After collecting himself, Hawkins nocked an arrow and searched for Gordon, feeling like Robin Hood as he looked over his bow’s fiber-optic sight, standing on a branch thirty feet above the ground. He was concealed by the leaf-laden branches, but the foliage also hindered his view. He mumbled curses while he moved further out on the branch, which bent from his weight.
The view ahead cleared and he locked his legs around the branch to stay upright and took aim again. With the drawstring pulled taut, he whistled a bird call.
He could hear Gordon chasing Lilly below, and the giant monsters in the distance, but amid all that, the sound of a bird call reply came loud and clear. Lilly was on her way. She passed by below. A blur in the night. Superhuman.
Gordon moved quickly too, but despite his dark coloration, he stood out. It took just a half second for Hawkins to adjust his aim and let go of the bowstring. The arrow whistled through the air, heading downward, puncturing leaves and then finding its target. The projectile slipped through the thick flesh of Gordon’s right shoulder, burying itself six inches deep.
With a roar of frustration, Gordon stopped. He looked at the arrow, snarled and snapped it off with a flick of his hand, leaving six inches inside his body. Then he looked up, straight through the leaves, following the arrow’s trajectory in reverse, straight to Hawkins.
“You’re going to need more than a children’s toy,” Gordon said.
The giant man took one step toward the tree while Hawkins nocked another arrow, but then he stopped and turned toward the east. Hawkins, never one to waste an easy shot, let the arrow fly. It struck Gordon behind his neck, but the man didn’t even flinch. Instead, he crouched down on the ground and rolled his body into a ball.
What the...?
Hawkins looked east in time to see a bright orange glob gliding through the air. The giant known as Karkinos roared and swung one of its massive, dual clawed hands at the thing. Then, there was light as bright as the universe’s creation.
Hawkins shouted in surprise, shielding his eyes, but he lost his grip on the tree in the process. He began to fall, but he clenched his legs tighter and stopped himself at an angle. He remained there, stuck at a sixty degree angle for all of a half second. Then the sound hit. And the pressure wave. And the heat.
Hawkins was torn from the branch and flung. His mind whirled as the explosion set his ears ringing. He spun through the air, growing dizzy as he fell toward his doom. But as his arc through the air turned downward, he felt cradled, held tightly.
Opening his eyes, he saw Lilly staring down at him. Her yellow eyes were alive and determined. “I have you.”
When they reached the ground, Lilly absorbed the impact with her legs as though they’d fallen just a few feet. She then put Hawkins on his feet.
He worried about her safety so much, but here she was, saving him. Lilly, in just a few short years, had grown up. She was a mother. A skilled hunter. A warrior. And now his rescuer, returning the favor he’d granted her by taking her off that island.
Before he had a chance to thank Lilly, he looked over her shoulder. The far side of the South Lawn was on fire, but that only mildly concerned him. A mushroom cloud billowed into the air in the distance. For a moment, he worried about radiation, but then he remembered the glowing orange glob he’d seen. He, like everyone else in the world, knew what happened when those orange membranes on Nemesis’s body ruptured. And Nemesis’s new trick had been to launch smaller globs of the stuff from her mouth.
If she wasn’t careful, Nemesis was going to kill the very people trying to help her. Or was it the other way around? Hudson’s plan had been vague on that area. In the end, Hawkins took it as an ‘enemy of my enemy’ situation. But how could a creature like Nemesis understand who was on her side and who wasn’t? He doubted the giant would even notice their presence, let alone act to keep them alive.
“Is this how people will see me?” Lilly asked, looking at the fresh destruction. “Am I a monster? A Kaiju?”
That question, from Lilly, was loaded. The word Kaiju to her was more personal. Her mother’s name. But she understood it now, knowing that monsters, in general, were ‘Kaiju’ to the world. And her mother was a monster.
“Not even close,” Hawkins said with a grin.
“I don’t want to hide anymore,” she said.
“It might not be that simple.”
“Only monsters have to hide,” Lilly said.
Hawkins understood the point, but wasn’t convinced. Then he thought about the number of cameras likely recording the White House and the surrounding area. Her battle against Gordon would be...
Gordon!
A black shadow tore through the night.
“Look out!” Hawkins shouted.