Project Maigo (30 page)

Drakon settles its one good eye back on the White House and charges. She’s limping heavily, but doesn’t seem to have been slowed, and certainly doesn’t mind the pain.

Gunfire and grenades pepper the monster as it closes the distance, but the missiles hold back. The target is too close. Just as I hear the chop of approaching helicopters, Drakon arrives. The monster rises above us like a tidal wave, bathing us in orange light from its glowing membranes, forcing the men on the roof to hold their fire—not that a few bullets would change anything. The monster’s jaws snap open, splitting both vertically and horizontally, revealing four sets of sharp teeth and giving the creature a bite radius that would make Mick Jagger jealous. But it doesn’t roar or even bite. From within the ring of sharp, arm-sized teeth, a black sphere launches up and over the White House roof.

At first it looks like a glob of tar, but then it opens up, revealing thick limbs, hooked fingers and claws.
Gordon
. While his entrance is impressively flamboyant, the man’s arrival—if he’s still a man at all—makes me ill.

Before anyone even thinks to react, Gordon lands on the tallest point of the roof, denting the metal surface. He scans the frozen groups of soldiers, looking for someone. Looking for me, I realize.

“Open fire!” I shout, counting on the men to remember avoiding those explosive orange membranes that make such tempting targets. Gordon spots me just as the men on the roof send a barrage of bullets in his direction. He leaps down to the far side of the roof. I’m no longer able to see him, but I don’t need to. The screams rising up are image enough.

Working in concert with Gordon, Drakon assaults the roof, slamming her giant hand down, crushing men and tearing through the top two floors of the White House. With a gleeful roar, the monster leans down and catches two men within her jaws, lifting them up and silencing their screams with a quick chomp, before tilting her head back and swallowing them whole.

Next, Drakon turns her attention to my side of the roof. She reaches out, but pauses, as though confused. With a shake of her head, the monster yanks her hand away like a child who touched a hot stove. Gordon wants me for himself.

“Down!” Endo shouts, returning the favor of tackling him, by shoving me down and jumping on top of me. A twisting mass of helicopter launched rockets scream overhead, striking Drakon with enough force to knock her sideways. As the monster falls from view and Endo pulls me to my feet, I say, “Didn’t realize you cared.”

“Our plan hinges on you not dying,” he says.

Yeah, no pressure.

“Hudson!” The voice is deep, booming and hits me like an emotional missile. Gordon charges across the roof, covered in other men’s blood. His eyes burn with fury. Froth slides from his clenched teeth with each step.

I lift my P90 and hold the trigger down, unleashing fifty rounds in seconds. His body shakes from the barrage, but he doesn’t slow. While I reload, Endo takes aim with his more powerful assault rifle, punching round after round into Gordon’s forehead. The engine-killing rounds just get stuck in the thick flesh. But it hurts. Gordon, unlike his Kaiju, still experiences pain like a human being. He reacts like one, too, raising his meaty hand, to defend his face.

With the P90 reloaded, I aim more carefully, but hold the trigger down again. I have to fight the recoil, but I manage to send most of the rounds into my target—Gordon’s knee. The leg buckles as Gordon shouts in pain, but he lunges forward with his good leg, arms outstretched.

My brain tells me to move. To dive. To duck. But there’s no avoiding this freight train. The best I can do is take it like a man, or in this case, like a ragdoll.

Gordon hits hard, but he doesn’t slam me to the roof as expected. Instead, he lifts me up and over the sidewall, tackling me over the edge of the roof. On the inside, I’m rolling my eyes and thinking, “Shiiiit.” On the outside, I’m screaming.

40

The world turns through Jell-O. Or at least that’s what it feels like. I’m falling, wrapped in the tight embrace of my mortal enemy. But I’m also spinning. No, not spinning...flipping. I’m fli—

The impact sends a wave of pain through my body, numbing my toes and fingers. But I’m not dead! And I’m no longer held in place. Despite my body screaming to remain motionless, I sit up and stagger away.

Gordon lies atop the granite staircase of the White House’s south portico. We fell two stories down, but rolled so that Gordon absorbed most of the impact.
A stroke of good luck.

Gordon sits up, grinning.

Or...not.

He could have killed me if he wanted to. It’s obvious now. He could have popped my head in his hand like a too-full water balloon. He could have
not
flipped over. But he wanted me alive for a little while longer. Although that suits me just fine, it confuses me.

Until I see the look in his eye. He’s enjoying this. Like a cat, toying with a mouse, he’s going to kill me slowly, savoring each injury. And then, he’ll kill me. It’s a strategic risk, but why would he doubt victory? He’s virtually impervious to harm and has four Kaiju for back up. He has enough power to destroy entire nations. What would he have to fear from me?

I smile back at him, knowing the answer to the unasked question. I’m a sneaky son-of-a-bitch.

“I admire your confidence,” Gordon says, getting to his feet. “But it’s misguided.”

I stagger away, clutching my side, acting a bit more injured than I am. Doesn’t take much acting. I’m pretty messed up, but the pain is still so broad that I can’t identify specific injuries. As Gordon stalks toward me, I glance over my shoulder, but all I can see is Drakon, rampaging around the East Wing of the White House. I try not to react to it. It’s where I sent Beck. If they haven’t made it to the PEOC yet, they might be in real trouble.

“There won’t be any help coming,” he says, glancing up. I follow his eyes. Not a soldier in sight. “You’re on your own, Hudson.” He smiles. “Time to see what you’re made of.”

“You probably mean that literally, right?” I say, buying time.

He makes a show of licking his lips, almost seductively. “I’ll keep you alive long enough to tell you how you taste.”

A shadow shifts on the portico behind Gordon.

I stop my retreat. “Do you even know how nasty you are?”

Gordon sneers. Prepares to throw himself at me. But he never gets the chance. The shadow from the portico leaps through the air without a sound and lands hard on Gordon’s shoulders. I see claws, razor sharp, slip into his flesh, locking on tightly. Gordon shouts in surprise and pain, falling forward under the weight of his attacker, who falls first, using Gordon’s own momentum to lift him up and over. Powerful black legs extend and the claws release.

Gordon sails through the air, slamming into a tree, thirty feet away.

I wince-smile at my rescuer. “Just in time, Lilly.”

“He’s bigger than you described,” the cat-like Lilly says, crouching low to the ground, her tail twitching. And she’s right, Gordon is growing. Far slower than the Kaiju, but if he kept growing, he might become a Kaiju himself in twenty years. We’re not going to give him that chance.

Convincing Mark Hawkins, aka Ranger, to allow Lilly to take part in this fight wasn’t easy. In years, she’s just six, but like an animal, she has aged more quickly and is now a young woman. Maybe mid-twenties in human years. But to Hawkins, she’s still a kid, and he’s spent the last year protecting her. To make matters worse, she’s a mother. With five baby cat-people, who are currently under the care of Grandpappy Goodtracks and Joliet. But when I told him what I could do for them—how I could keep Lilly and her children safe, he relinquished.

“Too big?” I ask her.

“He’s not nearly as scary as Kaiju.”

I’m confused for a moment. Of course he’s not more frightening than a 300-foot-tall monster. But then I remember Hawkins’s story of how he found Lilly, at a place he calls ‘Island 731.’ Her mother, a monstrous chimera composed of both human and predatory animal parts, had been named
Kaiju
. If Gordon is a walk in the park compared to dear old mom, I think I might need to reclassify my own childhood issues as mild. That Lilly isn’t the monster she appears to be is a strong reflection on her character, and Hawkins’s influence.

Gordon screams in anger as he climbs to his feet. He lashes out at the tree that broke his fall, slamming his fist into the solid wood. The tree shakes as splinters fly.

“Strong,” Lilly says, sounding impressed.

“Can you handle this?” I ask.

She nods. “He can’t hurt what he can’t catch.”

Lilly springs into action, charging toward Gordon on all fours. I nearly cheer when I see the look of confusion on Gordon’s face. He has no idea who he’s up against, where she came from or what she can do. But he’s about to find out. Lilly leaps onto Gordon’s chest, her claws sinking in deep. He closes his arms to crush her, but the limbs close only on air. Lilly is gone again. Ten feet above him, clinging to the tree trunk, upside down.

Gordon glances down at his chest. Streams of brown blood leak from his charcoal skin. He screams and punches the tree again, this time shattering the trunk. As the tree falls, Lilly leaps easily away. She turns back, muscles tense, waiting for the chase to begin.

But Gordon isn’t all monster. Not yet anyway. He’s a soldier with a mission. Gordon turns toward me. The look in his eyes reveals he’s done playing. The second he catches me, I’m dead. He takes two steps, but doesn’t make it any further. Lilly rushes by behind him, clawing at the back of his legs. Gordon winces with pain and swings, but Lilly is already gone. He takes one last look at me and then focuses all his attention on Lilly, knowing that his mission won’t move forward until the cat-woman defending me is dead.

As I hobble up the portico stairs, my phone rings. I glance at the screen—it’s Endo—and answer the call. “Beck is in trouble,” he says.

“What? How do you—”

“Dunne,” he says. “Focus on Beck.”

It takes just a moment to slip out of my mind and into Beck’s. It’s unnervingly easy. Suddenly, I’m seeing through his eyes and feeling his emotions, which are still brave and more concerned about doing the right thing than preserving his own life. He’s dragging a bloodied Dunne down an East Wing hallway while Drakon hacks away at the building, trying to reach them.

When I come back to myself a moment later, ready to charge into the White House, I pause. The ground is shaking, and not just from the battle waging around me. It’s a familiar jarring rattle.

I turn west just as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building explodes outward, kicked by a mammoth, black-skinned, tan-clawed foot. My eyes turn upward, taking in the gigantic form of Nemesis. And perhaps for the first time since Nemesis emerged in Maine, I cheer at her appearance. This was the part of my master plan that I took on faith, believing that Nemesis wouldn’t be far and that she would respond to me being in danger.

She roars loudly. So loudly it hurts. The sounds of battle pause for a moment, as all eyes turn in her direction. Drakon’s head pulls out of the East Wing and peers around the White House’s ruined south side. There’s a flash of surprise in her one good eye, but then it squints, and she sneers. Drakon lets out a warbling roar, stepping out onto the South Lawn. Then she charges, moving very quickly, commencing an oversized version of Lilly’s fight against the much larger Gordon. A real David and Goliath battle. Except this time, Goliath isn’t a dude, and I’m rooting for him...her.

Before Drakon reaches Nemesis, my phone rings. Woodstock. I answer it. “What?”

“They’re moving really fast now.” It’s Collins. “Jon, they’re going to reach you in five minutes. When do you want us to—”

“Not yet,” I say, rushing up the stairs. “I’m not ready yet. And neither is Maigo.”

A shriek pulls my attention west again. Drakon has leapt in the air, its double jaws open wide, heading for Nemesis’s neck. I’m sure the attack is instinctive and typically a killer blow in the animal kingdom. But this is Nemesis. Her neck is lined with orange membranes, all primed and ready to blow.

My shoulders sag.

“Oh damn.”