Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (21 page)

Hellboy had unclipped his pistol and thrown aside the box. He made sure the chambers were loaded, aimed up at the dragons, and fired.

"You won't hit them at that height!" Liz said.

"But it makes me feel better." He emptied every chamber, seeing no evidence of the dragons' even noticing him all the way down here. But he was wrong. It did not make him feel better. If anything, he only felt more useless, so he nodded at the huge terminal building and started running again.

"Why are they doing this?" Liz said beside him. "It's a concerted attack, not random. Five of them, and they know what they're doing."

"Knocking out the airport?" Hellboy suggested. "You heard what Tom said ... we're at war."

The constant roar of aircraft surrounding the airport had changed in tone. Planes that had been circling or lining up to land powered up to pull away, veering left and right away from the runway and climbing over London, seeking new heights and fresh, safe airports. Hellboy only hoped they would get away in time. The dragons were still circling Heathrow in a tight spiral, and now they had started screaming.

Around Terminal Four there was panic. Emergency vehicles were tearing across the concrete, most of their crews looking up instead of across at the burning wreckage. Passengers from a couple of smaller aircraft had rushed down the steps and were now running for the building, casting fearful glances over their shoulders, faces white and eyes wide. Old people stumbled, children cried, and Hellboy and Liz stopped to help people to their feet. A woman stared at Hellboy and screamed, saw the pistol in his hand, and screamed again. Someone else shouted his name, but Hellboy could not tell who had recognized him. He looked up at the building and saw faces and hands pressed against the glass wall, bearing silent witness to the atrocity.

"Hellboy, this can't be over," Liz said.

"It isn't." He grabbed Liz's arm and pulled her to one side of an entrance to the terminal. "Look." The dragons had stopped circling and were now hovering in place, infrequent wing beats apparently enough to hold them aloft. They were turning their heads, scanning the ground below and the air around them, looking for a new target. When they found one, they screamed and converged quickly on the helicopter.

"What the hell are those idiots doing?" Liz said, aghast. The helicopter was flying toward the dragons, not away from them.

"Press? Politicians?" Hellboy shrugged his shoulders and thought,
At least it'll give all these people time to get inside,
"Liz, let's get inside," he said. "Uh-oh, here comes the cavalry."

Several policemen in body armor burst out of the terminal, machine guns in both hands. They skidded to a halt on the concrete, staring up at the dragons. The lizards were converging on the lonely helicopter, circling it, casting brief bursts of fire against its fuselage. Playing with it. One of them drifted in and swiped the helicopter with its tail, sending it into a dangerous spin. The pilot recovered, only to be knocked again from the other side. Then all five dragons spat fire, and the helicopter exploded. The policemen opened fire.

"Now they'll come down here," Hellboy said. He pushed Liz inside and followed.

From outside came the sounds of machine-gun fire, and Hellboy had a sense of being closed in from all sides; it felt as though the heavens were falling, and when he glanced from the next available window, he saw that was true. He could hardly see any sky. All he saw were dragons' wings, and all he heard were the cries of dying men. The gunfire lessened, then stopped, and all fell silent.

"Go!" Hellboy said. He was pushing people ahead of him up the staircase, desperate to reach the first level, where they could go deeper into the building. Here they were protected only by a thin layer of blockwork and metal siding, and the more walls there were between these people and the dragons, the better he'd feel.

The sense of being enclosed lessened. He glanced at Liz, and she said, "They're moving away." Hellboy nodded grimly. Good news for them, bad for someone else.

They made it up into the departures concourse. The crowd hurried through toward the huge departure lounge, but Hellboy and Liz held back, waiting by the wide spread of windows and looking out over the airport. The downed aircraft was belching clouds of rolling black smoke at the sky, forced aloft by towering flames. Hellboy tried not to think about what was feeding that fire and giving the smoke a definite oily texture; he could smell the conflagration from here, and that was bad enough. There were several emergency crews vainly pumping foam, many of them scanning the skies as they did so.

Of the dragons there was no sign.

"Those bastards!" Liz said. "That's plain murder. Damn Blake. Whatever his mad gripes, there's no justification for something like this."

"None at all," Hellboy said quietly. The anger was building in him. He needed to hit something, and soon.

"We can't just leave this," Liz said. "We can't just go." The huge fire outside was reflected in her eyes, and Hellboy thought he saw the ice blue of her own personal inferno in there as well.

"We won't," he said. "I fought one of these things — though that one looked bigger than these damn worms — and got my butt kicked. But five ... that's another thing altogether."

"Yeah, but now you've got me," Liz said. "And you've got that new cannon."

Hellboy held up his pistol and rested it in his big right hand. "Isn't she a beauty?" he said. "This'll put a hole in a tank."

"And a dragon?"

He nodded. "Oh, I
really
want to see what this'll do to a dragon."

Liz took a deep breath and turned away from the window, and when she looked at Hellboy, her eyes were still aflame. "Then let's go," she said.

But they did not have to go. The fight came to them.

Even above the screaming, they heard the roar of fire belching from a dragons mouth.

"That's coming from inside!" Liz said.

"Departure lounge," Hellboy said. Then he ran. He pounded onto the moving walkways, nudging people aside and apologizing as he went. He heard Liz behind him doing the same. The pistol was a reassuring weight in his left hand, and he made sure he had a perfect grip. They were getting closer.

Another roar, and something exploded at the heart of the terminal, setting ceiling tiles vibrating and advertisement frames falling from walls. Hellboy vaulted the handrail of the moving walkway and ran for a fire exit, shouldering his way through and crashing across the corridor into another door. It had been a guess, and a good one. He burst through and stumbled into a display of perfume and moisturizing cream, dropping to his knees, smashing the shelving away from his face, and bringing the gun up in one smooth movement. Someone screamed — a sales clerk, he guessed — but he ignored her, standing and forcing his way through the shop and out onto the concourse. People were running left to right. Some of them looked fearfully over their shoulders, most simply ran, terrified and determined. Children screamed as parents squeezed their arms.
Hold tighter,
Hellboy thought.
These kids need to grow up to tell the story.
He turned left and ran against the flow. Most people moved out of his way.

"You there, Liz?" he yelled.

"Right behind you."

"I thought I'd lose you in the perfume shop."

"Sexist ape."

Skidding around a corner, Hellboy saw what had caused the explosion. There was a dragon thrashing and twisting amid the ruins of a car display stand. The car itself — once a polished and curvaceous totem of materialism — had been kicked aside into a tie shop, and was now a burning wreck. Several bodies were scattered around its broken chassis. They too were burning.

"Son of a
bitch
!" Hellboy yelled. The dragon stopped its orgy of destruction and turned to face him. It grew quiet for a moment, perhaps confused at this big red man. Then it growled. "Oh yeah," Hellboy said. "Your cousin was an ugly mother too."

The dragon darted forward, surprisingly nimble despite its size. It coughed fire at the same time, and Hellboy and Liz rolled to the side. They ended up in a coffee shop — spilled coffee sheening the floor, discarded bags and magazines pushed against walls like snowdrifts — and they had to duck again when the dragon drew level and let out another gush of flames. The fire consumed the air around them and stole their breath, blazing across the counter and bursting bags and cans. As it receded the pleasing smell of roasted coffee filled the air.

"Now I'm getting very pissed," Hellboy said. "Liz?"

"I'll give you first shot," she said, smiling.

"So considerate." Hellboy stood, brought the gun up, and fired. The dragon seemed to dodge, flexing its neck and body as if it knew where the bullet was aimed. Then it lunged with its heavy front claws, dashing him aside, dragging him out, holding him down so that it could twist its body and stand on his chest. Hellboy aimed again and fired, but the bullet glanced from the thing's skull and took out the display window of a sports shop. Sneakers and footballs tumbled out, and the dragon snapped its head to one side and fried them.

Hellboy squirmed against the weight of the beast, taking in a huge breath and smashing at its foot with his right hand. The dragon screeched and lifted its foot ... and then brought it down again, hard. Hellboy's breath was forced from his lungs, and he felt the tiles beneath him shatter from the impact. He kept hold of his gun.

From his left he felt the livid simmering of a different fire.

The dragon turned its foot left and right, crunching Hellboy down into the floor. The sharp edges of broken tiles scraped his skin, the beasts claws bit into his chest and abdomen, and Hellboy looked up and saw a security camera turn toward him, flashing red.
Great,
he thought.
Ass kicked on film for the second time.
He turned the gun, pressed the barrel against the dragons foot, and pulled the trigger. Blood exploded in his face, and the dragon fell to one side, howling like a puppy left on its own.

Hellboy rolled toward Liz, and as he knelt and brought the pistol up, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck singed. A roar of flame curved over his head and struck the dragon on the face.

"Burn," Liz said. Her voice sent a shiver through Hellboy. He would trust Liz to death and beyond, but hell, she had hidden depths.

The dragon reared up and flapped its huge wings. They scraped walls, smashed doors, and scored the tiled floor. When it opened its mouth to inhale Liz's fire, Hellboy knew they were in trouble.

He aimed the pistol. "One good shot," he said. "That's all I ask. One ... good ... shot." He pulled the trigger and suddenly believed in the power of prayer. The bullet hit home in the dragons throat.

The giant lizard froze, stiffened, let out a small squeal. The hole in its throat spewed something colorless that distorted Hellboy's view of the monsters head — gas or heat, he could not tell — and then its eyes rolled up in its head.

"Oh, Liz," Hellboy said, "this is going to be — "

The dragon exploded. It gave a wet, dull thud that thumped through the ground into Hellboy's legs and set his eardrums pounding. Its neck was pushed apart by a ball of fire. Blood, flesh, and bone spattered the walls and powered in through the coffee shop entrance. Hellboy barely brought up his hands before he was hit by a slab of meat almost half his size. It was warm and stinking, and it rolled him to the floor and slid against the back wall with him. He tried to push it away but found that it was burning, pockets of gas in its flesh popping and sparking and dribbling fire down across his face and neck. It fused the meat to him, and he started to smell like a bad steak.

"Dammit!" He kicked up and out, shoving aside the still-melting chunk of meat, and then Liz was there adding her weight. The piece of dragon parted from Hellboy with a sucking sound, and he kicked it away. "Now, that is grim."

"The dragon's still burning," Liz said She was covered in blood, and a shiny, oily scale was stuck to her forehead. Hellboy plucked it away and held it up to the fires cast by the monster.

"Looks almost pretty," he said.

"You've got time to collect trophies later," Liz said. "One down, four to go."

"Yeah, and if they're all that easy to kill — "

"You call that easy?"

"Comparatively."

"Compared to what?"

He shrugged. "Give me a minute, I'll think of something."

Liz smiled, and a hail of bullets slammed into Hellboy.

Liz stumbled back, tripped over a discarded rucksack, and fell. Hellboy had pushed her. Maybe he'd seen the policemen out of the corner of his eye, or perhaps he'd sensed the danger. Bullets stitched his chest and threw him against the wall. He slid to the floor muttering something, but Liz could not make out the words.

"Stay still!" someone shouted. Liz, lying on her back, put her hands in the air. She was breathing hard. Blue flames licked her fingernails. She raised her head and looked at Hellboy, and he stared back with a look of almost comical surprise on his face.

"Keep your hands still!" the same voice shouted.

"They're up where you can see them, asshole!" Liz said.

"She's American, guv."

"Hey, that's no dragon. That's
Hellboy
."

"I swear," Hellboy whispered, "anyone calls me a dragon again ... " Then his eyes closed, and his chin dipped to his chest.

Liz stood. "If you're going to shoot me, do it, but make the first bullet count." She did not even look at the policemen. In two strides she was at Hellboy's side, kneeling down and gasping at the sight of the blood seeping from his wounds.

"Holy shit, I shot Hellboy ... " a voice said.

Another voice, this one whispering. "You better hope he stays down a while."

"HB?" Liz said. She leaned in close, angry, terrified, flames lighting the undersides of her fingernails. "HB, open your eyes at least?"

His mouth twitched. Only slightly but enough to make Liz hold her breath. He whispered something, but she had to lean in closer to get the sense of it. " ... spoil a good rest?"

Liz bit her lip, stood, and spun around. "He said he's going to insert his right hand into the one who shot him," she said. There were three policemen there, each of them nursing a machine gun, all of them looking as though they'd just fallen into hell and been dragged out the other side. One of them had burns on his right arm, and his eyebrows had been singed away. She suddenly felt sorry for them and tried to put herself in their position: one day minding the airport concourse, the next fighting dragons and shooting big red men. She almost smiled. Almost.