Nemesis cries out in pain and staggers back, placing her colossal hand on her side in a very human gesture of pain. Her cry becomes sharp. She flinches as though struck, being consumed from the inside.
While Nemesis is distracted, the Tsuchi rights itself, standing upright on its rear four legs, and in that position, standing as tall as Nemesis, its four, armored, spidery limbs twitching in front of it, arcs of electricity crackling between its bus-sized mandibles, I think it’s even more frightening than Nemesis or even her five siblings—Typhon, Karkinos, Scylla, Scrion and Drakon.
Next to Nemesis, the Tsuchi is nearly the tallest thing in Salt Lake City, with only three buildings being taller, by only fifty feet, give or take. Okay, so... Now it’s a MegaTsuchi. Knowing it’s inflicted a mortal wound, the Tsuchi hangs back and waits, its tail thrashing back and forth, decimating the facades of the buildings behind it.
I glance at Alessi. “Don’t tell me those are all...”
“Mormon church buildings,” she says, tapping a touch screen, reading information. “But most of downtown has been evacuated.”
Maigo kneels on the floor, hands pressed against the digital display showing us the action taking place two thousand feet below us. She cringes suddenly, seizing in pain. It hits me a moment later. I kneel beside her, wincing as my head blazes with pain transmitted from Nemesis and filtered through Maigo.
Maigo screams in time with Nemesis’s shrill roar, and I watch as three elephant-sized Tsuchi tear out of Nemesis’s side.
41
Nemesis spins in a circle, reaching for her side as the Tsuchi emerge. Her trident-tipped tail sweeps around behind her, hewing down the Church History Museum, the Plaza Hotel and the Family History Library—which contains the genealogy of just about everyone on the planet. The buildings crumble in unison, and I hope the church made digital backups of their genealogy information.
The emergence of three more Tsuchis is far more shocking than the destruction being wrought. They have the potential to destroy the world. The last Tsuchi leaps down from Nemesis’s side, revealing a bloody wound through her black skin, and the softer white flesh hidden beneath.
With a roar unlike anything I’ve heard from Nemesis before, the Queen of the Monsters enters a kind of berserker rage. The nearest newborn Tsuchi, still finding its legs, is stomped under foot, three times. On the third crushing blow, the small amount of explosive fluid in its body hits the air and detonates with a whump that’s muffled by Nemesis’s foot. But she doesn’t stop. She lunges at the second small Tsuchi that’s scaling a thirty-story apartment building. Before the small arachnid reaches the top, Nemesis’s long index finger punches through the creature, and the building. On the far side of the building, the claw exits with the Tsuchi dangling limp. When she extracts the claw, the Tsuchi is scraped away.
The third newborn is a brazen little bastard. It leaps off the top of a nearby building, legs splayed out, tail cocked back and ready to strike Nemesis’s head. I hold my breath. If the Tsuchi manages to tag Nemesis in the head, would that be it?
“Turn!” Maigo says, and once again, Nemesis seems to hear her, craning her massive head to the left and snapping her jaws open. Instead of landing atop Nemesis, the Tsuchi finds itself inside the massive jaws, which snap shut with the relative speed and power of a bear trap. The intense pressure bursts the Tsuchi’s insides out, the small amount of explosive fluid incinerating it all. Nemesis gives the limp, charred body a good thrash and then spits it out.
Rising smoke and dust swirls into the sky, obscuring much of the flattened church buildings, the surrounding city—and the big Tsuchi. It’s dropped back down onto eight legs.
Nemesis, coming down from her berserker rage, moves in a slow circle, her orange eyes squinting and suspicious.
“I should go now,” Maigo says.
I shake my head. “Not a chance.”
“I could help her. She’d be smarter with me.”
Collins crouches on the other side of Maigo’s kneeling form. “Jon’s right, honey. The way things are down there right now, you might not even make it down. You’ve seen how the Tsuchi detects people without even seeing them.”
“Nemesis would protect me,” Maigo says.
“And leave herself open to attack.” Collins rubs the girl’s back. “We need to protect you. Both of you. This only works if you both survive.”
“Here it comes,” Alessi says, turning our attention back to the battle raging below.
A swirl of motion in the debris cloud behind Nemesis reveals the Tsuchi’s presence. It moves with such speed that Maigo can’t even project a warning to Nemesis.