Project Maigo (9 page)

“If it doesn’t?”

“The cavalry shouldn’t be too far behind.”

His only response is to quickly spin the chopper around, while still moving in the same direction, so that we’re flying backwards. He performs the maneuver expertly, but it’s still disorienting. My head spins for a moment, but it’s quickly cleared by a surge of adrenaline brought on by Woodstock’s voice.

“Holy hell!”

I catch a glimpse of what’s coming. Black teeth. The mottled roof of a massive mouth. Two, beach-ball sized brown eyes with big black pupils, reflecting the red hull of Betty and my own dopy looking surprised face.

The image is erased by a stream of orange tracers. It looks like a laser beam, but the stream of hot rounds is meant to show me where the rest of my unseen bullets are traveling. In this case, they’re headed right where I want them to—down Scrion’s throat.

The bulldog-like Kaiju snaps its jaws closed, just missing the chopper and absorbing the rest of my chain-gun rounds with its thick skin, which like Nemesis’s, seems fairly impervious to conventional ammunition.

When Scrion doesn’t fall away, I realize how close to the deck we are. Just thirty feet off the ground. If not for the swath of destruction around us, we’d be plowing through trees and power lines. I hit the second button on my joystick, switching from the chain gun to one of our two rocket pods, which carry a payload of thirty-eight Hydra 70 unguided rockets, meaning you have to be up close and personal to make them effective. Which isn’t going to be a problem.

Scrion lets out a bellow. It’s a deep resounding warble that shakes my insides and the helicopter. I definitely hurt the monster, but I’m pretty sure I mostly just made it angry. In fact, I think it’s thundering after us even faster than before.

I toggle my phone to transmit via Devine. “All forces, ETA? We have civilians in the danger zone.”

“Hawk-One. ETA, thirty seconds,” the chopper team leader replies. “We can see you now.”

I came up with the code names. They’re not very creative, but they’re easy to remember, and each mobile combat unit has its own animal kingdom designation. Me? I’m still just Hudson, but if they’re directing their comment to the chopper, it’s Betty. For real. They hate it, but it makes me and Woodstock smile.

“Eagle-eye One. We’re forty-five seconds out,” says the lead fighter pilot, his voice distorted by the roar of his plane.

“Hawk-One, once the car is clear, hit Scrion with everything you have. Eagle-eye, follow up with everything you got. Let’s see if we can turn this thing around.” I’d like to say, ‘Let’s see if we can kill this bastard,’ but I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.

“Understood, sir.”

“Copy that.”

It’s nice to be listened to. Our first time around responding to the Nemesis crisis, there were a lot of toes being stepped on and even more wrong calls made. Granted, until you see it with your own eyes, a giant monster is hard to take seriously. And no one really understood it. I’m not sure anyone really does now. But we’re organized, at least. Whether that matters has yet to be seen.

I change modes on Devine so my conversation with Woodstock won’t be filling up the network. “Can you take us lower?”

“And you think
I’m
the crazy one.” Woodstock shakes his head. “Hold on.”

We slowly descend. The car is somewhere below us. Since we don’t land atop its roof and I can’t see it, I’m assuming they’re ahead of us.

“Betty, stop!” It’s Hawk-One’s voice, and if he didn’t sound so worried, I would laugh at the ridiculousness of his statement. Even though I’m not currently transmitting, I can still receive transmissions directed to me. “You’re tail is just a few feet above the civvies. Looks like you’re going to reach a turn in about fifteen seconds.”

“Copy that,” I say. Woodstock has heard them, too. Our descent stops short of the street and the fleeing car, which turns a sharp left and peels away, quickly accelerating like a miniature Millennium Falcon.

“You got something spiffy in mind?” Woodstock asks. “Cause now’s the time.”

“Ever set off a cherry bomb under a bucket?”

“A cherry bomb under a—wait, what in all shit are you…?”

I don’t hear the rest of his protest. I’m focused on Scrion. Every loping leap forward not only brings the Kaiju closer to us, but it also exposes the giant’s underside and the three volatile orange membranes. I normally wouldn’t consider such a move, but seeing as how the membranes are much smaller than Nemesis’s, the surrounding area has already been obliterated and all the force will be transmitted straight down into the ground, I don’t see the harm.

Scrion hits the ground on the downside of a leap forward, bringing its bulky mass to within fifty feet. Two more of those strides, and it will have us.

It’s only going to get one more.

Scrion’s muscles bulge beneath its mat of rubber-like flesh, and the body comes up again. At the first sign of orange light, I pull the trigger.

11

Pitiful
, he thought, observing how predictable his enemy was. Since the events in Boston, Fusion Center-P had become one of the most prominent divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, with access to all levels of government and military. And yet, their headquarters remained entirely undefended. They believed the threats they faced came in the form of giants, easily spotted from a distance.

They were wrong.

General Lance Gordon hunched down between a stand of bushes and a lush rhododendron. The space between the plants had been hollowed out. The remains of a plastic bucket and rotting popsicle sticks littered the dirt. A childhood hideout, long forgotten.

The space was barely big enough to contain Gordon’s new body. He had grown taller, standing nearly eight feet in height. His bulk had nearly doubled. Thick muscles pushed against his thick skin, which negated the damage from both bullets and impacts. In Boston, he’d survived a thirty-story fall.

But he had been wounded.

Gordon had watched from the ground as Jon Hudson offered Alexander Tilly up to Nemesis. That had been
his
place.
His
mission. Before Maigo became Nemesis, Gordon had received a heart transplant from the girl. In essence, he had Nemesis’s heart beating in his chest. While it didn’t grow to Nemesis’s size, it
did
change him. In addition to the physical changes, Gordon had become connected to Nemesis, feeling her desires. Her rage. Her targets. And he set out to help her. But when Hudson offered Tilly up, that connection had been broken. It left Gordon feeling directionless and confused.

He fled west and north, back to where the original Kaiju carcass had been discovered. Lost and alone, he wandered the wilderness, feeding on whatever animal crossed his path: mouse, elk, even Grizzly bears. They were all easy prey. But his sense of purpose never returned...until he felt the connection return. But not to Nemesis. To the others. To the unborn children.

The kids.

He had gone back to Alaska and found the eggs, still whole, buried in the back of the cave their mother had died in. He suspected that when Nemesis-Prime had died so long ago, the site had been buried by a landslide, and that the eggs had gone into some kind of hibernation. When he removed them from the cave and the light of day struck their shells, the young had quickly emerged.

He wasn’t really sure how it worked, but he believed the original creature they’d found in Alaska, what Zoomb now called
Nemesis-Prime
, was like many species of plants and animals. It only reproduced when death was near, helping to ensure the survival of the species. Under natural circumstances, the five young might have fought amongst each other until the last one remaining took up its mother’s mantle as judge, jury and executioner. But under Gordon’s direction—with his genetic duplicate of their mother’s heart, albeit human sized—all five had survived. They’d been connected to him since, but rather than him following their desires, they followed his.

And right now, that was vengeance. Against Jon Hudson. And against Nemesis for turning away from him.

His dark skin kept him concealed in the shadows, as he watched the woman in the car. She looked to be waiting for someone. A moment later, a red helicopter lifted away from the roof and headed toward his child.

His distraction.

He couldn’t see who was inside the chopper, but he had little doubt Jon Hudson would be one of them. Hudson would either die in that chopper or upon his return. Either way, he was going to die. Like all people, Hudson was frail, but his real weakness was the people he cared about.

When the helicopter disappeared from view, Gordon slipped from the brush and moved for the car. His instincts told him to charge forward, to roar and beat his fists. But he still had the mind of a military man. Stealth was the superior tactic. Even for a monster. An enemy taken by surprise is an enemy defeated.

The black-haired woman didn’t detect his approach until he was two steps away. Before she could scream, he’d punched through the driver’s side window of the small car with his sledgehammer fist, taken hold of the door and yanked it off. She fought to escape, but the seatbelt already around her chest held her in place. He took hold of the belt with both hands and tugged. It came apart like old yarn.

She fought against him, kicking and screaming, but when his large, thick-fingered hand compressed her forearm, the fight went out of her. Just a little more pressure and the bones would break. Gordon lifted the woman from the car and turned toward the large brick building’s side entrance, just as a pudgy man with curly brown hair exited. A dog jumped out after him, but took just one look at him and bolted.

The man jiggled as he stopped in his tracks. A ridiculous man.

Gordon lifted the woman by her arm, her toes dangling a foot above the gravel driveway. “Back inside.” His voice was deep and rumbling, unrecognizable to anyone who’d known him before—

“General Gordon...” the man whispered.

—except, apparently, this man.

“Inside, now,” Gordon said. “Or I’ll remove her arm.”

The man nodded and turned to the door. He struggled to get through it thanks to his bulk, nervousness and the several bags he carried. Gordon watched the man through squinted eyes, wondering how such a person could work for any government agency, and how he would taste. Nothing sated a hunger like fat.

Later
, he told himself. He needed them alive until Hudson returned, or died in battle.

After squeezing through the door, Gordon let go of the woman’s arm. Pudgy wasn’t going anywhere fast, and the way the woman ran into his arms meant she wasn’t going anywhere without him.

“Upstairs,” he said. He knew they operated out of the fourth story, which would also provide a view of the battle below. He took the stairs four at a time, the old wood creaking, but not breaking beneath his sizable mass. “Solid construction.” He spoke the words like he was considering buying the place. Really, he just liked seeing the pair squirm when he spoke.
So frail
.

The top of the fourth flight of steps opened up into a large space with enough computer terminals for a decent-sized intelligence team. “You’re the only ones here?” Despite Gordon’s gruff voice, he couldn’t hide his surprise. He’d seen only one person come and go that morning, but he had assumed a large crew was working inside.

“Just the two of us,” the woman said. “Everyone else is evacuating.”

“The woman,” Gordon said. “The redhead.”

The fat man nodded.

“There are only
five
of you here?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He just chuckled like Jabba the Hut. This was going to be so easy, it was almost disappointing.

“Hey!” the shout was so loud and forceful that Gordon nearly jumped. Instead he turned toward the voice. The redhead had returned. She was a tall woman. Curvy too. Dressed in tight jeans and a not quite too tight blouse. Gordon glanced at her feet. Boots. Real shitkickers. This woman was a looker, but she was more than that. She held a large revolver in two hands. Probably held .50 caliber rounds. A good weapon. And it was aimed between his eyes. Gordon liked this one. Too bad he had to kill her.

“Ashley,” the fat man said. “You weren’t supposed to—”

The thunderous crack of the gun firing drowned out the man’s voice. The bullet covered the distance between the gun and Gordon’s head before the sound reached their ears. The impact knocked him back, throwing him into the room’s back wall, which cracked from the strain.

Gordon’s head lolled forward.

The bullet fell away, clattering to the floor.

“Get out of here!” the woman named Ashley shouted.

Gordon raised his head, glowering at the woman with his yellow eyes. A sneer formed on his lips. “I like a woman who can fight.”

He shoved himself away from the wall and charged across the room.

The gun fired six more times before he reached her. He felt the impacts as little more than punches from an old lady. He reached for the woman, not intending to kill her. The other two were no doubt already running, so he’d need this one alive.