The Last Hunter - Collected Edition (107 page)

31

A wet tear punctuates the emergence of a massive sword from the insides of the behemoth. It slides through the thick flesh horizontally, carving a neat line. A second sword emerges. Then a third, all slicing the monster open like a Tauntaun on Hoth. It happens fast. In seconds. And in that short time, I’m too stunned to react.

The cut flesh separates, but there’s no blood, nor fluid of any kind. Instead, there is a battle cry. A human battle cry. Three sets of Nephilim hands lift the flesh up, supporting its weight on their unfurled wings, while all around them, an army of hunters surges out.

A Trojan horse. Nephil wasn’t overreacting, he’s simply one step ahead. And his tactics, while gruesome, are effective. The hunters leaping from the insides of the behemoth, are within striking distance of the trenches and only a single coil of razor wire stands in their path—an insignificant obstacle.

As the first of the hunters closes in on the razor wire and easily leaps it, I think,
Merrill, shofar!

The horn blasts immediately, but is muffled. Remembering my sound dampening effect, I free the compressed dome of air and allow the full power of the shofar to go roaring up through the valley.

The attacking hunters fall to the ground, the red beginning to fade from their hair. The Nephilim inside the behemoth shriek and shrink back, letting the giant folds of behemoth skin fall atop hunters still climbing out.

This will be another victory for us. Our army will grow once again and Nephil will be forced to stop using hunters against us.

When the horn blast stops, the sound of shouting voices, pounding helicopters and roaring jets take its place. But I barely hear them. My attention is on the few thousand hunters still on their knees.

I’m about to call out to them, to welcome them as freed brothers and sisters when the unthinkable happens. A splash of red appears and then washes over the group like a giant invisible painter is brushing their heads with blood.
All
of them are reverting back to their corrupted selves.

Merrill! Again!

The horn blast sounds, long and powerful.

The hunters resist. There is the occasional flicker of normal hair color, but it doesn’t last long.

I don’t understand! Why is the shofar not working?

“On the cliffs!” someone shouts when the sound of the shofar fades again.

I glance up to the top of the cliffs. Winged warriors line the precipices on either side of the valley, their wings outstretched. Their presence is ominous and hellish, but they’re not what holds my attention. It is the much smaller, much more numerous, force of gatherers that catch my eye. There are thousands of them, each between six and ten feet tall. Their skinny gray bodies are almost invisible with all the rising smoke, but their black, oval eyes cut through the distance.

Gatherers have the ability to communicate telepathically. That’s how Xin, who was part gatherer, gained his ability, which he somehow passed on to Luca, who is fully human. But gatherers can also manipulate minds, implant thoughts, erasing them or controlling their targets completely. And right now, high up on the cliff, they’re out of the shofar’s range, even amplified as it is.

They’re keeping the hunters corrupt,
I think.

Along with this realization comes a droning buzz inside my head. They’re trying to control us, too!

Guard your thoughts
, I shout mentally to my troops, warning them of the danger.
Resist their control!
From such a great distance, my unwilling force should be hard to control completely, but the distraction could prove fatal.
Snipers, clear the gatherers from the cliffs.

A second later, the first sniper round is fired. I see a single gatherer drop to its knees and tumble over the side. Gatherers can heal, but much more slowly than warriors. If the bullet didn’t kill it, the impact with the ground should. More snipers follow the order and a constant stream of bullets fly toward the cliffs, followed by a constant rain of gray bodies falling down. But there are so many gatherers, that each death counts for little.

Solomon.

It’s Luca.

I can feel them. They’re trying to find me.

He’s talking about the gatherers, I’m sure. They can probably sense his presence. Maybe even feel his thoughts and understand what he’s doing for us. If they were to somehow interfere with Luca, or hurt him, we would lose our ability to communicate quickly and universally to our multilingual force. The result would be chaos. But I’m not sure what more we can do, aside from killing as many gatherers as possible. We could napalm them, I suppose, but my lungs already sting from the first toxic cloud produced by the first bomb. And our supply is limited. We need to save it for the second Behemoth. Missiles are an option, too, but we could create a rockslide, covering the battlefield, or our base, with mounds of stone, a condition that would benefit our much larger adversaries. I hate it, but Luca is going to have to fight, too.

You’re stronger than they are,
I tell him.

But there are so many.

Not for long,
I think.
Fight as hard as you can.
I send an order through him to the helicopter pilots, directing them to climb and strafe the cliffs with their chain guns.

Before I can think of another countermeasure for the gatherers, a battle cry tears my attention forward again.

The hunters are charging.

Merrill, keep it coming!

The horn sounds again. A few hunters stumble, but the effect is negligible. The gatherers are keeping the shofar’s effect at bay.

This is the unthinkable moment I have been dreading.

The lead hunter, who is past the single row of razor wire, charges toward the trenches, sword raised.

My mind, for all its brilliance, can only think of one solution. And with just seconds remaining, I give the order.

Fire.

A barrage of bullets fly from the entrenched soldiers.

Scores of hunters fall, their human blood soaking the soil of Antarctica, but more take their place. So many more. The Nephilim inside the behemoth have reopened the wound, allowing more fighters to emerge. The warriors are screaming in pain, writhing against the sound of the horn, but I suspect that they too, are getting outside support.

A shadow draws my eyes up.

As the helicopters rise toward the top of the cliffs and open fire, lines of gatherers fall before their modern might. But the winged warriors with them quickly take action. Several stand in the way of the streaming bullets, using their bodies to shield their brethren, enjoying the pain and quickly healing from the wounds. Others take to the sky, attacking the choppers.

A scream pulls my attention forward again.

I spot a hunter in the trenches, slashing back and forth with a long sword until he’s shot. But the damage was done. Ten of my men are dead along with him, and more hunters are closing in, charging in columns protected at the front by hunters wielding large shields strong enough to deflect bullets. Seeing that there are just seconds before the trenches are overrun, I use my powers, which I’ve been reserving for the even more difficult battles to come.

A gust of wind slams into the front line of hunters, tossing them into the air like feathers in front of a fan. Even before they land, more take their place. I cut the wind, allowing my men to fire again. And then, when the hunters get too close again, I knock them back. We could sustain this tactic until all the hunters were dead, but danger is coming from all directions.

“Look out!” Holloway shouts. He tackles me from the side, taking us both off the wall. We drop, twenty feet toward the ground, but I manage to arrest our fall before we land hard. Our feet never reach the ground. An explosion rips through the wall, sending us flying. I catch a glimpse of a ruined helicopter as it strikes the wall and explodes. People and shrapnel fly in all directions. The wall crumbles beneath the chopper’s weight. I once again manage to catch us with a gust of wind, but the sound and the force of the nearby explosion has sent my head spinning.

Back on my feet, I stagger and release Holloway from my arms. But while I’m unsteady on my feet, Holloway is limp. He falls to the side, landing hard. I dive to his side, putting my hand on his back to steady him. But my hand doesn’t reach his back. A large chunk of metal shrapnel is in the way. I look at the wound. Some random chunk of helicopter protrudes from his back. It’s large and embedded deep, next to his spine.

Holloway grips my arm. That he’s still alive is a miracle. I turn him slightly and look into his eyes. “Fight,” he says, and blood drips from his lips. “You fight.” His voice is filled with fury. “To the last man. To the last woman. With everything you have. Fight!”

Holloway goes slack in my arms. The general is dead. But his words still ring in my ears.

Fight!

I place the general down, pull Whipsnap from my belt and scream, with my mouth and my mind, “Hunters! Attack!”

32

I run toward the front wall, driven by anger over the death of Holloway. I didn’t know him well, but he always struck me as a good man. And the world needs good men, now more than ever. Reaching the wall, I leap into the air, lifting off the ground like one of the helicopters.

As I soar up and over the wall, I remember that we have planned for this moment and mentally issue the order:
Duck and Cover
.

The battlefield comes into view beneath me. In the time I spent laying Holloway down, the battle has shifted. Hunters are pouring into the trenches. Many fall to gunfire, but others are cutting through my men. Not for long, though.

The rows of tanks lined up in front of the base, unable to fire at such close range targets without injuring our own forces, roll forward. The soldiers duck down as the sixty-seven ton armored vehicles drive over the trenches. One row at a time, the tanks park above the trenches in tight formation, sealing off the men below from the rushing hunters, who swarm over the tanks like army ants over beetles. Some of the hunters whack at the tanks with their weapons, but they have no effect. The men beneath them are now retreating into the base through a tunnel I formed.

With the men beneath them protected, and no friendly forces in front of them, I give the order to fire. Just once. Thunder rises from below as I cross over the tanks. The hunters on top of the vehicles stumble and fall, clutching their ears in pain. Others, unlucky enough to be in the line of fire, simply cease to exist. Most of the tanks aimed for behemoth and the Nephilim still holding the beast open. The giants are quickly reduced to pieces from which they cannot heal. The mammoth body folds in on itself again, trapping thousands of hunters that had yet to vacate the hollowed cavity.

Still airborne, I look up. A Nephilim warrior attacks a helicopter, striking out with its sword. The massive blade cuts through the chopper like it was a flying tomato. The attack sends the rotor blades flying and one of them returns the favor, severing the giant’s wings. Helicopter and Nephilim both fall, toward the base. Inside the base.

But Merrill is still blowing the shofar and the base is full of fighters who have been trained to kill Nephilim. I’ll have to trust that they can handle it. I have to take care of this hunter swarm first. Because I’m sure there will be no delay in what comes next.

To prove me right, a horn sounds in the distance, and I catch a glimpse of Nephilim warriors charging into the bottleneck. Just before landing, I direct the tanks, artillery and Navy vessels to focus their efforts on the bottleneck, while the Air Force jets continue their assault on the forces still out of sight and the helicopters clear the cliffs.

My entire flight, everything I saw and every command given takes just ten seconds. Then I’m approaching the ground on the far side of the tanks, dropping down toward a throng of several thousand hunters all working their way toward the base. And they will have no trouble scaling the walls. Just before landing, I see bullets tear through some of the hunters. Men on the wall are still firing.

Hold your fire
, I think, directing my thoughts to anyone firing from the walls. Then I land and put all of my anger and desperation into it. The earth buckles beneath me. A shockwave bursts away from me, moving through air and land. Every hunter for a hundred feet in every direction is knocked down. Those within twenty feet don’t get back up.

With every human death, on either side, my anger rises, tenfold when I am the one responsible for their deaths. But the hunters leave me no time to mourn the deaths of their brothers. They rush me from all sides, and I charge to meet them.

As they close in, I spin, swiping Whipsnap around, focusing a burst of wind from its tip. Men fly away from me, cast hundreds of feet in the air. At least I won’t see them die. An arrow whistles past my head, and I quickly form a protecting swirl of wind around me, deflecting several more projectiles being launched in my direction.

They’ve practiced this,
I think. By making me focus on defending against arrows, knives and darts, they’re keeping me from attacking. Any lapse in my defense could mean a quick death.

Unfortunately for them, I’ve been practicing too.

The hunters come at me again with little regard for their own dead, stepping around and on their bodies. As they close the distance, I wait, deflecting the steady stream of projectiles. And then, when the closest attackers are just fifteen feet away, I will the ground around me to rise up. A wall of stone forms around me. It does an even better job of protecting me, but that’s not its purpose.

It’s a weapon.

For a moment, secluded in my dome of earth, I close my eyes and say a prayer for the men and women I’m about to kill. At one time, they weren’t hunters. They were teachers, photographers, scientists and explorers. They had lives, and loved ones. Some, like Ninnis, were married, or had children. They were good people once. And somewhere, deep inside them, they still are.

But not right now.

And I’ve done everything I can to prevent this. Right?

My doubt disappears when Holloway’s words come back to me and my perfect memory remembers the expression on his dying face.
Fight!

“To the last man,” I say and then, with a focused burst of air, the stone around me shatters explosively. Fragments of stone shoot in every direction, cutting through the horde of hunters flooding toward me.

Men and women fall, clutching their wounded bodies and dropping their cherished weapons. They have known hatred and violence for as long as they can remember, but now...they’re free. Really free. And unlike a Nephilim, they have souls that will live on. This gives me some consolation. If I can’t free them in life, I can free them in death.

As I survey the battlefield, I find myself growing tired. The combination of strong emotions and exertion are taking their toll. I’m not yet useless, but I still need to watch how frequently I use my abilities, especially in unnatural ways, like turning the earth into a big grenade.

A battle cry spins me around.

A wall of hunters is nearly upon me.

I raise my hands, intending to knock them back with a homemade tornado, but then I see the hunters leading the charge—Em, knives in hand, and Kainda, hammer raised. These are
my
hunters.

As they reach me, I turn and run with them, raising Whipsnap and shouting. The roar of my hunters that follows fills me with energy, and I throw myself into battle against men and women fighting for themselves, rather than a cause they believe in. Their selfish motivations are weak compared to the convictions of my hunters, and the battle turns in our favor.

I try not to think, or feel over the next few minutes. Both ends of my weapon quickly become stained with human blood. And as more and more hunters fall to my skill, but also to the raw power with which I can now infuse my body, I try not to count.

But not counting is impossible for me.

A sword strikes my back, but I see it coming and tighten the molecules of my body. What would have been a killing blow clangs off my shoulder blades before a hammer drives the man to the ground.

“Watch yourself!” Kainda shouts at me.

Em appears by my other side. She whips a knife, dropping a charging hunter and draws a fresh blade before the body strikes the ground. “You shouldn’t be here!” she shouts at me. “You’re too important.”

“We’re all important,” I argue back, lifting a group of five hunters from the ground and using the wind to send them flying into their comrades. “Especially, you two. I will not leave you.”

“Then fight harder,” Kainda urges.

Fight harder? Hasn’t she been watching?
She strikes down two hunters, quickly and efficiently.
Probably not watching,
I decide.

“Our people are dying!” Kainda says.

That’s when I realize that it’s me who hasn’t been watching.

While our force of hunters is formidable, we’re actually outnumbered, and though our hunters are killing more, they have more lives to spare. But if I use my abilities against humans, how much will I have left for the Nephilim?

It won’t matter if there is no one left to fight,
I think.

Em must see my inner conflict reflected in my face. “You can do it, Sol.”

Faith,
I think.

Kainda grips my shoulder hard. Her touch is like electricity.

Passion.

I look at my wife, the power of her words and presence filling me. Then I leap away, rising above the battle and landing just beyond our front line. With a pulse of air, I clear the area around me. And then, I focus.

It doesn’t matter if I kill a hundred or a thousand, I tell myself. This is a fight the human race cannot lose, no matter the cost. Like Luca, I must push myself to the limit and beyond to achieve that end, even if it kills me.
This is for you, Holloway
, I think.

Then I strike.

With a spin, I swing Whipsnap around my head like I’m striking a combatant. But there isn’t anyone within range—of my physical weapon. But I am not striking with Whipsnap, I am striking with the very air of Antarctica itself.

A blade, nearly a half mile long and razor thin, follows Whipsnap’s path as I swing. With my eyes closed, I finish the strike, careful not to extend it into our own ranks. For a moment, I fear that my attack has failed. Every hunter I struck thus far provided resistance—a subtle tug on the blade as it severed their flesh. But there was no resistance this time, no tug, no indication that I struck a single enemy. That is, until I open my eyes.

While I have left the enemies to my back alive—perhaps a few hundred hunters—the thousands between me and the fallen behemoth are now dead.

Thousands.

God, no.

I fall to my knees. The weight of genocide falls on my shoulders like a cartoon anvil.

This is what Nephil wants.

This is why he sent hunters first.

To destroy my soul.

But he has misjudged me. He has already used me to kill billions. And I found forgiveness for that, and the burden lifted. Cronus’s words return to me. “Forgiveness cannot be earned. It can only be granted and received.” The Titan leader living in Tartarus, knowing I needed to hear the words, then said, “Solomon, for your crimes against your fellow men, for the darkness of your heart and for the evil thoughts of your mind, you are forgiven.”

And I was.

As I am now.

Hands grip my arms and pull me up. I recognize the feel of Kainda’s hands and don’t resist. As I stand, I look back and find the enemy hunters defeated. I have lost at least a thousand of my own hunters, but those that remain look strong and steadfast.

“I did it,” I say, mostly to myself, but Kainda responds.

“And you will need to again,” she says.

I look toward the bottleneck, but from this vantage point on the ground, so close to behemoth, the giant’s body keeps me from seeing the enemy. But I can feel them. The Nephilim.

Their true assault is just beginning.