Dragon Over Washington (The Third War Of The Bir Nibaru Gods) (43 page)

Thorpe turned and ran.

“Jesus Christ!” a woman exclaimed as Thorpe passed by, her eyes on Winder.

“He’s not religious,” Thorpe exclaimed, yet immediately regretted it as a coughing fit hit him. He stumbled on, struggling for breath and glanced back. Winder was moving steadily towards him, his features bubbling as if something struggled to emerge from inside the man. Winder’s inhumanly large, round eyes, yellow and black, predatory, with yellow fumes venting out, were fixed on Thorpe, A shriek echoed across the street, making passersby stop and stare at Winder, eyes full of fear.

“I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die!” Thorpe ran on, eyes wild, legs pumping unsteadily, fire in his lungs. He kept running, gasping for breath. He tried to hear Winder approaching above the din of his new shoes on the pavement.

Suddenly Thorpe’s eyes widened. He jumped to the street, waved and entered a black and orange DC taxi.

“Drive!” Thorpe gasped.

“Yes sir. Where to?” A very polite foreign accent.

“Just drive.” Thorpe was looking backwards, trying to spot Winder.

“Certainly sir. Meter?”

“Yes. Just go!”

The taxi started going. Thorpe, moving his head wildly from side to side, still unable to see Winder.

“Go to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building,” Thorpe panted.           

“No problem, sir.”      

Thorpe still couldn’t see Winder anywhere behind them and the taxi started speeding up, as fast as the congested Washington streets allowed. Thorpe started to relax. He sat back and suddenly leaned forwards. Winder was on in the street ahead, moving towards them.

“Run him down!”

“Are you crazy?” the driver exclaimed and turned the steering wheel. The taxi swerved aside, but Winder reached the car. Thorpe yelled as four talons penetrated the right-front car door and stopped inches from his skin. A metallic scream followed as Thorpe’s door was ripped away, leaving torn hinges and broken aluminum spars. The taxi stopped a moment later with screeching braking sounds.

“What are you doing?”

“Please get out the taxi.”

“What?”

“Please, I don’t want any trouble. Get out!”

“But I’m a -”  

“Please, I must ask you to leave the taxi now.”

Thorpe watched incredulously, hands on his mouth, as the taxi pulled away, leaving white smoke behind.

Thorpe didn’t turn around. He just ran, eyes on the pavement, his breath whistling in his throat. He didn’t care if he banged into people. He didn’t hear women shout and men swear as they moved out of his way. He just plodded on. “God. God. God.” Thorpe kept up the litany in his mind. I’ve found religion before I died, he thought dazedly, cynically. He felt Winder’s power behind his back. Thorpe looked sideways. He saw a store enveloped by Winder’s yellow mist, cracks running up the storefront’s glass windows, the clothes dummies inside blackening and melting, bright neon lights exploding one after the other, clothes on display catching fire. Thorpe gulped and ran harder.

Suddenly, a wide escalator yawned open in front of him, leading downwards. Thorpe ran into it, passing all the commuters who stood to the right, letting him pass. Before he reached the end, the escalator lurched and stuttered, the people on it shouting. Thorpe plodded on, realizing he had entered one of Washington’s Metro stations only when he passed the ticket vending machines.

And then a pair of hands grabbed him, lifted him up and turned him around. The hands holding him felt like iron clamps. Faint yellow acrid smoke started rising from Thorpe’s clothes. People shouted and a whistle blew sharply, but all Thorpe could see was the creature’s maw growing and gaping open before him. Winder’s face was now unrecognizable. Thorpe looked down the maw, seeing an endless tunnel, a revolving yellow-and-black funnel leading to a burning abyss an endless distance away. A monstrous shriek echoed triumphantly in the Metro station as the being that Winder had become flicked its tongue out at its prey.

Thorpe closed his eyes and went limp. There was no use struggling. He had given his best. He had tried running and failed. He had tried reasoning out what was happening and failed. He had disappointed The Man. He would never see Ellis again. He would never see his mother again. Thorpe drowned in an ocean of pain. He could hear himself screaming, as if from a distance. The pain intensified and he felt something inside being torn from him.

Thorpe tried to push the pain away, struggling to find something to shield him, to give him strength, to help him rise above the agony. He was an NSA agent! But that thought failed to support him and he continued sinking into the pain. He thought about computers, the Internet, and Object Oriented Programming, placing them like a wall around him. But the wall crumbled and Thorpe sank back into suffering. His mother’s face appeared in front him, reflecting all her hopes for him, all her love, all her badgering and her concern for his future. But the pain was too powerful and Thorpe drowned.

Suddenly Thorpe’s eyes snapped open and he stopped screaming, twisting his mouth. There was only one thought that gave him enough strength to overcome the pain. He would show them: Ellis, The Man, Agent Graham, his mother. He would show them all!

Thorpe put his left hand into the impossibly cruel that was about to swallow him; he screamed himself hoarse with the pain of his hand burning, the skin peeling, his fingers breaking, but nevertheless he grabbed the three-tipped black tongue and pulled.

What was once Winder shrieked, another high ululating painful screech. Thorpe was thrown across the Metro platform and lay on the floor, dazed, bright painful light filling his world. He slowly opened his eyes, blinking, trying to focus. The Winder creature was shaking its long, bullet shaped head. It raised its head and locked eyes with Thorpe. Its hands were talons and the blue, concrete platform flowed as the creature started stomping towards Thorpe.

Thorpe sobbed once, held his left injured hand close to his body and jumped down to the train railway, passing the red warning lights on the platform’s edge. He backed away from the thing that lightly jumped to the rail after him, its talons clicking on the hard metal tracks. Thick, noxious yellow smoke poured out of the creature’s maw and vicious jets of sulfur flew out of the creature’s eyes. Thorpe kept backing away, his eyes on the terrible predatory eyes of the creature that were watching and focusing on Thorpe, the burning yellow sulfur fuming out of them. Thorpe saw the creature’s claws unfolding, long black blade-like talons emerging from Winder’s torn suit sleeves.

And then Thorpe shouted and hurled himself away from the tracks and on to the platform, an instant before a train passed him. He held on to the concrete platform as the wind and the noise the train’s passing created engulfed him. Thorpe rose, gasping from the pain in his left hand, and turned to leave the Metro station. Thorpe moved slowly out, too tired to run, supporting himself on the walls, concentrating on taking one faltering step after the other.

Deafening loud screeches overran Thorpe. He heard train brakes, sirens and metallic squeals all trying to suffocate him and force him down to the floor. Thorpe stumbled out of the Metro station, his right hand on his ear, trying to block out the continuing, torturous metallic sounds coming from the train below. He fell on the pavement, his legs couldn’t carry him anymore.

A hand grabbed him.

“You sure move around a lot,” a soft woman said, her voice familiar. Thorpe turned around.

“Ellis!”

“Agent Christensen to you,” she said, but then smiled. “We started looking for you when you sent me the MMS with Winder’s picture. Then it was just a simple matter of following the city’s security cameras.” Her smile faded. “Where is it?”

Thorpe pointed to the entrance of the Metro station. He suddenly noticed that the tortured metallic screams had stopped. Ellis and Thorpe looked into the strangely darkened entrance. Yellow sulfuric smoke started billowing out, leaving burnt and corroded swathes over everything it touched, including a street lamp that fell into the street, twisting in inanimate agony. The smoke parted and the creature came out. Thorpe gasped. The creature floated, its clawed legs hovering above the pavement, its hands spread out, the tatters of Winder’s suit fluttering behind it. Its inhuman head was directed at Thorpe, a noxious aura, coming out of its eyes and mouth, surrounding it.

Thorpe jumped as sharp ripping noises exploded next to him. Ellis had drawn, aimed and fired her P90 submachine gun, holding it tight against its recoil, aiming it at the floating creature. Her magazine emptied and she drew it out, retrieved another one, jammed it in and continued firing faster than Thorpe could follow. He quickly looked at the creature. The huge, round eyes were locked on Ellis, the yellow sulfuric pools narrowing in anger, powerful streams leaking out. The P90’s bullets left a trail in the smoke around the creature, but they veered off in all directions before touching it.

Ellis stopped firing and put her hand on her ear, calmly watching the creature floating closer. Then her head rose as the creature shrieked, a high-pitched savage call of hate.

“Fire,” Ellis said. Booms echoed across the street and white smoke engulfed several buildings’ tops, especially the nearby National Archives building with its flat roof. Heavy Barret sniper rifles spoke, hammering the creature. It shrieked again, making Thorpe cower as the bullets slammed into the creature, making it jerk backwards with every shot. Its body shuddered repeatedly, but the heavy sniper bullets couldn’t touch it, ricocheting away and hitting the pavement and the buildings around. Thorpe watched as the creature’s eyes flashed towards every sniper hidden on the rooftops.

“Negative impact. Hold fire,” Ellis murmured.

The shots stopped and the creature threw its head back and screamed, rising higher into the air. Winder’s form bubbled like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon, stretching inside its confines. Thorpe watched, horrified, as the seams along Winder’s suit sleeves came unraveled. Three pairs of great-feathered wings unfolded from Winder’s back, spreading open with a rustling sound. Winder’s head was now a raptor’s head with a long, curved wicked beak. Great talons flexed on his legs. Something like a diagonal scar appeared, as if the creature had once been slashed from eye to mouth.

Thorpe tried to scrabble back as he felt the creature’s attention return to him. Its great round eyes seemed to touch him, their gaze pressing down on him heavily, making it hard to breathe, pinning him down to the pavement. His injured left hand started to throb. The pavement under the creature started to crack loudly, shards flying away, the concrete blackening and smoking. A nearby trash bin fell down and burst into flames.

Ellis watched the creature approach, looking for any visible damage caused to it by the barrage. Nothing. She pulled out her empty magazine and jammed in a fresh one, holding her P90 tightly.

“It’s coming after you. Run. We’ll keep it busy,” she told Thorpe softly, her eyes never leaving the creature.

Thorpe gaped at her in silent surprise and then looked back at the creature. Ellis pressed the trigger of her P90, but nothing came out. She looked at it in surprise, cocked it and pulled the trigger again. Nothing. The lights along the street started dying and cars stopped in their tracks, their engines stuttering, belching black smoke and dying as well. Ellis touched her radio, but it was dead. She looked to the street. The effect seemed to be spreading.

Thorpe pushed himself up, standing unsteadily, breathing hard. He glanced down, seeing his black shiny shoes all torn up, the leather burnt and blackened, his socks showing in places.

“No,” Thorpe said, surprising Ellis and certainly surprising himself. “I ran enough,” Thorpe growled, his eyes narrowing. “I may die here, but I’m done running. I will not die like an insect hunted by a bird!”

And Thorpe started walking towards the creature. He struggled against the creature’s gaze trying to push him down to the ground, struggled against the hurricane of yellow corrosive force surrounding it. He struggled against his tired limbs. He struggled against his fear. I will not run again! Especially not in front of Ellis.

Thorpe smelt sulfur. He put his hand in his pocket and came out with his smartphone. Somehow, it still worked though its screen flickered. Thorpe ran the music player program and started blasting through the smartphone’s extra loudspeaker. “
Aliyan Baal Addar! Aliyan Baal Addar! Aliyan Baal Addar!
” It was the recorded litany of the Owego cult.

“The Stormgod! Strike down this demon! Now!” Thorpe screamed as loud as he could, holding his smartphone like a holy symbol in front of him, running towards the creature. Ellis watched the creature stop in midair, cringe, gather its wings close and look up. She blinked. Its attention was directed towards the sky. Several street lamps suddenly flickered on. Ellis’s radio started emitting static noises. “All units fire, center mass,” Ellis instantly commanded.

The collective thunder of several heavy rifles firing at the same time rolled across the street and echoed off the buildings of Washington. A fiery trail erupted somewhere and reached out to the creature, engulfing it in fire as a Javelin missile hit it. Ellis narrowed her eyes. There were now holes in the creature’s body, gaping wounds bleeding yellow corrosive sulfur.

“Again!” Ellis demanded, checking and firing her P90. It had also returned to life. She watched as the creature redirected its attention to the agents firing at it, but it was too late. Too many large caliber bullets had already hit it. It sank down, snarling and shuddering, as shots kept pounding into it, and fumes and yellow fires engulfed it. It shrieked one last time, drowning out every other sound in the street, its eyes on Thorpe. And then a nebulous, yellow vapor spread insubstantial wings and left the broken remains on the pavement. The vapor faded into the night sky, taking its corrosive presence away, leaving Winder’s discarded and mutilated form behind.