Ahead was the full city-block-wide Market Square, bisected by Forbes Avenue and Market Street. It was a mix of brick and cobblestones and patches of grass. A dozen lampposts that looked like old-fashioned gas lamps still gleamed in the pre-dawn darkness. A clutter of trees, parking meters, trash cans, and café tables combined to make the kill zone a navigation hell. Lining the left hand side of the square were the half-dozen slick, black glass castles that been the Pittsburgh Plate Glass headquarters and now housed the EIA offices.
This was going to be a running of the bulls through a china store.
“Seeker, we’re in position!” Guy reported from across the river on Mount Washington. “We have hard cover and we’ve got eyes on you. We confirm that there are six targets. I repeat: six.”
The EIA was not going to be happy with them.
The piercing trill of the monster call echoed up the street. Somewhere ahead was also the oni commanding the namazu. A deafening roar of answering monsters washed over them in reply to the whistle. A moment later, a squad car went flipping past where Forbes Avenue opened into the square.
“Bowman!” Marc cried.
A namazu appeared at the intersection, blocking their way. Marc stomped on the brakes and they went skidding forward, several tons of metal about to meet several tons of angry electric fish.
Jane opened fire.
The big gun thundered as it shook in her hold, spitting out bullets faster than the eye could follow. The bullets slammed into the namazu, knocking it sideways as blood misted from the rapid-fire projectiles tearing it open. She strafed left, down the namazu’s body, away from the squad car.
Marc veered hard to the right, gunning the Humvee. They shot past the nose of the namazu. It lunged at Jane in the gunner’s seat. She poured bullets into its open mouth.
“Hold on!” Marc shouted.
They swerved the other way at whiplash speed. There was a wall of scales and arcing electricity and a flash of teeth.
Widget was making all sorts of yips and yelps over the com channel. “Nonononono! Yes. Yes! Watch out!”
Geoffrey blew their monster call but the namazu seemed to pay no attention to him. “Come here” apparently didn’t work when practically standing on the creature. Either that or the oni’s commands took precedence over Geoffrey’s.
“Find the oni with the whistle!” Jane fought to control the gun. The great glass castle of PPG was shattering under the hail of bullets that had missed the monster. She prayed that Widget was right about no one being in the line of fire. What direction was Bo? She risked a glance over her shoulder.
The squad car had landed upside down. Roof crumbled, Pedersen was trapped inside. A namazu lumbered toward the car, guided either by hunger or the oni with the monster call. Jane couldn’t risk opening fire on the beast; the chance of hitting Pedersen was too high.
“Seeker!” Duff shouted over the thunder of the bullets. “The only kill zone within a mile is inside the stadium! Three Rivers Stadium is the kill zone! Do you copy?”
“I copy on the kill zone!” Jane shouted. “Three Rivers Stadium. Find me the damn oni!”
“He’s on top of the PPG building!” Widget said. “Not the big one. Number Two. The little one all by itself on Market Square! I don’t think you can see him though! He ducked back behind one of the little pointy things on the roof.”
Jane would blast the glass castle into shards but it could kill any innocent bystanders in the apartment buildings beyond it.
“I can see him!” Guy announced from Mount Washington. “I have a clear shot straight down Market Street.”
No! Not Guy! She didn’t want her baby brother to kill someone. He was only sixteen.
“Take the shot!” Marc shouted. “They’re going to kill Bowman!”
Jane gave a wordless shout in dismay and protest.
“Damn it, I missed!” Guy cried. “He’s ducked down. I can’t see him.”
There was a sudden fury of black wings overhead and a scream as someone plunged from the rooftop of the nearest glass castle.
“She threw him off the roof!” Guy cried while Widget had been reduced to an endless stream of “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God…”
“I have a shot of the tengu.” Guy’s voice cracked and he sounded younger than sixteen. “What should I do?”
“Hold fire!” It might be Yumiko. Jane prayed that it was Yumiko and that the female was helping them.
The shrill notes of the whistle cut through everything. The namazu stopped, lifted their heads, and then started to move away from the overturned squad car.
“What is she doing?” Geoffrey reloaded.
“She’s leading them away,” Jane said. “Keeper, ETA on paramedics for Pedersen?”
“Three minutes,” Duff reported.
“Get ahead of the namazu. We’ll take them to the stadium and open up on them.”
Yumiko must have heard Jane shouting out the kill zone because the tengu headed toward Stanwix Street, which was the most direct route to the stadium. Marc raced across the Roberto Clemente Bridge as the yamabushi called the monsters up the on-ramp of the bigger Fort Duquesne Bridge.
“Oh! Oh!” Widget cried over the com from wherever she was. “Guys! Guys! I don’t know if this is good or bad but we’re getting company. It’s the EIA; a whole platoon of them. They’re coming out of the Liberty Tunnel right now.”
It meant that if the EIA had any clue what was going on downtown that they’d be on the Humvee’s tail in a matter of minutes.
“What’s the plan?” Marc asked.
“Do we have a plan?” Geoffrey asked.
“We get the door open to the stadium,” Jane said. “Get the monsters inside and then shoot the hell out of them.”
“That sounds like a plan.” Geoffrey said.
“Then we look for nests,” Hal added.
“Nests?” Jane asked.
“I want to try some of that roe.” In typical television host fashion, he was using as many words possible to explain something simple. “Cautiously, of course, but I’m curious as to what it tastes like. It looks much more like salmon roe than sturgeon caviar.”
“What nests?” Jane shouted.
Nigel explained clearer. “If the oni are anywhere near intelligent, they made the namazu at least fifty percent female. There should be two more nests at minimum.”
“We will deal with that later,” Jane growled. Hopefully. If they weren’t in jail. The fact there were nests, though, gave her an idea. “Chaser Two, call Maynard.”
“Me?” Hal’s tone was clear that he didn’t think it was a good idea. “Maynard?”
“Yes, you! Tell him that we’re doing what he asked and killing the monsters. Be charming. Tell him about the nest at Sandcastle and tell him that we need to be free to look for more.”
“But I want to watch you—ow!” Hal gave a cry of pain even as Jane shouted, “Now!” Guy must have hit Hal again. “I’m making the call. See. The phone is ringing!”
“Take off your headset!” Guy snapped and Hal disappeared out of the conversation.
Marc hit the end of the Clemente Bridge, turned hard onto General Robinson Street and flew down it. Three Rivers Stadium loomed straight ahead, a great concrete donut on the North Shore. It been scheduled to be torn down months before the first Startup to make way for two stadiums dedicated to football and baseball. Since all the professional sport teams had fled the city, it had sat abandoned for years. If Yumiko actually got the namazu onto the vast playing field, it would be like shooting fish in a bucket. Giant electric fish.