At The Hands Of Madness

by Kevin Holton

  “Guys, don’t worry, I’m fine!” He gave a thumbs up just before a shadow passed over him. We all looked up. He barely had enough time to raise his arms before a skyscraper crashed down on top of him.

  “NO!” NAFTA screamed, reaching out, as if that could somehow help. My heart seized at the thought of losing another member of our core group, but nothing like what Steve felt. His pain radiated, a palpable feeling that hit us all hard. No one should have to watch a brother die, whether that’s a brother by blood or by choice.

  Warrior, true to her training, hit the gas. She’d seen enough combat to know there was no going back for a fallen soldier, not in the middle of the fight. Maybe after, when the bullets—or, buildings—stopped flying, there’d be a chance to tour the field and collect the bodies, but not now. It’s not what he would’ve wanted, us endangering ourselves for him.

  It did leave a void, though. He’d always tended to the fallen. Who would tend to him?

  We accelerated away from the scene, bodies crashing down around us, thrown from homes mid-flight or shot out windows upon impact. Blood and viscera began showering us more than glass and dirt, as it’d saved the more populated buildings for later, ready to demoralize us in case it couldn’t kill us. NAFTA shouted for us to go back, but Allessandra put a hand on his shoulder and gave a single, quiet shake of her head. He stopped, but tightened his grip on the kinetic cannon.

  Warrior floored it toward an already-thrown building that was probably forty stories tall back when it stood upright. As it was, the building slanted out of the ground at a thirty-degree angle, sloping right up into the sky. “We’re gonna blast off this,” she shouted, “then you’re gonna take the shot, whether you’re ready or not, you got that, Heartbreaker? Time to end this.”

  “Copy that.” I hunkered down, readying myself to fire, tracking display on as I gazed through my thermal scope. “Down in front, NAFTA. Your ears will thank me later.”

  He nodded quietly and ducked as low as he could. Allessandra wasn’t far from the port either, but her head at least wouldn’t be less than half a foot away. I prayed Warrior had a plan for landing, but I gave a glance toward Mindcrusher, who nodded. She was a lot more helpful than she gave herself credit for.

  Our Humvee raced up along the building, its surface pockmarked by cracks in the foundation as Warrior did her best to stay in a straight line. Too much sidewinding would’ve put us right through one of the blown-out windows, not to mention slow our momentum. We didn’t need any distractions. Not now.

  NAFTA shouted, as much from anger as from excitement, as we cleared the roof. I aimed, and Mindcrusher waited. Breathe. I lined up as we crested to the top of our parabolic arc, steadying off, my reticule over the heat center in its chest.

  Bang.

  For an instant, there was nothing. No sound, no rush of wind around us as we began our trip back down toward the earth, no crash of buildings plummeting to the ground. I pulled away from my rifle, watching as Medraka shuddered, a single spurt of red the only indication my bullet struck at all.

  Allessandra held up her hand, and our fall stopped, an odd grayish-black rippling in the air surrounding us. We hung in the air as the remaining Phranna withdrew, the flow from its flesh stopping as the beast crumpled to its knees, arms curling in against its chest like the spindly limbs of a dead spider. Below, the Nanites stopped, our troops letting out a faint rallying cry.

  The others with me began celebrating too, but I didn’t. Something was wrong. The same something our psychic picked up on as she looked back at me, tense eyes alight with the racing of her thoughts, mind clearly ill at ease.

  Medraka’s projectiles, the buildings, hadn’t fallen. They remained in the air, floating around it, ready to fly, spin, crush. My vision flickered. For just an instant, I saw it as Wheelchair Kid described—put back together, its halves merged, a head with just a mouth, opened wide in a world-ending scream. Then, back to reality, which was somehow worse.

  We only got to hold each other’s gaze for a moment before the air crackled around us like cellophane. Our heads snapped back toward Medraka, which threw its arms out, detonating the buildings in close proximity. Though nearly five hundred yards away, we were thrown backward, the car splintering, shattering on contact with a nearby rooftop.

  I don’t think pain is supposed to have a color, but I saw it as I was flung hard into the cement, a tire flying off its broken axle and nailing me in the chest. It bounced clear off the edge as I sucked wind, twisting to make sure everyone was with me. Allessandra laid still, unconscious. Warrior leaped from the vehicle, grabbing what she could in the grip of her psychically-charged kinetic arm. Steve kneeled, checking that his cannon still worked.

  Mari was down below with the Nanites, but as I got to my feet, I saw our camp in ruins. There were no bodies. Just one long, red stain.

  “Damn,” I wheezed. “God… damn… you.”

  NAFTA lumbered over, a meaty hand grabbing me and hoisting me up. “Stop dying! We’ve lost enough people today.” For once, he seemed serious, full of authority he usually avoided. We both knew that one death—one specific death—counted as too many for him, but he looked out at what remained of our camp, face twisted with anger. It was an anger I’d grown used to seeing: the deep, unrelenting rage against a beast we couldn’t kill. Rage that stems from determination without hope.

  I felt that rage too. Stumbling back to the debris, I grabbed my Widow X, raising it to check Medraka’s heat signatures.

  Nothing.

  It read cold all over.

  Medraka had no hearts. The kaiju should’ve been dead.

  It got back up anyway.

  Chapter 11

  “Heartbreaker, what the fuck?” Steve backed away as Medraka rose from its knees, the flesh of its left torso already turning the same discolored gray as the right. It was headless, heartless, blood likely septic at this point. It just. Kept. Coming.

  I shook my head. Even for this monstrosity, what I was witnessing couldn’t be possible. “I did. It… it’s got no heat signatures. No heart. No hearts, at all. No brain. There’s no reason it should still be alive. None at all.”

  To make matters worse, I looked around and noticed we weren’t on a roof. This building was upside down, meaning we were standing on the sealed cement underside of the building’s basement. There was no path back to the ground, unless we opted for a thirty-story drop, and the only person who could make sure we survived the fall was in a coma, possibly dead.

  Warrior kept her cannon raised, over a dozen shards of metal clutched tight in the beam of her kinetic arm cannon. “Mindcrusher, got any insight?”

  I checked her pulse. Breathing. All still there. “Unconscious, but alive. So… no.”

  The ground shook, stomps echoing across the plains as the kaiju approached, all four hands flexing, limbs stiff from partial rigor mortis. We should’ve known better than to try to kill a god. They die, but never stay dead.

  It took its time crossing the distance, hands coming to rest on each upturned building as it passed, touching them reverently. This was a graveyard, each building a monolith dedicated not to the millions who’d perished at its four dead hands, but to the millions yet to die. I could practically feel the way it raged inside. Where it had been content to only destroy at leisure before, these puny humans had harmed it, done damage, shredded some of the organs it at least pretended to need, and now, it would see to it that every human being walking this forsaken planet was eliminated.

  Medraka approached, slowing to a halt barely a hundred yards away from the building, its two lower arms resting on other discarded structures. I had no idea where to shoot, not that my bullets would’ve hurt it now anyway. The sun shone briefly through the cleft between its torsos, then they snapped closed, blotting out the light.

  It raised its arms, and Warrior screamed, firing the bolts she’d scavenged from the destroyed Humvee. Just like it had shot OPR’s ravaged mech at us, she fired back, aiming wherever she could.
Left torso, right torso, hip. The only time it reacted was to the metal fired into its hand. To a creature like this, it should’ve been a splinter, but it jerked away.

  Then it pointed that same hand at Warrior, psychically yanking her cannon arm forward, body leaning back against the sudden pull.

  “No, damn it, no.” She spoke frantically, slapping at where the blaster met her port, trying to remove it. The arm sparked, ceased to glow, then tore completely free of her body, disk and all. She screamed, a sound I’d never heard her make before. It wasn’t a battle cry, or shout of pain. It bore the anguish of knowing she no longer had a way to fight it—and, given how much the stump bled, she wouldn’t be fighting at all.

  Blood gushed from the wound as she hit the ground, clutching her arm, chest heaving. I had no idea what kind of neurological integration it’d had, but she shuddered, visibly fighting to stay conscious. I didn’t react. What could I say, or do? The best I could’ve offered her was to put a bullet in her head before Medraka decided to make our suffering last an eternity.

  That actually wasn’t too bad of an idea. I looked down at my rifle. Steve looked at me. I looked back, catching his gaze. He seemed to agree. But who first? Allessandra, still unconscious? Lisa, who was going into shock? Or Steve, who probably shouldn’t have to watch us all die?

  I, of course, would have to go last. As the triggerman, the rest was up to me.

  “Hey, asshole!” a voice roared. An inferno leapt to life on its lower right hand, and as Medraka recoiled, that fire jumped into the air above it, whipping fireballs downward as it landed on its torso. “I hope you have ears, because listen up: no one kills me but me!”

  “Holy fuckin’ shit, Cindy!” NAFTA yelled.

  Warrior, head jerking, looked up with a sick, weak smile. Seeing a brief flicker of hope in Grover’s flames, I drew a morphine ampoule from my belt and offered it to Lisa. To my dismay, she accepted, groaning as her agony dulled. She curled up on the ground, half-asleep, half in shock.

  Medraka fell into the building behind it, swiping at Grover as he unleashed fire in every direction. Its gray flesh quickly blackened, the previous wounds that would’ve bled and oozed burning shut.

  “When I die, I’m walking into the fire with my back straight, my head high, and a middle finger raised to every god who wasn’t worth my time, and that includes you!” I had a feeling he left his mic on intentionally.

  He dove down into the crevasse between its two halves, and Medraka tried snapping shut only to jerk open again, swiping frantically at its inner sides.

  Mindcrusher stumbled up. “Not dead?” she mumbled, holding her head. She limped a bit, but seemed relatively okay.

  “No. You should stay down, you might have a concussion.” I checked her for lumps as NAFTA cheered Cindy on.

  “I’m okay. Just. When it… Pwomf.” She made an explosion motion. “Psychic shock. Brain whiplash. Just need… a second.”

  I nodded, then thought back to Lisa’s final assault. Tapping into my ear piece, I said, “Cindy, you read? Go for its hands!”

  “Heartbreaker? Are you killing this thing or not?”

  “Hands! Hit its hands!” Now that Allessandra had risen, I could maybe take some shots, but she didn’t exactly seem up to the task.

  Medraka threw itself around, pitching Grover off the front. He spun in the air and four tendrils flew from him, lashing around its wrists and yanking them in tight as he continued to coil, using gravity against it. Moments later, he’d bound all four of its hands in front of its body, and we turned away as he cranked his heat up higher.

  “Has he always been able to do that whip thing?” I had many, many more questions about his powers, but would settle for asking just this one.

  Steve shook his head. “It’s like any skill. The more he fucks shit up, the more he can do later on, except instead of an extra five push-ups, he, you know, sets things on fire.” He nodded toward Grover. Allessandra looked up at them and doubled back toward the bits of the car that hadn’t fallen from the roof. Clenching its too-many fists, Medraka snapped its arms open, sending Grover flying our way, the shock extinguishing his flames.

  “Cindy!” NAFTA yelled, aiming the kinetic cannon up and flipping it into Grab mode. He pulled the trigger, snatching his buddy out of the air and depositing him harmlessly on the rooftop with a hearty clap on the back for good measure.

  “Thanks, Steve,” he said with a nod.

  “How the fuck are you not dead? You got hit with a building. A whole building!”

  “Cranked up the heat, melted my way through, and climbed up to get the element of surprise. Worked okay. Now can someone tell me how we kill this fucking filthy bastard-faced sack of prolapsed assholes?”

  Steve snorted with laughter. In the distance, Medraka patted out the remaining flames, regaining its footing. It’d be starting toward us soon.

  “I already shot out both its hearts, but I think it’s using psychic powers to, I don’t know, keep its blood flowing and all that. The hands seem to be the source of this power, so if we destroy them, maybe then it’ll die. Your language isn’t gonna kill it though!”

  “Well it makes me feel better!” he said, spreading his arms, an almost-traditional ‘come at me, bro,’ stance, except his hands were blackened and run through with bright orange cracks.

  Staring at him, even as Medraka started moving in on us again, I said, “What happened to your hands?”

  Stumbling over, Lisa braced herself against Grover with her remaining arm, leaning her head on her shoulder, face paling further by the second. Allessandra returned with a fragment of scrap metal, handing it to him, which he superheated to cauterize the bleeding stump of Warrior’s missing arm. He didn’t even need fire. His touch alone left it glowing white hot. “Thanks,” she mumbled, passing out. He lowered her to the ground, apparently still in control enough to not burn her.

  “I brought you this,” Allessandra said, holding up the fuel tank. She must’ve ripped it free of the scrap. NAFTA nodded, removing his bomb belt and dousing the whole thing in what gasoline we’d had left in the tank. “I’ll launch. Aim dead center.”

  “Ready?” I asked them.

  “Aim…” Allessandra raised her arm as Steve watched excitedly, ready to see his explosives finally hurt it. She launched the makeshift firebomb at Medraka.

  Grover took a step forward, raising his finger gun. “Fire.”

  The crimson bolt stayed alight for the few hundred yards it needed to cross, a miracle of long-range control. It hit the bomb package straight on, sending out a concussive shockwave that managed to knock the beast backward, along with sending enough shrapnel and blanketing fire to take out an entire squadron. Steve used the cannon’s grab function to keep shrapnel from hitting us, while Medraka’s two bodies were pierced through with metal and already burning.

  It raised its four arms and brought them in tight, creating a rift through which it disappeared. We waited in the silence after, unsure of what would come next.

  “Did we kill it?” My question was less about an answer than about filling the silence.

  “Ugh!” Grover groaned. “Are you kidding me right now, dude?”

  “That’s exactly what they say in every horror movie before the monster shows up again. Why would you say that? Why would you jinx us?” Steve looked genuinely pissed.

  “Guys, do you really think…” A low rumble drew our attention to Great Bend, the shimmering metropolis we’d been working so hard to protect. Medraka appeared at its perimeter, facing us. It pointed one cold, dead arm at our group, then turned its back, leveling a skyscraper with a single swipe.

  We were too far to hear them scream, but we knew people were screaming, just as they knew we’d failed. Our one goal, the way we fought back against this interdimensional creature, the way we honored Damien’s memory, the way we continued justifying our newfound existence, failed.

  This thing didn’t want to kill us all. Not anymore.

  It just wanted rev
enge.

  Our Bluetooth headsets all chimed on at once. “Hyperion company, do you read?”

  It was Akila.

  “Heartbreaker here. We read. How did you get this frequency?”

  “We’re a collective nanobot swarm. Tuning a radio is hardly outside of our skillset, Heartbreaker. Our scanners showed it has no hearts left, and it should be dead, yet it continues to rampage, despite that fireworks display a moment ago.” Grover and Steve high-fived. “But, if you can come down to… well, to the remains of your camp, we have an idea. Actually, that’s not correct. It isn’t an idea. It’s a last resort.”

  Chapter 12

  We did our best to talk quickly without skipping out on any of the details. Trouble with that was the fact that it wasn’t a simple topic, but Akila simplified what she could.

  Akila addressed us before a crowd of her fellow Nanites, but they weren’t the united front from before. Some stood uneasily, with vacant eyes, their outlines uncertain. I didn’t need her to clarify. I knew I was looking at what she’d warned of before: when a Nanite deletes itself, leaving its body to run on in its shape, with the echoes of its mind, a literal ghost in the machine. There were too many for me to count, because I couldn’t get past ‘one.’ Every time I looked at them, I saw my son, with the same blank look that crossed his face in the moment before his death.

  Our group had arguably suffered less existential losses. Most of our people were dead, with just a few grunts and a radio boy crawling out of the debris, but they weren’t zombies, aimlessly following their last commands, repeated dialogue saved in their memory banks until they were finally decommissioned or reformatted. Wheelchair Kid survived. The three siblings hadn’t. They’d found a spare grenade, hugged each other close, and pulled the pin.