Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller) (36 page)

I can’t die like this.

“Get off of me!” I scream. My voice distracts the creature. Its jaws close slightly, revealing a pair of perfectly black eyes, like two eight balls jammed into the top of a killer Humpty Dumpty. Tufts of thick brown hair cover its milky skin.

I’ve seen this before. The remains of these creatures litter the cave floor. These things aren’t killing people here, they’re being killed. It wasn’t put here to kill
me,
I was put here to kill
 
it
.

“Get off me, I said!” I shout, further confusing the beast. I dive to the side, but it clamps down on my shirt—a red, white and blue flannel that looks much more patriotic than any piece of clothing should. I spin around and lose my balance. The shirt rips as I fall away. My hands stretch out to brace my fall and I plunge into a litter of bones—the bones of this thing’s kin. But my right hand catches on something sharp. A hot burn strikes my palm, followed by a warm gush of liquid over my wrist.

I’m bleeding.

And the thing can smell it. I hear its quick breaths, sniffing as a dog does. Then I hear the smacking of lips and then it moves again, closing in on me.

Ignoring the pain in my hand, I dig into bones and find the sharp object. Playing my fingers over it gently, I feel a large triangular tooth.
Then another.
And another.
In my mind’s eye I can see its shape: a broken jawbone from one of these creatures. I find an end that has no teeth and grip it.

I’m back on my feet for only a moment before the creature charges again. But I’m ready for it. Whatever this thing is, it’s deadly, but it’s not smart enough to realize I would anticipate the same attack.

I step to the side and swing down. I feel an impact, and then a tug on my weapon as the teeth catch flesh. A sound like tearing paper fills the air and makes me sick to my stomach. I can’t see it, but I know I have just sliced open the creature’s back.

It whimpers and stops.

I step closer.

It steps away.

Some instinct I never knew I had tells me I’ve inflicted a mortal wound. The thing is dying. I see its form again as it nears the far wall—egg shaped body, tiny arms, squat legs, large eyes. And I recognize it for what it is. Not the species, the age.

It’s a baby.

I’ve just killed a baby.

As it mewls against the wall, each call weaker then the last, the jaw-weapon falls from my hand.

“No,” I whisper, falling to my knees. What kind of a sick world have I been brought to?

I want my mother.

I scream for her.
“Mom!”
I scream again and again, my voice growing hoarse. My face is wet with tears and snot. My body is wracked by sobs between each shout for my mother. My thoughts turn to my father. How awful he must feel now that I’m gone, knowing I disappeared while angry with him. Not only had he lied to me for thirteen years, but he also believed I was capable of hurting Aimee. He didn’t trust me.
Never had.
But I trusted him now.
 
Was this what he was protecting me from?
 
This thought strikes me like a fist and I long for my father’s presence. He could protect me. I yell for him next.

But he doesn’t come. He can’t hear me. He’ll never hear me again. How could he?

My voice fades to a whisper. Pain stabs my head with every beat of my heart. The pinpricks of light surrounding me are now blurry halos. In the quiet, I can no longer hear the ragged breathing of the young creature. Certain it’s dead, I weep again, mourning not just the death of this deformed thing that tried to eat me, but the death of something much more precious to me: my soul. As my body gives way to exhaustion, I slide down onto the stone floor, surrounded by bones and wonder,
 
maybe that’s the point
.

###

—SAMPLE—

RAGNAROK
(A Jack Sigler Thriller
)
by JEREMY ROBINSON
and KANE GILMOUR

Available for $7.99 on Kindle at:

CLICK HERE TO BUY!

DESCRIPTION:

It starts with a thunderous crack and a flash of light. Screams come next.
Then the hunters.
With a staccato flicker, the light disappears and everything within a hundred yard radius goes with it. A massive crater is all that remains where a chunk of the world has gone missing. 
As the deadly phenomenon repeats and expands amidst the world's most densely populated cities--carving apartment buildings in half, scooping away entire city blocks, and claiming thousands of lives--Jack Sigler,
Callsign
: King and his black ops team take action. But the team is broken, spread across the globe and vulnerable. Scrambling to make sense of the violent disappearances and fighting to reunite, the team comes face-to-face with an otherworldly enemy capable of making the fearless...terrified. 
Taking the battle to the ends of the Earth--and beyond--the team combats a savage enemy whose centuries-old plan for mankind has nearly reached fruition. If they fail, the planet will become little more than a fully stocked food cache for a creature whose presence heralds the beginning of
Ragnarök
--and the extinction of the human race.

EXCERPT:

PROLOGUE

Fenris
Kystby
, Norway

The Past

THE DEEP, RESONATING
 
beat of drums rolled through the early morning fog like the thunderous footfalls of a frost giant. In response to the sound, an alarm bell rang in the distance—tiny and pitiful. Hrolf
Agnarsson
knew the monastery’s monks would be rising from their slumbers and arming themselves, but he wasn’t concerned. He’d led many raids before, and the battle was often won before the ships even made landfall. If the drums didn’t do it, the fiery torches lighting the dragonhead prows sent most of the God-fearing men running.

The drums reached a fevered pace as the ships cut through the fog.
Agnarsson’s
beard, clumpy with debris from a hastily eaten breakfast, twitched as the man grinned. The monk’s heartbeats would keep pace with the drums. By the time his raiding party reached the monastery, the men who remained would be exhausted from fear and from holding weapons in sweaty hands.

There were times when he longed for a true fight, but he wasn’t ready to be sent to the halls of
Asgard
quite yet. Not when there was plundering to be done.
 
Live like a King on Earth
, his father taught him,
 
and be greeted by Odin as a son
.

He looked up at the gray walls of the monastery. His smile widened when he saw several men fleeing from the gates.
 
The Irish never put up much of a fight
, he thought.

Irish monks, persecuted refugees from their own island homeland, had decided to settle and build a small structure that had later blossomed into the gray, rock-walled monastery. Other Vikings had led raids on the Irish on their island, but
Agnarsson
had suggested he and his men come up and pillage the Irishmen right here at home. Monks always had good food and drink, as well as skins and books and other things that raiders could sell in the southern markets. Women would have made the raid even better, but
Agnarsson
had rarely found women in a monastery.

The drums beat on, and for the first time,
Agnarsson
let his pulse quicken.

The ship scraped over the smooth stones of the shore. The rumble beneath his feet acted like a trigger. “
Hoooaaarrhhggg
!” he shouted, thrusting his axe high into the air. The thirty men behind him abandoned their oars, stood and drew their weapons, joining in the war cry. Then, as one, they vacated the boat with him, jumping into the frigid knee-deep water with little thought or care.

When the two neighboring
longships
unloaded, each carrying thirty more men,
Agnarsson
actually heard screams rise up from within the monastery.
 
If they weren’t afraid before
,
Agnarsson
thought,
 
they are pissing themselves now
.

The knowledge quickened his pace.

Rocky shoreline gave way to soft earth. His two-hundred-fifty-pound body left indentations with every step. Halfway to the monastery, he shed his skins and let them fall to the ground behind him. The furs had already begun to overheat his body, and in a moment, they would only be in the way. And his body—muscular and coated with the dried blood of previous kills—would set his foes’ legs to shaking.

Agnarsson
rounded the first of the outbuildings and came to a stop. There, standing before him, was something he’d never encountered before. Ten monks, armed with swords, stood waiting. He admired their bravery.
Ten Irish monks against ninety Viking raiders.
A ridiculous thing.
Yet here they stood.

He looked into their eyes and saw their fear.
 
Brave, but not fools
,
Agnarsson
thought.
 
They know death has come for them
.

Ninety men stopped behind him, facing down the ten.

And still, they stood their ground.

This will not do
,
Agnarsson
thought. He took pride in his ability to instill fear in men. That these men stood against that fear was an insult. He searched their eyes, seeing only terror.
 
Then why...

Then he saw it. One of the men held his sword like he knew how to use it. He might even be dangerous.

They stand because of him
.

Agnarsson
laughed and lowered his axe. He looked back at his men and they laughed, too. They all knew the joke and the punch line. It was time to share it with the monks.

With a speed that belied his size,
Agnarsson
turned forward again and with a twitch of his arm, threw his axe. The heavy blade spun in oblong circles as it sailed through the air. It came to rest with a wet smack and buried deep in the rib cage of the brave man. Ribs split. Lungs burst. The man’s heart severed in two, freeing him from this world and the remaining monks from their duty.

Swords struck the earth one by one as the nine remaining monks fled. They’d only made it five steps before the raiding party sprang into action. Waves of men surged past
Agnarsson
. He watched the glory unfold. Flames rose, along with screams. Monks fled, and died. Blood soaked into the earth.

With the casual gait of a man who knew that life couldn’t get any better,
Agnarsson
strode up to the monk who held the axe in his chest. He put his booted foot upon the man’s chest and pushed. The ribs flexed and cracked, loosening their grip on the axe blade. With a slurp, the weapon came free. The weight of the weapon in his hands and the sight of blood dripping from it brought a fresh smile to his face.

It grew wider still when he saw a monk fleeing toward him. The man had five raiders on his heels. And they would have overtaken the man if they hadn’t seen
Agnarsson
waiting, axe rising up. Taking careful aim,
Agnarsson
wondered if he could cleave the man in two. His muscles flexed. His grip tightened. He swung.

And missed.

As the axe split the air, a brilliant flash of light, made brighter by the white snow underfoot, forced his eyes shut. Blinded, he didn’t see the monk fall to the ground. The axe sailed through air and nothing more. The momentum of the missed blow nearly flung him to the ground, but he regained his balance and avoided the humiliation.

He opened his eyes to more bright light. Lightning arced through the sky above him, crackling with the sharpness of breaking trees. Then he realized that the sound, in fact,
 
was
 
snapping tree trunks. He turned around toward the source of the light and found its brightness now missing, along with a portion of earth and the trees within it. Odin had reached down from
Asgard
and scooped away part of the world.

As the monk behind him started praying to his “one true God,”
Agnarsson
turned toward the man.
“It is a sign,” he said. “Odin takes from the earth as he desires. Just as he would have us do.” He raised the axe, but the monk was spared once again.

An ear-splitting roar rolled over the monastery like a tangible spirit.

The sound reverberated off the stone walls of the buildings his men had set alight. He could feel the sound in his heart, thrumming and humming. Hardened Viking raiders fell to their knees, some of them screaming in terror. The few remaining monks passed out or pissed their robes. Every man around him screamed as if his soul was being yanked out and flung down to
 
Neifelheim
.

Agnarsson
had known his men all his life. They feared nothing. No God and no man. But now they were weeping and blubbering like babes. Some of the men—his men—started to flee into the woods. So complete was their panic that not one of them realized they were running
 
toward
 
the sound’s source, rather than away.

That’s when he caught a glimpse of the thing moving like a breeze through the snows, leaping between the trees and even up onto the sides of them before springing away, almost too quickly for
Agnarsson’s
eye to follow. Then it was gone in the shadows.

The first of his men to reach the trees was torn apart.
Agnarsson
didn’t see it happen, but the sounds of tearing flesh and muffled screams were fodder for the mind’s eye. Then the lower half of Magnus Trondheim’s red-haired legs flew through the air and tangled in the lower branches of one of the half-eaten trees. Other men had bolted at that
sight
, but
Agnarsson
had stood stock still, staring in wonder. He knew whatever the creature was, it wasn’t human.

The roar came again, but this time from inside the monastery.

There is more than one
,
Agnarsson
realized.

The few men still rooted in place came unglued, and with shouts of horror, they ran without mind or any sense of where they were going. Only
Agnarsson
remained in place, not because he was brave, but because he was petrified. He kept a firm grip on his axe while warm piss trickled down his inner thigh.