Free Project Maigo by Jeremy Robinson

way, intending to circumvent the monster. He understands when we level out and he’s still looking at Scrion head on, through the side window. “Shee-it. The son-of-a-bitch is chasin’ us!”
    Betty’s front end dips forward as Woodstock pours on the speed, but Scrion is fast.
    Very fast.
    Its wild eyes look frenzied, like it’s lost in some kind of drug-induced craze. Its jaw drops open. This thing is no Nemesis, but it could still make a quick snack out of us.
    “Hard left on my mark!” I shout. Woodstock could hear me through the headset if I whispered, but the volume of my voice does a good job of communicating my urgency. “Then head for the ceiling.”
    I crane my head back, face squashed against the window. The monster leaps, shoving off the ground with its powerful hind legs. As it lifts into the air, I get a look at its armored underside, which is covered in dark gray plates, split horizontally by three stripes of bright orange membranes.
    “Now!”
    Betty cants hard to the left. I couldn’t pull myself away from the window if I tried, and given the proximity of Scrion’s closing jaws, I would really, really like to lean back. But then I’m seeing blue sky above. The sound of a thunderous impact reaches my ears. It’s followed by a jolt of turbulence. Scrion is back on the ground, no doubt once again giving chase.
    A curse from Woodstock reaches my ears. I’m about to ask what the problem is, when I see for myself. The streets in the ruined part of town have all been cleared of debris. Only a few of them are open to the public, to ease traffic in other parts of town. Travel through the rest of the ruins is restricted, because the streets are rife with sink holes and every structure is ready to collapse. It’s not a safe place to be. And yet, the Kaiju fanatics and sightseers can’t seem to keep themselves away.
    Like the people below us. They’re driving some kind of small boxy car, and the driver is doing an okay job avoiding the potholes, but they’re not moving nearly fast enough. I can see the people inside moving back and forth quickly. They can see the monster coming. I wonder if they’re still having fun? Probably. Kaiju nerds are like that. They’d probably die with smiles on their faces. But it’s my job to keep that from happening.
    “We can’t be sure Scrion will follow us if we turn away,” I say to Woodstock.
    “What’s the plan?”
    I look ahead. The road below heads straight toward the ocean before banking to the left and running straight out to Beverly Farms, which wasn’t affected by Nemesis’s self-immolation.
    I nod at the joystick in my hand. “We’ll run interference. Head out to sea. Hope it follows.”
    “If it doesn’t?”
    “The cavalry shouldn’t be too far behind.”
    His only response is to quickly spin the chopper around, while still moving in the same direction, so that we’re flying backwards. He performs the maneuver expertly, but it’s still disorienting. My head spins for a moment, but it’s quickly cleared by a surge of adrenaline brought on by Woodstock’s voice.
    “Holy hell!”
    I catch a glimpse of what’s coming. Black teeth. The mottled roof of a massive mouth. Two, beach-ball sized brown eyes with big black pupils, reflecting the red hull of Betty and my own dopy looking surprised face.
    The image is erased by a stream of orange tracers. It looks like a laser beam, but the stream of hot rounds is meant to show me where the rest of my unseen bullets are traveling. In this case, they’re headed right where I want them to—down Scrion’s throat.
    The bulldog-like Kaiju snaps its jaws closed, just missing the chopper and absorbing the rest of my chain-gun rounds with its thick skin, which like Nemesis’s, seems fairly impervious to conventional ammunition.
    When Scrion doesn’t fall away, I realize how close to the deck we are. Just thirty feet off the ground. If not for the swath of destruction around us, we’d be plowing through