Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Something was happening on the far side of the vehicle, but because his attention was fixed on the picture in his gun sight, Knight didn’t see what the others did: a figure had crawled out of the rear driver’s side window and was clambering onto the roof of the SUV. Queen saw it and so did Rook. The latter leaned over his fellow passengers and tried to aim his Desert Eagle up at the man on the roof, but before he could fire, two things happened almost simultaneously: Knight fired a burst from his carbine that shattered the front passenger window and filled the interior of the chasing vehicle with lead, and the figure on the roof coiled like a spring and then jumped.

The pursuing SUV abruptly veered right, evidently out of control, and ground against the side of the team’s vehicle. Just as quickly, it rebounded and careened to the left, going off the pavement to smash into the exterior of a building. The members of Chess Team barely noticed the demise of their pursuers however; their attention was consumed by the crunch of something heavy landing on the roof of their vehicle.

“We’ve got a stowaway!” Rook shouted.

Bishop reacted immediately by tapping the brakes. Everyone inside was hurled forward by the sudden deceleration, and King expected to see their unwanted passenger thrown from his perch like a stone from a catapult, but that didn’t happen. Instead, something crashed down on the windshield right in front of Bishop, but somehow, impossibly, it refused to be dislodged.

King stared at the outline of their attacker, splayed out on the other side of the glass, arms and legs stretched out, feet digging into the narrow seam between the hood and the windshield, and he understood how the man, seemingly in defiance of the laws of physics, had managed to hang on.

Man was perhaps the wrong word.

The thing clinging to the front of the SUV was human in the literal sense, but one look told King that this was no ordinary foot soldier of the Chinese mob. The head and unkempt hair were that of a Burmese youth, perhaps in his mid-twenties, but the arms and legs were grotesquely muscled, straining at the fabric of the man’s clothes. The torso was malformed, as if he had been taken apart and reassembled by someone who had only the vaguest grasp of human anatomy.

This was one of the monstrosities they had fought in Myanmar—a frankenstein—but unlike those, this one seemed to be a new-and-improved model.

The thing dropped its head low and peered into the interior of the SUV, swiveling its gaze back and forth, searching for something.

It was looking for Sasha.

It found her.

The thing released one of its clutching hands, drew back, and punched through the windshield. The blow would have broken a normal person’s hand, but this creature was in no way normal. The fist smashed out the upper corner of the glass, folding it over like a dog-eared page in a book. Just as quickly, it grasped the exposed metal of the Surf’s roof in both hands and then braced its feet against the hood as if getting ready to lift something.

That something was the SUV’s roof. With a torturous shriek, the metal skin of the Toyota began peeling back like the lid of a sardine can.

King brought his XM8 up and let lead fly. The already compromised windshield fractured into a web of cracks, and beyond it, the bullets tore into the monstrosity’s chest. Blood, erupting from the exit wounds and blown back by the wind, sprayed across the windshield, but the thing barely flinched from the wounds. Driven by rage and augmented by a stew of chemical enhancements, it shrugged off the lethal wounds like they were mosquito bites, and commenced giving the Surf a ragged sunroof.

Rook stabbed one of his Desert Eagles in the direction of the thing’s exposed head, but even as he pulled the trigger, unleashing a thunderclap of noise in the semi-enclosed space, the creature moved. It ducked out of the way, and then with a gymnast’s agility, vaulted from the hood, up and over the opening to land behind the gap, impacting the roof with such force that the vehicle bounced on its suspension.

For a moment, King thought the frankenstein had been thrown clear, but a moment later the shredding of the car resumed. He twisted around, trying to get a shot at the thing, but it stayed out of view, using the curl of torn metal like a shield. King knew the 5.56-millimeter ammunition from the XM8 would pass through the thin sheet like it was tissue paper, but so far the high-velocity rounds hadn’t done much to slow the monster down.

“Rook, blast that fucker!”

Rook didn’t wait for a clear shot. He aimed the Desert Eagle at a spot roughly in the center of the roof and fired into the headliner. The entire chassis rang like a bell as the .50 caliber round punched an enormous hole in the roof. Rook adjusted his aim to a point twelve inches behind the hole and fired again. He didn’t need to hit a vital organ; a bullet from the Desert Eagle could rip off limbs.

The tearing stopped.