Kaiju Apocalypse II

by Eric S. Brown

  “Now this,” the Gunny whistled softly, “this was a battle, boys.”

  McCoy spotted the two squads of eight Dogkiller-clad troopers clamoring towards their position. “I want Dogkillers on point and bringing up the rear of the column as we advance into the city. Gunny, form us up.”

  “Let’s move, boys! Hup-hup-hup!”

  The strange power readings that they had been sent to investigate were deep inside the city. Captain Whitmire had theorized that they might be coming from some sort of last resort, a safe and hidden bunker. If that was the case, getting into it might be an issue, but that was one McCoy could deal with if they found it.

  The problem at hand was making it through the city itself. There was no doubt it would be teeming with Dog Kaiju, and the scans taken by the shuttle crew on the way down suggested that, while there were clear paths to avoid them, these changed, and the soldiers would have little warning should that happen.

  However, aside from the legions of corpses covering the beach, not even one had been spotted thus far. McCoy knew that the monsters could be crafty when they had to be, but this? This bordered on the ridiculous. Usually, if a Dog Kaiju caught wind of humans, they came running. The noisy, heavy, lumbering Dogkillers should have been a dinner bell for the beasts. Yet none came as the Dogkillers led the way. Their internal motors whined as they clanked about, guns ready, moving towards the city.

  The sun was setting on the horizon, its dying rays gleaming on the splashing waves of the water. The stench of so many bodies decaying in the heat of the waning day was simply too much. He saw one of the regular infantry under his command stop and throw up next to a ruined wall. McCoy felt the gorge rising in his belly as well, but swallowed it down. He wondered if the men and women inside the Dogkillers could smell it as well.

  The column marched into the city proper and began to move along its streets. McCoy directed its movement from the column's center using a high-powered, handheld sensor unit. According to its readings, the power signatures they were seeking lay around three miles to the north. He checked their surroundings, but the deep shadow cast by the setting sun created a lot of false pits and hid obstacles from them. The column slowed as the infantry began to pick its way through the rubble more slowly.

  “Kaiju!” McCoy heard someone scream over the comm link. The world around him exploded into chaos as Dog Kaiju came pouring out of the alleyways, side streets, and the ruins of Lemura all around the four squads. The heavy weapons of the Dogkiller troopers rang out like the thunder of a summer storm, scything the Dogs down as the armored soldiers clustered together to protect their flanks. The chattering of automatic small arms fire was quickly added to the noise as the two infantry squads joined in.

  It was impossible for McCoy to get an accurate guess at the number of lesser Kaiju they were facing from his position, but he could see enough to know they were all royally fubared. The Kaiju had to number at least in the hundreds and the noise of the battle would surely draw any others nearby down on them too. Their window of safe passage had been slammed shut on their fingers, and now, his sole focus changed to keeping the men and women under his command alive.

  McCoy watched as one of the large Dogkiller suits spun to bring its main weapon up at an approaching Kaiju. The weapon’s blast tore the Kaiju to pieces in mid-air, leaving nothing larger than a kernel of corn behind. McCoy realized that the soldier in the suit must have switched the type of rounds his weapon was using, because after that first deafening blast, a stream of high velocity rounds erupted from its barrel. The trooper swept his weapon back and forth, pouring concentrated fire into the front ranks of the charging Kaiju. The creatures caught in its fury danced and twitched as the rounds ripped through their scaly flesh. Geysers of Kaiju blood erupted from their bodies which splattered all over the street and coated the ruined walls of the fallen city. The ground beneath McCoy's feet shook as a thermobaric grenade someone had lobbed into the swarms of Kaiju detonated. A nearby building, already teetering, fell over and wiped out a large group of Kaiju that had been moving up behind them.

  The squads were collapsing in on each other, their formations growing tighter as the Kaiju forces pressed down on them. Dog Kaiju died by the dozens in their frenzied bid to kill and devour the humans before them. McCoy watched one of the creatures flop over and lie still, long strands of its intestines spilling out of its abdomen around it. Another of the Kaiju came barreling at him, managing to close to a relatively short distance without being cut down by the withering hail of gunfire from the soldiers. He whipped up his rifle and emptied half its magazine into the thing before it finally died, a snarl still on its lips. The Dog Kaiju came tumbling to a stop less than two yards from where he stood. McCoy knew the squads needed to fall back to a more secure location, but there was nowhere for them to go. They were surrounded, cut off and alone on this desolate Hell which had once been his birthplace, fighting to hold what little ground they still had.

  The shuttles, he thought. They had lifted as soon as the squads were deployed, but were supposed to be on stand-by somewhere above the city, waiting to be called in for extraction. “Phoenix Flight, this is Lion Six. We need air support at our present location!” McCoy yelled over the comm. “Phoenix Flight, I need you to do your best impersonation of an artillery barrage. Relaying coordinates to you now!”

  “Lion Six, this is Phoenix Two... sir, that's right on top of you!” a stunned voice answered him.

  “You don’t think I know that? Do it now, damn you!” McCoy snarled as he emptied the other half of his magazine into a Kaiju that jumped past one of the Dogkillers and made a beeline for him. His steady stream of gunfire met the thing head-on. Rounds raked across its chest, sending chunks of meat and muscle flying. Bergman sidestepped the Kaiju's corpse as it crashed to the ground, coming to a rest in the spot where he had been standing moments before. He ejected his rifle's spent magazine, slamming a fresh one into the weapon as he heard the shuttles beginning their approach. Their engines howled above the cacophony of weapons fire and snarls around him. He took a deep breath before shouting, “Y’all want to get your faces on the ground right fucking now!”

  *****

  Kitty watched the Tango Zeta 3 station growing larger on the small screen of her handheld sensor unit. Hacking into the main sensor feed of the shuttle she was aboard was an easy thing, and she had wanted to watch the group's approach first hand. She sat in the shuttle's rear compartment with several other techs and a small cluster of six, heavily armed soldiers. They were there to watch over the technicians and provide security, just in case.

  “Having fun?” a familiar voice asked. It was Fletcher, sneaking a peek at the small sensor screen from over her shoulder.

  She killed the feed, powering down the device. It wasn't against regulations to do what she had done, but it wasn't exactly something that would be looked on favorably either. Regulations aside, she did want to save her battery on the device, especially if they were going to be on the station for more than an hour or two.

  “Not really,” she answered gruffly. Fletcher's laughter made her relax in spite of everything going on around them. “You better get strapped in,” she told him as she patted the seat next to her own. “We'll be docking soon.”

  “Yes, ma'am,” Fletcher smiled and into the seat.

  Kitty let the silence envelope her as she tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling of the shuttle. Her mind drifted back to the schematics of the station they were approaching and she wondered what they would find there. After a few minutes of silence, she felt Fletcher’s eyes on her. She pointedly ignored him and tried to settle her nerves.

  “This is your first time out, isn't it?” Fletcher asked in a quiet voice. “I mean, since we left Earth’s surface.”

  Kitty craned her head around to glare at him. “And I imagine you have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, huh, Mr. Engineering?”

  “More than you would think,” he answered, his tone sincere. “Trust me
, this is nothing compared to a space walk across the Argo's hull to fix some damaged plating on her belly.”

  “I guess not,” Kitty allowed with a slight smile. “I bet that is pretty messed up, getting up and down mixed up, not sure where things end and where everything begins.”

  “And beautiful,” Fletcher admitted. “If you can get past the whole what if my mag boots lose their lock on the hull and I go drifting off to die thing.”

  The shuttle around them rocked as a loud clang ran throughout and along the length of its hull. The steady thrum of the engines, which had been a constant throughout their short journey, dropped to almost nothing. The spacecraft grew very silent for a moment, with only the steady hiss of the oxygen scrubbers to be heard. The murmur of the pilots broke up that monotony, and the noise in the shuttle grew back to their previous levels as everyone began to talk at once.

  “And we're docked,” Fletcher said, flipping the release of the safety harness he'd donned at Kitty's request. Kitty did the same and started to get up. Fletcher placed a hand on her arm, stopping her. He gestured at the soldiers behind them with his free hand. “Don't get in such a rush. Those guys will go in first. It's their job to secure to the place before folks like us get to go in.”

  Blushing, Kitty shifted in her seat. She felt like a total newbie for not thinking of that herself. She blamed her nerves, but still that was no excuse for an experienced individual of her pay grade. It didn't matter to her if she had experience in this kind of thing or not. The bridge could be an intense pressure cooker of stress and hard situations where one wrong move could cost the lives of hundreds, if not the Argo itself. Letting something as simple as docking with a station shake her up was inexcusable the way she saw things.

  “Sorry,” she told Fletcher. “I suppose I'm a bit on edge.”

  “Forget about it,” he shrugged off her apology. “If I said I wasn't wound a bit tight myself, I'd be lying. Now just sit back for a minute and let the guys with the guns earn their pay, okay? Besides, it's not like we really have anything to worry about. We aren't going to find any Kaiju waiting for us up here. The worst we're likely to run in to are some emaciated corpses, and if we're lucky, the guys with guns will cover those up long before we even go over to Tango Zeta 3. It's those poor soldiers who got sent to Earth that are in real trouble.”

  Kitty nodded, powering up her handheld sensor again. She began to play around with its controls as the first of the troops left the soldiers and made their way across the airlock into Tango Zeta 3. She had a job to do, and it would be completely unacceptable for her to be unprepared for the task at hand.

  *****

  When the wave of fire and heat ended, McCoy found himself lying face down in the street. He shook his head to clear it and saw both of the assault shuttles veering upwards and gaining altitude as they sped clear. A small part of him knew that they would resume their over-watch from above the ruined city, but the comfort was fleeting at best. Smoke filled the air about him and piles of burning Kaiju bodies lay around his position. The airstrike had been borne of desperation, but appeared to have worked and bought them some breathing room.

  “Sound off!” he ordered as he scurried to his feet. As the survivors of the squads with him called out to report in, more Kaiju were coming. He could see the cursed things running along the streets towards them in the distance, jumping over the bodies of their fallen brothers in their eagerness to kill them. He dumped the data of the location of the power signature they were headed for into the main combat link he and the other squad members shared. He hoped that the Dogkiller suits were coherent enough to understand his orders. “Rally at those coordinates! Third Squad, provide cover. First, Second, move your butts! Fourth Squad, clear a path!”

  The squads spread out, guns blazing, as they moved northward. Fourth Squad – Dogkiller troops – began to fire, their massive weapons cutting deep grooves into the front lines of the Kaiju masses that were forming up and attempting to stop their progression. Everyone else took random pot shots at the Kaiju coming in at them from the side streets and alleys, but their main focus was on hauling butt. McCoy prayed that whatever they found at the locator beacon would be both defensible and worth it. They couldn't stay out in the open as they were, or they would be overrun and torn apart by the sheer mass of the Dog Kaiju.

  “Some days it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed, does it, sir?” the Gunny asked as sidled up to McCoy. “Ryan! Check your six, corporal!”

  The Dogkiller in question turned with impressive speed, but it was not nearly fast enough. Five of the Dog Kaiju latched onto his armor, their combined weight throwing him off balance. Ryan managed to grab one by the neck. The power of the servos in the suit's hand crushed the thing's throat as his fingers closed around it. The monsters were in too close for him to use the suit's weapon effectively, McCoy realized. Sparks flew where razor-like claws struck metal, as one of the Kaiju delivered a glancing blow to Ryan’s armored head. McCoy heard Ryan cursing over the comm link and knew that the Kaiju had damaged the suit. While the Dogkiller suits were sealed systems, with their own internal environment, a damaged helmet could leave the soldier inside blind and deaf to the outside world.

  Sure enough, McCoy recognized the signs of a complete systems failure as Ryan’s Dogkiller stumbled backwards, arms flailing in the air. It toppled over with a loud thud on the street. Cracks formed and spider webbed out from the point of its impact. One of the Kaiju lost a leg to the combat suit's heavy weight, tearing its own limb off as the Kaiju tried to free itself.

  McCoy paused and took careful aim with his rifle. He steadily applied pressure to the trigger with his finger, and the rifle bucked slightly as he put a round into the monster's head. It sprawled out on the pavement, a gaping hole between its eyes, and a pool of blood growing around the stump of its lower thigh. That was the only help McCoy could offer Ryan at the time, though. If he stayed in one spot, he was as good as dead. The Kaiju were swarming like sharks in a frenzy, the scent of blood filling the air and the gunfire and noise of the Dogkillers continuing to draw the terrifying little beasties out. McCoy knew that Ryan wouldn't be getting up without the help of a crane or four other Dogkillers. The heavy, older model Dogkillers, once down, were nearly impossible to get upright again. He saw the remaining three Kaiju on top of Ryan, ripping away plating from his suit as they tried to get at him. It was just a matter of time until they did. Even if Ryan managed to fight off the three, more would take their places and his damaged suit wouldn't up to the task of stopping them. There were no other Dogkillers available to help up their fallen comrade. It was painful for McCoy to watch another soldier under his command slowly opened up by Kaiju like a rusted old can of sardines.

  The flash and thunder of a second thermobaric grenade exploding caught McCoy by surprise. The blast's shockwave picked him up and threw him several yards. He twisted his body like a contortionist and somehow managed to hit the street rolling. He sprang to his feet as a snarling Kaiju plowed into him. The strength behind the monster's impact sent him flying again. He landed on his back with a grunt, his breath knocked from his lungs. He wheezed, trying to force air back in as he raised his weapon at the Kaiju looming over him. The barrel managed to line up with the Kaiju’s chest long enough for the lieutenant to get a clean shot. He yanked back on the trigger, ignoring every firing discipline he’d ever learned in his life. McCoy kept his trigger pulled tight as he sprayed dozens of rounds into the Kaiju at point-blank range. The rounds cut their way into the Kaiju's stomach, shredding it, pieces of its organs and intestinal track flying from its twitching body. He lashed out with his legs, violently kicking the thing's collapsing corpse away from him as it fell flat onto the ruined street.

  “LT!” a voice shouted over the comm link of his helmet. He faintly recognized Kirby’s voice. “We've reached the target! It's a bunker of some kind!”

  “Can you get into it?” McCoy asked, getting to his feet. He dumped the empty magazine onto the street and sla
pped a fresh one in.

  “Yes sir! It looks as if a Mother Kaiju had a go at trying to dig into it. A good portion of the bunker is exposed including its main door,” Kirby replied, the excitement evident to McCoy over the comm channel. McCoy motioned at the Gunny, who waved in reply and came trotting over. Kirby continued to chatter into the comm. “Grimes was able to get the door open. We're inside and holding, but the entrance isn't large enough to get the Dogkillers inside! They've formed up and created an external defensive perimeter right outside the door. So far, it’s keeping the Dogs off us, but I don’t know how much longer they can hold! We need some support, sir!”

  “Let’s move, people!” Gunny shouted, his bellow cutting through the sounds of battle like a knife. The surviving squads began to move, slowly at first, but with greater confidence as the Dog Kaiju were pushed back by the combined firepower of the four squads.

  McCoy rounded a corner in the street and the battle for the bunker came into view. The remaining three Dogkiller suits were fighting for their lives, their main guns turning waves of incoming Kaiju to pulp. Kirby and Grimes stood in the doorway of the bunker, adding fire from their rifles to the bloodbath that was taking place around the half-buried structure. The bunker itself looked like a giant metal box, six feet or so below street level. The claw marks of a massive Mother Kaiju stretched across the whole area from where the beast had been trying to dig into it. McCoy hoped that Mother Kaiju was long gone, because there was not a hope in Hell for them if she was lingering about.