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Destroying the battleship would be fun at least, the Watchers would enjoy that, even if he took no joy in it himself.
But then, coming up the channel was the Coast Guard cutter. The Bofors rounds had bruised him but not done serious damage, exploding against the surprisingly tough outer skin. So he wasn’t terribly worried to see the white ship.
But the Coast Guard had learned. They had only a few armor-piercing shells on board, mostly to sink derelict ships that could not be salvaged. The first armor-piercing shell penetrated Vincent’s skin before exploding. It was sharply painful and left a crater. Chunks of Vincent’s body flew through the air, but even before they landed he felt their separate, dull, subservient intelligences awaken. His puppets! Each shell would make more.
On the other hand, Vincent was not at all sure what would happen if he, himself, the still-human part of him, was hit. He submerged, cool water flowing over him as if he was a submarine diving. His human form was the last part to go under. He’d already discovered that he did not need to breathe underwater, but something about it still made him nervous.
The gray steel of the Iowa’s hull was a wall ahead of him, the keel just a few feet out of the mud. Vincent slid two legs beneath the hull and pulled sharply. The Iowa tilted crazily, sending the stupidly brave folks who’d stayed around to watch tumbling across the deck.
But when Vincent tried to break the ship, he found the hull still too strong. All he could really do was rock the great ship back and forth, which was not very exciting to see. Not really . . . entertaining. Not at all what one expected of Abaddon.
Besides, after a week on the Okeanos he was tired of ships and the sea. So he slithered up onto the far side of the channel, keeping the Iowa between himself and that stinging Bofors gun. Leaving the port, he rolled into and over a neighborhood of inexpensive, two-story apartment blocks, smashing cars, knocking down stucco walls, and collapsing tile roofs, and that at least was entertaining because people came running out into the street, hopped into cars or fled on foot, sometimes only half dressed.
He broke power lines and gas lines with predictable results: fires blossomed in his wake.
He felt weary, though. Hollowed out. The voices whispered and the Watchers silently urged him on, but every movement was an effort now and he came at last to a stop, planted in the midst of a residential neighborhood. People fled before him, and that was nice, but his energy was all gone.
He wanted a rest. He wanted everyone out of his head. He needed to sleep.
A brave homeowner fired at him with a handgun. Vincent barely noticed. The homeowner, out of bullets, dropped the gun and fled.
Three big Sikorsky helicopters were veering to get in front of him, looking for a place to fight him again.
No more. Not now.
And Vincent Vu began to change.
The great red arms shriveled and shrank. The flails lay limp and curled up like doodlebugs. He was surprised when his feet—his own, human feet—touched pavement.
Sirens rose and fell. Red lights came rushing down the street. But when they came screeching up and leaped out with guns drawn . . . they found nothing but a frightened-looking kid.
“Hey!” a cop shouted. “Get the hell out of here!”
“Where should I go?” Vincent asked plaintively.
“Go home, you damn fool! Don’t you know it’s the end of the world?”
So Vincent did just that. He walked away, joined a crowd of rushing people, passed many more emergency vehicles, and finally found his way to the home his mother would never see again.
His father greeted him with a hug. “Thank God, you’re okay! Do you have any idea what’s happening down by the port?”
CHAPTER 28
Consequences
“ARE YOU FAMILY?” the doctor asked Shade and Cruz.
“No, but—” Cruz began.
“We’re all the family he has here.” Shade talked over her. “Everyone else is back in Chicago.”
“You need to contact them,” the doctor said, and his expression was grim
. “We may be able to keep him alive for twenty-four hours.”
Shade fell into a molded plastic chair. They were in a hectic corridor, weeping family members, gurneys preceded by shouts of “Clear a path, clear a path,” doctors and nurses and people carrying iPads to take down health insurance information.
Twenty-four hours!
