Kaiju Rift

by Ian Woodhead

  They kept their numerous food storage bunkers a few klicks away from sanctuary and well away from any known concentration of their enemies. In his lifetime, they had managed to increase the number of bunkers from six to nine. Their bunkers were now able to feed and provide for almost forty families all through the year. From what he heard, the elders now believed that their sanctuary was the largest one on this mainland.

  Each one stored, grew, and kept a few animals, mainly rats and chickens, as they were the easiest to feed. They used to keep cats too but gave up after a couple of years as they were a nightmare to feed. It seemed stupid to give food to something which could feed a human.

  Harry used to so enjoy visiting the stores back when he was first allowed to start patrolling with the older men. It helped to reinforce the stories that the elders used to tell him from the time before the arrival of the monsters when animals like these were able to roam across the land without fear of becoming another part of an enemy defiler or an extra food source for a foot-soldier.

  He never told anyone else, but Harry loved stroking the chickens and the rats. He even imagined how cool it would be to sneak one of them back and keep it as a pet.

  Harry shook away the reverie and glanced back at the survivors. Apart from Caroline, they were all sleeping. The girl looked too frightened to shut her eyes. He was about her age when they finally allowed him to start patrolling above ground. Is that what this little girl had to look forward to? Assuming they even survived this initial invasion?

  Harry froze. He grabbed his fleshmelta, frantically gesturing to the girl to move back to the far end of the cavern before he crept closer to the edge of the cave. From his vantage point, Harry could see all the way up to the edge of the city. Lush green fields, full of waist-high plants, separated this cave from a stretch of thinly placed trees. It was the plants that he stared at. Something was running through those plants and heading for him at high speed. Harry lifted up the fleshmelta, took aim, and prepared to fire.

  A grubby hand poked up through the dense foliage, followed by a head. “Wait!” cried Dosser. “Don’t shoot. It’s just me.”

  Harry reached down and helped the older man up. It took a lot of self-control not to shout at this thoughtless idiot. “I almost killed you,” he whispered.

  The other man nodded, trying to catch his breath. “I know and I’m really sorry for not following your detailed recognition instructions. I just didn’t think.” Dosser looked back towards the field then stared straight at Harry. “Oh man. Malc is in trouble! We so need your space gun!”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’ll take you.”

  Harry grabbed the man’s wrist. “It might be better if you tell me where he is, Malc. I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave these people without a guardian.”

  “But you don’t know where anything is!” he cried.

  “There’s a red brick three-storey building, decorated with stone dragons near to where the edge of the town ends.”

  “The library, yeah.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows. “Oh right. Well, Dosser and I found three kids sheltered behind the back of a supermarket, near to that library. They, I mean the invaders, surprised us when we were running across the road.” He took Harry’s arm. “They’re hiding in a shop with a bright blue shop front.” He drew in a deep breath. “You need to hurry, Harry, I don’t know how long they’re going to last.”

  Harry climbed down and jumped into the king grass then sprinted through the vegetation, heading straight for the red brick building. He looked back just the once to find Dosser and the little girl gazing back. Caroline gave him a brief wave. Dosser looked so worried and Harry did kinda echo the emotion. He so hoped that Malc was okay. Harry gave the girl a wave then increased his speed, needing to find Malc as soon as possible.

  It did feel a little odd to find himself being worried over another human being. He guessed it was because only Harry really knew what these evil creatures were capable of. It didn’t help to know that he still believed that everyone in this world, even the homeless, lived a pampered existence, none of them knowing what true hardship really was.

  Harry flattened his back against the red brick building and peered around the corner. The road opposite did appear empty, but Harry was far from convinced. Dosser had just ran past here at high speed, meaning the patrolling familiars, if any were close be, would now be on alert.

  He bent down, picked up a squashed tin can, and threw it as hard as he could in the opposite direction to where he wanted to go. The can landed close to a curb and clattered along the side of the road until it came to a stop beside the front tire of a small blue car. A moment later, a thin tentacle-like appendage burst out from a grate, wrapped itself around the can, and pulled it under the road. It took it less than two seconds.

  He scanned the surrounding area, looking for more grates and finding another three directly in his path. Harry scooped up another piece of rubbish before he ran across the road. He stopped next to the corner of a bank and attempted to get his bearings. He sighed silently. His trek seemed so clear when he had the advantage of height. Now, down here, Harry feared he would get lost in this labyrinth of buildings if he took just one wrong turning. Perhaps he should have allowed the older man to accompany him after all.

  Harry spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. Something just slithered under a car, close to him, probably another one of those tentacles. He moved backwards two paces, watching his shadow as it passed over one of those grates. A moment later, that tentacle shot back down. It wasn’t just noise and movement. A sudden change in light activated those things too. Harry imagined the older man by his side, jabbering on non-stop, and shuddered. No, he was best where he was, in those caves. Harry would be dead by now if he had brought Dosser.

  He threw himself into an alcove moments before three foot-soldiers ran past him. Harry didn’t need Dosser after all. The best way to find his friends was to look for the largest concentration of familiars. Harry emerged from the alcove and followed the foot-soldiers at a discreet distance. Sure enough, two minutes later, the patrol joined a larger company. Even from where he stood, Harry saw several more foot-soldiers and three collectors crowded around the front of the shop with the bright-blue sign over its door. This had to be the place.

  A single shotgun blast blew out another window, showering two foot-soldiers in glass. The pair of them jumped back and almost fell off the edge of the curb. They weren’t going to last much longer in there. The gathered freaks might be reluctant to storm the shop right now, but the stand-off won’t stay like that. Harry risked being spotted and climbed onto the roof of a black car. Just as he thought: two bio-tanks were slowly making their way towards the shop. There was no way of shooting his way through the front, not now; there were too many. There had to be another way inside though. He shifted his attention to the edge of the building and spotted a gap between this shop and the next. That had to lead to the back. There was his route.

  He climbed down, crouched behind the car, checked for any grates then raced across the road. One collector noticed his appearance and started to sound the alarm. Harry shot it in the face for its trouble. He reached the gap between the buildings, and checked to see if it did actually lead somewhere before he walked backwards down it, keeping his aim fixed on the way in. No more were following him. Was the collector the only creature to notice him? It seemed that way. The remaining collector and the foot-soldiers probably thought a stray bullet from somewhere else in town downed their colleague. At least, that’s what he hoped.

  Harry wasn’t sure how he was going to get Malc and the survivors he’d collected past the assembled monsters at the front of the shop, but he decided not to dwell on that right now. He needed to get them out of the building first.

  His boot heel scraped against the side of the wall. Harry glanced down and spotted movement reflected from the small puddle in between his legs. He threw himself to the floor, a moment before an energy
bolt from a fleshmelta passed over his head. He gritted his teeth and moaned in pain when the heat from the bolt singed his hair. He rolled onto his back and fired once while sitting up. His bolt hit home, a single foot-soldier standing in the courtyard behind the shop.

  He jumped to his feet and raced out into the courtyard. He fired another two shots, turning the other foot-soldier into a puddle of stinking gloop. It wasn’t the only foot-soldier out here. Harry spotted the last one trying to scramble over a five-foot stone wall at the back of the courtyard.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he growled. Harry ran over, viciously pulled it off the wall, and slammed the side of the creature’s head against a flagstone. The satisfying sound of its crystal skull shattering told him he’d killed the vile creature.

  Harry dropped the corpse, grabbed his weapon, and spun around, getting ready to fire again when he thought he’d miscounted.

  “Don’t shoot!” cried Malc. “It’s just me.”

  Harry lowered the gun, clipped the weapon on his back then ran over to the old man. Two strangers were helping him through a broken window. He nodded at the three young men and two women before he crouched beside Malc’s blood-soaked trousers. “Can you stand on it?” Harry tore away some of the material but couldn’t see much of anything in this dim light.

  Malc slowly nodded. “I guess so.”

  “That’s not good enough.” Harry looked straight at the blond-haired man to Malc’s left. He ignored the offered handshake. Harry grabbed the man and moved him forward a couple of paces. “You look strong enough. I want you to take charge of this man,” he said. “Help the others get him over that wall then carry him, the best you can. Do you understand me?”

  The man nodded.

  He turned to Malc. “Get these guys back to Dosser then see if anyone there can take a look at your leg.” He unclipped the fleshmelta. “I’ll keep the creatures busy while you lot get away.” A terrible whining filled the air followed by a tremendous crash coming from the other side of the shop. The bio-tanks had arrived. “Why are you still here?” he hissed. “Come on, move it.” It took the small group a couple of moments to cross the courtyard. Harry waited until most of them were over the wall before firing a couple of shots into the dark shop. Harry doubted he’d hit any of the advancing creatures, but he just needed to slow them down for a bit longer.

  Every member of the group had now vanished. He fired a couple more shots into the shop then he picked up the dead foot-soldier. “You have one more duty to perform,” he whispered. Harry held it in front of him and ran back through the gap between the two buildings. All he saw when he peered around the corner was a single collector. All the others must be inside. That was not good. Malc’s leg injury would slow them all down; they’d be easy pickings for the creatures if they followed their route.

  Harry dropped the corpse, pulled down the fleshmelta, and fired a single shot at the collector’s expanded sac. The remains of countless liquefied humans spread out across the road. The collector released a long, drawn-out bird-like screech before keeling over.

  “Be gone, vile creature,” he snarled. Harry picked up the corpse, held it up, and waited. Sure enough, two foot-soldiers ran out from the shop. They saw the dead collector then saw the corpse that Harry hid behind. Their posture suggested caution but not alarm. As he hoped, they thought the collector had been cut down by sniper fire. He waited until they were right on top of him before he threw the corpse at them and opened fire. Harry killed them both before either of them had a chance to go for their weapon.

  Three more foot-soldiers ran out of the shop just as Harry got to the other side of the road. Unlike the first two soldiers, these three burst out of the shop, already firing their fleshmeltas. Harry had to throw himself into an open doorway to avoid one of the bolts removing his head. Harry stayed close to the floor and scuttled around a display full of cereal boxes.

  The foot-soldiers had followed him inside. Once they were all through the door, the foot-soldiers split off and ran in opposite directions, with one of the creatures heading straight for him. Harry shuffled closer to the metal shelving. He waited for it to reach his position before taking out his knife and thrusting it up through its jaw and into the base of its brain. Harry caught it as it collapsed and gently laid the thing on the floor beside him.

  He could still hear crashing and plasma fire coming from the shop on the other side of the road, meaning some of them were still trying to locate Malc and his group. What a dilemma. Harry desperately needed every enemy, including the bio-tank, to converge in the building, but he wasn’t all that keen on actually dying. He had no other choice but to compromise his cover to draw the rest of them in here. Harry ran towards the bank of checkouts, keeping his head down. He grabbed a tin off one of the shelves as he passed and threw it as hard as he could at the shop window.

  The glass didn’t break, but the tin did leave a spider crack in the middle. Harry ignored the shouting coming from somewhere behind him and picked up one of the swivel chairs from behind a checkout bank and threw that at the shop window. The additional weight easily finished off the job started by the food can. It also almost got him killed. Two plasma beams cut a path through the computer screen next to his chest. Harry dove forward and rolled to the side, just as another shot turned the floor next to his foot into a pool of molten rock. He scurried towards the exit, noting that a whole bunch of creatures were now running out of the shop opposite his. Every single one was heading towards his position and they all carried a weapon of some kind. His plan worked alright but too well. Harry could not see any way of surviving the next couple of minutes.

  “It’s better odds behind me then out there,” he said. Harry jumped onto the checkout belt. He drew a bead on the shocked foot who was sneaking up on him and shot it through the face. He jumped down, shot at the other one, and missed. The surviving foot-soldier fired at the same time. Its bolt slammed into the wall directly above Harry’s head, causing a cascade of tins to fall on him. The sudden weight caused his knees to buckle. He crashed onto the tiles and his fleshmelta skidded across the floor.

  The foot-soldier sauntered over to Harry, booting his weapon under one of the fixtures as it passed. The creature raised its own fleshmelta and uttered something it another language. Harry assumed it was mocking him. Not that it mattered. He was going to die here, but at least the others had gotten away. It said something else in its own language. Harry glowered at the foot-soldier, refusing to allow it to see fear in Harry’s eyes.

  “Go on then, you vile fucking piece of shit. Go ahead, kill me.”

  It laughed at Harry just as something arced over from the next aisle and smacked into the side of its head. It was a tin of beans. Harry watched, fascinated as it dropped onto the floor and rolled under the fixture, coming to rest beside his fleshmelta. Another tin hit the creature. Harry crawled out from under the tins and rolled towards the fixture. He pushed his arm under, listening to a human voice call the other foot-soldier a variety of colourful insults. His fingers curled around the fleshmelta. He pulled it out, took aim and fired, melting the back of its legs.

  A pair of hands grabbed Harry and pulled him up. “We do meet in odd places, Harry,” said Callum. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” He pointed to a back room door, next to a wall of chest freezers. “That’s our way out, man. Let’s get out of here!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They were trying to corral him into what his memory strand knew as an old market hall. It didn’t take a genius to realise it was a trap. The place was bound to have over a dozen foot-soldiers, as well as a bio-tank or two ready and waiting for him. It made total sense. It was really the only way to exterminate such a dangerous foe as himself.

  Their plan was doomed to fail. How could it not? It had been him who had trained them in similar operations. It probably explained why he now had two guardians on his tail, attempting to run him into the ground. They were succeeding too, despite their huge bulk, the huge monsters faster than h
im.

  Take the next turning, said the memory strand. We can hide in that car showroom. At least until you have got your breath back. If you carry on like this, those things will run you into the ground.

  I don’t need any advice from you, he growled, taking the turning anyway. The memory strand was correct. The bone armour which had grown across most of his body, although excellent for deflecting bolts from energy weapons and bladed weapons, was not great for running.

  The captain raced down a narrow side-street then threw himself on the ground and shuffled under a white van parked on the corner. Sure enough, the two guardians ran past the van. He wasted no time in crawling out the other side of the vehicle and running back towards the showroom. It wouldn’t take his pursuers long to realise that he’d tricked them. He slowed down when he reached the edge of the showroom and vaulted over the chain-link fence.

  Are you sure this is a good idea?

  Trust me.

  The captain wasn’t sure he liked that tone of voice. He couldn’t further inquire as the annoying memory strand had already named every make of vehicle in here even before Copperfield was able to enter the building. He ran past several cars and pushed through the glass door and sighed with relief as the cool air washed over his sweating bulk. The captain wanted to close his eyes and enjoy the feeling. He also wanted the memory strand to stop quoting car statistics in his head.

  Silence, fool, or be silent forever.

  Yeah, about that. Thing is, I don’t believe you are able to do that. I mean, if you did have this mythical ability, why haven’t you already done it?

  The captain growled quietly while shifting his position to ensure one of those two guardians didn’t see him. This is your last chance.

  I still don’t believe you. Admit it, you need my expertise.