Project Hyperion (A Kaiju Thriller) (Kaiju #4)

I find a boot.

Most of it is hidden behind a half buried boulder. I approach slowly, wary of a trap. The boot is a black, military style, steel-toed affair. The top looks wet. As I round the boot, I get a look inside.

“My God.”

There’s a foot inside the boot.

Collins lets out a gasp when she sees it. We lean in closer, and I use a stick to lift it up. Leaves cling to the boot, saturated with drying blood. I drop the boot back down and step back when I see a flash of bone.

“A bear wouldn’t have done this,” Collins said.

I correct her, saying, “A black bear wouldn’t have done this.” I lift my hand and point ahead. “Or that.”

Bits and pieces of clothing and flesh litter the forest floor.

“Not sure if this needs to be said, but you have my permission to shoot anything that moves.”

She nods. “Likewise.”

“Ready to follow the breadcrumbs?” I ask.

Part of me hopes she’ll say we should go while the getting is good. A man has been torn to shreds and discarded through the forest like he was nothing more than the petals of a “love me, love me not” flower. But my revolt and fear are matched by my curiosity and ambition. And it seems the lovely Sheriff Collins has equal parts of both as well.

She frowns. “After you, Hansel.”





14



The razor wire chain-link fence is no longer an issue. A twenty foot section has been bent over and flattened into the ground. The chunks of flesh led us right to it. Whatever left the trail also took out the fence. But how?

“What could have done this?” Collins asks.

“Aside from a Humvee?” I ask.

“There aren’t any tracks,” she says, missing my sarcasm. There’s no room for a Humvee, and the terrain is far too rough for anything smaller.

I walk next to the rolls of razor wire, searching for some sign of what happened, but it’s hard to focus on the details while my eyes keep shifting up, wary of danger. I’ve been holding my weapon at the ready so long that it feels slick in my perspiring hands. Better to put it away, I decide, than have it flung from my sweaty hands when I need it most. I tuck the gun into my waist and focus on a portion of the razor wire that has been pulled away from the fence.

“You smell that?” Collins asks.

Smoke still permeates the air, but there’s something fleshy mixed in with it. Like raw hamburger mixed with vinegar, which is very different from the scent of the human flesh scattered about. It’s more musky. More animal. “Yeah,” I say. “I smell it,” but I’m not really giving it much thought.

There’s something caught in the razor wire. I reach into my cargo shorts pocket and take out one of three Ziploc bags I carry, just in case something like this happens. I invert the bag over my hand and carefully reach down. Avoiding the razor wire is like playing a game of operation, except here, if I hit the metal, I might need stitches.

The swatch of black dangling from the wire looks like fabric, but as soon as my bagged fingers close around it, I know its skin. It’s squishy, but firm, and the bottom side feels slick. I pull the three inch long specimen slowly out of the razor wire and turn it over, finding bright pink flesh crisscrossed with lines of blood.

Definitely skin.

But of what? The bear? I look at the destroyed fence. Could a bear do this?

Maybe a stampede of bears? Was this some kind of illegal breeding program for exotic pets?

I hold the sample up to my nose and take a quick sniff. “Ugh,” I moan. Hamburger and vinegar. Delightful. Whatever this skin came from is also the source of the smell. But why is it so strong here?

“Over here,” Collins says.

“I found something, too,” I say, as I stand. I pull the sample inside the bag and zip it shut. My eyes are on the sample as I walk. The skin side is dark. Nearly black. And it’s covered in small lumps that reflect the sun. I rub my hand over the surface. Feels like a novel written in Braille.

I see Collins through the bag. “Check this out, it’s—” The distorted view through the Ziploc bag resolves, and I see what she’s standing next to. I lower the bag and see it for myself. “Holy shit.”

It’s a pine tree with a wound that would have been fatal to a human being. Five deep gouges stretch across the trunk, reaching all the way down to the pale wood beneath the armor-like bark. Bears can sometimes scratch up trees, but this... I place my hand against the tree and spread my fingers wide. Whatever made this mark had a hand, or paw, twice the width of my hand.

“It’s at least a foot from top to bottom,” she says. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know what could have done this, and neither do you.”

She’s right about that. “But I have this,” I say, holding up the bag.

She leans in and squints at my disgusting find. “And that’s?”