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

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.”

“Here,” Coop says.

“Lie,” I tell her. “Tell Stephens there’s a biological terror threat, but do not elaborate. Let him draw his own conclusions.”

“Makes sense,” she says and then Ted is back on.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“Send a helicopter to my position,” I say. “Something with a big gun.”

“I’ll try,” he says, sounding agitated. Watson is amazing in so many ways, but he’s easily distracted and oversensitive. It’s also been a really long time since FC-P had a threat level higher than what I call RPSC—Rastafarian Pot-Smoking Chill. We’re out of practice. If he can’t stay calm and get his job done, people could die.

“Ted,” I say, “you and I both know there is no try.”

He chuckles. “There is only do. I’ll get it done.”

“Thank you, Ted. Call me back when you have an ETA on the chopper.”

“Will do,” he says, and I hang up.

I hand the phone back to Collins. “Keep that on. They might need to track the GPS.” I don’t say, “in case something happens to us,” but I can see she understands.

I push open the door and enter the third floor hallway. The walls are splattered with blood. The bodies of five doctors, dressed for surgery, litter the floor. They’re mangled, like the woman in the morgue fridge, but not mostly consumed like the people outside.

I step over the bodies, working hard to not let them distract me. We need to figure out where the creature is heading and make sure an army is waiting when it gets there. “Let’s try to find the roof access.”

Collins has her hand over her mouth as she steps around the bodies. Without looking away from the corpses, she nods.

The distinct sound of a gun being racked stops us in our tracks. “Put your hands on top of your heads and turn around slowly.” The accent is subtle, but easy for me to place. The man with a gun aimed at my back is Japanese.





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