5 Onslaught (24 page)

Sad that
The
Antarktos
Saga is complete? Why not jump into some brand new, giant monster fiction to
ease the pain? What follows is a sample of Project Nemesis (A Kaiju Thriller).
Fair warning, Nemesis is not a YA novel and is recommended for 18+
audience
(mostly because of scattered language). Enjoy!

PROJECT NEMESIS

Available now!
Click here to buy.

DESCRIPTION:

Jon
Hudson, lead investigator for the Department of Homeland Security's Fusion
Center-P, thinks his job is a joke. While other Fusion Centers focus on
thwarting terrorist activity, Hudson's division is tasked with handling
paranormal threats to national security, of which there have been zero during
his years at the DHS. When yet another Sasquatch sighting leads to a research
facility disguised as an abandoned Nike missile site in the back woods of
Maine, Hudson's job becomes deadly serious.
Hudson and the local Sherriff, Ashley Collins, suddenly find themselves on the
run from a ruthless ex-Special Forces security team, but the human threat is
short-lived as something very much not-human destroys the facility and heads
for civilization, leaving only a single clue behind--a name scrawled in blood:
Nemesis. Working with his team at Fusion Center-P, Sherriff Collins and a surly
helicopter pilot named Woodstock, Hudson pursues the creature known as Nemesis,
attempts to uncover the corporate secrets behind its creation and accidental
release and tries to comprehend why several clues lead to a murdered little
girl named Maigo.

But as the body-count explodes, along with the monster's size, it quickly
becomes clear that nothing short of a full military response can slow Nemesis's
progress. Coordinating with every branch of the U.S. military, Hudson
simultaneously searches for clues about Nemesis's origins and motivations, and
leads the counterattack that will hopefully stop the monster before it reaches
Boston and its one million residents.

Witness the birth of a legend as Jeremy Robinson, bestselling author of
SecondWorld and Ragnarok, combines the pacing of Matthew Reilly with the
mystery of James Rollins and creates the first iconic American Kaiju* story
since King Kong. 
Includes original creature designs by
legendary Godzilla artist, Matt Frank.
*Kaiju is Japanese for "strange beast." The genre includes classic
monsters such as Godzilla, Gamera, Mothra, Rodan and King Ghidorah. 

1

Now

“You have
got to be kidding me!” I shout to myself when Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on
Me blares from my pickup truck’s feeble speakers. If the flashback to my
childhood wasn’t bad enough, every thump of the bass drum releases a grating
rattle. Whoever owned the beat up, faded red Chevy S-10 before me blew nearly
every speaker.
Probably some teenager.
Man, I’d like
to punch that kid in the face. Of course, right now I’d like to punch every
radio DJ within a hundred miles, too.

I
tap the radio’s “seek” button. Boston.
More than a Feeling.

Again.
Jane’s Addiction.
Pets.

One more time.
Aerosmith.
Love in an Elevator.

I
punch, literally punch, the radio’s power button, but all I manage to do is
spin the volume up. Steven Tyler howls in my ear. The vibrating speakers make
him sound like a smoker with an artificial voice box. I tap the button more
carefully, despite the racket, and silence fills the cab once more.

My
neck cracks as I roll it, releasing my music-induced tension. “Welcome to
Maine,” I say, doing my best DJ impression, “home of the seventies, eighties,
nineties, and...
that’s
it.”

I
should probably invest in a new stereo system someday. Hell, I should probably buy
a car with anti-lock brakes, eighteen airbags and all the other things most
people care about. But that would require an effort beyond my actual desire to
replace Betty.

Yeah,
I named my truck. Betty was the name of my first girlfriend. Like this truck,
she had a grating voice and a high maintenance personality. Despite
girlfriend-Betty being easier on the eyes, I stayed with her for only six
months. Pickup truck-Betty talks less.
And doesn’t complain
when I turn her on.
We’ve been together for going on five years now, and
even though she’s rough around the edges, she’s just about the only thing in my
life that makes any sense.

I
glance in the rearview. The road behind me is as empty as the road ahead. I
catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror and shake my head. I don’t look like a
DHS agent.
DHS—Department of Homeland Security.
Most
of the people working for the DHS are straight-shooting, tight-ass suits. An
inordinate percentage of the men have mustaches, like they’re 70s porn stars or
1900s Englishmen ready to engage in some old fashioned fisticuffs.

Of
course, I am sporting the beginning of a beard myself, but that’s less of a
style choice and more of a result of my ancient shaver, pilfered from my father
when I moved out ten years ago, crapping out a week ago. I think it looks good,
but if any of my superiors saw it, I’d probably get a good talking to.
Proper dress.
Appearances matter.
That
kind of stuff.
It’s a good thing my superiors don’t give a rat’s ass
about me or my department. I don’t think I’ve seen or heard from someone with a
higher pay scale than mine in the last six months.

I
adjust the maroon beanie cap covering my crew-cut brown hair. The tight-fitting
knit hat has become a staple of my wardrobe, and it is a style choice, mostly
because it disguises the fact that my hair is slowly retreating like soldiers
from my muddy battlefield. I think it makes me look like The Edge, from U2, a
band of the eighties, nineties, and today that I actually wouldn’t mind hearing
on the radio.

My
smartphone—which is really a company phone—cuts through the silence, saying,
“Turn right,” in a far from sexy, yet feminine voice that is the closest thing
I’ve had to a girlfriend in a year. Other than Betty, I mean. I spot the dirt
road up ahead and turn onto the uneven surface. The road is covered in half
buried stones the size of grapefruits and rows of hardened ridges formed by
water, which, in combination with Betty’s rigid suspension, bounces me around
like I’m on a grocery-store horsey ride, having a seizure.

Twenty
minutes and a headache later, I arrive at my destination. I pull the truck into
the lone parking space, put it in park and kill the engine. The car door creaks
as it opens, allowing the outside world to wash over me. Warm summer air chases
away the chill of Betty’s air conditioning, which works like a champ. The smell
of pine and earth and, I think, water, fills my nose.

It’s
been too long.

Once
upon a time, I’d been a real salt of the Earth type. I camped, fished, hunted,
slept under the stars and smoked a doobie or two. It’s been at least ten years
of indoor and pot-free living since then. Thank God I’m not in drug
enforcement. I’d be horrible at it, mostly because I think I’d let
all of the
potheads walk.

The
small cabin is on loan to me from Ted Watson, one of two people I actually
oversee. I’m supposed to hire two more team members out of whatever law
enforcement branch I can entice them from, but I haven’t really bothered.
Seeing as how every case I have is like a bad episode of The X-Files, but without
the actual monsters, aliens and government conspiracies, I just don’t see the
need to deal with more personalities.

Not
that Ted is hard to deal with. He’s kind of like a grown up version of Chunk,
from The Goonies—chubby, funny and he occasionally breaks into a jiggly dance.
He’s also brilliant with computers and electronics. I’m pretty sure he got
posted to my team because, like me, he doesn’t exactly fit the company profile.
Anne Cooper, on the other hand, does. Cooper, who I call Coop, mostly because
it bothers her, is a straight-laced administrator who does things by the book,
even though so little of our mandate is in any book not written by a fiction
author, a lunatic or both.

They’ve
been with me for three years now, manning the home front—a house perched atop
Prospect Hill in Beverly, Massachusetts. From the top floor you can see the
ocean and, on a clear day, Boston. It’s a nice place to live and work, but it’s
not the great outdoors.

Believe
it or not, I’m not on vacation. I’m working. Watson’s family just happened to
have a cabin in the area, and I felt like being nostalgic for a night before
beginning my “investigation.”

With
a shake of my head, I push away thoughts of the ridiculous day I’ll have
tomorrow and hop up the steps to the front door. Despite the apparent disuse of
the cabin, the porch wood feels firm beneath my feet. Maybe it’s faux worn, I
wonder, like those beat-up looking hutches made for rich old ladies who want to
have rustic kitchens without the actual rust.

I
dig into my pocket for the key while scanning the area. Most of the trees are
pines, though a few maples line the dirt road, their leaves glowing lime green
in the afternoon sun. There’s no mailbox or even a number on the cabin. As I
pull the key from my pocket, I lean back and peer down the road.
Nothing.
And there wasn’t a single house on the way here,
which suits me, because while I don’t have any doobies, I do have a twelve-pack
buried in a cooler full of ice.

I’m
not supposed to drink on the job, but I’m not technically working right now and
I’m pretty good at warding off hangovers. Besides, I’m pretty sure that even
drunk off my ass, I’ll be able to figure out the mystery of Sasquatch.

Yeah, Sasquatch.

Fucking Sasquatch.

I
work for the Department of Homeland Security, and I’m investigating a rash of
squatch sightings in the northern woods of Boonie-town, Maine. When the DHS was
created in 2002, in the wake of 9-11, the bill was loaded with “riders,”
tacked-on provisions that wouldn’t normally pass if they weren’t attached to
something guaranteed to pass, like the creation of the DHS. Riders usually have
nothing to do with the actual bill, but the one that created my division did.
The DHS has seventy Fusion Centers around the country. They’re hubs where intel
and resources from federal and local law enforcement agencies can be pooled in
an effort to openly share information between departments—something that might
have helped avoid the events of 9-11. Each hub has its own lead investigator
tasked with investigations that affect multiple law enforcement agencies, and
that are a threat to national security. That’s me, lead investigator, except my
Fusion Center has yet to be involved in any serious investigation. Fusion
Centers are most commonly identified by the city they’re in, such as Fusion
Center – Boston, my closest neighbor in the DHS, otherwise known as “those
assholes in Beantown”.

The
Fusion Center I head up is known as Fusion Center – P. The P is for
“paranormal”.
Seriously.
The supernatural paranoid who
added the rider believed the end of the world was nigh and that it would be a
supernatural event. That’s also why we’re located in Beverly, Mass, next door
neighbor to Salem, Mass. Salem being the apparent gateway to hell and home to
the gruesome Salem witch trials, as well as scores of modern witches like Susan
Beacon, who claimed she caused the “perfect storm” with a curse. There isn’t a
day that goes by that I don’t praise the good Lord she made that claim before
my stint at the FC-P began or I would have had to investigate it as a threat
against the United States.

FC-P
is the seventy-first Fusion Center and it doesn’t technically exist. You won’t
find us in any public documentation. Despite its creation, the FC-P is pretty
much an embarrassment. That’s why the ‘Paranormal’ on our IDs was reduced to
the letter P.

The
deadbolt unlocks smoothly, barely making a sound. I push the door open and step
in. The dim room holds two comfortable looking rocking chairs, a dining room
table, a wood stove and what appears to be a large, black bean bag. I try the
lights, but nothing happens.

The
breakers, I think, vaguely remembering Ted saying something about them being
shut off. I move to take a step into the cabin, and freeze before I leave the
doorframe.