Monster Island(79)

Oh, no I wasn’t. I knew perfectly well that Marisol and the others were still being held as a food supply in Gary’s castle. I knew that I had a personal responsibility to kill Gary.

I also knew that Ayaan had just gotten me off the hook. She had made those things unimportant. Ignorable. I could finish my mission and barely have to lift a finger. It just meant writing off a couple of hundred human lives.

“I’ve got some ideas but I need every man I can get in on this one. I need you, Dekalb.” He stared at me even as I steadfastly refused to meet his gaze.

Eventually I followed him into the trailer without a word and sank down into one of the comfortable chairs there. Kreutzer lingered in the background, all but rubbing his hands together in nervousness while Jack studied high-res images of Central Park and the things Gary had built there.

“We have to start with a couple of assumptions,” he said, finally, that final word sounding like something with too many legs that had just flown into his mouth. This was a man who thought that hard data was a necessity in buying an electric toothbrush. Staging a suicidal rescue attempt would require notarized affidavits from signal intelligence operatives and a signed letter from the Joint Chiefs of Staff describing in perfect detail exactly what his mission was. He didn’t have that luxury now, of course. “We start by assuming that this ispossible. Then we assume that we have the gear and the personnel to pull it off.”

I nodded but still refused to look at his screen.

“We have to assume that he’s still human enough to share some of our limitations. That he can only concentrate on one thing at a time.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “You want to use Ayaan’s sacrifice as a diversion.” It made sense, of course. Gary wanted one thing very badly, and that was revenge. If he was handed it on a silver platter why would he notice us sneaking up behind him with a chainsaw to cut his head off?

I could think of a bunch of reasons why he would notice that. He wasn’t stupid. We had underestimated him before and it had cost us so much. Jack was thinking in the realm of possibilities, though, not in terms of what might happen but whatcould happen. Even I knew that was dangerous territory.

“We have to assume one other thing. That he didn’t know this was here when he built his fortifications.”

That made me look up. Something Gary had overlooked? Something that would solve all of our problems? Jack was tapping the screen, indicating a featureless rectangular shape just inside the boundaries of the Park. It sat immediately downtown from the 79th Street transverse, formerly a well-paved road and now a ribbon of muddy water. I had no idea what it was.

When Jack told me I had to seriously think about what we were going to do. About how we were going to sneak inside Gary’s fortress and somehow make it back out alive with a couple of hundred living people in tow. It couldn’t be done.

We were going to do it. “How do we start?” I asked.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Ten


They were walking in the garden between the dormitory buildings, the mummies keeping a discrete distance from the living when something white and fast blurred across Gary’s vision and collided with his temple, making his eyes shiver in their sockets. His brain squirmed in his head as he sent out a dozen commands at once, drawing in clumps of soldiers to cover his blind spot, sending Noseless clambering up the stairs of thebroch to get a clear view, rushing Faceless out to where the wall of the enclosure wasn’t quite finished.

It was with his own eyes, however, that he solved the mystery. Looking down, still shaken by the blow, he saw the missile that had struck him so violently. It was a softball, soiled and dented from long use. Looking up again he saw a girl standing stock still a few dozen yards away, her eyes very wide. She wore a catcher’s glove and her nose was running unheeded. Her bright energy thrummed inside her with the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

Gary knelt down before the terrified eight year-old and tried to smile. Considering the state of his teeth maybe that wasn’t the best idea. The girl trembled visibly, waves of fear rippling through her gooseflesh.

“Come here, baby. I’m not going to bite.” Not this one, anyway. She had plenty more years ahead of her as a breeder before she would be culled. If she was a threat he might have to eat her father or something as an object lesson.

At his side he could feel Marisol barely able to control herself. She wanted to hurt him, he knew. Violence had been done to his person and she felt as if she should take it as a sign to begin a violent rebellion against her captivity. He also knew she wasn’t that stupid. The others who stood around him in a wide circle looked ready to run away at the slightest provocation. There would be no mutiny today.