Yesterday's Hero (4 page)

The T-Rex spins again, lunges. The flat of Kayla’s blade drives its head up. The ceiling plaster crunches under the impact, hemorrhages wires and air conditioning. But there is no follow-up. There is no death-defying leap, no stabbing, or slicing, or dicing. Just these halfhearted dismissals.

The T-Rex comes at her again. Again. Again. She slaps at it, twitches aside. Again. Again. Again.

“You know,” says Clyde, crouched beside me, “I’m not sure that is the spirit after all.”

Dammit. I should have said more to Shaw. I should have stood my ground. Except… Where is the line now? Which side of the bed?

“Kayla!” Shaw yells, trying to break through, trying to snap her out of the funk.

Another lightning bolt. The three well-armed civilians on the other side of the hall dive for cover. Chunks of ceiling rain down on them.

“Plus side,” I say. “The T-Rex is distracted.” Lead with optimism, I figure.

Shaw nods. “We move on the primary. Clyde, prepare whatever you’ve got. Arthur, get close. I’ll cover you.”

Ah, point man, my favorite. Still, I need to put in more time at the range if I want to be a good enough shot to hang back and snipe at things.

A couple of deep breaths, then I go for it. Head down. Ass out. Break cover. Scramble forwards.

Bullets fill the air. Knowing they’re not aimed at me doesn’t make it any better.

I make it to one display case, spot a pile of rubble that looks like cover, dive for it. Behind me, the T-Rex bellows. I want to turn, to look, to make sure it’s not closing, not chewing on Kayla while she stares at its teeth, a look of boredom on her face. But I can’t because here comes the lightning storm.

I’m half running, half dancing. And screw cover, it’s down the middle of the hall now. I fire blindly. The room explodes around me in strobe flares of light. Stone and wood and glass score my cheeks. I scream obscenities, and then just scream. I’m barely on my feet now, skittering forward. I can’t see. I can’t—

The blast lifts me off my feet. It feels like being the center of the world. A great, tearing change in perspective, slamming me into the very heart of creation. Suddenly all there is, is white, is pain—a great hollow sphere of it surrounding me.

And then back to reality, to flying across the room. A sprawl of limbs as graceless as balled paper tossed at a trashcan.

I
land. The impact jars my bones, blurs my vision. My teeth chomp on the inside of my mouth, draw blood. I roll like a rag doll. My limbs are distant memories.

Instead of the wall ending my passage with a crunch, it’s a person with an “oomph.” They collapse on top of me. My eyes focus for at least a second. It’s the pretty Asian woman with the automatic pistol. She sits up, shakes plaster from her hair. My head is in her lap. She smiles down at me, curiously calm in the middle of the madness.

“Hello,” she says, “I’m Aiko. Nice to meet you.”

I go with the more casual, “Gnnnfgg nnn.”

I try to roll off her. There’s a blinding pain in my left shoulder and my left foot. That whole side of my body feels loose—skin and bone turned to so much jelly.

“Arthur! Arthur!” Someone’s calling my name. I go to turn my head but decide to spasm helplessly instead.

Shaw skids across the floor. Clyde flails his way through lightning strikes behind her. Shaw grabs me off Aiko’s lap. Claims me.

“You’re alive?” Shaw says. She runs a hand over my forehead.

I’m blinking a lot and twitching so that seems to confirm it for her. She does the thoughtful thing, turning away and emptying a magazine in the direction of the lightning-slinger. It’s rather sweet.Another lightning bolt blasts past. Clyde yells. Shaw curses, tugs another magazine from an inside pocket. I struggle to bring my limbs online, managing to use my right elbow to get upright.

The Asian woman, Aiko, leans forward, puts a hand on my shoulder.

“You should probably—” she starts.

“Get off him,” Shaw snaps. “And get out of here. We don’t need casualties.”

Aiko bristles visibly. She removes the hand from my shoulder. That’s good—bearing the extra weight was a little much for me right now. “Where were you while we staved off the body count?”

Shaw fires in the direction of the lightning-slinger without taking her eyes off Aiko. “I am more than happy to arrest you for illegal weapon possession.” She wears a tight smile.

Another different decision from the one I’d have gone with. And I’m going to have to call on one of these, but right now I’m playing the twitching injured guy, so I let her have it.

The T-Rex interrupts the nascent feud. Its tail sweeps overhead. Display cases detonate. Glass shards and mineral missiles fill the air.

“Will somebody make that fucking dinosaur extinct already?” Shaw yells. She looks distinctly less cool than when we arrived here. For people who saved the world yesterday, we’re looking spectacularly outclassed.

“Clyde,” I manage, “what have you got? Anything that can evict an animating force?” The words are strained.

Clyde touches his earpiece “Tabby,” he says. “Trying to think of a way to remove an animating force. Anti-magic doo-dad. Wondering, if you have a moment that is, if you could check the database.”

If she has a moment? What the hell does he think she’s doing out there? Crocheting mittens for any reanimated triceratops she happens across?

Kayla still bats at the T-Rex’s head as if disciplining a troublesome dog. Shaw mutters her name along with some select curse words.

“Animating force,” Tabitha’s voice comes back. “Invested in skeleton.” Though the T-Rex is hardly a skeleton now. Skin covers most of it, exposed muscle and gristle the rest. “Rather than removing force, remove skeleton. Nothing for force to cling to.”

Filet a T-Rex. Well that should be easy.

“Explosive kinetic force, located centrally?” Clyde says.

I like the bit where he uses the word “explosive.”

Tabitha grunts.

Clyde nods. Then he looks to Shaw. “Excuse me,” he says. “Don’t mean to interrupt—”

“Spit it out.”

“I don’t suppose you happen to have a grenade on you, do you?”

Which is a slightly more mundane solution than I was thinking we’d go for. I could have thought of blowing it up with a grenade.

Shaw reaches into another inner suit pocket and removes a thin steel canister. I am beginning to think I should never go through Shaw’s pocket book.

“Excellent,” Clyde says lightly as more of the room disintegrates around us. “Just need to get it inside the T-Rex now.”

And, I admit, I would not have thought of that bit.

Shaw blinks. “Alright then,” she says, and goes to stand up.

I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I have tender feelings for Shaw, or because of a sense of duty, or because of the blows to the head, but I reach out a hand to stop her.

“No,” I say. “You’re still a better shot than me.” I manage to get my face muscles to stop spasming long enough to smile. “Primary objective and all that. You stay here, shoot the evil cow with the lightning, protect Clyde. I’ll go.”

“Arthur—” she starts.

“Oh,” I smile, “I can’t have been that good in bed.”

That line clearly sounded cooler in my head. Even Clyde’s blank mask looks shocked.

I rather hope the T-Rex does get me now.

To cover the moment, I grab the silver grenade and run towards imminent death.

R
unning is harder than I’d hoped. My left side still feels numb and weak. My feet skid on discarded rubble. I fear I look like I’m creating my own Olympic event—half hopping, half limping.

I hug the left-hand wall, desperate to avoid the T-Rex’s gaze. It thrashes back and forth, dominating the central aisle. Kayla thumps it desultorily on its head. It roars, spraying her with prehistoric phlegm. The grenade is a solid weight in my hand.

“Its mouth! Open its mouth!” I scream at Kayla. I don’t know how else to phrase the absurd request.

Kayla turns slowly, arches an eyebrow. The T-Rex lunges, jaws snapping. She sidesteps casually.

“Its mouth,” I yell. “Open!”

Kayla gives a heavy shrug.

“Please!” I’m close enough that I don’t want to get any closer. I can smell its breath, foul as a charnel house.

The T-Rex lunges again. Kayla sidesteps again. The gaping mouth of the T-Rex whistles by her. Towards me. Knife blade teeth lancing at my head.

I try not to close my eyes. I hurl the grenade at the beast’s tonsils. It bounces off one tooth, drops into the wide red maw.

Without much seeming care, Kayla slams an elbow into the T-Rex’s jaw. The mouth shuts very suddenly and very fast. Instead of the T-Rex’s teeth scouring my flesh from my bone, its nose thuds into my chest, sitting me down on my arse. The roar turns to a choking cough.

For a moment I think the grenade is going to come out the other way, coughed back at me in a fiery ball of death. And then, as the T-Rex rears backwards, I see a tiny flash of silver disappear down its throat.

It worked.

It actually bloody worked.

I’m so stunned I actually sit there and stare before remembering to scramble for cover.

The explosion rips through the room. Through the guts of the dinosaur. The rib cage distends, bursts through the rotten skin. Vertebrae, claws, bone shards embed themselves in the walls, a mess of reptilian shrapnel. The creature’s head barrels over the pile of splinters I’m pretending is cover. Its teeth slash the air one final time.

I stay there, waiting to be certain. Waiting to make sure the Grim Reaper has left the building. Eventually I uncurl, my ears ringing. The back of my jacket has been flayed, but I’m remarkably whole, just a few grazes along my back. Smoke billows through the room.

“Oh! My! God!” It’s the young girl with two pistols and enormous headphones. She paws them down around her neck, still holding the guns. Two platinum-blonde pigtails bounce as she skips forward, almost prancing through the massive pool of blood that’s spreading across the room.

“You guys!” She stares at me, at Shaw, at Clyde, at Kayla. “You are
so
freaking awesome!”

To be honest, I am not entirely upset with that response. Modesty be damned. That looked pretty cool.

The job’s not done though. Shaw walks past the girl, heading towards the stairs. Clyde and I head after her, drawn warily into her wake, pistol out. Kayla stands watching us walk.

The blond girl dances after us. “I mean, did you guys see that?” she says. “With the grenade! And its head! I mean holy Jesus, I have never seen anything close to being half that cool. Not even on TV.” She pauses, thinks. “You guys should totally be on TV.” She nods to herself. “You would be massive.”

I wonder if I can get this girl to be a character witness at my next performance review.

We’re at the foot of the stairs. Shaw signals with her gun for me to go wide. I start edging along the wall and Shaw starts edging up the stairs. Clyde stands and watches us.

“Batteries?” Shaw says to him.

He gives an embarrassed shrug—proving that such a thing is possible—and slips two double As under the lip
of his mask.

She pauses at the top of the stairs, in line with the wall, not yet visible to anyone crouched behind it. I see her take two quick breaths.

I realize I
really
do not want to see her get shot. That I would be very upset. More than if it was Clyde, and despite the brevity of our association I’d already count Clyde among my best friends. And I realize that maybe I’m not so sorry about the joke about being decent in bed. Not as sorry as I ought to be anyway.

Shaw holds up three fingers, then two, then—

I move before she finishes the countdown. There is no way I’m going to let this wizard cow put holes in Felicity Shaw. I vault the wall. It’s not a maneuver that’s going to win me an Olympic gold, but I keep my gun arm free. I sweep the pistol along the length of the raised platform.

I point it at nothing. At no one.

“Shit!” Shaw, snapping around the corner, curses at the empty platform. She scans back and forth. There’s just one door. One route away from here, easily taken in the confusion. Shaw points to it. We start running.

The door flies open onto a corridor. More display cases line the walls. The stocky woman stands beside one. She has bad skin, bad teeth, and a bad perm. She looks a little like my mother. Admittedly my mother’s left jaw, shoulder, arm, and side aren’t encased in metal, but it’s still a little embarrassing that she’s the one who’s been handing us our arses so tidily.

The woman raises a hand. Sheets of steel shift with an electronic hiss. Engines whine. She extends the hand protruding from the metal arm. A ring of LEDs shine blue and bright around her wrist. With a quick movement she smashes a glass case. She grabs something large and silver—a sizable chunk of metal or mineral—off a velvet board.

“Put it down,” I say.

Shaw points her pistol. I mirror her movements.

The woman starts shouting, defiant. But I don’t start understanding. The language sounds familiar, though. Something eastern European? Russian perhaps?

Shaw cocks the hammer on her pistol. “He said put it down, you Russian bitch.”

So, definitely Russian then.

The woman laughs at us.

“I’m warning you,” Shaw says, but perhaps not loud enough to expect to be heard.

Lightning arcs out of the wall. Shaw yells, fires. But she’s not as fast as the Russian woman. The bullet whips through a white electric blur, slams into the wall. The corridor is abruptly empty.

Another electric blue-white light flashes from through an archway to the right.

“Fuck!” Shaw yells.

I’m already running past her. I skid at the archway, bunch my knees ready to put on another spurt of speed—

It’s a little dead-end room, an alcove with dreams of grandeur. It holds a great carved rock, a few spotlights, some poorly chosen wallpaper. And no Russians at all.

Shaw joins me, pistol still pointing. She thrusts it at empty space. We stare at each other. There was nowhere for the Russian to go and she’s totally gone.