Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller) (11 page)

16

It’s
ten minutes before I work up the courage to move, and even then it’s just to scratch an itch on the tip of my nose that has been growing in intensity since I climbed into the morgue’s body cooler. The power is out, so I’m not being chilled, but the smell grows worse by the minute, despite me being the only body inside. Of course, the odor could be coming from one of the neighboring units. My next door neighbor is Collins, but what do the other twenty-odd drawers hold?

I decide I don’t need to know. Between the bits of human flesh scattered in the forest, the field of gnawed bodies and that...thing, I’ve seen enough nightmare material for a lifetime.

But as hard as I try, I can’t get the image of the creature out of my mind. I got a clear view of it when it chased us inside the building. At least fifteen feet tall, while on all fours. Maybe twice that if it stood on its hind legs.
Its
rough skin, which would probably be better described as armor, was a mix of black and dark gray, perfect nighttime camouflage, if you ignore the twenty-something glowing orange membranes lining the sides of its neck and ribs, and stretching down the center of its torso. And the face—all angles and full of rage, but somehow feminine.
And the eyes...
The eyes looked human.
Deep brown.
The kind of eyes romantics write songs about.

Despite its size, the thing was fast. It moved with speed and grace, like a cat. A long tail that looked more like a weapon than a biological requirement snapped around the creature like an angry snake. I didn’t get a good look at its back, but I think there were overlapping shells, like an armadillo’s carapace, but thicker and covered with what looked like hardened shark fins.

I would love to be able to say it was like something I’ve seen before—a bear, a tiger, a fucking dragon even, but it was like nothing I’ve seen before. It wasn’t human.
Wasn’t animal.

What then?

Alien?

What else could it be?

A chuckle escapes from my mouth as I’m struck by a realization. I clamp my hand over my mouth and wait to be devoured. Nothing happens.

I hear Collins’s drawer slide open.

A moment later, my square metal door opens and Collins is looking down at me. “You just figure out a joke or something?” She pulls out the long metal drawer.

I swing my legs around and sit up.
“Actually, yeah.
This case is now officially my jurisdiction, which means the full resources of the DHS are at my disposal.”

“Assuming anyone believes you,” she says.

“There is plenty of evidence here.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But you saw it. Who’s going to believe us?”

The answer that comes to mind makes me frown. “Sooner or later, that thing is going to find civilization. When that happens—”

“We can’t let that happen,” Collins says, her sunset eyes burning with determination.

I’m not sure exactly how we can stop it—my personal armament doesn’t include Hellfire missiles—but I agree. I pull out my cell phone. No signal. “Let’s get to higher ground.”

As we head for the exit, I glance right and see the large open fridge. There’s a body in there. I saw it when we ran into the morgue. I slow and alter course. It’s a woman. She has brown hair pulled back in a way that makes me think she’s mid-thirties, but there’s no way to be sure. Her face is missing. She’s wearing professional clothes and a lab coat stained dark brown by her own blood. One of her legs looks gnawed on, and there’s a hole through her chest.

I stop at the door, looking at the poor woman. Then my cop side kicks in. Who are you? It doesn’t take me long to find a pair of vinyl gloves. I pull them on and carefully inspect the body while doing my best not to breathe through my nose.

Collins steps past me, deeper into the freezer, while I pick the woman’s pockets. No money. No wallet. No I.D. “I’ve got nothing.”

“Hudson,” she says like I’ve just uttered the most ridiculous words a human being has ever conjured. “Have you seen this?”

I look up. My legs flex and I spring up like a stunned jack-in-the-box. I want to curse. Or run. Or scream. But all I can do is look.

The chrome side-wall across from the dead woman is covered in text. I can’t read a word of it, but I recognize the ink as blood.
Most likely the woman’s blood.
“You don’t think she—”

“No,” Collins says. “There’s too much. She’d have died while writing it.”

While most of the text is smeared and illegible, there is one word, at the top, that is larger than the rest.

Νέμεσις

“Any ideas?”
Collins asks.

I shake my head, no, but say, “Greek maybe. Get a picture. We need to go.”

Collins uses her
iPhone
to snap several photos of the bloody text. After quickly reviewing the photos she says, “Good.”

There’s no sign of the creature other than the destruction it left in its wake. We’re two stories underground, yet I see sunlight at the end of the hall. Must be how it got out, I think. It takes us a minute to find a second staircase that hasn’t been destroyed, but once we do, our ascent to the building’s third floor (five stories up) is slowed only by our own exhaustion. We’re both walking by the time we reach the top of the stairs.

Leaning against the wall, propped up by my left forearm, I fish into my pocket and find my phone. No bars.

Shit.

When I put the phone away, Collins holds hers out to me.
“Time to join the modern world.”
I take the phone and look at the bright display. Three bars.

Without another word, I dial. The call is answered on the second ring.

“Ashley, hey!” says Ted Watson. I can’t see him, but I know he’s sitting behind his computer-laden desk, Mountain Dew in hand or nearby, surrounded by monitor screens that can hold his attention far easier than the ocean view just beyond them. Before I can get a word in, he keeps talking. “How’d it go with Jon this morning? He’s a little rough around the edges, but I thought you two might hit it off. I mean, I’m no match-maker. Bad luck with those kinds of things, actually. My parents got divorced.
Twice each.
And—oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I know that’s a touchy subject.”

I hear him making breathy noises at himself. It’s not uncommon for him to get flustered by his inability to stop talking. Takes work to stop
himself
sometimes. He frequently has to stick his foot in his mouth after he’s insulted someone. Luckily for him, and this is probably why we’re pals, my feathers are hard to ruffle.

“Sorry, Ash,” he says, sounding like a normal person. “What did you call for?”

“You need to lay off the caffeine, Watson,” I say.

“H—Hudson?”
He sounds confused for just a moment,
then
starts to get excited again.
“No way!
You didn’t—”

“Ted, listen,” I say loudly. I hardly ever interrupt his rants. That I did
tells
him this isn’t a social call.

“Did you find something?” He asks. “Is Sasquatch—”

“If this were Sasquatch, I’d be thrilled. We’ve got twenty to thirty dead.”

“People?”

“Yes, Ted.
People.”

“Who killed them?”

“Not who.
What.”

That takes all of the talk out of him and gives me time to lay out the entire story, from our visit to the Johnsons’, to the gun-toting goon squad, to the orange-glowing creature. I finish by recalling the bloody text.

“Any way I can get a look at the text?” he asks. All of the Ted Watson mania is gone. He’s either gone pale with fright or realizes the gravity of the situation.

“Hold on,” I say. Despite not owning a newfangled phone, we usually have a lot of time to kill in the office and Watson lets me play Angry Birds on his phone. I open the Web browser, connect to the DHS webmail server and log in. “Almost there,” I say. After attaching several different images to the blank e-mail, I hit send.
“On the way.
Included a photo of one of the shooters.
I.D. him if you can, but the creature is our biggest problem.”

“Gotcha,” he says.

“Put Coop on.”

“Hudson,” Cooper says in greeting as she takes the phone.

“You heard?”

“Everything.”

Conversations with Cooper are barebones and to the point. After speaking with Watson, her brevity is refreshing.

“You’re sure this is an FC-P threat?”

“Wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t.”

“Understood.
Protocol says I need to send a threat assessment to Deputy Secretary Stephens; shall I do that?”

I inwardly cringe at the idea of involving DHS bureaucracy in this, but not following protocol will only give them a reason to pull me, once they realize a huge wad of shit is airborne and en route toward the fan. “Yes. The threat is imminent and could affect thousands.”

“Thousands?”

It’s a big number, I know, but if this thing got loose in a downtown somewhere… I shake my head. “Better to overestimate than underestimate it.”

“Agreed.”

“Coop,” I say, “I need you to get in touch with Maine authorities.
Local
P.D.
within a thirty mile radius of
Willowdale
.
State Police.
Any National Guard in the area.
We’re going to need some heavy hitters. SWAT.
Maybe more.
Have them carrying high caliber rounds.”

“Where do you want them?” she asks.

“I don’t know yet. Just have them on standby.”

“Will do.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Put Watson back on.”

“Hey,” Watson says. He sounds out of breath.

“Can you trace this phone’s GPS?”

“Hold on.” I hear his keyboard clacking.
“Yeah, got you.”

“Got a satellite view?”

“Archived, yeah.”

“What do you see?”

“Trees,” he says.
“Lots of trees.
Wait, you’re not far from the cabin.”

“How old are the images?” I ask.

“Timestamps say they’re just a few months old.”

Damnit
, that means that whoever is running this place has some serious resources. “Can you get some real time satellite coverage?”

“Going to take some time.
Need approval.
Might be hard to get.”

“Why’s that?” I ask, growing annoyed, but then I realize why. FC-P is requesting a spy satellite be repositioned over the state of Maine to track a giant man-eating monster. This is going to blow up in our faces until the bodies start piling up. “Put Coop back on.”