“These giant gasbags,” he says, “they work something like a hot air balloon, right? The top half is filled with enough lighter-than-air gas to counteract the weight of the lower half. And the skirt thing just moves them around.”
All eyes are on Rook, waiting for him to reveal his plan.
“To fly higher in a hot air balloon, you ditch sand bags, right? So what would happen if you ditched the whole basket?” He answers his own question by making a whistling noise and wiggling his fingers as he raises a hand toward the ceiling. “Bye bye, gasbag. And if it self-corrects by expelling gas, they’ll be far less explosive and high enough to not do any damage on the ground.”
Hawkins looks unconvinced. “Even if we can cut away the lower half—”
“Or just part of it,” Rook says.
“Whatever is severed is going to land on the ground, destroying infrastructure and killing people.” Hawkins shakes his head. He’s dedicated his life to saving people, first as a Search and Rescue Park Ranger, whose tracking skills saved a large number of people, and whose fighting skills allowed him to defeat a grizzly bear. That’s not mentioning the BFSs and Lilly’s horrific mother on Island 731. A plan that involves casualties as a given isn’t going to sit well with him.
“Look kids, this is war. And it’s not just your world and the people you love who are in the crosshairs. I’ve got a wife and kids now. People I love. Who I’d give my life for, and who I’d sacrifice lives for. If we’re not in this to win, at any cost, then we’re going to lose.”
The group’s response is silence.
“Have any of you fought a war?” Rook asks. “And I don’t mean against monsters. I mean a real war. Where civilians are killed, by the bad guys and the good guys. The kind that doesn’t involve fancy rooms with comfy chairs.” He motions around the well-appointed situation room. “Anyone?”
A single hand goes up. “Chief Warrant Officer Five, U.S. Marine Corp...retired. But not really. Not anymore.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about,” Rook says.
“I do,” Woodstock says, and then he turns to me. “And the fella is right. Much as I hate to say it, wars are won by kicking ass and ignoring names. We can count the dead when we win.”
“At what cost to our souls?” Hawkins asks.
Rook leans forward, face a little bit red. “Any cost.”
“Are we really considering this?” Joliet asks. And I know she’s not just being quick to take Hawkins’s side because of their relationship. She says what she thinks, regardless of his opinion. “Ignoring civilian casualties... That’s just—”
“Necessary,” Collins says, and I’m glad she beat me to the punch. Just thinking it makes me queasy, but Mephos, Rook and Woodstock are right. We’re at war with an enemy bent on wiping out an infinite number of Earths populated by even more people. Pulling our punches to save a few, could mean that everyone will die.
“We’ll do what we have to,” Maigo says, backing up her mother before me.
All eyes turn to me. The call is mine to make.
Before I can speak, an alarm sounds.
Cooper’s fingers fly over her keyboard. “We’re under attack. It’s the GUS.”
I stand from my chair. “They’ve already got us on the ropes. This isn’t a time to pull punches. And I’m not big on fighting fair. So let’s kick ’em in the nuts.”
“Damn the consequences?” Hawkins asks.
I nod. “If we don’t, we might be damning the human race.”
“Cowboy, I need you to take me, Rook, Collins, Hawkins and Joliet to Stinson Mountain. Maigo, meet us outside with Hyperion.”
“And Nemesis?” she asks.
“She’s here?”
“In the tank,” Maigo says.
“Will she fight with us?”
Maigo nods.
“Then do it.”
“And us?” Freeman asks, motioning to himself and Fiona.
“I want you on the ground, defending this base. Cooper and Watson will direct you.” I point at Cowboy and say. “Soon as we’re away, find out what they’re up to. The gasbags can’t be their endgame.”
I’m about to dismiss the group when something above us thumps.
All eyes turn up. Twenty feet above us is a large, square grill on the ceiling.
“They’re in the vents,” Maigo says.
22
LILLY
All at once, a city of 50,000 people pitched over and barfed. Lilly had never seen, heard or smelled anything like it before. She hoped she never would again. On the plus side, she seemed to be immune to the effects of shifting between frequencies of reality. Probably because she wasn’t quite human, but she liked to think it was because she was a total badass.
Like Crazy.
Or not, she thought, when she found him lying at her feet. He was sprawled in the perfectly cropped grass, alive, but unconscious. Shifting an entire city had taken its toll on the man.
But it had worked.
Lilly looked up at the strange purple sky, roiling with clouds, but there was not a kaiju in sight. The MirrorWorld wouldn’t save them if the Aeros destroyed the Earth, but it had saved Tucson, and Lilly, for a time. Crazy was crazy, but she owed him. Everyone still alive in this city did.
Following the chorus of projectile vomiting, screams returned. Some of the larvae had made the jump with them. She’d heard that Crazy could move between frequencies and not take the mud on his shoes with him, but that kind of control must not have been possible at a city-wide scale.
Before Lilly could leap into action with Faithful in hand, a new sound muffled out the screams. A continuous roar, growing in volume.
Like a waterfall, Lilly thought, and then she remembered Crazy’s description of the MirrorWorld. Most of this world was flooded. Tucson was sitting in the middle of an endless swamp, rather than a desert, and the water was rushing in. There were countless people in need of help, fighting for their lives against Aeros larvae, or MirrorWorld floods, but right now, only one man mattered.
Lilly grasped Crazy by his belt and hoisted him off the ground. He was heavier than a man his size should have been, but she was far stronger than pretty much any other woman on the planet—save for Maigo. And she could do other things Maigo couldn’t. She leapt to the side of a brick building, her claws digging into the mortar. In five quick lunges, she neared the top. When she and Crazy’s combined weight pried a brick loose and she began to topple back, her tongue launched out, stuck to the wall and reeled them both in. She dumped Crazy over the wall and followed him over. The entire climb had taken just three seconds, but in that time, the water had arrived.
The roiling fluid was dark and murky, laced with tendrils of black vegetation. She watched as people scrambled inside buildings, while others watched the ground from second story windows. It was less of a tidal wave and more of a steady flow. Like a river. Easy to avoid, if you were mobile. If you were human.
She watched with a smile on her face as the rising waters enveloped the larvae, which could not swim. Their bodies twitched and writhed beneath the liquid, curling into rigid C shapes, as life drained away.
Just as Lilly started to feel hopeful, despite the fact that they had been transported to another world by a man who now lay unconscious, movement in the now five-foot-deep water caught her keen eyes. A normal person probably wouldn’t have noticed the shift of black on black sliding through the water, but she could see it.
And it was huge.
The dark shape, partially concealed by clouds of vegetation and human debris, slid toward a pale dead larva, caught in the water’s current. The larva rolled down the sidewalk below, like it was trying to get away. Then it bumped into a bike rack, floating up higher. That was when the dark shape closed in, and with a quick lunge, the entire human sized larva disappeared.
Yellow light flickered beneath the water, just for a moment, but the luminous veins revealed the creature’s thirty foot length. It was built like a crocodile, but far larg
er, and with a broader head.
“Uh, Crazy,” she said, nudging the man with her clawed foot. When he didn’t stir, she kicked him harder. “Yo, C-man.”
Lilly couldn’t help but chuckle. Had Hudson been here, and heard what she’d just said, she had no doubt he would have quoted his favorite TV show and said, ‘Phrasing.’
Crazy groaned, but didn’t open his eyes or move.
“Great.” Lilly looked for people who might be in danger, but everyone she could see was peering out of second story, or higher, windows. Some were watching her. Others had noticed the flash of yellow light in the water, and were pointing, probably trying to guess what was lurking down there, or where the hell they were.
She closed her eyes and focused on her hearing. She couldn’t quite cover the entire city, but she could hear for miles around. Babies were crying. Adults, too. Some fights. Curse-filled verbal tirades. But for the most part, the city had gone silent, like frightened rodents content to wait out the cat.
Then she heard a scream.
And another.
Miles away, but they struck her just as hard, because they weren’t the kind of screams people made when they were afraid. They were the kinds of screams they made when they were being torn apart. Worst of all, they were too far away for her to do anything about it.
And then they weren’t.
Across the street, glass shattered. Water rushed into what looked like the lobby of a dorm. And with the torrent of dark liquid, moved the darker shape of...what? Some kind of MirrorWorld apex predator. Crazy had told them about the Dread, that they were the basis for the real world’s stories of ghosts, ghouls and modern myths, but she’d only been half paying attention. She never believed she’d actually be brought to this strange world, just beyond perception.
As screams from the dormitory built in pitch, but didn’t quite hit that ‘dear God, I’m being eaten alive’ level, Lilly dropped to her knees beside Crazy and grasped his body armor. She gave him a shake. “Crazy!” She slapped his face with her fluffy hand, claws retracted. “Hey! Wake up!”
But he wasn’t waking up, and she could tell he wasn’t about to. Not any time soon.
Screams rose up around the city, as predators moved in on their new and abundant food source. She couldn’t help them all, but she certainly couldn’t ignore the people across the street.
She quickly pillaged Crazy’s gear, taking Faithful’s sheath and strapping it to her back. She took his belt and the .50 cal handgun it held, wrapping it around her waist. Finally, she took the jet black MP5 he carried. Geared up for war, she ran to the side of the roof, and leaped off.
She landed atop a palm tree, thirty feet away. Unlike many cats, she wasn’t afraid of water. Thanks to her webbed feet, she could swim as well as any creature born to a life at sea. The gills on the sides of her neck allowed her to stay underwater indefinitely. But there was no way in hell she was going for a dip in these waters. As comfortable as she was in the water, she would still be at a disadvantage when it came to fighting predators perfectly adapted to it. And she had no idea how many of them actually lurked beneath the churning liquid.
Her next leaps carried her to the top of a UPS truck, and then across the street to the top of another palm tree. Just twenty feet away from the flat brick wall of the dorm, Lilly aimed the MP5 at an empty window and pulled the trigger. Three bullets shattered glass, clearing out the space and allowing the screams from within to be heard more clearly. With a single lunge, she dove through the window, rolling over the shards of glass and back onto her feet with the grace of a seasoned acrobat.
Three girls, probably around Lilly’s age, gasped at her entrance, but their horror turned to hope upon seeing her.
“OMG,” a girl with pink hair and a nose ring said. “You’re real!”
“You think?” Lilly said, moving to the door and cracking it open. The hallway was empty, but there were several other partially open doors framing surprised faces now gawking at her. “Stay here,” Lilly said to the three girls now videotaping her with their smartphones.
“You’re so hot,” one of them said, smiling wide.
Lilly just shook her head. As ostracizing as being a chimera was, she’d rather be a monster-fighting cat-woman than a flighty, boy-obsessed ditz. A hundred different sarcastic remarks came to mind, but she held them all in, and dashed into the hallway—toward the sounds of screaming. She sprinted past the cracked-open doors, hearing the whispers of admiration, and leaned forward into a four legged dash, embracing her cat-like physiology and drawing a cheer from the college students. The positive attention felt good, but it was fleeting. They were probably all going to die here.
She slammed open the door at the end of the hallway and entered a stairwell. The scream came from the floor below. She leaped the railing and dropped the distance, landing in five feet of black water. The door leading to the lobby was propped open and allowed her a clear view.
One side of the lobby was smashed in, making way for a gargantuan creature with jet black skin and veins of luminous yellow that grew brighter with every thrash of its long, double-snouted head. It was like a mutant crocodile, and it was after two meals—the same two college bros who had first recognized her. All of their cocky coolness was gone now, though. Their screams were high pitched and cracking, driven from their throats by the knowledge that they were about to be dismembered, consumed, digested and shat out in an alien world. Kind of an epic way to go, but still not pleasant.
The only thing currently saving the two young men was a coffee table they held between them and the monster, the thick wooden legs propped against the brick wall behind them. But their shield wouldn’t last much longer.
The behemoth surged forward, ramming its twin snouts into the wood, which splintered and folded in a few inches.
Lilly stepped into the lobby, raised Crazy’s MP5 submachine gun and pulled the trigger. In two seconds, the weapon spat out thirty 9mm rounds, each and every one of them punching into the creature’s hide. Yet not one of them drew blood. Not knowing the creature’s physiology, she was hoping to get lucky—that at least one bullet would hit something important.
While she hadn’t killed, or even really injured the beast, she did manage to get its full and undivided attention.
“Get the hell out of there!” she shouted to the bros, who looked momentarily thrilled to see her before their terror set back in. They dropped the table and swam for the entrance to a second stairwell on the far side of the lobby. Their splashing got the creature’s attention again, and it started turning back around, going for the easier meal.
Lilly ditched the MP5 and drew the .50 caliber Desert Eagle. She gripped it in a solid two-handed hold and squeezed off a round. Yellow blood burst from the creature’s back, spattering the ceiling. She fired again, but somehow she managed to miss the monster when it twisted back around toward her.
A third shot took a chunk out of its forward shoulder, but didn’t slow the creature down. She aimed between one of its two sets of eyes. She thought it might actually have two brains, but she hoped destroying one would send the second into chaos. Then she pulled the trigger, but missed again. The MirrorWorld croc had slipped beneath the water.
A wave rose up, pushed by the pressure of the giant creature surging through the water. Lilly fired again, the single shot completely ineffective, as the water stole its kinetic energy and shielded the Dread better than any bulletproof vest could.
Lilly was about to pull the trigger for a sixth and final time when she realized two things. First, firing again was a waste of time. Second, she was about to become a meal. As the Dread-croc slammed into, and through, the stairwell door, sending a cascade of concrete bricks into the water, Lilly sprang into the air. She rose up two stories, passing flights of stairs and the faces of college students who had foolishly come out of hiding to watch the fight. She barely noticed the cheering students as she watched the monster below slam into the stairwell, thrashing at the water where she had s
tood a moment before.
As gravity tugged her back down, Lilly thought, Don’t look up, don’t look up.
But then it did, twin sets of jaws, filled with rows of hooked teeth that ran all the way back into its throat, opening to receive her. Lilly reached out toward the monster with one hand, the other reaching out behind her back.
Twenty feet above the monster, Lilly pulled the Desert Eagle’s trigger, firing the final round in its magazine. While the kick from a .50 caliber round might break some men’s wrists, Lilly had no trouble absorbing the energy. An explosion of yellow burst inside one of the twin mouths, pain driving the creature back down into the water. Before the beast could recover, Lilly landed, driving all of her downward force into the handle of Faithful. The black blade sank deep, passing through hide, skull and brain.
The beast thrashed, churning the black waters yellow with its glowing blood. Lilly grunted as she yanked the blade from the monster’s skull and then again as she drove it back into the second head. As soon as the machete passed through the second skull, the creature fell still.
Loud cheers erupted from the stairs above. A spiral of smiling faces looked down at her.
It felt good. She couldn’t deny it. But it was also ridiculous. “In case you guys haven’t noticed, all of Tucson is in an alternate dimension, populated by monsters who would like to eat you. Shutting up and hiding in your rooms until the sky is blue, would probably be a good idea.”
With that, the smiles disappeared, and one by one, so did the now mortified students. For just a brief moment, Lilly was left alone to catch her breath. Then a young woman’s face peeked over the third floor railing. “Uh, you might want to come see this.”
Lilly recovered the MP5 from the water, secured her weapons and then leaped up the stairwell until she reached the third floor, where a large window provided a view of the campus, including the building atop which she had left Crazy.
In the good news column, Crazy was awake and on his feet. In the bad news column, he was surrounded by hundreds of flying Dread. Some were insect-like, with big red eyes. Many more looked like tiny black bats, whipping around him in a circle. Several oversized centipede things with six wings flew through the city streets, their backs lined with large creatures that looked like a combination of a bear and wolf, but with glowing red veins.
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 14
