“Look out!” Someone yelled.
Hawkins looked up as the corner of the Commerce Building disintegrated and debris exploded out in all directions. He dove to the sidewalk, taking cover as concrete sprayed past. A soldier with slower reflexes fell beside him, a slab of sharp marble embedded in his face.
Hawkins stared at the grim sight. He wanted to scream. He wanted to run away. But he’d seen worse than this soldier’s deformed face. He’d seen friends turned into monsters, into incubators. And he’d survived that mess by acting, not lying down.
Nemesis roared as Hawkins stood, drawing his attention. The monstrous Kaiju was heading in the direction he’d come from, which was a good thing, but he wasn’t there to deal with the full-sized monster; he was there for someone else. A man named Gordon. A traitor to his country, perhaps not all that dissimilar from the clandestine group at DARPA who had kept Island 731 operational since World War II.
Hawkins turned right onto Executive Avenue at a sprint, dodging past a burning tank and a group of soldiers tending to the wounded. He wanted to stop and help, but he wasn’t responsible for those men. It was Lilly he was concerned about. Hudson had offered to create a preserve—fenced-in private land, where Lilly and her daughters could live in peace. But it came at a high price. He needed Lilly’s muscles. He needed Lilly the monster, not Lilly the girl.
While Lilly, who had been separate from the world but desperate to experience it, was on board from the get go, Hawkins had had serious reservations. It wasn’t until Hudson offered to look into the DARPA mess and find out who was responsible, that Hawkins had come around. If Lilly and her...litter, could be safe—truly safe for the rest of their lives—the risk could be worthwhile.
But Hawkins had never pictured anything like this. It was a warzone.
He slid to a stop in the mud of what once was the White House’s front lawn. In the distance, past a stand of flattened trees, he could see the Kaiju known as Drakon, impaled atop a monument. Brown blood pooled around the scene.
This was worse than a warzone.
An aggravated shout turned his attention north, toward the White House. He didn’t recognize the baritone voice, but he recognized the tone of it. That was Lilly’s doing. She was kind and gentle, but she was a young woman and could be infuriating when she wanted to be.
Sticking to the trees, and feeling more at home, Hawkins moved through the shadows, well concealed thanks to the body armor Hudson had given him. He held his weapon of choice, a compound bow, at the ready. The bow shot arrows at 400-feet per second. It was quieter than a BB gun and highly accurate, thanks to its fiber optic sight. The weapon was powerful enough to take down nearly any living thing on land, short of an elephant, and the prey—or in this case, the enemy—wouldn’t be tipped off to his location because of sound. Even better, Hudson’s colleague, Endo, had supplied some specially modified arrow heads. If they performed as promised, he thought they would make a real difference.
His back-up weapon, supplied by Hudson, was slung over his back. The Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotgun could fire eight 12-gauge shells as fast as Hawkins could pull the trigger, each of which could remove a man’s limb. He wasn’t hunting a man, though. Hudson seemed to think the shotgun would only slow Gordon down. A weapon of last resort. “Aim for his face,” had been Hudson’s advice.
Watching Nemesis charge off through the city like it wasn’t there, Hawkins would have preferred something closer to a giant-sized sci-fi laser cannon.
A second frustrated shout drew his attention north again. He crouched by the trunk of a tall maple tree and scanned the area. He spotted Lilly on the other side of the lawn, scrambling up a tree. A massive black hand reached around from the other side and dug its fingers into the bark, just missing Lilly.
If he caught her...
Hawkins nocked one of Endo’s arrows, which he promised would pierce Gordon’s thick skin. He looked down the sight, waiting for the right moment, trying to ignore the sounds of destruction and human suffering behind him. What mattered to him most was straight ahead, and in danger.