Apocalypse Unseen

by James Axler

  The Annunaki female roared as she heard this, and for a moment the Cerberus warriors wondered if their bullets had actually wounded her through her impenetrable scale hide. “Pet? Be careful whom you call a pet, apekin girl. Ki is no one’s pet.”

  “Key?” Grant muttered, trying to place the name.

  Brigid recognized it, racked her brains for just a nanosecond to realize who Ki was and what threat she represented. As the name flashed through her mind, she recalled with dread who Ki had been in ancient Sumerian myth. “Kane, Grant—Ki is the mother of all Annunaki!” she shouted to her colleagues.

  “I thought that was Tiamat,” Kane said as he rattled off another shot from his Sin Eater, scrambling over a table to get a better bead on his target.

  “Tiamat held the genetic codes,” Brigid summarized, “but Ki was like the firstborn, the most ancient of the Annunaki along with her consort, Anu.”

  Ki had been reaching between chairs for Grant where he had rolled beneath a table, his Copperhead still booming at her. But as Brigid spoke, her words carrying over the hubbub of gun reports, Ki halted and looked up, her luminous eyes meeting with Brigid’s. “What do you know of my brother, apekin?” she growled, her forked tongue darting between sharklike teeth.

  “Brother?” Kane muttered. “I thought you said—”

  Brigid shot Kane a look. “The legends contradict themselves. Sometimes she’s consort, sometimes sister and sometimes just a place—Earth.”

  Striding across the table’s top, Ki stalked toward Brigid, ducking her head to avoid hitting it against the ceiling. “Anu named the planet after me,” she stated in her strange duotonal voice. “It was mine—it’s always been mine. You apekin are just tenants whose lease is about to expire.”

  As Ki moved away from him, Grant slipped out from under the table, drawing himself up from the watery floor and taking that moment to reload his Copperhead with a fresh clip. Kane caught his eye and made a gesture, running the index finger of his free hand along his nose for just a second in the old 1 percent salute. The salute was something the two men shared, a little superstition dating back to their Magistrate days, and it referred to the 1 percent margin for the unexpected to ruin an op, no matter how controlled it seemed. On this occasion, Kane hoped that Grant realized that the 1 percent in question was not their chance of success, but that of the reborn Annunaki. Because Kane had a plan.

  Grant watched as Kane gave a signal they both recognized and, following his partner’s lead, he reached into his coat pocket for two tiny earplugs he kept there for just such an occasion.

  Brigid had rattled off several bursts of fire from her TP-9, watched in increasing frustration as the bullets skimmed the surface of the Annunaki’s body and were lost in the darkness of the room. She backed farther away as Ki strode toward her, and suddenly her back was pressed against the wall where the shuttered serving hatch was located. Ki loomed before her, climbing down from the table and sniffing the air.

  “All these years and apekin still smell the same,” she said, licking her lips with her writhing, forked tongue. “I wonder, do you taste the same, too?”

  But as Ki reached for Brigid, there came an almighty explosion, so bright that it lit the room. The brilliance was accompanied by a burst of noise like clashing cymbals, the whole thing seemingly feet away from where Ki stood. The Annunaki fell back, clutching at her eyes where the explosion had momentarily blinded her, hissing with pained irritation.

  The explosion had been caused by a weapon that the Cerberus warriors habitually carried in their arsenal. Called a flashbang, the device was similar in size and shape to a palm-sized ball bearing, and was designed as a nonlethal part of the standard Cerberus field-mission equipment. As its name suggested, the flashbang brought an almighty flash of light and noise when it was triggered, similar to a genuine explosive being set off, only the flashbang did no damage. As such, it was used by the Cerberus personnel to confuse and disorient opponents—be they human or a reborn space goddess.

  In the explosion’s wake, Brigid rocked in place, dazzled by the sudden burst of sound and light. But Kane had thrown the device and he and Grant had been prepared, using earplugs and turning away from the brilliance as the flashbang went off.

  “Come on, Baptiste,” Kane said, grabbing his partner’s arm. “The bitch here wants to eat, so we’ll go find her something to eat.”

  Kane guided Brigid through the doorway and into the kitchen area while Ki continued to writhe where she stood, swiping at the patterns that danced across her eyes. Ki had incredible night vision, which meant that hunting her prey in the darkness had been easy, but it also left her especially vulnerable to the dazzling effects of the flashbang.

  Grant, meanwhile, made his way back through the room, skipping in a backward run through the water that pooled on the floor, his Copperhead trained on Ki’s staggering form. He worked the Copperhead’s trigger, firing round after round into the great Annunaki form, using the laser target to ensure he struck the same exact spot again and again.

  Ki wailed at the force of those impacts, swaying in place as she blinked back the afterimage of the explosion. Inevitably, she stepped away from the source of the attack, stumbling against the wall where the shuttered counter was located. Her eyes opened wider and her expression fixed in a grimace of anger as her vision returned. Ki eyed Grant with pure hatred burning behind her eyes.

  “Check your privilege, apekin,” she shrieked as she took a pace toward Grant where he stood on the far side of one of the long dining tables.

  Grant seized the opportunity, triggering his own flashbang and throwing it toward the reborn Annunaki. The silver sphere arced through the air, its short timer counting down to explosion as Grant turned his head away.

  Then—

  Boom!

  The flashbang ignited in a burst of noise and light, rocking the cutlery that had waited in drawers for two hundred years.

  Ki stumbled back again, shrieking in pain as the blinding force of the explosion seared her eyes. The shutters clanged as her muscular body struck against them, rattling in their treads.

  Grant glanced back, located his target and threw another flashbang right at her head, firing his Copperhead to cover the toss. “One for luck,” he muttered as the flashbang sailed through the air toward its target.

  There was another explosion, this one just two feet from Ki’s blue-scaled face and accompanied just a fraction of a second later by the pained shriek of the Annunaki goddess.

  Ki clawed back, away from the brilliance, trying to get away from the pain it brought. Powerful muscles worked, ripping at the thin metal shutter into the kitchen, tearing it apart like tissue paper.

  Grant fired again, sending another burst of 4.85 mm bullets at the retreating Annunaki as she clambered blindly through the revealed serving area, dropping awkwardly over the sill.

  She’s all yours, Grant thought as the lizard creature disappeared from view. He would have stayed, provided back up, but Brigid had made it clear that someone needed to keep track of Papa Hurbon before the demented voodun priest unleashed something else. Grant figured he was that someone.

  Without pause, Grant ran for the exit to the cafeteria, booted feet splashing in the layer of dark, swirling water that carpeted the floor.

  * * *

  THROUGH THE AUGMENTED sight provided by their night lenses, Kane and Brigid saw Ki come stumbling through the hatch in the wall. She moved without grace now, flopping and falling over the sill and worktop behind, limbs tangling in the steam-tray units that had been designed to hold hot food while it was being served to the soldiers who had once operated this base.

  Grant had bought them a precious few seconds in which Kane and Brigid had been able to pull down their colleagues from the meat locker, dragging them out into the open area of the kitchen itself. Kane had just been hefting Sela Sinclair’s
body from the open refrigerator when Brigid had alerted him with a hiss.

  “Incoming,” she had said before ducking down out of sight.

  Now Kane placed Sinclair’s frozen body gently down behind a freestanding, island-style worktop, his eyes watching the reptilian figure come barreling through the ruined shutter. As Kane let go of Sinclair, leaving her beside the other two members of CAT Beta, he commanded his Sin Eater back into his hand with a familiar flinch of his wrist tendons. The gun appeared in his palm in a fraction of a second, and Kane was already rising from behind the counter with the weapon poised before him, index finger locking on the trigger.

  “Hey, snake face.” Kane shouted as the Sin Eater bucked in his hand, sending a stream of 9 mm slugs at Ki’s rising form. “How’s it feel to meet a meal that fights back?”

  Ki rose from the floor, slipping a little in the slick blanket of water there as she tried to regain her balance before finally standing, her head hunched forward. “Apekin,” she said, “I’m going to eat you alive—slowly.”

  “Talk is cheap,” Kane said. “Why don’t you come get me, Your Highness?”

  Ki took a step forward, and as she did Kane took a step back, causing Ki to laugh. “You’re scared,” she said, between guffaws.

  “Not me,” Kane said, but as Ki took another step, he took one, too, away from her.

  “Your body betrays you,” Ki told him. “Weakling apekin. See the way you back away from what you know to be your destiny?”

  Ki bared her teeth then, snapping them together as she took two more steps toward Kane. “I’ll eat you bit by bit, leave you just enough so you stay alive for a very long time indeed, just enough life so you feel every bite.”

  Kane took another step back, his blaster held out before him. “I hope you choke,” he said, sounding a little less sure of himself now.

  Ki strode forward, butting against the worktop island with her hip, angrily knocking the things on its surface to the floor as she pushed herself aside.

  Good, thought Kane, her vision’s still impaired. That made things easier.

  She was almost upon him now, and Kane was right at the threshold to the walk-in refrigerator, his heels against the sill of the illuminated open doorway. “Come on,” he taunted. “Come get me.”

  Ki pounced, leaping the last five feet to where Kane waited, her feet rising off the ground. Kane scrambled back in that same instant, turning around and shooting behind him, sending a continuous stream of bullets at the blue-scaled Annunaki as she charged toward him. The bullets struck her hide armor, clanging against the scales with momentary flashes like fireworks, before being cast away in all directions.

  Ki was beyond the threshold now, into the illuminated space, her feet striking the floor of the refrigerator as she continued to scramble after Kane. Kane leaped, reaching high with his left hand, grabbed the hook-and-chain that Edwards had been hanging from barely a minute earlier. As Ki grabbed for Kane, he swung on the chain, throwing himself out of her reach by the narrowest of margins. Behind him, he heard the material of his jacket tear as Ki caught it with the hook-like talons of her claws.

  Still hanging in the air, Kane twisted, shifting his weight so that he rotated, locking the Sin Eater’s trigger down and sending a vicious storm of bullets at his opponent.

  Ki laughed the bullets off, taking just a moment to flick some aside as they struck against her torso. Ricochets hurtled across the locker, striking the tiled walls with clangs and thuds. Several bullets had embedded themselves in her superhard skin, but it was the work of just a moment to pluck them out with a claw before letting them drop to the ground.

  As Ki continued to stride toward him in the confines of the large refrigeration unit, Kane felt something hit him—hard! He let go of the hook and chain and went flying toward the side of the room. He landed awkwardly, rolling into a freestanding shelving unit before he brought himself back to his feet.

  Ki was on Kane then, shoving him back against the floor so that he struck there hard on his back. Then she was looming over him, reaching out with lethally sharp claws, grasping for his face.

  Kane fired again, the familiar wail of the Sin Eater echoing in the hard-walled confines of the room. Bullets lashed Ki across the face and shoulders, striking and flying away as they were repelled by her impenetrable scales.

  And then Kane’s Sin Eater clicked on empty.

  Chapter 25

  Papa Hurbon was waiting at the end of the corridor beside the elevator, listening to the sounds of gunfire as the battle played out within the cafeteria, watching as the brilliant white explosions rocked the room. It was taking too long, he realized. His goddess should have dispatched these interlopers by now—even hungry from rebirth, her strength should have been more than enough to repel their bullets and to finish them. Plus, she had the instincts, somewhere deep down, of Nathalie, didn’t she? And Nathalie had been deadly.

  It was hard to see in the darkness, as the lightning stutter of the flashbangs provided the only illumination other than the candle Hurbon bore aloft in one hand. Every time one of those explosions went off, the brilliance seemed to draw his attention to the watery floor below him, its color a black sheen like oil. It was eerie, unnerving, seeing it in flashes like that, as if it were alive.

  He heard another explosion, immediately followed by the rending of metal. But there was something else, another noise, getting louder—splashing, running footsteps. Someone was coming!

  Hurbon reached to the call button beside him, found it by touch and jabbed it with his stubby index finger as he watched the entryway at the end of the corridor. The elevator’s doors drew back beside the wheelchair-bound figure, as he waited to see if it was Ki who was approaching or someone else.

  He saw the silhouette then, like a moving shadow, as a figure emerged from the cafeteria. Human. All too human.

  “Hold it!” the man shouted in a voice like rumbling thunder.

  Blast, thought Papa Hurbon, reaching for his wheel rims, those Cerberus people are tough.

  He pivoted his wheelchair, turning himself into the elevator car and jabbing the floor button. The damn thing didn’t go to the surface; in fact, this was as high as it went. Still, he had items down below, where he had set up his djévo and stored his many items of witchery...and a more traditional arsenal of weapons.

  Hurbon watched the darkened corridor as the doors rocked closed, shuttering him alone in the elevator’s cage. He had seen the Cerberus man come running down the corridor with a gun in his hand, heard the shot as he sent a bullet toward Hurbon and the elevator. The doors had closed on the bullet, blocking it with their heavy sheets of metal, accompanied by a noise like someone hitting his skull with a hammer. He was safe...for now.

  Damn those Cerberus people. They weren’t just tough, they were lucky as all get-out, too.

  The elevator shuddered as it began its descent.

  * * *

  GRANT HAD COME hurtling out of the cafeteria like a freight train, leaping through the open doorway and out into the corridor beyond with his Copperhead subgun raised and ready. There were two ways of executing that exit—you could either go all sneaky-sneaky, checking for an ambush and trying to stay out of the line of fire; or you could come out like a lion from a cage and trust that the speed and surprise of the action would be enough to throw off a would-be attacker’s aim. Grant chose the latter only because he knew time was at stake, that if he didn’t get after Hurbon soon, the current situation could escalate from already bad to preposterously worse.

  He recognized Papa Hurbon as soon as his night-vision lenses lit on him. Brigid was right anyway—she’d said it would be Hurbon in the wheelchair.

  “Hold it!” Grant shouted, drawing a bead on Hurbon as a rectangle of light grew larger beside the man.

  Hurbon was running, Grant guessed, making a break while
he still could. That was like him. Grant had met the guy twice before and on both occasions he had shown himself to be a cowardly rat when the chips were down. He had lost his legs to his goddess, Ezili Coeur Noir, and then he had lost his consciousness to her, becoming shuttered within a technologically enhanced hallucination created from his own desires. Grant had been forced to wake Hurbon from that dream, and the Cerberus crew had enlisted his help in stopping Ezili Coeur Noir and her sisters, each one in actuality a template fragment of the Annunaki goddess called Lilitu. Hurbon had helped, but he had remained away from the final battle, using mystical means to influence the fight itself.

  And now here he was, large as life and operating from the same darned redoubt where CAT Alpha had trapped his wicked goddess. It was as if he had been playing them all along, as though he had wanted to be left with the trapped energies of the dead Annunaki so that he could follow an agenda of his own. On the way here, Brigid had speculated that someone was using Tiamat’s teeth to distribute the genetic traits of the Annunaki, Grant recalled. Could it be that Hurbon was that someone, the person behind the widespread reemergence of the death gods of multiple religions? Yeah, Grant wouldn’t put it past Hurbon for a second—in fact, it was right up his alley.

  Grant thought all of this in the flash of a heartbeat, even as the doors to the elevator opened and the corpulent figure of Papa Hurbon wheeled himself inside. He was escaping, Grant saw, and there just wasn’t time to worry about being delicate any longer, not with that Annunaki monster called Ki still on the loose.

  Grant raised the Copperhead and fired, sending a single 4.85 mm bullet in Hurbon’s direction just as the elevator doors slid closed. The doors closed on the bullet, snapping shut against it in a ringing clang of metal on metal.

  “Dammit,” Grant muttered, jogging along the corridor toward the sealed elevator. He looked at the display to the side of the call button, wiping away the mold that had clung there over the recent months since the redoubt had been opened up to the elements. The elevator was descending.