Free of the ocean’s slowing grasp, the thing reaches the shore and breaks into a colossal sprint. I stand transfixed as the monster reaches the remains of what was once an ocean-side mansion and smashes through it, black dust billowing into the air. I note an orange glow beneath its body, but don’t linger long enough to discern its source. The monster is very definitely heading our way, and I don’t want to be here when it arrives.
This thing might not be Nemesis, but it’s at least a hundred feet long, and it’ll make short work of the FC-P headquarters.
As I leap into Helicopter Betty’s passenger seat and slam the door closed, I barely notice us lift off. I dig into my pocket for my phone, start the FC-P emergency app, designed by Watson, which allows me to communicate with local law enforcement, emergency response crews and every branch of the military. With the tap of a button I can speak privately with Woodstock, or with all response forces. Any conversation held through the application’s network will be known to every branch involved in a threat response. After quickly popping on the helicopter’s headset, which has been modified to work with my phone via Bluetooth, I start the conversation.
“Target is not Nemesis, but should be considered an equal threat.” I glance out the windshield as we rise up into the air. The creature is pounding its way through the charred remains of East Beverly. “Target is in the black zone. Risk of civilian casualties is low. Engage now. Weapons free. Let’s see if we can stop this thing before it reaches civilization.”
“Copy that,” says a voice, and my phone’s screen reveals the speaker as an Air Force representative. “Helicopter support is two minutes out. The heavy hitters are three minutes out. Over.”
“We’re moving into position.” This comes from the National Guard, who are now armed with tanks, among other things typically reserved for foreign theaters of war. “ETA, two minutes. Over.”
The way the app is set up, we could all talk at once. Saying ‘over’ isn’t really required, but it does keep everyone from talking over each other.
“Copy that,” I say. “Two minutes. Don’t hold anything back.”
After a series of confirmations, I turn to Woodstock.
“What’s the plan?” he asks.
“We need to keep it busy for two minutes,” I say.
I expect him to frown at this, perhaps unleash a string of curses, but instead, he grins. “Time to see how Betty’s upgrades work.” He activates the chopper’s new weapons system. The windshield fills with digital information, providing data about the outside world, possible targets and ammo. Although Woodstock has trained on operating Betty’s weapons while flying, the best performance was while he flew and I worked the weapons.
I wrap my hand around the second joystick, which has two triggers and four red buttons that allow me to switch between armaments. Feeling very much like I’m playing a videogame, I grip the joystick and fight to suppress a smile of my own.
The helicopter pitches forward and accelerates rapidly. Woodstock’s war-whoop is loud in my headset. My voice chimes in, but I’m not sure if I’m joining the cheer or just screaming. Feels like both. And maybe it is. After a year of failed cases, part of me is glad to be back in the thick of it. The rest of me is just trying hard not to crap my pants.
10
The destruction below us is a stark reminder of Nemesis’s power. The remains of charred homes look disturbingly like skeletons rising out of the earth. Where tall oaks and maples stood undisturbed since the English settled Beverly in 1626, there are now blackened, leafless limbs pushing through the soil, like giant hands, reaching for us. The homes that were more solidly built have west-facing façades that look almost normal. Some even have lawns and shrubs where the building sheltered the earth from the flames. But the east-facing sides are burned out and gutted. Nothing was spared her fury, not a single home or person who was still inside the circle of carnage. They’re still picking remains out of the debris.
All of this is fresh in my thoughts as we close in on the...whatever this is. “Needs a name,” I say to myself, but Woodstock can hear me.
“We could call it Fucktard,” he offers, with a twitch of his mustache. He’s enjoying himself entirely too much.
I looked at the shelled monster, plowing through the city’s remains, still headed straight for us. “Scrion.”
“The hell is a Scrion?”
I’ve been brushing up on my ancient mythology, hoping to turn up more information about Nemesis’s origins. If we can understand where she came from, we might be able to figure out a way to stop her, or kill her. “Scrion was the son of Poseidon. A bandit.”
Woodstock glances at me. “You know it’s Sciron, not Scrion, right? You’re not the only one who’s been catching up on their Greek myths.”
I frown and wave him off. “Scrion sounds better. Who’s going to know?”
Woodstock shrugs, indifferent. “And this ugly prick reminds you of him, why?”
“He was eaten by a giant sea turtle.”
“Makes sense, I s’pose,” he says. “But I still prefer Fucktard.”
So do I, I think, but the codenames I come up with will be used by local law enforcement and the military. The powers that be, and the media, not to mention the vast number of people in the world without a sense of humor, wouldn’t appreciate it.
I lift my phone, which is actually more of a hand-held supercomputer that looks like a phone. We call it ‘Devine,’ which sounds like a transgender stripper, but is really just a cute way of saying DVIN (Digital Vanguard Intelligence Network). Granted, that’s the name of the network and not the phone itself, but we got a kick out of effeminately saying, “That’s just Devine,” when calls came in. It does everything modern smartphones are capable of, just a lot better, much faster and with a few bonus options the public will never see on their devices, like the ability to pilot a drone or paint an airstrike target.
I switch the communication app so everyone can hear me. “Attention all response units, target Kaiju designation is now Scrion. Images are incoming.”
Yeah, Kaiju. The word that came to define the giant monster genre that includes city-stompers like Godzilla and Gamera has become our official term for any creature that is...well, not natural, with the understanding that it be reserved for things capable of mass destruction. A snail with tentacles wouldn’t qualify—unless it was ten stories tall. Scrion? It’s a Kaiju for sure.
I aim the camera’s 75 megapixel camera through the front windshield and snap a photo, which is instantly sent to everyone with access to Devine. I switch the phone back to its private mode so not everyone can hear me talking to Woodstock. “Take us around. I want to get this thing from every angle.”
We bank left, low to the ground, the g-forces pushing me into the side window, allowing me to keep an eye on Scrion. It’s still moving forward, but tracking us with his round eyes and squished-up face. When its head can’t turn any further, the body follows.
My eyes widen.
It’s following us.
It is after me!
“Faster,” I say.
“Faster, why?” Woodstock asks and then banks the chopper the other way, intending to circumvent the monster. He understands when we level out and he’s still looking at Scrion head on, through the side window. “Shee-it. The son-of-a-bitch is chasin’ us!”
Betty’s front end dips forward as Woodstock pours on the speed, but Scrion is fast.
Very fast.
Its wild eyes look frenzied, like it’s lost in some kind of drug-induced craze. Its jaw drops open. This thing is no Nemesis, but it could still make a quick snack out of us.
“Hard left on my mark!” I shout. Woodstock could hear me through the headset if I whispered, but the volume of my voice does a good job of communicating my urgency. “Then head for the ceiling.”
I crane my head back, face squashed against the window. The monster leaps, shoving off the ground with its powerful hind legs. As it lifts into the air, I get a look at its ar
mored underside, which is covered in dark gray plates, split horizontally by three stripes of bright orange membranes.
“Now!”
Betty cants hard to the left. I couldn’t pull myself away from the window if I tried, and given the proximity of Scrion’s closing jaws, I would really, really like to lean back. But then I’m seeing blue sky above. The sound of a thunderous impact reaches my ears. It’s followed by a jolt of turbulence. Scrion is back on the ground, no doubt once again giving chase.
A curse from Woodstock reaches my ears. I’m about to ask what the problem is, when I see for myself. The streets in the ruined part of town have all been cleared of debris. Only a few of them are open to the public, to ease traffic in other parts of town. Travel through the rest of the ruins is restricted, because the streets are rife with sink holes and every structure is ready to collapse. It’s not a safe place to be. And yet, the Kaiju fanatics and sightseers can’t seem to keep themselves away.
Like the people below us. They’re driving some kind of small boxy car, and the driver is doing an okay job avoiding the potholes, but they’re not moving nearly fast enough. I can see the people inside moving back and forth quickly. They can see the monster coming. I wonder if they’re still having fun? Probably. Kaiju nerds are like that. They’d probably die with smiles on their faces. But it’s my job to keep that from happening.
“We can’t be sure Scrion will follow us if we turn away,” I say to Woodstock.
“What’s the plan?”
I look ahead. The road below heads straight toward the ocean before banking to the left and running straight out to Beverly Farms, which wasn’t affected by Nemesis’s self-immolation.
I nod at the joystick in my hand. “We’ll run interference. Head out to sea. Hope it follows.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“The cavalry shouldn’t be too far behind.”
His only response is to quickly spin the chopper around, while still moving in the same direction, so that we’re flying backwards. He performs the maneuver expertly, but it’s still disorienting. My head spins for a moment, but it’s quickly cleared by a surge of adrenaline brought on by Woodstock’s voice.
“Holy hell!”
I catch a glimpse of what’s coming. Black teeth. The mottled roof of a massive mouth. Two, beach-ball sized brown eyes with big black pupils, reflecting the red hull of Betty and my own dopy looking surprised face.
The image is erased by a stream of orange tracers. It looks like a laser beam, but the stream of hot rounds is meant to show me where the rest of my unseen bullets are traveling. In this case, they’re headed right where I want them to—down Scrion’s throat.
The bulldog-like Kaiju snaps its jaws closed, just missing the chopper and absorbing the rest of my chain-gun rounds with its thick skin, which like Nemesis’s, seems fairly impervious to conventional ammunition.
When Scrion doesn’t fall away, I realize how close to the deck we are. Just thirty feet off the ground. If not for the swath of destruction around us, we’d be plowing through trees and power lines. I hit the second button on my joystick, switching from the chain gun to one of our two rocket pods, which carry a payload of thirty-eight Hydra 70 unguided rockets, meaning you have to be up close and personal to make them effective. Which isn’t going to be a problem.
Scrion lets out a bellow. It’s a deep resounding warble that shakes my insides and the helicopter. I definitely hurt the monster, but I’m pretty sure I mostly just made it angry. In fact, I think it’s thundering after us even faster than before.
I toggle my phone to transmit via Devine. “All forces, ETA? We have civilians in the danger zone.”
“Hawk-One. ETA, thirty seconds,” the chopper team leader replies. “We can see you now.”
I came up with the code names. They’re not very creative, but they’re easy to remember, and each mobile combat unit has its own animal kingdom designation. Me? I’m still just Hudson, but if they’re directing their comment to the chopper, it’s Betty. For real. They hate it, but it makes me and Woodstock smile.
“Eagle-eye One. We’re forty-five seconds out,” says the lead fighter pilot, his voice distorted by the roar of his plane.
“Hawk-One, once the car is clear, hit Scrion with everything you have. Eagle-eye, follow up with everything you got. Let’s see if we can turn this thing around.” I’d like to say, ‘Let’s see if we can kill this bastard,’ but I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.
“Understood, sir.”
“Copy that.”
It’s nice to be listened to. Our first time around responding to the Nemesis crisis, there were a lot of toes being stepped on and even more wrong calls made. Granted, until you see it with your own eyes, a giant monster is hard to take seriously. And no one really understood it. I’m not sure anyone really does now. But we’re organized, at least. Whether that matters has yet to be seen.
I change modes on Devine so my conversation with Woodstock won’t be filling up the network. “Can you take us lower?”
“And you think I’m the crazy one.” Woodstock shakes his head. “Hold on.”
We slowly descend. The car is somewhere below us. Since we don’t land atop its roof and I can’t see it, I’m assuming they’re ahead of us.
“Betty, stop!” It’s Hawk-One’s voice, and if he didn’t sound so worried, I would laugh at the ridiculousness of his statement. Even though I’m not currently transmitting, I can still receive transmissions directed to me. “You’re tail is just a few feet above the civvies. Looks like you’re going to reach a turn in about fifteen seconds.”
“Copy that,” I say. Woodstock has heard them, too. Our descent stops short of the street and the fleeing car, which turns a sharp left and peels away, quickly accelerating like a miniature Millennium Falcon.
“You got something spiffy in mind?” Woodstock asks. “Cause now’s the time.”
“Ever set off a cherry bomb under a bucket?”
“A cherry bomb under a—wait, what in all shit are you…?”
I don’t hear the rest of his protest. I’m focused on Scrion. Every loping leap forward not only brings the Kaiju closer to us, but it also exposes the giant’s underside and the three volatile orange membranes. I normally wouldn’t consider such a move, but seeing as how the membranes are much smaller than Nemesis’s, the surrounding area has already been obliterated and all the force will be transmitted straight down into the ground, I don’t see the harm.
Scrion hits the ground on the downside of a leap forward, bringing its bulky mass to within fifty feet. Two more of those strides, and it will have us.
It’s only going to get one more.
Scrion’s muscles bulge beneath its mat of rubber-like flesh, and the body comes up again. At the first sign of orange light, I pull the trigger.
11
Pitiful, he thought, observing how predictable his enemy was. Since the events in Boston, Fusion Center-P had become one of the most prominent divisions of the Department of Homeland Security, with access to all levels of government and military. And yet, their headquarters remained entirely undefended. They believed the threats they faced came in the form of giants, easily spotted from a distance.
They were wrong.
General Lance Gordon hunched down between a stand of bushes and a lush rhododendron. The space between the plants had been hollowed out. The remains of a plastic bucket and rotting popsicle sticks littered the dirt. A childhood hideout, long forgotten.
The space was barely big enough to contain Gordon’s new body. He had grown taller, standing nearly eight feet in height. His bulk had nearly doubled. Thick muscles pushed against his thick skin, which negated the damage from both bullets and impacts. In Boston, he’d survived a thirty-story fall.
But he had been wounded.
Gordon had watched from the ground as Jon Hudson offered Alexander Tilly up to Nemesis. That had been his place. His mission. Before Maigo became Nemesis, Gordon had received a heart transplant fr
om the girl. In essence, he had Nemesis’s heart beating in his chest. While it didn’t grow to Nemesis’s size, it did change him. In addition to the physical changes, Gordon had become connected to Nemesis, feeling her desires. Her rage. Her targets. And he set out to help her. But when Hudson offered Tilly up, that connection had been broken. It left Gordon feeling directionless and confused.
He fled west and north, back to where the original Kaiju carcass had been discovered. Lost and alone, he wandered the wilderness, feeding on whatever animal crossed his path: mouse, elk, even Grizzly bears. They were all easy prey. But his sense of purpose never returned...until he felt the connection return. But not to Nemesis. To the others. To the unborn children.
The kids.
He had gone back to Alaska and found the eggs, still whole, buried in the back of the cave their mother had died in. He suspected that when Nemesis-Prime had died so long ago, the site had been buried by a landslide, and that the eggs had gone into some kind of hibernation. When he removed them from the cave and the light of day struck their shells, the young had quickly emerged.
He wasn’t really sure how it worked, but he believed the original creature they’d found in Alaska, what Zoomb now called Nemesis-Prime, was like many species of plants and animals. It only reproduced when death was near, helping to ensure the survival of the species. Under natural circumstances, the five young might have fought amongst each other until the last one remaining took up its mother’s mantle as judge, jury and executioner. But under Gordon’s direction—with his genetic duplicate of their mother’s heart, albeit human sized—all five had survived. They’d been connected to him since, but rather than him following their desires, they followed his.
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