“Well, I mean...” She arches her eyebrows.
“Don’t even. I don’t.” I groan. “Just.” Nrrrrgh. “Don’t.”
Madison says, “Athena’s a grown woman. What’s wrong with that?”
I bite my lip. Nod. “Yeah. Uh huh.” Roll my tongue around my cheeks. Eyeball Madison. “Athena is only a month old.” I look to my daughter. “You were ten, like, what, ten days ago?”
Athena furrows her brow. “Daddy, you can’t—”
“The fuck I can’t.” I reload the Winchester. “When we get to the fortress, we are gonna have a long talk, young lady. A long talk.” I rub the sides of my face. “Don’t you know you can’t trust men at this point?”
“I’m just talking about the movies, daddy. That’s always the joke.”
Relief floods my gut. “Oh, thank shit.”
“But I have also had sex.”
My eyes go wide. “I’ll kill the motherfucker.”
Reintegrating into society is gonna be a huge problem.
Explosions light up the side of the horny leviathan. Six big ones that blow bioluminescent loads (heh) onto the surrounding field.
The parasite creature screams.
I hear a sploosh down below.
Madison checks. Says, “Yeah the hallway down there is now a flood of monster cum.”
I watch through the lighthouse windows as a sleek, silent helicopter banks away. Turns. Punches the other side of the leviathan with more missiles.
DeVille. Gotta be DeVille.
And if DeVille’s here...
I stand. Run away from the stairs. Out to the walkway. I hear Madison and Athena call for me. I jump. Plant a foot on the guardrail. Jump again. Grip the humpin-pumpin leviathan’s flowery skull. Dig my boots in. Pull myself up.
I shoot down into its brain. The leviathan grunts. Shakes. I rack the lever and shoot and run along its back till I run outta ammo. Then I throw the goddamn empty shotgun at the face of a cultist on the ground praying at their cumming moron monster god. Break his dumb nose.
I scurry down the leviathan’s tail.
A bullet bores into the back of my leg. Another cracks against my shoulder blade.
Don’t stop.
Run.
Run.
I pull a Wile E. Coyote. Go straight off the edge of the cliff.
Swan dive.
Wind rushes. I see the rocks below. The white caps on waves.
Oh, momma.
And...
And...
Alpha catches me. I feel the cold metal hands wrap around me. Save me. I’m stuffed inside the cockpit.
Jade’s hologram flutters to life on the dashboard. “You’ve got a spine again.” She’s dressed like a Marine with pigtails.
DeVille hoots over the radio. “Howdy, Big Daddy. You miss us?”
I smile. “I did.” I’m home. No longer a lost child. I breathe. Let rage flow. Shake my head. Sniff. Blink away tears. Bang my head against the rear restraints of Alpha’s cab. “It’s been so goddamn hard.”
DeVille sighs on the other side of the radio. “We got you, cowboy.”
Jade’s hologram bows on the console. “How’s it feel to be back with the baddest bitches in the world, limpdick?”
I close my eyes. Grin. Jump. “Feels good.”
Inside Alpha, I can do anything.
I punch handholds in the face of the bluff. Climb back up. Stand at the tail of the porn star leviathan. Grab it. Yank it away from the lighthouse. Drag it.
The leviathan twists to bite at me.
I grab its flowery flesh face. Rip the petals of skin away. One by one.
He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me...
Till there’s nothing left but its snappy reptilian skull.
I grab the upper and lower jaws in Alpha’s metal hands.
Break em apart. I’m King-fuckin-Kong. I drop skull. Walk down the length of its glowing body. I reach inside its cloaca. Snatch what it has for a penis. Tear out the organ.
Bioluminescent blood flies.
It coats me and the still-believing cultists.
I say over Alpha’s speakers: “I am the new god. And you’re fucked now.”
Jade says, “Try the new vengeance, cap-ee-tan.”
Alpha’s hands snap back. Plates open near the robot’s wrists. Giant blades emerge. They’re shiny. Smooth on one edge, serrated on the other.
I squeal. “New toys!”
I hack at the heads of the cultists bowing on the ground. Turn their bodies into chuck. Red mist hangs in the air.
The leviathan that choked on grenades and puked before rouses itself.
I go to attack, but realize I don’t need to.
Plissken’s son, Turing, is already there. Chunkifying the parasite titan with dual 20mm rounds and lightsabers. His sister, Lovelace, is a ballerina of blood. Cutting skin and floating through the air in a new exoskeleton.
They make glowing sushi.
Salute me.
I return the gesture.
My parents strut between my legs.
Between Alpha’s legs.
Jack and Catarina.
They look up at me.
Catarina says, “Hey, kiddo.”
Jack says, “Kinda disappointed you didn’t leave any for us to kill.”
I find the time to breathe between tears.
They all came. All of em.
For you.
You.
Sappy jerk.
I tell everyone, “See who wants to defect. Get em on a chopper and outta here. Loot the island, then fuckin nuke it.” I light a cigarette. “Whose dumbass idea was this little rescue, anyway?”
The fat-saucer form of Plissken hovers in front of me.
He bobs. “Well, someone had to save you.”
8. The Fortress
Me and Jack—my old man, even though he’s about the same age as me—we pass the bottle of Evan Williams whiskey back and forth. Smoke while the sun starts to come up.
Jack’s dressed like a cowboy. That’s his look. Jeans. Plaid shirt. Stetson hat. The boots. Six-shooter on his thigh. Only anachronism is the combat vest.
And the pulse rifle slung over his back.
He says, “Bullshit.”
I shake my head. Grab the booze back. “Nope. The dude in charge here, and his psycho doctor, they cut parts of me off and fed em to infected to see if there was some...transfer of power or something.”
Jack laughs. “That’s insane.”
I shrug. “Yeah, well, no shit. On the plus side, I only got shot twice during the escape.” My leg throbs. My shoulder aches. But the bleeding stopped after Jade/Alpha pulled out the bullets and injected the wounds with medigel. Scabbed over pretty good.
Sunlight creeps over the horizon. Red and rosy. It paints my mom, Catarina, a few shades of pink as she gathers the children and some of the defectors.
Two choppers land in the field. Both big and bulky. Troop carriers. They’re fat like storks. Ain’t piloted by DeVille, though—DeVille’s still running recon and blowing back monsters that poke their heads up near the water.
No, this is some dude and some chick. Thompson and Swift, respectively, according to their name tapes. I don’t have a problem with em. I just don’t care right now.
Jack motions for me to board one of the birds. “Unless you wanna walk?”
Happy as I am to have legs again, that shit’s not happening.
* * *
I lean back against my seat in the cargo area of the Sikorsky X2 something something helicopter. A machine the company was working on for stealth military missions back when there was a military. It’s quiet.
Guess DeVille and Caleb’ve been busy together.
Wonder how busy...
I shake my head. Let the thought fall away.
Mouth the whiskey.
Light a cigarette.
Lay my arm over Plissken in the seat next to me. I run my hand along his metal frame. Pat him like a dog I ain’t seen in years. My only fuckin friend.
For once, I’m content. Happy, even.
Plissken shifts. Rotates his forward optic toward me. Says, “Your cells are new. And yet you still manage look like shit.”
“Yeah, I see you got fixed up too.”
“DeVille and your uncle Caleb are good with machines.”
“DeVille and Caleb, do they uh—”
Plissken groans. “They aren’t fucking, if that’s what you want to ask.” He flutters in his seat. “And it’s really nice to know where your mind is, considering the last time you saw me, I was dead.”
I lean forward. “No... No, it’s just been a weird time for me, man.”
“Well, I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”
“Holy shit, Plissken. I’m sorry. Okay? I’m fuckin sorry.” I blink. Scratch my cheek. “How are you?”
Plissken bobs. His version of a shrug. “I am fine, actually. The last memory in my database before my tragic shutdown shows me heroically saving you and then also heroically sacrificing myself to destroy the walking nightmare city of White Plains as it attacked the Sikorsky facility.” He puffs his thrusters. “So I’m pretty happy with myself.” He dips his forecurve toward Turing and Lovelace. “And my children are here.”
Lovelace and Turing look at us. The displays on their faces both: .
I grin. Say to Plissken, “Can you explain what the hell happened to Athena?”
“I hate to break this to you, but she grew up.”
“Well, I—” I shake my hands “—I know that.”
“I’m messing with you. As soon as Athena was safely at the fortress, she started Spartan training.”
“A month ago.”
“Well, less. But yes. Your blood changed her. It took her over. As far as Caleb and I can tell, your blood forced Athena to reach optimal combat age as quickly as necessary.”
“Hey, hey. You did that shit. You inoculated her.”
“I did. And it continues to pay off. She’s stronger than she could have ever been otherwise. It’s amazing, really.”
I smoke. Exhale. Stare at the metal under my feet. “How old is she right now?”
“Twenty-two. Again, this is the supposed optimal age for her. At least as far as the parasite is concerned.”
“She gonna be thirty by the end of the week?”
“No. The parasite advanced her age to a point. This point. Again, this is the age of her peak combat efficiency. It wanted her strong fast, but from what we can tell, it’s done.”
“Nice to know she won’t turn into a grandma before I’m middle-aged.” I take a lungful of smoke. Exhale.
A voice comes on over the internal speakers: “Hi, all. This is your pilot, Captain Thompson. I’d like to remind you that smoking is prohibited.”
I stand.
Lovelace and Turing stand with me. Put their hands up. Stop.
Plissken takes over the comms. Announces: “Captain Thompson, I would like to remind you that there are three robots on this helicopter. All of which are more capable than you at piloting the craft. The man will smoke. Unless you’d like to be swiftly removed.”
There’s silence.
Then some static.
Then: “Uh, this is Captain Thompson again, just wanna say, enjoy your flight, folks.”
I pat Plissken’s side. “Thanks bud.”
Plissken says, “We’ve been together for ten years. I’ve witnessed you without nicotine. Yet again, I’ve saved us all.”
I arch my eyebrows. Rub my hands together. “So...Athena says she’s had sex?”
“I am not privy to Athena’s personal life, though it would not surprise me that everyone is getting laid except you.”
* * *
In the movies, there’s always some moment—some break in the action—where the heroes find a quiet spot and wistfully say: “Right now, it’s almost as if the world isn’t ending.” Or some shit like that. You know what I mean.
Well, it’s a fuckin lie.
We’re three hundred feet up. Going one-fifty or more. We zip over the water. It’s bluer now. Cuz all industry is dead. But I can still make out titans under the waves. Whale-sized beasts. They breach. Attack each other. Devour each other. All those mouths and limbs and tentacles. There are random schools of what look like fish but can’t be.
Gets worse when we fly over Rhode Island. Entire towns lie in ruin. Ain’t no bodies anymore, cuz the parasites either ate em or made em get up and walk away. There are planes half-crashed in Narragansett Bay. Buried up to their tails. Metal skeletons.
The Quonset State Airport is a series of mutilated aircraft and dark scars where fuel exploded.
I wonder what it was like for people who’d been in the air when the infection hit. They must’ve gotten reports of what was going on. The wholesale slaughter of the human race. The monstrous mutations.
Did they try to land? Did they push the planes as far as they could? Try to find a haven on an island somewhere? Did the pilots realize how fucked they were, crash the planes thinking it was mercy?
There’s a big hole where central Providence used to be. An ugly pockmark in the ground filled with shattered pipes and infrastructure.
I tap Plissken’s side. Say, “It got up and left? Like Newark and White Plains?”
“Yes. Several months ago, according to Caleb’s records. It uprooted itself and slithered into the Atlantic.” Plissken bobs. “Very Lovecraftian, of course.”
“Sure. It’s headed to R’lyeh to wake up Cthulhu.” I grimace at the thought. “Do we actually know why yet?”
“No. It stands to reason that the megaparasites we’ve seen so far exist to colonize other areas, continents, and so on. At least, that’s a theory that Caleb and I have discussed. The issue with that theory is that there should no longer be a need to do any colonizing at all.”
“Why not?”
“There aren’t any areas of the planet left to infect.”
* * *
We drop to about a hundred feet as we approach the fortress. Come in over the bays that surround south Boston.
The chopper jukes to the right a bit. Makes a few people tumble over. I hear the chopper’s guns fire. Big rounds that shake the floor. Whumpwhumpwhump.
I check out the window. Watch as a big flesh-tower stumbles around on fire in a high school football field. Its midsection and head are gone.
Plissken says, “40mm incendiary shells. They’re very efficient at terminating the larger parasite forms.”
I nod. “No shit. And Thompson’s a good goddamn shot.”
“Everyone is. They have to be.”
“Fair point.”
Patrol boats scour the water. They zig and zag between the wrecks of old ships. Tankers. Even a few old warships. Guess they’re not too worried about the aquatic species.
Plissken says, “There is a fence that seals off the entire bay area from the Atlantic Ocean. It runs from Deer Island all the way to Hull. It emits both painful sonic frequencies and a toxin that, basically, tastes awful. It seems to work. Though only against creatures with a nonhuman origin. Keefs, stilt-walkers and flesh-towers, for example, don’t seem to care. There is also a primary wall to the west which isolates the peninsula from the rest of the area. That’s actually where Juliet is right now.”
I cock an eye at him. “You guys have been busy bastards.”
“It wasn’t us. Your uncle has been setting this up for almost a decade.”
“My family is fuckin weird.”
Course, the real question is: Why the fuck did Caleb let me wither away on top of th
e fuckin Empire State Building when he could’ve helped me? Saved me?
The answer to that question probably sucks.
Maybe.
Find out soon enough.
Thompson’s voice crackles over the speakers. “Welcome to Camp Svoboda, people.”
The fortress is star-shaped. Five points. Thirty-foot walls thick enough that there are buildings on em. The fort sits on the tip of a hook of grassy land, out in the water. A thin strip of earth connects to it from the south. A ropey causeway that creates a bay just to the west, snug up against Camp Svoboda.
There’s movement everywhere. Squads of troops patrol outside the walls. Five-man teams. At the lead of each is a bulky soldier in mechanical armor. Alpha on a smaller scale.
Robots assist. Some bipedal that walk with their human counterparts. Others that move supplies. Food. Water. Building materials.
I see animal pens. Pigs. Chickens. Cows graze on grass near the water. Farmers till soil. Tend crops is a huge field that looks like it used to be a parking lot.
Inside the walls are a handful of five, ten and twenty-story buildings. Apartments, probably. Which makes me wonder about rent.
Crime.
Poverty.
I mutter, “What the hell did you build here, uncle?”
We land outside the fortress. Just south of it. The second chopper comes to a stop next to us. Thompson’s chipper on the radio: “Last stop, folks. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
I chuckle. Stand. Sling my rucksack over my shoulder. Wince when my body reminds me I took a bullet there. File out with the rest of the refugees. Take in a few lungfuls of salty air. It’s nice to be somewhere that won’t result in immediate chaos.
Young, happy men and women in jeans, boots and hoodies greet the dozens of ex-cultists. They look like they could be goddamn resident assistants in a college dorm—except for the pistols on their thighs.
Still chipper as fuck.
One of em—a tan mouse of a man—shouts: “Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Camp Svoboda! I hope your flight was pleasant. Now, there are a few ground rules we need to make everyone aware of—”
I roll my eyes. Rub my face. “You gotta be fuckin kidding.” I pop a cigarette in my mouth.
Blood God (The Hroza Connection Book 5) Page 6