Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (14 page)

Imposter! Imposter!
The beast roared
again.

The translated words, spoken by his own internal voice, were like having his own thoughts turn on him, reaffirming the doubt he already felt.

Then it struck him, a surge of hope was born as he realized it. If it was surprised and angered every time it killed someone so easily, it must not be able to tell who the challenger was, it could not sense him like he could it. He did have an advantage.

Get its attention
, Jonathan thought.

He left behind the policeman still yelling at him. Running a few yards, he approached the closest SWAT van still upright. He gauged the jump; no small task when he didn’t know his own strength. Aiming to land aboard the top of the vehicle, he reached out with one hand and put his palm on the van roof. The immense core strength he now possessed made the maneuver simple. He landed smoothly with the simple use of his forearm. The strength coursing through him defied gravity without the strain it would put on mere human muscles. Grace was a symptom of the balance and stability that this strength brought.

From above the barrier, he could see what had unhinged these men fighting around him. This thing, it couldn’t seem to tell the difference between the people running from it or the people fighting it, or it just didn’t care. It was piling the dead, stacking its kills one on top of the other in the street like trophies.

Jonathan wasn’t ready to see it; he couldn’t take it all in. With terrible understanding, he realized he’d smelled the blood. It pooled in the street beneath them. The odor was a visceral thing, flooding his lungs and threatening to empty his stomach. His eyes darted from one lifeless form to the next, he didn’t know what to do with the images and he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t looked away.

His eyes came to rest on a single color standing out in the pile. It was small and thrown so carelessly into the mass of bodies; pink, impossible to miss against the predominantly blues and blacks of police and SWAT uniforms. A jacket, a child’s jacket, a girl; she couldn’t have been more than six or seven. She was still, her body so fractured, her limbs and fingers contorted in unnatural angles, her jaw dislodged turning her childhood innocence into the very essence of wrongness. The little girl, the thing had picked her up and broken her, until nothing about her was right.

Her eyes stared back at him, lifeless, demanding an explanation from within the fallen. His vision a tunnel, the girl was all he could see, her dead gaze questioning him.

Why did you take so long? Where have you been? What did you wait for?

The guilt was so overpowering that there seemed nothing to hold on to inside as the image of the girl’s broken body branded itself into his mind. It threatened to break his very sanity, his very ability to be in this moment. Plummeting, he searched for stability within himself, something to halt the unhinging of his mind, to let him move his body again, if nothing else than to let him shut his eyes. He didn’t find what he was looking for.

Instead, something terrible seemed to find him.

It surfaced without thought, a thing that had hidden in plain sight for so long that it startled him when it moved within. He didn’t recognize this part of himself as it made its presence known, but his intuition screamed out in warning that he wasn’t supposed to let it out, that it had been chained down inside for a reason, that it was never meant to do the world any good. It had been forced to wait for his permission, for Jonathan to surrender control.

There was no choice; it had the strength to move that he couldn’t find. When he let the thing take hold of him, its fury wrenched his eyes from the broken body of the girl and back to the monster in the street. Part of Jonathan curled down into a ball as the thing grew stronger. It fed on the responsibility, the disgust, the frustration, the unfairness, the very adrenaline pumping through his veins and silenced the part of him that wouldn’t act.

There was no desire to flee. There was no more fear of pain or death. He lost himself in rage, became something rabid and focused. He felt a surge of violent strength as it finally took the wheel.

The creature stood next to its pile of trophies, its back to him. There was a break in the gunfire. Jonathan saw now that the remaining police had stopped shooting momentarily as the creature had gotten a hold of a fellow officer and they feared hitting their comrade.

He’d never moved so fast, the strength in his legs propelling him. The SWAT van rattled, the roof caving in as he charged forward. When he hit the ground the pavement shook beneath him. He didn’t hesitate, only forced his legs to push harder, to accelerate. He took one last powerful step before lunging straight for the monster’s back. His arms covered his head like a shield, his eyes and teeth clenched shut waiting for the impact.

There was a heavy thud like slabs of meat clapping together. He felt the connection reverberate down his spine.

He heard a crash somewhere out in front of him. When he opened his eyes, he was on the pavement. The sound of helicopter blades surfaced, muffling the noises around him. His rage made the world feel as if it were moving in slow motion, dulled to his senses.

He saw the police officer next to him scrambling to the safety of the vehicle barricade. The creature had dropped the man when they’d connected. Jonathan looked up to where it had stood. There was nothing there now.

Ahead of him, there had been a bullet riddled semi-truck. It had now collapsed onto its side. The creature had torn through the hull of the trailer and overturned the entire vehicle. Jonathan rose to his feet, his fury focused on what now lay in the truck’s hull.

The raging thing inside of him, it seemed pleased with itself.

He took his eyes away from the container briefly, assessing his surroundings. The police were still. They wore astonished faces, their mouths hung open. They tried to blink the gun smoke out of their eyes and believe what had happened. He knew what they saw. A nothing of a boy, barely a man, had knocked the beast from its own battleground.

The moment passed, its ending marked by a loud creaking from the inside of semi’s trailer as the thing began to move. He’d jumped off the precipice, now it was time to deal with the climb back to safety. Jonathan could imagine the monster inside the hull, not yet knowing what had hit it so hard and it stoked the flames of his anger to know he’d rattled it.

The large clawed hand of the beast reached through the hole its body had torn in the side of the semi. The men surrounding Jonathan snapped out of their momentary lapse, taking cover again behind their vehicles. Jonathan’s gaze focused on the claws.

With a quick and powerful motion the beast pulled itself on top of the capsized semi and crouched beside the tear in the hull. Its white eyes quickly swept the scene, finding where it had stood a moment earlier and coming to rest on Jonathan. It began to growl, speaking in its monstrous dialect.

Challeng-

“I’m right here!” Jonathan roared over it, cutting off the voice as it translated in his mind.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THURSDAY | JUNE 30, 2005 | 11:20 PM

JONATHAN
crashed into one of the cement pillars supporting the freeway. The cylindrical support cracked around him as he hit. He fell onto the street, dust from the fractured pillar raining down on him.

A little over a minute had passed since he’d been staring down the monster. Since then he’d been kicked so hard he’d knocked over a SWAT car, been backhanded into the asphalt, and now grabbed by his jacket and thrown out of the street entirely. If it weren’t for the pillar, he’d still be airborne. He was losing this fight. Worse, the creature didn’t even seem to be taking him seriously any longer. He had its attention, there was that, but it was just toying with him. Its interest now only seemed to be gauging how much punishment Jonathan could take. It was all he could do not to accidentally kill bystanders by crashing into them as the creature kicked his ass all over the street.

Since taking that first kick to the chest, he’d learned a lot. On the up side, he was no longer a fragile man. He was hurting, but not the pile of broken bones that he should have been. Whatever the implant in his chest had done to him hadn’t been limited to shear strength. It had made his body denser and far more resilient. On the negative, he didn’t know the first thing about fighting, and it was embarrassingly apparent.

It was as though the creature lived and breathed violence; methodical and quick; it was four steps ahead of him with every attack. He had to change tactics. He couldn’t stand toe to toe with it. Eventually it would grow bored and begin to focus on killing him. Jonathan knew whatever the beast was doing in the fight right now, it was psychological in nature, meant only to show him that he was hopelessly out of his depth. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t expected this before showing up, but his frustration was rising. He was losing his grip on the fury that was holding back his fear. Even now, looking up at the beast from his knees on the sidewalk, it showed no hurry to maintain the upper hand. It wanted him to attack, it wanted him to fail. It wanted him to do so in front of his entire species.

Reaching his feet, Jonathan noticed the metal pole of a street sign next to him and pulled it out of the cement. It wasn’t easy, but the pavement broke away when he put the strength of his back into it. Maybe he could keep the thing from getting too close to him.

He looked up and the creature hadn’t changed pace or even given a sign that it registered he’d picked up a weapon. When his panic began to build, he forced himself to remember he had a plan. Turning away, he retreated into the darkened streets beneath the viaduct. It was one step closer to where he wanted it and it lured the damn monster away from the police barricade.

There were no streetlights underneath, plenty of shadows to hide in. He hoped that if he could lose the thing in the dark for a moment he might gain the upper hand. He could sense its location through the signal in his mind, but in the dark it would need to search for him. He ducked out of the creature’s line of sight and made for the shadows, pressing his back to one of the pillars. Both his hands clasped the metal bar tight to his chest as he waited for the creature to make its way in.

He sensed it nearing rapidly. The beast must have jumped from the police barricade to where Jonathan had smashed against the pillar when it realized he’d retreated. He could feel the pavement rattle as it landed and rolled into a fighting stance.

The thing moved with an animal like grace. During the fight it had dropped kicked him while both hands had been planted on the ground. It changed between a human-like walk and a knuckle crawl when it wanted to move quickly. That it mimicked a gorilla at times was encouraging. That his prediction had been correct meant his plan had a chance.

He focused on the compass in his mind. The beast stood on the other side of the pillar. He could hear its heavy feet and hands on the pavement. Suddenly the movement stopped, and Jonathan thought he heard the sound of it sniffing the air over the hum of the city’s noise.

Dammit,
he thought with sudden alarm.

He’d miscalculated his advantage. There were good reasons not to lure a monster into the dark. Even if the thing couldn’t target him directly, it could likely hear, smell, and see better than a man. He became aware of how loud his own breathing was and quickly held his breath. He had to hope that their location would mask his sounds, and that the densely populated city would inundate its senses with the smell of other humans. He waited, desperate for the signal to start moving away from him. He needed it to turn its back on him.

He let out each breath as slowly as he could. The creature didn’t move for a moment, and the wait made the moment stretch out. Finally, he sensed the gap between them grow larger. It was moving away, checking behind one of the other pillars.

As quietly as he could, Jonathan moved the metal pipe to one hand and edged quickly to where he could see the creature’s back stalking away, deeper into the shadows. Whatever he was going to do, it had to be fast. It was too agile, too quick. He couldn’t delay; he had to get a few solid strides in before the sound of his boots on the pavement gave him away. When the moment seemed best, he let out the breath he was holding, and took two powerful strides before launching himself at his enemies back. As he drew close he brought the bar over his head aiming to bring it down onto the monster’s skull.

At the last moment it sidestepped and spun. Jonathan, fully committed to his attack, brought the bar down with all his strength, punching a hole in the pavement as he landed. The creature’s foot quickly came down on top of the bar as its alternate hand grabbed him by the throat. He realized then, it had known exactly where he was the entire time. He felt himself lifted off the ground and spun. The beast’s foot on the bar pried it loose from his grip. He found himself slammed against the pillar again, his feet dangling above the ground. A split second passed and the beast’s fist connected hard with his face, punching his skull into the pillar, then again and again.