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The White House roof quakes with each of Karkinos’s footsteps, jolting more and more as the immensely heavy Kaiju nears. Its yellow eyes remain fixed on me, which seems impossible, because I’m so friggin small. It would be like me looking into the eyes of a cockroach before I squashed it.
“You’ve won,” I say to Gordon. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Cowardice is a new tactic for you, Jon,” Gordon says. I hate that he uses my first name, like we really know each other. Like we used to be pals. I’ve only ever known the man as a monster. “I thought you were stronger than that.”
“I’m not talking about my life,” I say, pausing as Karkinos takes another thunderous step forward. “I’m talking about the rest of the world. You have your own Nemesis now. No one can touch you. Just go live your life.”
“I’ve seen what you can do,” Gordon says, tapping his head with his free hand. “What Endo tried to do to me. Do you really believe the government, or fucking Zoomb for that matter, will let a 300-foot-tall monster live peacefully? Besides, this world needs to be judged. It sings for it.”
“Nemesis has shown mercy,” I point out. “You can’t—”
“Nemesis has shown weakness,” he says, placing a hand over his chest. “I don’t blame her. I took her heart. The engine that should have driven her resides in me. The world’s judgment has fallen to me.”
“So Karkinos is to be the next Nemesis?” I ask.
“Karkinos...” Gordon tries out the name. He grins. “I like it. But Karkinos is not Nemesis. It’s a tool.” His grin becomes wicked. “I am Nemesis. And I will judge the world and everyone in it. Starting with you.”
With a final stomp that seems to shudder the whole planet, Karkinos stops its approach within the corner of the U.S. Treasury Building, a good 500 feet away. Even at this distance, it’s huge, rising high up into the air. It feels strange, being small again, like Karkinos is cheating. I knew what it felt like to engage this monster as equals.
“Jon Hudson,” Gordon says, “and the rest of this miserable city, I sentence you to death by fire.”
Karkinos reaches its giant claws up toward the large glowing membranes on its chest.
It’s going to self-immolate!
I’m about to ask Gordon if he’s serious, but then I remember that he’s built to withstand the scorching flame. When the fires die down and everything for several miles to the west is a wasteland, Gordon will be the only thing left standing.
The massive claws slip inside the membranes, and I swear I see a smile on the Kaiju’s fanged mouth. It might just be reflecting Gordon’s pleasure, but I take personal offense at the grin. I lift both fists, giving the giant a defiant double middle finger.
The Kaiju pulls its hands free with a slurp.
Twin rivers of orange fluid pour from Karkinos’s chest like an explosive Niagara Falls.
The delay between puncture and ignition is just a few seconds.
My thoughts turn to Collins. If she’s behind Karkinos, she should make it through this. I send her my love and close my eyes.
The rumble of my death begins, but it sounds different. Strange. In fact, I don’t think the explosion will even register before I’m vaporized.
My eyes snap open.
Gordon is shouting in anger.
A wall of white blocks my view. Sparkling feathers hang from wings spanning 500 feet.
Nemesis!
Maigo...
In her white form she’s—
KRAKOOM!
The explosive force knocks Gordon back. I fly from his hand and slide across the rooftop.
My eyes turn back to Nemesis.
Her massive wings shake violently, but they remain solid, blocking the inferno. Bright orange flames rush by, hundreds of feet overhead. I can feel the heat, but it’s only like a hot summer day. Flames streak out to the sides as well, but Nemesis’s proximity to Karkinos means that she is taking the brunt of this attack, saving what remains of the city.
Saving me.
Again.
Tears fill my eyes. I know she can’t survive this.
The burst of fire fades.
The wings stop shaking and immediately, the large reflective panels people call feathers start to fall away, fluttering to the ground like diamonds, except that one side has been charred black.
Nemesis falls to one knee, trailing a column of smoke. The stench is revolting, not just because of the smell, but because I know what it’s from. Nemesis has been cooked.
She falls in on herself slowly.
Still breathing.
But as she drops down, Karkinos is revealed, standing. Steam rises from its drained chest. Its face is frozen in anger.
Totally frozen.
That’s when I notice the change in the Kaiju’s body. A straight black line has been etched into its armor, head to toe.
Understanding what has happened, I hop to my feet and nearly cheer as Karkinos comes apart. Tons of flesh separate, as strands of viscous fluid stretch out between the halves and snap. Karkinos’s body, cut clean through, falls down, and then apart. When the monster’s cleaved body hits the ground with twin thunderous booms I can feel in my teeth, I let out that victory cry.
Nemesis didn’t just save me, or Washington, she saved us all.
But I don’t think Nemesis deserves the credit. Left to her own devices, that spirit of vengeance would have happily eradicated the human race. It was the human side of her, a little girl, who made the difference and was willing to give her life—again.
When Gordon screams, I flinch back, having forgotten all about him. He’s staring out at Karkinos’s split body. He starts punching himself. Hard. Then he remembers that there is someone else he can take his anger out on.
He reels around and charges toward me.
With his long stride, he’ll reach me in seven steps. He makes it only four, though.
“Hey!”
The voice is young and feminine, but her appearance is anything but. Lilly leaps at Gordon from the side, and drives her legs into his arm. She’s far smaller than him, but she is strong. Really strong. Gordon is slammed to the side, decimating an actual air conditioning unit.
While he pries himself free from the metal case now twisted around his body, lost in a frenzy, I expect Lilly to press the attack. Maybe go for something vital. His throat possibly. But she doesn’t. She waits.
Hawkins steps up next to her. Like me, he’s taken a beating, but he’s alive.
“We weren’t done with you,” he says to Gordon, holding up a small device. I recognize it as the transmitter Endo gave him.
For the arrows.
My eyes widen when I see the collection of arrows jutting out of Gordon’s body.
Holy...
Hawkins pushes the button.
Gordon’s body bulges out from the inside, as the arrow heads explode. His thick skin contains the energy, which makes the damage that much more horrible. The arrows are forced out of their entry holes, followed by spraying flesh and blood. Then he falls still, his body twisted and distorted. Fluid leaks from the wounds and his nose, mouth and eyes. But the explosive membranes have been left intact. Hawkins had been warned about them and kept the arrow tips, and their explosive potential, far away from Gordon’s core.
Helped to my feet by Lilly, I hobble over to Gordon. I can’t very well check for a pulse, but I don’t need to. He’s not breathing, and well, he’s basically a big black sack of nasty. Dead for sure.
“Thanks,” I say to Lilly, and then I look at Hawkins. “To both of you.”
The pair just nods, their duty done. Despite their physical differences, I can see a lot of Hawkins in Lilly’s demeanor. They really are like father and daughter now, a feeling I understand only slightly, thanks to my connection with Maigo, which I now fear is completely severed.
Lilly helps me to the White House’s rooftop wall, where Nemesis is still crouched down. Endo is gone. No real surprise there. We’d become so
mething like friends over the past few weeks, but he was still a criminal and I was still the law. Like Batman and Catwoman, our bromance was doomed to fail. And honestly, right now I don’t give a rat’s ass. Let him go. I’m more concerned about the people who are still here.
“Maigo,” I say, but I get no response. “Maigo!”
A quiver runs through the giant’s skin, shaking free more of the glistening feathers. She rises up slowly and turns. Her face is blackened, cooked like chicken over a too-hot grill. I think I see bone. This creature and the girl bonded to her have suffered so much in their lives. Neither of them deserve this. And, in my mind, neither of them deserves death.
If there is any chance that they can survive, it needs to be now.
“Go!” I shout. “Get the hell out of here!”
She stares down at me for a moment and then stands on shaky legs. The blackened skin covering her body cracks, oozing red blood and eliciting a groan. But then she’s up and moving.
She heads south, toward the Washington Monument, staggering over the South Lawn and the Ellipse. With each step, I can feel her energy draining.
C’mon...go!
She falters at the Washington Monument, clinging to its strong form for support.
And then, despite her proximity to one of the country’s most beloved and recognizable treasures, the Air Force returns in force. Jets streak by, leaving strings of missiles in their wake. Nemesis is struck from behind. Her wings haven’t fully closed and the carapace that protects them is still open. Blood sprays from her exposed back.
She roars in agony.
“Stop!” I scream. “Stop!”
The next cluster of missiles drops Nemesis. Her clawed fingers drag gouges through the Washington Monument as she clings to it.
On the ground, she drags herself to the water while helicopters move in and unleash a torrent of chain guns and rockets into her back. She groans in agony, pulling herself into the Tidal Basin.
But instead of swimming, she floats.
The Basin’s water turns red.
Nemesis heaves twice, like she’s coughing underwater, and then with a bubbly sigh, she lies still.
There are no more Kaiju in the world.
Maigo is dead.
As despair takes hold of my heart, my phone rings. Numb, I pluck the device from my pocket and glance at the screen out of habit. Collins’s smiling face, a photo taken three months ago while looking for the Chupacabra, stares back at me. I smile and answer the phone. “Ash?”
“I’m sorry, babe,” she says. “I know what she meant to you.”
“Nothing compared to you,” I say, sucking back my sadness and replacing it with relief. “Where are you?”
Epilogue
Two months after the destruction of Washington, D.C. and the demise of all the Kaiju, including Nemesis, the world feels quasi-normal again. And not all in a good way. Crime is back up. A couple of unfinished wars have flared back up. Free of the fear of judgment, the human race is showing its true colors again.
But there is more good than bad. The FC-P is operational, complete with our own hundred-acre training installation in the woods of Maine. The property is fenced off and heavily monitored. Hawkins, Joliet and Lilly have settled into a cabin, smack dab in the middle of the land. But they’re not prisoners.
They’re employees, though Hawkins is the only one receiving a paycheck, and that is under an alias to protect his identification from the rogue group within DARPA that they fear will come for Lilly, should she be discovered. We’ve just scratched the surface on that investigation, because we have to move quietly. Not only is DARPA out of our jurisdiction, but they have resources that make our brick house headquarters look silly. Though we do have a secret weapon in Lilly. She’s been out on two field missions with Collins and me, quickly making us feel obsolete, using her heightened senses to rapidly dispel reports of strange creatures. She’s a natural, but she’s also killing my mojo.
Which is why Collins and me are out on our own this time around. Not that the site is anyplace glamorous. And the memories of this place sting. We’re on Craney Island, a sliver of land in the middle of the Potomac River, twenty-five miles south of D.C., which is in ruins and will stay that way for a long time, though the President insists on running the country from the damaged White House. Having retained his bravery and new moral code, Beck has become an exemplary leader, bringing a panicked country back from the brink. Part of me wishes I could undo what I did to him.
But then he calls and asks my advice, and I can’t help but smile. I told Endo that I’d implanted just two thoughts into Beck’s mind: be brave and do the right thing. But that wasn’t the truth. I pushed three new thoughts on him. Be brave. Do the right thing. And: Trust Jon Hudson.
And trust me he did. Not only has he restored the FC-P to its former status, retaining our budget and giving me the freedom to perform operations with a black budget—things that are required when building a reserve for a cat-woman and investigating DARPA—he also occasionally asks for my input on everything from foreign policy to his choice in tie color. I filter most of his calls through Cooper, whose baby bump is now in full view. Watson nearly quit, but when Cooper stayed, he couldn’t leave. I suspect his main reason for leaving was to protect her, which is noble and right, but Cooper knows the FC-P needs her. Needs both of them. And with Gordon—and Nemesis—dead, our headquarters is secret-ish once again.
Craney Island is 200 feet long and mostly rock with a few large bushes. No one comes out here. There’s no reason to. But we got some reports of something strange being wedged in between the rocks. Since Nemesis died upriver from here, we decided it was worth our attention. The military carted away all the Kaiju bodies long before anyone had a chance to complain. If we were able to find some part of Nemesis, we would be able to study her independently, just in case we face something like a Kaiju again, or if Nemesis-Prime’s creators ever return to see how their instrument of justice is faring.
“See anything?” Collins asks, as I stumble over the rocks.
Our bodies have recovered from the beatings we took. Even Woodstock is up and about again, bitching about Betty’s fate, but thoroughly enjoying Helicopter Betty 2.0, which is a Black Hawk, painted bright red.
I work my way along the shore, opposite Collins, who is on the far side of the island, a whopping twenty feet away. “I’m not sure that we—hold on.”
A slick-looking, gray mass stands out among the brown stones. As I get closer, I see that it’s quite large and looks like some kind of giant chrysalis. Definitely FC-P material, but it doesn’t look like any part of Nemesis I’ve ever seen. “Here!”
Collins joins me by the gray mass, lips twisted to the side. “What the hell is it?”
I shake my head. “Looks organic, but...”
“It’s too big for the boat,” she points out. We crossed the river in a rented Boston Whaler. And if the boat weren’t too small, this thing is too big for Collins and I to carry.
“We’ll just have to see what’s inside,” I say, taking out my jackknife.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she says.
I wave her off. “I brought gloves.” After stretching a pair of rubber gloves over my hands, I poke the blade into the fleshy surface. Pulling slowly, I cut a long slit. Nothing bad happens, so I push forward, slipping both hands inside the incision. I give Collins a half-hearted grin, suspecting this is going to be gross, and I pull.
The walls slip apart, tearing and falling away. I leap back as the insides liquefy and slide out into the river. Gross.
But my revulsion is quickly forgotten. There is something inside, like a seed at the center of a rotten peach.
I step closer. “Oh my god.” I jump into the goo. “Ash! Help me!”
When she sees what I do, she pulls the engagement ring off her finger, sticks it in her pocket and jumps down beside me, tearing away layers of clear film with her bare hands. The sticky sheets are stiff, but they come away
, one at a time. As we tear through the layers, what looked like a fuzzy human form resolves.
It’s a girl. She has tan skin and shoulder-length, black hair.
I pause for a moment, realization gripping me, and then I’m back at it, ripping and pulling amid tears. When the body slips free, I catch the girl under her arms and lift her away to a patch of grass. It’s cold out, near freezing, but the girl’s body is hot and steaming, not to mention lifeless. I lay her down, prepared to start chest compressions.
Then she coughs.
I turn her sideways as she continues to cough, clearing slimy fluid from her lungs. When she’s done, I roll her onto her back. Her eyes blink open. She looks at Collins and then at me. Her brown eyes are so familiar. I’ve seen them in a dream, in photos and in the face of a monster.
“Maigo,” I say.
She smiles. A slight thing. With a delicate hand, she reaches up and touches my face. For just a flash, I’m standing in front of a Christmas tree again. But all the pain and fear of that moment, for both of us, is gone, the burden lifted.
Maigo’s smile widens and she says, “She had gifts for us both.”
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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader,
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading PROJECT MAIGO. Ten years ago, if you’d have told me I’d be writing Kaiju novels for a living, I would have never believed you. And yet, here were are, with not just one Kaiju thriller, but two! Even more if you count ISLAND 731 and all the other monster books I’ve written.
I hope that you enjoyed this monstrous installment of what I hope will become a long running series of Kaiju novels...and movies, TV shows and comic books. Nemesis is already on her way to being featured in a video game, Colossal Kaiju Combat: The Fall of Nemesis. My dream for Nemesis is that she’ll be America’s first really iconic Kaiju to rival Godzilla. She’s off to a good start, but not even her 350-foot-tall girth is going to reach such a lofty goal without help.
Project Maigo Page 27