Project 731 (17 page)

25

When people back home asked Pixie Brearley where she lived in Los Angeles, she always replied, “On Sunset,” and watched as people were either impressed or afraid. The reaction depended on what they knew about Hollywood’s infamous Sunset Strip. It was a haven for actors looking for cheap rent at the heart of tinsel town. It was also populated by a large number of seedy elements, from drug dealers to porn actors to general freaks of nature that would make her conservative parents pass out. But it was where a number of stars got their start.

It also was a good eighteen miles away; a thirty minute drive without traffic, and there was
always
traffic. Brearley silenced her alarm clock and stared at the ceiling. She had two auditions today, one for a grocery store commercial she would probably get, and one for a sitcom that she wouldn’t. She had a face that got her into auditions, but there was something—her voice, delivery, mannerisms, who knew?—that kept her from landing the big roles. This ever-present dichotomy depressed her. She was always on the cusp of having a career. A real career.

She knew she shouldn’t complain. She got enough work to pay the bills. But it really just felt like a tease. Like if the Church had asked Michelangelo to do a comic strip instead of the Sistine Chapel. Sure, she might not be on the same level as a Michelangelo, but she had the potential. Or, at least, she believed she did. “Just like every other asshole in this town,” she said to herself, sitting up in bed.

It was 6:00 am. The sun was rising, but her apartment building was still cast in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains rising up behind Montrose. The small town, technically a part of the much larger Glendale, was on the fringe of Los Angeles, but it had a small-town feel. It let her be close enough to work, without having to deal with the stifling inner-city life other wannabe actors seemed to enjoy.

Maybe that’s my problem
, she thought,
I need more angst
.

She stood and stretched, thinking she needed to get back to taking Yoga, but it was such a cliché LA thing to do, it drove her nuts. She wanted all the glory Los Angeles had to offer, without losing her Maine sensibilities.

That’s probably the real issue. I’m not ditsy enough
.

She turned to the chest-high bedroom window that stretched from one end of the room to the other and looked at the view. Or rather, the lack of view. Despite living quite close to the base of the San Gabriel Mountains, the grayish-brown smog stuck in the valley completely erased the surrounding landscape. Out the windows at the front of her apartment, she had an equally non-existent, stunning view of downtown Los Angeles. But she really only saw the mountains and the city from her apartment on the few days a year it actually rained. While the rest of Los Angeles went ballistic over a quarter inch of rain, she just enjoyed the views and the ability to see more than a hundred feet. Right now, the towering mountains were vague silhouettes, backlit by the rising sun.

Something about the light held her interest. While she rubbed the crust from her eyes, she watched the sunlight shift about through the haze, like when someone walks in front of a light, breaking it up with a mobile shadow. But on a grand scale. That shadow loomed larger. Menacing. Her thoughts immediately shifted to the Kaiju known as Nemesis. She had been safe in Los Angeles during both of the creature’s prior appearances, and the West Coast had been totally unaffected by the monster, or by the five others that had smashed a path of destruction around the world. Los Angeles had earthquakes, violent wind storms, brush fires and lung-burning smog, but
not
Kaiju. Despite that, she paid special attention to the monster, because its origins in Maine were only an hour away from her childhood home in Mechanic Falls.

The shadowy shape warbled through the view, almost vibrating, and then, it quickly shrank away to nothing. She rubbed her eyes, fixed on the shadowy mountain, but she could see nothing other than the blank slate of gray light.

Her phone chimed, prodding her onward toward her day. Every part of her morning was programmed into the phone as a series of reminders. Otherwise, she languished in the shower, or ate too slowly, or forgot to iron her clothes...and without fail, she’d show up late to an audition, which was the quickest way to lose the part, unless your last name was Lawrence or Johansen.
Do they even have to audition?

She picked up the phone and headed for the bathroom. Normally, she’d hit the exercise bike first, then eat, then shower, but today’s early audition meant skipping all that and eating an energy bar on the way. In the bathroom, she shed her clothing, turned the shower to scalding hot and waited for the steam to start rising. While LA, to her, was hot all year long, especially now in the summer, she still hadn’t broken the habit of taking a hot shower.

Steam curled up over the shower curtain, and she pulled it open. She put one foot in the shower and stopped.

Was the ground shaking?

Another earthquake? She stood still, attuning her body to the floor beneath her feet. She could take a few steps back and be in the doorway, a not bad place to take cover during a bad earthquake, but she was on the second floor. If a bad quake hit, she’d feel better being outside. But here she was, buck naked and living next door to a guy she called ‘Dirty Phil,’ partly because he was a grubby kind of guy, but also because he was a leering perv. If she had to run outside because of an earthquake, she was going to do it fully clothed.

The shaking returned, rumbling steadily under her feet. She’d felt several quakes since moving to LA ten years prior, but none felt like this. They normally came in waves, lifting up and then sliding away. This was constant.

Increasing.

Maybe the wave is still coming?
she thought. If so, it was going to be huge.

She yanked her foot out of the shower, bolted into the bedroom and reached for her clothes. The shorts went on first, commando style. She started to pull the tank top over her head, but she turned to leave. She could dress while running. But as she neared the door, a loud crash pulled her eyes toward the window.

I’m too late
, she thought, turning, muscles coiling in preparation to run through the living room, out the front door and down the steps to the palm tree-filled courtyard.

But what she saw outside the window locked her in place, not because standing still was a better idea, but because some primal part of her brain knew that running or not would have no bearing on how things played out. She finally understood the deer-in-headlights phenomenon that everyone in Maine talked about. She could see into the future. Her fate was set. She was going to die.

The creature outside her window, charging down the hill, through Montrose and on a trajectory that would take it to the more densely populated cities of Burbank, Glendale and Los Angeles beyond, was
not
Nemesis. But as it emerged through the haze, she could see some of Nemesis in it—the bright orange patches that could set cities on fire, and the overlapping plates of armor—but the comparison ended there. This...was a giant spider, with a wicked looking tail that whipped back and forth, shattering homes and lives. The creature itself was a hundred feet long, and nearly as wide thanks to its eight legs, but the tail added another hundred to its reach.

The worst thing about the monster wasn’t its appearance, massive size or shocking speed. It was that as it ran down the hillside, flattening everything in its path, it was also plucking people up—from where they stood outside, through building windows and out of cars—and cramming them into its mouth, gobbling them down. It was like its many eyes, limbs and tail were working in tandem to guide it forward and simultaneously feast on the smorgasbord of humanity. There were ten million people in Los Angeles county. If this thing was just here to eat...as Nemesis had done on its way to Boston, it could act like a lawn mower, carving a path of destruction up and down the valley, tearing people from every nook and cranny of the over-populated cities beyond Montrose.

All of this flitted through her senses and mind in the two seconds it took the Kaiju to close the distance. As the monstrous form reached her building, and plowed right through it, Brearley clutched her arms over her head and ducked. She wasn’t in a doorway. Wasn’t protected by anything other than her own hands.

But she survived.

A breeze tickled her arms, and she lifted them away from her head. The back wall of her bedroom still stood, though the window was cracked. But the side walls and the entire front of her apartment, along with most of the building, was crushed to the ground. She looked up at the spider Kaiju as it continued down the hill, lifted Dirty Phil in one of its long arms and shoved his screaming form into its gnawing mouth.

I’m alive!
she thought, and then she started forming a plan. She glanced left, looking to the car park, where her Toyota sat, unmolested.
I’ll head east
, she thought,
through the Angeles National Forest and keep going until I reach the East Coast. What are the odds that this would happen in Maine again?

She took one step to the dresser where she kept her keys and stopped. The world around her shifted. The apartment fell away. As nausea spread out through her body, she thought the second floor had collapsed beneath her. But when the whole world fell away, she knew that couldn’t be. She looked down at the fading landscape and saw a long pole, like the end of an elephant tusk, protruding out from her gut.

Realization came in time with her ear-shattering scream that would have landed her a starring role in a Hollywood slasher film. The tail had swung back as the Kaiju continued forward, punching a hole through her back and lifting her up and over the monster, pulling her down, into the creature’s gaping maw, which twitched and ground its previous victims like metal in a junkyard auto shredder. She was deposited in the jaws feet first, her mind exploding with pain, and then she was sent to merciful oblivion as the two mandibles shoved her in, jolting her body with a lethal dose of electricity once both made contact with her shoulders.

26

The butterflies in my stomach go Kaiju on me, tearing at my insides with ruthless ferocity, their razor blade wings slicing me into little
Yan Can Cook
chefs.
A little there. A little there. Done!
It’s not because I’m expected to place a bacteria bomb on the back of an extremely lethal Nemesis-spawned Tsuchi, it’s because we’re about to disembark a DARPA aircraft to meet our team, along with two of the men who raided the cabin, shot Joliet and would have killed them all—if not for the interference of Maigo, whose abilities are now out of the bag, for the team, and for the enemy. As is Lilly’s location. To heap even more insult after injury, Collins and I are now dressed in GOD uniforms.

“They’ll understand,” Collins says. She’s seated across from me, looking as good in a black, armored uniform as she does in everything else.

“We’ll see,” I say.

Maigo, despite her constant state of near-silent glum, is a calm person. I’m not expecting much of a reaction from her, but then, I’ve never seen her face-to-face with men who tried to kill her and the people she cares about. She killed eleven men. So, I suppose she’s really a wild card, which puts her in the same category as Lilly and Hawkins. While Joliet is the most rash of us, the normally cool-headed Hawkins has been holding this grudge for years. And while I can’t say I blame him, knowing that GOD’s experiments resulted in the deaths of his colleagues and friends, he might be quick on the draw. And then there is Lilly, who not only survived Island 731, but was born there, to a monster created by GOD. It wouldn’t surprise me if her very DNA was patented by the secret organization. Of all of them, she has the most reasons to see GOD taken down, not to mention the ability to make it happen. I’d love to see it happen, but right now we need GOD, their fancy flying machine and their weapons.

The X-35 sets down on the tarmac with nary a bump, the VTOL repulse engines blowing my mind. Where will we be in thirty years?

Probably dead.

Or fighting zombie robots.

One of the two.

“Let us go out first,” I say to Silhouette and Obsidian. “Smooth things over.”

“No argument here,” Silhouette says, and I give Collins a knowing smile. As badass as these guys are—and I’ve seen them in action—they’re in no rush to deal with...with who? Not Lilly. From what I understand, Lilly never really took part in the fight, a fact that must be eating her up. It’s Maigo they’re afraid of.

Collins and I stand at the back hatch. I dial Hawkins on our new Devine phone. He picks up on the second ring. “Who’s this?”

For a fraction of a second, I’m surprised by the tone, but then realize they haven’t heard from us since our last known location was pancaked by Nemesis, and this phone no doubt shows up as an unknown caller. “It’s me.”

“Hudson.” He sounds relieved. “Where are you?”

“Did you see the weird plane set down about three hundred feet from your Zoomb jet?” I ask.

“You mean the DARPA plane that Lilly is already on top of and we all have our weapons pointed at?”

I smile. “You guys are on the ball.”

“We try.”

“Well, when the hatch opens, it would be great if Lilly didn’t gut me.”

“That’s you?” he says. “Did you steal it? I know Woodstock is good, but a UFO?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” I say. “And before I open this door, I need your word that no one is going to get violent.”

“I don’t like the sound of this...”

“How’s Joliet?” I ask.

The question throws him, softening his tone. “She’ll live. But she’s going to be in the hospital for a few days.”

“Then all of our people made it out of Maine, okay?”

“Who’s in there with you, Jon?” Hawkins tone has shifted again.

“If I can work with Endo, you can work with these guys.” My patience starts to wear thin, but I remind myself that he doesn’t know about the Tsuchi threat to this area. “Just call Lilly back, and let’s talk this out face-to-face. We have bigger problems.”

The phone muffles for a moment, and I hear Hawkins whistle through his fingers and then shout something. There’s a gentle thump on the roof. “Okay,” he says. “She’s pulled back.”

“Coming out.” I look back to the cockpit. “You guys are horrible at making friends. You know that, right?”

Obsidian gives me a sort of half smile and presses a button. The back hatch slides open without a sound and settles on the tarmac. We’re on the southern end of the airport, where private jets are kept. Most of the small planes around us are gleaming white luxury planes, but the bright yellow Zoomb jet, sporting a logo on its tail and wings, shines like a beacon, despite the still rising sun just starting to peek over the distant mountains.

At the bottom of the ramp, the FC-P awaits, and they’re not happy. They are, I note, dressed for war—even Maigo, who is wearing our standard, night-op garb and armor, which isn’t as sophisticated as the gear Collins and I are wearing. Lilly is crouched, ready to pounce, but she doesn’t move. Hawkins is trying to look around me, into the X-35. But Maigo...

She steps around the others and hugs me, breaking the tension. I squeeze her back as best I can with all the armor between us. “You okay?” I say into her ear.

“I’m not hurt,” she says.

“That’s not what I mean.”

She leans back. Looks me in the eyes. “Been better...but I’ve been worse, too.”

Good perspective
, I think, and I smile. “That you have.”

“Hudson,” Hawkins says, but I hold up my hand before he can finish.

“First thing we all need to agree on is that sometimes, to do our job and protect the world from the kinds of threats the FC-P is charged with facing, we have to work with people we don’t like. Take Lilly for example—”

“Hey,” the cat-woman says, but smiles.

“And sometimes we have to work with people we loathe.” I acknowledge Endo for the first time and offer my hand. He shakes it, and I add, “Been a while, douche-breath. How’s the corporate espionage thing going?”

“Where’s my sister?” he asks.

“And there is the problem,” I say. “Your former employers, or faux employers, whatever you call them, currently have possession of Alessi and Woodstock. I’m going to assume you’re all bright enough to understand the position that puts us in.” When no one responds with anything more dramatic than Endo’s twitching lip, I continue. “What do you know about Lompoc?”

“Nemesis is alive,” Maigo says quickly, and with a trace of excitement.

“And you’re lucky to be,” Hawkins adds. “Nemesis did a number on Lompoc and the GOD facility.”

They don’t know.

“Well, you’re right and you’re wrong,” I say. “Nemesis destroyed the GOD laboratory, but not Lompoc.”

Endo puts his hand on my arm, and I have to fight the urge to sock him in the nose. I manage to resist, mostly because he’d probably dodge the punch and then level me with a spinning kick of some kind. “What happened?”

“Short version—” I start to say, but I’m cut short by what sounds like an air-raid siren. I’m about to ask what it means when I remember that I’m the one who picked it out. The sirens, installed in all major coastal cities, warns of an impending Kaiju attack. “—that.”

“What is it?” Hawkins asks.

Collins lifts the Devine phone to her ear, saying, “A Tsuchi,” before turning away, listening to the voice on the other end.

“I thought the Tsuchi were little,” Lilly says, and then she reveals why hers and Buddy’s relationship is the most strained at the FC-P. “Like a stupid dog.”

“They are. Until they find a living Kaiju and do their thing to it.”

“The Tsuchi implanted young into Nemesis?” Hawkins asks, jaw slack.

“And now we have Nemi-Tsuchi running amok. Yeah. Two of them. One here in LA and one headed east, whereabouts currently unknown. When I first saw them, they were the size of elephants, but I think we should assume they’re growing.”

“And fast,” Hawkins adds. “As fast as Nemesis grew, the Tsuchi are faster. As long as they have the raw material to fuel it, they could be as big as Nemesis in a day.”

“What raw material?” Lilly asks, her suspicious tone suggesting she’s already figured it out.

“People.” Maigo looks haunted as she speaks the words, no doubt recalling her own feeding frenzy.

“Lots of them,” Collins says, turning back to the group. “The Tsuchi is making a beeline through Burbank toward downtown, eating everyone it comes across on the way, and here, that’s a lot of people, even this early.”

Unlike Nemesis, the Tsuchi won’t have to go far to find more people to eat. There are enough to keep it busy for a long time. And if it can grow as fast as Hawkins thinks, it’s not going to have any trouble finding enough food to fuel its Kaiju growth.

“Police put it at two-hundred-feet long, with a hundred of that being tail.” Collins waits, the phone still at her ear.

“Have emergency responders, local, the National Guard and FEMA—everyone—filling the gaps behind it, but never, and I mean never, crossing its path. Any emergency vehicles already in its path should clear the area and move to the communities already affected. Triage protocols.” Collins is about to relay the orders, but I stop her with, “And get me every military aircraft available. I want rings around this city thicker than Saturn’s. But under no circumstances are they to engage until the order is given.”

“Why not?” Hawkins asks, as Collins relays my orders.

“Because,” I say, “We might have a way to kill it.” I glance at Maigo. “And Nemesis.”

She tries to hide her frown, but fails. Endo does even worse, but says nothing. I reach out for Maigo’s hand, lock her fingers in mine and squeeze, leading her into the X-35, and toward our salvation, or our doom.

Possibly both.