by J. C. Nelson
“If I tear your heart out and offer it to Ra-Ame, she may have mercy on me. For yours and the man’s, she will most certainly be pleased.”
At five yards out, they stank, a deep, earthy smell like mushrooms and rotten fish combined. I turned to run to the car, only to find more corpses blocking the way, their mouths open in crazed grins. Panic made locking in another magazine impossible as the dead closed in on me.
A lithe figure wrapped in the night landed just outside the ring, slicing a co-org’s head open. With five fluid strokes, she carved the next five, her blade moving like a surgeon’s scalpel and an artist’s paintbrush in one. “I thought you did not need rescuing.” Amy leaped past me like a ballet dancer with a knife.
“We girls have to stick together.” I ran to the car, jumped in, and started it. It was time to do a little rescuing of my own. Headlights on, throttle full down, I aimed right for the pack of co-orgs surrounding Brynner.
At the last moment, I cut the wheel, plowing through a pile of them and sending more flying. From point-blank range, I used the Deliverator to blow holes the size of dinner plates in everything dead.
“You could have killed me,” Brynner screamed at me as he sliced another co-org.
I reloaded the crossbow. “If I wanted to kill you, I would have run you over. I’m trying to apologize.”
“You lie to me. You go behind my back, invade my privacy, and make up for it by killing a bunch of meat-skins?” With each word, he rammed one in the head.
I’d heard the best apologies fit the person. “Nothing says I’m sorry like a pile of dead corpses.”
Every corpse for fifty feet dropped to the ground, lifeless. Not because I’d shot them. Even the ones I hadn’t gotten a chance to ventilate fell, gushing black smoke into the night.
“It is time to be going.” Amy ran past Brynner, slid across the hood, and pushed me into the passenger seat.
I fumbled, reloading my Deliverator. “Was that too easy?”
“There was nothing easy about that.” Brynner slammed the rear door, the car shifting from his weight. “Amy, where were you?”
Amy backed the car up. “I took the big group. I thought you two could handle the little group. Less flirting, more killing would make it easier.” She floored the accelerator, tearing down the street, through stoplights so close I saw several other people’s lives flash before my eyes.
“Slow down, you’re going to get us all killed.” I glanced over my shoulder.
And regretted it.
Behind the car, maybe fifteen feet back, a misshapen form sprinted, moving faster than human speed. It ran on all fours, a ghastly head appearing and disappearing. We ran lights, straight through intersections, anything to put more space between us. With easy leaps, it cleared the traffic we dodged by milliseconds.
Brynner followed my gaze out the window. “What is that?”
“You came to his home and challenged him. He has brought his best body, and we have hours until the sun.” Amy swerved as the Re-Animus leaped into the air, its claws swiping down inches from our bumper.
Brynner kicked out the rearview window, shattering the glass.
“What the hell are you doing?” I twisted around in the seat to stare at him.
“Giving myself a clear shot. Give me your Deliverator.”
I handed it to him.
He waited, not even breathing, for the Re-Animus to jump. As it flew toward us, Brynner fired in bursts, squeezing off shots.
The beast fell inches short, its claws tearing gashes in the trunk. It disappeared in our taillights as Amy kept accelerating. We drove for miles upon miles, until the moon rose and at last we could look down the long highway and know it no longer followed. Blue moonlight lit the desert like an alien planet.
Amy pulled over to let the car cool down, and I got out to throw up.
I looked for Brynner and found him standing by the trunk, watching down the highway. “I’d say you got its attention. Now how are we supposed to kill that?”
Thirty-One
BRYNNER
Dad hadn’t mentioned anything like that. Ever. He’d fought a Re-Animus in places no other man had gone and lived to tell the tale, but never once mentioned something like that monstrosity. Now that I’d upset it, I’d have to do something. I looked to Amy, who had swung out of the driver’s seat to scan the horizon. “Amy, you have any suggestions?”
She held one hand to her chin, thinking for a moment. “Run far away. Never stop running. Pray you die before it finds you.”
“I’m going to take that as a no. Grace?”
She still knelt by the back of the car, one hand holding her golden ponytail back, the other across her stomach. She shook her head. “Atomic bomb? Maybe? What the hell was that?”
Amy came over and put her arm on Grace’s back. “That is a Re-Animus who has had time to prepare his body. First they look human. Then, over time, they look like that.” Grace looked up. “And after that?”
“Grace Roberts, if you prayed, I would say pray you never find out.”
Grace had been right. A fool’s errand, a suicide mission. Why hadn’t I listened? “I say we call home and wait for reinforcements. I’m sorry I brought you both out here. I was wrong.”
“Can I get a recording of that?” Grace held out her cell phone. “I want to set it as my ringtone.”
“The time for running is past. You must kill it tomorrow.” Amy walked over and grabbed me by the chin, pulling my gaze downward. “You cannot wait. Tonight it will call for reinforcements of its own. Though the old ones are suspicious, they will eventually be persuaded.” She cursed in Arabic. “By itself, the old one may be vulnerable. Give it more than a day and it will be unstoppable.”
When the sun rose, we headed back into town. Amy drove, and she followed a route she seemed to know, until we pulled into a motel that made the Big 8 in Bentonville look high-class. I swore as we passed the corner where I’d nearly been killed. “We need to sleep, but we can’t do it here. This is suicide.”
Amy got out and grabbed her equipment from the trunk. “It is the only place it will not look. Anywhere else in the city, it will have eyes and ears, but all of the eyes here are gouged out. All the ears”—she motioned to her head—“cut off. You sleep, I will keep watch.”
The three of us rented a single motel room, the motel owner’s lecherous stare telling me he so desperately wished he could watch what went on in our room.
I slept with Grace.
That is, I slept beside Grace, so close I could smell her deodorant and brush her hair. Amy sat near the window, her legs propped up, her head down. Every so often, a fly would buzz against the window and her head would snap up like a crocodile’s.
When I woke after four hours, I felt ready.
Ready to die.
Grace woke when I rolled off the bed, took her entire uniform set into the shower and emerged with the energetic look of someone who hatched a plan on how not to die. “Amy, let’s say you wanted to get ahold of a Re-Animus. What would you do?”
Amy shrugged. “One that has been here this long? I would pick up a phone. It will have ears listening everywhere.”
Grace handed me her tablet. “I need to know if they’ve torn down the Rainbow’s End Casino yet. I wanted to go there, but last year I heard they were closing.”
I took it and tapped in a few search terms. “How about sharing your genius with the rest of us? Your brilliant plan?”
Grace shook her head. “I don’t have a brilliant plan. I have parts of a suicide run, and that’s about it.”
“You are going to die anyway. Let us hear it.” Amy sat on the edge of the worn bed, her arms folded.
“I have no intention of dying here. Or at the casino, but if we have a hope, we’ve got to get moving. I need high sun.” She zipped up her bag and grabbed it. “We’re heading to the local BSI station first. Rearm. Reload. Then the nearest pool supply.”
“I will drive,” said Amy. She handed Grace one
of Dad’s journals. “You have another mission.”
As we drove through Vegas to the BSI outpost, I caught sight of the headline “Rampage kills 108 on strip.” TVs in windows showed news footage of last night, casino patrols gunning down hundreds of meat-skins, terrified gamblers taking their chances in the dark rather than hide in overrun card halls.
“What have I done?”
Amy laughed, a short, choppy harumph. “Your eyes are opened, too late.”
Oh, they were open. We pulled up at the BSI outpost, and the place looked like a war zone. Built to Department of Defense standards, the low concrete roof with narrow windows and wide support pillars would survive anything short of the apocalypse.
Apparently the apocalypse happened the night before.
Every bit of glass lay in glittering shards. Dead meat-skins lay heaped up around the building, and most telling, smoke stains showed where the local command had activated emergency flamethrowers.
I knocked on the heavy steel door. “Brynner Carson. Open up.”
After a moment’s scrambling, the heavy doors rolled away, and I walked out of a warzone and into a field hospital. The wounded lay everywhere, and blood painted the black and white tiles. Frightened faces lifted to see me, like I was some sort of savior.
“Mr. Carson.” A gray-clad BSI officer saluted me. Had to be ex-military, since I’d grown up in the BSI and the only salute I used was my middle finger. “Thank you for coming. We sent out the SOS, but with what’s going on in New York and L.A., honestly, I thought we’d die here.”
I glanced to Grace, an unspoken conversation. I couldn’t ask “What exactly happened?”
“Situation report,” snapped Grace. “I want all your intelligence, news feeds, and every report. You have ten minutes. Brynner will secure the building and set up defenses. You take me to your war room.”
The commander turned to her and nodded, the paced off with Grace at his heels.
I glanced to Amy. “You want to help me, umm, secure this place?”
“What is the point?” Amy pointed with one hand to the bent steel beams and cracked concrete. “This is no longer a fortress; it is a tomb. Any who choose to stay here are embracing death.” She tapped the shattered glass, hanging on only by the steel mesh within it. “If this is the damage wrought in a single night, then when evening comes, the old one will tear this place from the ground.”
She spoke aloud what I thought, what everyone inside had to be thinking. But sometimes the key to pulling off the impossible was believing you could. “That’s why we’re not going to give it the chance.” I went outside and swept the dead meat-skins into piles, knifing a few that still feebly moved. By the time I returned, Grace waited in the front. She carried an ammo bag under her shoulder and kept her face emotionless.
She turned to the field commander and the small squad of walking wounded who followed. “We’ve come with weaponry so advanced BSI Analysis hasn’t even approved its use outside of emergencies. You will stay and hold this position, because every co-org attacking you isn’t attacking some civilian. We are going to hunt this thing down and kill it.” She looked over to me.
And left me completely unprepared for a speech. “Well? You heard the lady. Lock down and hold until after we’re done. Don’t get dead.”
I spun on my heel and nodded to Amy. “Let’s move.”
Grace joined me as we walked down the corridor and out into the sun. “Who’s in charge here?”
She gave me a smug smile. “I am. Let’s get to the hardware store, head on over, and set up. We only get one shot at this.”
Two stops later I pulled up at the chain-link fence barring entry to the Rainbow’s End Casino. A grand, sweeping staircase led to an enclosed glass entrance. Black tarps covered the once-majestic glass, shielding it from the sun.
I used a pair of bolt cutters on the gate, then the front doors as well, letting loose chain clink to the chipped concrete.
“This is it.” Grace opened the door and stepped inside. “Perfect.”
The Rainbow’s End opened to a lobby that spread longer than a football field. To one side, the check-in counters stood, to the far right, wide-open areas where once slot machines spun, stealing money. In the center of the casino, on the second story, stood a two-story pool with solid glass walls.
Once, you would have been able to watch swimmers dive deep into the water, frolicking on imported beach sand, while below the casino ran. The pool still held water, a foul green sludge.
Grace walked in with a bag of salt over one shoulder. “Okay. Get the water on, get the lights on. Amy, don’t let anything surprise us.”
It took nearly two hours, even with a water main the size of a fire hydrant gushing water, to refill the pool. Grace ferried the salt we’d brought in, dumping it herself.
Grace called me to the stairs, and Amy followed like a curious cat.
“The pool only had about fifteen feet of water in it, but it’ll have to do. Brynner, you’re going to wait at the top of the stairs for it.” She pointed down the staircase, then turned to look at the pool behind me. “When it comes in, say something stupid to get its attention.”
Her brilliant plan sounded less brilliant by the moment. “That thing will steamroll me.”
“I’m counting on it. Roll with it, let the motion carry you into the pool. That’s saltier than a strip of bacon, and the pump has it churning. Amy, I want you on the roof. Pull back the tarps when it hits the water so we can hit it with sunlight.” She scanned the glass ceiling. “And don’t fall.”
“We’re going to get killed.”
Grace nodded. “Possibly.” She turned and ran down the stairs to the front door.
I called after her, “Where do you think you are going?”
“I’m going to make a call. Stay put, be ready.” Grace didn’t look back.
GRACE
It sounded like a bad plan. It was a bad plan. It was also the only thing I could think of. Nothing short of the ocean could kill a monster like that, and I was short one ocean. So many things could go wrong I didn’t even want to count them. But it started with a phone call. Two blocks from the casino, I found a convenience store and paid the owner twenty dollars for a two-minute call on the store’s phone, punching in the numbers from memory.
When the receptionist answered, I knew what to say. “Field Operative Grace Roberts for Director Bismuth. She’ll take my call. It is an emergency.”
Seconds later, the phone clicked off hold.
“Grace Roberts, where are you?” Director Bismuth’s worried tone tickled me to my toes.
“Vegas, with Brynner and Amy. We’re holed up in a shutdown casino. I don’t think we can kill this Re-Animus, so around five we’re going to get out of here and back.”
“Not until you finish what you’ve started. Do you have any idea what has happened in New York? Or Los Angeles? Or Dallas?”
I was running on borrowed time. “You know, waiting until five sounds stupid. We’ll leave ASAP.” I hung up the phone and sprinted for the casino.
Brynner met me at the front gate, and I shoved him, which was like pushing a garbage truck. “You were supposed to be inside. In position.”
“I was worried about you.” He ran on ahead, easy since he hadn’t sprinted two blocks already.
Inside, I moved up the center staircase, around the pool, and out onto the wide balcony leading to the old hotel rooms. From there I’d have a clean shot across the lobby.
“Grace?” Brynner called out to me, his voice echoing. “When it gets here, no matter what happens—”
I couldn’t think about what might happen without my stomach knotting like a boa constrictor. “Got it. I’ll rescue you again. Your dad give you any tips on how to kill a Re-Animus?”
Brynner turned away, kicking at the sand by the pool edge. After long seconds, he answered. “Dad said there were three keys to killing one. First, you had to have a plan. Second, you had to understand that no matter how good your pla
n was, something would go wrong.”
I waited, listening to the gurgle and splash of water in the pool. Brynner stretched, jogging in place.
“I can count to three, you know. What was the third key?”
“You couldn’t let yourself care if you lived or died.” He looked up at me, his gaze drilling straight through me. “I can’t quite get to that one yet.”
Before I could answer, Amy’s shadow skittered across the floor. High above, she leaped along the steel support beams. How she’d gotten on the roof, I didn’t know or want to know. If Grave Services needed hundreds of people like her, Egypt must be a complete hellhole.
I checked the time again, and again. What if it hadn’t heard? What if it didn’t come until dark?
The ceiling exploded in a rain of glass.
Brynner leaped over the staircase, diving under a craps table to escape the deadly hail. Through the gaping hole, the Re-Animus came, landing in the sand beside the pool, cracking the concrete. “Brynner Carson. Running away again.”
I crouched and fired a syringe in an arc that ended right at the monster’s chest.
It looked down at the syringe sticking out of it and crushed the plastic with a gnarled hand. “Woman. Be patient, I will deal with you in time.” It stood at least eight feet tall, with chalky white skin and a skull the size of a football helmet. Heavy bone ridges covered its head. It flexed arms that ended in claws like a tyrannosaur’s teeth.
A shadow on the floor distracted me for a moment. Amy dangled from a girder, kicking her feet to climb back on. She’d have to take care of herself. I swapped out the syringes for one of my artificial amber bolts and fired again.
And smiled as the monster staggered, black smoke catching fire under the sun.
“Still think you’ll wear my skin around? Have some more.” I fired again and again, sinking bolts into it.
It came for me, leaping onto one of the support columns and climbing like a monkey.
“Run!” yelled Brynner, climbing out from under the table. He shook bits of glass from his hair and took out his blades. “Hey, ugly. Pick on someone your own size.”
