She recognized the tensing of the Kaiju’s muscles just before he leapt at her. She pirouetted out of the way, the hunting spear twirling in her hands as the juvenile landed clumsily upon the jagged, uneven rock where she had been standing seconds before. The tip of the spear lashed out four times in rapid succession, each thrust cutting deeply into the Dog Kaiju’s vulnerable front tendons. Off balance and lacking the strength to keep the weight on its legs, the juvenile fell onto the rocks, its mouth clacking shut violently as it crashed.
Curri was already moving again, skipping from one boulder to the next, as she moved into position behind the Dog Kaiju. Her balance was perfect. Her senses were honed from years of hardscrabble and the specter of death looming over her people on a daily basis. Another twist and she was behind the Dog Kaiju, balanced carefully atop a large flat rock. She found the vulnerable spot at the base of the young Kaiju’s skull, and with a surety born of practice, drove the point home.
Her strike was perfect. The hindbrain of the Kaiju was located just above the end of the beast’s spinal column in an area unprotected by the primary skull, where there were no arteries. Her spear tip, made from the same material which had once been used to create the armor of the Dogkiller suits of a people she could not identify with, severed the hindbrain from the primary. Every muscle in the juvenile’s body spasmed and locked into place as paralysis spread throughout the creature. She managed to yank the spear back just before it would pierce the pulmonary artery of the Kaiju. Therefore, little blood splashed onto the rocks as the juvenile fell under her spear.
She looked around for any sign of another Dog Kaiju. She knew that the juveniles often acted as lone scouts to seek out and find any food source, and then passed along the news through a complicated tri-chambered olfactory gland in their throat. Every once in a while, however, a few juveniles would gather together and form their own pack. These packs were a danger to a lone hunter such as herself, because they often moved quieter and swifter than a pack filled with older, heavier Kaiju.
Curri was fortunate, this time. No other Dog Kaiju could be seen or heard. She waited for the Kaiju’s last, shuddering breath to pass before she turned and hurried back to the cave she and the last remnants of her clan called home. It would be unwise to linger in this place of death.
*****
Curri slung the fish over her shoulder after pulling it from her gathering pouch. She had already cut off the head and tossed it away, leaving it for the seagulls which they sometimes hunted. She supposed such a gesture futile, since nobody had actually gotten close enough to kill one of the birds in months. Still, she knew that they had to be nesting somewhere nearby. The island was big, but it wasn’t that big. She nearly drooled at the thought of finding a clutch of seagull eggs.
Higgins met her as she strolled into the mouth of the cave. Once, he had been a giant of a man, nearly seven feet tall and pure muscle. Years of malnourishment had left him skinnier than he had ever been before. He was still bigger than everyone else in the clan was, however. He stood, towering over her, frowning at her with a look of disapproval. “I thought you were going to wait before you went out again.”
He might have been attractive, if not for the scars covering his body, but she could never think of him in that way. In the years since her parents' deaths, he had watched over her, helping her grow into her role as leader of the clan. He was her rock, dependable and sturdy, even if he was a judgmental jerk and full of himself at times.
More than a few of his scars came keeping her alive and not, as one would presume, from the Kaiju Wars. A jagged gash ran across his left cheek, a reminder of the time where he stood in for her during a duel for power within the clan and his opponent got in a lucky swing of a knife before Higgins broke the man's spine. The charred flesh of his own back served as another memento of just how devoted to her he was. When fire fell from the sky during the dark times, as the blue above turned to gray, he had sheltered her with his own body until they could crawl the last few feet into the cave they were racing for when all Hell broke loose. His right hand was missing its little finger, his left ear was mauled from a clash with a Dog Kaiju, and long scars ran the lengths of his legs from yet another clash with the lesser Kaiju. To say that Higgins was tough would be a gross understatement. Curri, however, was not intimidated by him in the least, though some in the clan were deathly afraid of him.
“We have to eat, Higgins,” she reminded him yet again. “Hunger can kill us just as well as the Dogs can, just that would be slower and more agonizing. Take a look outside, why don’t you? There's one hell of a storm rolling in. Should be here in an hour or two at the most. It'll wipe away any scent I might have left before the Dogs have a chance to try to track me here. If they even find the body.”
With a grunt, Higgins reached for the fish she held out to him. Curri jerked the fish away from him suddenly, holding it beyond his reach. She scowled at him. “If you're going to complain about me getting food for us all, you get to eat last.”
“The Dog Kaiju comes closer to finding our little haven here every time you venture out. There is more at stake here than just your piddling little pride,” he told her as he retreated a step.
“My pride?” Curri snapped. “You think I'd risk all our lives just to show how great a leader I am?”
“Yes, your pride. And you do seem to want to prove yourself to the others, but you have no need of doing so. Everyone is well aware of your prowess with a spear, and nobody questions your bravery. The tribe would have starved long ago without you.”
Curri huffed at Higgins, giving him a wide berth as she walked past him into the cave. Deep within, the others waited for her.
Higgins followed her to the doorway. It was an old door, built during the opening days of the Kaiju Wars. It was heavy and was, once upon a time, protected by a massive locking mechanism, though its servomotors no longer functioned. The tribe relied upon brute strength to open and close it these days, since the combination of salty air and a constant moisture had turned it to near-solid rust. Higgins alone could perform the task on his own. Otherwise, it took three grown men to lock the door in place. Curri waited as he took hold of the door and heaved, moving it mere inches to one side. It took Higgins several more such displays of his strength to open it enough for them to enter. He then stayed behind to close it once more as she continued on.
There were more than a few entrances and exits within the network of caves in the mountain, but this one was the one closest to the ocean, and therefore, it was kept sealed at all times. Had Higgins not been waiting on her upon her arrival, Curri would have needed to wait until whoever was on watch further down the tunnel heard the echoes of her metal-tipped spear clanging on it. Folks felt better with the door closed, though if the Dog Kaiju found their home, its presence would likely only buy them an hour at most. Thankfully, the cave didn't solely depend upon the armored door to keep it safe. The cave was remote and hidden, and the laziness and lack of single-mindedness of the Kaiju upon the death of their mother added greatly to their safety.
The tribe called this place “The Cave,” but in truth, it was a bunker left over from the world before. Or rather, part of a breached one. Oil lamps lined the walls of its passages instead of powered lights, filling the air with a sooty smell that reminded them all everyday of the horrid world they now lived in. There was very little which remained of the former bunker which they had not scavenged for parts or tried to repair. The people of the tribe had not lost so much as to forget such things, but neither did they have the parts, or some cases the skills, to make them all functional again.
One of the relative few people who had the skills to fix just about everything greeted her as she emerged from the shadows of the corridor. Matan, a small, diminutive man who looked as if his last meal had occurred sometime in the previous decade, greeted her with a smile from behind the table. His warm welcome eased the tension between Curri’s shoulders some. His intelligent eyes drifted from her face to the fis
h which she had clutched in her hand. His smile grew slightly bigger.
“Welcome back,” Matan said, as he inclined his head in her direction. He pushed aside the technical drawings which were spread out upon the table. “I guess we'll all be having a bit more for dinner tonight than kelp and moss.”
Higgins had caught up to her and stood behind Curri as she stopped to speak with Matan.
“Any luck?” she asked.
Matan's laugh was a bitter one. “I'm an engineer, not a miracle worker. I can only do so much, you know.”
Curri frowned. Matan had been at work on the cave's comm system for months. When they had first relocated here, he told her he could probably get it up and running, even if most of the other systems in the cave were beyond hope. She had entrusted him with the task of getting it working again and let him stay inside, where it was safe from any danger. He had not foraged for goods since then, and was still eating his share. So far, he had failed, and her patience – and the patience of the others – was beginning to grow thin.
“We need that comm system up and running,” Higgins growled from behind her.
Matan sat his book down in front of him, spreading his hands in a gesture of peace. “I'm doing the best I can with what I have at hand,” he said, his voice earnest. “The power cell Curri brought in from that torn apart Dog Killer suit a while back helped a lot, but look... I am pretty much rebuilding things from scratch here, and making up things on the fly to get the system operational, or as close to operational as I can make it. I'm close, I can feel it. I swear. Just give me a little more time.”
“You have time,” Higgins reminded the sharp-nosed younger man with a pointed look at the book he had been reading. “You have plenty of time, apparently.”
Adjusting his battered and taped glasses, Matan shrugged. He refused to let the giant towering behind Curri press him further. “I've got one last thing I can try this evening. Kind of a last-ditch thing, I suppose. If it works, it works. If not... well, there's nothing else I can do until I get more parts. And the problem is...”
“You don’t know what type of parts you need until you try it,” Higgins finished for him. He grunted but let the issue rest.
“Just do what you can,” Curri instructed him, trying to keep the weariness from her tone. “Higgins and I have a fish to clean. We'll catch you later.”
Matan nodded at them as they walked on past him, deeper into the cave.
The corridor opened in a wide room with a high ceiling. Inside was the makeshift camp of the tribe. Numerous tents filled the space between its walls. They were built for privacy more than for anything else, so that the members of the tribe had some space they could retreat to when they needed it, rather than venturing alone into the other parts of the cave.
A small crowd gathered around Curri and Higgins as they set about preparing the fish to be cooked. Rebecca and her two children were there. Nanci was redheaded like her mother while Buck's hair was a much darker brown. John was there too. The silver cross he always wore dangled from a rusting chain about his neck as he stood next to Dave and Luthor. Everyone was excited about having some meat with their evening meal, regardless of how small a portion it was going to be when divvied out equally.
The smell of the fish being cooked made Curri's mouth water but she didn't plan on taking a share of it herself. There were others in the tribe, and not just the children, who needed it more. Leigh was pushing seventy and her health was far from good. Curri had seen the kind of sickness the older woman had before and knew Leigh would likely perish in the coming weeks or months, but she refused to give up hope on the older woman.
After the tribe's meal, Curri left Higgins to attend to the day-to-day matters of the tribe and assigning the duties for the next day. Every member of the clan worked, whether it was working at repairing the tattered clothing, they all wore, cleaning and caring for the latrines, taking guard shifts at the key entrances, or more specialized projects like the comm system Matan was working on.
Curri ducked down one of the corridors leading out of the cave's central area and headed for Matan's workshop. He was already there working, when she arrived. A plate of untouched kelp with a lump of fish sat on the table next to him.
“Matan?” she said, startling him.
He jumped and spun around to face her, an old world revolver leveled at her chest. His cheeks flushed red as he recognized her and the fear in on face shifted to embarrassment.
“Does that thing even work?” she taunted him.
“It does now,” he answered, tucking the pistol into a holster on his belt. “I finally cracked the lock to the cave's armory yesterday.”
“W-what?” Curri stammered in disbelief.
“Oh yeah,” Matan chuckled. “I suppose, I forgot to mention that earlier. Your giant friend was sort of imposing. Must have slipped my mind.”
“Matan, are you telling me that we have weapons again? Real weapons?”
He nodded excitedly. “That we do. There are even a couple of Dog Killer suits in there. Not sure if they are functional or not yet, as I haven't had time to test them, but they look to be in decent shape. I just figured the comm system took priority so I have been mainly continuing to focus on it.”
Curri gritted her teeth and forced herself not to be angry. She knew how task oriented Matan could be when given a project. “Okay,” she said. “We'll do an inventory of the armory tomorrow and start handing out weapons to those we know that can be trusted to use them correctly. I'm sure Higgins will want to handle that anyway,” she paused, moving to stand next to where he sat. “So did the test you were going to try with the comm work?”
“Hold on,” Matan said as he flipped through the frequency settings again. He paused and changed the position of the wire. “That’s weird... it shouldn’t be doing that.”
“Doing what, Matan?” Curri asked.
“I put it to ‘receive only’ for settings, but for some reason, I’m broadcasting instead,” Matan tried to explain. “How to put this... ah! It’s like when you’re out hunting and you want to watch and wait, but instead of watching, you’re just yelling out into the dark and stomping along the rocks, making as much noise as you can.”
“But still, you got it working,” Curri said with a grin.
“The problem is that I’m not really sure who’s listening.”
*****
There was a hissing noise as a the tube implanted into the doctor's sternum finished injecting his heart with his daily dose of cardiac medication. With a soft pop, it disengaged itself and was retracted back inside the hover chair. His broken body lay undisturbed for a moment as the medicine began to take hold. His skin wasn't quite as pale as it had been a few moments earlier and he felt somewhat better. He knew the feeling wouldn't last. It never did. All the technology and drugs at his disposal were nothing more than a means of prolonging his life, not cure the old age that he battled every day. The medication barely kept the cancer which ate away at him at bay. His time was running out. The drugs were losing their effectiveness. His natural antibodies in his blood were beginning to build up a resistance to them.
One of the research station’s half-dozen maintenance drones stood nearby. A pincer-like metal hand clutched a glass of water. Tiny flecks of various minerals floated in the liquid. They, too, were just another part of the doctor's massive daily routine of keeping death away. He wasn’t sure yet if it was a placebo effect or that they actually helped, but the vitamin-infused water seemed to help a bit, so he was reluctant to give up on that treatment.
“I'm ready,” he thought through the neural interface in his brain and the drone moved towards him. It tipped the glass up to his mouth and allowed him to drink from it, pulling it away when he gave the signal that he was done.
“Thank you, Clint,” the doctor conveyed to the drone. It was not aware, unlike the station's AI, but when you were as alone as he was, the doctor believed it paid to keep up such things. They were necessary, for his own sake
, to keep him from not going mad from his isolation. He had named each of the station's drones long ago and thought of them as companions more than he thought of them as machines. “That will be all.”
Clint turned and left the room, the drone's heavy footfalls clanging on the metal floor as it went.
The doctor closed his eyes and he prepared himself for sleep. The work cycle of the day was over and all that needed to be done to buy him one more day, Lord willing, had been completed.
The cold, hollow voice of the station's AI called to him. “Doctor?”
“What is it, Gregory?” he responded, exhausted from his treatments and ready for the day to be over.
“You wished to be notified at once if I detected transmissions from others like yourself. I believe I have done so.”
The doctor's eyes snapped open. “Where?”
Kaiju Apocalypse III Page 2