Sarah steeled herself. She needed to be part of this conversation. 'There were living people down there, too. Maybe a third as many as the dead. They were all carrying rifles. I don't claim to know how that works.'
Ayaan nodded. 'We knew there had to be one of them providing close support.' One of them. A khasiis. The Somali word meant 'monster'. English speakers used the word 'lich'. The not-so-mindless dead. When a ghoul managed one way or another to preserve its intellect post mortem they also tended to develop certain new faculties. They learned to see the energy of death, just like Sarah did. Some of them learned to control other undead, to communicate with them telepathically and bend them to a Monstrous will. Ayaan had some experience with Monsters. She had shot one in the head years prior, one namedGary .Gary had not only survived that shot'he'd gone on to enslave an entire city. It took a raging inferno to finally bringGary down and Ayaan had lost plenty of friends in the process. Sarah had her own reason to hateGary . Her father was one of the friends Ayaan had lost. 'There must be a top-level asset nearby.'
'Top-level is right. To override their natural instinct to devour the living.' Fathia, Ayaan's second in command, leaned her chin on the stock of her assault rifle and looked scared. 'Gary could do that, for a little while. But even he had limits. If this army has been moving together for a long time, marching together'it would take a stronger khasiis thanGary . And there's only one of those that we know about.'
'The Russian,' Ayaan said. Her eyes narrowed to thin, angry slits. 'The Tsarevich.'
Sarah knew it had to be true. But what would the world's most pre-eminent monster be doing inEgypt ? Everyone knew the boy lich's story. He'd been injured in a car accident, a hit and run, back when there had still been cars. He had languished in a semi-comatose state for years in a hospital bed, half dead even before the Epidemic began. When the dead rose the boy had been abandoned where he lay, only to die and rise again with his intellect intact'and with new senses and abilities, new supernatural powers no one had ever seen before.
They said he had an army of the dead, and a cult of the living, and that in some parts ofSiberia he was considered to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. The stories about him always revolved around his cruelty and his power. They made him sound like a devil. For himself he claimed only to be a Tsarevich, a Prince of the Dead.
'He came here himself,' Ayaan said. Her cold eyes lit up, but grew no warmer. 'He finally made a mistake.'
Monster Planet
Chapter Two
Ayaan had a responsibility to the survivors'the living'she had left outside ofPort Said . She could have ordered Osman at any time to circle back and provide air support for the camp. She didn't. The other women in the helicopter started to trade sidelong glances, the occasional half question. 'We've never fought an enemy with guns before. Shouldn't we...?' Leyla asked.
Ayaan glared back at them. Some of Mariam's blood still flecked her cheek. 'The camp is hardened against attack, if that's even what he's after. If we give him a chance to get away now we'll never see him again. We're going to find the Russian, today, and we're going to remove him from play.'
It was enough for most of the soldiers. Ayaan had lead them into stranger encounters and she had proven her tactical brilliance a hundred times over. If she said she knew what she was doing they believed her. Sarah wasn't so sure but she kept it to herself. As the youngest member of Ayaan's unit and the only non-Somali (she was half American, on her father's side, which was a strike against her with most of the women) her opinion counted for little. Still she couldn't help having a bad feeling.
Ayaan had always been more than cautious than anyone around her. She'd bordered on paranoia in the past'and it had kept her people alive. Now she was throwing herself into the lion's maw. It made no sense.