Hellboy: Unnatural Selection (22 page)

"He ... I didn't know who he was," the burned policeman said. "It's chaos out there. There's a plane down, didn't you know? And dragons! And I come in here, see you and him, and how was I supposed to know who the hell he was?"

"Stop gibbering," one of the other officers said. "Miss, the airport ambulances are busy as hell, and I'm not sure — "

"I'll live," said a voice, gruff and pained. Liz sensed him standing behind her. And from the looks of the policemen's faces, he was a sight to behold.

She turned around, smiled, and cried. Hellboy was touching the three holes across his torso, swaying on his feet, and rubbing the blood between his fingers.

"Been stabbed," he said. "Been slashed with an ancient sword. Been bitten and thrashed with giant tentacles. Never been shot." He reached into his belt, and the knife he brought out and flicked open was long and thin. It reflected fire from the burning dragon. He never even glanced up before slipping the blade into the first of the wounds.

Liz grimaced, but she could not look away.

Hellboy hissed as he eased out the first bullet. The second had gone deeper, and he really had to work at this one, the spent slug finally flicking out and shattering a glass on the shop counter. The third bullet had barely penetrated his hide. Hellboy pulled this one out with his fingernails.

"Holy shit," the burned policemen said. He turned and ran past the dead dragon, departing the departure lounge at speed.

The sergeant started to go after him but then turned back to Liz. "Miss, if possible, I'd like to ask you both to accompany me."

"Accompany you where?" Liz said.

"Were evacuating the airport. The things that brought down the aircraft are setting about the buildings now, and the parked jets, and just about anything that moves. The military is on its way, so the best we can do for now is get away."

"Oh, great," Hellboy said. "The military."

"They're better trained to deal — "

"With dragons?" Liz asked.

The sergeant looked away, unnerved and confused. He glanced at the dead dragon, its head and neck a ruined mess, flames still licking across its ruptured body and igniting the fat with a bluish fire.

"Sergeant," Liz said, "we need to get to the arrivals exit quickly. We're meeting someone there, and it's vital that we make it."

"Miss, with all due respect, I don't hare time for that. My job is to protect the airport, now more than ever before."

"And I respect that." Liz smiled at him; she knew how disarming her best smile could be. He was a tall man, fit, proud, and this was a day that he'd never forget. He had seen people killed — probably some friends among them — and the killing was obviously not yet over. But sometimes there were difficult choices to make. "We're here to try to prevent more like this happening. Haven't you seen the news lately, from all around the world?"

"Yes," he said, unable to meet her eyes. "Around the world. Not here."

"You thought Britain was immune? Look at that." She pointed at the burning dragon. It was twitching now, fleshy ripples passing across its corpse as small pockets of gas burst deep inside. She was worried there might be another explosion.

"You say you're here to stop more?"

Liz nodded. "We can't know for sure, but this could be just the beginning."

A distant explosion reverberated through the terminal, the floor jumped beneath their feet, and from somewhere came the sound of shattering glass. "Oh, God," the sergeant said. "I think that was another plane."

Liz closed her eyes, hoping he was wrong, sensing he was not.

"We need to go," Hellboy said. He was still scratching at the wounds on his chest, slowly flexing his upper torso as if to work out the pain. "Tell your guys to aim for the necks. That's where they have their gas sacs. Or whatever." He cringed and rubbed one of the bullet holes. "Damn, this'll be sore in the morning."

"Er ... I'm sorry I shot you," the sergeant said.

Hellboy shrugged. "Good shooting. I can't hit the side of a barn."

The sergeant raised an eyebrow and looked at the dead dragon.

"Third shot," Hellboy said. "And look at the size of that thing."

The four of them walked past the burning beast and headed toward the vast check-in hall. The sergeants radio crackled once or twice — shouts, panicked mumbling, shooting — and he walked quickly, glancing back at Hellboy and Liz every few steps.

"What's happening?" he said at last. "Why us? Why here?"

"Reaping what we've sown," Hellboy said.

"I'm sorry?"

Liz nudged Hellboy and shook her head. "He's delirious," she said. The sergeant obviously doubted her, but he was not about to argue.

They walked past a vast panoramic window that looked out over the runways and other buildings, and the scene that greeted them stunned them to a halt. The airport was a war zone. The first crashed passenger jet was burning as fiercely as ever, but now there was an even greater conflagration a mile away across the concrete. It looked as though several parked aircraft and a hangar had been set alight, and the flames reached for the sky like the souls of the doomed jets. A dragon was buzzing the flames, drifting in and out as if reveling in the heat splashing across its body.

Closer by, several emergency vehicles had been attacked, and they lay scattered across a runway like a child's discarded toys. At least one had exploded, the force of the blast having extinguished whatever fire caused it.

"Look," the sergeant said. "Terminal Three." He spoke without emotion, because really there was little that could be said. Terminal Three, a mile away across the airport, was under attack by the other three dragons. One of them perched on the roof and coughed fire down between its feet, apparently trying to burn through like a blowtorch. Flames and gases erupted about its head, but it shook them away and gushed fire again. The other two lizards hovered at windows and holes in the walls, pouring flames into the building, moving back as part of a wall blew out. People fled the building in every direction, from this distance resembling little more than colored ants desperately trying to escape a cruel child with a magnifying glass.

One dragon took off, strafed the fleeing crowds with fire, then went back to its attack on the building.

"Bastard!" the sergeant yelled. He stepped back and fired at the window before them, shielding his face as the glass shattered outward and fell to the concrete thirty feet below. Then he braced the machine gun against his shoulder, aimed, and cried out in frustration when he realized how foolish his gesture had been.

His cry turned from anger to triumph when several war planes passed overhead.

"Oh, tell me they're not ... " Liz said, but she did not have time to finish. The missiles flew, the dragons moved out of their way almost lazily, and the west façade of Terminal Three erupted outward in a ball of smoke and flame.

"Get me the hell out of here," Hellboy said. "Liz, we need to make contact with the embassy, and fast. I want to stay here, but we'll be more help talking to someone who can affect this."

"That way, five hundred yards, turn right," the sergeant said. Then he and the other officer ran for a staircase that led down to the runway level.

Liz wanted to shout after them, tell them not to be so stupid, but she knew they would not listen. Not today, when madness had come and taken them away. They were hardly themselves anymore; angry, yes, raging at the dragons, but barely themselves. They were people in their own dreams, fighting the stuff of nightmares.

"Will this ever end?" Liz said.

"Yes," Hellboy said. "One way or another, it'll end."

That should have been something of a comfort, Liz knew. But the tone of Hellboy's voice brought no peace at all.

They moved away from the window and set off at a run. Hellboy seemed to have shrugged off his terrible wounds — sometimes, love him as she did, he terrified Liz — but he was frowning, disconnected, distracted. She glanced at him several times as they ran, and the last time she saw something in his face that she recognized from a hundred times before.

"Oh now, HB," she said, "come on. Come
on
!"

"Liz, I can't just run away from this," he said. "Those turds in suits from the embassy can wait." Thoughts vocalized, he suddenly seemed more sure of himself. He scratched at his bullet holes and smiled at her. "I've got a plan."

Liz closed her eyes and sighed. But inside, where anger always simmered, she felt her own desire for vengeance heating up.

"Guys!" Hellboy shouted. A breeze came through the bullet-shattered window and kissed the blood on his chest. The wounds were healing already, but the three holes had left deep, heavy aches in his flesh, like fists of stone melded with his body. They itched. "
Guys
!"

The two policemen running away from the terminal turned around. Hellboy waved at them, gesturing them back. The sergeant shook his head and carried on, but then he paused again and shouted back. "Tell me you have a plan!"

Hellboy glanced at Liz and smiled. "He may have shot me, but I think I like this guy."

Liz shook her head. "Male bonding. Always did go way over my head."

The policemen ran back to the building and waited below the smashed window. Hellboy held on to the frame and leaned out, looking left and right, trying to make out the lay of the land. He glanced across at Terminal Three. It was a ruin now, fire belching from the shattered east wall, the three dragons still dipping in and out to add to the conflagration. The Tornado jets roared by overhead, but they did not fire any more missiles. Packing state-of-the-art firepower, faster than a bullet, they were all but helpless against their flesh-and-blood foe. Hellboy was glad their pilots did not have itchy trigger fingers.

"Wait there!" he shouted down. He ducked back in and turned to Liz. She was twisting her hands in front of her as if nervous, but her eyes were as cool as cut steel. "Liz, I've got an idea. It's crazy, and it'll probably get us all killed. But I'm not doing much else today. What do you say?"

"I say tell me the idea."

"Right. OK." He looked around: up at the ceiling, back at the burning mess of the dead dragon, out the broken window at the ruins of the jets and airport buildings. The Tornados roared overhead again, as if an angry noise would scare the dragons away. "Liz, I want to fight fire with fire."

"How do you mean? They duck in and out of fire without a touch. Just like me. I can't do much against them — "

"But you can
distract
them!" The idea was rolling now, and Hellboy liked the way it was going. It was simple, that was the key. Simple ... though dangerous as dragon shit after a spicy chili.

"You want me to act as bait for four dragons."

"Yes!"
She won't mind,
Hellboy thought.
She'll do it. This is Liz. She'll do it.

"Did one of those bullets get you in the brain?" she asked, aghast.

"Hellboy!" the sergeant called.

"Wait up!" Hellboy roared, and several loosened ceiling tiles tumbled from their grid. The policemen fell silent, waiting out of sight.

"You're mad."

"I'm red." He raised his eyebrows. "And cute."

"You are not cute. Intriguing, interesting, distracting, but never cute. A bunny rabbit is cute. A pussy cat is cute."

"Yeah, but they're not as suave as me."

"Are you trying to wisecrack me into submission?"

"Has it worked yet?"

"No."

"Right. OK. I'll tell those guys to run to their deaths, then."

Liz growled.
Just like a tiger having its tail pulled,
Hellboy thought. Not that he'd ever pulled a tigers tail.

"That's not fair!" she said.

"Liz, listen to me. No more joking. No more gallows humor. We've seen a lot of people die today, and if we leave this to the military, a lot more will die. We've dealt with crap like this before, and we won't let amazement or disbelief cloud our judgment, not like them. So here's what I thought: you call up some fire and send it out; the dragons see it, and they're intrigued; they come; those two cops and I kill their scaly asses."

"You think that'll work? Its too easy."

"That's
why
it'll work."

"You're a terrible shot."

Hellboy shrugged, glanced along the concourse at the smoldering lizard. "I'll concentrate."

Liz bit her lip and looked from the window. She walked to the opening and looked down at the policemen below, smiled, turned back to Hellboy. "Where do you want me?" she said.

Hellboy smiled. "That's my girl."

How did I let him talk me into this?
Liz thought.
This is insane. This is suicide.
But at the same time she thought of the phoenix in Zakynthos, and the way it had reacted to her display of fire making. At first it had appeared bewitched, as if fascinated or enamored of someone with its own talents. That had all changed later. But perhaps the dragons would act the same to begin with, long enough for Hellboy and the policemen to get off a few clear shots.

Failing that, she'd just curl up into a ball and jump.

Liz was standing on top of a mobile staircase, staring out over the airport. The crashed aircraft burned on the runway, emergency vehicles still gushed flames here and there, and scattered across the wide flat expanse were smaller shapes, some colorful, mostly just black and scorched. Each shape had a million stories attached to it and dozens of people who would spend the rest of their lives grieving. Liz saw each one as a dead person, and the tears that came unbeckoned were for every one of them. She imagined people at home listening to the radio or watching events unfold on TV — there were certainly press cameras focused on this from many distant angles — and she could not conceive of the worry and heartache being felt across the country right now. Mothers would be watching for missing sons, husbands for absent wives, and children would be huddled against babysitters and wondering whether Mummy and Daddy would be coming home tonight.

Liz closed her eyes, and the tears that squeezed out were hot.

The sound of another explosion came from across the airport, and she saw a dragon setting upon a parked jumbo jet. The worm slithered under the body of the aircraft, unleashed a burst of fire against a wing, and was engulfed in another, more massive explosion as the fuel tanks erupted. The tail flew backward, the wings thumped across the concrete, and wreckage rose high and wide on the expanding ball of flame. The fire roared skyward into a mushroom cloud, edges folding down and drifting back to the ground as ash and smoke.