Hellboy: Unnatural Selection(65)

"Accompany you where?" Liz said.

"Were evacuating the airport. The things that brought down the aircraft are setting about the buildings now, and the parked jets, and just about anything that moves. The military is on its way, so the best we can do for now is get away."

"Oh, great," Hellboy said. "The military."

"They're better trained to deal — "

"With dragons?" Liz asked.

The sergeant looked away, unnerved and confused. He glanced at the dead dragon, its head and neck a ruined mess, flames still licking across its ruptured body and igniting the fat with a bluish fire.

"Sergeant," Liz said, "we need to get to the arrivals exit quickly. We're meeting someone there, and it's vital that we make it."

"Miss, with all due respect, I don't hare time for that. My job is to protect the airport, now more than ever before."

"And I respect that." Liz smiled at him; she knew how disarming her best smile could be. He was a tall man, fit, proud, and this was a day that he'd never forget. He had seen people killed — probably some friends among them — and the killing was obviously not yet over. But sometimes there were difficult choices to make. "We're here to try to prevent more like this happening. Haven't you seen the news lately, from all around the world?"

"Yes," he said, unable to meet her eyes. "Around the world. Not here."

"You thought Britain was immune? Look at that." She pointed at the burning dragon. It was twitching now, fleshy ripples passing across its corpse as small pockets of gas burst deep inside. She was worried there might be another explosion.

"You say you're here to stop more?"

Liz nodded. "We can't know for sure, but this could be just the beginning."

A distant explosion reverberated through the terminal, the floor jumped beneath their feet, and from somewhere came the sound of shattering glass. "Oh, God," the sergeant said. "I think that was another plane."

Liz closed her eyes, hoping he was wrong, sensing he was not.

"We need to go," Hellboy said. He was still scratching at the wounds on his chest, slowly flexing his upper torso as if to work out the pain. "Tell your guys to aim for the necks. That's where they have their gas sacs. Or whatever." He cringed and rubbed one of the bullet holes. "Damn, this'll be sore in the morning."

"Er ... I'm sorry I shot you," the sergeant said.

Hellboy shrugged. "Good shooting. I can't hit the side of a barn."

The sergeant raised an eyebrow and looked at the dead dragon.

"Third shot," Hellboy said. "And look at the size of that thing."

The four of them walked past the burning beast and headed toward the vast check-in hall. The sergeants radio crackled once or twice — shouts, panicked mumbling, shooting — and he walked quickly, glancing back at Hellboy and Liz every few steps.

"What's happening?" he said at last. "Why us? Why here?"

"Reaping what we've sown," Hellboy said.

"I'm sorry?"

Liz nudged Hellboy and shook her head. "He's delirious," she said. The sergeant obviously doubted her, but he was not about to argue.

They walked past a vast panoramic window that looked out over the runways and other buildings, and the scene that greeted them stunned them to a halt. The airport was a war zone. The first crashed passenger jet was burning as fiercely as ever, but now there was an even greater conflagration a mile away across the concrete. It looked as though several parked aircraft and a hangar had been set alight, and the flames reached for the sky like the souls of the doomed jets. A dragon was buzzing the flames, drifting in and out as if reveling in the heat splashing across its body.

Closer by, several emergency vehicles had been attacked, and they lay scattered across a runway like a child's discarded toys. At least one had exploded, the force of the blast having extinguished whatever fire caused it.

"Look," the sergeant said. "Terminal Three." He spoke without emotion, because really there was little that could be said. Terminal Three, a mile away across the airport, was under attack by the other three dragons. One of them perched on the roof and coughed fire down between its feet, apparently trying to burn through like a blowtorch. Flames and gases erupted about its head, but it shook them away and gushed fire again. The other two lizards hovered at windows and holes in the walls, pouring flames into the building, moving back as part of a wall blew out. People fled the building in every direction, from this distance resembling little more than colored ants desperately trying to escape a cruel child with a magnifying glass.