Monster Island(75)

I tried to bluff. “We were just looking for the drugs. Scoping out hospitals, looking for a way in to complete the original mission.”

“Nice try. My brain is dead, not damaged. You want to kill me. I know I would do the same thing in your place. I’m a threat, a serious threat, and you want to neutralize me. Obviously I don’t want that. I’m willing to make a deal.”

I sat down hard on the lawn. “Talk to me. The survivors-”

“Are mine now,” he interrupted. “There’s no room for negotiation there. What I will give you is safe passage. I know you had some trouble with pigeons the other day. They’re gone now. I’m going to let you enter Manhattan just long enough to get to the UN building, get your pills, and leave. Nobody will come close to you-I can keep them back. I can protect you. You do this and then you get on your boat and you leave here forever. Sound doable?”

“And if we try to take back the prisoners anyway?”

“Then you get to find out why a million dead men can’t all be wrong. This is what I’m offering, Dekalb, and nothing else. Get the drugs and leave. Oh, and one other thing. Ayaan.”

I looked over at the girl in question. She was posing for pictures-Fathia had found a Polaroid camera in one of the barracks and all the girls wanted a souvenir of their visit to New York City. She turned to look at me and smiled.

Gary purred in my ear. “Ayaan stays here. I want to cut the skin off her in little pieces and eat them one by one. I want to have some quality time with her viscera. She shot me in the head. Nobody gets a free ride after that.”

I put a hand over my mouth to hold in what I wanted to say to that.Not going to f*cking happen, *. Instead I waited a moment and said “I’ll have to get back to you.” I hitEND and put away the phone.

“Dekalb,” Kreutzer said from the door of the trailer. “We’ve got image.” I followed him back into the stuffy enclosed space to see what Jack had found.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Seven


Gary flew with the undead pigeons on First Avenue. Through their eyes he watched as they fell, whole flocks at a time, tumbling through the air, their wingtips spinning lifelessly. Gary was a man of his word-if Dekalb wanted to take him up on his generous offer the way to the UN building would be clear. Gary wasn’t so much afraid of Dekalb as concerned. While the weapons inspector and his team of Somali killers could hardly make a dent in Gary’s defenses, they could conceivably do something so random it would endanger Gary’s breeding stock. If they were to fire missiles at thebroch, for instance, Gary would almost certainly survive but Marisol’s people could be hurt in the ensuing chaos and debris. A thousand such scenarios had gone through Gary’s mind and he didn’t relish any of them. Getting Dekalb out of New York as quickly as possible was just good common sense.

Gary sucked the life out of the birds until only one remained, banking unconcernedly over the great piles of its former wingmates, the greasy iridescent blue feathered masses of them clogging the streets. Gary spilled air across a pair of fluttering wings and wheeled toward the river and Long Island. He dug deep with the bird’s pinions and soared until he could see Jamaica Bay burnished by the sun, until he thought he could see the earth curving away beneath him but… enough. He gave the bird a hard squeeze and its vision dimmed. A barely-noticeable spark of dark energy flowed into Gary’s being.

In a soft and shadowed place he shifted in his king-sized bathtub and fluid seeped into the hollow of his collarbone. He reared up, the briny liquid falling away from him in torrents, and grabbed his bathrobe. There was work to be done.

Marisol vomited noisily across the brick floor. “Morning sickness?” Gary asked, lifting the living woman to her feet by one elbow.

She shook him away. “I’m suffocating in here. What is that stuff, pickle juice?”

“Formalin,” Gary responded, looking down at the pool of straw-colored liquid he’d just clambered out of. “I’m preserving myself for future generations. You should be grateful. The more I protect myself from bacterial decay, the fewer of your people I have to eat. Let’s go get some air if it bothers you so much.”

As he lead her up the spiraling staircase hidden in the tower’s double wall he summoned one of the mummies to clean up the sick. It gave him a real if petty pleasure to make Mael’s former honor guard do janitorial work but honestly, somebody had to clean thebroch and only the mummies retained the necessary manual dexterity. Gary’s own hands acted like they were encased in fur-lined mittens-he couldn’t even button his own shirt. The Ptolemies from the museum could use simple tools, at least.