Mura started up the stairs but froze. A chill ran along the length of Nori’s spine as he did so.
Sniffing at the air, Mura asked, “Do you smell that?”
“I can’t really smell anything but smoke. Most of the city out there must be burning.”
“There’s something dead above us,” Mura said, his voice going so soft and low that Nori could barely hear his words.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I know what rotting meat smells like. My dad was a butcher,” Mura whispered.
“Oh,” was all Nori could think of to say in response.
“Hold on a sec,” Mura told her. It looked like he was adjusting his goggles. Mura leaned out over the rail of the stairs and looked upwards. He jerked himself back onto the stairs in a quick motion, dropping to one knee as he vomited onto his boots.
That Nori did smell. Her own stomach turned at the scent, but she steeled herself and managed not to join Mura in his vomiting through sheer willpower.
When Mura stopped heaving, he wiped his lips with the backside of his hand.
“What is it?” Nori demanded. “What’s up there?”
Mura apparently couldn’t speak so he took off his night vision goggles and handed them to her.
Nori took them, sliding them onto her head by their strap, and leaned out of the stair’s rail to take a look for herself. She wished she hadn’t. From the floor above them, as far up as she could see, Nori saw the disemboweled and skinned bodies of men, and maybe women, it was hard to distinguish gender with so little left, hanging from the railing of the stairs by strands of their own intestines tied in cords around their necks. She did vomit then. Mura waited silently at her side until she was done.
“What…?” she started and had to pause to swallow, “What did that to them?”
“Kaiju,” Mura said stating the obvious and only rational answer.
“If it was kaiju, where are they?” Nori asked, confused. Surely, if the monsters were in the building with them, they would have attacked by now.
“This place is a trap. We need to get out of here.”
“No argument here,” Nori said as Mura helped her to her feet.
A loud slamming noise echoed upwards from the bottom of the stairwell.
Nori flinched at the noise. “What was that…?”
“That was the main door to the stairwell on the ground floor,” Mura replied. “I’ve tried all the others as we’ve been moving up the stairs. It’s been the only one that was open so far.”
“And now it isn’t?” Nori’s grip on the pistol Mura had given her grew tighter, her knuckles going white.
“Now it isn’t,” Mura confirmed. “They’ve locked us in here with them.”
“We could still go up. Head for the roof or something,” Nori suggested.
“That would be pointless,” Mura explained. “Those things may be monsters, but they’re not stupid. If they’ve blocked all the other doors in the stairwell, you can bet the top one will be blocked somehow too. There might even be more of the kaiju waiting for us up there.”
“So what do we do?” Nori pleaded.
“The only thing we can, Nori,” Mura said, his voice filled with half-hidden fear and sadness. “We fight or we die.”
****
The snarls, growls, and hisses of the kaiju below their position on the stairs rose upwards from the ground floor. They were soon followed by the sound of inhuman feet charging up the stairs. Mura shot Nori a look.
“You have to keep it together if we’re going to get through this,” he cautioned her. “And don’t shoot me in the back,” he added as he ran to the corner of the platform they were on, angling the barrel of his rifle down at the stairs leading up to them.
Mura popped a flare and tossed it. It lit up the stairwell revealing the monstrous faces of the kaiju racing towards them. All the kaiju were humanoid. Each of them was covered in thick brown hair from head to toe and had the fanged snout of a boar that looked ready and eager to gore them. Some of the kaiju had lips smeared red with human blood.
Not waiting for them to get closer, Mura opened fire. His rifle chattered as it spat burst after burst into the ranks of the kaiju. The lead creature took several rounds in its chest and shoulders before it died. The others behind it trampled its body beneath them as they continued their charge. Mura kept firing. His next target took a burst to its head that splattered brain matter and bone fragments into the air. The kaiju died instantly. One of the kaiju behind it caught its corpse as the dead kaiju fell and flung it over the stair’s railing out of its path. Mura’s next target took multiple hits to its stomach that ripped into its innards, gutting it. Again, the kaiju behind simply flung it from their path.
“Anytime now!” Mura screamed at her as Nori stood gawking at the carnage he was creating in the kaiju’s ranks. His words reminded her that she had a pistol in her hand. Not wanting to accidently shoot Mura, she leaned out over the railing and started firing at the approaching pack of kaiju from its side. Her first two shots missed. One of them sparked off the railing next to the kaiju. The other somehow streaked through the holes in their ranks to bury itself in the stairwell wall.
Nori steadied her aim and took a third shot at the monsters. This time, her bullet smacked into the skull of a pig-faced kaiju, destroying its left eye in the process. The dead monster careened sideways, colliding with another kaiju next to it. The two of them went down tripping up several of the others behind them.
“Yeah!” Mura shouted with excitement. “That’s how you do it!”
In spite of their losses, the kaiju were gaining ground. They had closed to within yards of Mura’s position. Mura flicked his rifle to full auto and hosed the front lines of their ranks. Kaiju howled and squealed. Mura held the trigger of his weapon tight until it clicked empty.
Nori saw him pop his expended magazine to reload. Mura had driven the kaiju back some with his desperate gambit but not far enough. The creatures plowed into him, knocking him over to pile on top of his prone body. Mura’s pain-filled cries echoed in the stairwell. Nori fired into the kaiju that were swarming him, putting three rounds into the back one of them. The kaiju grunted and tumbled forward, disappearing into the pack. Nori realized there was nothing she could do to help Mura. His cries had already grown silent, and she didn’t have the ammo to take on all the kaiju by herself.
Knowing she was next, Nori turned and darted up the stairs. The only weapon she had was the pistol Mura had given her, and there were far too many of the monsters left to try to make a stand with it. Her only hope rested in outrunning them. What she would do when she reached the top of the stairs and found the door there blocked, she had no idea.
Nori ran as fast as her exhausted and aching legs could carry her. She bounded up the stairs two at a time. Her breath came in ragged gasps. As she rounded the corner of the stairs, stumbling onto to the next floor platform, she saw the feet of the poor men and women who had been disemboweled and skinned dangling down from the railing above her. Nori forced herself to ignore the mutilated bodies and keep going. She could hear the footfalls of the kaiju behind her now. Those that hadn’t stopped to feast on Mura were gaining on her fast. The toe of her right shoe hooked the edge of the next step, catching there. She lost her balance, unable to recover in time, and slammed into the steps in front of her. Nori felt a sharp pain in the side of her chest and knew she had cracked a rib or two in the fall. Her already-wounded kneecaps and hands were bleeding again. She left a trail of red drops in her wake as she heaved herself to her feet and pushed on. Nori knew she was that God had been looking after her, because the fall could have hurt a lot more than it had.
Glancing over her shoulder as she ran, Nori saw a dozen yellow, hungry eyes in the darkness of the stairwell looking up from below her. She didn’t have a clue how many rounds were left in the magazine of the pistol Mura had given her. Fear and adrenaline had washed away her memories of not only how many shots she had already fired but
also everything Mura had told her about the gun. Spotting a door that led onto one of the building’s interior floors, Nori paused to try it. She jerked on its handle with all her strength. The door rocked in its frame but refused to open. She let go of the door and started running again.
The kaiju were so close now that she could smell them over the smoke and the stink of the bodies that dangled from the railing of each set of stairs she ascended. They had their own unique, musky odor. Nori knew that the top of the stairwell was only two floors above her. She had to think of something, do something to slow the kaiju.
As she rounded the last bend in the stairs and stepped onto the last floor platform of the stairs, she saw the doorway that led to the roof. A cool breeze blew in through it that gave her new energy as it touched her sweat-slicked skin. The door itself was gone. Only a pair of mangled and broken hinges rested on the side of the frame where the door would have been attached. Not taking any chances, Nori raised her pistol as she sprinted for the doorway and fired a shot through it into the night beyond. She hoped that if there was something waiting for her on the roof that the shot would drive it back from the doorway so that she could make it safely through.
The pain in the side of her chest was growing worse. She could taste blood in her mouth and wondered just how badly the fall on the stairs had hurt her. Her chest hurt with each breath she took. She prayed that her cracked ribs hadn’t punctured one of her lungs. She didn’t know anything about medical stuff. Before the kaiju had come to Tokyo, the worst injury she had ever had in her life was a broken knuckle from punching a bully in the nose…and that had been when she was eight.
Plunging through the doorway, Nori found herself in the cool air of the night outside. There was no sign for kaiju at least that she could see, but there was also no sign of the missing door that looked to have been torn off its hinges. The roof of the building was a wide, open space. Other than the small, shack-shaped protrusion of the doorway up from the building’s interior, the roof was flat too. There was nowhere for her to hide. She had to make a choice of trying to hold the kaiju as they came through the doorway behind her or find a means to get off the roof before the kaiju caught up to her.
Nori whirled about, aiming her pistol at the doorway, though her eyes were still scanning around the rooftop. She saw what looked to be the top of a fire escape ladder not too far from where she stood. It became her back-up plan as she braced herself to take on the kaiju.
The first of the pig-faced monsters came through the doorway, grunting angrily at her. She squeezed the pistol’s trigger and blew out the monster’s right eye. The bullet exited the rear side of its skull in a spray of black blood that splattered over the other kaiju behind it. The next three kaiju all tried to push their way through the door’s opening at once. They ended up in a tangled mess of arms and legs, each blocking the others. Nori used the time the kaiju had just bought her in their over eagerness to kill two more of them with well-aimed headshots. The third kaiju broke through as the bodies of the other two it had been wrestling against went limp. The third one was fast. Nori had no time aim as it reared its head back in an inhuman roar and charged at her. Fear got the better of her in the moment, and she fired three shots into the monster in rapid succession. Her first shot slammed into the kaiju’s chest with little effect in terms of slowing the monster, though it did blow a gaping hole in its ribs. Her second shot did much the same, striking the kaiju only inches from where the first shot had landed. Nori’s third and last shot did the trick, though. She jerked the pistol a tad higher before she squeezed the trigger. That third bullet caught the kaiju in the center of its throat. Its roar turned into a sickening gargling noise as the thing choked on its own blood which flowed up into its mouth. Drops of black blood spattered across the floor of the roof as the kaiju shook its head about wildly trying to breathe. Nori retreated beyond the reach of its outstretched, grabbing arms as the monster stumbled towards her. She tried to shoot it again, but her pistol clicked empty. Not knowing what else to do, Nori threw the empty pistol at the monster’s face and then turned to run towards the top of the fire escape ladder she had spotted earlier. Some still-functioning, rational part of her brain reminded her that she had seen six sets of kaiju eyes chasing her up the stairs. That meant there were three more of the monsters if that was truly all that was left after the battle she and Mura had fought on the stairs and she had counted correctly.
As Nori reached the top of the ladder, a kaiju that must have been hanging on the ladder just below the roof’s edge, launched itself upwards at her. The thick mandibles protruding from its face snapped at her. She flung herself backwards, landing hard on her butt, as the kaiju pulled itself up and over the edge of the roof. The thing resembled a spider. It moved on six legs with two human-like arms on the sides of its body above them. The spider kaiju hissed as it climbed onto her body, pinning her beneath it. Nori punched and kicked at the monster, but her blows had no effect on it.
Nori screamed a final time as its mandibles snapped together on her neck, their ends meeting deep inside her flesh.
****
General Akio sat in his command chair as Karza stood beside him. The two of them watched together as several squadrons of fighters swept in on the wounded king of the kaiju. The great beast had dropped to one knee and looked on the verge of collapse. Rei’s final blow appeared to have nearly finished it.
Waves of unrelenting missiles flashed as they hammered into the giant monster’s body. Each explosion drew fresh blood from the king of the kaiju. Hurting as it had to be, though, the king of the kaiju still managed to put up a fight. A geyser of fire sprayed from its mouth to wash over two fighters as they came about for another run at it. The wings of the two planes grew misshapen as they melted in the heat of the flame before their own weapon payloads and fuel tanks erupted, causing the planes to become blossoming masses of fiery wreckage that blew apart in the sky.
The fighters were taking a heavy toll on the king of the kaiju, but General Akio could see that it just wasn’t enough. He nodded at Karza. Karza moved to the nearby comm. station and opened a channel to the CO of the fighter squadrons engaging the monster.
General Akio couldn’t fully hear the order she gave to the squadrons’ leader, but he did catch the words, “Whatever it takes.”
This time, as the fighters came howling, inbound towards the king of the kaiju, they loosed everything that had aboard them at the giant monster. Each plane emptied the entirety of its missile payload, all aimed at the king of the kaiju’s head. Explosion after explosion tore at the monster. It reeled under the barrage unable to respond to it but still, it refused to fall.
Three of the fighters didn’t pull up or veer away as they closed on the monster. One after the other, they drove themselves into the monster’s skull. General Akio made a mental note to give each of those pilots the highest honors that he could as the king of the kaiju fell at last.
Entire sections of the king of the kaiju’s massive head were caved in. The right side of its face had been stripped away down to the monster’s very bones. A gaping wound that left brain tissue exposed to air leaked gray fluid on the top left corner of its fractured skull. One of its eyes was simply gone, leaving a burnt and mangled, empty socket in its place.
The staff of the command center around General Akio and Karza cheered and gave shouts of victory as the giant monster toppled over onto the streets of Tokyo and lay there unmoving as its own blood pooled about its body.
“It’s over,” General Akio said quietly.
Karza cocked her head in his direction. “No, sir, it isn’t. We may have just won the war, but the battle is far from over. The entire city remains teeming with lesser kaiju.”
General Akio gave a dark laugh. “Them we can handle Karza. See to it.”
Karza nodded sharply. “Consider it done.”
Epilogue
It took the better part of three days to clear the city of the lesser kaiju. Karza oversaw it all, eve
ry step of the way, and General Akio left her to it. He had his own problems to deal with. His plans to protect the city had failed and hundreds of thousands had died because of it. Worse, the attack had done so much damage that there was no hope of keeping it secret from the rest of the world as Japan had done in the past. The world now knew that kaiju were indeed very real, and that someday, more of the monsters would rise again to continue their war on the world of man. Press conferences, mounds of paperwork, and hearings lay ahead of him, and he could only hope that when they were done, he wouldn’t have his rank stripped from him to be sentenced to the remainder of his life in jail. In truth, General Akio knew he had done all he or any man could do to hold back the monsters and that at least would allow him to sleep at night, regardless of where he rested his head.
The End
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Eric S Brown is the author of numerous book series including the Bigfoot War series, the Kaiju Apocalypse series (with Jason Cordova), the Crypto-Squad series (with Jason Brannon), the Homeworld series (With Tony Faville and Jason Cordova), the Jack Bunny Bam series, and the A Pack of Wolves series. Some of his stand alone books include War of the Worlds plus Blood Guts and Zombies, World War of the Dead, Last Stand in a Dead Land, Sasquatch Lake, Kaiju Armageddon, Megalodon, Megalodons, and Megalodon Apocalypse to name only a few. His short fiction has been published hundreds of times in the small press and beyond including markets like the Onward Drake and Black Tide Rising anthologies from Baen Books, the Grantville Gazette, the SNAFU Military horror anthology series, and Walmart World magazine. He has done the novelizations for such films as Boggy Creek: The Legend is True (Studio 3 Entertainment) and The Bloody Rage of Bigfoot (Great Lake films). The first book of his Bigfoot War series was adapted into a feature by Origin Releasing in 2014. Werewolf Massacre at Hell’s Gate was the second his books to be adapted into film in 2015. In addition to his fiction, Eric also writes an award winning comic book news column entitled “Comics in a Flash.” Eric lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children where he continues to write tales of the hungry dead, blazing guns, and the things that lurk in the woods.
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