His Humvee impact had cut this creature in half at the waist, and only the head, torso and powerful arms were on the hood of the vehicle. King looked out the window for the other half. Even though the glowing energy sphere, which King decided was some kind of portal transporting these creatures from one place to another, provided abundant light, it was still the middle of the night and the park was crisscrossed by long shadows from the tower and the surrounding buildings.
King hit the gas and chased after the next creature he spotted. This one was retreating back toward the energy dome and King gave chase, moving the Humvee up to 50 mph before he felt he was pacing the beast. They were headed right for the wall of the dome. King decided that if it went through, he would follow it and mash the fucker into the road on the other side.
The dome loomed large before him, reaching a hundred feet above the road now, and it had stretched the width of the road and through most of the buildings that had been to either side of it. The sound of lightning began to crackle again. The kinetic white creature nearly reached the sizzling yellow energy, when the wall of light winked out, muting the crackling sound. The creature continued on directly ahead.
And then down.
The dome was gone, and in its place was a crater in the Earth that stretched almost 150 feet in diameter. The creature’s momentum carried it well past the lip of the crater and it arced down into the suddenly empty space.
King cranked hard on the wheel of the Humvee and slammed on the brakes. The vehicle turned an abrupt 90 degrees to the left, its thick tires screaming, but it was no use. The armored 5000-pound vehicle rolled in empty space as it plummeted down into the abyss of the ruined Chicago street and the cauterized clean edges of the crater below it.
EIGHTEEN
Shanghai, China
Shin Dae-jung cowered against the low concrete wall. His eyes squeezed tightly shut. His whole body shook with fear. He couldn’t bear to open his eyes even a slice, because he knew with the certainty of a gambler on a winning streak that if he opened his eyes, his vision would fill with the sight of his grandmother having her innards eaten by one of his best friends.
Knight shook his head. His thoughts made no sense. Why is it so dark? It was daylight. We were in a fight…
When Chess Team had first gone up against the malevolent genetics company Manifold, run by the twisted egomaniac Richard Ridley, the company’s security team captured Bishop and their scientists experimented on him. He had become what the team termed a “Regen”-one of Ridley’s twisted regenerating soldiers. But there had been a heavy price attached to regenerative healing and near-immortality. The regeneration process slowly ate the soldier’s mind, filling it with aggression, until he was nothing more than a raging, hulking terror. Bishop had been well on his way to becoming such a mindless beast of anger, and Knight was the only one that had fought the big Iranian American when he was in his full-on Regen state. But Bishop had been cured, Ridley was gone and Manifold was no more. Questions formed in Knight’s terrorstruck thoughts. Why was he certain Bishop had reverted to his Regen form? How had his ailing grandmother arrived in Shanghai? And why was the Regen Bishop trying to eat her?
Knight cracked his tightly clamped eyelids and daylight burst through them like stabbing skewers. He squinted and blinked a few times until his eyes adjusted to the glare. His head felt heavy and his limbs didn’t want to move yet. He was curled in a ball on the concrete floor of the balcony on the Customs House clock tower. He groggily sat up. A chill ran up his back. His body was soaked through with sweat. What the hell?
Knight stood and swayed. Things went out of focus and he thought he would fall, but then reality reasserted itself and the world around him slammed into focus again. He looked over the wall. He had dropped the EXACTO rifle. The glowing, pulsing sphere was still crackling down the street and throwing sharp, jagged bolts of lightning to strike the street, the buildings and the river. Debris or water pluming up with each strike.
The river! Bishop!
“Bishop! Can you hear me?”
Static was the only reply. He looked over the parapet wall again, expecting to see Bishop’s body on the ground with the few creatures they had managed to kill. But there were no bodies. Either the beasts had managed to get back up, or the surviving ones had pulled away the corpses of the dead.
Then a blur caught Knight’s eye. One last creature streaked out of the glowing energy dome and headed to the base of the clock tower where Knight watched from above. The thing stopped its hectic race across the pavement just shy of the base of the building and slowly craned its head sideways, so its chameleon-like eye was looking up the tower, directly at Knight. This can’t be good.
Knight was about to consider alternate means of escaping the Customs House building, but the creature didn’t enter the lobby. It continued to stare up at Knight for another few seconds. Knight didn’t know how its vision functioned. Maybe if he didn’t move at all, the thing wouldn’t spot him. The creature squatted low and lunged toward the stone base of the building. The leap carried it twenty feet into the air before its claws extended and the beast snagged the side of the building. It hung on in a crouch, its bizarre head still tilted like a dog listening to a faraway sound, its eye still glaring up the building at Knight. Then it began a galumping, leaping climb, straight up the side of the building toward Knight’s position.
“Ah, shit.” Knight bolted away from the low wall and quickly glanced around. At the speed the creature was climbing the building, it would be here in seconds. Without the EXACTO, he had only his KA-BAR knife and a grenade on him. “Bishop, if you’re out there, I could use some help! I’m bugging out of my hide.” He was still filled with the panic from earlier, although visions of his grandmother had faded and he no longer had the feeling Bishop had reverted to his Regen state. Where had that come from anyway? Wait…the roar. It started with the howl that one creature made.
There was no other escape beside the rusted access door from the stairs he had used to reach the balcony. Knight raced to the door and at the last second, pulled the grenade from his belt pouch. A standard-issue M67 fragmentation grenade, Knight didn’t know how effective it might be on the beast, but it was all he had. He removed the safety clip, then positioned himself at the top of the stairs, inside the stairwell, holding the door ajar, with one outstretched hand. Using his thumb to remove the pin, Knight held the spoon on the side of the grenade for a second longer, his watchful eyes never leaving the edge of the wall where he expected to see the creature at any time.
But instead of one clawed hand reaching over the edge of the parapet, the beast leapt straight up into the air, clearing the edge of the wall by a good several feet, before landing on the top of it in a crouch. Knight could just see the clear claws extending from the tips of its white toes dig firmly into the concrete just below the lip of the wall.
Knight let the spoon fly and gently rolled the grenade out, before letting the door swing shut. He leapt over the side railing on the stairs, and dropped eight feet to the middle of the next flight of stairs in a crouch. In one fluid movement, he leapt forward headfirst and reached his hands out side to side to grab the railings on either side of the stairs. With about a third of the flight of steps remaining, he swung his legs up to his chest and pivoted on his arms. Then he lunged down the rest of the flight of stairs feet first, releasing his grip on the rails and flying down to land on the painted blue concrete landing in another crouch. He took two steps and lunged down the next flight of stairs, repeating the maneuver, pinioning on his arms over the side rails halfway down the flight and landing on the next landing. As he crouched on that landing, he heard the rusted door above him creak open and then the grenade detonated, slamming the door shut with a booming sound that echoed down the staircase. Still, the fire door muted the explosion considerably.