Slayers (Jake Hawkins Book 1) (41 page)

It was infinitely worse than his first freefall experience. At fourteen thousand feet, the temperature was arctic. If his first jump was bad, this was hell.

His brain went into sensory overload. With too much to comprehend, it simply shut down, and for a second he couldn
’
t see, couldn
’
t hear, couldn
’
t think. Then the violent reality came rushing back.

The loose shirt he had been wearing for the past three days was so tattered and flimsy that it did nothing to protect him from the wind. There was no control whatsoever
–
Jake was locked in a centrifugal spin. For a second, he looked up and saw the plane above, already nothing more than a dot in the sky, growing smaller and smaller as he catapulted toward the earth.

This was it.

There was no going back.

And the only thing separating him from certain death was five fingers wrapped like a vice around the backpack in his hand.

He arched his back, like he had been told to do, but it was half-hearted. The terror in his gut was so absolute, so overriding, that it was hard to concentrate on anything else. There was no parachute on his back. He almost fainted from the fear of that thought.

It took what felt like years, but he levelled out. This jump had been much higher
–
he found himself staring down at a never-ending sheet of white below. They were above cloud level. The sun shone against his back.

The pack was torn from his grip.

Sudden panic was insuppressible. Sure, there were still a couple of minutes to act before he hit the ground, but that did relatively little to calm his mind. His only hope of survival had just zoomed away from him. He could catch it, but it would take an almost impossible level of manoeuvrability.

Archfiend appeared in the sky. Jake only just managed to make out the shape of the falling slayer, through strained eyeballs and a hazy vision. The figure came rushing toward him, moving laterally. Amidst the chaos, he spotted the backpack below, spiralling and twisting away.

Time was now moving too fast to feel fear. He could only act.

The backpack was falling just a little faster than he was, with less surface area to slow it down. He arched in the air until he was almost vertical, fighting to remain in control. One slight lapse in concentration, and he would start spinning again. He locked his arms against the side of his body, replicating a dart. He had never tried this before.

It worked. Slowly, the backpack grew closer. Archfiend was now gone from his peripheral vision, and he didn
’
t have time to keep tabs on the monster. He reached out, battling against the wind
…

…
and plucked the pack out of the air.

As soon as he had a hold, he gripped so forcefully that his knuckles turned white. There was no way he was letting go this time.

Something crashed into him. Subconsciously, he knew it was Archfiend, but there was no time to react. The impact was phenomenal. A barrage of pain swamped him. He spun away, twisting and turning in the air. But he was possessed with a fiery determination. It didn
’
t matter how much agony he was in: his grip was not slipping.

Somehow, with his vision doing cartwheels, he kept the pack in his grasp.

He stabilised again, steadying out into a controlled freefall. The clouds came rushing up. Suddenly, he was enveloped in a vast mass of grey. His visibility disappeared. Raindrops lashed against his body like razor-sharp needles. The stinging lasted a couple of seconds, before subsiding as he passed through the cloud cover and came out over the skyline of Washington D.C.

Jake moved with the desperation of someone with their life on the line. He deliberately de-arched, and instantly lost control of his body position. Now, though, he could move around. The world spun like mad. He twisted in the air and yanked the backpack down on one shoulder, then reached up with the other arm and punched outwards. His fist shot through the other strap. Now, the pack was on his back.

It would be impossible to get into the leg straps, and the ground was approaching fast. He was definitely under two thousand feet by now. He arched once more, slowly emerging out of the tumble, disoriented. Then he reached up and tugged the straps so tight that they constricted the blood flow to his arms. If he was going to survive this, the pack had to be snug. For one final measure, he clipped the chest strap together.

Here goes nothing,
he thought.

He ripped the pilot chute free.

The parachute took a moment to respond. It whisked out of the bag and caught the air and expanded above his head, just as it had done in Iquitos. But there was a sudden, searing pain in his calf. He looked down.

Archfiend was clutching onto his leg.

Just as Jake registered the sight, the deceleration of the parachute opening jerked him to a halt. His arms almost tore out of their sockets, as the brunt of the force was applied to his shoulders, with no leg straps to take the impact. But he remained in the harness, dangling freely.

Archfiend
’
s grip slipped. The monster ripped Jake
’
s pant leg and fell, back-first. Jake had opened his parachute just in time. Another couple of seconds of freefall, and he would have impacted the ground.

Even from five hundred feet up, Jake heard the
thump
of Archfiend hitting the rooftop below. It was a grisly noise.

Now under control, he tucked his legs up and slipped them into the leg straps. The harness was loose, but it would hold. It gave him the flexibility to steer.

It only took thirty seconds to coast down to the building Archfiend had hit. Throughout the descent, he never let his eyes wander from Archfiend
’
s motionless body. There was no sign of life.

As Jake came in, he pulled down hard on both straps, just as he had done before, but this time there was more than enough room to land. He felt the parachute flare. The roof dipped down within reach. He touched down smoothly on both feet.

Archfiend was dead. That much was clear. The concrete surrounding his limp body had jagged cracks running through it, splintered from the force of the impact. His eyes were closed and his limbs were splayed in all directions.

Jake shivered involuntarily. He was numb from overstimulation of the senses, but even he could sense the magnitude of Archfiend
’
s demise. It was over.

He turned his back and strode to the edge of the rooftop. With a pang of realisation, he knew where he was.

From the south-east corner of the building he had landed on, he looked out over the South Lawn of the White House. It was a flat expanse of perfectly trimmed grass, surrounded on either side by a dense cluster of trees. Behind it lay an empty oval almost three times the size of the South Lawn. He recognised it as the Ellipse, a fifty-two acre stretch of land that dwarfed everything in sight and made the White House look like nothing more than a child
’
s toy. The building itself shone in the dawn sky.

Jake was standing on the rooftop of a sprawling labyrinth of a building. The roof was multi-layered; there was no single place where it was flat. Rather, it was home to interspersed white columns amongst the raised sections, complete with windows and sloping brick walls. The design of the rooftop was a mess.

There was a sudden, incessant buzzing against his leg. He once again drew out the satellite phone and answered it, gazing out over the skyline.

“
Hey, dad,
”
he said.

“
My god!
”
Mark cried through the speaker.
“
You
’
re alive!
”

“
Yeah, I
’
m okay. I managed to get the parachute on my back. Bloody close though. I
’
m on the rooftop of some building overlooking the White House.
”

“
I think I see you. That
’
s the Old Executive Office Building. You
’
re in a good position to keep watch. Stay there! If you see
anything
out of the ordinary, you tell me right away, you hear me?
”

“
Okay.
”

“
What about Archfiend, Jake?
”

“
He
’
s dead.
”

A voice from behind said,
“
Are you sure about that?
”

Jake dropped the phone and spun reflexively, at the same time tugging his pistol free. The gun was his last remaining option. He had no Snowdog, no equipment. It was a miracle he had anything at all to defend himself with.

Archfiend was on his feet, sprinting for him. Jake raised the barrel and fired one shot. It was all he had time for. The bullet hit Archfiend in the shoulder, who visibly recoiled, but other than that it did little to harm him. Two more steps, and he ripped the pistol from Jake
’
s hands and tossed it over the edge of the roof, to the road four storeys below.

Jake saw a fist flying at him. He ducked low and rolled across the rooftop, away from the punch
’
s trajectory. The air above his head whistled from the power behind the strike. If Archfiend had connected, he would probably be dead. He followed through with the roll, tumbling over his shoulder and springing up, so that now they were facing each other off along the edge of the rooftop.

“
How do you rate that performance?
”
Archfiend said, taking a mocking bow.
“
For a moment there, I almost convinced myself I was dead.
”

“
You can
’
t have
…”

“
It
’
s going to take a bit more than
that
to kill me, Jakey boy. I
’
m the original. The first slayer. Ground zero. Nobody understands how powerful I am. Nobody will ever kill me: not you, or any of your friends. You
’
re all helpless. Pawns in a game.
”

“
I
’
m not dead yet,
”
Jake spat.

“
Because I want you alive, you idiot.
”

“
Why?
”
Jake said, perplexed.
“
Why all the games? You
’
ve been playing with us since the Amazon.
”

“
Because I want you to see this.
”

“
See what?
”

Archfiend drew a small grey remote out of his jacket pocket. It featured a single black button. The device looked tiny in his clawed hands.

“
This,
”
he said, and tapped the button with a single, bony claw.

It began with a precursor; a deep rumbling under the ground. Jake felt the building beneath his feet vibrate, tremble on its foundations. His bones rattled. There was a noise
–
similar to the demolition of the skyscraper in Iquitos. An all-encompassing roar that came from everywhere at once. He braced, expecting the roof to drop away underneath him.

Then he turned and looked out across the horizon, and saw that the noise was coming from somewhere in the distance.

A second later, the Ellipse caved in.

The sight was awe-inspiring. An expanse of grass the size of more than fourty football fields simply fell away. Archfiend had triggered a series of underground explosions large enough to level the entire park. The kilotonnes of displaced dirt seemed to collapse in slow motion, due to the sheer size of the blast radius. When they finally came to rest, a crater larger than anything Jake had ever seen in his life lay in place of the Ellipse.

Slayers began to emerge from the smouldering dirt.

Jake
’
s mouth dropped open in shock.

The activity emerged first from the centre of the crater. A slow trickling of white dots pushed up from out of the ground, claws first. He imagined an underground cavern, so huge that it could hold three thousand slayers, all deprived of food, waiting for the moment the roof would come down and they could begin their ascent to the surface. An entire city of food was lying in wait.

There were already at least a thousand above ground. They clawed themselves out quickly enough. As Jake watched, even more came scrabbling out. The rippling wave began to spread outwards, toward the perimeter of the crater. It would take them a few minutes to reach flat ground.

The military won
’
t stand a chance,
Jake thought.

Nothing anyone could do would even come close to putting a dent in the army that was about to engulf Washington.

Or so he thought.

A droning from above his head began to escalate in volume. He hadn
’
t noticed it before, too transfixed by the chaos unfolding below. But now it grew closer and closer until the noise was on top of him. He looked up.

An aeroplane roared overhead, missing the rooftop by a tiny margin. Jake ducked as it shot over him. He saw it was the Bombardier. The jet careered down toward the crater, skimming just above the trees surrounding what had once been the Ellipse. It continued to descend, moving at six hundred kilometres an hour.

The plane slammed into the slayer horde.

It landed on the very edge of the main pack. Jake watched as the wreck skidded along, pulverising hundreds under its bulk.

It exploded with colossal fury.

Jake had no idea what caused the blast. It definitely wasn
’
t the fuel tank. No amount of fuel could detonate so spectacularly. A wave of fire expanded in all directions along the dirt, engulfing the majority of the horde. Bodies were thrown skyward. The blast consumed the majority of slayers within the pit. Stragglers that had sprinted ahead shrieked and roared in an attempt to escape the heat.

Jake fell to his knees, stunned.

Beside him, Archfiend stood rigid.

The two observed the scene of devastation before them.

“
Dad
…”
Jake whispered, and let out a sob.

He closed his eyes. Zoe. Crank. Thorn. Felix. His dad. They were all dead. He didn
’
t care if Archfiend killed him now. There was nothing left. It would be preferable to having to live with what had just happened.

“
Move!
”

Someone had yelled; someone far away. The call was nothing more than a faint blip, but Jake picked it up on the edge of his hearing. He opened his eyes, and that was when he saw them.

There were five parachute canopies swaying in the sky above. His mind flashed back to the stockpile of chutes he had seen in between the two seats. He put two and two together.

The plane had been empty.

That was all he needed to know. He rose and turned to face Archfiend. The beast
had seen the canopies too.

They charged at each other.

Archfiend was faster. Jake raised his arms in surprise, but it was more of a flinch than a defensive manoeuvre. Archfiend took advantage and drove a shoulder into Jake
’
s stomach and lifted him up off his feet, just as Jake had done in the cockpit of the Bombardier, and he found himself flying backwards with one arm wrapped around Archfiend
’
s neck, a powerful headlock, but far, far too late.

They both passed over the edge of the rooftop.

They both plummeted off the building.

There was a moment of sheer vertigo as Jake looked out and saw windows flashing past.

This is it,
he thought.
Game over.

They fell for more than three seconds, and then there was a tremendous impact, sharp and brutal and hot, unlike any collision Jake had ever felt in his life, and then there was
…

…
nothing.