Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller

Chapter Seventeen

I took the stairs down from Volkov’s office, trying to hold my lunch in. The Security guys unlocked the front door for me. They asked me what’d happened; they’d heard something smashing and were worried the building was going to come down. I snarled something incomprehensible at them and ran for it.

Thick smoke enveloped me as soon as I was outside. The ground beneath my feet was even more broken and unstable now. At least Tempest had lost interest in the building now that he had his hands on Volkov.

It cost me fifteen minutes and a couple of new scrapes on my forearms to get through the rubble and back to the car. Thick soot coated the windows now. I started it up and turned towards the hospital, running the window wipers as fast as I could to keep off the twin problems of soot and rain. A flash of lightning lit the clouds, followed a few seconds later by the hammering of thunder. Just what I needed.

My walkie crackled. “Boss, where the hell are you?” Lindsey said. “We’ve got fires spreading this way. Everyone’s abandoning ship. Dasari’s got the mother walking. I think she’s getting ready to run for it.”

“Stop her,” I barked into the walkie. “I’m three minutes away. Stop her now.”

“What about the family? The mother and child?”

“Get them out of the way. Lock them in a cupboard. I don’t care.”

“Boss, did you not hear me say that there’s fire heading this way? I’m not locking some woman and her grandson up to let them burn to death.”

“Get Dasari!” I yelled. “I don’t care what else you do, but get Dasari.”

I jammed the walkie back into my pocket and put my foot down. The orange glow of fire was off to my right, spreading through rubble and the remains of the tightly packed suburban homes. The rain was no longer enough to slow the fire’s creeping advance.

I checked the rearview mirror. Three giant figures stood against the broken skyline. The fighting had stopped. All three monsters were free of impulse control now. I wondered if the two handlers were still alive. I doubted it. As I watched, Nasir cocked back his massive fist and threw a punch at Volkov Tower. Dust puffed up from the building. Nasir wound up and delivered another blow.

The building trembled. Then it began to collapse, the huge “V” toppling to the earth. Grotesque scratched at the air and hissed with delight. My grip tightened on the wheel. Panic crept through my muscles, my veins. My skin seemed to tingle. There’s no stopping them.

Movement in front of me drew my attention back to the road. I jammed on the brakes as a scattered crowd of bloody and dirty people appeared in my headlights. No one even seemed to notice me as I brought the car screeching to a halt. A few of them carried bundles or bags, but most just clutched family members as they ran as fast as the crowd allowed. I spotted one young man in the crowd, spinning around, panicked eyes searching for a lost loved one. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled something, but no one took any notice.

I edged forward in the car for thirty seconds, leaning on the horn. It was hopeless. I got out and shoved my way through the crowd. I contemplated firing a couple of shots into the air to clear the way, but decided against it. These people were wild, panicked. I didn’t know whether the Maydays’ attack had left them so shellshocked that the gunshots would mean nothing, or whether it’d start a stampede. I relied on my bulk to push my way through.

The crowd cleared enough for me to get a good view of the hospital. Dim lights came from the windows; emergency power, I guessed. Three ambulances were parked haphazardly in the emergency bay, nurses and paramedics loading people on gurneys into them. I didn’t know what they hoped to achieve. The hospital wasn’t big, but surely they had more bedbound patients than they could possibly hope to evacuate. And even if they did get them away, where would they go? They’d have to skirt the edges of the city to get to the ports. It’d be a buffet line for the Maydays.