Kill Machine (The Hroza Connection Book 6)

by William Vitka

  I honestly don’t know who’s alive.

  Be easy enough to blow all the fuckin saucers outta the sky with antimatter missiles, but we need em. We can break em a little, but we need em. Vaporizing the pieces of shit ain’t no good. Damage we can repair. Destruction is harder. Harsher.

  I scramble east. Beat my feet along Sixty-ninth. Roadie-run between buildings and expensive shops and expensive apartments I was never able to afford when I was normal.

  Y’know. Paying taxes with a job and shit.

  Now it explodes around me. Bursts. Shatters. All the pompous bullshit is debris under my feet as the pilots’ blue beams cut housing costs on the East Side.

  One of those beams tags my shoulder. Only for an instant.

  But it drops the armor there from one-hundred percent to forty-five percent.

  Any sustained fire, and we’re fuckin dunzo.

  Which ain’t gonna be fun, since the pilots still really want me.

  Clyde carries me along at sixty miles-an-hour. I hit First Avenue. Jump. Crush New York Presbyterian under my feet. Jump. The East River passes under me. A shining mirror. I land on a Roosevelt Island housing complex. Jump. Another shimmering mirror of the East River blows by.

  I land in Queens.

  And I keep running.

  Stomp the random, sporadic undead. Minor monsters who’re bugs to me.

  I blow through Astoria. Woodside. Forest Hills. Corona.

  Till I’m at Flushing Meadows Park.

  The snow’s thick here. Heavy amid the wide open spaces.

  Fourteen saucers chase me.

  I shout. Scream. “C’mon assholes, it’s the World’s Fair.”

  The other Talos join me. They’ve all been tagged.

  Dents and pieces of armor that’re scarred from energy blasts.

  The ships ain’t firing right now.

  It’s not that we beat the saucers here. I don’t think. They just don’t know what we’re gonna do next. So they don’t know what to do with themselves. Plus I cut the snake’s head off with a bullet from my dad’s Colt.

  Then I got away.

  Which means they gotta be shaken. Unsure.

  I keep moving. Don’t stay in one place too long. Jog and dance like a boxer. “Movement is life.” I tell my family: “Those blue bitches don’t know shit. I killed their goddamn leader, but I’m still the prize they’re after.” I grin. “Now we’re in the shadow of the Unisphere. Let the cocksuckers get close.” I hurl a chunk of asphalt at one saucer. “We need five or six of these stupid things mostly intact.”

  Plissken peels a big chaingun off his back. Tosses it to me.

  I crack my neck in the command cubby. Tuck the mechanized ammo belt into a compartment on Clyde’s back. Spin the chaingun up. Scream. “Let’s rock.”

  Plissken screams with me. “Kill em all.”

  This is the most enthusiastic and colloquial he’s ever sounded.

  He shows his joy by opening fire with the blaster in his warframe’s palm. Tells us to focus our weapons on the saucers’ deadly cannons. Their underbellies.

  Plissken takes one outta commission.

  The ship wobbles like a top on its way to crashing. Its edge punches into the ground. Kicks up vast amounts of dirt and concrete. It bounces. Rolls. Slashes through the Long Island Expressway. Comes to a stop with a titanic splash in Meadow Lake to the south.

  Feels like a great victory.

  At first.

  Till the wrecked saucer starts to puke out aliens and alien monsters.

  I turn my chaingun on em. “Hola, bitches.” Make the first wave mulch. I sidestep. Try to stay light. A beam grazes my heel. Alarms go off in the cockpit.

  Clyde says, “You to avoid tho—”

  “I know I know.”

  Bullets spew from my chaingun. They pepper the lake. The ship.

  Big plug-ugly centipede motherfuckers squeal. Chitter. I get most of em. A hundred of the squirmy suckers. But they burrow. Dig underground where I lose sight.

  I waste ammo tilling the soil of my little killing field. Hammering the radar signals with 30mm rounds till I get the penetration I need and the signals disappear.

  Turing downs another saucer in time to get his right arm and right leg vaporized by a death beam. He falls. Lands hard on his chest.

  Lovelace and Jade disable the ship that disabled him. A combination of Lovelace’s palm blaster, Jade’s chaingun, and cannon fire from Catarina.

  Four ships outta action now.

  Turing does the best he can with one arm and one leg and an automatic rifle he unhooks from his back. Offering quick, precise bursts that drill through downed pilots and monsters.

  Plissken gives his son covering fire. Hoses the burrowers with his palm blaster.

  Booker, Sarah, Harryhausen, Aiden, and Athena close ranks. Form a semicircle. They try to hold position but not get shot at the same time.

  Their chainguns and rifles and shotguns are unending murder fountains. Bullets and beams split between assaulting the pilot saucers and killing whatever bioweapons spill from the crashed ships.

  Spent brass from their murder tools’ ejection ports turn the park into a shimmering carpet metal and madness and blood and bone.

  It ain’t enough.

  Dunno if the pilots know Turing is the weakest now or if they’re just dicks.

  A saucer beam bursts through the saucers of the New York State Pavilion. It wrecks the skate park. Shatters the Avenue of Peace.

  Those who can dive outta the way while dodging other nightmare rays do.

  Which means we leave Plissken’s son totally exposed.

  When I turn back, there’s nothing left of Turing. Just a burned out, charred chunk of the Earth. Not even a scrap of metal. It’s all gone.

  Jade screams. Roars.

  Plissken’s silent.

  It’s weird. Eerie.

  Which means he’s so pissed he can’t think of anything useful to say.

  The rest of us try to keep our pieces together as he runs. Jukes. His legs pump him toward the saucer that slaughtered his son. He launches himself at it. Catches the edge of the rim. Punches handholds along its underbelly. Till he gets to the yellow sphere at its center.

  That big control room.

  He hammers it with his fist. Wrenches off panels of metal. Reaches inside.

  Plissken grabs a handful of pilots. I see em wriggle in between his fingers. Flailing arms and legs and disc-shaped shark heads.

  He squeezes the alien pricks. Blue gore and goo spurts. Squishes. Drips in sticky, fleshy pools. Plissken flings the muck down. Grabs another handful. Mushes em. He sticks his face against the ruined cockpit. A kid looking for more goodies inside a piñata.

  Wires emerge from Plissken’s hands. Snake their way inside.

  The ship stops fighting. Guess the wires from his fingers told it to behave. He guides it to a relatively soft landing in one of the lawns as it powers down. A cargo door opens. Farts out a couple hundred burrowers.

  All dead. Chitinous carcasses.

  Plissken turns. Launches three separate volleys of antimatter missiles at three saucers taking position above us.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  All gone.

  Plissken says, “Fuck you.”

  I can empathize with that, but I guess we won’t be fixing those ships.

  Which means... I’ve lost count.

  Three destroyed. Five potentially useable. If you can find the one Clyde hurled like a roided up Olympian into the Atlantic Ocean.Even if it’s small. And if it wasn’t obliterated on impact.

  So there’s seven left. We can get away with nuking a few mor—

  Clyde tries to warn me before a big hulking bastard slams into me and pins me on the ground. Too bad my mind was elsewhere.

 
Now, this motherfucker. He looks...looks...

  “Sonuvabitch.” I grunt. “A goddamn Hroza?”

  It’s got the skull face. The beard of tentacles. The long crustacean body. All the bits and pieces. But it’s eyes are...dumb. Determined. Pissed. Sure. But there ain’t any thought behind em.

  I struggle as it wraps more muscly tendrils around me. The beast crushes the ammo feeder belt for my chaingun. Headbutts me. Starts to squeeze my armor.

  I watch the health of my warframe drop percentage point by percentage point.

  Clyde says, “It is not a true Hroza. Genetically similar, but this creature is a clone.”

  “Oh, brilliant idea.” I shout. “Sonuvabitch.”

  “Indeed, sir. The pilots are dropping all of their troops on the battlefield now. All of their biomechanical warmachines.”

  I yell into my radio: “Need some help here.”

  Sarah yells back: “We all do.”

  Clyde enlarges my radar map. It’s our fourteen blue signals in an ocean of red.

  Not good.

  Any Talos that ain’t similarly pinned by a Hroza clone is under asstons of fire from the remaining saucers. They’re too busy with the pilots to turn their guns on the monster Wrestlemania. They stop to target any clones, they’re fuckin dead.

  I kick my knees into the faux-Hroza’s abdomen. “Oh, this is delightful.” Again and again and again till I feel part of the titan give. Smoosh. It howls.

  But it won’t let go.

  It keeps me pinned. Keeps crushing my Talos.

  Depletes my armor.

  A series of slugs rip through the tendrils around my right arm.

  The titan howls again. Releases its grip.

  I punch its big fuckin face. Pull the shotgun from my back. Shove the barrel against the faux-Hroza’s skull. Press the trigger. Send life-ending buckshot through its brain in a chowdery spray.

  I hear Catarina say, “Had to save my boy.”

  I shove the bastard’s body away. Haul myself up to my knees. See my mom watching me.

  She says, “It’s what mothers are supposed to do. No matter what.”

  Blue beam a heartbeat away from her.

  Then she’s gone.

  I grit my teeth. Grind my jaw. “Fuck it.” I light a cigarette. “Clyde, target all the saucers. Every goddamn one.”

  “That may not leave enough intact for—”

  “Do it. Now.”

  Plissken must be following my weapon patterns. Cuz he breaks in over the radio. “You realize what you’re risking, don’t you?”

  I duck. Dive. Roll. Evade beams aimed to disable me. See a Hroza clone strangling Athena. Grunt. “Nobody else dies today.”

  Antimatter missiles streak away from my shoulder pods. They track the alien ships. Zig and zag after em.

  Then the air is full of explosions. Of thunderclaps.

  Parts of the saucers land. Thunk against the ground.

  It rains metal. It rains pieces of monsters.

  The aliens get a taste of their technology from the receiving end.

  I rack the pump on my shotgun. Send an empty shell flying. Stomp toward my daughter. Blow the face and head off the faux-Hroza with fresh buckshot. Kick the corpse from Athena. Hold my hand out.

  She groans. Wraps her hand in mine.

  I lift her to her feet.

  We do the same for the rest of our kin. Gather our wounded. Try to pick everyone up while the saucers fall outta the skies like flies. They crash and boom and smoke and sputter for a good couple minutes while we slaughter the rest of the biomechanical warmachines.

  Nobody walks away without a scratch.

  Lovelace hops along. One of her legs gone. Booker and Sarah help keep her steady. Dunno why she hasn’t disengaged from the Talos. Maybe she’s stuck.

  Thompson and Fiske ain’t doing so well either. Ditto Swift.

  They’re alive. In desperate need of hospitalization, but alive.

  Their warframes, on the other hand, are totally shot to hell.

  Plissken pries the Talos heads open. Scoops the survivors up. Carries em in his hands. These little broken human dolls.

  A sad moan escapes my throat when I see Jade’s warframe. A charred husk. Fingers of one hand splayed. The other hand reaching for something. I sigh. “Goddamn it.”

  Then I can’t stop thinking about DeVille.

  Gotta talk to her. Gotta tell her...

  “I’m still alive, you asshole. Get me the hell outta this thing. I’m stuck.” Jade grunts. “Apparently disengaging from the Talos, if you’re a robot, gets funky when you take too much damage. It’s a really shitty flaw.” She groans. Sighs. “Turing...”

  I sniffle. Laugh. Crack open her Talos.

  Alpha crawls out.

  I offer her my palm.

  She steps in. Then climbs up my arm. Plants herself on my right shoulder. Then she’s quiet. Pensive.

  Cockroaches appear from the southwestern edge of the park. Hundreds of em. Maybe thousands. They scuttle over the remains of the aliens and their wretched biological creations. Chew the flesh. The bone.

  Got no idea what the gestation period of these things is. But all of a sudden, I feel kinda like I’ve been duped into feeling sorry for the roaches’ “small, wounded tribe” crap.

  I watch em for another moment. This carpet of scavengers.

  The carrion feast is endless.

  34. Remember That Thing? No, No. The Other Thing

  Me and Gordineer sit with beers and whiskey at Manny’s. Back on the Beast. I stay away from the observation deck. Nothing good for me happens there.

  Better to bury that and all the memories.

  Gotta stop throwing myself pity parties.

  Gordineer raises his shot of booze. “The other pilots... They’re gonna be pissed.” He sniffs. “Chuck Jones is gonna be pissed.”

  I look at the amber liquid in my own glass. “Fuck em. We beat the bastards once, we can do it again.” Images of Jack and Catarina pop into my head. “I’ll kill their whole race if I have to.”

  I say this with the hope that our victory here means the pilots’ll think long and hard before they bother us again. Y’know, like how many ships and soldiers are they willing to lose to get me?

  Just gotta make sure I’m too painful to obtain.

  Oughtta ask Plissken to launch some defensive satellites into orbit. Or the moon’s orbit. Maybe Mars’. So we can nuke the cocksuckers before they even get close enough to hurt us.

  Once he’s done putting all those saucers back together again, anyway.

  I drink. Smoke.

  Anxious as hell.

  There’s supposed to be news.

  Kinda makes me miss being a reporter.

  Sure as shit doesn’t make me miss my bosses, but, hey. Being at the forefront of the news was a kick.

  Till it all turned to gossip and clickbait, anyway.

  “He told the president one secret, you won’t believe who farted next...”

  “One weird trick to make your wife a ferocious lizard person!”

  “Doctors hate him! Learn how Death managed to cheat...himself!”

  “He ate seventeen gerbils and lost twenty pounds!”

  Exclamation marks all over the damn place.

  No. I’m waiting for news about DeVille. The twins.

  Due date has moved from any month to any week and now possible any day.

  My grand post-alien attack plans are to finish off my one whiskey. One beer. One cigarette. Then amble up to DeVille’s room. Shower. Wait.

  I’m gonna hang out. Maybe watch a few movies.

  Hell, write a damn book about all this.

  Please don’t.

  Ain’t gonna mope.

  I’m gonna just...be excited about my kids
. About retirement.

  About hanging up the Colts for good.

  The freedom that’s gonna rear its head over my life soon.

  That, more than anything, is what Jack and Catarina would want.

  Harryhausen zips into Manny’s ramshackle bar. A light at the top of his saucer shape blinks red. And I notice a few patches on his frame from where he took damage in the big fight. For now patched up with mismatched metal plates.

  My heart jumps in my chest. “The twins—”

  Harryhausen shakes back and forth. Flashes a hologram that reads: NO.

  I didn’t wanna remind you for obvious reasons. Thought I’d give you a day...

  * * *

  I cross my arms. Stare at the holographic maps. The radar. All the lights blinking and buzzing in the Beast’s command tower. There’s a lotta information to process. And the best I can come up with is: “You gotta be fuckin kidding.”

  The biomass in the trench is moving. Chewing.

  This damn thing a little bigger than Florida. It eats the Earth. Works its way from the crust we all kinda live on. Down down down.

  I fight the urge to smoke and suck whiskey. “Can anyone tell me what the fuck it’s doing now?” I look around. Don’t recognize anyone except Harryhausen and Gordineer.

  A skinny dude in his early twenties says, “It’s consuming the planet.”

  “Ya don’t say!” I grimace. “I’m talking about ideas on its strategy. Its goal.”

  The kid cocks an eye at me. “I don’t... I’m not sure there is anything beyond that.” He pauses. “Sir.”

  I bite my lip. “Where’s Plissken?”

  Gordineer stares at the holograms. “Shit. The pilots were right.”

  I shrug. “But about which whackadoo parasite plan? None of em made any sense and they were all science fiction cheese... I confess the one where the biomass turns the planet into a giant, sentient infectious world is kinda neat. I mean, like, objectively.” Clear my throat.

  Sorta undercutting the apocalyptic terror here a bit, chuckles.

  Gordineer scratches his cheek. “Could be any of the plans. How the hell are we supposed to know what this big mama jama is thinking?” He looks over to me. “Fire’s always been good at dissuading monsters, right? If it eats too far down, hits lava or whatever—”