KILL KILL KILL

by Mike Leon

  “We dropped a thousand pound bomb on it and it was still trying to get back up. We incinerated every last piece with flamethrowers,” Ratzinger says. “The site is about fifty clicks North. I have people circling it.”

  A carcass would have been good, but Walter is perfectly okay with a pile of ashes. He couldn’t have done better himself. The only part that doesn’t add up is the airstrike. Graveyard is a private military company, not part of the United States military. Walter can call in air support because he has a direct line to USSOCOM, but only he has that clearance.

  “How did you call in an airstrike without me?”

  “Well,” Ratzinger stammers. “We, um, we broke into your office and imitated your voice on the phone to Colonel Sattler at SOCOM.”

  “He didn’t ask for clearance codes?”

  “No, sir.”

  Walter has known George Sattler for two decades. The old fart would know his voice. He starts to question them, but then he realizes how it makes sense. Half the operators in the company probably do a spot-on impersonation of him when he’s not around. He would if he were them.

  “What made you think that would work?”

  “Uh, actually it was his idea, sir,” Ratzinger says. He’s pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to Sid Hansen behind him. “He planted my cell phone on the dinosaur. He figured out it was Rothschild too.”

  This gives Walter pause. Sid? The kid hasn’t done anything right since he walked into the building that first time and beat up the lobby fire team.

  Walter shifts his footing to glare at Sid over Ratzinger’s shoulder.

  “That true, son?” he asks.

  “Yes,” Sid Hansen responds coldly.

  “Damn fine work, soldier.” Walter nods. “That’s what I expect from Kill Team One.”

  “sir?” Sid says, seemingly confused.

  “You heard me, son,” Walter says. “Walk with me.”

  Walter passes the rest of November Team and walks off toward the building. Sid Hansen follows, looking anxiously over his shoulder to the rotting dragon Sigma operators are uncovering from beneath the black tarp.

  “Are you sure it is completely dead?” Sid asks.

  “It smells like it is,” Walter answers.

  “The big one was able to regrow from its injuries.”

  “You leave that thing to me, son,” Walter says. “I got bigger plans for you.”

  Sid nods quietly in response.

  “There are still more of those things out there in disguise,” Walter says. The thought of it disgusts him. There is a small army of those monsters out among the masses, and with their leader dead, they’ll be restructuring, regrouping, rebranding, as Sobek had said. Soon they will have a new leader and the plan to enslave humanity will be back in full swing. He can’t let that happen.

  “Zap and Tom came up with a list of addresses before the Krupp thing – addresses where they live. I want to kill every last one of the fucking things, and I want my new Kill Team One on point for this operation.”

  BORING EXPOSITION V

  Megan Van Duyn is in the sub-sub-basement of the Graveyard building. Here, the file drawers and shelves of books seem to go on for miles, a dense paper jungle of gloom. Her only company is the creepy Filekeeper at the big oak desk nearby, with his ratty white hair and oxygen tank. It is cold down here, but not like it was in the forest the night the bad man came. Nothing could ever be as cold as that night.

  Her pants were wet and itchy, so she took them off and wrapped herself in a blanket she found in a desk drawer. The Filekeeper pointed it out to her when she asked.

  He doesn’t talk at all – the librarian, secretary, whatever he is. He just sits there in silence except for the turning of pages and the horrible, rhythmic gasps of air coming from the mask that feeds him oxygen. He must be sick or something. Maybe he has the black lung.

  Megan didn’t talk for a long time after she saw the bad man. Now that is beginning to change. Since she saw Sid Hansen and the soldiers upstairs blow the monster up with their big guns – since she saw the thing could be hurt or killed.

  “What do you do down here?” she asks the Filekeeper. He looks up just briefly before he turns again back to the thick leather tome spread open upon his desk. It’s no use. Making him speak has become a game to her. She knows he can. He spoke to Sid Hansen, or so Sid told her.

  Sid brought her down here after the monster ran away. She asked him if he was going to chase after it, but he didn’t answer. He just pushed her into the room, nodded at the Filekeeper, and left. Sid wasn’t much for decorum. His old man was the same way.

  Strangely, this place is better in her view than the room upstairs where they had tried to make her comfortable. The file room has computers, and internet access. Megan logged in to Facebook for the first time in a long time today. The posts by her friends seem trivial after the things she has seen, but it is nice to have that sort of normalcy again.

  Megan hears the sound of the file room door swinging open and she turns up from the computer expecting another gruff soldier with black clothes and a big gun to be standing there, come to drag her to the next warehouse, safe house, or secret basement where she will hide. Instead, she sees a short, thin woman with brown hair pulled back in a claw clamp – one purple streak held off to the side above her ear. It matches her creased purple top. She’s wearing nice clothes, but that look crinkled and dull like she’s walking the walk of shame after a wild bender.

  “Megan?” the woman asks. It is strange to hear her name after spending so long with a bunch of soldiers who don’t know it, or don’t care to use it. “Megan Van Duyn?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I know lots about you,” the woman says. “My name is Victoria Russell. I’m a friend of your father.”

  Megan never knew any Victoria that was a friend of her father’s, except for the ditzy slut he married. She doesn’t know what business this woman, with her pop-punk dye job and scuffed up Louboutins, has with her.

  “Could we?” Victoria says, pointing to the Filekeeper. The withered old creeper nods and stands, dragging his oxygen tank off into the darkness of the file stacks to leave them alone here.

  “What do you want?” Megan says.

  “It’s over,” Victoria says. “The monsters are dead. You can go home now.”

  The idea is so distant it seems like a myth. She thinks about it for a moment. Home. Where is her home? Van Duyn Manor? She pictures it in her mind and all she can feel is the freezing cold. She sees the teeth again, and the rain of blood from the monster’s maw.

  “I don’t want to go back there,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t ever want to go back there again.”

  Megan wants to return to her mother’s house and school and cell phones and social networks and warring for popularity with Nikki Ostermann. She wants to forget all of this.

  “Aw,” Victoria purrs. Megan knows that sound. It’s the sound of a grownup feigning concern over something they find too cute to take seriously. “You don’t have to go back there.”

  “Can I go stay with my mom?”

  “You can go back to your mom if you want.”

  “But what?” Megan says. She’s not some stupid little brat that can be manipulated with soft words and offers of lollipops. She knows there’s something else.

  “Megan,” Victoria starts. She leans forward and puts her hands on her knees to come down to Megan’s height. It’s a gesture Megan doesn’t appreciate. She knows when she’s being babied. “I know you don’t want to go back there, but that place, it belongs to you now. So do a lot of other things. You’re part of an empire that goes back a thousand generations and controls incredible power. You inherited that power. It belongs to you now.”

  “What if I don’t want it?” Megan says. It comes entirely from unnecessary spite. She doesn’t like this stranger who suddenly appeared telling her what she can and cannot do.

  “You couldn’t give it away if you tri
ed,” Victoria says. “It’s a part of you.”

  “I don’t want it,” Megan says.

  “I told you,” Victoria says. “You really don’t have a choice. We need you now.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care about any of this stuff. I’m tired of soldiers and that kill team guy and getting shut up in a stupid room. I want it to be like it used to be. I had friends, and clothes, and the best parties, and Parker Stevens liked me.”

  “Oh, darling,” Victoria says, rolling her eyes emphatically. “Is that what this is about?”

  She makes it sound trivial. Megan doesn’t like that. Those things matter…

  “You can have all of those things if you want – even Parker Stevens,” Victoria says. “Though I doubt he’ll interest you anymore when you own all the Disney boy bands.”

  It takes a second for Megan to process what Victoria just said. The complete shift from a terrible prospect to one that sounds far more promising takes her by surprise. And that very last bit certainly piqued her curiosity.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean exactly what I said, dear. You’ll be richer than anyone. Superstar celebrities will be your playthings. Prada will design whole lines of shoes just for your feet. You’ll drive the world’s most expensive cars as fast as you want, and never get a speeding ticket. The sky is the limit to what you can have.”

  Victoria sits down on the big brown desk to Megan’s right, nearly on top of the mouse pad to the side of her keyboard.

  “So what do you want to do?” Victoria asks, though the question is rhetorical. “Do you want all of those things? Or do you want me to leave you here in your soggy underwear to think about it?”

  She doesn’t have to think about it at all.

  “What do I have to do?”

  Victoria puts her hand over the little two-button mouse Megan was using and snatches it up from the desk. She conceals it close to her.

  “The answer comes with great responsibility, but that’s okay. I can teach you what you need to know.”

  Megan can’t stand that kind of baiting bullshit. It’s not an answer at all. It’s a tease.

  “That’s not fair. You have to tell me.”

  “First, you need to learn to keep the biggest secret,” Victoria says, as she hands back the mouse. Megan takes hold of it and holds it up close. At first she thinks her eyes are playing with her, but then she notices the tiny flakes of black and green sticking to the tip of her fingernail from where it rubbed away the Logitech logo that was printed on the top of the mouse.

  The ink couldn’t adhere because the white plastic housing that covers the top half of the mouse is no longer white plastic at all. It is made from solid gold.

  RETURN OF THE NINJA

  “Fuck,” says Ratzinger. “He looks like the walking dead.”

  “You mean a literal walking dead man or the popular TV show?” Sergeant Holman asks.

  “The ninja steals Japanese,” Ivan says. He lies sprawled on the back seat of the blue Toyota Corolla that Tanaka stole from the reptoids he killed in Texas. He does indeed look like a cadaver.

  “He was delirious much of the way here,” Tanaka says. “He will need rest and medicine.”

  “Let’s get him upstairs people,” Ratzinger says, shouting at the cadre of operators surrounding them outside the building’s front door.

  Walter Stedman looks ecstatic to see them as he walks through the lobby doors to the parking lot.

  “I figured you were dead,” Walter says. “Both of you.”

  “It was a close call,” Tanaka says.

  “What happened? Where did you find him?”

  “He was being held by Blood Drinker in an abandoned warehouse.”

  “What is it with these things and abandoned warehouses?”

  “Blood Drinker burn!” Ivan shouts from the back seat as operators lift him onto a stretcher. They carry him toward the building and Walter and Tanaka follow.

  “We destroyed the creature with fire.”

  “You killed Blood Drinker?”

  “Not alone. It was a difficult battle. In the end, I used ninja magic to subdue the beast and Kill Team One helped me set fire to the remains.”

  “Kill Team One One,” says Holman.

  “Holman! Every toilet!” Walter yells at the man. “Every fucking toilet! Now!”

  “What is he talking about?” Tanaka asks.

  “Nothing. We designated a new Kill Team One when we thought Ivan was dead,” Walter says. “Are you certain Blood Drinker is dead?”

  “Yes. We burned every last piece of him.”

  “Damn fine work. We’ve taken out their command structure. We have the fuckers on the run now.”

  The lobby of the Graveyard building is quite a bit different from when Tanaka was last here. Hundreds of bullet holes dot the glass panels and walls. Craters are missing from the tile floor where some type of ordnance must have detonated. A thirty foot tall section of the building’s glass face is covered up by plywood planks. There was a very destructive gun battle here.

  “Yeah, my guys pounded the reptoid king with a zillion billion bullets here. Still didn’t kill him. They had to drop a MOAB on his head and barbecue the leftovers.”

  There is something else amiss inside the lobby – something Walter could not have noticed.

  Tanaka watches as operators carry Ivan up the stairs on the stretcher. A medic shines a flashlight in his eyes as they wait for the elevator at the top.

  He shifts his gaze back down the stairs and to the two security guards stationed at the metal detector near the foot of the stairs.

  The one to Tanaka’s right wears a name tag that says Holiday. He is a short, chubby man, with a black pencil mustache Tanaka finds unusually thin and clean.

  “I have two kill teams in the field now hunting down the rest of them,” Walter says.

  Tanaka draws his sword and lunges forward. The shining steel pierces Holiday’s chest and exits between his shoulder blades. The chubby security guard spits up a mouthful of red gore and growls.

  “What the fuck?” Walter says.

  A dozen men in black combat gear turn their guns on Tanaka from all directions. Most of them are shouting.

  “Drop the sword!” screams the closest one of them. “Drop it!”

  “Shoot him! Shoot him!” yells the other security guard, a lanky grey-haired man who is apparently unarmed.

  “Hold your fire!” Walter orders.

  “Shoot the bastard!” someone else screams.

  Tanaka ignores them all.

  “I see your true skin, monster,” Tanaka says.

  He lifts Holiday up from the ground on the end of the sword. The hidden beast comes forward from the strange plane on which it resides. His true form is that of a ten foot tall blue scaled humanoid with glowing green eyes.

  “No!” the monster bellows as it swipes at Tanaka with talons disproportionately long for its fingers.

  Tanaka jerks his sword free from the monster’s chest and brings it around to cleave the creature’s torso in diagonal halves.

  Walter is already demanding the creature’s death more loudly than the guns blazing at the lower half that remains standing.

  “Shoot it! Shoot it!”

  Tanaka steps back as fully automatic weapons pump gratuitous amounts of bullets into the thing. There is no need. He is sure he killed it himself.

  When they are done shooting the carcass to bloody chunks, one of the operators cautiously approaches it and kicks it to see if it starts moving again.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Walter says. “How did you know?”

  “The reptile men are very good at disguising themselves, but their energy is somehow wrong,” Tanaka says. “I can see it now, after fighting several of them. They appear contorted, as if something big is in the place of something small and struggling to stay.”

  “Like a fat guy in a tiny shirt?” Ratzinger says.

  “Yes,” Tanaka says. The analogy is hardly a
fitting descriptor, but these men are simpletons. It will have to do.

  “You think you can spot any of them that way?” Walter asks.

  “They all appeared the same way so far.” All of the ones at the diner in Texas had the same strange aura about them. At first, Tanaka wasn’t sure if it was universal, but then the creatures in the warehouse were the same – even Blood Drinker.

  “This is exactly what I needed all along,” Walter says. “You see any more of them here?”

  Tanaka shakes his head. He searched the faces of the soldiers in the lobby several times already, to be certain.

  “Ratzinger,” Walter says. “Pick eight or ten of these guys and take the ninja on a lizard hunt. I want everybody in the building to get the stink eye by the end of the day, and everybody with security clearance by the end of the week.”

  JOLLY ROGER

  “Okay,” Walter says. “So what does it do again?”

  He’s leaning on the back bumper of the tractor trailer they brought in to store the cadaver of the thing shot dead in the catacombs. When Zap pointed out that the freezers in the Graveyard building were incapable of storing anything this size, Walter had Frank Overton drive down to Flagstaff to buy a refrigerated truck with a fifty-three foot trailer, more than enough space to accommodate the lizard corpse, Zap, Tom and all of the equipment they would be using to cut the thing up.

  “We think,” Zap starts. “We think it’s a communication device.”

  “Where was it?”

  “Ensconced in the dorsal stream of the telencephalon, between Brodmann areas seventeen and forty-two,” says Technical Tom. Walter hears him say it, and he doesn’t even try to understand what it means. Zap will explain it in a second. Instead, he wonders what Tom is like when he’s not doing science. He answers his own question in the same thought. He’s never not doing science.

  “It was buried in his brain.”

  “That’s lovely,” Walter says. The idea makes too much sense really. The secret service and CIA are always looking for smaller and smaller earpieces to conceal on agents. The next step is just sticking a god damned radio in somebody’s brain, and human scientists are working on that right now. It stands to reason that the lizards have had that technology for years.