Kaiju Seeds Of Destruction (Kaiju Deadfall Book 3)

by JE Gurley

  He motioned for his men to back away from the tunnel. So far, they remained undetected, but that would not last long. The creatures had a keen sense of hearing and an even stronger sense of smell. They would have to pass the opening to reach the church. He pulled an M67 fragmentary grenade from one of his pockets and pulled the pin. As he tossed the 2.5-inch diameter grenade into the tunnel, the spoon popped off with a distinctive ping. The Fleas stopped what they were doing to take note of the small object bouncing toward them. Five seconds later, the grenade detonated. The 6.5-ounces of high explosives packed into the device sent shards of metal casing flying outward in all directions. The deafening noise echoed down the tunnels for several agonizing seconds. LaBonner worked his jaw trying to pop his ears. Dust and chunks of loose rock from the ceiling sifted down on them.

  Glancing inside the tunnel through the haze of dust and smoke, a few of the Fleas had survived, shielded by their comrades and the now smoking corpses of dead rats and human remains. Their dark, glistening eyes focused on him. He motioned to Chalmers, who stepped forward with the minigun. They disintegrated under the onslaught of a stream of alien crystal-coated 7.62mm rounds. Chalmers grinned maniacally as he held down the trigger. His fusillade of bullets struck several of the pipes in the tunnel. A stream of water sprayed Chalmers in the face from a ruptured water main.

  “Ew!” he moaned, wiping his face frantically with his hand, as the six-rotating barrels spun down to silence.

  “It’s tap water, Chalmers,” LaBonner snapped. He reached out into the stream of spraying water, collected some in the palm of his hand, and used it to wash the Wasp ichor from his face. The water was warm, but it refreshed him. “Get a grip.”

  “That took care of them,” Chalmers said, inspecting his handiwork.

  “But not their buddies,” Spence announced, as he stared back down in the direction they had come. The skittering of the knife-like points of Flea legs and their high-pitched chattering filled the tunnel. Making a stand against so many Fleas would have been suicidal.

  “Move it!” LaBonner cried.

  They raced down the tunnel as fast as their exhausted bodies would carry them, but the Fleas were faster and tireless. As they neared the exit to the street above, they maintained barely a fifty yard lead over the pursuing Fleas.

  “Up the steps,” he urged.

  LaBonner positioned himself beside the steps as his men climbed to safety. He leveled his MK17 but held his fire until the Fleas were less than fifteen yards away. The bullets tore through the creatures’ bodies. Ocher-colored blood sprayed the walls of the tunnel. Their chatter became frenzied, as they clambered over the bodies of their dead brethren. LaBonner continued firing as he backed up the steps.

  Near the top, Chalmers leaned past him and cut loose with the M134D-H, cutting a wide swath of destruction through the massed creatures. Once outside, both men tossed grenades down the steps. Body parts from the Fleas and a geyser of blood erupted from the opening. They slammed the cover back over the entrance and held it in place, while Spence and Mayer pushed an abandoned, canary yellow postal service Renault Kangaroo from the street to help block the opening. It was a finger in the dike. The Paris sewers had entrances every fifty yards. The Fleas would eventually find a way out.

  For the moment, the sky above them was free of Wasps. That would not last long. The latest batch of Kaiju, though smaller than the first to attack Earth, reproduced Wasps and Fleas at a prodigious rate, much faster than the previous Kaiju. The Wasps patrolled the air like fighter squadrons, drawn by any sight or sound of human presence. Soaring on two pairs of leathery wings, the Wasps were both fast and silent. Their venomous stinger was not their only weapon. Each of the sharp-edged legs could sever a limb, and their mouths could rip off a human head in one bite.

  LaBonner’s team emerged on the Rue de Bonaparte on the west side of the church. They hunkered down in the entrance of Herve Chapelier, a Parisian handbag manufacturer. The mobs fleeing the city had smashed the windows and looted the store, as if purses and handbags were a priority during an end-of-the-world scenario. The off-white façade of the Eglise de Sulpice peeked above a line of horse chestnut trees a block away, its mismatched twin towers rising into the smoke-filled sky. Almost there.

  He tried to stand, but his legs would not cooperate. A fear washed over him, deeper than any he had experienced while under fire from the Taliban in Afghanistan. His new enemy was deadlier and alien. It harbored none of the human characteristics, however misguided, that he could understand or relate to. This misanthropic enemy wanted to devour him, much as he would eat a crawfish or a bowl of gumbo.

  He pushed his fear down as far as he could and steeled himself. He stood. “Let’s move it,” he ordered.

  They reached the open square without incident, but as they passed the Font de Sulpice dominating the square, the first Wasps appeared overhead, only a few at first, but more would soon arrive following the alien pheromone trail the creatures left, like foraging army ants. He pointed to the west façade of the church, whose open-colonnaded terraces reminded him too much of the Roman Coliseum and the deadly gladiatorial events that took place within it.

  “Spence! Mayer! Make for the towers. Wait for the Kaiju to get close enough before taking your shot. We’ll cover you.”

  Spence glanced up at the approaching Wasps as if unhappy with LaBonner’s order to abandon him. Nevertheless, he nodded and started across the square at a fast trot. Mayer followed. As they raced across the courtyard carrying their nuclear-tipped rockets, LaBonner and Chalmers climbed onto the top tier of the French Renaissance fountain and took positions on each side of the tall pinnacle bearing seated statues of Bossuet, Fenelon, Flechier, and Massillon, four mid-Seventeenth Century bishops marking the cardinal points of the compass. LaBonner knelt waist deep in the water spilling over the top of the basin. Chalmers pushed up against Massillon’s marble feet.

  The barking of his SCAR and the whir of the M134 drew the Wasps to them, as LaBonner expected, allowing Spence and Mayer to reach the church in safety. He conserved ammo, waiting until Wasps got within a few feet before firing. This tactic was also more effective, as he pinpointed the more vulnerable areas between armor plates. However, Chalmers used his minigun like a broom, sweeping it back and forth, and firing without letup into the mass of gathering Wasps, wasting precious ammunition.

  Chalmers’ expression of disgust as he fired worried LaBonner. Hating one’s enemy was understandable, especially one as inhuman as the alien creatures, but Chalmers seemed to take each attack as a personal affront. Killing Fleas and Wasps was incidental to the mission. Destroying the Kaiju was of foremost importance, their true mission. Chalmers’ delight in killing Wasps and Fleas had seized control of him, become a priority, leading him to take too many chances. As he took a step away from the cover of the pinnacle to the edge of the fountain, LaBonner warned him back.

  “Chalmers!” he shouted. “Take cover!”

  Chalmers ignored him, caught up in a mad killing frenzy. Two Wasps attacked in tandem. Forced to swing the minigun from one to the other, he left an opening for the Wasps. One Wasp took the brunt of the gunfire, its body disintegrating in a spray of blood as the flurry of bullets tore into it. The first creature’s sacrifice allowed the second Wasp to close in. It leaped over the body of its companion and landed on Chalmers’ back, dragging him backward. Off balance and unable to bring the minigun to bear, he dropped it as he fell at the feet of Bishop Massillon. He pulled his knife and began stabbing at the creature’s head. He inflicted serious wounds to the creature’s eyes, but it continued to hack at Chalmers’ body with two of its forelegs. He rolled into the basin with the creature on top of him.

  LaBonner splashed across the basin to aid Chalmers. He jammed his rifle against the Wasp’s head and held down the trigger. The creature’s head exploded into a gory mess of flesh, yellow blood, and ebony crystal. One of the wings thrashed through the water and struck his ankle, knocking him down. He came up splu
ttering, spitting out a mouthful of water. The decapitated Wasp didn’t move. He pushed it from Chalmers’ body and lifted Chalmers’ head from the bloodstained water. His eyes were open and his lips moved, but blood spilled out instead of words. He bled from a dozen wounds. He glanced up at LaBonner and coughed up a mouthful of blood and water.

  “Damn you, Chalmers!” LaBonner yelled. “Don’t you die on me!”

  It was too late. Chalmers couldn’t hear him. His eyes closed and his head rolled limply to one side. He lifted Chalmers’ body and laid it on the ledge of the fountain. LaBonner could do nothing for Chalmers, not even save his body from the fate of so many others, that of feeding the Kaiju. He picked up the M134 minigun, dropped down from the fountain, and ran for the church.

  Mayer leaned from the second-level terrace, firing her weapon at the Wasps pursuing him. LaBonner waved her back under cover. She carried one of the rocket launchers. She was too important to expose herself to save him. He reached the entrance just ahead of a Wasp. Inside, he fell to one side, turned, and fired a five-second burst from the minigun into the creature, as it scrambled through the door. It continued to lunge at him in its death throes, stabbing one of its knife-edged legs into the plaster beside his head and raking a large chunk of masonry from the wall. He fired one more burst to be certain it was dead; then, closed and barred the door. The heavy wooden door would not resist a determined onslaught by the Wasps, but it would slow them down.

  His head pounded as bounded up the stairs. Bad time for a migraine. He bit down on his lip to ignore the throbbing. The Kaiju waded across the Seine in three enormous strides, crushing the Pont D’lena Bridge beneath its ponderous tread. It halted in front of the Eiffel Tower as if posing for a photograph; then, reared and pressed its bulk against the tower. The massive creature rose over halfway up the open girder structure. The screams of the stressed metal sounded like the city dying. A cloud of paint flakes and rust chips exploded from the warped girders, falling around the tower like dirty snow. The bizarre scene mesmerized LaBonner. Despite the danger, he stopped to watch.

  The iconic tower swayed drunkenly as the Kaiju pressed into the network of girders. Its front legs became battering rams, pounding the 130-year-old wrought iron. Finally, pushed beyond its structural limits, the tortured metal gave way. The northwest pillar supporting the tower twisted and buckled under the strain. Concrete exploded at the tower’s feet. The tower canted far to one side for several moments, seemingly in defiance of the laws of gravity, but the Kaiju pounded it until the 1,000-foot-tall edifice toppled.

  As if curtseying, the tower bent forward at the waist, folding at the second observation level. A 300-foot length of steel girders peeled away from the structure and collapsed into the Seine. Waves splashed over the banks and across the garden, washing away many Fleas in its wake. Its integrity compromised the rest of the structure split apart as rivets popped and welds cracked. Steel girders plummeted onto the Champ de Mars, embedding in the concrete like toothpicks in a tray of canapés.

  Satisfied with the Eiffel Tower’s destruction, the Kaiju dropped back onto its twelve legs and resumed its leisurely trek into the heart of the City of Lights.

  4

  August 11, Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX –

  Doctor Robert Wingate ‘Gate’ Rutherford stared out his office window at the Memorial Grove near the facility’s main entrance. A slight breeze rustled the leaves. His mind was on Commander Erwin Langston and the freshly planted tree dedicated in his honor. His heroic sacrifice in stopping the alien communications pod on the moon, thereby stopping the Kaiju, deserved higher honor than a tree and a posthumous increase in rank, but the world had bigger problems to deal with, and as usual, heroes were shunted aside.

  Gate had attended the ceremony ten days earlier. The three surviving members of the Lunar One crew attended as well, adding their praise to that of the gathered dignitaries. That such an observance had taken place in spite of the current turmoil around the world spoke highly of the world’s high esteem for Commander Langston. His was not the only sacrifice, but it was the most widely known. So many had died in the U.S., the South Pacific, and in Europe, it was difficult to keep track of the unsung heroes. That news of yet another swarm of Kaiju pods marred the solemn occasion only emphasized the sacrifice Commander Langston had made.

  Gate rued the fact that some newspapers called him a hero as well. He reserved such accolades for better men and women than him. He had joined then Captain Walker’s team, entering Kaiju Nusku hoping to learn more about the creatures. The possibility of dying had not seemed important. His anger at seeing Chicago trampled and witnessing tens of thousands of people dying had supplanted his natural sense of self-preservation. Crawling around inside the guts of a monster Kaiju had changed that. If the terror he experienced then, and the fear the memories evoked when he thought about it did anything, it proved to him that he was no hero – Foolish, maybe, but no hero.

  He tore his gaze away from the window and focused on the report lying on his desk. He had read the words numerous times, but the full impact had yet to set in. It was a case of emotional overload. Ten more Kaiju would arrive on the Earth within four days. Twenty more would follow seven days later. It seemed an impossibly high number. He had warned that the Nazir would escalate their attempts to eradicate mankind for possession of the planet, but even he had not fathomed the resources at the aliens’ disposal. As a former catastrophist for NASA, he feared for the end of humanity. Humans had proven resourceful and to some extent cooperative, but as the Kaiju destroyed precious infrastructure, feeding and relocating tens of millions of humans became an increasingly impossible task. Earth was near her breaking point. More Kaiju could tip the balance.

  Earth’s primary defense had been her early warning systems – LISA, the DRS satellite, and the gravity wave detectors scattered around the planet. Now, even those had failed them. They had only days to prepare for the new onslaught of giant Kaiju.

  When the New Horizon probe had flown past Pluto in 2015 after a 10-year journey and snapped photos of Haumea and her twin moons, Hi’iaka and Namaka, the icy outer worlds had looked benign, offering no hint of the diabolical plot unfolding even then. No one suspected that when New Horizon went off-line just hours just before its rendezvous with Pluto, it had been the first shot in an interstellar war. Gate was convinced the brief loss of contact that had required a complete computer reboot had been an alien attempt to hack into the system to retrieve information about Earth. Later, when the probe had proved an annoyance to the aliens, they had destroyed it. NASA had planned new probes using the gravity drive, but none was presently past the drawing board stage.

  Working alone and without NASA’s sanction, he had discovered the alien base on Haumea, a stony, planetary fragment beyond the orbit of Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. Until the military had reverse-engineered one of the alien gravity drives, the enemy had been impossibly far away, too far to strike. Now, a slim hope grew in his chest that Project Javelin would work. It was mankind’s last chance.

  The Air Force had developed the SR-80 Lance as a Near-Earth Orbit tactical fighter, capable of both atmospheric and space flight as a defense against China or Russia, the main threats at that time. With the advent of the alien Kaiju invasion, the Air Force had retrofitted it with the new gravity drive. Even so, it could not travel 5 billion miles to the Kuiper Belt among the Trans-Neptunian Objects. For that, it needed a lift. The Javelin was a stripped down spacecraft, an open framework fitted with a large gravity drive engine and habitat modules. The SR-80s would dock with the Javelin and ride piggyback to Haumea. There, they would confront the enemy in its front yard.

  Gate could not go. His heart was not in it. His hatred no longer burned hot in his chest. Having seared away all his passion and anger, it now smoldered like a banked fire. He had seen Kaiju and witnessed the aftermath of their path of destruction close-up and intimately, and he had no desire to confront them again. He had satisfied his morbid curiosity concernin
g the giant alien creatures. His and Walker’s observations had aided the Kaiju Killer teams in Europe. For that, he was delighted, but he had learned something about himself during the encounter of which he was not proud. He was afraid.

  His fear was not as much fear for his life as a fear that he would change even more than he had. He was not the person he had been a year ago before the Kaiju. What would he become if the alien onslaught continued? He did not want to find out.

  As a NASA catastrophist, people, cities, and countries had merely been numbers on a chart, which he could manipulate. He had no emotional investment in the outcomes of his projections. Their futures were purely the results of cause and effect, a consequence of math, and a throw of the cosmic dice. After following Kaiju Girra and witnessing its path of destruction through Indiana and Chicago, his interest had become personal. The numbers now became people and the buildings someone’s home. Each death diminished him. He wanted to stop the aliens as quickly as possible to save as many lives as he could.

  Sometimes, his desire to stop the Nazir drove him to push himself beyond his physical limitations. After Nusku, he had thrown himself headlong into his work, ignoring friends and his own body. He had lost considerable weight, becoming a scarecrow of his former self. His health had deteriorated, and the nightmares intensified. Sleep became secondary to his pursuits. When Kaiju Kiribati had arrived, followed by the gravity bomb meant to disrupt the Pacific tectonic plates, his personal fear had grown to encompass the entire planet. Even after the threats had passed, his hatred had not abated. He had managed to temper it somewhat by focusing on astronomy rather than catastrophic predictions. He sublimated his hatred of the aliens beneath the same blanket of ennui that separated him from friends and colleague. His weight and overall appearance had improved, but he was still a shadow of his former self, moody, withdrawn, and prone to sudden outbursts. Walker, seeing him after months of isolation, had told him he did not play well with others. He struggled to change that aspect of his life.