by Tristan Vick
Grabbing her aggressively by her long, wet hair, he swung her around like a rag doll and slammed her head into the hard tile wall. He repeated the abuse anytime she growled or became nippy toward him—growing more and more violent each time she failed to heed his lesson.
By the end of the brutal defilement, however, he had accidentally crushed her skull in. As he stood over the corpse of his ex-girlfriend, he helped himself to a cigarette when, out of the blue, he had the novel, yet twisted, idea of turning a profit on whoring out zombie flesh – a new kind of skin-trade, so to speak.
Fancying himself a brilliant entrepreneur for having come up with it, Gen made his sick and twisted enterprise a reality and began trapping and collecting young zombie girls to add to his harem of undead sex slaves.
Soon enough fucking zombies was all the rage. The new spectator sport for the post-zombie apocalypse era. Gen currently owned more than five hundred sex slaves. With no one to stand up to him, with nobody to tell him “no,” his sick and twisted idea of the world became a reality.
The elevator dinged, causing Gen to snap back to the present. The doors slid open; Gen stepped inside and hit the button to take him to the top of his citadel. Once there, he’d make his preparations. He was expecting a very special guest shortly.
23
Kaiju
Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower, Shinjuku Region, Tokyo
Zombies typically hunted in large roaming packs, and they coordinated themselves like insects working together in a kind of hive-mind mentality. Usually they were quite efficient, especially when they had numbers on their side. If there was one thing Saeko knew, it was that Biters weren’t exactly known to respect personal boundaries.
Yet, for whatever reason, instead of closing in on her and pinning her down to try and disembowel and feast on her entrails, the Biters that encircled her seemed to be downright polite and kept a comfortable distance. Which, in her opinion, seemed rather unusual for ravenous flesh eating monsters. It was almost as if they were afraid of her.
“Well this is new,” Saeko said, speaking to herself. Addressing the monsters standing in a circle around her, she shouted, “What are you fuckers waiting for?!” She hoped this would goad them into attacking her so she could get this unexpected detour over with and get the show on the road. But they were downright timid. “What’s wrong with you all?” she yelled at them. “Attack me already!”
Then she heard the deep growl of something more than a mere zombie. Catching it from out of the corner of her eye, she barely had time to react. It moved so fast.
Before Saeko could avoid the hit, air was knocked out of her lungs and she summersaulted to the ground. The abrupt impact caused her to roll several times before skidding to a halt. While her bare, knees shredded themselves upon the rough pavement, her leather jacket prevented the rest of her from getting too badly scraped up in the rough and tumble fall.
“What the hell was that?” she gasped, trying to catch her breath as she pushed herself up off the ground.
Getting back onto her feet, Saeko did her best to ignore the terrible twinge of her scraped knees. They’d heal. Although in her opinion, it couldn’t be soon enough.
Saeko turned and looked at the thing that had barreled into her. Her eyes widened with fear as she beheld a hideous reptilian creature staring back at her with gilded eyes that flickered with intelligence. It had dark serpentine slits for pupils, and green scaly skin covered its large, muscular form, and had spiny razor sharp teeth. It was half human, half beast, but all monster.
What appalled her the most however, even more than its hideous velociraptor-like face, was its sheer dominating size. The kaiju, as such monstrosities were called in Japan, was nearly eight feet tall. Its forelegs were anthropoid, but with clawed hands; and stood ready to pounce again on its kangaroo-like haunches. Unfurled behind the monster were giant, clawed bat wings. Saeko knew that whatever it was, it was clearly not to be considered friendly. This was a predator, through and through. Even the undead kept a safe distance from the reptilian monstrosity.
“What sort of demon are you?” Saeko asked aloud as she unsheathed her katana and held it at the ready.
One of the Biters close to her attempted to lunge at her, but the winged lizard screamed out a ferocious roar, sending the Biter staggering back. Saeko had never seen anything like it. Biters usually showed no sense other than pure instinct. And if their instincts were telling them to back off, then she knew this beast was some serious business.
But the living dead also happened to be utterly brain dead; their urge to eat drove every motor function and so no amount of vestigial caution could override their baser need to feed. In the very next moment, the same Biter stepped forward again.
In a blink, the kaiju flapped its leathery wings, flew over, and smashed into the bumbling zombie with the force of a cannonball. The poor thing didn’t even know what had hit it and, with a dreadful crash, the Biter was tossed through the air and smashed through the glass window of the department store on the opposite side of the street. It was the first time Saeko had ever found herself feeling sorry for one of the living dead.
Hissing at the rest of the idling zombies, warning them to keep their distance and mind their business, the creature suddenly turned back around and looked right at her.
“Perfect,” Saeko mumbled to herself in a less than enthusiastic tone. “Now it’s angry.”
Raising her sword, she lunged at the reptilian beast with a swift attack, but the creature effortlessly swatted her out of the way. “Rreeearhhh!” it shrieked as it batted her into the air like a foul ball.
Saeko crashed down into the windshield of a flat-nosed city bus. Lodged in the shattered glass of the windshield, she fought to stay conscious. Pushing forward, she dislodged herself from the fractured glass and crashed down onto the unforgiving pavement with a bone shattering thud.
24
Kamikaze Spirit
The Ruins of Narita International Airport, Chiba
Spinning around, Commander Endo watched in breathless astonishment as the beast rose up before him. The creature gazed at him with serpentine eyes that blinked sideways through a nictitating membrane. The reptilian creature towered above Endo with its six-foot seven inch-tall frame. It was pure intimidation with piercing claws and razor sharp teeth.
“What on God’s green earth sort of monster are you?” Endo asked the kaiju that had seemingly materialized out of thin air before him.
The strange Chimera had the head of a Komodo dragon and the spiny scales of an iguana. Its teeth were fierce and jagged like that of a crocodile, and it stood upright on its hooked talon hind quarters, like a man. In addition to these features, it had a prehensile tail capable of winding around its prey, like a boa constrictor, and bat-like wings that folded neatly into a protective leathery sheath across its back.
Rattled by the sudden manifestation of the kaiju, Commander Endo raised his M4A1 assault rifle and, without a moment’s hesitation, fired off a shot. BLAM!
The bullet impacted the wall, but the creature was way too fast for him and easily evaded the shot. Squawking angrily, the kaiju blew blistering hot air out of the reptilian slits on its snout and shook its head angrily—a clear warning for Endo not to pull another stunt like that again.
“Dammit!” Endo cursed. He aimed his gun and squeezed down on the trigger, but before he could get off another shot, the monster sprang forward and swatted him hard. The slap effortlessly tossed Endo across the room as if he were made of straw. He wasn’t though, which made crashing into the last row of white porcelain sinks extremely painful.
The porcelain fractured, as did a few of Endo’s bones, as he crashed down onto the sink, and several pieces of the hand basin broke off from the brunt of the impact. Endo hit the ground like a ton of bricks and shards of porcelain rained down all around him.
Groaning, Endo realized a couple of his ribs were broken as he reached for where he thought his weapon landed. But it wasn’t where he exp
ected it to be. Looking around the floor he spied his gun halfway between himself and where the creature stood in the middle of the restroom. “Shit,” Endo grumbled.
Knowing that he had to retrieve his weapon, Commander Endo made a mad dash for his gun, but the lizard man leapt up onto the ceiling and crawled upside down along the top, like a cockroach, matching Endo step for step. Endo slid head first, stretching his arm as far as he could towards his gun as if he were sliding into home plate of the Tokyo Giants baseball diamond. Suddenly, something coiled around his ankle and jerked him backward. He looked back to find the creature’s tail wrapped tightly around his leg and, with an angry sounding hiss, it picked him up off the ground and slammed him into the ceiling. And then the wall.
Plaster caved in around him and crumbled to the floor as the air rushed out of Endo’s lungs. Before he even had time to think about what to do next, he came crashing back to the cold, hard, tile floor with an unforgiving thud, cracking some tile panes and a few more ribs in the process.
The creature slithered down the side of the wall, as a gecko would. It looked straight at Endo, paused a moment, and then hissed even more menacingly than before.
Suddenly, a small canister skipped across the floor, smashed into the wall, then let out a burst of smoke. The bathroom quickly flooded with a hazy smokescreen, giving Endo the chance to duck out of the way as the creature lunged for him in a desperate attempt to catch its prey before it disappeared into the smoke.
Rolling across the floor, Endo barely dodged the creature’s attack. He quickly snatched up his weapon then sprang to his feet and dashed out of the restroom. He didn’t dare look back, since he was dead certain that the monster was hot on his heels.
He emerged from the smoke billowing out of the entrance to the restrooms, and exited into the open hall of the airport to find his men there waiting for him.
“Sir, we heard gunshots,” Mr. Takeda said.
Before Endo could warn them to stay back, the wall behind him exploded as if a bomb had gone off and the kaiju bore down upon him. Endo crashed to the ground with the lizard creature clasped onto his back, screeching like a banshee out of hell. Taking action, his men responded in kind and opened fire.
The beast roared with blood thirsty rage, pounded its wings forward and rose off the ground to try and avoid the hailstorm of bullets that tore into its scaly flesh.
Endo pushed himself up. Dizzy from being tackled, he fought through the fog of looming unconsciousness and watched as his men fired sporadically in every direction as they tried to neutralize the threat. But it wasn’t like gunning down a mindless zombie. The kaiju was fast. And smart too. It skillfully evaded their shots and out maneuvered their attempts to bring it down.
The creature swooped down at them with its talons forward and gutted two of Endo’s men in one fell swoop. “Skreee-rahhh!” the beast yowled out victoriously.
The seven remaining soldiers circled up and hunkered down. But the creature flew up to the rafters and, clinging upside down like a bat, twisted to look down at them. Without warning the monster screamed and with a shudder, sprayed a series of venom-tipped needles at the huddle of men.
The soldiers looked at their bodies, bristling with quills, then suddenly began to heave and puke as the venom rapidly invaded their systems. Blood began tricking from their eyes, noses, and ears. One by one each remaining member of the squad collapsed into a heap on the ground. Their poisoned blood oozed out of virtually every orifice.
The beast swooped again, flapping its bat wings with such force that Endo had to brace himself, and picked up a soldier and tore him in half. It was Takeda. His horror-filled shriek was brief…then only silence as the monster dropped the two pieces of what remained of Mr. Takeda on the ground and slowly rose up on its hind legs, standing a good four feet taller than Endo.
Cautious not to arouse the beast’s suspicions, Endo gradually reached around his back and fetched a grenade from his back utility belt. Drawing it out, he pulled the pin with his thumb and held tight to the safety release.
If he was going down—Daiichi Endo knew this much, he wasn’t going to go down alone. Especially not after this thing had slaughtered his team. But seeing as he was outmatched, he planned to kamikaze this fracking lizard and take it to the afterlife along with him.
Commander Endo clinched his jaw tight, his teeth ground against teeth and, in a gravelly voice filled with wrath but tempered with great discipline, he said to the beast, “You may not know it—but you’re already dead.”
25
Infiltration
Tokyo Skytree, Sumida Region, Tokyo
Ijin Gen put the wooden bokken practice sword back onto the wall rack and wiped himself off with a white towel which he balled up and then tossed into a nearby waste bin. A tattoo of a fierce oriental dragon covered his left pectoral. The green dragon wound up his shoulder, wrapped around his arm, and traveled down until it came to his wrist where the scaly tail coiled into a tattooed wristband.
Gen also had a less tasteful image of a Geisha woman being sexually assaulted by a giant red devil, called an oni, on his back. The oni thrust its limb sized phallus inside the poor woman whose juices trickled down the devil’s throbbing member. As the same time, the geisha girl reluctantly, yet submissively, sucked on the tip of one of the devil creature’s horns while it violently tore off her kimono and molested her with a snake-like tongue that slithered up her small, bare breasts.
Gen picked up a fancy, white collar shirt from the back of a white leather sofa next to a mini-bar, slipped it on, and buttoned it up halfway. Locking his arms behind his back he stepped up to the observation window of the Tokyo Skytree and gazed past the long stands of dark hair that hung in front of his eyes. He looked out at the darkened ruins of the sprawling cityscape.
After Tokyo’s infestation, Gen used his army of Yakuza to conquer the tower for himself. To make his base of operations even more secure, he had steel shipping containers stacked all around the perimeter of the tower—two wide and three tall.
Way up high, above the city, the tower was his personal citadel and he was king. Up here, away from that labyrinth of concrete, he was safe from the creatures that constantly sought to devour him. On a clear day he could even see the curvature of the earth.
Maya entered the room with a food service trolley. Lifting a large silver lid off an oval plate, Maya revealed the finely prepared Kobe beef steak, and cooked carrots and potatoes all slathered in onions and garlic sauce.
“Your dinner is ready, Sir.”
“Leave it,” Gen said without much interest. His eyes remained fixed upon the swath of night stretching out before him. Sometimes it felt as if he was staring into his own soul, he thought. A place where blackness abounded.
The moon and stars peeked through patches of the partially cloudy sky, giving the underbelly of the hovering shroud an ashen glow. To him, the scene rang poetic…the light being blotted out by darkness.
He took a startled step backwards. Rising into view, a stealth helo suddenly appeared before Gen. Realizing who it was, he smiled. His guest had arrived right on schedule. Turning to Maya he said, “Our guest is here. Have everything ready by the time he comes up.”
“As you wish,” Maya replied. Urgently leaving the room, Maya went to attend to matters.
Gen turned back to the glass to see the blinking red light of the VTOL set down at the base of the tower. A crooked grin came over him. He didn’t think the son of a bitch would come, but here he was. If he played his cards right, he’d have a bona fide Admiral in his back pocket.
Gen knew that if it came down to push and shove he couldn’t take on the famous Admiral Kazuma Sakaguchi with his limited resources. The Admiral controlled the entire fleet and was Japan’s last remaining military presence. Even though Gen was the most powerful man in Tokyo, he worked on a different level. It was well known that Admiral Sakaguchi still ran the show.
Minutes later the elevator doors slid open and two well-dressed a
nd well-armed Japanese men decked out in black, escorted the Admiral and his female companion onto the observation deck where Gen awaited them.
Showing extra courtesy, Gen bowed deferentially. “Nice to see you again, Admiral.”
The Admiral, however, did not return the gesture. Meanwhile, the Admiral’s assistant, Rina Kobayashi, dressed in her white officer’s uniform, stood next to the Admiral and scanned the room. She sized up the two guards and figured they were just poorly trained thugs. Nothing she couldn’t handle if need arose.
“You received my message, I presume?”
“Of course,” Gen replied. “I had a little trouble believing it myself, but here you are.”
Admiral Sakaguchi smiled. “I’ve been aware of your services for some time now,” the Admiral said, the corners of his lips curling upward into a fake grin.
“I take it you want to sample the merchandise beforehand?”
“That won’t be necessary. I am on a tight schedule. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get down to business.”
Gen snapped his fingers and Maya entered the room. She had changed into a tight, gold cocktail dress with a red dragon emblazoned upon it. The slit that allowed her slender leg to show gave the dress a bit of classiness and whole lot of sex appeal. “My assistant, Maya, will see to your every need. If you desire anything, anything at all, please do not hesitate to call on her.”
The Admiral gave a subtle nod of his head, the slightest and most minute courtesy he could afford to give to a criminal like Gen, and turned to follow his escort.
Riding up the secondary elevator to the auxiliary observation deck, Maya led the Admiral into a room full of young girls. Young zombie girls. All eight or nine of them were, as far as the Admiral could surmise, between the ages of fourteen and…perhaps twenty. All were strapped down onto metal bed frames with rugged leather restraints. Even though they snarled and writhed, it was no use. Their tiny frames couldn’t hope to loosen the sturdy manacles which ensnared them. It was a zombie harem, a cloister of undead women, and it made him sick to his stomach to imagine what might go on here. If he ever found out who Gen’s regular customers were, those who frequented this establishment, he’d have them put down just on principle.