“Got it.” The Oshkosh was headed that direction anyway. If we were going somewhere, it might as well be in the shadow of an armored vehicle until we got there.
“Get up there and—” The roar came again, much closer this time. Boone grimaced as it shorted out his hearing protection.
The ground shook. Then it shook again. It was like a miniature earthquake every other second. Those were footsteps.
“Run!”
The fog was rolling back in. As painfully cold as it had gotten, it should have frozen solid, but instead it just clung to us. Visibility was a fuzzy fifty feet at best. It was all gray mist and slightly darker gray ground. The sun was shining above, but you wouldn’t know it in here.
The truck drove forward. The three of us ran alongside, slipping across newly frozen puddles of seawater and sliding across loose stones. The gunners on the Bride saw something and opened fire. High-velocity shells ripped through the air over our heads to smack into distant meat with an audible thwack. The answering roar was really pissed off.
A belt-fed 40mm grenade launcher began firing rhythmically. Out in the mist I briefly caught a chain of explosions, three hundred yards away, and thirty feet up . The flashes briefly illuminated a massive, humanoid body.
“That’s tall!” Trip exclaimed.
“This must be how gnomes feel all the time.”
The earthquakes went from sporadic to a drum beat as the thing picked up its pace. The loose gravel was vibrating like it had been set on top of a subwoofer.
The truck hit the brakes as the fifty-cal on top let rip. We never even made it to the rock pile we were supposed to claim. I braced my rifle over the hood and got ready. Hopefully the OLTVs would give me a warning before they took off so they wouldn’t drive over my feet.
“Is a rifle even going to scratch that thing?” Holly shouted next to my ear.
“Maybe it’s got a weak spot.” I peered through my scope and got my first good look at the approaching threat. It filled my scope. The thing had legs as big around as tree trunks and arms that hung nearly to its distant knees, was covered in blue skin and bony protuberances, and was big as a friggin’ house. I don’t think anything on it would count as a weak spot. “Giant! It’s a giant!”
Trip got on his radio. “Target is a giant. I repeat, giant.”
We’d gone over giants in Newbie training, mostly in hushed tones, but it wasn’t like mankind ran into them much anymore. They were a nightmare left over from darker times. They were rare—thank God for that, because they were supposed to be ridiculously hard to kill. In the olden days, one of these things could eat a town. How a giant had wound up here, I’d never know, but in the island’s never-ending turf war, this had to be the heavyweight champ.
“According to the square cube law, there’s no way that thing can exist,” Trip said fearfully.
“That’s helpful right now!” Holly snapped back.
It was too close to safely shoot the 105 at it, and the Bride ’s nose-upward angle probably meant they couldn’t depress the muzzle enough to hit it anyway, but we nailed the giant with everything else on that beach. It was like a mad minute on a spectacular firing line. Skippy and another chopper had gotten the call too, and had swooped in, dropping rockets on the monster’s shoulders.
But the giant was still getting closer.
It was hard to tell what it really looked like, so wreathed in shrapnel and shockwaves, but the giant was misshapen, like it had been pulled out of the oven too early. The fairytales lied. These things only looked human in the vaguest sense of the term. It looked kind of clumsy, but covering a quarter of a football field with each step, it was closing fast.
I realized it was heading right for us, or at least for the truck we were hiding behind. I stepped away and banged my fist on the hood. “Move! Move!”
The Hunter in the driver’s seat put the hammer down. The wheels sprayed gravel. The fifty on top kept firing as it bounced away. The three of us started running back toward the ship, only the world was shaking so bad that it was hard to stay on our feet.
There was a world-shattering boom as the Ostrava One fired its 125mm main gun. The tank shell zipped right past me. I don’t know if I threw myself down because of instinct or if the concussion took me off my feet. You don’t really have time to think through the physics at a time like that. All I knew was that as I hit the ground the shell struck the giant’s torso. The mighty beast lurched to the side as the explosion rocked the beach.
Holly was still running. Trip came back, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me upright just as it began raining blood and meat all around us. Some of the pieces were the size of Thanksgiving turkeys. Not wanting to be killed by flying meat shrapnel, we took off. I looked back to see that the giant was not only still standing, he was pursuing the OLTV. One absent kick and the heavy armored truck was deformed and flipping end over end. By the time it crashed on its side, the giant had spun around and was heading toward the Bride . We were in its way.
Holly saw that it was going to catch me and Trip, and she slid to a halt and opened fire. It was a futile noble gesture.
“Shit!” I put my head down and sprinted as fast as I could. It made absolutely no difference. The giant caught up to Trip and me in a fraction of a second. It leaned over and swept its hand along the ground in a flash, tearing up a vast swath of earth.
I found myself sailing through the air, spinning around in a cloud of gravel.
The ocean was below me. Rocks peppered it like rain. Then it rushed up to hit me.
I crashed through the ice-cold surf. The shock was incredible. I struck the rocks beneath a second later. That hurt less than the water.
Getting dunked in ice water is a terrible sensation. The cold hit like an electric shock. It caused an uncontrollable gasp. Water filled my mouth. I thrashed, trying to get my bearings, got my knees on the bottom, and scrambled up. Skin burning, heart racing, I wretched, sucked in air, and tried to get my bearings. I forced myself up. It was only waist-deep. The air hit me in the face like a brick.
I was forty feet from shore. It hadn’t so much as hit me—if it had I’d be dead—but more like I’d been swept up like a dust bunny in front of a broom.
The giant was heading for the ship. I didn’t see Holly or Trip anywhere. Ostrava One fired again, the tank’s autoloader capable of pumping out a round every six seconds. From the way this shell punched a football-sized hole clean through the giant’s guts and out its back in a shower of gore, they’d switched from high-explosive to armor-piercing.
I was hyperventilating. It was so shockingly cold that I could barely think. All I could do was struggle toward land or die, so I did, clumsily, until I realized Trip was floating facedown a bit further out to sea. Arms wide, head down, motionless. I tried to shout his name, but the muscles of my jaw were reflexively clenched too tight. I waded toward him.
The tank’s AP round must have done the trick, because the giant lurched and stumbled toward the ocean. The next shell punched through its chest and the giant toppled into the surf. It struck the water so hard that a wave came back and hit me and knocked me over again. I came up sputtering, grasping for Trip. My fingers didn’t want to work. I caught hold of his vest and flipped him over. His eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. I started dragging him back toward the beach.
That meant going directly toward the monster. There was no way around. It had landed on its side, but was already struggling again to its hands and knees. It lifted its hideous, bumpy head, water drizzling down, blood pouring out of the massive hole in its abdomen, and it looked our way, lips parting in a snarl, revealing ivory teeth as big as my head.
Those huge eyes were focused directly on me, out splashing in the shallow end. There was intelligence in the giant’s eyes, far more than expected. Then it spoke. Each word was deafening, its breath a foul, stinking wind. It was clearly language, and a complicated one at that. Unable to speak, I gave my answer by reaching for the rifle that wa
s still slung across by body. I lifted Cazador with one shaking hand, raised it to hip level, and fired.
The side of the giant’s head exploded. Pieces flew violently in every direction. There was a gaping exit wound where its ear had been. I was so dizzy and befuddled that I stared stupidly at Cazador for a moment, thinking, Did I do that? before I realized that had come from the tank.
Boom. Head shot.
The light in those eyes went out. The massive body crashed into the water again. This time my feet were planted and ready so I wasn’t washed away by the impact wave. I let my rifle hang, and went back to dragging Trip through the pink surf. I was trying to tell him that everything was going to be okay, but I couldn’t form words.
The rest remains an incoherent blur. I don’t remember getting Trip back on the beach. I don’t remember collapsing, curling into a ball, and shivering until other Hunters got there to help us. But as I lay there, world spinning, I did remember the giant’s words, and somehow I could understand their meaning.
We will never let you free Asag.
CHAPTER 16
I had helped set up the ship’s hospital. I hadn’t planned on being one of the first patients. Since Hunters tended to be pessimists, we had picked two of the bigger rooms on the ship to serve as the infirmary. I’d been stripped out of my clothes, dried off, and stuck under a heated blanket. Occasionally a deck gun would fire, which told me I needed to get back to work.
“They need me out there, Doc.”
Boris Todorovic came from Hurley’s team out of Florida, had grown up in the Yugoslavian civil war before immigrating to America and still had the accent, but had been an honest-to-goodness medical doctor before joining MHI. He had the reputation of being a beast in a fight but for this mission he was more valuable saving lives than taking them, so Earl had been put in charge of our infirmary.
Boris was currently standing next to my bed, dressed in scrubs rather than body armor, but still keeping me from doing my job. It turned out a man who had earned a reputation for once dismembering a luska with a fire axe had a very no-nonsense bedside manner.
“Sorry, Pitt. Until the shivering stops and the heart rate comes down, you’re staying here.”
“I’m fine.”
“Your words are slurred, a classic sign of hypothermia.” Boris started walking away.
“That’s just how I talk.”
“You say so, Mumbles. Here…catch.” He tossed a wooden tongue depressor at me. I not only failed to catch it, but it hit me in the nose too. “The patient demonstrates obvious lack of coordination.”
Trip was in the next bed over. “To be fair, he’s always like that. Z can’t catch a cold.”
“You’re not helping my case.” I threw the little piece of wood back at Boris and missed.
“Throw one at me, Doc.” Trip sounded kind of drunk. “I’d totally catch it.”
“You’re both lucky that giant did more of a scoop and toss than an outright hit. But you were in twenty-nine-degree salt water for a few minutes, and already chilled before. Being in wet clothing afterwards certainly didn’t help matters. Your core temperatures dropped too much. Even mild hypothermia causes confusion and poor decision making. So you want to go play with guns and explosives? Not on my watch. I’ll check back in an hour and see if you’re doing better. Trip, in addition to being hypothermic, you’ve got a concussion, so you’re not going anywhere for a while.” Boris walked off to check on his patients on the other side of the room.
It took my normally quick-witted friend several seconds to think of a response. “I collect concussions like you collect Barbie dolls, Doc!”
“Barbies? Really, Trip?”
“I don’t know, man.” Trip closed his eyes and sank back into his pillow. “I’ve got the worst headache ever.”
“Because even if he did actually collect dolls, which I doubt, because seriously, look at the guy, it isn’t like he’s going to get nerd-shamed by someone who paints tiny little metal dudes.”
“They’re miniatures. For wargaming. Now quit talking. Your words are hurting my brain.”
But I had doctor’s orders to not let Trip fall asleep. “Getting tossed across a beach by Frosty the Super Giant hurt your brain. I saved you from drowning.”
Trip groaned. “I’ll thank you after I’m done wishing for death’s sweet embrace.”
There were three other Hunters in the infirmary with us. Two had been in the flipped truck. Their driver—Cooper, it turned out—had crawled out of the wreck without so much as a bruise. The last Hunter was from the French contingent and had been on the convoy. They never even saw what threw it, but something had hurled a rock right into the turret hard enough to split his scalp wide open and nearly rip one ear off. It had been dangling by a strip of flesh when they’d carried him in. Boris had just kind of stuck the ear back on as best as he could, taped it down, and the French Hunter was getting flown out on the next chopper.
The lost ear was gross, but that was it so far, five stable in the infirmary, nobody in a bag. Considering the ridiculous quantity and quality of monsters we’d blasted on the way in, that was remarkably lucky. I figured it was our reward for doing our homework and hitting with overwhelming force. I figured now that the various monster groups knew we were here, and a force to be reckoned with, it was only going to get harder.
Which was another reason I needed to get back to work as soon as possible. If we were still on track, today we would secure and fortify the beachhead. Tonight we’d hold, because even though night was very short here, monsters usually loved to attack in the dark, and tomorrow we would hit the ruins. If Earl saw me like this, weak and brain-froze, I was worried he’d pull the plug on letting me go through the gate. I needed to get moving, to either avoid Earl entirely, or to at least look like I had my shit together when he saw me.
“Hey, Trip. I just remembered I need to do something. Try not to slip into a coma.” I sat up and waited for the dizziness to pass. Wow. The room was spinning. I was a little nauseous. The weird angle we’d landed at certainly wasn’t helping the effect.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To get my gear bag from the cargo bay. I can recuperate while I put my armor on.” I got out of bed before I remembered I was naked. It was true: even mild hypothermia makes you stupid. “Shit.”
“Yo, you need pants, man.”
“They’re in the bag.” I thought about streaking across the whole ship, but that was probably what Dr. Boris meant about poor decision making. The worst part would be the cold metal floors, so I began looking around to see if there were any slippers stashed in here, but my poor decision was postponed because Holly and Earl walked in. I hurried and covered myself with the electric blanket.
“Aw, cute. Z’s acting like I’ve never seen one of those before,” Holly said.
“Have some dignity, boy,” Earl snapped. “There’s a lady present.”
Holly snorted.
“Hey, Boss.” I nodded politely. “Holly.”
She’d been right there with us, between a tank and a giant, and by some miracle there wasn’t a scratch on her. Sometimes in the chaos of battle that was just the way things shook out. Holly smirked at me. “Considering that ice bath must’ve caused some shrinkage, still not bad, Z. No wonder Julie married you.”
“Thanks?”
“Knock it off, kids.” Earl stopped between our beds. “How’re you two doing?”
“Awesome,” I lied.
“That’s why your skin is bright red and you’re shaking like a leaf,” Holly said.
“I’m not red,” Trip declared.
“I helped haul your ass in here. It’s the first time I’ve seen a black guy turn blue.”
Trip waved one hand dismissively as if getting swatted like a bug was no big deal. “You worry too much, Holly.”
“Spare me, Dreadlock Smurf.”
“I’m ready to get back to it,” I told Earl. “I’ll be fine.”
“Outstanding.
” I was pretty sure Earl knew I was lying, but he wasn’t big on coddling his Hunters. Earl was a walk-it-off sort. Normally if one of his men said they were ready to fight, he’d take them at their word. However, I must have looked really bad, because instead he called out, “Hey, Boris, got a minute?”
The doctor wandered back over. “What is it?”
Earl was shaking a cigarette from a dwindling pack before he realized this was technically a hospital room. “You mind?”
“Eh…” The doctor shrugged. “Nobody’s on oxygen.”
“Want one?”
“I smoked for two years so I could wear a nicotine patch for five. No thanks.”
“Quitter.” Earl snorted. “What’s the status? I need all the Hunters I can get.”
“As soon as it’s safe for Skippy to land, Darne’s man needs to go to the airfield and then back to the mainland. He’s not going to die, but he needs reconstructive surgery, and there’s nothing else I can do for him here. I want Jones and Neely here overnight because of head trauma. Brian Musgrave broke three fingers when the truck landed, but he says it’s his off hand, so you should be able to put him doing something.”
“And Pitt?”
“I’ll be ready to hit the ruins, no problem,” I asserted.
“You base this on your medical degree? Do I tell you how to make the spreadsheets? No? Shut up.” He turned back to Earl. “Let him warm up and he should be fine in a bit.”
Groovy. I didn’t do all this work to end up sitting on the bench.
“Thanks, Boris. You need anything else, just ask. You get more patients, I can send you Gretchen and her healers, but until then I can use them as mobile field medics. What’s your plan if anything sneaks in here?”
“I would hit it with an axe, as is the way of my people.” The doctor said that so nonchalantly that none of us could tell if he was joking or not. “When you bring me wounded, make sure to bring their guns. Anybody not sedated can still fight. Now, if you will excuse me, Neely still needs stitches.”
Monster Hunter Siege (Monster Hunters International Book 6) Page 24
