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

His entire torso, head and arms were gone.

Nick’s knees collapsed and the lower part of his body toppled over, spilling out severed intestines and blood.

Jenny shook uncontrollably as her mind struggled to make sense of what she was seeing.

A wet smack drew her eyes up. There was the rest of Nick, clutched in the jaws of something massive. It was as black as the bear, but bigger. It tossed Nick’s body up and caught it again, the way a lizard or a bird repositions a meal before swallowing it whole. Then it repeated the move, each time biting down hard, stabbing its long curved teeth into the body, shredding bits of meat and clothing with each bite. Blood rained down on the forest floor, staining the still laid-out blanket red.

Jenny was too scared to scream. She simply turned around slowly, and then quickly walked down the hill on shaking legs. She mumbled incoherently to herself, and she viewed the world through blurred vision as tears streamed over her face. When a sickening slurp behind her was followed by an audible swallow, she lost control of her bladder. And when the ground shook beneath her, she began to weep.

When it shook again, she ran.

The third impact tore a scream from her lungs.

And just as she was sure she would be cut in half, she reached the dirt road and Nick’s pickup truck. She whipped open the door and was bathed in Nick’s scent. She missed him already, and the memory of his body filled her with something new—rage.

She reached into the truck, grabbed the shotgun from the rack in the back window and turned around to face the creature.

It slid out of the forest. The small trees lining the road bent and broke. Its massive, strangely feminine head, loomed forty feet above her. Brown, almost human-like eyes gazed down at her, focused like a predator. A forearm came out of the forest and pressed into the dirt road just a few feet away. The limb was as thick as a tree. The five black claw-tipped digits were the size of her arm. The creature’s chest emerged next, broad and powerful, while at the same time, beautiful. A large portion of each breast glowed with swirling orange light, like it contained phosphorescent liquid. The same light flickered all across the creature’s torso and the sides of its neck. The sight nearly mesmerized her.

A deep resonating growl drew her watering eyes back up to the monster’s head. Its jaws opened, revealing railroad-spike sized teeth and bits of Nick’s body stuck between them.

Jenny matched the growl with a battle cry of her own, gave the shotgun a firm pump and aimed it at the creature’s glowing chest. “Fuck you,” she grumbled, and pulled the trigger.

The last thing Jenny heard was the creature’s impossibly loud howl of pain. She would have clutched her hands to her ears if not for the sudden explosion of heat and light that washed over her just a second after she pulled the trigger.

When the light faded, all that remained was a charred husk, standing like a statue, holding a melted shotgun.





21



The view from the helicopter is split into two colors—blue and green. The sky is thick with haze rising from the damp forest, but last night’s storm has fled and the smoke from the burning lab is far behind us. The forest below stretches to the horizon, the hilly ground rising and falling into the distance like an ocean of pine, frozen in place. The stillness of it all infuriates me.

I look back to Collins. “See anything?”

“Would have told you if I had,” she says, and I can tell she’s equally frustrated.

“Want me to start flying a pattern?” Woodstock asks. He turns his head away from me, looking to the left, and I notice for the first time that he’s got a ponytail. Maybe the nickname has nothing to do with his last name? When I don’t answer, he adds, “The trees are thick in these parts and stand upwards of a hundred feet. We could have flown over King Kong and not seen him.”

“Actually, that’s not a bad description,” I say.

He cocks his head toward me. “No shit?”

“Imagine a hairless, armor-plated Kong with a tail and more feline, yeah.” It’s actually a very crude description of the creature I saw, but the size and color match close enough.

My phone rings. I put it to my ear. “Please have something for me.”

“General Lance Gordon,” Watson says. “Retired—”

“Let me guess, five years ago.”

“Yep,” he says. “And First Sergeant Steve Thompson retired about a month later.”

“Hold on, Ted,” I say, and lower the phone. “Hey Woodstock, when did you retire?”

He scrunches his forehead. “Going on seven years, why?”

“Nothing.” I put the phone back to my ear. “Keep going, Ted.”

“Gordon went private sector. Tax records show him as a consultant to Zoomb.”