Dawn of the Kaiju

by Eric S. Brown

  Johnson shrugged. “Only God knows that for sure, General, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  ****

  Captain Gary Peart watched the battle that was taking place on the surface via the large screen that covered the forward section of the Compton’s bridge. The Compton wasn’t officially part of the battle group that engaged the Kaiju off the coast of North Carolina. She had been on patrol in the region long before the battle group had arrived and her orders hadn’t changed overly much.

  Peart sat in his command chair, the decision of whether or not to go to the battle group’s aid weighing heavily upon him. The Compton was the first sub of her class and her tech made that of most of the US fleet’s seem long outdated in comparison. The patrol to which she was currently assigned had been meant to be a shakedown cruise of sorts for her. He didn’t question that the Compton could more than handle herself in the conflict and her updated orders now included making every possible effort to prevent any Kaiju she encountered from making landfall on US soil. Still, the battle group in the distance was being slaughtered. It consisted of two destroyers and a single battleship, the Roosevelt.

  One of the destroyers was already damaged to the point of sinking. The destroyer was dead in the water. Its hull was breached by a single swipe of the Mother Kaiju’s hand that it was engaged with. Sailors in lifeboats were pouring off it in what looked to be a vain attempt at survival. The Roosevelt and the other destroyer were emptying everything they had at their disposal into the Mother Kaiju. Tracer rounds from their deck mounted gun emplacements streaked through the darkness of the night towards the giant monster. The Mother Kaiju stood several hundred feet tall, the upper portion of its body above the ocean’s surface. Peart watched as it closed in on the remaining functional destroyer even as the Roosevelt’s main cannons thundered. A fiery explosion blossomed on the Mother Kaiju’s right shoulder causing the creature to lumber sideways. The Mother Kaiju stayed on its feet though, quickly recovering from the impact. It reached the destroyer, with clawed hands lashing out to grab hold of the destroyer’s forward deck and plunge that end of the ship beneath the waves.

  Peart hadn’t heard of any Mother Kaiju this close to the United States. There certainly hadn’t been mention of one in the last batch of reports he’d received. He was on the verge of ordering his crew to take the giant monster with the Compton’s guns when his XO, Olsen, shouted at him.

  “Sir! We’ve got incoming. CBDR.”

  Peart’s head jerked around to look at his XO. Though Olsen kept an air of professional composure, Peart knew the man well enough to know that the Compton was in trouble.

  “Another one of those?” Peart asked, gesturing at the image of the Mother Kaiju on the forward screen.

  Olson shook his head. “No sir. I believe it’s a swarm of lesser Kaiju!”

  Peart’s own heart leapt into his throat. For a sub like the Compton, facing a swarm was far worse than going head to head with one of the Mothers. For all her upgrades to her tech, the Compton only possessed two weapon systems she could bring to bear on her enemies. Those were the traditional stern and aft torpedo launchers and the long range nukes she carried. Her sides were as exposed as those of any other submarine. If the tactics of the Kaiju swarm were consistent with those of others he read about it, they would close on the Compton as fast as they were able and then tear her hull apart with their bare hands from the outside as she sat helpless against them.

  “Evasive maneuvers! Engines to full military speed!” Peart ordered.

  Those orders given, he asked, “Time to contact?”

  “The swarm is moving at 25 knots, sir. Even with our engines at full, they’ll overtake in less than three minutes!”

  “Take the swarm with our aft launchers!” Peart said, “Fire at will! Maximum spread!”

  “Target locked!” The guns station informed him, then added, “Batteries released!”

  The view on the forward screen changed to show an image of the swarm in pursuit of the Compton. Peart winced as he saw the swarm. Even with the screen set to a wide-angle image, the swarm took up the whole screen, filling it was a mass of gray scaled creatures.

  “Contact!” The gunnery officer yelled a fraction of a second before the screen lit up as a series of explosions ripped their way across the forward ranks of the Kaiju.

  Peart couldn’t guess at how many Kaiju died in the blasts, but he knew it wasn’t enough. The cloud of gray merely shifted as it continued forward, more Kaiju surging onward to take the place of those that had perished.

  Tapping open a channel to the Compton’s engine room, Peart screamed over it, “I need more power to the engines! Now!”

  He knew it was already too late though, even as the words left his mouth. He heard the loud clangs of the lesser Kaiju making contact with the Compton’s hull.

  “The Kaiju have overtaken us, sir!” Olsen shouted. “We have breaches happening all over the aft section!”

  “Emergency bulkheads are dropping in place but we’re still taking on water!” another officer was yelling.

  The entire bridge had become a scene of chaos and panic.

  “We have reports of Kaiju inside the Compton, sir!” Olson told him.

  “Open a ship wide channel for me,” Peart demanded.

  “Channel open, sir!”

  “All hands, this Captain Peart! Abandon ship! I repeat, abandon ship!”

  “Captain!” the Compton’s helmsman shouted at him, gesturing toward the forward view screen.

  The image there was distorted. It was more of a smear across its bending surface than anything else.

  Peart had just enough time to realize what was happening before the screen shattered and a Kaiju came tearing through the forward hull. An explosion of ocean water came flooding onto the bridge in the creature’s wake. The rush of water hit Peart like a runaway eighteen wheeler, trapping him in his command chair. He opened his mouth to scream and the water rushed inside him as well, filling up his lungs. Then his world became only a cold, wet blackness.

  ****

  “Bam! Bam! Bam!” Danny squealed, ramming one of his toy robots into an equally sized, plastic T-Rex. His blue eyes were wide with excitement and glee despite the atmosphere of worry and fear around him.

  Mark sat a few feet from where his son played in the grass. The rays of the early morning sun were warm as it rose above the mountains. Scott sat next to Mark, taking a swig from his already half empty bottle of beer. A cooler, mostly full of melted ice, rested at Scott’s feet.

  “I can’t believe it,” Scott was saying, though Mark was barely listening. “I mean I know things are getting bad out there but this ridiculous.”

  Scott must have noticed he wasn’t paying attention because he reached down and splashed some of the chilled water in the cooler at Mark. Mark flinched when the cold liquid struck his sandal clad feet.

  “Hey!” Mark exclaimed.

  “Got your attention, didn’t it?” Scott grinned. “You zoned out on me again.”

  “Sorry,” Mark shrugged.

  “It’s okay. I get it,” Scott said, gesturing at Danny. “You’ve got a lot more to think about than me when push comes to shove.”

  Danny was still playing away in front of them. The robot toys appeared to be winning and driving the dinosaur ones back in retreat.

  “I guess I do at that,” Mark admitted.

  “If we’re not safe this far inland, the way I figure it, we’re not safe anywhere,” Scott said, finishing his beer.

  “I know,” Mark nodded. “It’s just, we didn’t hardly have time to grab anything before those army guys…”

  “National Guard,” Scott corrected him.

  “Whatever. Before they grabbed us and brought us here.”

  “Best be glad they did, son,” Scott assured him. “From what I hear, they are making some kind of big stand on the coast. You and your boy are a lot better here than you would be there when the shells start flying.”

  Scott leaned
over fishing the last two beers out of his cooler and handed one of them to Mark. Mark accepted it reluctantly. He wasn’t keen on drinking in front of Danny.

  Mark, not wanting to be rude, opened it, as he looked past Danny at the sea of tents and mobile homes surrounding them. The area that had once been a wide-open field was now a refugee camp that sprawled all the way across the valley. It didn’t have a proper name that Mark knew of, but Scott liked to call it Camp Screwed. Why, Mark couldn’t say for sure. Maybe it was because everyone here was on edge, with very little in terms of the comforts of their own, now left behind in homes that none of them ever thought they would see again. Or maybe it was because if the Army failed to stop the Kaiju, the camp would be like one big buffet bar just waiting for the monsters to reach it.

  By Mark’s best guess, there had to be nearly ten thousand people in the camp as of this morning and more were still being brought in. There were rumors of other camps like this one scattered all across the western part of North Carolina. He often thought of finding someone with a car and either convincing them to take him and Danny westward or just stealing it and heading out themselves. There were three key problems with that idea. For starters, this was the south. Most of the good old boys who did have some gas for the vehicles had been herded to this camp and they also had guns. Messing with an armed redneck was never a good idea under any circumstances. Two, gas, even for the camp’s generators that the National Guardsmen looked after was a very rare thing. There was no way to know for sure who had any and who didn’t without asking. Doing so tipped off whoever you were brave enough to ask to exactly what you were thinking. And three, even if he did a get a vehicle with gas, Mark had no idea where he and Danny could run to. They were recent transplants in the South and had no family remotely within easy reach. That last part made his lips dip into a frown as he thought of his sister Laura. She had been in the middle of a four year tour of duty in the Army when all this crap with the Kaiju hit the fan. He could only pray she was okay and safe somewhere herself, though he doubted it. Knowing Laura, she would be on the front line if she could.

  Mark realized Danny had stopped playing. The small, blond haired boy came over to where he sat.

  “Dad, I’m hungry,” he pleaded looking up into Mark’s eyes.

  “They’ll be setting up things for breakfast in an hour or so, Danny. It won’t be long. I promise.”

  One good thing about the camp was that the guardsmen running it did make sure everyone was fed. Not that the food was great. It was usually some kind of cereal or stale pastries for breakfast with no coffee, only milk and juice to drink. Thankfully, Danny seemed rather content on living on breakfasts like that day in and day out even if Mark himself wasn’t.

  “I can’t wait that long, Dad,” Danny urged him. “I’m hungry now!”

  “I’m sorry, Danny…” Mark started but Scott interrupted him.

  “I think I got something, son,” Scott said, digging around in the pockets of his shorts without getting up. He produced a pack of half crushed cookies and handed them to Danny.

  Danny took them, tearing the wrapper open, to ram several of the cookies into his mouth at once. Through the mouthful of crunching chocolate, he said, “Thank you Mr. Wiggins!”

  The remainder of the cookies in hand, Danny darted back to his toys to resume his own little private war. The dinosaurs were making a comeback, it looked like.

  “Good kid you got there,” Scott commented.

  Mark met Scott’s eyes. “Thank you. I mean that.”

  Scott patted the roll of fat that was his belly. “I think I’ll survive,” he chuckled.

  ****

  Major Laura Riddle’s Apache soared over the beach, making a sweeping run, as she overlooked the sheer amount of personnel and firepower that had been gathered below her. Rows of tanks of every kind lined the beach. Scattered among their number were numerous mobile, track mounted missile launchers. Here and there were parked APCs, their .50 Caliber machine guns facing the ocean waves. Thousands of infantrymen and support troops moved through the clustered vehicles like ants as they continued to prepare for the coming battle.

  Laura’s Apache was far from the only one moving about above the preparations. An alarm warned her that she needed to get her head out of her butt and start paying more attention to the airspace she was flying through. A trio of fighter jets whined by to the south, headed out away from the beach. They were the third such group she had noticed flying that way in the last few minutes. She supposed that meant the Kaiju were getting closer.

  The Navy had done their best and come up short. Now it was the Army and Air force’s turn to take a shot at stopping the Kaiju. If the monsters weren’t stopped here and now, the Kaiju would make landfall and there would be very little left to combat them as they made their way inland into America.

  Her role was to provide support to the Gamma section of the combat grid. The position was composed mostly of ground based missile launchers with a few Abrams thrown into the section to provide it a backbone should the Kaiju come into direct combat range of it. Laura wasn’t sure her Apache would make much of a difference if one of the Mother creatures made it ashore if the reports she had stolen a glance at during the general briefing on this ops were correct. Just one, one, of the giant creatures was reported to have taken out an entire naval battle group by itself and remained a threat afterward. She supposed the best she could hope for was that it would be lesser Kaiju that charged the section of the combat grid she was assigned to. Those, she would not only be safe from, but her Apache’s weapons would cut them to shreds.

  She brought her bird around to take up a stationary position above her section of the grid and pointed it toward the ocean. As she did so, she got her first real life look at a Mother Kaiju. The water of the ocean churned and parted as the monster rose above the waves. Its three yellow eyes burnt like small suns even in the midday light. The thing stood, easily, two hundred and fifty feet tall. Its lower half resembled that of a T-Rex. The Kaiju’s arms were long though and eerily human-like in their appearance. They ended in three fingered, clawed hands. Her breath caught as the Mother Kaiju opened its mouth to reveal the rows of metal, razor teeth inside it. The Mother Kaiju loosed a shriek so loud that it hurt Laura’s head, even inside her Apache over the sound of the bird’s engines. The ears of the poor infantry groups had to be bleeding from the sheer volume of the cry.

  Batteries and the main guns of tanks up and down the beach all opened fire at once. The Mother Kaiju staggered underneath the power of the barrage that struck it but it didn’t fall. Instead, it stood there enduring everything that was being thrown at it though chunks of the thing’s flesh were blown clean from its body.

  Oh, God, help us! Laura thought as she realized what the Mother Kaiju was doing. The giant beast was using itself as a distraction to keep everyone’s attention focused on it. Even as it reeled under the firepower tearing it to shreds, thousands and thousands of smaller forms were emerging from the waves to storm the beach. The distant, man-sized Kaiju looked like little dots of moving gray from where Laura hovered watching them, but there were so, so many of them.

  As the tanks, missile launchers, etc. kept their fire concentrated on the Mother Kaiju, Laura watched the infantry move forward to block the lesser Kaiju. Small arms fire joined the raging cacophony of the battle.

  Laura held back. Several other birds like hers had already sped forward to meet the incoming tide of lesser Kaiju. Their rockets sent pieces of Kaiju bodies and sand skyward as they struck their targets. Laura wasn’t entirely sure why she was holding back. She had flown combat ops before and never been afraid. Well, not so much as to keep her from doing her job.

  At last, the Mother Kaiju fell. Its torn and battered corpse collapsed into the waves with a splash that rained ocean water over the beach near where it went down. Laura allowed herself to feel hope that they would be able to stop the Kaiju here, and hold the creatures at bay. Then the bottom of her stomach fell out
as her eyes bugged and she saw two more Mother Kaiju rising not far off the coastline. The fear that rushed through her set her into motion. She kicked her Apache’s engines up to combat speed and dove into a strafing run at the Kaiju closing in on the troops in her section of the grid.

  Volleys of rockets left the launchers on her Apache’s small wings as its main cannon chattered, hosing the Kaiju in her path. Her Apache left a trail of mangled Kaiju corpses in its wake until she flew over the coastline and there was churning, orange tinted water beneath her.

  Laura brought her Apache around hard for another run. This time, she knew she would need to be careful as to not hit the troops and vehicles she had been assigned to support. Unfortunately, in her determination to hurt the lesser Kaiju as much as she could, her course had taken her too far out from the shore and too close to one of the new Mother Kaiju that was charging the beach. She never saw its massive hand lash out at her until one of its claws clipped her Apache’s tail.

  Suddenly, her console was blazing with warning lights and it was all she could do to keep any kind of control. Her Apache spun about wildly in the air as she fought to keep it from going into a full out spin.

  “This is Tango 2!” she cried over the bird’s comm system. “I’m hit and going down!”

  Laura knew she had to get her bird clear of the troops and vehicles below her before she went down. The trouble was the whole beach was full of troops and vehicles for miles in every direction. She jerked her controls with all her might, bringing the Apache around again. She was losing altitude fast and didn’t have much time. She managed to angle the Apache to where it should strike the beach in between the clusters of the armies defensive lines and the open water. With any luck, it would plow straight into the ranks of the lesser Kaiju making their way ashore.

  Having done all she could, she rode the bird down. A sea of snarling, snouted faces stared up at her until both her and the Kaiju she plowed into were consumed in fire.