“Faen,” Cato swore through his shirt. “We should go now.”
“I’m with you, man,” Carter said. “We can call the cops and let them figure it out.”
“Look at that,” Anna said, pointing at something far bigger than a sea lion. Her face showed no sign of discomfort. She lived for this kind of stuff. In school, her friends had said she was morbid. She preferred to think of it as having curiosity, but there was no denying that she had to stop herself from smiling. She pulled out her phone and took several pictures.
The putrid green cloud quickly drew nearer to them, but they did not notice. All of them were staring at the fourteen-meter-long dead whale that had just washed up. It was dark skinned, covered in gray patches and white mottling. More seagulls flew overhead. Some few dared to land on the far side of the fish graveyard and peck at the flesh buffet.
“A gray whale,” Cato said. “The Atlantic Ocean pods are extinct, and I’ve never seen one before. They are a cool animal. And they have a good nickname, too,” he added, his voice a little quiet.
“What is it?” Anna asked. It was Carter who answered her.
“They call them the Devil Fish,” he said. Cato nodded in affirmation. “We get whales washing up here every so often. There’s actually a skeleton of one at the aquarium. This is bad, though. Not natural at all. Radiation from Fukushima, maybe?” At that thought, he pulled out his phone and called the office.
Anna turned to Cato. The whale, even dead, was an awesome sight. Even though two meters of it were up on the dry sand, its massive body stretched back into the ocean for longer than they could see.
“What is coming out of its face? I’ve never seen anything like it,” Anna said.
Cato stared. Long gray tentacles, the underside of which were pinkish white, stretched from the animal’s mouth. Perhaps they bobbed in the ocean water, but it seemed that they were still moving. It was hard to say with certainty, but the tentacles appeared to be growing naturally from the whale’s body.
Squawking gulls descended as more dead sea life washed ashore. The wind picked up, blowing sand in their faces and chilling them. The rotting corpse smell was more pungent than ever.
“It must have eaten an octopus or something,” Cato said. “And the tentacles got attached somehow to its face.” The explanation didn’t sound reasonable even to him.
Carter hung up. “They didn’t hear anything about Fukushima. That’s one relief, I guess. But that cloud is almost on us, and I don’t like the look of it. We don’t have rain jackets, either. Let’s go back.”
“Maybe someone will come pick us up,” Anna said.
“In your dreams!” Carter said. Cato liked this expression. It seemed so American to him.
“Just let me take a few more pictures,” Anna said. She was the kind of girl men didn’t usually say no to, and neither did now. Cato pulled a small digital camera from his bum bag and took a few photos as well. It was certainly ground zero for something, and he shared, to a lesser extent, Anna’s excitement at being the first witnesses there. As they watched, the whale sluggishly came more onto the shore, sliding upon the wet sand.
“Um, guys?” Carter said. “Look up.”
The tenebrous cloud had reached them. It lurked over their heads, glowing with unhealthy radiant energy.
“This is not good,” Carter said.
Anna took a photo of it. Rain fell down, glowing green drops that sizzled. They hit the whale’s carcass, and there was a creaking, stretching sound.
“Faen!” Cato cried.
“Watch your language,” Anna said. He cursed too much, especially knowing that no one around them could understand him.
The whale’s flesh and the bodies of the sea life stretched and cracked where the rain hit them. They were drying, as though being instantly mummified. It was a gruesome sight, seeing the freshly dead animals instantly dehydrate. Far worse was realizing the same fate awaited them.
“I don’t want that shit to touch me,” Carter said. Even as he spoke, a sparkling drop the color of fresh bile hit his jacket sleeve. It immediately dried like paper. Carter screamed. Around them gulls were dying in droves, screaming their pain as the rain sucked all moisture from them.
“The rain,” Anna said. “It’s going to kill us!”
“Under the whale,” Cato said. “It’s our only hope.”
The drops fell heavier. Over their heads, the cloud didn’t look so small after all. It robbed the sky of all else.
“Are you guys crazy?” Carter asked. “Under the whale?”
“It’s a dreadful idea,” Anna said. “But we have to try it.”
She scurried forward. A drop hit her hair, and she felt it stiffen as though it had been blow-dried for hours. That terrified her.
She dove into about two feet of seawater and slid under the whale. Seconds later Cato joined her. Its body was buoyed up as the tide came in. It didn’t leave much space, but it was enough. The drying rain became a monsoon, the animal carcasses withered, and the sea itself retreated from the shriveling touch of the rain.
“Where’s Carter?” Anna asked. Cato’s ear was close to her mouth, but she had to yell to be heard over the stretching sound of dead flesh and the cacophony of shrieking birds. They both shivered in the cold ocean water. Cato took off his glasses, which had steamed up in their small space. Above them, the whale settled and shifted down. They now had less than ten centimeters of breathing room.
“I can’t see him,” Cato said. “I think he ran the other way.”
“Faen,” Anna said.
It was a nightmarish wait, their bodies freezing as they lay between the ever-crushing whale and the evaporating seawater. Fish corpses bobbed in the water and hit them in the face. Worst were the lobsters, whose sharp claws stuck like an unheeded warning. But as nightmares do, it ended suddenly. It was over. The birds stopped screaming, the ocean water ceased receding, and the spectral cloud fled inland, across the forests of fir, to the east. Cato and Anna climbed out from under the whale, shaking from cold but laughing from relief that they were alive. But that relief quickly dissipated as they walked down the beach
They found Carter’s desiccated body less than ten meters away. He hadn’t run nearly far or fast enough.
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Kaiju Rampage Page 11