Island 731

49.

At first, the plan worked great. Preoccupied by the deadly swarms, the soldiers paid them no attention, and Bray’s bell kept the chimeras from targeting their small group. But the flamethrowers were turning the tide against the airborne monsters and for every man that fell to a draco-snake bite, five of the small creatures were either cut down by the constant 9mm bullet spray or were set on fire. It was the former that slowed their progress.

“Ahh!” Bray shouted. He kept running, but now limped.

Hawkins slowed to help him. “You’re hit?”

“In the calf,” Bray said, wincing with every step. “But I can still move.”

As more and more chimeras poured from the jungle to their left, the soldiers to their right advanced. And while the bell still worked its magic, the mercenaries would soon notice their chaotic charge through the clearing. And when that happened, it wouldn’t be stray bullets coming their way, it would be a barrage. There was no choice but to head for Kaiju, Bennett, and the children.

Hawkins veered left toward the bunker. A palm tree to his right took a round. He glanced back at the baseball-size indentation in the bark. If the tree hadn’t been there, it would have struck his head. He glanced toward the soldiers and saw two of them tracking their dash. “Duck!”

Hawkins obeyed his own command just as a three-round burst rang out and zinged over his head. He angled farther left, putting more trees and distance between them and the soldiers. More bullets shattered the trees around them as the two soldiers switched to full automatic and held down the triggers. Hawkins covered his head with his hands as he crouch-ran. He glanced up for just a moment and saw movement ahead, but he didn’t slow. Couldn’t. He just kept his head down and did his best not to collide with a palm trunk.

He glanced back and saw the others still with him, running low. The incoming gunfire had stopped, too. He could still see the soldiers, but they were dealing with a swarm of seagulls. The frenzied birds never stopped attacking. Even when the sky filled with the feathers of the dead, they continued fighting.

Hawkins realized why. Over the chop of helicopters, the crack of gunfire, and the keening wail of dying people and animals, there was a constant pulse, pulse, pulse. Bennett had either hit some kind of emergency button that repeated the signal around the island, or he was pressing his finger down on that remote.

No longer fearing a bullet to the side of the head, Hawkins stood and resumed his run. A shriek nearly toppled him over. He looked ahead and saw a second battle.

Kaiju was there. Roaring and twisting. The monster swung out with its arms and tail, fighting a far more agile enemy. There were three of them—the children—leaping around, striking with their small claws. One looked familiar. Lilly, the panther-girl. Another had a more reptilian body with a crocodilian snout. The third was mammalian, but Hawkins couldn’t ID any specific species on account of the puffy, black hair.

Kam said there were five, Hawkins remembered. And then he saw them. Two small, limp bodies lay in a patch of grass. Had the litter attacked? Or had Bennett ordered Kaiju to kill them?

The reptilian chimera was suddenly caught in Kaiju’s oversize aye-aye hand, which, even lacking its long finger, was still deadly. The small creature let out a high-pitched scream before it was silenced with a crack. Lilly and the other chimera cried out and pressed the attack. Lilly clamped on to Kaiju’s arm with her catlike teeth. The behemoth roared in pain, shaking its arm, and finally swiped Lilly and sent her flying.

Hawkins had seen enough. He looked back to ask Drake for his knife when a large rock went soaring over his head. Joliet grunted from the effort.

The hurled stone collided with the side of Kaiju’s head. The monster grunted and turned to face them as it batted the puffy-haired chimera away with its tail. Kaiju stared at them, heaving from exertion. Blood dripped from its arm where Lilly had bitten down, but the creature didn’t attack.

Bennett peeked out from behind the trunk of a palm tree. He’d been hiding from the fight between mother and children. He looked them over, paying attention to their hands. He’s looking for weapons, Hawkins thought.

Bennett grinned and then stepped out into the open, but much of his maniacal confidence had leeched away. He flinched with each shout, gunshot, and explosion.

“Got more than you bargained for?” Hawkins asked. He didn’t think taunting Bennett was wise, but he didn’t see how it could hurt.

Bennett glanced toward the battle. Draco-snakes flew past overhead, converging with the conflagration, but the soldiers were still winning, pushing the fight closer by the second. “Exciting, isn’t it? Just wait until we reach the mainland. We will have such fun!”

Hawkins noticed a backpack over Bennett’s shoulder and remembered the bottle labeled “active” he’d taken from the lab. If he had just one bottle of water tainted with those fast-growing chimeric blastocysts, the North American continent would be swarmed. The only thing that would save the rest of the world were the oceans and Panama Canal. If the creatures survived the cold, they might even be able to cross the Arctic ice to Greenland, Europe, and Russia. They would eventually burn through their food supply, overpopulate the northern hemisphere, and die out. Humanity might survive, but every country accessible by land or ice would be scoured clean.

Bennett has to be stopped, Hawkins thought.

Suddenly, the fuzzy chimera leapt from the ground, reaching its claws toward Kaiju’s eyes. But the small chimera never made it. The monster opened its jaws, caught the smaller creature by the back of its neck, and bit down. Death was quick.

Was Kaiju killing the children quickly on purpose? Was it being merciful?

“No!” Joliet shouted, stepping forward. “They’re your children! Don’t you remember that?”

“Her children?” Bennett said. He turned to Kaiju. “Old girl, you’ve been keeping secrets.”

Hawkins saw Lilly stir in a patch of grass. Without a second thought, he ran to her and knelt down. Bennett was distracted for the moment.

He looked into the yellow eyes. She bared her teeth and hissed. Hawkins nearly retreated, but then her features softened and a slight smile formed. “You came,” she said.

“Sorry about what I said. About everything,” Hawkins whispered. “I didn’t understand.”

She looked into his eyes, squinting, and then nodded. “Okay.”

Hawkins reached down and picked the girl up. She was covered in dense but soft fur, black as night, but she had the body of a human five year old. Hawkins grunted as he lifted her. She was heavier than a human. The girl clung to him as he hustled back to the others. He handed Lilly toward Drake. Man and chimera-girl looked at each other, uncertain. But when she reached out for him, Drake took her, his muscles holding her weight better than Hawkins’s. In exchange, Hawkins took the knife.

“Please tell me you didn’t come here for them?” Bennett said. A bullet pinged off the cement by his foot, making him jump.

The battle was close; just one hundred feet away, separated by a thin smattering of palms and a shrinking army of chimeras. Hawkins noticed that no more draco-snakes were coming out of the jungle. The reinforcements had run out. Of course, neither side of the conflict knew that a third, far more overwhelming force would soon arrive. Hawkins glanced uphill. The spiders had yet to crest the top.

“Kam asked me to,” Hawkins said, but he didn’t speak to Bennett. He spoke to Kaiju. “You hid them from Bennett because you cared about them. And Kam cared about them. Called them brothers and sisters. Saving them was his last—”

“Kill them!” Bennett shouted.

Kaiju charged.

Hawkins turned to the others. “Get to the boat. I’ll meet you there!”

“Mark, no,” Joliet said.

“Bray, take her!”

Bray wrapped a big arm around Joliet’s waist and hoisted her up. Drake led the trio toward the jungle and ocean beyond, following a diagonal path away from Bennett, but closer to the fighting soldiers. Joliet kicked and screamed. Lilly just clung to Drake, staring back at Hawkins with sad eyes that revealed she believed she’d never see him again. When he saw her eyes widen with fear, he knew he’d watched them too long.

Hawkins was lifted from the ground, clutched around the ribs by Kaiju’s aye-aye hand. Despite the crushing pain, he managed to hang on to the butcher knife. With a shout, he brought the knife down and plunged it into the monster’s shoulder. The sharp blade slid through skin and muscle, three inches deep.

Kaiju let go of Hawkins, but it wasn’t all good news. The nine-foot-tall beast had lifted him up, nearly over its head. He fell hard to the ground at her feet. He struggled to stand, but was backhanded by the polar bear claw. The strike sprawled him to the ground and knocked the knife from his hand.

No chance of being the more aggressive predator, Hawkins thought as he struggled to his feet. Then again, Kaiju isn’t exactly being the most aggressive predator, either. He’d seen how quickly it’d slaughtered the soldiers in front of the gallery. Why was it taking it so long to kill a single man armed with just a knife?

The aye-aye hand found him again, this time hooking its four remaining claws into the skin of his back as it slammed him to the ground.

Kaiju roared and leaned in close. Its jaws opened wide enough to envelope and bite off Hawkins’s face. He squirmed for freedom, turning his head away from the open maw. But Kaiju never bit down. He could feel and smell the hot, rancid breath on the side of his face, but the attack had stalled.

“Son.”

Hawkins flinched at the sound of Kaiju’s voice. It had a deep rumble to it as he expected, but there was also a trace of femininity. He turned to face her.

“My son,” she said.

Hawkins wasn’t sure if she was asking a question or claiming him as her own. There were no inflections to her voice, just words. “Kamato,” he said, thinking she would recognize him by his full name.

“You say Kam,” she corrected. “Where son.”

Still no inflection, but Hawkins knew it was a question. Hawkins wasn’t sure how to answer that. Hell, any answer might end with him being crushed to death. And if he told the truth?

Kaiju picked him up off the ground and slammed him back down. He coughed and wheezed, trying to catch a breath against the force of her grip.

“Kill him!” Bennett shouted. The sounds of battle were painfully close. “We need to go!”

“Where,” Kaiju growled.

It was clear that if Hawkins didn’t answer, she’d kill him anyway. Not only was the truth his best chance at surviving, but she also deserved to know her son’s fate. “Dead.”

Kaiju’s grip tightened.

“How.”

Hawkins could barely breath, let alone speak. “Stabbed,” he wheezed. “Bennett. Bennett killed him.”

The pressure fell away as Kaiju let go. The three-foot quills on her back rattled and shook. With a snarl, she turned back toward Bennett.

“What are you doing?” Bennett shouted. “Kill him!”

Hawkins sat up, clutching his chest. “She knows. About Kam.”

Bennett looked mortified.

Kaiju took a step toward him.

He stepped away. “Kaiju. You know I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Kamato. He was my brother.”

“Not brother!” Kaiju shouted. “Son!”

The giant monster got just two steps into her charge when—pulse, pulse—she froze.

Hawkins eyed the small remote in Bennett’s hand. He was no longer pushing it continuously. The battle was all but over. In fact, some of the soldiers were now headed their way, weaving through the trees, aiming their weapons.

“Kaiju,” Bennett said. “It doesn’t matter whether or not you like what I’m telling you to do. It doesn’t matter if I just had you kill your children, or that I put a knife in Kam’s chest. All that matters is that you obey. Now, kill him.”

Pulse, pulse—

Hawkins put all of his strength into the throw. The blade glinted in the sun’s light, looking like an oblong strobe light as it crossed the distance. Hawkins had remembered the knife blade still tucked away in its sheath. Without a handle, it would have made a poor weapon choice against Kaiju. But against a man, at a distance, the blade worked just fine.

Bennett shouted in pain as the blade struck home. The blow hadn’t been as dramatic as Hawkins had hoped—the dull side struck Bennett’s hand—but the intended effect was the same: Bennett dropped the remote and never finished triggering the third pulse. The two-pulse burst effectively canceled the kill order and unleashed Kaiju.

Bennett scrambled for the remote at the same moment the beast he’d controlled for so long turned on him. Bennett must have realized he wouldn’t be able to reach the remote and trigger another two-pulse burst because he got to his feet with a scream and sprinted in the opposite direction.

Hawkins limped in slow pursuit, stopping when he reached the remote. He bent down and picked it up.

Kaiju roared as she chased Bennett through the jungle. He was fleet-footed and did an admirable job weaving in and out of the trees. But Kaiju slowly closed the distance like a cheetah pursuing a gazelle. It would be over in a few seconds.

Hawkins flipped the remote over and found a plastic indentation. The device slipped open, revealing two more red buttons. Neither was labeled, but he knew these were the buttons that would detonate the explosives in Kaiju’s and Kam’s bodies.

Bennett squealed like a wounded pig. Kaiju was upon him. He could see her claws sweeping back and forth, goring the smaller man.

No one should live like that, he thought. Kaiju had been born a monster, but part of her was still human. What she was, what she’d done, had to weigh on her. And now her son was dead. All that was left for her was killing. Hawkins offered a silent “sorry” and pushed both buttons.