“They’re in the city!” Duff cried. “They’re on Liberty Avenue! There’s two—maybe three. Bo is yelling for help. One of them overturned Bowman’s car and he’s pinned!”
Bo Pedersen was married to their cousin Patty.
“Damn it!” Jane climbed onto the Humvee and stripped the tarp off the cannon. “Change of plan! We’re intercepting them in the city! Move!”
“You sure?” Geoffrey asked even as Marc punched the gas pedal. The Humvee leapt forward. “We’re going to be seen.”
“Yes!” Jane snapped. “Liberty Avenue is nearly the heart of downtown. If you’ve ever had to chase a flock of damn turkeys all over downtown, one thing you learn is that unless you can fly, you can’t get from the river’s edge to Liberty Avenue. There’s a damn maze of jersey barriers, bridge abutments and retaining walls in the way. For more than one namazu to show up in the middle of downtown, they’re being led through the maze. The damn oni have a monster call just like we do and they’re using the namazu to terrorize the city.”
“Seeker?” Guy cried over the com. “What’s our orders?”
“Move to Mount Washington and find hard cover. Do not come into downtown!” And because he wouldn’t listen to that, she lied. “I want those trucks safe! We need them intact.”
“Okay.” Guy sounded like he’d swallowed her lie. “We’re rolling!”
The morning sun was just starting to peer over the hills as they roared toward the skyscrapers of downtown. The very tips of the PPG glass castle gleamed brightly while the rest of the city was full of shadows.
Jane was up in the gunner’s stand, growling out curses. They couldn’t sit by and let the damn things wipe out the remaining police force. Bertha, though, would chew the hell out of downtown if they open fired at street level. Almost every building had big glass storefronts. If they missed the monster, the bullet could plow through blocks before hitting stone.
Whoever called the namazu into the city had the advantage; they knew the real commands that the monsters were bred to obey. Jane’s crew wouldn’t be able to drag the namazu out of the city unless they were the only ones commanding the creatures.
“Keeper?” Jane cupped her mic to cut down the howl of the wind. “Somewhere downtown is an oni with a monster call just like ours. I need eyes on him!”
“Okay. Okay. How do I find him? Shit! Shit! Shit! Seeker, can I bring in outside help?”
“Yes! Do anything you need!”
The communication line went silent for a few minutes until a stranger’s voice suddenly joined.
“I’m patched into…” A young female voice paused to yawn deeply, “the cameras downtown. Explain again what I’m looking for.”
Duff explained quickly and quietly. “Someone downtown at this minute with a whistle that they’re blowing.”
“You woke me up to find a flutist?” the unknown girl asked sleepily.
“It’s more like a bosun whistle,” Jane snapped. “Find it!”
“Who is that?” the female asked the question that Jane wanted to ask.
Duff kept to protocol. “You don’t need to know now. I’ll explain later. Lives are on the…”
“Holy crapola!” the girl shouted. “What the heck are those things?”
Well, the girl had just proved she had the ability to access downtown’s cameras.
“The oni with the whistle is controlling them,” Jane stated as calmly as she could while wondering who the hell this girl was. “Find him!”
“Okay,” the girl said before the words totally sunk in. “Wait! An oni? What does an oni look like?”
“It’s five-freaking-thirty in the morning!” Jane shouted. “He’s going to be the only person downtown blowing a freaking whistle!”
“Working!” the girl cried. “Working! Jimmy Crickets, those things are—whoa! Oh no, oh no, it’s trying to eat a cop!”
“Where?” Jane, Marc, and Duff all cried.
The girl made all sorts of sputtering noises and then cried, “Market Square! Market Square. We got to do something, D—”
“No names!” Duff shouted to drown out the stranger. “No names! This is an unsecure line! I’m Keeper. You’re Beater One.”
“Keeper!” Jane snapped.
Duff understood the unasked question. “She’s the newest bunny, Seeker!”
The bakery that Duff worked at employed illegal immigrants who all took rabbit names for some unknown reason. Babs Bunny. Clover. What was the new one? Widget No Problemo. (Jane could not understand how this was a rabbit name but the girl was nevertheless one of the bunnies.) It meant that the girl couldn’t go to the police or the EIA without endangering herself.
There were more squeaks from the bunny that boded ill for Bo Pederson. They were still on the wrong side of the river, a mile away from Market Square. Jane couldn’t help but remember that the last time she saw Bowman, he had announced Patty was pregnant. Guy had grown up with no memory of his father. It left a hole that even four older brothers couldn’t fill. “Marc?”
“Got the pedal nailed to the floor.” His voice was tense. He was the one that knew Bowman the best.
They reached Smithfield Street Bridge and turned hard without slowing. The tires screamed in protest and the Humvee leaned.
“Don’t roll us!” Jane leaned into the turn to counterbalance Bertha’s weight.
“Working on it,” Marc stated calmly.
In theory the bridge had two lanes of traffic inbound and outbound. Jersey barriers and high curbs, though, limited the inbound to one lane at the turn. They overshot it, ending up in the outbound lanes as they headed into the city.
“Wrong side,” Geoffrey murmured to their little brother. “Get over.”
“Not going to happen,” Marc replied. “Not at this speed.”
They whipped past the first arch of steel girders that marked the start of the center lenticular trusses. Beyond that point, there was no way to cross back to the correct lanes.
“Forbes Avenue has only three lanes,” Geoffrey warned.
“Well aware of that,” Marc said.
“Let the man drive!” Jane shouted. This was another reason why she didn’t want to get her brothers involved. Her brothers might be afraid of her, and they might do what she told them, but they’d fight with her and among themselves at every decision point. She had Hal trained to jump when she said jump. Her brothers might decide to override her at the worst possible moment. “Make sure we’re locked and loaded!”
“We can’t fire Bertha in the city!” Marc shouted, confirming her fear that her brothers wouldn’t listen to her.
“The hell we can’t!” Jane shouted back. “We’re not going to let these things eat Bowman! I’ve seen what they do to people!”
“There’s going to be responding police and paramedics!” Marc shouted. “We’ll hit them with friendly fire!”
She was normally the one urging caution to her younger brothers; of all the times for them to suddenly grow up! “We’ll be careful! Keeper, find me another kill zone! One-mile radius!”
“What? What? What?” Widget cried in confusion and then must have spotted the Humvee incoming on the city’s many cameras. “Oh! That’s the cavalry? Oh, that rocks! You’ve got four targets in Market Square and two more on their way up the other end of Forbes Avenue.”
Six total?
Jane cursed and covered her mic. “Marc, take us through Market Square so we can save Bowman’s ass, and then head out of town. The plan is to pull them out of the city if we can.” She let go of her mic. “Beater One! Get eyes on the oni with the whistle!”
“I’m looking!” Widget cried.
They hit the end of the bridge and flashed into the city proper with towering buildings lining the street. They tore down Smithfield Street. Marc slowed for the sharp turn onto Forbes Avenue. The roar of the namazu came echoing up the artificial canyon. The namazu’s discharge flickered like a Tesla coil within the still-dark street, reflecting off all the big glass storefronts.