Planet Hate, page 13
As Grant spoke, Rosalia came hurrying to the group with her scraggly dog in tow. “Area’s clear,” she summarized, “but there’s a lot of noise coming from that way.” At Grant’s querulous face, she elaborated. “You ever hear parrots fight, Magistrate? Sounds kind of like that.”
“And that’s gonna be where Domi is,” Grant concluded with a reluctant sigh.
“We need to keep moving,” Kane muttered, straining to get up off the ground. “We have to go help Domi.”
Grant pressed his palm against Kane’s chest. “Not so fast, partner. You’re in no state to…”
“We were sent here to help Domi,” Kane reminded him. “We can’t compromise that just because—”
“You’re blind?” Rosalia finished. “You think me or Grant here want to be wet-nursing you? Use your head, Magistrate Man.”
Slowly, Kane nodded. “Leave me here then and go find Domi.”
Standing, Grant stared down at his partner, his obvious concern drawing lines across his newly hairless head. “You going to be okay?” he asked, realizing as he said it how stupid a question it really was.
Kane pushed himself to a sitting position, leaning far back with his elbows and forearms still pressed against the ground. “Just go,” he instructed miserably.
Crouching for a moment, the beautiful Rosalia placed her hands to either side of her dog’s head, forcing it to look at her. “You stay here and take care of Kane,” she instructed. “You bark like a maniac if there’s trouble, yes?”
The dog whined as it looked at Rosalia with its impossibly pale eyes before adopting a guard position at Kane’s side.
“Goes double for you, Magistrate Man,” Rosalia added, touching Kane’s hand for just the scantest of moments.
An instant later Rosalia and Grant were off, and Kane heard their retreating footsteps as they hurried through the underbrush.
DOMI PUSHED herself backward, away from the bloody torso that lay in the center of the nest. Above her, its wings flapping like two great punkah fans, the mother bird hovered in place for a moment, beady eyes watching its home before it brought itself to a landing at the nest’s edge, its scythelike talons clutching the rim. As quietly as she could, Domi shuffled backward, her eyes never leaving the bird’s as she clambered over the fallen torso of the girl. The bird pecked at the wolf’s body, tearing great hunks of flesh from it and swallowing them whole. After a moment Domi came up to something solid behind her, and she turned swiftly, looking to see what it was. As she did so, the great bird squawked, a loud and hideous sound this close to Domi’s ears.
Domi found that she was standing beside the clutch of eggs, and realized it was one of these that she had backed straight into. Even as she watched, one of the eggs began to break open, and Domi looked on in terror as a sliver of its blue shell snapped off, dropping away to the bed of the nest at her bare feet. There was a hollow tapping and then another chunk of eggshell broke away, this one as large as a dinner plate as it slid down the side of the egg. A viscous mucus glistened on the underside of the broken shell, catching the sun for a moment as the plate-size chunk slipped away.
Behind her, Domi heard the bird twitter excitedly, watching the birth of its hulking progeny.
Then Domi saw something poke through the shell, a sharp line jabbing at the hole in its surface. The spike disappeared, and a moment later an eye appeared at the twelve-inch hole in the egg’s surface, black iris in the center of a red-and-gold circle, the eye itself perfectly round. The eye was twice as large as a human’s, and Domi shivered as she saw the thing blink, feeling faintly unsettled at being just five feet away from that alien orb.
With another tap, the shell broke wider and a face appeared at this makeshift window. The head was bald, a pointed beak jutting out three inches from its underside like a pair of garden shears. The baby bird squawked then, a sound like nails on a chalkboard, and Domi took several steps away. But as she did so, the mother bird cawed angrily above her, and Domi felt something prod against her back.
The albino girl turned to see that the mother was nudging her with its beak, knocking her back toward the opening shell as the baby made its way out into the world. Then the gigantic bird gave a single flap of its mighty wings, knocking Domi across the nest and off her feet. Domi fell to the bed of sticks and branches, and her head knocked against something hard and unforgiving. She looked up in time to see it was the blue eggshell, and the sharp face of the baby bird was lunging at her from a little way above.
“WHAT’S GOING ON with Kane?” Rosalia asked as she dashed through the trees at Grant’s side. Beside her, the large ex-Mag had brought his Sin Eater back to his hand as they weaved through the trees, running in the direction of the bird squawks.
“I don’t know yet,” Grant admitted, “but I’ll give you even odds it’s nothing good. Trust me, it never is.”
The sheathed sword slapped against Rosalia’s butt as she vaulted over the fallen limb of a tree. Grant couldn’t help but admire the woman’s stamina. He was taller than her, longer of limb and a trained Magistrate to boot, yet she kept pace with him effortlessly, her breath coming steady and even. It was clear that this mysterious woman was at the peak of physical fitness. Grant had met her many months ago during an investigation into DNA smuggling out in the coastal village of Hope. Back then, the two had found themselves on opposing sides of a lawless operation, and Rosalia had proved herself to be a wily and capable foe. He had followed her across the vast Mojave Desert, he on a motorized wagon while she remained on foot, and yet she had seemed indomitable, outpacing him, her fierce spirit refusing to allow her to compromise. If she could be trusted, as Kane seemed to believe, then having her as an ally was doubtless an asset to the struggling Cerberus operation. That was, of course, one very big if.
Suddenly a dark shadow crossed their view overhead, and both Grant and Rosalia ducked their heads as something swept by. Overhead, amid the behemoth branches of the towering redwoods, a colossal bird raced through the air. Automatically, Grant had trained his Sin Eater on the bird as it passed by, and he watched with irritation as the thing hurtled upward in a sweep of mighty russet wings.
“Grant…?” Rosalia urged from just beside him.
Grant turned at her call, and a moment later he saw what it was she had spotted. There, between the hulking tree trunks, lay a corpse of one of the incredible birds, its shadow-dark feathers marred with a splash of congealing blood.
Keeping their heads down, Grant and Rosalia jogged toward the fallen bird. As they got closer they saw that its head lay at an awkward angle, beak open and a thin, sharp tongue sticking out. Its eye was open and unresponsive.
“Broken neck,” Grant concluded.
From all around, the two Cerberus warriors could hear rustling from the trees, the sounds of nearby squawking and the swoop of mighty wings.
His pistol still in hand, Grant engaged the hidden Commtact he wore beneath the skin. “Domi?” he urged. “Can you see us?”
Barely had the words left Grant’s mouth before Rosalia grabbed at his firm bicep, pulling him closer to the bole of the nearest tree. Grant looked at her irritably, then followed where she silently indicated, peering up into the air above. Three fearsome shadows were cutting through the trees at a rapidly increasing speed as a trio of the gigantic birds power-dived at the newcomers.
“What the flock…!” Grant growled as he jabbed at the trigger of the Sin Eater, blasting a stream of 9 mm titanium-cased bullets at the approaching creatures.
In response, the birds opened their sharp beaks and unleashed a horrendous chorus of angry cries.
DOMI DROPPED BACKWARD, falling to the floor of the nest with a grunt as the hungry infant broke free of its egg and jabbed its sharp face at her. The infant unleashed a hideous shriek as its would-be meal dropped away, the noise so close to Domi’s ear that she almost missed Grant’s hail on her Commtact.
Behind her, the mother bird was ruffling its feathers, poking its melon-size head at Domi, nosing her back at her newly hatched child with the hook of her beak. Domi yelped as that sharp implement ripped through her flesh, tearing a strip of chalk-white skin from between her shoulder blades.
“Grant, you gorgeous, gorgeous man!” Domi shouted into the Commtact pickup. “Where the fuck are you?”
Grant’s voice came back over the Commtact as Domi rolled out of the way of the baby bird’s jabbing beak. “We’re on the ground close to your transponder,” he explained, “but we’ve run into some trouble of our own.”
“Tell me about it,” Domi responded irritably, her foot whipping out in a vicious snap-kick that knocked the baby bird’s three-inch knifelike beak aside. “I’m in a nest and mommy bird is trying to make me dinner for her newborn boy.”
“Where—? Shit, hang on,” Grant said over the Commtact. There was a moment’s silence, then Grant’s voice came louder once more. “Whereabouts are you?” he asked.
Behind her, the mother bird clambered into the nest, lethal talons plucking at the bedding as Domi rolled frantically to one side. The second of the three eggs had begun to crack, and with a blurt of chirruping noise, another viciously sharp beak appeared, nudging the thick shell aside.
“I got a peek a few minutes back,” Domi explained as she rolled out of the mother bird’s way. “Gotta be thirty feet above ground in the branches of a redwood.”
DOWN ON THE GROUND, Grant looked all around him as the trio of birds dived at him and Rosalia for a second pass. Beside Grant, Rosalia had drawn the katana that Shizuka’s aide had loaned her, and she stood in a ready stance as the birds plummeted through the air.
“There’s a shitload of forest here,” Grant snarled over the Commtact as the Sin Eater bucked in his hand. “Are you able to give us an indicator which tree?”
“Will do,” Domi assured him. “Stand by.”
As Grant’s Sin Eater drilled bullets into the lead bird’s breast, Rosalia’s blade swept through the air in a flash of steel, lopping off the creature’s head with an explosion of blood. Split in two, the creature’s decapitated head went sailing through the air past Grant’s shoulder while the body tumbled over the leaf-strewed ground, churning up soil and grass in great clumps.
A half second behind, the bird’s nest-mates seemed to balk as they witnessed the fate of their fellow. One of them swooped away, rolling its leathery wings and whipping around a hulking tree trunk, disengaging from its dive. The other wasn’t so quick and, while it tried to change course, Rosalia was lunging ahead, driving twenty-five inches of razor steel through the monster’s plumage and into its curving belly.
Grant watched in astonishment as the dark-haired woman’s sword stuck fast in the bird’s torso and she, still holding the sword tight, was carried up into the air with it. Rosalia wrenched at the sword as the wounded creature flapped its mighty wings, ascending into the branches with three fearsome strokes of those sail-like appendages.
As Rosalia was dragged off her feet, the other bird turned back and lunged for Grant, kicking up dust with vast sweeps of its heavy wings. Grant spun and crouched to protect his face as the thing’s talons clawed for him, each pointed nail as wide as two fingers. The beast missed Grant’s face by inches, and the ex-Mag felt a pummeling on his back and shoulders as the thing’s talons clawed against the Kevlar of his coat.
Then Grant’s hand snapped out, grabbing for the bird’s ankle as it began its ascent just a few inches shy of hitting the ground. Despite his weight, Grant was pulled along for two paces before he found his foothold in the shifting soil with its smattering of dead leaves and moist grass. The bird flapped its wings, cawing in frustration as it tried to get free of its sudden burden.
“This is for the birds,” Grant growled and, with a flex of his arm muscles, he swung the bird around his head like a hammer thrower, letting go at the zenith of the arc and watching as the bird careened away into a nearby tree with an almighty crash. As the bird struggled to right itself, Grant took several steps forward, blasting a stream of lead slugs from the Sin Eater in his other hand, drilling them through the creature’s brain pan.
Up above, Rosalia was struggling with her newfound flight where the katana sword had lodged itself in her flying foe’s belly.
“Stupid…” Rosalia muttered, and she pulled the sword free in a rush of blood and intestines. Then she was falling, spiraling through the air in a fifteen-foot drop as the hard ground hurried upward to meet her.
Above her, the wounded bird smashed through the upper branches of a poplar tree, cawing in pain as its large intestine unraveled around it.
At the last moment Rosalia twisted her body, meeting the ground with her feet and bending her knees to absorb the impact.
“You okay?” Grant asked from where he still stood, gun trained on the swooping birds above. He was fifteen feet from where Rosalia had landed.
“Fine,” Rosalia grunted in response. “Just give me a second.”
As she spoke, something came tumbling from the skies, a fuzzy down covering its body.
“Heads up!” Grant called.
The eye-catching mercenary leaped back as the flailing body of a baby chick wrapped in an egg—a baby almost three feet in height and with a vicious beak shaped like a scimitar—smashed into the ground in a shattering of blue shell and a crunch of newly formed bones. The thing flapped its useless wings for a moment as it lay on the soil, dazed and mortally wounded by the hard landing, the broken remains of the shell splayed all around its failing body.
Over the Commtact, Domi’s straining voice came to Grant’s ear. “You get that?” she asked.
DOMI PEERED OVER the side of the high nest at the eggshell debris strewed far below where she had knocked the egg over the side. “Come on, Grant,” she muttered under her breath, “get your ass up here already.”
Behind her, the mother bird squawked angrily as it realized that Domi had killed one of its young before it had even properly hatched. As the hulking bird lunged at Domi, its beak snapping together like an oversize pair of scissors, Domi sidestepped. The beak snapped shut on empty air, but already the bird’s head was twitching around to make another attempt at Domi’s face.
Timing her move with perfection, Domi drove her fist up into the underside of the bird’s mouth, ducking its snapping beak as she delivered the uppercut. The bird cried out in annoyance, and Domi disappeared beneath its round belly, rolling swiftly across the nest as the bird danced on the spot. This close, Domi could see the thudding of the bird’s breast as its heart beat against its ribs.
A moment later Domi was behind the massive bird, bringing herself up in a fighting crouch. But as she readied her attack, something flitted across the cramped nest just behind the albino warrior. Domi turned to see a great slice of eggshell splinter against the nest floor, and then the oversize chick was flapping its fluffy wings as it struggled out of the remains of its egg.
“So that’s how it is, huh?” Domi spit through clenched teeth. “Double your pleasure, double your fun.”
Then the baby bird staggered across the nest as it sought its live prey—Domi.
The newborn was almost three feet tall, coming up to above the petite Domi’s hip. It strutted across the nest on unsteady legs, struggling a little as it clambered over the broken torso of the teen girl in favor of Domi, her radiant form catching its eye.
A QUARTER OF A MILE away, Kane was trying to make sense of everything as he sat sprawled on the scrub grass. His face was burning, the left eye a source of incredible heat, and his vision remained just a blur of flickering light and color.
This had been building for a while, he knew. Several weeks ago, when he had been held as a prisoner in Life Camp Zero, he had been starved for several days and suffered sensory deprivation. His body had become one great mass of aches, the kind of bone-deep weariness that one felt with influenza. Even in that state, Kane had driven himself on, staging a dramatic jailbreak and releasing his Cerberus partners from the hands of the stone would-be god, Ullikummis. He had been pushing himself ever since, even as the world darkened around him.
But something must have triggered this, he knew. Amid the swirling colors in his vision, he saw something for just a moment, a sweltering desert, heat haze bucking and weaving beneath an unforgiving noonday sun. Kane concentrated, trying to make sense of the vision.
He seemed to be running, great powerful strides across the yellow sand. He could hear—what?—his own breathing, deep and even, his bare feet as they shushed against the swirling grains of sand. But it wasn’t him; the strides were too long, the speed like an animal’s, something superhuman.
Kane allowed himself to be swept up by the vision, taking in the sights as a low, rocky outcropping budded into view on the horizon. The outcropping formed the mouth to a cave, beneath which—somehow he knew this—a network of underground tunnels and caverns formed the home of a wise Annunaki philosopher called Uppelluri. Uppelluri had taught him everything he needed to know, every guiding tenet that he would carry with him for that long journey into space, after his father imprisoned him.
No, Kane realized, not him. This wasn’t his story; it was the story of Ullikummis, the Annunaki creature’s life flashing before Kane’s eyes as his true sight receded.
Beside him in the forest, Kane heard the dog growl with irritation.
“What is it?” Kane asked, turning to where he could detect the dog, unable to see anything at all. “Is someone coming?”
The dog padded closer, nuzzling Kane and sniffing at his face. Then the mutt whined in some imitation of a human response, before lying at Kane’s side.
The dog sensed it, smelled it, this thing inside him. Something had become caught in Kane’s eye, or just next to it, where the scar had formed at the top of his left cheek.
It was something Annunaki. Something evil.
