“Worse,” Lilly said, zooming in again, focusing on one of the chunks. While much of the gunk falling toward the city might actually be shit—because who knew?—the large chunks looked like long, wriggling larvae, each the size of a man, but with hundreds of stubby legs. “Okay, so, it’s crapping out little Mothra spawn.” She returned the image back to normal just as they flew by Hyperion and came up on Nemesis. The big kaiju didn’t even flinch as they passed, which was good. If they were undetectable to her, the Aeros might not see them either. Lilly headed for the open rear hatch, cinching her parachute tight. “Looks like we know what our job is now.”
Crazy stepped up beside her, standing with the dull patience of a man waiting for the subway train. She glanced at his body. He was dressed in the body armor she was now missing, and carrying an array of jet black weapons coated in what he called oscillium, but his gear was incomplete.
“Forgetting something?” Lilly asked, pointing at his parachute, still sitting on the bench.
“Over the DZ,” Woodstock called out. “Go, go, go.”
Crazy gave Lilly a smile, and jumped.
“What the frick?” Lilly muttered, and she jumped out after him. “I hope you’re not expecting me to catch you.” She would, but with such a low jump, there wasn’t time. Her parachute sprang open, slowing her descent, while Crazy plummeted toward the street below, where pedestrians ran screaming, like Godzilla movie extras.
In typical Crazy fashion, he twisted around and offered a smile. Lilly noticed his gross, split, Dread eyes a moment before he winked out of existence. Then she turned her attention to the rapidly approaching ground. She stuck the landing with no trouble, her increased strength, speed and agility making the landing easy. Then she shed the parachute, and looked for signs of trouble.
A shrill scream spun her around, claws extended, expecting to find a larva turd attacking someone. Instead, she found a wide-eyed woman backing away from her, shouting, “There’s another one!” before bolting away.
Lilly’s head hung back, mouth open with a groan. “‘Fight naked,’ he said. ‘Unleash the weapon.’ Asshole.”
As though called by the name Lilly imagined most people used for him, Crazy slipped back into reality just a few feet away. “The MirrorWorld isn’t nearly as dry.”
Before Lilly could express not giving a shit, her sensitive ears picked up another scream, this one too far away to have been caused by her. “This way!” She broke out into a run and was surprised when Crazy matched her pace. She was used to Maigo matching or beating her in training, but she’d never met anyone else who could keep up.
Their run took them to a four-way intersection. Ahead of them lay a pristine collection of red brick buildings, palm trees and perfectly manicured grass. “The hell is this place?”
Crazy cleared his throat and pointed to a sign that read: University of Arizona.
“Right,” Lilly said, and charged forward against the flow of students running from whatever hell had been shat upon them. She glanced up as a dark shadow fell over her. The campus was directly beneath the GUS. Clumps of fleshy who-knew-what fell from its undulating body.
A couple of young men in shorts and tank tops slowed their retreat to gawk at Lilly. She was about to verbally tear them apart when one of them, with something like reverence in his voice, said, “Oh, my God. It’s her.”
The words were whispered, but she could hear them just fine.
“Dude,” his long haired friend said, now ogling.
Lilly pointed away from campus and shouted, “Run, you fucking tards!”
They obeyed, but continued speaking to each other. “Holy shit, dude, she spoke to us!”
Lilly fought against the smile sneaking onto her face and focused on the screaming, which was now close enough for Crazy to hear. While she had been distracted by the bros, he had taken the lead. As he rounded a brick building, Lilly leapt in the air, perching herself atop a palm tree.
Between a collection of buildings, a group of people were being assailed by a ring of the oversized larvae, which were faster than they looked, and spraying toxic, black gunk from their sphincter-like mouths. Wasting no time, Lilly sprang from the tree top, landed beside one of the creatures and raked her claws along its segmented side. The creature’s body went rigid, arching back in soundless pain. Lilly’s second strike plunged her fingers into the top of its head, and she was both pleased and horrified at the ease with which her fingers punched through.
But in the larva’s death throes, it sprayed black fluid from its mouth, coating the man Lilly had intended to save. There was a moment when the man was just disgusted. Then he began to scream.
And a moment later, melt.
The man took just five seconds to fall apart, during which time more people found themselves coated, and melting.
“The spray is deadly!” Lilly shouted to Crazy, who was busy shooting one larva after another. He was doing wide scale damage, but for every larva he killed, another fell from the sky. And that was happening all over the city. It was a losing fight.
“Lilly.” The voice was Collins, speaking through the comm that Crazy had thankfully not removed with her clothing. “What’s the situation on the ground?”
“FUBAR,” Lilly said, using the acronym Hudson had taught her, though Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition actually seemed tame. And given the rhythmic shaking she now felt beneath her feet, it was about to get worse. “Is that Nemesis I feel incoming?”
“Headed straight for you,” Collins replied. “I’m patching Maigo in.”
“Any way for you to evacuate the area?” Maigo asked, sounding a little more tense than her usual tense self.
“Uh, not without the national guard and a few weeks.”
“We can’t take this thing down over a city full of people.” Maigo sounded annoyed, and that made Lilly angry. She was the one in a giant robot!
“Well, right now the city’s full of people who are being melted by acid spraying dildos!” Lilly dove to the side as a falling larva unleashed a cloud of acid in her direction. She rolled back to her feet and looked over her arm, where she felt drops strike. The smell of burnt hair filled the air, but she felt no pain. “So unless you have any bright ideas—”
“I can do it,” Crazy said.
“Do what?” Lilly asked.
“Evacuate the city. Just cover me for a minute.”
Lilly stared into his confident eyes for a moment. “Fine. We’ve got this.” Then she deactivated her comm and held a hand out to Crazy. “Give me the machete.”
“Faithful,” he said, drawing the blade from its sheath on his back.
“You name your weapons?” She caught the machete when he tossed it her way, looking over its wickedly sharp, serrated blade. She swung out at a black object falling above her. The blade slipped through the larva with little resistance, carving it in half. “‘Faithful’ it is.”
Crazy fell to his knees and placed his hands on the ground, as though praying to Mecca, only in the wrong direction. Lilly had no idea what he was doing, but she fulfilled her promise, leaping, swinging, cutting and clawing. She mowed through the wriggling larvae as quickly as they fell, even after the last remaining people fled the scene. They were at the eye of the storm now, being pelted by squirming acid-spraying creatures. As more of them sprayed the ground, it became unsafe to walk on. Lilly jumped from one clearing to another, eventually retreating to the side of a brick wall, where her sharp, powerful claws held her in place. “Crazy! Whatever you’re doing, we’re out of time.” A roar shook the city and drew Lilly’s gaze upward. Nemesis had arrived, and as the kaiju’s gaze was on the GUS in the sky, she trampled buildings—and maybe people. And she and Crazy were about to be next. “Really out of time!”
Lilly prepared to leap down and yank Crazy away, but then he started shaking. For a moment she thought he might be having a seizure, but then she understood he was shaking from exertion, like a weightlifter.
“Gaaaah!” Crazy screamed, e
xperiencing some kind of pain Lilly couldn’t fathom.
Distracted by Crazy, she failed to see the larva falling toward him like a missile. A hiss of spray burst from its mouth.
“No!” Lilly shouted, diving out, swinging with Faithful—and missing.
16
HUDSON
The walk back to what can best be described as a medieval fortress with modern design flourishes is awkward, hot and humid. I kick a leg out to the side, doing the funky walk that men around the world have perfected to ward off hang nasty, but it only helps for a step or two. Then my dangly bits are all out of whack once more.
It’s no wonder everyone I’ve seen is dressed like they’re Savage Land cosplayers. Men and women alike are scantily clad, dressed for the heat, but also for battle. I haven’t seen a modern firearm among them, but the wide assortment of weaponry tells me they’re skilled warriors.
“Hunters,” Solomon says, noting the attention I’m giving the people we pass. Though he has a dinosaur steed walking behind us, its hot breath adding to the sticky air, he’s walking with us. “Reformed, like me.”
“What did you hunt?” I ask.
“Men,” he says, smiling at my shocked expression. “For the Nephilim. They were dark days, but they have come to an end...for the most part. Roaring lions lurk just out of sight.”
“I think your dinosaur pal could handle a lion,” I say.
“Not literal lions,” he explains.
“Nephilim,” I say. “Right.”
“And my dinosaur pal is a Crylophosaur. I call them Cresties. A native species that survived underground.”
I look back at the thirty-foot-long dinosaur. It’s keeping pace, but paying us no attention. Its snout is raised, casually sniffing the air. “Kind of have your own Journey to the Center of the Earth thing going, then, huh?”
“If Jules Verne used Dante as a ghostwriter,” he says, and then he motions to the Crestie. “His name is Grumpy.”
“Grumpy?” The name tickles my memory, scratching at something from childhood. “Grumpy is supposed to be a T-Rex. Of course, as bad as he was, Alice was the real danger. Grumpy was a bit slow...”
I stop talking when I notice Solomon’s shocked expression, a smile slowly spreading. “You know Land of the Lost?”
“Marshal, Will and Holly,” I sing. “On a routine expedition—”
“This is the man who is leading the fight to save an infinite number of parallel Earths from an alien invasion?” Fiona asks.
I clamp my mouth shut, but the tune is stuck now, and stuck tunes demand to be finished. I’m pleased when Solomon joins in, humming the Land of the Lost theme song, not just because I’m enjoying the childhood bonding, but because that bond might influence his pending decision to help us, or not.
“Time is short,” Cowboy says, just before we reach the song’s end. The interruption erases Solomon’s smile. I think he’s a man who knew how to have fun once, but he’s been weighed down by the responsibilities of running a kingdom and managing a continent, to which he claims to be connected. Cowboy either doesn’t see the mood shift, or doesn’t care. “We need your help.”
“You will make time,” Solomon says, eyes forward once more. In the distance, the tower destroyed by Freeman’s railgun is slowly stitching itself back together, obeying Solomon’s will.
“But—” Cowboy starts.
Solomon motions to David, caught in the middle of a hang nasty shake. “You have a time traveler.”
“Time is not flexible,” David says, and for the first time since meeting him, he seems a little nervous. “The events unfolding in our absence can’t be changed by our return. If we don’t get back, the people we left behind will soon be in real danger.”
His wife, I think. He’s worried about Sally. And with good reason. When we left, a giant gassy kaiju was floating in the sky. Who knows what happened after we left. The thought triggers my imagination. I see Collins, and Maigo, Hawkins, Joliet and Lilly, all our friends and family left behind to deal with an invasion while we hop through dimensions, gathering a small force of people that may or may not help turn the tide in the coming war.
Cowboy is right. We’ve spent enough time chatting, and this hang nasty is killing me. It’s time to go home.
I stop in my tracks, doing my best to not flinch when Grumpy’s big snout bumps into me. The parade of dinosaurs and hunters stops when Solomon does. “Sol, listen...”
He’s smiling again when he faces me.
“What?”
“Sol,” he says. “The only people who call me that are the ones who knew me—” He motions to the lush terrain surrounding us. “—before all this.”
“Well, I’m sure we would have been pals, back in the day,” I say. “Maybe we still can be. But that’s not going to happen unless you come with us.”
“Perhaps, but the days of Saturday morning cartoons and Cocoa Pebbles are long behind me. Behind both of us, I suspect. As much as you are responsible for your world, I am responsible for this world. I cannot abandon it.”
“Says the king who named his very own Dino Rider after a Sid and Marty Croft TV show.” I make a show of looking around. “Where’s Space Ghost and Ookla?”
To my surprise, he laughs. “I look like him now, don’t I?”
“Ookla? You’re not quite that ugly.”
“Thundaar.” He pats the long spear-mace thing that is far more flexible than I would have guessed, somehow wrapped around his waist. “Instead of a sun sword, I have Whipsnap.”
I can’t help but smile. I like this guy, and could probably spend days reminiscing about 80s cartoons, but like he said, those days are long behind us. People I care about are in danger. As much as I want him to come, I also understand why he wouldn’t want to leave, especially if there are Nephilim lurking about. Aliens are bad enough, but demon half-breeds sound like a nightmare.
Still, I have to try.
“The aliens invading our Earth—the Aeros—won’t stop there. They’ve been fighting a civil war with the Ferox for millions of years, taking their carnage throughout the universe in multiple dimensions. I don’t know how the history of your Earth played out, but back home, the Ferox arrived thousands of years ago, when mankind was still dressing like…well, like you. No offense. Since then, they’ve lived among us, directing the course of humanity, training us in the ways of war, while at the same time teaching us to hate our oppressors, making us sympathetic to their cause. We’ve been manipulated for most of modern history, and it worked. The Aeros see humanity—all of humanity, no matter what dimension they live in—as a threat. If our Earth falls, this world, your world, could be next. It might not happen for another twenty years, or it might happen in a month.”
Freeman clears his throat, and I’m not even sure that’s something he really needs to do. “With an infinite number of potential realities to conquer, it’s also possible that the Aeros would not arrive in this dimension for eons.”
“Thank you, Captain Calculator,” I say to Freeman. He’s well meaning, but his blunt honesty isn’t going to help. His personality is similar to David’s that way, but at least the old time traveler knows when to keep his mouth shut. “Also worth considering is that the Aeros might have a way to destroy all realities at once.”
“But you don’t know this for sure?” Solomon asks.
“If you had an infinite number of planets to destroy, wouldn’t you try to find a way to wipe them all out at once? The Earth they conquered before reaching us could have merely been a beachhead.”
“Is good point,” Cowboy says, stepping closer. “We should look into this idea.”
“But it’s still conjecture,” Solomon says. “You’re guessing. But if I leave this world, the evil that remains will sense my departure. My land will be in peril. My family in danger. Had I not been here upon your arrival, that collapsing tower would have killed ten people. Ten friends. Had that happened...”
He lets the threat go unspoken.
I moti
on to the hunters all around us, my hand stopping at a particularly fierce black woman with a very cool looking afro, not to mention one of the skimpiest outfits of these hunters. She looks entirely comfortable and not at all fazed by my attention. “Your lands seem pretty guarded to me.”
“And your wife is far from defenseless,” the hunter woman says.
“Zuh,” Solomon says. “Please go check on the girls.”
The woman named Zuh shakes her head, clearly annoyed, but she obeys.
“Please, understand,” Solomon says, “I am connected to this continent, body, mind and soul. The further I get from it, the less powerful I am. In another reality, the power might not exist at all. I have to stay. My mind cannot be changed.”
I’m about to argue my case again, but Cowboy stops me with a hand on my arm. “He is not the man I thought him to be. We should go.”
Solomon frowns at this, but if Cowboy meant his words as a guilt trip, the King of Antarktos isn’t susceptible.
“No offense to Tarzan here,” Rook says, “but if asses need kicking and this guy’s pussying out, there’s no sense in continuing the verbal circle jerk. Let’s get the hell out of this sauna and find me a spatula to scrape my nuts off the side of my leg.”
I can’t help but chuckle. Rook seems to be as much a kindred spirit as Solomon. But they definitely don’t share that connection.
The King of Antarktos shifts his angry gaze to Rook. “What can you do?”
“In layman’s terms?” Rook says, “I can blow shit up.”
“That’s all?” Solomon asks.
“You need more—” Vines launch out of the ground swirling around Rook’s mouth. When his hands go for his guns, the vines entwine them as well.
“I agree that it is time for you to go,” Solomon says.
A stiff wind kicks up around us, the pressure squeezing against my body, whipping my clothes around. And then, with a churning in my gut, we’re airborne. Solomon lifts Cowboy, Freeman, Fiona, Rook, David and me high into the air and carries us back the way we came. As we fly through the air, I look back at the distant fortress, the tower once again whole.
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 10
