Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(62)

"What the hell are those idiots doing?" Liz said, aghast. The helicopter was flying toward the dragons, not away from them.

"Press? Politicians?" Hellboy shrugged his shoulders and thought, At least it'll give all these people time to get inside, "Liz, let's get inside," he said. "Uh-oh, here comes the cavalry."

Several policemen in body armor burst out of the terminal, machine guns in both hands. They skidded to a halt on the concrete, staring up at the dragons. The lizards were converging on the lonely helicopter, circling it, casting brief bursts of fire against its fuselage. Playing with it. One of them drifted in and swiped the helicopter with its tail, sending it into a dangerous spin. The pilot recovered, only to be knocked again from the other side. Then all five dragons spat fire, and the helicopter exploded. The policemen opened fire.

"Now they'll come down here," Hellboy said. He pushed Liz inside and followed.

From outside came the sounds of machine-gun fire, and Hellboy had a sense of being closed in from all sides; it felt as though the heavens were falling, and when he glanced from the next available window, he saw that was true. He could hardly see any sky. All he saw were dragons' wings, and all he heard were the cries of dying men. The gunfire lessened, then stopped, and all fell silent.

"Go!" Hellboy said. He was pushing people ahead of him up the staircase, desperate to reach the first level, where they could go deeper into the building. Here they were protected only by a thin layer of blockwork and metal siding, and the more walls there were between these people and the dragons, the better he'd feel.

The sense of being enclosed lessened. He glanced at Liz, and she said, "They're moving away." Hellboy nodded grimly. Good news for them, bad for someone else.

They made it up into the departures concourse. The crowd hurried through toward the huge departure lounge, but Hellboy and Liz held back, waiting by the wide spread of windows and looking out over the airport. The downed aircraft was belching clouds of rolling black smoke at the sky, forced aloft by towering flames. Hellboy tried not to think about what was feeding that fire and giving the smoke a definite oily texture; he could smell the conflagration from here, and that was bad enough. There were several emergency crews vainly pumping foam, many of them scanning the skies as they did so.

Of the dragons there was no sign.

"Those bastards!" Liz said. "That's plain murder. Damn Blake. Whatever his mad gripes, there's no justification for something like this."

"None at all," Hellboy said quietly. The anger was building in him. He needed to hit something, and soon.

"We can't just leave this," Liz said. "We can't just go." The huge fire outside was reflected in her eyes, and Hellboy thought he saw the ice blue of her own personal inferno in there as well.

"We won't," he said. "I fought one of these things — though that one looked bigger than these damn worms — and got my butt kicked. But five ... that's another thing altogether."

"Yeah, but now you've got me," Liz said. "And you've got that new cannon."

Hellboy held up his pistol and rested it in his big right hand. "Isn't she a beauty?" he said. "This'll put a hole in a tank."

"And a dragon?"

He nodded. "Oh, I really want to see what this'll do to a dragon."

Liz took a deep breath and turned away from the window, and when she looked at Hellboy, her eyes were still aflame. "Then let's go," she said.

But they did not have to go. The fight came to them.



* * *



Even above the screaming, they heard the roar of fire belching from a dragons mouth.

"That's coming from inside!" Liz said.

"Departure lounge," Hellboy said. Then he ran. He pounded onto the moving walkways, nudging people aside and apologizing as he went. He heard Liz behind him doing the same. The pistol was a reassuring weight in his left hand, and he made sure he had a perfect grip. They were getting closer.

Another roar, and something exploded at the heart of the terminal, setting ceiling tiles vibrating and advertisement frames falling from walls. Hellboy vaulted the handrail of the moving walkway and ran for a fire exit, shouldering his way through and crashing across the corridor into another door. It had been a guess, and a good one. He burst through and stumbled into a display of perfume and moisturizing cream, dropping to his knees, smashing the shelving away from his face, and bringing the gun up in one smooth movement. Someone screamed — a sales clerk, he guessed — but he ignored her, standing and forcing his way through the shop and out onto the concourse. People were running left to right. Some of them looked fearfully over their shoulders, most simply ran, terrified and determined. Children screamed as parents squeezed their arms. Hold tighter, Hellboy thought. These kids need to grow up to tell the story. He turned left and ran against the flow. Most people moved out of his way.