by Gary Gibson
Are you crazy? Dutch was about to say, then changed her mind. “Was that grating loose all this time?”
“I worked it loose over the last couple of nights I was down here,” Miles explained, sparing her a quick glance. “Took me fucking forever.” He giggled, sounding not quite sane. “The pipe’s barely wide enough for a rat, so no way we can crawl out of here. But if I’m right and we can both fit in next to it, it’s got to be better than getting eaten by that…thing if it comes alive again.”
Dutch knelt down beside him, seeing there was indeed just enough space behind the grating for them both to squeeze in next to each other—although she suspected it would be an uncomfortably tight fit. Nor, she suspected, would it keep them safe from a live kaiju once it caught their scent.
Even so, they might actually be able to make use of it, assuming her impossible, stupid, lunatic plan worked.
Moving quickly, Dutch once again scaled the rope ladder until she was directly beneath the steel bars. Hooking one arm through the rope ladder, she quickly lit one of Eddie’s cigarettes, drawing the smoke deep into her lungs until the tip shone brightly in the darkness. Then she held it up between the bars and threw it in the direction of the cloth-covered table beneath Santa Muerte’s feet.
And missed.
Fuck.
A grinding noise drew Dutch’s attention to the floor of the pit. Miles was trying to fit himself into the tiny space behind the grating, a panicked look on his face.
Dutch watched, horrified, as more cracks spread across the exterior of the kaiju’s still form.
Dutch figured she had maybe one more shot before whatever was inside emerged. She pulled another cigarette out of the pack with her teeth, stuffed the pack back into her jeans, then lit the cigarette with one trembling hand. She sucked on it until its tip glowed like a tiny star.
I don’t pray, lady, she thought, staring into the bony statue’s eyes. But I could really use your help.
She flicked the lit cigarette through the air in a smooth parabola and it landed almost dead centre on the table, amidst the bundles of dried flowers laid before the candles.
Even if the plan didn’t work, she had decided, being burned to death seemed a marginally better fate than being eaten by a hungry kaiju. The dried flowers caught quickly, sending up oily smoke, the flames rapidly spreading across the table.
Dutch wondered if maybe now Carreras had a live kaiju again, he might let them go. But she’d had a feeling even before things went south that the gang boss wasn’t ever going to let her or Miles leave the estate alive.
But maybe if the kaiju burst out of its cocoon to find itself in a burning chapel, it might try and bust out of its cage before it had a chance to notice her and Miles cowering behind a grating by its feet.
As a plan it sucked, but it was all she had.
Dutch quickly climbed back down to the floor of the pit even as the flames licked up towards Santa Muerte’s feet. Just as she folded herself into the narrow gap behind the grating next to Miles and pulled the grating back into place with his help, a sudden grinding and tearing came from the kaiju, like a nest of baby chainsaws clamouring for attention. A moment later its skin collapsed inwards and an immature killosaurus emerged, jaws snapping.
“Holy shit!”
The voice had come from overhead. Dutch angled her head so she could peer through up past the grating and at the bars above. Eddie stood on the bars above the centre of the pit, staring down at the killosaurus, his pistol held half-forgotten in one hand. His astonished gaze shifted between the flames and the reborn kaiju.
“Hey!” he shouted in the direction of the chapel entrance. “I think it ate them!”
The killosaurus answered this remark with a growling shriek. Dutch watched with horrified fascination as the creature tensed its muscles, then sprang upwards, slamming into the steel bars overhead with enough force that Eddie was sent stumbling backwards and out of sight.
Eddie’s timing couldn’t have been better. Dutch saw the kaiju leap upwards to cling to the steel bars with long-taloned claws, worrying at them with foot-long incisors. The metal shrieked, the bars coming loose of the concrete into which they were set. Within moments the kaiju had knocked the bars loose and it rose upwards, disappearing entirely from her sight.
Dutch kicked the grating to one side and pushed herself out far enough to catch a last glimpse of the kaiju as it exited the pit. She heard a burst of gunfire, followed by a prolonged shriek that ended abruptly, and then the sound of shattering wood.
“Move,” Dutch shouted, grabbing hold of Miles’s shoulder and hauling him out of the drain. She lurched back over to the ladder, pulling herself back up and onto the floor of the chapel, feeling the heat from the blaze. The killosaurus was gone, but there was a ragged hole where one wall of the chapel had been.
Miles climbed up and out of the pit behind her, panting hard. The far end of the chapel had become a solid sheet of flame, hot enough to scald Dutch down one side of her body. Santa Muerte grinned from out of the flames that consumed her.
There was no sign of Eddie or any of Carreras’ guards. Dutch stepped towards the hole in the wall and caught a glimpse of the killosaurus headed in the general direction of Carreras’s mansion, attracted, perhaps, by the bright lights that burned within.
Dutch ran out through the hole in the wall and followed in the kaiju’s wake, another idea forming in her mind. Miles called after her, but she ignored him. She’d paid her debt, and from this point on he was on his own.
She ran through the gardens and the zoo, which had come alive with the sound of terrified animals. As she emerged through a low gate, she saw people running down the steps of the mansion, carrying fire extinguishers. They rapidly reversed direction once they saw what was hurtling towards them on four powerful limbs.
A moment later, the kaiju smashed through the front facade of Carreras’ mansion, and an electronic alarm whooped through the night.
She was almost out of breath by the time she found Miles’s Ford Falcon Coupé in the same place she’d seen it, parked amidst a long line of classic vehicles. She slid into its front seat, hardly noticing the sound of gunfire and screams coming from the mansion. The leather seating curved against her back felt like some kind of unholy pleasure. Consider this payment for saving your ass, Miles.
She found the keys in the ignition and took off fast down the long road that wound away from Carreras’s mansion. Miles was a shitty driver and a shittier mechanic, and she had no doubt the car would need some serious TLC. She remembered she knew a guy with a well-equipped garage up in Tijuana who’d be willing to help her out; it was a couple of days drive, a couple of thousand kilometres from El Salvador all the way up to Baja California, but that was just a chance for her and the Coupé to get properly reacquainted.
Dutch reached for the radio and searched for a music station. Once she’d found one, she turned it up loud enough to drown out the gunfire and the screams of the dying and drove north, the sky glowing reddish-orange beneath the rising sun.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gary Gibson is widely regarded as one of the UK’s leading authors of hard science fiction, space opera and post-apocalyptic fiction with a career stretching over fifteen years and more than a dozen books, including Stealing Light and Extinction Game. More information can be found at his website: www.garygibson.net.
This story is a prequel to Devil’s Road, first published in March 2020 and available as an audiobook, a signed limited-edition hardback, paperback and an Amazon-exclusive ebook from the following links.
Devil’s Road: Kindle | Audible US | Audible UK | Audible Germany | Audible France |
Limited-Edition Hardback (16th March 2020): Newcon Press
Paperback: Amazon UK | Amazon US | Waterstones | Barnes & Noble | Indiebound | Abebooks
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Standalone books:
ANGEL STATIONS (2004)
AGAINST GRAVITY (2005)
GHOST FREQUENCIES (2018)
DEVILS ROAD (2020)
Shoal Sequence:
STEALING LIGHT (2007)
NOVA WAR (2009)
EMPIRE OF LIGHT (2010)
MARAUDER (2013)
Final Days Duology:
FINAL DAYS (2011)
THE THOUSAND EMPERORS (2012)
Apocalypse Trilogy:
EXTINCTION GAME (2014)
SURVIVAL GAME (2016)
DOOMSDAY GAME (2019)
Story Collections:
Scienceville & Other Lost Worlds (2018)