Project Maigo(83)

Then through his skull and the brain trapped beneath.

Gordon staggered to a stop, looking confused. He knew something fundamentally wrong had occurred to his body, but he didn’t know what. Then he went cross-eyed and saw the arrow.

This is it, Hawkins thought, slipping back behind the tree. He carefully put the bow down and reached into his pocket. When he found what he was looking for, he peeked back at Gordon and felt his hope shrivel away like a Shrinky Dink in the oven.

Gordon yanked the arrow from his head, looked at it curiously and dropped it. He still looked a little stunned, but he was also scanning the trees. Hawkins slipped behind cover, waited a beat and peeked around the tree again.

Gordon was gone.

“Hello there,” said the baritone voice, close enough to feel in his chest.

Hawkins whirled around to find the mammoth Gordon standing above him with a wicked sharp-toothed grin. Hawkins grabbed the bow and tried to scramble back, but he tripped over the tree’s roots.

Gordon reached out.

Lilly descended with a shriek.

She landed on Gordon’s arm and clung to it, her claws digging in deeply. Before the giant man-thing could react, she swiped her razor-sharp talons across his face twice and leapt away. Gordon roared and swung at her, but she was already up the tree, shouting for Hawkins to run.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Hawkins got to his feet, unslung his shotgun and leveled it at Gordon’s face. The Kaiju-man lowered his gaze back to Hawkins and sneered. “I’m going to eat you.”

Hawkins knew that Hudson might say something like ‘Eat this,’ but he lacked the man’s sense of humor. He just pulled the trigger, sending a cloud of 12 gauge into Gordon’s face, filling the gaps between the criss-crossing lines left by Lilly’s claws.

He then pulled the trigger seven more times, staggering Gordon back. Despite having eight shells of shot embedded in his face, the traitorous general remained on his feet.

When the shotgun’s last report faded, Gordon took his hands away from his face and said, “I’m going to eat you slowly.”

“Shit,” Hawkins said, picking up the bow and preparing to run.

When Gordon took one mighty step forward, halving the distance between them, Hawkins knew he couldn’t escape. After surviving the unthinkable, he’d finally met the monster that would kill him.





43



All of the chaos around me—the sirens, gunfire, klaxons, screaming and crumbling buildings—cease to exist in a moment of sickening clarity. I’m a dead man. Not because of any immediate physical threat, but because if the events of today are seen as anything other than a stellar victory, the blame for all this is going to chase me down like a laser-guided missile. I feel faint as the blood drains from my face.

Watching the U.S. Capitol Building be hacked apart by two Kaiju can have that effect. At least, it can when you’re the guy who led them here.

Nemesis arrived at the north side of the Capitol just as Scylla reached the south. There was a brief roar-off, with both monsters hollering at each other like two angry inebriants on either side of a car. While the drunks might then run around the car to slap each other silly, the two Kaiju are going through the building. Nemesis makes short work of the Senate Chamber while Scylla flattens the House.

Unlike me, Endo seems to be taking great pleasure in the destruction, laughing lightly, an open mouthed smile frozen on his face. When the Kaiju reach the rotunda and lay into it with their giant claws, the dome exploding like a crushed egg, Endo turns to me. “It’s like Godzilla versus King Kong.”

A vague memory of a childhood movie returns. Godzilla on one side of a tall Japanese building. King Kong on the other. The monsters smashing through the building to get at each other. Endo is right. It’s like the monsters are doing an homage.

Endo holds a small pair of binoculars out to me. “So you can see.”

I’m not sure I want to see this any closer than I can right now, but I take the lenses and put them to my eyes just in time to witness the end of an iconic American building of untold historical and financial value.

With a swipe of Nemesis’s mighty arm, the Capitol Building ceases to exist. In her fervor to reach Scylla, Nemesis has left herself open to attack. While Nemesis is overextended, the hammerhead monster lunges forward. Its lower jaw drops open, revealing those horrible teeth—the longest and sharpest on any of the Kaiju. The massive jaws wrap around Nemesis’s forearm, and compress.

There is resistance for a moment, but the blade-like teeth slowly slip through the thick flesh. Nemesis doesn’t react at first, and I think the Kaiju must not have pain sensors in their armor or skin. But once the teeth are a few feet in, Nemesis throws her head back and roars in pain.