After five more rungs, Rook felt himself tilting. He paused and held on tight. The Colossus was bending at the waist.
Oh shitfizzle.
As the statue’s chest bent forward, Rook’s fingers slipped in the notches, squashing together in a much smaller space. Shouting in pain, he fought against gravity and lifted his legs. He shoved his feet into two lower rungs and pushed up, while he pulled down with his arms. His already tired muscles shook, but he’d effectively locked himself in place, like a gecko on a window, without the suction cups.
The huge statue swung its hand like it was about to slap someone across the face, but instead, it swept through several of the ancient walls, as if it was cleaning breadcrumbs off the dinner table. Its massive legs were crouched, and the waist was nearly horizontal to the ground now, but Rook was still a hundred feet up. If they were still over the sea, he’d have dived for it, but over land, it was still too high to jump.
The Colossus made another huge sweep with its hand, slamming into stone walls and archways. When the arm lifted away, almost a third of the ruins were flattened, but the statue was also missing its hand at the wrist. Rook couldn’t see through the dust whether the hand had just fallen off or been pulverized by the tremendous impact.
The force of the strike revealed that Ridley wasn’t just clearing a path, he was using the Colossus to attack Queen and the others. Rook hated how helpless he was, but he had to use all his strength just to hold on as the statue stood tall again.
Rook let his feet fall out of the holes as the thing’s body went vertical. His body swung down and his hands once again held his full weight. He grunted at the tug on his fingers. He could feel them getting sweaty. He wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. He reached his left hand out of the hole, and quickly wiped the tips of his fingers across his chest. He was hoping to dry them off, but the exertion meant his t-shirt was doused with sweat and tacky. Wiping his fingers didn’t dry them at all.
Then he reached for the next lower handhold. It was packed tight with grit. He scraped his fingernail across the rough surface, but none of the debris was loosening. He reached lower for the next hole. It was full too.
Son of a bitch!
He looked down and saw the third rung was free and clear. He’d have to let go, fall a few feet and catch himself. Sure, he thought, no problem. Then he counted off in his head, one… two… three!
He let go.
And fell…up.
It took his mind a second to register that he was moving in the wrong direction, but then he realized what had happened. The Colossus’s left hand had reached across the chest and plucked him free like a wood tick.
The hand wrapped around him tightly. He couldn’t move. The fingers stopped their grinding flex, just before they crushed him to death. The arm extended out in front of the Colossus as it turned around. The face tilted down to look at him, as the hand held him up for the face to see. The face sneered at him. Then the mouth formed two words. There was no sound emanating from the mouth, no actual lungs or voice box to create sound, but the shape of the lips and tongue was unmistakable — a message for him, directly from Richard Ridley. Then the wind blasted past Rook’s head as the left arm whipped past the face and the torso twisted to the side. Rook felt his stomach lurch like he was on a fast elevator or an amusement park ride.
Then suddenly the hand stopped. The arm was cocked back. The head turned toward him and the lips formed a nasty smile.
Rook had only just started his reply when the arm launched forward, the hand moving like a rocket to pitch him out to sea.
“Yeah, fuck you toooooooo!”
The fingers opened and Rook felt his body launch out over the water.
SIXTY-ONE
Beach, Carthage
Bishop watched Rook sail out to sea before his position was fired on and he had to tear his eyes away. Five mercs in black were advancing down the beach toward him. He darted down to the rocky shoreline and laid down, the barrel of his recently acquired AK-47 aimed back up the beach. The sand stretched south for a bit before becoming a rocky pile, no doubt used as a kind of breakwater against storms. Still wearing his armor, Bishop didn’t notice the rough surface of the rocks below him.
He wished he had more firepower, but the AK would work for now. Instead of firing wildly, like the mercs, he switched the weapon to its semi-automatic mode, prepared to make every bullet count. He controlled each breath, blocking out the rest of the world, not worrying about Rook’s fate. He gently squeezed the trigger, and one of the three mercenaries on the beach toppled over backward, his head spraying out to the sides in a burst of red, coating his companions in gore. The other two men dropped to the sand.
Bishop could still see them. He wasn’t anywhere near Knight when it came to being an accurate shot. He had a lot of bullets though, and he knew how to take his time. He lined up the next shot and waited, allowing two full breaths to come and go. The shot was trickier, because the man was low to the ground and so was Bishop. But the head was still visible. Bishop brought his aim just a nudge higher before firing, anticipating that the bullet might drop in its arc slightly before it reached the man. It missed.
He breathed in again and released. He held his breath. When he fired again, the boom of the rifle was joined by a geyser of red further down the beach. The third man scrambled to his feet and retreated, dropping his rifle as he went. The man shouted as he ran, but Bishop couldn’t make out whether the man was saying something or just shrieking in terror.
Bishop heard a rumble and turned his gaze upward. The Colossus stared down at him.
And things were going so well.
He jumped to his feet and ran for the ruins.
The Colossus took a huge stride up the beach toward his position, then bent over and swept its massive handless arm across the ruins to Bishop’s right. A tidal wave of broken walls and chunks of rock, along with a cloud of roiling dust and sand barreled toward him, propelled by the sweeping arm. Bishop dropped the AK, made an about face and ran for the water.
He reached the rocks and dove headfirst into the shallow water. He slid beneath the waves, his armor slowing him some, but his prodigious strength more than made up for the extra drag. Then the first piece of the debris hit the water, far ahead of him. It had flown over him and crashed into the water. A large slab of stone wall, maybe seven feet tall and four feet wide sliced vertically into the sea, stabbing into the sandy bottom. Bishop turned to his left, heading north along the shore as more rock and sand arced over his head into the drink. The thunks they made under water sounded gentle, but he knew each piece of stone had the potential to crush or pin him under the surface.
He raised his head for another breath and saw that the statue had moved on, rampaging across the ruins, stomping wildly. He realized then that Ridley couldn’t actually ‘see’ through the statue. He was striking blindly, hoping to hit something.
Bishop swam back to the rocky shoreline, and activated his throat mic.
“Queen, the statue is blind. Ridley can’t see where he’s steering the thing.”
There was no reply.
Bishop clawed his way out of the water and checked the small pack on his hip for the radio — it was waterproof but it was dented in. Something must have hit him. He had no way to get in touch with the others.
The Colossus took another two rampaging steps, kicking at the ruins as it went. Bishop could see several black-clad bodies take to the sky along with crumbling blocks of stone. The bodies twisted and turned in the air before they hit the ground, screaming the whole way. They reminded him of Rook.
Bishop turned to look out to sea, but before his eyes got that far, he spotted something else about 600 yards up the beach.
The helipad. And the bird sitting on it was starting up its rotor blades.
Bishop quickly unstrapped his armor plating, and removed his boots. Then he pulled off his sticky t-shirt. Wearing just his wet BDU pants, he dove back into the water and started swimm
ing diagonally across the water from the beach — kicking for the helipad.
On his left along the ruins, the Colossus had ceased moving again. More of its right arm was missing now. Bishop couldn’t see Ridley or any of his people. He guessed the fight had moved inland. It was hard to see anything from the water. He turned his focus back to swinging his arms and kicking his legs. He needed that helo.
By the time he got to the rocky side of the helipad, the chopper’s rotors were in full spin. Bishop wasted no time. He climbed up the rocks and sprinted around the back of the bird, to the right side of the craft, going for the pilot. He didn’t bother ducking his head like you always see in films. He knew the rotors were so high above him that they wouldn’t touch him.
The helipad was deserted, but the pilot sat inside the little Eurocopter. Bishop wasn’t sure what model it was, but it had a small body, just big enough for five passengers total. With a white body and navy blue skids, it looked more like something the Tunisian President might fly in.
As he got closer, he could see the pilot was wearing camouflage and not black. A local, he thought. Not a merc. Bishop whipped open the Pilot’s door and punched the man in the side of the head, then dragged his unconscious body out of the bird.
He was pleased to note that even though the helicopter was a civilian craft, it had a rocket pod mounted on the pilot-side skid.
He strapped himself in and gently placed his feet on the rudder pedals. He held the cyclic with his right hand and grabbed the throttle grip on the collective with his left. He had had exactly five helicopter pilot lessons, and none of them had gone very well, so he handled everything delicately.
He began raising the collective and twisted the throttle to increase his engine speed. The helicopter lifted off the ground. He moved the cyclic forward ever so gently and he felt the craft shudder as it transitioned from vertical movement to forward movement. He kept gaining altitude, but he was heading straight into the ruins, where he didn’t want to be. He pressed the cyclic to his left and depressed the rudder pedal to make a turn out to sea. He spun almost 180 degrees — more than he wanted, but he was still heading away from the land, which was what he wanted. He pressed the cyclic forward more sharply than he needed to, and the nose of the craft dipped as it moved forward. He increased the throttle and the craft sped out to sea.
Now all he had to do was keep the craft level and look out the windows for any sign of Rook. The latter proved to be more difficult. When he was sure he was further from the shore than Rook could have been tossed, he turned the craft with some difficulty, and started back.
Then he spotted something in the water. He smiled.
“You are seriously hard to kill, Rook.”
The water was splashing slightly around him as Rook swam toward shore. He was much farther south than the beachfront adjacent to the ruins, but Bishop supposed it would be hard for Rook to know exactly where to head, that far out to sea.
Bishop brought the helicopter lower with some dithering. He’d learned that nearly everything he did with the controls needed to be done gently. It wasn’t like driving a car or a motorcycle. It was like driving a car with hypersensitive power steering through an obstacle course, while sending a text message and eating a messy burger without getting any on you.
He moved toward Rook’s position, and hoped the man wouldn’t shoot him out of the sky. He came up behind Rook, and lowered the helicopter to where it was just two feet above the surface of the water. Rook turned in the water to watch him. Then Bishop gently wiggled the cyclic side to side, making the helicopter dance left and right across the water — the only thing he could think of to send a signal to the swimming Rook that he wasn’t a threat.
Bishop could see Rook mouthing the words “What the fuck?”
The windows were tinted though, and Bishop knew Rook couldn’t see who was flying the chopper. He held the bird steady as Rook swam toward him. When Rook grabbed the left side skid, Bishop could feel the helicopter dip slightly toward the water, and he raised the collective just a nudge. Then he waited.
A few seconds later, the passenger side door of the craft opened, and one of Rook’s Desert Eagle hand cannons was pointed in the doorway. Then Rook looked in. His face changed in an instant from hostile to confused.
“When the hell did you learn to fly?” he shouted.
Bishop couldn’t hear him over the rotors, but just smiled. Rook slammed the door shut and strapped himself in. Then he donned a headset, and flicked a transmitter button on the side of it. Bishop raised the collective, and brought the bird up away from the water, as Rook grabbed the second headset and reached across to seat it on Bishop’s head, before flicking it on.
“Thanks for the rescue. I thought I’d break my friggin’ back when that Frankendouche chucked me.”
“How did you survive, man? You we’re flying like a missile.” Bishop brought the helicopter up and pointed it straight at the giant statue on the shore. When he felt the helicopter was roughly the height of the giant’s head, he leveled off.
“You mean other than being the toughest S.O.B. you know? My legs hit first. The armor absorbed a lot of the impact. If I’d landed on my back, I’d be dead. It still felt like being dumped onto concrete from about twenty feet.” Rook leaned forward, looking out the window. “You have a plan beyond saving my ass?”
“There’s a rocket pod on the skid,” Bishop told him. “I was thinking we blow something up.”
“My specialty.” Rook smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Then we can use the chopper to run Ridley down and grind him into chuck.”
Bishop laughed. “Now we have a plan.”
SIXTY-TWO
North of the Ruins, Carthage
Queen watched in amazement as the helicopter approaching from the sea fired a rocket at the Colossus of Rhodes. The rocket raced from one of the skids on the underside of the helicopter, and left a long thin trail of white smoke as it zipped directly for the statue’s immense head.
The detonation was spectacular, spraying rock and metal fragments in all directions. The remaining giant spires on the statue’s crown went flipping end over end in all directions, as giant slabs of stone came raining down all around the ruins.
Queen watched the sky, but none of the debris would reach her. The wind was picking up, and clouds were filling the sky out to sea. The breeze cleared the cloud of smoke hanging over the shoulders of the Colossus.
The statue now had no head.
But it was still moving.
She needed to find Ridley. The arrival of the Forgotten had turned the tide of the ground battle initially, but more of the mercenaries had arrived from the north, and this time they were not startled by the wraiths. The end result was a lot of bodies littered around.
She picked her way past savaged corpses of soldiers and bullet-riddled wraith things with shriveled gray skin and mutated faces. Asya was by her side, but the others had hung back, Knight being mostly a liability in a firefight at this point.
She turned to Asya. “You know what? The hell with this. We need that statue stopped. We need Ridley dead, and we’re too outnumbered on the ground even with the wraiths helping. I want you to go get a vehicle. I don’t care if it’s a school bus, a freight truck, a bulldozer or a friggin tank. Make it big. This skulking around is getting us nowhere. I’m gonna try to find Ridley and stab his black heart.”
Asya nodded curtly, then ran off through the trees, headed for the main road.
Queen slipped off to her right, deeper into the remains of the ruins. She knew Ridley and Seth were holed up somewhere near the northern end of the ruins, but she didn’t know where. She ran through a still-standing archway, and slipped out the other side, hiding behind fragments of stone as she moved. Most of the area was covered in a cloud of dust and fine particulate sand now, but she could still see the Colossus looming above, as its headless form moved up the shore, toward the northern end of the ruins.
When Queen rounded the next corner, she
could finally see Richard Ridley.
He was wearing a black jumpsuit and stood atop a round structure at the far northern end of the ruins. Bullets struck the northern side of the structure, causing Ridley to flinch, but he just ducked and ignored them as he commanded the Colossus. The statue continued its steady approach, heading straight toward him.
“Who the hell is that, then?” she asked herself, wondering who was shooting at Ridley. Maybe Deep Blue’s reinforcements are early? she thought.
Didn’t matter, they were taking the heat off of her for the moment. She moved two more walls closer to the round structure, and took aim with her AK-47.
She fired three shots in rapid succession, the third found Ridley’s arm and severed it at the elbow. But there was no blood, and the Colossus was still moving. Then the man’s arm began to grow back.
What the hell?
And then she realized. She wasn’t looking at Richard Ridley. It was Seth acting as his decoy. Seth wasn’t controlling the Colossus at all. He was using the mother tongue to regenerate his body as he was continually peppered with bullets, while somewhere else, hidden, Ridley pulled the strings of the statue. “That’s alright,” she said.
She changed the selector to fully automatic and blasted away at Seth’s head until his body fell off the raised wall. She wanted him dead too. She understood that he might not have actually died, thanks to that damned magic language, but he was out of the game for now.
She made her way toward the water, through the ruins, occasionally coming across a pitched battle between men in camo and mercs in black, or between mercs and wraiths, or some combination of the three. When she saw camo, she went the other way. She didn’t know who the newcomers were, but she suspected they were locals, trying to protect the nearby Presidential Palace. When she came across a straight merc/wraith brawl, she popped as many of the mercs as she could. The wraiths appeared to be losing, perhaps struggling in the sunlight.
Finally reaching the sea side of the ruins, she looked toward the helipad. She saw a tennis court, a few trees, and crouched down by the trees — Richard Ridley. He was looking up as he directed the Colossus toward the group of camo-clad soldiers closing in on Seth’s location.
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