Jeremy Robinson: Island 731

Lying on their stomachs, they climbed to the peak and looked over the edge. The battle for Island 731 had followed Bennett and was being fought below. The trees beyond the hill were sparse, as much of the land was either volcanic stone or covered in slabs of concrete that had once been helicopter landing pads, a use for which they were being used once again. Three helicopters had touched down. Two had unloaded their payload of eleven fully armed mercenary squads already and were lifting off. A third unloaded just four men whose gear looked bulky. When streams of fire burst from their weapons, Hawkins knew why. Flamethrowers seemed morbidly appropriate, given how much they’d been used in clearing Japanese bunkers during World War II. Only now they were being used to fend off the armies of draco-snakes and seagulls closing in on the soldiers like a living hurricane. To the left of the battle, Hawkins saw what looked like a concrete airplane hangar emerging from the base of a hillside.

The bunker , he thought. This is where the children live .

And then he saw them. Five little bodies standing before a giant and its master. Bennett was no doubt confused by their existence and he wasn’t sure if Kaiju would recognize them or not. Kam thought she might very well kill them.

Hawkins looked past the chaos. The jungle grew thick again, perhaps one hundred yards from beginning to end. Beyond that, he saw the coast. Their only means of escape lay on the other side of a battlefield.

“I think we should skirt around behind the bunker,” Hawkins said. It was the slowest, but safest route. If their enemies occupied each other long enough, they might make it past. Of course, there were still the children to consider, but they would handle that debate when they got closer.

“Sounds good to me,” Bray said.

Hawkins didn’t hear Joliet or Drake agree with the plan. His sensitive ears had picked up a new noise. Mixed with the din of battle, it didn’t sound like much. The problem was that it came from behind. He took a few steps back and looked over the steep rise they’d just climbed. At first glance, everything looked fine. Then he noticed that the dark soil of the jungle below wasn’t soil at all. The ground was alive.

The spiders had multiplied, using men and cattle to spawn more young.

Hundreds of them.

Hawkins backed away from the edge as the first of the spiders began scrambling up the hillside. “Change of plans.” The others peeked over the edge and saw the advancing army of killer chimeras.

“Run,” Hawkins said. “Straight through. Run.”

At first, the plan worked great. Preoccupied by the deadly swarms, the soldiers paid them no attention, and Bray’s bell kept the chimeras from targeting their small group. But the flamethrowers were turning the tide against the airborne monsters and for every man that fell to a draco-snake bite, five of the small creatures were either cut down by the constant 9mm bullet spray or were set on fire. It was the former that slowed their progress.

“Ahh!” Bray shouted. He kept running, but now limped.

Hawkins slowed to help him. “You’re hit?”

“In the calf,” Bray said, wincing with every step. “But I can still move.”

As more and more chimeras poured from the jungle to their left, the soldiers to their right advanced. And while the bell still worked its magic, the mercenaries would soon notice their chaotic charge through the clearing. And when that happened, it wouldn’t be stray bullets coming their way, it would be a barrage. There was no choice but to head for Kaiju, Bennett, and the children.

Hawkins veered left toward the bunker. A palm tree to his right took a round. He glanced back at the baseball-size indentation in the bark. If the tree hadn’t been there, it would have struck his head. He glanced toward the soldiers and saw two of them tracking their dash. “Duck!”

Hawkins obeyed his own command just as a three-round burst rang out and zinged over his head. He angled farther left, putting more trees and distance between them and the soldiers. More bullets shattered the trees around them as the two soldiers switched to full automatic and held down the triggers. Hawkins covered his head with his hands as he crouch-ran. He glanced up for just a moment and saw movement ahead, but he didn’t slow. Couldn’t. He just kept his head down and did his best not to collide with a palm trunk.

He glanced back and saw the others still with him, running low. The incoming gunfire had stopped, too. He could still see the soldiers, but they were dealing with a swarm of seagulls. The frenzied birds never stopped attacking. Even when the sky filled with the feathers of the dead, they continued fighting.

Hawkins realized why. Over the chop of helicopters, the crack of gunfire, and the keening wail of dying people and animals, there was a constant pulse, pulse, pulse . Bennett had either hit some kind of emergency button that repeated the signal around the island, or he was pressing his finger down on that remote.

No longer fearing a bullet to the side of the head, Hawkins stood and resumed his run. A shriek nearly toppled him over. He looked ahead and saw a second battle.

Kaiju was there. Roaring and twisting. The monster swung out with its arms and tail, fighting a far more agile enemy. There were three of them—the children—leaping around, striking with their small claws. One looked familiar. Lilly, the panther-girl. Another had a more reptilian body with a crocodilian snout. The third was mammalian, but Hawkins couldn’t ID any specific species on account of the puffy, black hair.

Kam said there were five , Hawkins remembered. And then he saw them. Two small, limp bodies lay in a patch of grass. Had the litter attacked? Or had Bennett ordered Kaiju to kill them?

The reptilian chimera was suddenly caught in Kaiju’s oversize aye-aye hand, which, even lacking its long finger, was still deadly. The small creature let out a high-pitched scream before it was silenced with a crack. Lilly and the other chimera cried out and pressed the attack. Lilly clamped on to Kaiju’s arm with her catlike teeth. The behemoth roared in pain, shaking its arm, and finally swiped Lilly and sent her flying.

Hawkins had seen enough. He looked back to ask Drake for his knife when a large rock went soaring over his head. Joliet grunted from the effort.

The hurled stone collided with the side of Kaiju’s head. The monster grunted and turned to face them as it batted the puffy-haired chimera away with its tail. Kaiju stared at them, heaving from exertion. Blood dripped from its arm where Lilly had bitten down, but the creature didn’t attack.

Bennett peeked out from behind the trunk of a palm tree. He’d been hiding from the fight between mother and children. He looked them over, paying attention to their hands. He’s looking for weapons , Hawkins thought.

Bennett grinned and then stepped out into the open, but much of his maniacal confidence had leeched away. He flinched with each shout, gunshot, and explosion.

“Got more than you bargained for?” Hawkins asked. He didn’t think taunting Bennett was wise, but he didn’t see how it could hurt.

Bennett glanced toward the battle. Draco-snakes flew past overhead, converging with the conflagration, but the soldiers were still winning, pushing the fight closer by the second. “Exciting, isn’t it? Just wait until we reach the mainland. We will have such fun!”

Hawkins noticed a backpack over Bennett’s shoulder and remembered the bottle labeled “active” he’d taken from the lab. If he had just one bottle of water tainted with those fast-growing chimeric blastocysts, the North American continent would be swarmed. The only thing that would save the rest of the world were the oceans and Panama Canal. If the creatures survived the cold, they might even be able to cross the Arctic ice to Greenland, Europe, and Russia. They would eventually burn through their food supply, overpopulate the northern hemisphere, and die out. Humanity might survive, but every country accessible by land or ice would be scoured clean.