Monster Planet(108)

'Who...' she wondered out loud. 'Who is it?'

'Gary,' Sarah gloated, her face parted by a broad and exultant smile. 'It's mother-f*cking Gary, that's who!'





Monster Planet





Chapter Fifteen


Gary swept through the crowd, slashing cultists, disemboweling them, stabbing them in their throats. He was vicious and completely remorseless. He seemed to have no plan, just an insatiable need to kill. Someone hit him with a grenade and he fell down on one knee'then rose again unharmed. Twelve new barbed spines emerged from under the bottom of his skull. They shot out like pistons and skewered the heads of ghouls, right through their helmets.

'He gets stronger every time you shoot him,' Sarah said. She had told her father the secret in an attempt to break his heart. Instead he had turned it'turned Gary'into a weapon of mass destruction. Maybe she'd been wrong about him. Maybe Dekalb had more strength than she thought. 'It's all over, Ayaan. It's all over.'

“I do not understand. Why does he fight against our ghouls? The last time I saw him he could take their minds in his hand like grains of rice.” Ayaan shook her head. “Unless the Tsarevich is stronger. I think his control is the better. Yes, that must be it.” Ayaan sucked on her lower lip. Sarah watched the woman who had been her mentor. If you just glanced at her she looked the same as ever'she was still Ayaan'yet if you took a closer look it was unmistakable. She was a corpse now. You could see the way her skin was tightening in her face. You could see it in how much weight she'd lost'she was half the size she used to be. Or maybe it just seemed that way. In life Ayaan had been a towering figure to Sarah. She supposed everyone's parents were like that. In death she was just one more ghoul.

'Stay here,' Ayaan told her, and started hobbling away toward the yurt. Was she going to protect the Tsarevich? Sarah could hardly believe it. They'd done it. They had broken Ayaan, broken her mind. Such a thing shouldn't have been possible. Yet Ayaan herself had frequently warned Sarah that humanity was a liability. Sarah remembered perfectly what Ayaan had said around the campfire one night when Sarah was sixteen years old. 'None of us,' she said, 'is immune to death or madness. The time may come when you have to sanitize me. You may have to shoot me because I've panicked so badly I threaten the squad. None of you may hesitate, when that moment comes.'

Now she seemed to have changed her tune. Was she really a believer? Did she really believe in the Tsarevich, like the two liches Sarah had already killed? Or was she just afraid of death, like her father had been, and Gary before him?

Speaking of the devil'Sarah looked up to see Gary whirling through the Tsarevich's army like a top. He was under sustained gunfire and his skull had taken on a patchy and mottled appearance'he was being healed as fast as he was being injured but the process wasn't perfect. Sarah just didn't know how long it could be kept up. She knew her father was doing it. She knew he had to be somewhere nearby. Gary's legs flexed and sharp fragments of bone jutted out of him, covered him in vicious spikes. He tore through a machine gun position and the weapon's wooden stock shivered into pieces. The gunners were thrown away like crumpled bits of paper.

Sarah suddenly realized she'd been left alone. Ayaan and the werewolf had both abandoned her. Well, they had more serious problems. Sarah's hands were tied so securely there wasn't much she could do, anyway.

Or maybe there was. She turned around in place, taking in the frenetic energy of the camp, the living people running in every direction, the ghouls taking up defensive formations. She found what she wanted and headed toward it at a run. A single mummy, standing alone at the back of the valley next to a big rock formation. It'she'held a jar in her hands with something round and murky inside.

'I was sent by Ptolemaeus Canopus,' she said, skidding to a stop in the dirt. 'Are you alright? We need to work together if we're going to get out of here.'

The mummy didn't move. The thing in the jar didn't move either but she could feel a haze of dark energy wafting off of it. It was desperately trying to get her attention. She looked down, through the glass, and saw a human brain there. Nasty, but hardly the worst thing she'd ever seen.

Behind her she heard a prolonged scream and she turned to look. Blood jetted high over the crowd, a fountain of it. Gary had grown an extra joint at the end of his legs, a curved, scythe-like foot that looked perfect for evisceration.