Chapter 25
World At War
Day 82
Los Angeles
The four F22s were racing back over towards the rampaging monster, this time escorting a far larger friend. The B-2 was not an aircraft seen often in daylight, but she was still an impressive sight. The jet black bomber sliced through the air like a great obsidian arrow, her vaguely bat like form intimidating in some deeply primeval way.
Of course, the nearly half mile monster five miles ahead of them was fairly impressive too.
Sugar144 led the attack. She was loaded with AMRAAMS, as were the three others and they all knew they would be about as effective as spitball. The true purpose of the attack would be to try to position the monster, to goad it into making one of the leaping attacks that had made helicopter and A-10 attacks against it a sure form of suicide. The B-2 had the true weapon aboard, the aptly named Angel of Vengeance(8).
Back in the Cold War, the eapons geniuses had came up with an idea to take out the Russian carriers and battle cruisers with a non nuclear weapon with one shot. The AoV was a fragmentation bomb like weapon. That was tech that had been around for eighty years. The new bells and whistles came from three other things:
A. The missile had a top speed of around Mach 17. Not exactly crawling.
B. It's nose was full of tempered depleted uranium slugs, the hardest and most dense metal on earth. And at mach 17, it would be like a blast from God's own shotgun.
C: It also ejected a shaped charge of 55000 degree plasma as it sent the slugs in.
They had tested one on a mountain three times the size of the monster in front of them. The mountain lost in a landslide. It was now jokingly called the Angel's Pit. It was four hundred feet deep. The new one was 7 generations improved over that.
" On my mark, " Sugarr144 snarled, "Three, To, One, Mark!" Her trigger finger twitched and she ripple fired her four missiles and arced away in a left turn. The G Forces made her see red as she pulled away. Her wingmen followed, Shadowlev, Lovelee and CallaArgenue fired in sequence, trailing barely a thousand feet over it as it bellowed defiance at the stinging attackers. And then, it visibly tensed as they passed back over at a leisurely three hundred knots.
" Come on you big ugly bastard, fucking do it!" Sugar144 rasped.
As if it heard her, the creature leaped. And on the B-2, the order was given.
Captain Matt "Woodlawnian " Woods punched the button on his tactical display and the Bombay door opened, dropping the Angel out just as the leviathan leaped. The timing was almost right. They had went for a gut shot, but the monster had missed it's target. The missile went down it's mouth in midroar. A fireball 800 yards in diameter blossomed into being around it. Nothing for at least a square mile, no structure at all, could possibly have survived.
They turned around and around for two long minutes. The whole east side of Central L.A. seemed to be on fire. The smoke was almost tangible from the debris in it. And then , the smoke swirled and a familiar form rose from it.
It dripped gore from a score of wounds. It's front fangs were shattered. It stood there saying back and forth, low groans coming from it's obscene mouth. It reached down to cup it's stomach in it's hands. It roared in discomfort, bent forwards slightly, and…
A thousand foot long streak of fire came from it's posterior, with a sound like a exploding gas truck.
Sugar144 summed up the feelings of the stunned squadron rather nicely.
"The baddest missile in the history of the Armed Forces and all it did was make it fart? Next time, we'll just feed the fucker some Exlax!! Let's get the hell outta here."
The five jets left as the creature burped smoke, then went back to destroying the city.
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On Air Force 1, President Barack Obama had gotten some semblance of control back. He had ordered the military to Def Con 2 and had ordered the military to engage the monsters at all costs. The V.P. was aloft in Air Force 2 and the Joint Chiefs were at Washington. Of course, since bad boy number four was currently demolishing Baltimore, they weren't in the safest possible position they could be. He felt nature calling and headed to his private lavatory near the nose of the jet.
He opened the door and a woman's voice spoke from the darkness " Miss me?"
" Michelle?!" he said, in shock and sheer crazy hope.
" Fool, I'm Oprah Winfrey!" and the last thing he felt was teeth.
The Secret Service agents heard the scream and came running, but the sheer shock of what they saw made them hesitate too long.
A somehow resurrected and transported Oprah Winfrey was biting through the president's throat even as they opened fire. Then more screams could be heard. Two minutes later, Air Force 1 slammed into a field outside of Metropolis, Illinois at six hundred miles an hour. The sole witness sore later that he had seen a woman's form walking from the wreckage with a skull in her hand, laughing.
All over the world, everyone who had died since the attacks began were coming back as zombies. They weren't as certainly deadly as the lager monster, nor as vicious as the smaller, but only decapitation seemed to put them down.
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On the Uncharted Island, things were grim indeed . Lelani seemed to be having heart failure from her efforts. Her barrier was gone and only the fact that ramming it seemed to have knocked the Great Mother out cold momentarily had kept panic from overwhelming them. Tagaloa-savali, the Messenger strode to the top of the temple, speaking even as he steadily smote his enemies, " Children, listen to me!" he commanded.
Even as he spoke, he started swelling to even greater size," I am going to try to delay the Mother as long as I can, but I cannot hope to match her for more than a few moments. We must hold this temple for at least twelve more minutes or all is lost!" With that said, he jumped to the ground. Hen he leaped, he as thirty five feet tall. By the time he landed, he was twice that.
Daley took command: " Nathan, Eric, guard Lelani. Mel?" she called out to here Mel was holding her side of the temple completely unaided." can you put you light around the whole top?"
Mel spoke up, uncertainly in her voice, but courage there as well. "I can try."
Love. That was what powered the gift Kane, Hawaiian god of light had given her. All through the fight, her love of Cody and Eric had strengthened her. Now, she walked to here Leilani had stood, steadily blazing light at her side of the temple, incinerating any monsters that approached. A shell of light dimy took form around her as she stood there and thought, As Lex did in the chamber below, about love. About her loved ones here and at home. It was hard now, like moving a mountain, but the shell grew, slowly passing over the others. And then, she had unexpected help as Taylor rose from Lelani's side and put the sacred Gjallor Horn to her lips.
A three toned note blew from it as Mel's sphere of light now encompassed the top of the temple.
At least ten thousand monsters now stood around the temple. And a fifteen hundred foot high and still growing Tagaloa-savali was crushing a score at a step as the Great Mother slowly stirred.
" Nothing's happening," Eric said as he wiped gore from his hands as he stood by Mel,"
" Wait." Mel said as she focus her mind further.
The red skies suddenly parted and a rainbow the breadth of the Golden Gate Bridge touched the earth on the edge oft the island. A thundering of hooves and feet could be heard . And then, tens of thousands of form could be seen as Valhalla emptied and the Einjar, the warriors chose for their bravery, flooded onto the plain. They needed no encouragement, no orders. They attacked the Sokil as ruthlessly as the lesser monsters themselves had always attacked. And in the lead was Sigurd, slayer of the Dragon Fafnir. And then, nine gigantic forms on winged horse flew down with them. They were the Valkyries , the chosers of the slain and in their lead was Brunhilde, the mightiest of them.
The smaller monsters ranks were shattered as they faced the onslaught. And then things got even worse for them as Daley discovered that Mel's barrier was one way. The thunderbolts of Zeus flew again, catching the monsters between death from light, lighting or sheer Viking brutality.
It seemed they had a chance yet again when the ocean surged as the megaton mass of the Mother rose to her feet. And was sent sprawling back again as Tagaloa-savali, now twenty five hundred feet tall himself attacked. His spear actually lifted the beast six hundred feet out of the water and knocked her for a flip. He waded in attacking, but even he knew he couldn't battle with her for long.
The final countdown had begun.
In the Heart of the Rock, Cody Jackson was face to face with three murdered classmates. He lingered protectively over Lex Marin as Abby Fujimoto repeated her accusation.
" You could have saved us but you didn't. You could have let him kill you, then I could have saved the other. But you didn't even offer. You like getting to fuck Mel and Eric too much. " The oriental woman slowly stalked him. The tall , gangling Ian Milbauer spoke as well.
" I was hurt. I had a broken leg. He'd already raped me a dozen times. He made me say I'd broken my leg in a fall. Bullshit. He broke it the first time he raped me. And I didn't get the Subversion until later. You were lucky. He though you were better looking than me. You and your fuckbuddies let him kill us so you wouldn't die. Cowards, " he spat in condemnation of Jackson, Mel and Eric.
Heavyset Jory Twitch spoke, " He told me he planned on having me have sex with animals, that I wasn't woman enough for a man to want me. And you let him kill us. All so you could have your own desires satisfied with Eric and Melissa. You should be dead, not us!"
" That's not true." Jackson spoke quietly as he guarded Lex. " You guys might have suffered first, but you were dead when he tried to rape me and Eric to death and when he tried to kidnap Lex. And when I had to kill him. You don't have any idea of what we've been through." And what he didn't notice was the feather of Quetzalcoatl softly glowing in his pocket.
" How dare you say that to us?!" Abby hissed in rage, "you're alive, we're dead. And you have you lovers, even though you know one day they'll shut you out."
Ian added:" Yeah, you're so dumb. Mel and Eric have known one another their whole lives. Why would they want to keep you around? They don't need you like you need them."
Jory talked in a hate filled voice, " They don't even need your body. Mel can use a toy on Eric, the same as she did you. And all you do is remind them with every breath of how perverted they've gotten since meeting you. You should be dead. You wouldn't be missed for long. "
They all spoke at once. " You should be dead, not us."
They didn't expect the reaction they got.
Jackson laughed at them.
" Is this it? This is the best you could do? Fucking idiots." He laughed again. Then he sobered and spoke to them earnestly. " Do you seriously think I don't know they'd be better off if I had never seen them?! Don't you know I have nightmares about one or the other of them dieing or worse, leaving me because of something I do? Because I'm not good enough for them? You take that chance every time you love someone and if your master had the brains of a fly, he'd realize that."
" You speak openly of our master?!" Abby seemed incredulous.
Jackson laughed a third time, this time in contempt. " You three aren't the real deals bitch. Especially not you. Abby loved Ian and Jory to the point of obsession. She would have killed herself and not batted an eye if it had saved them. " He lifted the glowing feather out of his pocket and held it out between his hands. " You three are nothing but shells and it's time for you to go back to Hell where you came from!" He snapped the feather and blue light blazed. And when it left, they were gone.
Unfortunately, he now had new company as Robert and Richard Russell stood before him.
" I was beginning to wonder if you were ever gonna do that with ol Snaky's feather," Bob Russell said with a sneer.
" Aww, he looks just like Sleeping Beauty. Bet I wake him with more than a kiss, " Richard Russell said as he leered at the still form of Lex, obscenely running a hand over his groin.
The twins moved as one towards Lex. Jackson tackled Richard, but Bob stabbed at Lex with the tsai of Amastu Mikaboshi even as Jackson flung his knife he'd made at Hartwell at him, hitting him in the hand even as the blade fell..
The whole chamber shook unexpectedly as Tagaloa -savali fell rapidly shrinking to the earth outside it.
The Great Mother roared in triumph as her foe fell still.