Kaiju Apocalypse III

by Eric S. Brown

  KAIJU APOCALYPSE III

  ERIC S. BROWN

  &

  JASON CORDOVA

  The device has not detonated.

  Five simple words changed humanity’s destiny, words which still hung in the air around the old man. The words had haunted the old man for years, mocking him, taunting him and assailing his conscience. It affected his sleep, his dreams. As his eyes failed him and the physical ailments became too much to bear, the words became that much more of a burden. The worst part of it all was that it was his fault, and only he knew it. The guilt of such knowledge could destroy any man.

  His body rested in a hovering chair before a sea of monitors that covered the walls of the room around him. Originally designed as a temporary mobile medical support unit, the chair had become as much a part of him as the withered, drooping skin that covered his bones. Blue veins showed through his nearly transparent flesh, their spider web-like appearance giving the illusion of a shattered piece of glass. His eyes were sunken deep into his skull and ringed with the telltale signs of sleeplessness, but they still gleamed with the sharpness of intellect and cunning. Rows of tubes extended from the chair's arms and into his. They, more than his feeble old heart, pumped his blood and kept death at bay. Despite the indignities, he bore through it. He was a survivor, after all – he had lived through the end of the world three times now.

  His mind drifted back to the days when he was a younger man, back when saving the world actually meant something. The first time that the world ended was when the oceans rose to reclaim the land and brought the massive Mother Kaiju with it. Mankind, initially overwhelmed by the gigantic creatures from the dark water, had been forced to seek shelter in domed city fortresses upon the islands that remained after the great flood. There,they had made their stand, the power of technology against the teeth and claws of the Mother Kaiju. Mankind held its own for some time, with the massive Kaiju unable to break through the thick walls of the city-states. Mankind and Kaiju settled into a stalemate, and for a time, an uneasy peace reigned.

  That all changed with the arrival of the smaller foot soldiers of the Kaiju, the nine-foot long Dog Kaiju. Nor-wic fell first, and one by one, the city-states fell until only one remained. Lemura, the last standing city-state, had been the location of what humanity believed would be the last great fight between mankind and the Kaiju. The great beasts and their armies of lesser Kaiju had been fought back off its shores, trying to crush the city under their claws. A surprise attack by humans on a small island out in the middle of the ocean, followed by a sudden scientific breakthrough, had led to the destruction of the Kaiju Overmind.

  This victory had seemed to shake the Kaiju to their core. The human race was given a brief reprieve and chance to rebuild from the Kaiju War. However, the stay of execution was all too brief as the Kaiju returned in force.

  The second end was that of Lemura and all that had been rebuilt under the guidance of himself and Governor Yeltsin. When the Kaiju returned, they came like never before. There was no prolonged war, merely a series of quick decisive battles that thoroughly shattered what remained of the human race and wiped away most of the traces of the world before. What had once been a planet filled with light, laughter and hope had turned into a silent planet of death and sorrow.

  Like many others, he had fled in those dark days. The world, as it was, had thought him dead. Instead of dying, however, he had retreated to a highly classified, and at the time being, unmanned research station buried deep in the Himalayas. The station was fully automated and equipped with not only a state-of-the-art AI, but also several drones designed to make life easy for anyone manning the remote location. There, he sat and planned, plotting to take back the world for humanity once and for all.

  Often, he had considered reaching out to contact Yeltsin, to let the man know he was still alive, but something had kept him from it. Perhaps it had been fear, or something deeper, darker. If Yeltsin had known he was alive, the Minister would have spared no expense in bringing him back to his secured location beneath Lemura. He had wanted no part of the reconstruction or the desperate battles that came after, so he stayed in his station.

  Though he had avoided Minister Yeltsin, he had contacted some of his old colleagues who had survived and passed along to them the design of a bomb that would destroy all of the Kaiju – and the Earth with it. Unfortunately, when Lemura finally fell, the device had yet to be fully completed. Yeltsin and a handful of survivors, holed up in Lemura's primary “last resort” bunker, took over the project, fulfilling his wishes without even realizing it. There, they continued work on the schematics, he had sent until a crude version of his bomb was online and tapped into the core of planet. His theory precluded the potential for cracking the core itself and triggering a chain reaction which would interrupt the spin of the planet, killing everything on it. He had waited and waited for Yeltsin to use the bomb and end them all, but for whatever reason, the minister-turned-governor never had. So he had languished, alone, while the world continued to spin... and Kaiju rampaged in their ceaseless orgy of destruction and carnage.

  The device has not detonated.

  He shivered at the memory, a cold chill running up his back. The chair was comfortable and set at the proper temperature to keep him warm, but no amount of technology could hold back the growing cold which was creeping through his body. Wracked with confusion and guilt, he had lain in the mobile support chair, his body mostly immobile, and his mind wandering back, thinking of the billions who had died. His sanity began to slip as his former colleagues died off in their forgotten bunkers.

  Suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, a massive ship appeared in the skies over the Earth. He had recognized the craft, the moment of its arrival, though he doubted what he saw initially as he questioned his sanity. The ship was the Argo, which had been tasked to leave Earth behind and search for mankind’s new home many years before. He had doubted his own eyes for a long time, even as the evidence piled up before him. Finally, he had accepted it for the truth and a new plan began to form in his still-active mind.

  It was an easy matter to hack into its systems unnoticed and monitor what transpired on board the giant colony ship. The great ship had been sent out into the stars to find a new home for those it carried, the last hope of the human race. The mission to Alpha Centauri had been a complete and utter failure. A creature which had existed in Earth legends had already claimed the system as its own, and nobody on board the Argo wanted to fight for a new home. So they fled, leaving behind the potential new home to return to the bosom of mankind’s origin.

  He had not known whether to weep or laugh as he listened to the ship’s hails over the various comm channels as the massive ship came into range. Its crew was completely unprepared to find the Earth still in the Kaiju's clutches upon their return. They set about gathering fresh supplies to leave the Sol system once more while also attempting to locate any survivors on the Earth's surface to take with them. He kept his silence throughout and merely watched their activities from the safety of his hidden facility, unwilling to leave his home. The thought of leaving Earth and allowing the Kaiju a true and complete victory over mankind sickened him, and he certainly was not foolish enough to believe that the Argo stood a decent chance of finding an Earth-like world to call home before the limited amount of supplies it could carry ran out.

  He watched as the ruined streets of Lemura again ran red with the blood of humans as soldiers from the Argo discovered Yeltsin in his secret bunker and tried to take him with them to the stars. He had been sure that the former governor would not leave Earth without detonating the bomb he'd unwittingly helped build, but something must have gone terribly wrong. The true end had never come, and Yeltsin and the soldiers rescuin
g him disappeared beneath the giant foot of an enraged Mother Kaiju.

  His years of studying the Overmind and the Kaiju had taught him the beasts' real nature. He knew of the great mother Kaiju that slumbered beneath the Earth's mantle, waiting to be awakened to take flight. The time of that awakening corresponded with the arrival of the Argo. Maybe her time to awake had come naturally, or maybe something about the great colony ship's experimental engines had stirred her the rest of the way out of her slumber? It hadn’t mattered, not really. She had awaken with a ferocity born of hate and rage, and had rent the entire Pacific Basin asunder as she roused from her cocoon.

  She took flight, reshaping the seabed as she rose. The planetary orbit was destabilized, and the moon shifted subtly due to this. Monstrous waves rose unbidden and crashed over every last bit of land still standing, including his hidden retreat. It had been a harrowing few weeks as he had worked to keep the water from flooding his home. Earth’s orbit around the Sun was erratic now, and no computer model was in agreement, of what path it would take.

  Miraculously, the planet itself survived. The damage done was beyond any sort of mending, though. He had prayed Yeltsin had set some sort of remote timer in order to detonate the bomb, but there had been no flash of heat and pain, no cleansing of the world, as the fires of bomb were unleashed. There was nothing but the mother of all Kaiju's birth pains as she broke free, and in an act which would shock the old man to his very core, engaged the Argo in space.

  The massive ship fought against her with all it could bring to bear, but it was far from enough. Left with no other obvious choice, the ship's captain must have risked an unplotted leap across the galaxy, for the Argo's spatial jump bubble had formed around her. The Mother of All continued to fight, to rend into the colony ship, as it began to phase out of the solar system. The chaotic energy of the uncontrolled jump sliced into the massive Kaiju, wounding her grievously as the last hope for humanity disappeared into the stars.

  After the colony ship was gone, vanished to only God knew where, her gargantuan body had fallen back to the world of her hibernation. Her death throes, which had lasted for many years, shook the Earth and stirred the oceans. Her children howled in anguish as she died. However, after she had died, they lived on. They hunted the last remnants of humanity, the few survivors who had been pushed to the brink of civilization and thrust into an age when club and spear were needed.

  Everyday, he would ask the AI, which cared for his now-failing body the same question.

  “The bomb? What of the bomb?”

  The device has not detonated was always the same reply. The cold in his belly continued to grow, gnawing at the edges of his soul, and his sanity.

  *****

  Curri was never sure whether it was night or day. Nobody could, not anymore. Once, she had been told, you could look up and see the stars in the heavens clearly. Those days had long passed. Light and dark blended into a constant gray that hung over the Earth, due to the thick fog. There did not seem to be a difference between day and night any longer. A world of vibrant colors, once upon a time, Curri’s environment was, and in her eyes, always had been one of a listlessness and constant gray.

  She moved with the grace of a dancer across the jagged, uneven rocks. She was at least two miles from the cave where she and the others of her clan called home. No one else ever came out this far, unless things were so dire they had no other choice. Curri, like her father before her, was bold to the point of recklessness, and regularly partook in such excursions. It was her only escape from the pressing burdens of her duties. She could not recall when her life was different, when the world was alive with life and sound, but the images from her father’s bedtime stories of her youth painted a picture which was so very unlike the world in which she lived. She often wondered if it was all simply a lie to get her to sleep on nights when the night terrors came.

  The most vivid memory of her young life had been the day when the sky had burned and the ground had rumbled. Her parents told her that something had came home to Earth, though she couldn't quite remember what that something was supposed to have been. Her father had been so full of hope and excitement, his smile infectious on her young psyche. He was sure the time of the Kaiju was over, though that had deeply confused the young Curri. Whatever had arrived in the stars over the Earth would see to it, he said. He had continued to insist that they were saved even as he died in the collapsing tunnels of a world Curri could never quite grasp.

  Curri's mother hadn't been as easily convinced, which saved both of their lives. The woman had done everything within her power to keep Curri levelheaded and aware that nothing might come from the thing in sky. As always, her mother had been right. All the thing in the sky had brought with it was more death, terror, and ultimately, sadness. Her clan called it The Day of the Burning Sky, and for good reason. The skies burned with a strange fire as the Earth beneath their feet shook endlessly. There had been nearly three hundred people fighting to stay alive on the island with them when it all began. Afterwards, there were less than fifty.

  Curri's mother had managed to get her out only to die three years later of an infection caused after she had cut her foot on a rock. She had ignored the cut, even though Curri had insisted that she treat it. Something, though, had taken the fight out of her mother, who seemed lackluster in her efforts at keeping the clan alive. Despite their best healer’s treatment, the fever took her mother from the clan.

  Her mother had been a strong woman and taken over leadership of their tribe when her father perished. Losing her mother was simply too much for some of the less militaristic members of the clan. The clan split apart to go their separate paths in smaller groups. Thankfully, her mother’s legacy was powerful enough, and over two dozen of the surviving military members of the clan had stayed with Curri, looking to her for hope and leadership. According to her makeshift calendar, that had been well over a decade before, though she had no idea just how accurate it was. Nobody could know for certain, though the general consensus among them was that her count was close enough.

  The harshness of her life was evident. Her hands were callused, skin bruised and pale from lack of sunshine. She was rail-thin from lack of a proper diet and the difficulties of finding food safely. A lingering cough tickled her lungs and throat, remnants of the nasty bug, which had nearly killed her seven months before. Even so, she possessed an iron will and was both agile and strong. One had to be if one were going to keep breathing, keep surviving.

  Curri remembered well her father's tales of the great cities like Pacifica, Altantica, and Lemura, though she had never seen them herself. They were gone now, like so much else from the world of the past. Ruined piles of rubble were all that remained of them all, mostly reclaimed by the seas when the Day of the Burning Sky had occurred. Her father had seen them while they were in their prime, filled with thousands of survivors and people. He had been a soldier during the last days of Lemura and fought in one of the last great battles upon its shores. He had been the steady rock when the city had fallen, when the Dog Kaiju had come to finish off the last remnants of humanity. It had been he who had led them under the city and out of it through secret tunnels known only to the military and the ruling elite. The majority of those who had left the tribe after her mother’s death considered him a traitor, and said that he should have stayed and fought to the bitter end. The former military who had stayed behind, who were now what was left of her clan, knew better and told her so. They stayed away from the breakaway clan these days, content with their own ability to survive. She did find herself wondering if there were others like her out there, survivors. She desperately wanted to meet someone new.

  Something splashed in the waters below her, tearing her away from her thoughts and back into the real world. Her keen eyes honed in on the fish struggling to free itself from the tiny pool of water in which it had become trapped. She smiled as she raised her spear. Her stomach gurgled hungrily as well-honed muscles pulled the spear in her hand back
. She aimed one final time before she hurled it with all her strength.

  She knew that her aim was true even before the spear struck the fish. It broke the surface of the water, impaling the fish perfectly. Dark red blood spilled out of the large fish and tainted the small pool. She hurried over to where the impaled fish lay. She knew she had to hurry and that time was short. The smell of blood, more often than not, drew a pack of Dog Kaiju into the area. She needed to be long gone before the creatures arrived. Curri couldn't risk them following her up the rocks and to her home in the caves in the jagged cliffs high above.

  Curri knelt and picked up the dead fish and identified the predator almost instantly. She was pleased that it was a barracuda, though she had not seen one in a long time. The previous week’s storm must have pushed them further in towards the land, she decided. She ran the spear completely through the barracuda to avoid damaging the meat of the large fish, her nimble hands working quickly. She pulled her large satchel off from her shoulder and carefully placed the fish inside. After a quick check to ensure that, the teeth of the dead fish could not damage the satchel, she shouldered the bag and grabbed her spear. She checked the barbed head and was satisfied that she had not damaged the precious instrument.

  The sound of something sharp scraping against rock drew her undivided attention. The spear twirled in her hands as she pivoted on the balls of her feet, the point of the hunting tool pointing towards the sound. She dropped into a crouch as a small, dark shape emerged from behind a large rock. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized the juvenile Dog Kaiju as it began sniffing the air. Eyes locked onto her, and she snarled softly as the juvenile Kaiju hissed at her.