Kaiju: Deadfall, page 24
“Caitlin,” Autumn said sharply.
“It is, and we were trying to outrun these three tornadoes with the Gunderson family and their van, and Autumn saw a Little One behind the storms and pushed me down before I could see. She said she saw it clear as day and it was running.”
Frank didn’t say anything, just watched the air between the two sisters, but Duckie spoke up. “It ranned away from the twisters? That’s what tornadoes are. Twisters.”
“Right,” Caitlin said, her eyes distant, “but no, it was running after us.”
“They target people,” Quebra said. “We learned that early on. That’s why they’ve stuck mostly to the cities, even ones like this that’ve been flattened. Because new people always show up.”
“People like us,” Chia grunted, “but we were tricked. Otherwise, we would’ve never come here.”
“Then you would never have saved Duckie and me,” O’Brien said. No one said anything to that.
“You did save us,” she went on, “and we’d like to go with you. I know we don’t seem like anything other than dead weight, but we’ll both work hard. Duckie’s a helluva lot stronger than he looks.”
“I am,” Duckie agreed. “Helluva.”
“Well,” Chia said, “we don’t exactly put it to a vote or anything, but I guess we ought to make it official. Anyone got any problem with these two nice folks?”
Dodger’s silence was deafening. As if he carried even half his own weight, but at least he did the decent thing now and kept his stupid spoiled mouth shut.
It was as if the Little One lying dead across the thoroughfare had lost all its novelty. Funny how a genuine human moment could do that, thought Frank.
It occurred to him then that, even though they were downwind of the corpse, there was no smell of rot. There wasn’t really any distinctive odor at all. He tapped Quebra’s shoulder.
“Yeah, boss,” Quebra muttered.
“Any way to be absolutely – I mean two hundred percent – sure that thing’s dead?”
“It’s been there for a week at least,” said O’Brien.
Dodger shoved his hands in his slacks and began pacing. “Yeah. Maybe we ought to fall back. Plus, there’s the sickness. Wouldn’t want anyone to get infected.”
“We’re not touching it, Dodgman,” Quebra said.
“Who knows what it’s touched?” Dodger snapped. “You know the infection comes from those things! What if it bled or spat or shit all over the place when it died?”
“Okay, okay,” said Chia. “The man’s got a point. I think we’ve seen enough. Let’s count our blessings and move along.”
There was a low, rumbling sound, like a fart, and Duckie laughed. Frank’s eyes fell upon the Little One and for a second he was sure, two hundred percent sure that it had shifted in the rubble. O’Brien pinched Duckie to silence him and they all stared at the giant.
Little Ones had been felled by multiple missile strikes. That was a long time ago. Frank had never seen anything less work. This seemingly unblemished creature...had it just died of old age? Could such a miracle be possible that all this was going to come to an end? Due to age, stress? Or maybe this one had caught the goddamn common cold just like The War of the Worlds.
Maybe it wasn’t dead.
Maybe it had moved.
Everyone had stopped breathing again, Frank noticed. His lungs screamed and he let out a too-loud gasp. Quebra shot a glare at him.
Quebra’s eyes quickly changed and he pointed the binoculars over Frank’s shoulder. “Shit.”
Hell Walks is available from Amazon here
JE Gurley, Kaiju: Deadfall
