Angel of Doom

by James Axler

  Going off in a knee-jerk reaction was not the key to victory here. He wasn’t even certain that either Charun or Vanth would be showing. As such, he remained patient, his less-lethal shotgun ready for action. The Sin Eater, folded away along his forearm, would be for someone or something worse. Brigid had stated for the entire Cerberus group that they would do their best to rescue and recover their lost soldiers.

  The monstrous steps slowed. The walker was on the far side of the clearing, fifteen yards away, and obscured by the tree line. One thing, though, had become apparent. What they had mistaken for the ponderous bulk of a walking Spartan war bot wasn’t a thing forged of alien alloys and cobbled Sandcat armor.

  Fingers, the size of sausages, swept aside the crown of a tree, branches shattering under incredible pressure. The splintering limbs weren’t violently thrashed, merely shrugged aside with a casual brush of an arm as long as Kane himself was tall. The creature that the arm attached to was a thing of horror, its face just as twisted and inhuman as Charun’s own.

  This was not an automaton, and it was far too large to be an Annunaki or one of their servant Nephilim. This was a gargantuan creature, not unlike another horror that Kane had encountered. It had been in the Appalachian Rift, and his name was Balor of the Baleful Eye, an entity of horror and suffering created by another scion of Enlil, the brutal yet eternally handsome Bres. This thing was not a Fomori, but he could already “hear” Brigid’s explanation of how the Celtic Fomorian demons and the Greek Cyclops were likely different cultural observations of the same creatures. And these giants were the creations of horrible technologies that made flesh and bone flow like molasses.

  Because of the power it instilled in them, and because of the continuous agonies it ravaged them with, the one-eyed giants were fearless in the face of danger and death. Kane watched as splinters of smashed branch speared into thick, elephantine hide, taking only trickles of blood, eliciting a smirk on the titan’s face. Anything that sparked its way from the endless existence of dull ache was a moment of pleasure, a relief from the sameness of eternity. According to Bres, when they’d last battled, the constant state of their bodies was breaking and tearing their deformed figures, and instantly healing. Only the worst of agonies could penetrate such a fog of constant ache.

  It had made the Bres’s Fomori formidable, utterly fearless in battle, even enjoying receiving injuries. Added to that was the riot of cellular activity that made them heal almost instantly.

  Less-lethal shotguns were not going to be the order of this battle. Not with eighteen feet of rippling brawn and the splinter injuries on its arm closing, the trapped wood being scabbed over to become part of its uneven, alien dermis.

  The big, ugly eye swept the tree line as the creature inhaled deeply.

  “Smell you,” it rumbled.

  The fat, knob-knuckled fingers wrapped around the trunk of the tree it’d mangled and twisted, wrenching the field maple from the ground. Clumps of dirt fell away from the gnarled roots, the three-foot-diameter log easily grasped by the cyclopean horror.

  “Smell you. Kill you,” the thing grunted.

  Kane rose and rushed away from his position as the massive trunk slashed through the air, propelled by mighty muscles.

  Chapter 9

  Five or so years ago, when he’d been a Magistrate in Cobaltville, there were lengthy lists of things Grant never thought he would run into, encounter, let alone be threatened by. Sure, he’d heard stories of genetic mutants unleashed upon the countryside in great hordes just to enforce a feudal lifestyle among the survivors of the apocalypse back in 2001. But those things had been hunted down, thanks to the reunification program that had trained and armed Grant and Kane, equipping them with polycarbonate armor and high-tech weaponry from full-auto side arms to Deathbird assault helicopters. After a while, the muties were exterminated, something that Grant regretted missing out on.

  Since then, however, he’d faced biological and technological wonders without end. Pan-terrestrial aliens such as the Archons, the hybrid barons who commanded Grant and Kane, the Nagah, the Fomori, the Annunaki themselves. Grant even recalled the time his tesseract “time shadow” faced off against a living Minotaur in a brutal battle thousands of years prior. Grant even regularly visited New Edo and Thunder Isle, where time-trawled dinosaurs lived and thrived.

  None of them quite matched the scope of eighteen feet of rippling muscle, topped by a grotesque head with a huge, watery green eye. At eighteen feet, it towered over even the largest of predatory dinos that he’d encountered, the Acrocanthosaurus. Fortunately the cyclops stood bipedal-erect, so its entire body was in a column of flesh, bone and muscle, unlike the forty-foot-long Acro, which squared its bulk on two massive hind legs, balanced out by a muscular tail.

  Even so, nearly twenty feet of humanoid was impressive, especially since it was no mere inflated person. This was a creature with broad feet and fat legs, its girth slowly tapering, but not by much, to shoulders that were “only” seven feet across, and arms that, while seemingly spindly, were still thicker than Grant’s by a factor of three.

  The moment Grant saw the brute rip up a thirteen-foot tree by the roots with no more effort than he would have pulled out an annoying weed, his mind raced. The cyclops had announced its intentions in a manner that would have made Domi seem loquacious and then fast-balled the maple like a javelin. The three-foot-thick trunk smashed against other trunks with the crash of thunder, and only the grunts of Kane’s efforts over the din informed Grant that his friend was all right.

  “Yo! One-eye!” he bellowed, stepping into the open. “Pick on someone your own size!”

  The giant had been reaching for another tree trunk when it paused, looking aghast at the dark-skinned human who rose to greet it, shotgun clutched in fists that would have been massive to any other entity.

  The cyclops reared back and whipped its head forward in a challenging roar. But as soon as the creature opened its mouth, Grant shouldered his shotgun in one smooth movement and fired.

  While there wasn’t much hope that a neoprene baton would do much to penetrate its hide, getting whacked in the epiglottis by a rubber slug that could break normal human ribs did send the giant into a stunned coughing fit.

  That single shot purchased several seconds for Kane to get his feet back beneath him, and time enough to come up with a coordinated plan.

  “Fall back into the heavy woods—he’ll have a hard time moving quickly in there,” Kane ordered.

  Grant turned and broke through the tree line. As soon as he was out of sight, he immediately cut to the left, running perpendicular to his prior course. That change of direction was a lifesaver as the enraged giant plowed through trees, bellowing like a wounded bull. Yard-thick trunks exploded under the pressure of the cyclops’s passage.

  Grant, thanks to his time on Thunder Isle, was intimately aware of the square-cube law. The giant was three times the height of a human being, but the nature of such growth was that its volume and mass grew much faster than its surface area. As a “normal-size” human, the beast would have easily been about 300 pounds. Due to that mass increase, the thing was now more than a ton in weight—2,700 pounds by his mental calculations.

  Since the creature’s musculature and bone structure had been altered by Annunaki technologies—nanomachines rebuilding the entity to properly support all of the added material—there was little doubt the cyclops had few physical impairments in regard to its enormous weight. By the thickness of those massive legs, there was little question that just taking a single footstep would shatter its own bones. It was mutated to be that large.

  Such incredible power inherent in its limbs was enough to give Grant pause.

  “We might have to get lethal with this bastard,” Grant said over his Commtact.

  Kane’s pause was enough to remind Grant of the potential nature of this beast. What was now a cyclopean horror might once have been an innocent person. Then again, nearly 20 feet and 3,000 pounds of rampaging mu
scle were hard to handle with kid gloves. “Whatever happens, we go home.”

  “Find you!” The titan’s roar was such that Grant could feel the air shudder around him. Would any of their weapons hurt that thing? And given the kind of regenerative power he’d encountered among the Fomori in the Appalachians, would they cause it lethal harm? It was going to be a fine line that, despite the practicality he normally showed, Grant didn’t want to cross without exhausting all other options.

  There used to be a time when Grant would have killed a mutant monstrosity such as this outright, but years of battle, as well as learning more and more of Zen from Shizuka, had taken the quick edge off his aggression. It also didn’t hurt that this thing was talking, giving it some semblance of humanity, and that he and Kane were able to keep skirting its attentions.

  That wasn’t going to last forever. But Grant wondered at something.

  “Kane, we’re gonna zap this thing with the Tasers. If that doesn’t work, then we fill him with lead,” Grant offered.

  The breath of relief on Kane’s end of the Commtact told Grant that the idea was greatly welcomed. If the current could go through the metal of a Spartan war bot, there was little doubt that it’d affect a flesh-and-blood humanoid with even better efficiency.

  At least that was the hope.

  The cyclops grunted, snorting as it was confused and frustrated by how easily it had lost its prey. Apparently its enhanced size came with similar benefits, such as hundreds of square feet of olfactory receptors through which it could smell its prey. Grant had to keep ducking through and past trees, at the same time avoiding rustling the undergrowth. Though large, he was lithe and capable of great agility and stealth.

  The cyclops was keen of smell, but that singular eye of his at least helped out Grant. Depth perception and peripheral vision were both heavily curtailed by the lack of binocular vision, and thus, as a predator, it was left poorly off in close pursuit. Then again, a nine-foot reach forgave a lot in terms of grabbing at someone. If Grant was caught in those massive paws, not even his old Magistrate armor could prevent his being crushed like a grape.

  It wouldn’t even take a grab. Just a clumsy swat with a fist the size of a melon would be more than sufficient to shatter his ribs.

  The cyclops’s vision might not have been ideal for hunting, but as Grant inadvertently snapped the branch of a sapling as he scurried past it, the thing’s head turned, attention locked on to that sound. The thud of a ton and a half of rampaging man-beast informed Grant of his deadly situation. He whirled with the shotgun, raising it and hoping the Taser launcher beneath would be enough.

  The boom of Kane’s shotgun was a sharp sound amid the ponderous steps of the giant and the cyclops stopped after two more steps.

  “Damned…humans!” the creature growled. “Puny, worthless…humans!”

  “Now,” Kane whispered into the Commtact as the cyclops turned its back to Grant. Taking two swift strides, the big Magistrate bounded into firing range for the Taser and fired. The barbs struck the creature in its broad back, the barbed tines sticking into the thick hide.

  “Hate you!” it bellowed. Grant didn’t know how much louder the thing could get but he wasn’t going to let it turn and try to rip him apart. He energized the Taser and, with a pull of the trigger, heard the snaps and cracks of intermittent voltage popping along the electrical wires. The cyclops groaned and grunted, gurgling, but it stood. Its arms moved stiffly, but even with its range of motion limited, it could still cause some harm, simply by toppling over. Luckily, it was so paralyzed and its legs of such great size and density compared to normal human limbs, that it stayed standing. In another moment Kane was out and firing. His Taser darts stuck into the cyclops and he cut loose with his own voltage.

  Together the two Cerberus warriors hammered the giant with the output from both Taser batteries. At 50,000 volts, and with the Tasers operating at 3.1 milliamps—on the high end of less lethal, electric-shock technology—the cyclops received not just one zap of electricity, but each Taser was hitting him with 19 pulses per second, 38 times per second. For the space of thirty seconds, the giant’s nervous system was overrun and abused by amperage. While the volts were a measure of the energy, amps were the measure of the force carried by each charge. Higher amounts of milliamps were lethal; 10 milliamps could cause a fatal series of convulsions in a 150-pound human. This was why the Tasers only put out a third of that, often only a fifth of lethal capacity.

  Grant didn’t know how that would work against an entity that was twenty times as heavy, but considering the paralysis the cyclops demonstrated, apparently it was enough.

  Grant’s Taser ran down, reaching the end of its thirty-second cycle. He swept the shotgun aside on its sling, letting his Sin Eater launch into the palm of his hand. The cyclops teetered, then fell to its knees, the ground shuddering beneath the soles of Grant’s boots. A swallow cleared the lump in his throat at the thought of the massive opponent’s collapse.

  Sure, Kane and Grant felt fear in the face of enemies, despite the bravado and smart talk they fired off. But that was the whole point of being a hero. Doing what had to be done, no matter how scary it was.

  Grant approached the stunned cyclops, seeing Kane enter the clearing at a right angle. His Sin Eater was out, as well. The beast had voiced its hatred of humans loud and long enough, so that if it did swing to kill, neither former Magistrate would have a single regret about putting it down with a wave of full-auto heavy slugs. But even so, they didn’t want to cause undue harm.

  One thing that had been part of their rebellion against the old barons and their villes was a rejection of cruelty and controlling the lives of others. They fought for freedom, and there was still a strong possibility that this poor beast was merely the victim of Charun or Vanth, mentally twisted by the same kind of hypnotic forces that had incapacitated Brigid.

  The cyclops gave its head a shake, as if clearing the cobwebs out, and both Kane and Grant froze in their advance toward the mighty giant. When the thing lifted a seventy-two-inch-diameter arm, things were already apparent that the Tasers did work on it, but not as effectively as they would have liked. The giant’s fist hammered the ground, striking with a force that made wrecking balls seem inadequate. Grant felt his knees buckle beneath him from the vibratory shock wave. Over the Commtact, he could hear Kane grunt as the surge of force transmitted through the ground gave him trouble.

  Grant was so bowled over by the impact of the giant’s fist on the ground, he couldn’t see where his friend and partner had fallen, or stumbled. For all the big Magistrate knew, a tree could have fallen upon Kane, trapping him so that the monster could pounce upon him.

  Grant let himself tumble into a roll, to give him a little more distance, and with a pivot, he was facing the titan. As big as it was, the cyclops had a hard time getting up from its kneeling position. Those legs were meant for keeping it standing, not for ease of bending so that it could stand from a fallen position. It crawled toward the tree line, where its long arms could be used to reach a tree trunk and help brace it to get back to standing.

  “Kane!” Grant growled. “What’s your status?”

  “Staggered by that thing. It punches as hard as a mortar,” Kane answered. “We can’t let him back on his feet.”

  “No way in hell. Pop him in the head with the less-lethal. Distract him,” Grant ordered.

  Kane didn’t ask questions, and the brawny Grant dropped his war bag. He found a coil of rope, the exact item he was looking for. The big man didn’t know how well this would work, but it was better than nothing. The giant was still flesh and blood, and part of the dictates of a giant was the need to breathe and, hopefully, have a supply of blood to the brain.

  It took a moment of guesswork, and Grant was glad he had inflexible rope; nylon that wouldn’t stretch and give. He needed to choke the beast out. He also plucked out a steel collapsing baton that he could use as a handle.

  As he was making preparations, he listened to
the thunder and crash of Kane’s shotgun, bouncing high-velocity neoprene rounds off the cyclops’s head. The beast bellowed, cursed in its limited lexicon, thrashed and swung one arm toward Kane while keeping itself propped with the other. This was mere harassment, not a counterattack. Though the rubber slugs could break ribs, even snap necks at close distance, the knots of muscle and dense bone that made up this giant could continue suffering annoyance and prickling pain all the while.

  There was little danger of causing it permanent harm.

  Not like putting strands of strong rope around its throat and garroting it. Lack of blood to the brain would kill much faster than loss of breath.

  Could kill. I just have to get to him first, Grant reminded himself.

  With two quick strides Grant was at the thing’s heels. The fat, flat, elephantine feet were nothing that would provide a handhold, but he threw himself at the top of the cyclops’s heels, launching himself as high as he could, and was able to clear the four-foot ledge formed by the stumplike appendage. With two kicks, he was standing and racing along the calf of the giant. It was a platform that was wide and flat, easy to balance upon. The next level he had to hurdle was actually six feet in height, and was the cyclops’s ass.

  Grant drew his combat knife, knowing that he was going to need every ounce of leverage he could get. With a leap, he was clawing on at chest level on one of the giant’s cheeks. He brought down the combat blade like a climbing ax, the sharp point digging into heavy hide and eliciting a grunt of annoyance from the cyclops. Still, that thick skin was strong enough that Grant could haul himself up higher on the butt of the beast. He dug his toes into the dimple of a lower back muscle when the thing pushed itself off of one arm, trying to get upright.

  Grant planted one foot on the handle of his knife then swung the loops of rope upward with all of his strength. The coils snagged the creature, but he couldn’t be sure where. Even so, he kicked off of the knife, planting the soles of his feet against the broad sheets of muscle that formed the cyclops’s back.