He sat down near the transport truck and held the barrel of his M1911 pressed against the underside of his chin as he watched the seconds tick slowly by on his watch. It was the longest ten minutes of his life at the end of which he decided he must really be okay. The infection he feared hadn’t been passed onto him by the wound from the Kaiju Spawn.
Wally got to his feet and conducted a quick search of the truck and the two jeeps that he discovered parked behind it. He found several bottles of water and used all but one of them, to further clean himself up and wash out the wound where the Kaiju Spawn’s claws had slashed open his skin. The final one he chugged down in a series of rapid gulps.
He doubted very much that a single Kaiju Spawn could have killed all the soldiers here. Wally was NOT going to look into the bed of the truck again but his memory of the horror he had seen, told him there had to have been around half a dozen men at this roadblock based on the number of arms and legs he had seen stacked in piles. That meant that were likely more of the creatures close by but not so close as to have heard the shots he had fired or they would have been on him already. Even so, the sooner he got out of here, the better.
Wally had found a P-90 and several magazines for it in one of the jeeps. He wasn’t a gun nut by any means but he had watched enough SF TV shows to recognize the P-90 for what it was. He had always thought it was one of the coolest looking guns in the world. Wally practiced ejecting and reloading its magazine until he was sure he had gotten a feel for it. He also found a small satchel of grenades in the second jeep. He tucked his pistol under his belt, shrugged the satchel of grenades onto his shoulder, and double checked to make sure the P-90 had a full mag, before setting out again towards Sylva on foot. He knew he could have moved the transport truck so that he could get his pickup through, but didn’t want to chance drawing the attention of more Kaiju Spawn from the sound of the motors.
Night had fallen completely by the time he left the roadblock behind. He kept a steady pace and stuck to the center of the road as he walked. The dark clouds of the earlier rain had parted and the moon had come out. It gave him just enough light to see by. He passed a sign that read “Welcome to Sylva” and was comforted by it. Wally guessed he had about two hours or so to go before he reached the house he had grown up in and Claudia had taken from him in their divorce.
****
Sylva was a cemetery; the houses arrayed like tombstones, their windows so many dark eyes. It gave Wally a creepy feeling to think that real eyes might be peering out at him. Inhuman eyes, belonging to creatures that would rip him to shreds and eat the remains.
Wally shook the feeling off. He couldn’t let his rattled nerves get the better of him. For Leigh’s sake, he must keep a clear head. He went another half a block, and stopped dead. An overturned car blocked the intersection. Debris was strewn everywhere. He started to go around and almost tripped over what he took to be part of a fender.
It was a body. To be exact, it was half a body, from the waist up, in a dried pool of blood. The head was turned to one side and bone gleamed where the cheek should be. The chin, too, had been gnawed clean. The eye was an empty socket.
Wally fought another impulse to heave. Fortunately, there wasn’t anything left in his stomach to bring up. A few racking spasms, and he was over it and moved on.
The dead were everywhere. Or rather parts of them. Ravaged heads. Torn torsos. Limbs that had been ripped off. So many, it led Wally to surmise that a swarm of Kaiju Spawn had swept through town slaying everyone they came across.
Wally looked up from the litter of dead and spied another blockade ahead. Or so he assumed. He advanced slowly, praying he would find some soldiers still alive. But as he drew near, he was dumfounded to see that the blockade was a wall of people with their backs to him. He was about to call out when an icy bolt of fear rippled down his spine. They weren’t people. They were Kaiju Spawn.
Wally froze. There could be no mistake. Scores of the things were just standing there, staring fixedly to the northeast. They swayed slightly, like reeds in the wind, and now and again one or another uttered a low hiss. He figured they must be resting. That they had sated their hunger on human flesh and had gone into some sort of somnolent state. Then he looked in the direction they were looking---and his very skin crawled.
Not quite a mile off, a gigantic form loomed against the backdrop of sparkling stars and the crescent moon. The Kaiju, itself, had stopped whether to rest or for some other purpose, Wally couldn’t say. But there it stood, its massive bulk swaying slightly, just as the Kaiju Spawn were doing. Wally could swear that the swaying was synchronous, as if some sort of psychic link existed between the monster and the mutated aberrations it had spawned.
He had to get out of there while the Kaiju Spawn were distracted. Scarcely breathing, he crept to the curb and sought safety behind a hedge. To get a better idea of how many of the creatures blocked the road, he peered over, his heart leaping into his throat. They stretched for blocks. There must be hundreds.
Staying low, Wally moved from the hedge to a lilac bush and from there to the side of a house. Once he was sure the Kaiju Spawn couldn’t hear him, he broke into a run. He was only ten minutes or so from his old home, and from his daughter.
Other than a fence he had to clamber over, Wally made good time and soon came to the center of town. The main street was empty. No dead, no devastation. Probably, he reasoned, because the civil defense sirens had gone off and everyone had fled.
A lot of the buildings were brick, with awnings to shade pedestrians. He could see the white spire of a church, and the dome of the library. The electricity was out and everything was dark. Not so much as a candle flickered.
He had gone a couple of blocks when a low rumbling drew his attention to the Kaiju. The monster was moving again. The thoom of its first step was like a peal of thunder. With ponderous tread, it headed north, continuing on its mysterious way to who-knew-where. The cadence of the Kaiju’s footfalls was like the beat of a bass drum, and as measured as a metronome.
Smiling, Wally let out a sigh of relief. At least the behemoth had spared Sylva. The same couldn’t be said of the Kaiju Spawn, though, as became apparent when loud snarls and hisses erupted behind him. Now that their leviathan lord and master was on the move, so were the Kaiju Spawn. And they were coming in his direction.
Wally ran. The slap of his feet sounded unnaturally loud. He passed small shops and a hair salon and was almost to a restaurant when his footfalls were echoed by a flurry to his rear. Glancing over his shoulder, he distinguished shapes loping incredibly fast, with a strange lopsided gait. The swiftest of the pack. He doubted---he prayed---they hadn’t seen him, but they would at any moment.
The restaurant door was open. Wally plunged inside, quietly shut the door, and backpedaled until he bumped against a chair. Grabbing it before it could topple to the floor; he ran to the counter and ducked behind it. The P-90 clutched to his chest, he struggled to control his breathing.
Putting an eye to the edge, Wally braced for the worst. Several Kaiju Spawn ran past, their bodies hunched forward, like bloodhounds on the scent. One was actually sniffing the air. They went by without looking at the restaurant, which told him they didn’t know he was there. Luck was with him, yet his frustration was boundless. To be so close to his daughter, and have this happen.
Wally was about to go in search of a back door when a creature came to a stop right outside. It was sniffing, like the others, and turned its reptilian head from side to side. Suddenly it stepped to the window and peered in, its eyes seeming to glow with reflected moonlight.
“Please, no,” Wally whispered.
The Kaiju Spawn stepped back and cocked a fist as if to smash the plate glass. Its gaze alighted on the door. Going over, it gripped the knob and shook it. When the door failed to open, it threw back its scaly head and gave voice to an eerie howl. Wrenching harder, it threw its shoulder against the frame. The door opened so suddenly that the Kaiju Spawn stumbled, and then
recovered its balance. Hissing, it surveyed the interior.
Wally backed away from the counter. If he cut loose with the P-90, the shots might bring others. A narrow hall offered the possibility of escape. It was dark as sin. Backpedaling, he went about halfway, and halted.
The Kaiju Spawn was at the counter, its nose high, turning its head back and forth. Venting a loud hiss, it vaulted over, landed on all fours, and like a greyhound released on a race track, shot into the hallway after him.
Wally had no choice. He leveled the P-90, flicked the selector to full auto, and fired. It was a shot he couldn’t possibly miss at such close range. A hail of lead struck the creature and jolted it to a stop. . . But only momentarily. The P-90’s magazine held fifty rounds, enough to turn anyone, or anything, into Swiss cheese. Yet somehow the creature kept coming. It was almost to him, an out-flung claw inches from his face, when it collapsed. Gurgling and thrashing, it made a last furious effort to reach him, and was still.
“Damn,” Wally gasped. Ejecting the spent magazine, he inserted another.
The back door, thankfully, wasn’t locked. He eased out and gratefully gulped the fresh night air. The smart thing was to go slow but he was anxious for Leigh. With so many Kaiju Spawn about, if she was still alive, she was in dire danger. ‘If’. The most terrible of words, especially to a parent.
Tapping into a reservoir of energy he didn’t know he possessed, Wally jogged half a dozen blocks and came to another residential section. Home---rather, his former home---was just up the street. Memories washed over him, of the happy times when his wife still loved him and the two of them doted over their precious little girl. The mere thought of her being torn to pieces….
Wally came within sight of their house. Overcome with emotion, he stopped and murmured Leigh’s name. Hissing in the distance brought him out of himself. Now wasn’t the time to be sentimental.
Despite an urge to dash straight to the front door, Wally circled the house. All appeared peaceful. Yet he couldn’t shake a feeling that something was wrong. He was almost to the side door that opened onto the flower garden his wife was so fond of when he spotted a body. Human, not Kaiju Spawn, belly down. He nudged it with a toe, then rolled it over. “Howard!” he blurted.
Claudia’s boyfriend had met a grisly end. His throat had been torn out, his gut ripped open. Strands of his intestines lay stretched out around his body like purple, bloated snakes.
Wally felt no remorse. How could he? He had never liked the guy. Truth was, he’d wanted to bash his face in for coming between him and his wife. Clearly Howard had fallen prey to a Kaiju Spawn. But if so, where were Claudia…and Leigh?
Any caution evaporated in his concern for his daughter. Throwing the side door open, Wally entered. There was no light but he didn’t need any. He knew this house like he knew the back of his hand. Leigh’s bedroom was upstairs, the second room on the left. He took the stairs three at a stride and was going to call her name but the cry died in his throat as he turned to stone with his foot raised.
Claudia was at the top of the stairs, waiting for him. Or what had once been Claudia. Her tongue flicked out, rimming teeth as sharps as nails, and she grinned as if she were happy to see him. Almost as if she had been waiting for him. Lying in ambush for this very moment.
Surely not, Wally thought. And then his ex-wife shrieked and sprang, and damn if it didn’t sound as if she shrieked his name. He fired a heartbeat before she slammed into him. Locked together, they fell. Her fetid breath fanned his neck as her teeth snapped an inch from his skin. They struck and bounced and tumbled, and Wally came to rest at the bottom, the wind knocked out of him, with her on top.
Claudia grinned that ghastly grin. She had him where she wanted him. Spreading her teeth, she bent. And who was to say which of them was the more surprised when Wally, without thinking, jammed the muzzle of the P-90 into her mouth and squeezed the trigger. Her head burst, showering gore and blood and hair on the wall and the floor. She fell across him, her once lovely eyes, now snake-like, fixed on his in hatred where once there had been love. Frantically, he shoved her off and rose, shaking.
A conflicting tide of emotions washed over him but Wally refused to give in to them. He could only think of Leigh. Flying up the stairs, he reached her door and hesitated. What if his wife had gotten to her? What if Leigh had suffered the same fate as Howard? Girding himself, he said softly, “Leigh? It’s daddy. Are you in there?”
Wally opened the door.
****
Leigh’s room was just as he remembered it. There were posters of Wonder Woman and Pinky Pie covering the walls. Stacks of comics lay scattered about the room’s floor. His old Rom the Space Knight figure he had given her sat on Leigh’s desk, well cared for, and looking every inch the valiant guardian and protector of humanity that the character had been in his comic series. There was no sign of Leigh though.
“Leigh,” Wally called again, praying to hear an answer. None came.
Wally could hear a pack of Kaiju Spawn shuffling along the street outside. They had to have heard the gunfire from his encounter with Claudia. Wally moved to the room’s sole window and risked a glance outside.
Three of the Kaiju Spawn were standing in the middle of the road outside the house. The creatures were sniffing the air, their heads twisting on their necks, craning around from one house on the street to another as if in search of where the noise they had heard came from.
Wally carefully crept back away from the window inwardly saying a prayer of thanks that the creatures didn’t seem to know where he was. He stood in the shadows of his daughter’s bedroom, listening, waiting to see what the Kaiju Spawn would do.
After a long moment, the creatures seemed to move on, the sound of their grunts and hisses fading into the distance. Only then did Wally move.
Moving as silently as he could, he headed downstairs. Claudia’s nearly headless body twitched as he stepped over it. Wally nearly let loose on her corpse again with a fully automatic spray of bullets but caught his trigger finger at the last moment. Scared as he was he knew Claudia was dead and that doing so would only call the Kaiju Spawn that may still be outside to him.
Wally paused at the bottom of the stairs. Where in the devil was Leigh? She had to be here somewhere. The odds that she would venture outside were next to nothing given the circumstances. No, Leigh was a smart kid. She would find somewhere to hide and wait for help to come.
“The basement,” Wally muttered, cursing himself for not thinking of it earlier. Throughout her childhood, they had always taken shelter there when there was trouble. He remembered the big storm that had rolled through when she was seven. They had holed up there for an entire day waiting for it to pass, playing board games by flashlight and listening to a battery powered radio.
The entrance to the basement was in the rear of the house’s kitchen area. It took every ounce of his willpower not to run to the kitchen at a full out sprint. He crept through the living room, keeping his back to the wall and as far from its large windows as the space of the furniture-cramped room allowed him.
He eased around the corner doorway into the kitchen and froze. The place looked like a war zone. The table was overturned and splintered into pieces that littered the floor in front of him. The refrigerator hung open, swaying slowly back and forth on a single, still attached hinge. The small window above the sink was shattered and shards of broken glass glinted in the weak rays of moonlight that leaked in from the sky outside.
Relief washed over him as he saw the basement door was closed. The wood of its thick surface was covered in the claw marks of Kaiju Spawn and the wall around it showed clear signs of being attacked.
Wally rushed to the door, trying it, to find it locked. He heaved his shoulder into it and grunted in pain realizing that if one or more Kaiju Spawn couldn’t smash through it easily, he sure wasn’t going to be able to.
Wally leaned up against the door, pressing the side of his face into it. “Leigh,” he called desperatel
y. “Leigh, it’s me. It’s dad. If you’re can hear me, please open the door.”
Something moved in the basement. He could hear whatever it was underneath him. He held his breath as he listened to the sound of someone or something climbing the stairs to the other side of the door.
“Dad?” Leigh’s voice answered him. “Is that really you?”
Wally started to respond to her but the words caught in his throat. Tears well up in his eyes and burst out to slide down over his cheeks. He nodded his head, knowing she couldn’t see him, as he knees nearly gave out.
“Dad?” Leigh’s voice called again.
“I’m. . .I’m here Leigh,” he croaked.
He waited for the sounds of things being shifted about on the other side of the door, his heart pounding in his chest. When Leigh opened the door, he swept her up into his arms, letting his P-90 clatter to the kitchen floor. He hugged her so tightly that she slapped his shoulders and squealed.
“Easy dad!”
Sitting her down, he took a step back, drinking in the sight of her. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. Leigh’s long blonde hair was dirty and unwashed. Her cheeks were stained with dirt and dust from the basement below. The T shirt she wore was tattered and her jeans blackened in patches by what appeared to be dried blood.
She flung herself back into his arms, sobbing.
“Mom. . .” she started but Wally cut her off.
“She’s gone Leigh. She can’t hurt you now.”
“The bad things killed Howard,” Leigh told him.
“I know,” Wally said. “You were really smart to hide in the basement Leigh.”
“It was all like a nightmare, Dad. The TV started talking about those monsters. Mom and Howard didn’t believe any of what the news was saying at first, but then we all saw a group of big army helicopters fly over the house. There was this awful noise way off in the distance, sort of like thunder but it wasn’t. It was more like a roar. Mom and Howard started to believe what the TV had said. They started acting scared. I mean really scared. They were trying not to show it but I could tell. Howard got his shotgun out of the closet upstairs and loaded it as we all sat in the living room together. The TV had stopped talking by then. Every channel was just snow and static. It was like Mom and Howard didn’t know what to do. Mom wanted us all to go to the basement and lock the door. Howard wanted us to get in the car and leave town. They argued . . . a lot.”
Kaiju Spawn Page 3