Monster (Gone 7)

I’m not your puppet!

Knightmare was even bigger up close and radiated power and violence. Shade vibrated to a stop, forcing herself to speak slowly.

“Hey. You. Should. Um . . .” She had not exactly thought about what to say to the monster. “Stop. Being. An. Asshole.”

With slowness that tried Shade’s patience, the creature turned malevolent pupil-less black eyes on her. “What the hell are you?”

“I’m. The. Hero.”

Shade was pretty sure he would blink at this if he had eyelids. He did not appear to. His eyes were black balls, inhuman, soulless.

The CHP arrived. Their car doors opened. Two officers were slowly, slowly taking positions behind the cover of their doors, handguns drawn.

“Go ahead, shoot, you puny nothings!” Knightmare bellowed in his crack-of-doom voice.

Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

The highway patrolmen emptied their clips at point-blank range. Shade saw the bullets flying. She saw the slugs strike their target. She saw them spin away.

Guns don’t bother him, so what am I supposed to do?

Cruz and Malik coasted up in the stolen vehicle, taking their sweet time. Malik and Cruz piled out. Slowly. Malik left the engine running, then reached back in and threw it into gear. The SUV crawled forward, just as they’d planned. Shade to distract so that Malik could get the vehicle closer.

Well done, Malik.

She returned to the SUV in a single bound as Malik was still slowly walking away. She opened the door and climbed in. Her morphed body was a very poor fit for the seat, but she was able to jam one foot down on the accelerator and watch the speedometer move from eight miles an hour to twenty to forty-five, at which point the SUV was just a few feet from impact. She leaped out, easily matching what to her was not even walking speed, and watched as the SUV advanced on Knightmare.

His dead eyes turned, spotting the SUV, and he began to move.

It was a surreal ballet, the SUV advancing at a seeming crawl, Knightmare swinging his sword at a slightly faster pace. SUV . . . sword. SUV . . . sword.

Shade shifted position to see better. The front bumper was inches from Knightmare’s left leg as the sword arm completed an awkward arc.

The SUV crashed into Knightmare with a loud crumpf!

Knightmare’s sword arm sliced into the SUV behind the driver’s seat.

Knightmare’s leg was slammed by the impact of the big SUV and he lost his balance. His sword arm had carried him around with its momentum and now he fell on his back atop the SUV.

Erin’s unnatural warbling scream rose in pitch.

The CHP in the helicopter had their door open and fired down at him with a shotgun, the fat slugs clearly visible as they flew.

Shade looked around, searching for some tool, some weapon. By the main highway was a barbed-wire fence. She raced back and ripped lengths of wire free, coiling it, then ran back just as Knightmare climbed—apparently unhurt—off the crushed SUV. He glared up at the helicopter and then did something Shade would not have thought possible for a creature of his size and weight: he jumped.

Knightmare jumped twice his own height, and at the top of his rise he swung the sword arm.

“No!” Shade cried in a millisecond buzz.

But Knightmare was too high and the helicopter was too low and the sword arm smashed into the whirling blades, which shattered and came apart, hurling jagged steel

in every direction.

Then the sword’s arc cut into the top of the helicopter and down through the passenger space. Shade watched in horror as the blade sliced down through the body of a patrolman, down through his shoulder, down through his chest, out through his hip.

The helicopter crashed into one of the administrative buildings, bashing in the red-tile roof. Shade saw it all in slow motion with exquisite detail: the tiles flying, the stucco crumbling, the rotors shattering, the pilot struggling with the stick, mouth open, starting to scream . . .

Am I fast enough?