Monster (Gone 7)

Fight or flight?

The answer when at last it came should have been a triumphant shout, but it came out as a shaky, doomed whisper.

“Fight.”

Shade kicked off and zoomed after the creature as he kicked at police cars, crumpling them like empty beer cans. Shade saw a police officer, his uniform aflame, flying through the air like a football.

The monster was fast, able to move at more than human speed, but Shade was moving at bullet speed and she easily caught him. She raced rings around him, dodging gobbets of fire that dribbled from his mouth, looking for vulnerabilities, for weaknesses, but he was to all intents and purposes a massive pile of walking magma. From twenty feet away it was like sticking your head into a pizza oven. The heat of his touch boiled the tarmac beneath his great reptilian feet.

And in Shade’s head the Dark Watchers leaned forward, excited, like spectators at a football game.

Shade took a step back and then another. The magma creature had not yet seen her. She could still run. Should run!

But now she noticed something about the creature: the black crust of rock was no longer morphing, it had steadied, becoming what it was now: a sort of jigsaw puzzle of oddly shaped plate armor, like poorly made chain mail. Hard, cooled (though still blisteringly hot) volcanic rock over a core of fire.

An idea formed in the cold, clear core that in so many ways defined Shade Darby. Terrified, roasting hot, appalled, and overwhelmed, she nevertheless . . . thought.

Shade raced back to the SUV. Malik had made no effort to leave; on the contrary, he had one foot out the door and Cruz had begun to open her own door.

The fools are coming to help me? Against . . . that?

She vibrated to a slowness that was barely tolerable and said, “Get. Out! Run! Run!”

Then she popped the back door, shoved the gate upward so hard and fast that one hinge snapped and the whole rear door hung by a thread. There she found what she was looking for: the golf bag that had belonged to the owner of the SUV.

Balls and clubs. She grabbed some of the throwing stars as well, tossing them into a small runner’s backpack, which she slung over her shoulder and then, cursing a blue streak to keep her courage up, zoomed back to the creature who now was nearly at the docked Okeanos.

She pulled out a club and beat it on the ground until the head twisted off, leaving a somewhat bent, high-tensile-strength shaft with a jagged end.

Deep breath.

Insane!

Deep breath.

Hero time!

Gripping the pointy club, she raced straight at the creature, sighted the gap between two hard plates that formed part of his right lower calf, just above where his Achilles tendon would be if he had such a thing, and with all her considerable might, with a power driven by shocking speed, Shade leaped and stabbed the shaft deep into the red marrow. She bounced off the creature and to her relief felt no pain—it was like quickly touching an iron to test its heat.

Sparks flew but they flew too slowly to reach her.

The monster was as hot as the center of a volcano, hot enough to melt lead and copper bullets, but it was not hot enough to melt the golf club’s titanium shaft.

The monster’s next step was a stumble, and while it was still plowing forward trying to catch its balance, Shade grabbed a second club and plunged it into a narrow gap on the top of its opposite foot.

And then the magma beast . . . fell!

It fell directly toward a policeman, who stared up, paralyzed with horror.

Shade ran, grabbed the policeman, and shoved him out of the way, snapping ribs like twigs, but better that than being crushed. Too late she saw a policewoman still in her patrol car, and the magma creature crashed down on her like a rock slide, sending up showers of sparks and smoke. Shade heard a desperate cry, quickly annihilated.

The monster was fast on his feet, but not so fast at standing up. He disentangled himself from the police car, crushed to half its normal height. A burning hand stuck out from the crumpled windshield. The beast stared quizzically at the two small shafts and pulled them out like they were splinters.

The beast stood, but even before he was fully erect he opened his mouth and, with a glottal roar that sounded like a hundred men vomiting at once, sprayed forth a gusher of liquid fire.

Shade backed away quickly as the napalm fell and a pillar of flame and smoke swirled like a tornado around the great monster.

The creature was fast, not fast enough to catch Shade, but too fast for her to manage as easily as she’d have liked. The fire that blew from that gaping jaw was faster still, forming an obstacle course of melting tarmac and tornadoes of smoke. If she wasn’t careful, she could too easily run into the flame, and she was not at all sure it wouldn’t burn her, however fast she was.