“Burn!” Peaks roared, and he spread his liquid fire everywhere. It rolled across the deck, blistering the paint, seeping down into the holds, lighting up anything flammable, food supplies, scientific gear, specimens, bodies, the ship’s cat . . . and Vincent.
But Vincent’s detached arms continued their advance on Napalm, their tubular legs burning and regrowing, burning and regrowing. They marched like fearless warriors through walls of flame, over blistering magma. They burned and smelled of fish. They burned and sent up an oily smoke. They writhed and twisted and were consumed, and yet kept growing.
Impossible!
The scientist in Peaks, the rational mind that still worked feverishly beneath the animal rage of Napalm, could not believe what it was seeing. Could not imagine that anything biological could so ignore its own destruction. It wasn’t courage; the sections were mindless automata, indifferent to their own survival, driven by the will of the thin boy with the glittering eyes.
The ship was sinking. One of Vincent’s legs had pushed through the wrong part of the ship and water was gushing in through a five-foot hole below the waterline. The deck, already a crazy quilt of twisted metal and fire, tilted as the bow began to settle.
Vincent did not feel the agonies of his detached sections, but he felt a dull pain from those parts of his core that burned, dull pain being all his starfish nervous system could convey. The pain was tolerable. What was not tolerable was the fact that he had been forced to let go of the box and its precious contents.
Furious and afraid, Vincent now began willfully ripping the Okeanos apart, tearing off great slabs of steel and hurling them at Napalm with shocking force.
A two-ton segment of deck hit Napalm like a sharp-edged Frisbee, cutting deep into him, spilling a gusher of magma, and causing Napalm to howl in pain and fury.
On the wharf Dekka and Armo, Shade and a de-morphed Cruz, stood watching in confusion.
“Which one do we fight?” Dekka asked.
Off to their right, Drake seemed equally nonplussed. He stood there, whip arm twisting in agitation, as his body regrew melted flesh.
The Coast Guard was less indecisive. They were getting frantic, screamed orders from DiMarco on the radio: Sink the ship! Sink it now!
The Bofors opened up at point-blank range, firing into the port side of the already-sinking Okeanos.
Cruz covered her ears with her hands. The noise was staggering: ripping steel, the furious sound of a fire running out of control, the BamBamBamBam! of the Bofors gun, the thwack-thwack of the helicopter, all punctuated by Vincent’s shrill screams and the rumbling roar of Napalm.
The Okeanos, or what was left of it, settled into the mud. Its main deck was now well below the level of the dock, its superstructure looking like a tin can after someone had dropped in a cherry bomb, shreds and tatters hanging.
And now, no longer hidden by hoods, nightmare creatures leaped onto the land. They looked like humans being hugged from behind by giant red centipedes. And as they advanced, they sprouted tendrils like worms, tendrils that grew from human stomachs and chests, whipped furiously like electrocuted spaghetti.
“You’re. Dekka,” Shade Darby said, slowing her speech.
Dekka shot her a surprised look. “Do I know you?”
“Shade. Darby,” Shade said. She pointed at the advancing meat puppets and said, “I’ve. Got. Them.”
Vincent’s human meat puppets were quick, but not to Shade. The whipping tendrils were bewilderingly fast to a normal human, but not to Shade.
She unwound the thick rope that had been used to tie the Okeanos off to the dock. The end of the rope was burning. She whipped the rope around over her head, not at her maximum speed—the rope would have come apart—but far faster than a human could. Then she smacked the rope end into the nearest meat puppet. The impact slammed the creature so hard, it careened off the edge of the dock and fell into fire.
She went after the second of the puppets and this time whipped the rope around its human legs, dropping the creature to the ground. She ran up on it, twisted the rest of the rope around its waist, cinched a knot, held on tight, and gave it a burst of speed. The meat puppet split apart, two pieces falling with wet sandbag sounds.
Two more of the meat puppets closed on her, recognizing that she was the immediate danger. One Shade dispatched by hurling a section of steel mast like a javelin. It skewered the foul creature, but then something struck Shade’s neck.
She jerked away with speed that saved her life, but barely. The place where the tendril had touched felt like someone had jabbed a cattle prod deep into her neck.
Shade bolted, ran, then . . . slowed. Her limbs had gone heavy. Her insectoid legs had lost their spring. The world around her sped up as she slowed.
Poison!
She began to de-morph, but instinct warned her not to, and she stopped, fearing that the poison within her would not be eliminated by resuming her human form. Suspecting that out of morph, the poison would kill her.
She folded her legs beneath her and sat hard on the dock. Breathing was coming hard. Her vision blurred and her head swam, as the dock turned beneath her. Nausea rose in a wave.
A meat puppet advanced, and it was all Shade could do to keep it in sight as the whole world went sideways and slanted and prismatic.
Tendrils whipped the air and in seconds would stab her again and again, filling her body with enough poison to kill any living thing.
Water. She had to reach the water. Get away.
Her legs were as awkward as stilts badly attached to her body. Her hands were better and she clawed at the dock, hauling herself inch by inch . . . but there, just before her, a pool of liquid fire.
Too weary. Stop right here.
The meat puppet advanced, as all around Shade Darby raged a battle like nothing the world had ever seen.
So much for being a superhero, Shade thought as the meat puppet and its flails loomed closer.
CHAPTER 26
Innocent Bystander
ONE PERSON ON that dock had ever been in many a fight to the death. Only one had come near to death so many times that she and death were practically on friendly terms. Shade had fought, but only Dekka was a true combat veteran.
Her eyes surveyed the scene. Armo, morphed again, stood wet at her side. The Shade Darby person had knocked out two of the meat puppets, then fallen.
The shape-shifter or whatever she was, Cruz, was human once more, crouching in fear.
The simple fact was that they did not have the power to beat Napalm, and they certainly did not have the power to beat the incredible beast tearing itself free of the ship like a man fighting his way out of a paper bag.
“Armo,” Dekka said, “I suggest retreat.”
The white-furred berserker glared at her through slitted eyes and made an animal roar. But then, in a more human voice, he said, “Let them fight it out?”
“Shade!” Cruz cried, pointing.
Dekka trotted down the dock, aimed, howled, and fired. The meat puppet flew apart as if it had swallowed a bomb. Cruz ran to Shade, and Dekka rejoined Armo.
“Where were we?” Dekka wondered aloud.
“Thinking about running away,” Armo said.
Dekka nodded. “Let them fight it out and we take on the winner.”
Yes, that was the logical thing. It was the unemotional thing. Two vastly powerful enemies were fighting each other. She had a vague memory of a quote, something about not interfering with your enemy when he’s making a mistake.
But logic was not everything. There was also . . . hate.
Dekka turned toward Drake, who seemed transfixed by the great red beast now grappling with Napalm, and shouted, “You! You and me, Drake. You and me!”
Drake’s eyes glittered. He smiled. “My pleasure, you fat black dyke bitch!” Drake ran at her, fearless as ever, stumbling slightly with his limbs not entirely regrown, whip hand already sailing through the air.
They had fought before, back in the FAYZ. But Drake had never face
d this Dekka.
She raised her hands, screamed in his face, and Drake disintegrated, reduced to a squall of bloody bits flying through the air.
In two seconds, he was gone aside from a stain on the dock.
Dekka nodded, satisfied, but not so naive as to believe he’d been truly destroyed. It would, however, take him a while to put himself back together.
And damn, it felt good.
Now Dekka and Armo started backing away, but Dekka found it hard to disengage. Partly her veins were drenched in adrenaline, and that adrenaline was urging her to take one more shot at either Napalm or the creature on the ship.
But there was more to her reluctance to retreat, for the Dark Watchers were not happy with her prudence. Shushed but urgent whispers in her brain egged her on, demanding she fight, fight, fight! It was all she could do to force herself to step back, to take another step . . . and now there was a black kid, face wild, rushing past her to where Cruz knelt beside a stunned Shade Darby.
Then, with a herculean spasm and a crashing, splintering noise, Vincent surged all the way up and out of the wrecked ship, heaved his bulk onto land, once more holding the container aloft like a prize with one red arm, and surged straight at Napalm, who backed away on the dock, leaving flaming footprints behind him.
“Get her out of here!” Dekka yelled to Malik.
Napalm vomited a gusher of magma at Vincent and the red flesh sizzled and smoked, but Vincent did not stop. His flesh burned as he grappled with Napalm, wrapping his massive thick arms around the writhing fire creature. Steam billowed and Vincent’s shrill and very human voice was a long, drawn-out howl of rage, but he did not let go of the living volcano. Slowly, inexorably, screaming incoherent gibberish words, mad Vincent dragged Napalm toward the water by the Okeanos’s bow.
For a heart-stopping moment, the two great monsters wrestled for control, Napalm spraying fire and roaring, Vincent screeching and pulling.
Dekka felt like a mere human watching the gods battle. They smashed and battered each other: Napalm belched fire, Vincent’s poisonous flails stung him again and again, and with each passing second Vincent dragged Napalm another foot closer to the channel.
Now Vincent’s remaining meat puppets rushed at Napalm, slammed into his legs even as they burned, slapped him with their own tendrils, which curled like leaves in a fire.
Then, with the majestic slowness of a falling redwood, both Vincent and Napalm fell backward, banged against the prow of the Okeanos, and tumbled into the water.
Steam erupted in a geyser, searing Dekka and Armo, even as they backed hurriedly away.
Malik was between Dekka and the ship. He had his back to Napalm and Vincent, was huddled protectively over Shade. He was talking to her.
“It’ll be okay, babe, I’m getting you out of here.”
The boiling cloud of steam rolled over him.
Malik did not have a morph. He had no special power protecting him. He was an innocent bystander, a civilian wandering onto a brutal battlefield to protect the girl he loved.
The steam rolled across his back. Blisters rose over the back of his thighs, his buttocks, his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head. Dekka saw his eyes widen in sudden realization.
“Aaaaarrrrgh!”
Malik screamed, an eerie, spine-tingling scream of unbearable agony.
His mouth opened to scream again, but before a sound could come he collapsed onto the dock. He thrust his left hand out to stop his fall and his palm landed in liquid fire. His knees struck right at the edge of the creeping magma and he tried to pull away, but he had lost the use of his left hand.
Malik had taken the blast that would have cooked Cruz and maybe Shade as well.
He shrieked again, an eerie, animal howl, inhuman, like nothing Dekka had ever heard before, the sound of a person in more agony than the human mind could accept.
Cruz jumped up and body-slammed Malik, knocking him clear of the fire, but too late, too late, because a slab of Malik’s skin sloughed and hung like a limp flag from the back of his neck.
Shade had seen it all. She had been looking into Malik’s eyes when the steam hit him. She forced herself to stand, feeling the effects of the poison weakening. She limped after Cruz, crying and de-morphing.
In Cruz’s strong arms Malik bellowed in pain, writhed and heaved. Cruz touched still-burning flesh and dropped Malik, and Shade tried to help her, tried to lift Malik, tried to ignore his terrified eyes, tried to gather him up, to hold him close and somehow put out the flame that still chewed at his flesh, but her arms were too weak, too leaden.
“Malik,” Shade croaked. “Malik!”
Cruz, summoning courage she did not imagine she possessed, lifted Malik into a fireman’s carry, draping his arms over her shoulders, lifting his weight with her legs, ignoring the drops of burning human fat that fell onto her shoulders and neck.
“Malik,” Shade cried. “Malik!”
A morphed Armo came then and took Malik from the struggling Cruz, lifting Malik’s weight as if he was a small child.
“To that van!” Cruz panted, nodding exhaustedly toward the damaged van. She ran ahead and opened the back door, and Armo slid Malik in.
“Good luck,” Armo said, and ran back to Dekka.
Shade, feeling like a drunk, arms and legs working but not well, slid into the driver’s seat. “Map, Cruz. Hospital.”
Before Cruz could respond, Shade floored the accelerator and turned so sharply the van was momentarily on just two wheels.
Get him there alive, Shade told herself grimly, just get him there alive!
But driving was hard with numbed limbs and blurry vision and the howls of unspeakable agony behind her.
“Saint Mary Medical Center,” Cruz said. “Right at the Forty-Seven. It’s seven miles. Malik, hold on, hold on, we’re going to the hospital!”
The van went tearing erratically through the port, weaving almost miraculously through a stream of LAPD cars all rushing the other way.
The battle had drawn the curious, and traffic was dense as drivers slowed to gape at the pillar of smoke and the circling helicopters of the LAPD and three separate news stations. But now Shade was morphing again, head clearer, awkward limbs stamping hard on the accelerator, and the world around her slowed. With complete indifference to the damage, she pushed through every gap, tearing off side mirrors, leaving great gouges in paintwork.
I’ve killed Malik!
Perdido Beach, all over again. Her mother and now Malik. If he somehow survived, he would never be the same, he would never be the beautiful boy she’d once loved.
Still loved.
Seven miles took them just six minutes. Shade pulled the van to the emergency entrance, leaped out, grabbed Malik’s shoulders as Cruz grabbed his legs. They ran him inside, yelling, “Help him, help him!” The triage nurse stared in confusion. Shade pushed past, kicked open a swinging door, and found herself in the midst of chaos. Wounded police officers and dockworkers, some horribly burned, some with blood-soaked bandages, and doctors and nurses with heads down rushing from patient to patient.
There were no empty beds, so Shade and Cruz set Malik down on the counter of the nurse’s station.
An ER nurse yelled, “What the hell are . . .” before she saw Malik’s condition, and then, as if someone had thrown a switch, she was rapping out orders and demands. A young doctor rushed up and began yelling his own instructions.
Shade stood back, panting, human again.
“Is he going to die?” Cruz asked, sobbing.
“I don’t know,” Shade said. “I don’t know.”
Now Malik was concealed by half a dozen doctors, nurses, and technicians. Needles plunged into veins, a tube was pushed down Malik’s throat, status reports came in rapid succession. Pulse, oxygen level, blood pressure.
“Is he allergic to anything?” a nurse demanded.
“No,” Shade said. “Can you—”
“We’re trying,” the nurse snapped.
?
??You’ve killed him, Shade.”
Cruz’s flat statement was a knife in Shade’s heart. Time froze as the awful reality became a new and insidious poison in her veins.
The medical team lifted Malik onto a gurney and, still surrounded by white coats, he was wheeled away.
And Shade was left with Cruz. They stood side by side looking stupidly at the swinging door through which Malik had disappeared.
“Pray,” Shade said to Cruz. It was somewhere between an order and a plea. “You believe in all that, so pray. Okay? Pray.”
“I am praying,” Cruz said. And silently added, For him, for you . . . for the whole human race.
CHAPTER 27
Heroes, Villains, Monsters
DEKKA AND ARMO stood side by side watching the huge mutant starfish struggle in the water, watching steam billow up, watching the surge of water splash up and over the dock.
A new helicopter, much larger, was hovering, looking for a place to land that wasn’t aflame. The Coast Guard cutter pumped futile cannon and machine-gun rounds into the water.
“What do we do, bet on the outcome?” Armo asked.
“If I had my old power, I could move that rock somewhere, well, I was going to say ‘safe,’ but what the hell does that even mean?” Dekka wondered.
One of the meat puppets seemed to notice her, and the creepy human-starfish hybrid creature came at a run. Dekka shredded it with barely a glance.
But then, one of Vincent’s legs slapped the dock and with its tubules began slowly, wearily, it seemed to Dekka, pulling itself all the way onto the dock.
The Coast Guard ceased firing because a miss now might kill innocent civilians.
Dekka and Armo backed away, retreating faster and faster, as the creature filled most of the parking lot, not quite as big as it had been since it had lost arms to both the densovirus and Napalm’s fury, and the regrowing sections were shorter. But it was still enormous, and the belt of poisonous tentacles still writhed and lashed, reaching out almost as far as the creature’s red legs. And, like a model riding atop a nightmare vision of a parade float, Vincent Vu still emerged from the central circle at the nexus of the arms.