Monster Island(70)

“What’s your objective?” I asked, trying to keep the dialogue open. This guy was going to shoot somebody if I didn’t calm him down.

The agent raised his arms to the heavens as if beseeching a beguiling fate. “To get my hairy white ass out of here! Now disarm, motherf*ckers!”

It was the opening Mariam needed. Unbeknownst to me (and, thankfully, to Kreutzer too) the girl sniper had climbed on top of the wheelhouse and lined up the perfect shot. When Kreutzer’s arms lifted and he was no longer aiming directly at anyone on the ship she held her breath and squeezed the trigger on her Dragunov. The top-heavy carbine dropped to clatter on the concrete as Kreutzer grabbed at his right index finger. “Jesus!”, he screamed. “She blew my finger off!” He stared down at his bloodied hand with wide eyes and then looked at me again. “Jesus!”

In a second I was over the rail. I scooped up the weapon he’d dropped, intending to cover him with it while the girls secured the perimeter. Ayaan had a similar idea but it mostly involved clubbing the survivor across the face with the buttstock of her AK-47. He fell to the ground and rolled into a fetal ball.

“Goddamnit, Ayaan, that was unnecessary,” I shouted. “And dangerous, too. What if he had a partner-or a whole platoon of them hiding behind those trees?”

Ayaan nodded thoughtfully. Then she jabbed Kreutzer in the gut with the barrel of her rifle. “This towelhead wants information,futo delo. Is there a platoon of fools like you hiding there?”

“Oh, glory, no, oh Lord I’m the only one here, Jesus protect me in my hour of misery I swear it, I swear it!”

She looked up at me with a smile and a shrug.

I called for the girls to come and bandage the poor *’s finger (Mariam hadn’t blown it off at all, merely cut it enough to make him drop his weapon) and start looking for a secure place to set up operations. It looked like Governors Island was ours for the taking. I examined the weapon Kreutzer dropped and put it on safety, then handed it to Ayaan.

“You ever think about upgrading?” I asked her.

She gave the weapon about a second’s worth of examination, sighting down the overloaded receiver and hefting its considerable weight. She pulled out its composite buttstock to full length and then slammed it home again. Then she glanced from the black plastic and electronic doodads of the M4A1 to the varnished cherry wood and solid steel of her rifle. Kreutzer’s weapon looked like a toy.

“Everyone knows about this weapon. Urban warfare version of the M16, yes?” she asked. “It is known to jam at a bad time. The barrel overheats when you fire one full clip.” She tossed it back at me and I staggered as it collided with my arms.“No sale, Dekalb.”

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Four


One of the mummies brought the pregnant woman to Gary. She was tied into a wheelchair after she attempted to beat in the skull of one of her captors with a brick. Gary wondered how far she expected to get through a city full of the dead when she couldn’t run or do more than waddle quickly. Her swollen belly lay in her lap as if she’d stuffed a bowling ball up her shirt.

The mummy pushed the wheelchair over to where Gary sat on a pile of bricks and waited patiently for Gary’s next command. He took his time issuing it. He’d been in a peaceful mood all morning, just contemplating the sky and the unfinishedbroch behind him and the new structures he had ordered built on the Great Lawn, not really thinking about anything. After the previous night he supposed he deserved a chance to rest.

His body had been rigid with seizures for hours after he snacked on Mael, the dark energy he had liberated from the Druid sloshing back and forth in his belly and his head and his fingers until black lightning shot from his eyes and mouth. At least a hundred dead men outside thebroch’s walls had been consumed as he thrashed about trying to hold on to his spark-Mael’s energy threatened to sunder him, to physically tear him to pieces and he reached out for their fleeting life force to sustain his scorched and bruised frame. He managed not to explode, somehow. After a few hours of shivering in a corner, his arms wrapped around his knees as his brain iterated through endless hallucinations and his eyes blind with the phosphor blare of the dark light he’d seen he was finally able to stand upright and walk around a little bit again.

“You’ve gained weight,” the pregnant woman said. Marisol, her name was Marisol. “I guess that’s what happens when you binge and forget to purge.”