Obliteration Read online

  If there was anything good to come out of the past year, it was the look on Cafferty’s face in the prison cell, asking Van Ness for help with his tail between his legs. Even if it meant doing something that should have been finished long ago, if his nukes hadn’t been disrupted.

  “Allow me to introduce you to my supersoldier program,” Van Ness said to the group, breaking the silence. “Thanks to Dr. Liander, they are the perfect combination of human and creature DNA, creating what you see below. The loyalty and intellect of a human, the strength of a creature. And they always follow my orders, unlike some of my human colleagues from the past . . .”

  Van Ness looked downward at the stump on his arm, reflecting on the betrayal of his number two, Edwards. He snapped out of the memory.

  “So, Mr. Mayor, this is how we win this war. This is how we take back Earth.”

  Nobody replied. He’d expected motormouthed Cafferty to have a response, though the majesty before the failed mayor seemed to have shut him up for a change.

  It didn’t matter. Van Ness’ point had been proven when the lights had thundered on. What irked him more than anything else was that it didn’t need to come to this. Millions of lives had been lost because of the ragtag team standing in front of his wheelchair. The fools didn’t seem to grasp this simple fact, despite the world collapsing at this very moment.

  But the former mayor will eventually grasp the magnitude of his errors.

  Mr. Cafferty’s time on this planet will be ending so very soon . . .

  Van Ness watched the looks of concern spread over the mayor and his team’s faces. Only now must they be realizing they were not in charge, that they were never in charge, that Van Ness was now holding every single card—as it always had been.

  “Now, now, why such nervous looks?” Van Ness asked, addressing the group. “Without our words, we are just like the creatures—merely animals. Don’t you think?”

  Van Ness looked down at the thousands of supersoldiers and smiled to himself.

  “I gave you my word I will see this all the way to the end,” Van Ness continued. “And I will. Perhaps the right question is this: Will you know when the end is upon us, Mr. Cafferty?”

  Van Ness eyed Cafferty for a long moment, studying his impact on the man, seeing the anxiety spread across his face. Truth be told, he could order the mayor’s execution right now, in this moment, in this place. All it would take was one look at Franco Roux, and the mayor’s life would be snuffed out before he even had time to react. The entire team could be cut down in moments by the supersoldiers.

  It was so very tempting.

  No, no, a swift death is not a fitting end for Thomas. His team will watch him die.

  After he’s witnessed me break the backs of these creatures once and for all and my victory is complete.

  Van Ness was, if anything, a man of his word.

  “Perhaps a little demonstration is in order,” Van Ness said. “Dr. Liander, can you be of assistance?”

  Cornelius Liander poked his finger against his glasses. “No problemo. Follow me.”

  The doctor strode along the bridge, arms locked by his side. He appeared to Van Ness like an annoying teenager, despite his advancing years.

  Van Ness had sent him down here twenty years ago because of his irritating, quirky behavior. It turned out to be a masterstroke. Liander was a genius at genetic manipulation. What he sorely lacked in social graces he made up for with scientific imagination and lack of moral boundaries. Precisely the man Van Ness needed to create these supersoldiers.

  “How is all this possible?” Cafferty asked the doctor, as they followed him across the bridge.

  “You built an army of adults?” Munoz added. “How?”

  “Oh, DNA sequencing, amniotic tanks with enhanced growth conditions, brain-computer interfaces, and some WD-40,” Liander replied, making himself laugh.

  “Are they . . . human? Self-aware?” Munoz continued.

  “Oh, they’re human . . . kinda. 87.2 percent human, to be exact. Any less . . . whew, no good. Self-aware, not quite. They are essentially clones of each other. I added some things, took a few important things out as well. And now . . . well now, they behave very nicely.”

  “Did they not behave nicely in the past?” Munoz asked.

  “That’s enough, Doctor,” Van Ness said, cutting him off. “The demonstration, please.”

  Liander punched in a code on a panel and the doors slid open.

  Van Ness pushed the joystick on his wheelchair forward. “Follow me,” he commanded.

  Van Ness rolled into a pristine laboratory with a transparent wall at the far end. An unusual cylindrical glass tube containing a syringe with a glowing green barrel caught Cafferty’s attention.

  “What’s in that syringe?” he asked.

  Van Ness stopped for a moment to study the green liquid inside the needle.

  “More creature than human—” Dr. Liander began to say.

  Van Ness immediately cut him off. “That would be our last resort. Pray to whatever god you believe in that we never need to use that, Thomas.”

  Van Ness continued to the glass wall at the end of the room. Everyone fanned around him. Munoz and Bowcut kept having a whispered conversation. He would soon have their attention.

  Dr. Liander stood to the side, a tablet illuminating his face. “Mr. Van Ness, I’m sending in Timothy. The elevator is ascending.”

  “Stop giving them names, Cornelius,” Van Ness replied. “It gives them a level of humanity that they don’t deserve. They are a creation. They are soldiers.”

  “Um, okay. I’ll send him in.”

  “It. You’ll send it in.”

  The doctor nervously nodded and fingered his tablet. The lights in the lab faded out, leaving the room dimly lit.

  The glass to their front illuminated, highlighting a basketball-court-sized room several feet below them. White walls. Varnished wooden floorboards. A solid steel partition in the middle, splitting the room in half.

  On one end, a lone supersoldier stood at attention, stoic, expressionless, breathing steadily like the thousands of supersoldiers they just witnessed below.

  On the opposite side of the partition, a two-meter square opened in the floor.

  Much like the Colosseum in Rome, Van Ness thought. A gladiatorial fight for the modern ages.

  A creature’s muffled screech came through the reinforced window. On the other side of the partition, the soldier tensed instinctively. The creature bounded through the square hole and hunched in anticipation.

  “My God,” Ellen muttered.

  “Bad memories, Mrs. Cafferty?” Van Ness replied, referring to the exact test he put her through in his lair one year earlier.

  “Not for me,” she shot back defiantly. “I seem to recall killing that creature in Paris.”

  Cafferty smiled at Ellen and squeezed her hand.

  “True, true,” Van Ness said. “One important difference, though. Can anyone spot it?”

  “That soldier has no weapons,” Cafferty replied. “He’ll get slaughtered in seconds.”

  “Thomas, my supersoldiers don’t need weapons,” Van Ness replied. “They are the weapon.”

  The steel partition slowly descended, revealing the opponents to each other. The creature let out an ear-piercing screech and bared its serrated claws and three rows of razor-sharp teeth. Its tail crashed into the ground with tremendous force, preparing to attack.

  With lightning-fast speed, the creature rocketed across the floorboards. It leaped in the air, over the top of the soldier, and its massive black tail swung down to tear him to shreds.

  The sight of tens of thousands of hybrid soldiers had stunned Cafferty earlier, but he was finally regaining his composure. He watched the scene unfolding before him with intense scrutiny. He moved closer to the glass wall, expecting to witness the supersoldier’s senseless slaughter at the hands of the monster below.

  The creature’s tail whipped toward the unmoving soldier’s neck
. In the blink of an eye—faster than the creature itself—the soldier’s arm reached up and grabbed the tail, stopping its momentum dead. Then he drove the tail into the center of the creature’s torso, ripping right through its rib cage. The tip penetrated through the back of its body, impaling the creature midair.

  Yellow blood spattered the floor in every direction.

  The creature crashed to the ground, gripping its chest in agony.

  The soldier circled over the writhing black body. He smashed his boot down onto the creature’s skull with incredible force, caving it instantly and crushing its brain stem and vertebrae.

  The lifeless carcass lay at his feet, and the soldier stood at attention again, barely out of breath, seemingly oblivious to the carnage.

  The entire encounter appeared unhuman.

  Cafferty, Ellen, Diego, and Sarah stared through the glass in complete shock, unable to process what they had just witnessed.

  “My God,” Bowcut said.

  Cafferty’s hatred of Van Ness suddenly overwhelmed him. He hated witnessing this demonstration. Hated knowing that Van Ness’ supersoldiers were the only way they had a chance at winning. And he hated the deal he had made with the devil. It was clear Cafferty was a dead man at the end of all this, and Van Ness was just teasing him along.

  To make matters worse, Ellen gripped his arm. She still didn’t know Van Ness’ terms for humanity’s survival, didn’t know the secret deal Cafferty had made with him.

  One must live, and one must die . . .

  The supersoldier’s success surely meant Cafferty’s eventual death. Van Ness would make him watch as he conquered the world and then dispose of him once and for all. When he agreed to the deal, Cafferty thought he had a shot at surviving all this. Now he realized Van Ness had baited him the whole way.

  I never had a chance . . .

  Dr. Liander pressed his finger on the tablet again, and the lights in the lab brightened. “Here endeth the demonstration.”

  Bowcut turned to Van Ness. “So what’s the deployment plan? Where do we even start?”

  “Cut the head off the snake, of course. We’ll take five thousand of my soldiers to San Francisco first.”

  “Why San Francisco?” she asked. “And why only five thousand?”

  “Because, my dear,” Van Ness replied, “it’s all we require to kill the queen.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  All Karen and Joey could do was stare in silence at the gaping hole in the middle of the park. The thousands of creatures surrounding it stopped screeching, almost in unison. The mass appeared focused on what was about to rumble from the ground.

  Sweat beaded on her forehead, partly from the nervous anticipation, mostly from the stifling heat in the break room on the roof of the building they were in. The lack of power had turned the place into a giant greenhouse. Even with the doors open and some of the windows smashed out, the breeze wasn’t enough to mitigate the soaring temperature.

  Back in the park, the massive black head of a creature rose from the depths below with what looked like a crown of thorns on top. Karen squinted to get a better look. Two glowing red half-moon eyes cleared the hole, and massive claws clutched the edges, pulling the creature up farther. This monstrosity had to be the size of a truck.

  Suddenly, it let out a deafening screech that even from the break room sounded earsplitting.

  Joey covered his ears quickly from the terrifying noise.

  Karen quickly followed suit.

  Windows in buildings around the park shattered into a million pieces.

  The throng of smaller creatures backed away several yards.

  “My God,” Karen muttered.

  Is this their leader?

  How could it not be?

  The giant monster climbed out of the hole and stood on the grass, towering over the surrounding thousands of creatures by at least twelve feet. Its scaly body glinted in the late-morning sunshine. It looked in all directions and screeched again.

  The surrounding mass obediently organized itself into a thick corridor that led down an adjacent street. Even the smaller ones who’d appeared to have previously given the orders had now fallen into a deferential line.

  The giant creature strode between them, moving smoothly on its muscle-ripped legs, until disappearing from view. The rest promptly followed until the park emptied.

  Karen peered at the hole in the ground.

  Are they taking it on a tour of their devastation? To show their leader what they’ve accomplished?

  “What was that thing?” Joey asked.

  “I’m not sure, little buddy.”

  The only thing she was sure about was the street below them was clear of the living nightmares. And this presented them with a chance to head in the opposite direction of the mass.

  To head for the wharf. To save ourselves.

  It may be our only opportunity.

  “Baby, I need you to listen to me carefully,” Karen said, stroking her fingers through her son’s hair. “We’re gonna leave this building and head for a boat, okay? I want you to stay close to me. Stay quiet. Can you do that for me?”

  “Like a boss!” he said, making her smile.

  Karen took a deep breath. Joey gripped her hand.

  She headed for the fire escape, pushed the door farther open, and entered the stairwell. Everything remained silent, apart from the moan of a gentle breeze rising up the flights. Karen peered down the gap toward the ground level. Natural light flooded in from the emergency exit.

  A single human arm protruded from several floors below her, absolutely still, caked in blood.

  Heading past mutilated bodies was unavoidable, and she guessed the carnage would only get worse as they made their break through the tourist spots on the streets. She wished there was a way to protect her son from seeing all this. He had already witnessed the attacks. Seen his father butchered. Slipped in blood. And yet, she wanted to keep him from experiencing more. It was almost certainly impossible, though. This trip would likely further scar him, but it was too late to worry about that.

  Karen and Joey descended the stairs. She moved at a fast but careful pace. Listened carefully for any creature sounds. Kept her vision focused on any dark corner or open entrance.

  Three levels down, they passed an open-plan office with around forty workstations. The fire door had been ripped clean off. A pile of corpses lay in the corner, women and men of different races and ages. The creatures didn’t discriminate. Blood spatters decorated the pristine white walls behind them. She guessed they’d backed into a corner before the killing commenced.

  Like an execution by firing squad.

  She and Joey continued down the stairs past the severed arm. Karen looked only long enough so they could step over it. The years as a paramedic had gotten her used to grisly scenes, which helped. However, no training existed for anything like this, for something of this scale and magnitude.

  They reached the ground level, and she breathed a sigh of relief until she realized that was probably the easy part.

  She slowed to a stop by the entrance and forced back the fear building inside her. They had to commit to this plan. They were getting on a boat and getting away from these creatures.

  They were going to do all that.

  We are . . .

  Karen craned her head outside.

  Once again, no creatures. Only the quiet yet constant buzz of flies coming from around the dead. She picked up Joey and headed outside.

  Three blocks of weaving around dead pedestrians on the sidewalk took her to Columbus Avenue. She turned left onto the tree-lined street and moved past rows of independent restaurants, cafés, and stores, all now torn apart at the hands of the creatures. The ground was littered with shards of broken glass, torn clothing, handbags, bloodstained jackets.

  And, of course, corpses.

  The slaughtered bodies lay thicker here than on Lombard Street. Some had been thrown out the windows above the stores and lay slumped on the hoods of the
stationary cars. Others had been cut down while likely trying to take refuge in the buildings. A French bistro had upturned tables, several dead beyond the counter.

  No one was spared. Everywhere she looked was carnage.

  It would have been numbing, but there was always a fresh atrocity, some new horror she’d not yet seen. Weirdly, that probably kept her sane, kept her thinking about where she was and where she needed to go.

  Karen continued her fast walk past a park containing a statue dedicated for the city’s firemen. She avoided looking at the children’s playground and shielded her son’s eyes as they passed.

  They were making good progress, though Karen knew they were only one creature away from bringing their attempt to a swift end.

  Joey kept his head nestled in her shoulder. She could feel his little heart beating fast, but he was acting like a trooper. A heavy little trooper—even in this moment, she marveled at how big he’d gotten, and her love gave her more energy to get him to safety, continuing to ignore the pain in her ankle.

  A yellow trolley sat dormant in the center of the street. Dark red stains concealed the horror inside, though the slight incline on the street had caused blood to run out the battered back door and drip onto the pavement.

  Karen moved to the center of the road, keeping low, and scampered from car to car. She turned right along Leavenworth Street and neared the wharf.

  So very close . . .

  Excitement rose inside her.

  We’re gonna make it to a boat . . .

  She picked up her pace to a jog.

  Suddenly, a piercing screech caused her to skid to a stop.

  She turned to look back.

  Roughly three hundred yards behind her, a single creature stood in the middle of the road, staring at them.

  Then another joined it. In the blink of an eye, the two creatures leaped forward, bounding over cars toward her location.

  Karen desperately scanned the immediate area. She’d never outrun them in time to get to Pier 45, much less make it to a boat.