Kaiju Apocalypse III

by Eric S. Brown

  A claw from a Mother Kaiju narrowly missed his Trident, and the acid stream she vomited up at him barely missed. The craft, moving just fast enough, managed to miss all of the corrosive liquid, but he knew that his time was running short. He had to give Curri and the others a chance to get inside the bunker and do whatever Dr. Bach needed them to accomplish.

  A plan began to form in the back of his mind, one so audacious and daring that he wasn’t certain whether it was truly his idea or one implanted by the doctor.

  “Dear God, please let this work,” Matan whispered, praying for the first time since he had been a young boy being held in the protective arms of his mother, and before she had been ripped away during the Night of the Burning Sky. Before he had become a jaded and given up all hope for humanity’s future. “Please.”

  The drones began to fly near the faces of the approaching Mother Kaiju, annoying them and buzzing close to their eyes and ears. The Mothers responded as he had hoped and they began to thrash wildly in the air. A Mother was accidently struck by another, and they howled at one another. The drones continued to instigate and prod them, angering them further. Matan fired another missile at them for good measure, and the two Mothers began to brawl, their single-minded purpose forgotten in their lust for blood and carnage.

  The Trident shook violently. Matan glanced out the broken window and spotted a Dragon Kaiju clutching the wing of the aircraft. He tried to shake it off, but the Dragon held firm, the razor-sharp beak of the beast digging into the fuselage. He felt control of the aircraft slipping from his fingers and realized that his time was running out.

  He took the Trident into a violent and steep dive, which caused the Dragon to lose its grip on the wing. However, the small Kaiju had managed to damage some of the electrical components within and the stabilizers were now shot. He could turn left and right still, but he could not take any sharp turns. His maneuverability had just been cut in half.

  “Matan,” Dr. Bach said over the comm. “You are doing good work, but I need you to do one more thing.”

  “Huh?” Matan asked as he began to pull out of his dive, or tried, at least. His hands were locked in position. He tried to move. No part of his body from his neck down was responding. Panic began to fill him. “Doctor, I can’t move my arms!”

  “I know.”

  “What do you mean?” Matan cried out.

  “I need you to die in a blaze of glory,” Dr. Bach said. “Curri’s psychological profile that I’ve been able to build on her over the past few hours suggests that the loss of both you and the soldier named Higgins would give her the combined strength and despair she would need to activate the Verhys module.”

  “No... don’t,” Matan pleaded as tears began to form in the corner of his eyes. “I can do this. I can win.”

  “There is nothing to win, young man,” Dr. Bach chided. “There is simply a task to accomplish and the means to facilitate it. You are nothing more than the means.”

  Matan began to swear and yell at the doctor as the Trident built up more speed. The propulsion kicked into overdrive and the aircraft screamed downward from the sky. Matan could see the dark blue water rushing up to meet him. He tried one last gambit.

  “If you’re going to kill me, drive me into one of those God-forsaken Mothers!”

  Silence reigned over the comm for long, terrifying moments as the ocean grew bigger and bigger in his view. Matan’s heart began to beat faster and faster before he felt his hand move, and pulled the stick back, taking him out of his dive. The g-forces pushed him back into the pilot’s chair as he leveled out mere meters above the waves of the ocean. The Trident turned and lined up on another Mother Kaiju.

  “Thank you,” Matan whispered as missiles began to fly from the underbelly of the Trident. The Mother staggered from the onslaught and roared in pain. Matan felt the aircraft increase speed. “Thank you.”

  Matan felt another one of the Dragons land on the Trident's hull with a loud thud that shook the ship. The Trident wobbled as two more Dragons joined the first. Their claws tore and ripped at the ship's hull. Warning lights lit the entire console in front of him as the Dragons continued tearing into the ship. It no longer mattered – it was too late. The Trident crashed into the Mother Kaiju, turning itself and the Mother Kaiju's upper torso into a blazing eruption of burning fuel and detonating ordnance. Matan's last thought was of Curri. Her face flashed before his eyes as they were melted away inside their sockets.

  The Mother Kaiju fell into the ocean, dead. Of the Trident or Matan, there was not a trace left.

  ****

  Curri stared at the withered old man in the life support chair with unveiled disgust. Various tubes were connected to his frail body through the chair, and his sunken eyes were yellowed. Something in the chair hissed, a continuous sound that began to grate on the ragged edge of her nerves.

  The room was quiet. The others in her tribe had elected to stay in another secure room together to be with one another when Curri activated the bomb. It left her alone, with the exception of the man on the video comm display who was looking down upon her. She turned away so she would not have to look at him as she tried to comprehend the massive device before her.

  “What is your delay?” Dr. Bach asked over the comm. She glanced back at the horrible visage and realized that the device, which would probably end the world was far better to look at than the old man on the screen. It shocked her a little upon realizing this.

  “Why didn’t you just use one of your drones to activate the bomb?” she asked. “If it’s so easy to activate, why didn’t you just do it remotely?”

  “Fail-safe reason,” Dr. Bach replied with obviously thinning patience. “The designer implemented a DNA-sequencing lock on the scanner. Only a human can activate it, not a drone.”

  “Or a Kaiju,” she muttered. Dr. Bach laughed. It was a wet, harsh sound.

  “That would have been ironic,” the doctor said. “Go over to the device and place your hand on the small screen on the left of the keypad.” Curri followed his instructions. On the screen comm, Dr. Bach nodded weakly, his breathing in labored gasps. “Now type in the following numbers: 3–0–3. That should do it.”

  Curri obediently punched in the numbers. The machine buzzed and began to beep. “Now what?” She looked back at the comm screen. “Now what happens, Dr. Bach? Dr. Bach?!”

  On the screen, the doctor was staring blankly at the screen, eyes unseeing. Behind him, Curri could just make out the signs of a machine struggling to keep the man as alive as it could. Something, and she wasn’t sure what, had overtaxed the man’s last bits of strength and energy. It rendered him unconscious, and probably put him into a coma. He would be of no more help to her, she figured. She looked away from the face of the wizened old man on the screen and back to the device. A small digital counter on the left of the DNA lock that she had activated was counting down. It took her a moment to translate the seconds counting down into something she recognized.

  Three minutes. She had three minutes until the world ended by her hand.

  Her mouth was dry. The bunker shook slightly as a Mother Kaiju outside began to strike the protective walls. Dust fell from the ceiling, as the shaking grew more concentrated. Curri stared at the device for a moment before she shifted her eyes to the doctor’s slack face on the screen. Seeing no help there, she sat down on the floor and pressed her back against the wall. She stared numbly at the device as paneling began to fall from the ceiling, a not-so-subtle reminder of the Mother Kaiju who was above and trying to stomp a way into the bunker.

  One minute left before the device fully activated, Curri’s hands began to shake more as a deafening roar blasted through the bunker. She faintly heard the screams of the rest of her tribe as the Mother cracked open the walls of the bunker. The screams faded as the victorious howls of the Dog Kaiju filled her ears. She would have wept for them, but she had no more tears to shed. Not now, not ever.

  The device activated. The floor beneath it disappe
ared as drills took it down into the Earth, accelerating to over ten times the speed of sound as it moved with single-minded purpose and determination. The resulting sonic boom ruptured her eardrums, and the flash from the propellant, which fueled the device, blinded her. She would have screamed in pain, but Curri’s mind was completely and utterly broken. She sat there, deaf and blind, and waiting to die.

  The device bore deeper into the Earth, driving for the core. Theoretical physics clashed with actual reality as the neutron bomb within the device triggered. The Veryhs module, which contained cold dark matter, a substance which had only been theorized about a mere twenty years before. The Veryhs module shook and began to break apart as the nanoseconds began to tick by, cold dark matter infusing the neutron bomb.

  The neutron bomb, enhanced by the collapsing Veryhs module, created, for the briefest of instances, a small, dark matter fueled neutron star at the very heart of Earth’s core. Pressure from the core immediately collapsed the star, causing what physicists call an “event horizon.” Within this, a small space approximately fifteen meters wide disappeared from existence. Nanoseconds later, more of Earth’s core disappeared as the black hole began to devour the planet from within.

  Within two beats of Curri’s heart, Earth ceased to exist.

  End

  Read on for a free sample of Kake Bible’s Kaiju Winter

  One

  “Jesus, this suit is roasting,” Dr. Allison Hartness snaps as she suffers yet another drop of sweat falling into her eye. “Couldn’t Bartolli have sprung for the cooled versions?”

  “He did,” Dr. Robert Tomlinson replies as the two volcanologists make their awkward way across the ash covered earth a few miles from the epicenter of the Yellowstone caldera. “But the bastard kept those suits for himself. Like the ass is ever going to come out here in the field.”

  Ash falls about the two scientists, adding to the six inches that already coat the dry and cracked earth underneath. There to recalibrate the eastern sensors in Zone Two of the supervolcano, Dr. Hartness and Dr. Tomlinson are ready to get the final task finished and head back to the “comfort” of Bozeman, Montana a few miles away. Not that Bozeman is either comfortable or safe since the entire population has been evacuated in response to the imminent eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Neither of them is happy they have to fetch their own towels and bed sheets at the abandoned motel they are staying in. Especially since they have to wrap the towels and linens in plastic to walk the breezeway from the office to their rooms in order to keep the ash from soiling everything.

  “You two know the radio is on, right?” Dr. Cheryl Probst of the United States Geological Survey says in their ears.

  “Yeah, but we know you are the only one back in Virginia listening,” Dr. Hartness responds. “Bartolli hasn’t once done radio duty.”

  “Would you want him to?” Dr. Probst laughs. “Half the reason you go into the field is to get away from that ass.”

  “Says the woman that gets to sleep in a bed without having to wear a respirator,” Dr. Tomlinson grumbles. “Want to trade places? You are welcome to come out into the field in my place. I don’t mind.”

  “Just fix the sensors and get back to the motel,” Dr. Probst says. “You can have a few drinks and sleep the night away knowing you only have two more days of repairs.”

  “Cram that bright side up your ass, Cheryl,” Dr. Hartness laughs. “You can also cram anything else up there you want. Be my guest.”

  “There it is,” Dr. Tomlinson says as he points to the top of a black box that sticks up from the ash. “Last one, then I’m taking Dr. Probst’s advice and heading back to get drunk.”

  “I didn’t say get drunk. I said have some drinks,” Dr. Probst replies.

  The scientists kneel down by the box and get to work, each systematically going over the machine to double check each other’s work so they can make sure they don’t have to come back out and repair the sensor any time soon.

  “That should do it,” Dr. Tomlinson says. “Is it working?”

  “Hold on,” Dr. Probst says.

  The two doctors wait not so patiently as their colleague back in Reston, Virginia goes over the signal and readings being sent to the USGS headquarters. Dr. Tomlinson looks up at the dreary winter sky, ignoring the small flakes of ash that begin to coat the plastic face mask he wears. It’s almost impossible to tell what are actual clouds and what are the never ending ash clouds that puff up from various points close to the Yellowstone caldera. The man shakes his head and then looks down, watching the grey flakes softly land on the unseen ground.

  “Anything?” Dr. Hartness asks.

  “Yeah,” Dr. Probst replies. “But it isn’t making sense. Is there a vehicle close by?”

  “A vehicle?” Dr. Hartness asks. ‘What kind of question is that?”

  “I’m getting readings, but they are uniform, almost rhythmic,” Dr. Probst replies. “That’s why I wanted to know if a vehicle was close by. Maybe some redneck that didn’t evacuate and is out in his bubba truck with the stereo on.”

  Dr. Hartness turns awkwardly in her environment suit, the thick plastic crinkling and bending as she looks at Dr. Tomlinson. The man looks back at her and shrugs his shoulders, which looks more like a twitch in his identically bulky and awkward suit.

  “We don’t see anything,” Dr. Hartness says. “It would have to be some stereo system for the sensor to pick it up.”

  “Do you feel anything?” Dr. Probst asks. “Because whatever it is should be right about...huh. Never mind. It stopped.”

  “Does that mean we can go now?” Dr. Tomlinson asks Allison

  “I just mentioned a weird anomaly the sensor is picking up and you think you can go?” Dr. Probst laughs mockingly. “Nice try, Bob.”

  “I hate you, Cheryl,” Dr. Tomlinson replies. “We’ll take it apart and start over.”

  “Joy,” Dr. Hartness sighs.

  Dr. Tomlinson kneels next to the box again and pulls his tools back out from his bag. He gets the sensor open, and then stops, one hand resting on the ground.

  “Hey...I do feel something,” Dr. Tomlinson says. “It’s getting stronger. Allison, check this out. This doesn’t feel-”

  Dr. Tomlinson is yanked down flat and a large cloud of ash explodes up around him. He’s jammed hard against the ground, his arm lost from sight and the rest of him shaking as he starts screaming bloody murder.

  “Bob!” Dr. Hartness yells as she rushes forward. “Bob! What is it?”

  “Jesus Christ!” Dr. Tomlinson screams. “It has my arm! IT HAS MY ARM!”

  Then the man is suddenly free and rolling across the ground, his right arm torn right from his body. Blood sprays everywhere, turning the grey ash black. Instead of continuing forward, Dr. Hartness stumbles back, turns, and throws up. The vomit fills her suit which makes her vomit even harder as her colleague lies on the ground screeching.

  “Allison! Bob!” Dr. Probst shouts over the radio. “What’s going on? What happened?”

  Dr. Hartness rips the hood off her suit and wriggles out of the whole thing as fast as possible, her chest coated in her own sickness. She keeps her eyes averted from the man crying for help just feet from her, afraid she’ll never stop vomiting. Unfortunately, what she sees instead doesn’t comfort her any.

  “What the hell…?” she rasps as ash begins to coat her throat.

  The ground before her starts to crack and split, and then something comes shooting out; something long and bright blue. It wraps around Dr. Hartness’ body and yanks her down into the newly formed hole, folding her in half in order to make her fit. Blood spurts up from the hole like a small geyser. Geysers are common around the Yellowstone area, just not ones made of human blood.

  “Bob!” Dr. Probst yells. “Tell me what is happening!”

  But Dr. Tomlinson is too busy screaming to give her an answer. Then he’s too busy being yanked into the hole after Dr. Hartness by the same long, bright blue thing. His screams are cut off suddenly
and all that can be heard is the buzzing of the radio earpiece in Dr. Hartness’ suit that is slowly being covered over in ash as it lies empty on the ground.

  “Bob! Allison! Someone talk to me!” Dr. Probst yells from the earpiece. “Hello? Hello? Tell me you’re okay! Let me hear your voices! Please!”

  ***

  The sounds of Hank Williams’ “Lonesome Whistle” play quietly as the late model sedan makes its way down the ash coated Montana highway. Special Agent Tobias Linder watches out the windshield as tiny flakes of ash float down from the sky, adding to the three plus inches that have accumulated just in the past 48 hours alone. He’s lost count of what the actual total is now. His attention drifts from Highway 37 to his dashboard and the small device that continually flashes red numbers at him.

  He sighs as the number climbs from 36% to 38% in seconds. Another two miles and the number hits 40%, telling him he can just make it to his destination before he has to change the air filters. Otherwise, the car’s engine will be choked with ash and turned into a useless hunk of metal.

  His phone chimes for the seventeenth time that morning, but he ignores it, knowing exactly what the voicemail will say. As much as he’d like to do his duty, as ordered by the Office of the President of the United States, Linder has a wholly different agenda than helping with the evacuation of the Southwest United States. There’s business waiting for him in Champion, Montana, a small town just a few miles ahead on the edge of Lake Koocanusa.