by JE Gurley
“You’re right, but will we still be alive?”
Gate had no answer for that one.
16
August 15, Dobbins Air Reserve Base, Marietta, GA –
LaBonner thought Paris had been sweltering. Stepping off the C-130 Hercules and onto the sunbaked tarmac at Dobbins was akin to walking into a sauna. The mid-morning heat bitch- slapped him in the face. A percent humidity of 96 percent leached the moisture from his flesh, and re-deposited it as a second clammy skin he could not wipe off. The only breeze to evaporate perspiration was the scorching air rising from the tarmac. The heat enveloped him like a cloud. Hot air crawled up his pants leg, singeing the hairs on his legs. He lifted one foot to make sure his boot wasn’t miring in the soft asphalt.
“If this is morning, I can’t wait for mid-afternoon,” he said to no one in particular.
Although protected by burn ointment, bandages, and a long-sleeve shirt, his blistered skin grew a voice and begged him to put it out of its misery. He shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the approaching truck that would transport him and the nine men who had accompanied him from Lakenheath to their next ride.
He glanced at the new captain’s bars gracing his collar glinting in the sun, his reward for a successful mission. They looked like twin shiny silver tombstones to remind him of the men and women he had helped kill. When offered the promotion, he had refused, but Colonel Eckhart had insisted. If he had pushed too hard, Eckhart might have demanded he take time off for medical treatment. Accepting the promotion was his only way back into the action.
Assigned to the 94th Airlift Wing stationed at Dobbins, they now waited for word on the inbound Kaiju pod. It was due to strike in less than five hours. The 94th’s fleet of C-130s would quickly transport them to any Kaiju landing on American soil. As senior officer, Caulder was in command of the newly formed K-Team Zulu. LaBonner was glad to let the responsibility slide from his shoulders. In his eyes, his record was one of dismal failure. As the sole survivor of K-Team Charlie, he didn’t want a second chance to kill more men. Caulder, Vance, Warski, and six others he had met only briefly had left Lakenheath twelve hours earlier for America. He had not slept on the journey across the Atlantic. His troubled mind would not allow it. A sense of betrayal that he alone of his team had survived consumed him. Remorse could kill a soldier as quickly as an enemy bullet. He had to find a way to live with his guilt or put all their lives at risk.
LaBonner recognized the same guilt in Caulder’s haunted eyes. He had not slept on the flight either. He had paced the deck of the noisy plane with a grimace frozen on his lips, refusing to engage anyone in conversation. His silence spoke of his reluctance to broach the one subject that they all carefully avoided like a landmine – fear. Not a fear of the Kaiju, the Wasps, or Fleas – they had faced those fears – but the fear that they would make the same mistake again and more men would die. He could not read Vance or Warski but suspected they wrestled with their own inner demons.
He and the others were the lucky ones. Skill had little to do with their surviving their battles with the Kaiju. Bringing down one of the giant creatures was a team effort. Individual training, speed, and cunning meant nothing during the fight. One man could not do the job. Soldiers and comrades had died for that one golden moment that marked the difference between success and failure. Now, they had to learn to operate as a team instead of individuals, or none of them would survive. Afterwards did not concern LaBonner. Killing the Kaiju did. He owed it to the fallen.
LaBonner clung to one bit of good news. Somehow, the Javelin had destroyed nine of the incoming Kaiju, leaving only a single pod to deal with in the first wave. He didn’t know how, or if anyone had sacrificed themselves to accomplish it, but he was grateful. Earth needed any break it could get. He needed the specter of an endless number of Kaiju lifted from his troubled mind. They slowly whittled down the number of Kaiju in Europe. Eliminating nine of the new creatures en route hinted at the possibility that someone had a plan for the other twenty on their way.
They had come to Dobbins because NASA had predicted a 90-percent probability that the Kaiju pod would strike the East Coast somewhere between Myrtle Beach, SC, and Jacksonville, FL. He could not shake the uncomfortable sensation that he stood in the center ring of a giant bulls-eye. He glanced upward at the sky hoping he didn’t see a bright dot growing bigger.
Caulder caught him staring at the sky. “We still have a few hours.”
“Maybe their watch is fast.”
Caulder’s face turned even grimmer. “If it strikes the ocean, the tsunami will wipe out half the cities on the coast, but it will give us more time to prepare. God help me, I’m praying it strikes the ocean.”
LaBonner understood Caulder’s coldness. Caulder was not callous or unfeeling. People were going to die no matter where it landed. The more prepared his team was, the better chance they had of destroying the Kaiju.
“They’re evacuating the cities along the coast,” LaBonner responded.
Evacuating the larger cities and coastal islands in twenty-four hours would be next to impossible. Many had only one or two exit routes that did not lead either north or south along the coast. The smaller cities stood a better chance, but without knowing where the Kaiju would strike, any place to which they evacuated could be in the target zone.
“Good luck with that,” Caulder answered.
The truck pulled up with brakes screeching and stopped in front of them, followed by the stench of overheated brake fluid and scorched brake pads.
Caulder shouldered his pack. “Taxi’s waiting.”
LaBonner did the same, but winced as the heavy pack dug into tender flesh. The truck conveyed them to a cinder block building housing the Georgia National Guard Reserve, their new home for the duration. The governor had already dispatched the Guard to the coast. Next came the part LaBonner detested – the waiting. He was a man of action. Faced with danger, battle instinct and training took over. You made spur of the moment decisions. Sometimes they cost lives. During battle, you didn’t have time to do a running analysis of your actions. That came later. Downtime, especially when waiting for the next battle, allowed time for retrospection. His men had died. He might never know if he could have saved them, but every decision, each move weighed heavily on his mind.
He could not dismiss the nagging doubt that rose above all others that everything they did was for naught. The aliens had proven resourceful and determined. They had already dispelled all the theories put forth by so-called experts as to their resources, which now seemed unlimited. They could stand off five billion miles and toss monster Kaiju at Earth until the planet crumbled under the onslaught. If nothing he did counted, was he foolish to throw away his life so cavalierly? His gut told him to head for the deepest desert or the highest mountain and bury himself in a deep hole.
Of course, he couldn’t run away, abandon his comrades or his duty. He was a soldier. Everyone was afraid, but not everyone could fight. What separated him from the masses was that gift or curse that made first responders like cops or firefighters heroes. They ran into burning buildings or toward the sound of gunfire when everyone else ran away. It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it. Unfortunately, this time, it was him.
The team killed time by watching television, but found an unusual scarcity of news about the Kaiju rampaging in Europe, as if they didn’t exist. Bad news was bad advertising. Only a fleeting banner scrolling beneath the commentator warned of the Kaiju targeting the southeastern coast, as if it were an approaching storm. Instead, reality shows, talk shows, and news programs about politics dominated the airwaves. The people most affected by the Kaiju didn’t need to know, and those yet unaffected didn’t want a reminder of what lay in store for them.
One local news story attracted his attention. The camera showed a knot of protestors marching down Peachtree Street carrying Judgment Day signs. They all wore black with a white cross emblazoned across their chests like some band of medieval Templars. He ha
d heard of the group, people who believed the Kaiju were dark angels sent by God to cleanse the world of sinners, but he had never encountered any. He found it difficult to believe sane people could encourage the Kaiju, and even more difficult to believe they could actively work toward Armageddon by setting fires and destroying buildings.
“Insane fuckers,” he mumbled at the screen.
LaBonner watched the news with his attention divided between the screen and the men who would soon be fighting by his side. He knew three of them by name – Caulder, Warski, and Vance – and had a nodding acquaintance with a couple more. Most of the others were young raw recruits. The Romans called them tirones, untested in battle. They had trickled into Lakenheath from all over Europe. The only thing that concerned him was that they were willing to die. He didn’t want them to die. He wanted them to get the job done and go home to their families. Enough men had died already. Too many.
Caulder, Warski, Vance, and he had the same look in their eyes, the vacant battle weary stare from seeing too much, too many friends die, too many civilians die, and too many monsters. The others’ faces displayed fear. That was to be expected. A man or woman would be a fool to face a Kaiju unafraid, but their young faces also showed a touch of excitement, as if beginning a great adventure against which they could test their worth.
The long sleep his beaten body had demanded at Lakenheath had helped heal his superficial wounds, but it needed more than a few hours’ sleep and Band-Aids to heal properly. His blistered skin had tightened and threatened to split every time he moved. The shrapnel wound in his side throbbed constantly. He refused the pain pills offered by the base physician. His mind was cloudy enough without the additional fog of medication.
Confined to the base, they ate, dozed, played cards, and watched television. The one thing they did not do was speak of their experiences, not even when the new recruits asked. The only advice LaBonner offered one concerned soldier was, “You can’t prepare for it. You just try to stay alive long enough for the perfect shot. Don’t make any plans for the future.” It was dismal advice and not the words of support the fresh young recruit had expected, but LaBonner had no encouragement left in him.
LaBonner watched television, losing himself in its mindless programming. The Kaiju arrived two hours early. He watched its approach on CNN, a blazing fireball low in the sky. Instead of striking the ocean off the Eastern Seaboard as predicted, it crashed less than sixty miles northeast of Atlanta in Commerce, Georgia, a small town near Interstate 85. The impact extinguished the entire population of 6,500 in a blinding flash of light, so quickly that no one knew what was happening. The impact created a dark cloud of smoke and dust that rose a mile high into the afternoon sky, blocking out the sun. Molten rocks the size of SUVs spewed from the crater and fell like brimstone on the surrounding countryside. Homes not demolished instantly by the impact burst into flame from the heat wave. Summer desiccated pastures and rain-starved forests quickly became blazing infernos. Superheated hurricane-force winds swept outward, incinerating anyone caught outside without shelter.
The 7.2 magnitude quake that followed the impact raced outward in a concentric circle, leveling buildings, bridges, and power lines. In Atlanta, shattered windows cascaded onto the streets from high-rise buildings downtown and in Buckhead. A Marta train jumped the buckled tracks and crashed into Brookhaven Station, creating a roadblock across Peachtree Road.
The barracks building shook for a full minute, knocking photos from the walls, cracking the ceiling, and upending tables and other furniture. The flat-screen television fell from the wall just as the power failed. LaBonner held onto the suddenly alive chair in which he sat, as it took him for a wild ride across the room. Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. Sirens began wailing in the distance, as the city awoke to the crisis.
“Well, that was fucking different,” Vance said, picking himself up off the floor. He rubbed the back of his head where it had banged the tile. His hand came away wet from blood. He glanced at the blood, and said, “Shit.”
Caulder pinned each man in the room with a hard stare. “Garb your gear. It’s time to earn our pay.”
LaBonner picked up his pack and weapon and strode for the door without looking at his fellow team members. His pulse pounded in his temple from a migraine, but he had given Thayer all his aspirin three days ago. He gritted his teeth and forged on.
K-Team Zulu loaded onto a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter and was in the air within ten minutes. The runways were active with FA-18 Hornets loaded with AIM-7F Sparrow short-range and AIM-9 Sidewinder medium-range air-to-air missiles. A few carried BLU-26 cluster bombs outlawed by international treaty but revived as an efficient method of killing Fleas. The pilots nicknamed the bombs “Black Flags” after the flea spray. The 20mm M61 Vulcan cannons in the nose of each Hornet were effective against both Wasps and Fleas. The loud whine of the twin GE F404 turbofan engines as the Hornets took to the air drowned out the sound of the Blackhawk’s engines, curtailing any possible conversation. It was just as well. No one felt much like talking.
Unlike the first Kaiju to arrive on Earth, which took hours to emerge, the Kaiju in the later European attacks became active within minutes. Within an hour, swarms of Wasps would control the skies above the craters, and hordes of Fleas would sweep outward in all directions. The Hornet pilots would have their hands full avoiding the often-suicidal Wasps. AH-1 Cobras, UH-1 Iroquois ‘Hueys,’ and UH-60 Blackhawks like their transport vehicle would strafe Fleas and Wasps with 7.62mm Gau-17A Gatling guns, 7.62mm M60 machine guns, 20mm XM-197 cannon, AIM-9 missiles, and 70mm Hydra rockets.
When the skies became too dangerous, the choppers would retreat to attack the leading edge of the advancing Fleas. The tactics had proven effective for the first few hours, but LaBonner had witnessed such attacks many times. Eventually, by the time the second wave of Wasps and Fleas hatched, they all failed. The Fleas and Wasps were fearless and relentless, and their greater numbers overwhelmed any attempt to stop them from the air. Each hour the Kaiju remained alive, it produced hundreds more Fleas and scores of Wasps. The only effective way to stop a Kaiju was a controlled nuclear explosion. If K-Team Zulu failed in their task, LaBonner was certain the military would resort to a larger nuclear bomb. In that case, the aliens would still win by default.
The size of the crater astounded LaBonner when he caught his first glimpse of the smoking pit reaching down to the bowels of hell. He had seen the massive craters blasted in Indiana and Nevada by the first Kaiju. The craters from the European monsters were smaller. The crater below was bigger than Meteor Crater in Arizona. The impact had peeled back layers of gray Georgia clay in a three-hundred-yard-wide strip for half a mile, gouging deeper into the earth toward the crater end of the furrow. The splintered trunks of trees, demolished buildings, mangled vehicles, and strands of barbwire fencing lined the channel plowed through the Georgia countryside.
The crater was slightly oval, over a mile wide and more than five-hundred-feet deep. Black smoke poured from the crater and rolled along the ground, partially screening the ebony Kaiju pod deep within the crater. Patches of molten rock were visible through the smoke and haze. A ridge of shattered earth surrounded the pit, reaching a hundred feet in height at the terminus. Every building, farmhouse, and bridge within a six-mile radius lay flattened by the force of the impact and the aftershock.
As the Blackhawk approached the crater, the dense smoke roiling from the crater parted, allowing LaBonner a brief view of a dark shape moving just out of view. He leaned out the open door for a better look. The object was much smaller than any Kaiju he had seen. As its entire shape and size became distinguishable, his chest heaved with dread. The alien pod disgorged not a single giant Kaiju, or even two, but hundreds of smaller creatures, each ten feet in length. They scurried from the crater like baby spiders from a disturbed web and spread out in all directions so quickly LaBonner soon lost sight of them.
“Giant spiders! That is way fucked up,” Vance said. H
is right hand rested on the glass of the door, as his gaze shifted to follow the Kaiju Spiders pour out across the countryside.
“I counted at least a hundred,” Caulder said over the headphones, “maybe more.” His voice expressed the disgust that LaBonner, too, experienced at the unsettling sight of giant alien spiders.
“This changes things,” LaBonner replied. “Our nukes are useless.”
“We’ve got Wasps,” the pilot called out, as he banked the chopper sharply.
LaBonner focused his attention back on the pit. A large swarm of Wasps appeared through a break in the smoke. They had emerged fully developed from the pod. The aliens had once again changed tactics and caught them unaware. Instead of a giant Kaiju, they had sent smaller mobile units, Spiders and Wasps. K-Team Zulu had no time to prepare a proper defense. The aliens had sent an invasion force. The thought of twenty more similarly laden inbound pods sickened LaBonner.
He shook off the melancholy that gripped him. “Do we go after the Wasps or the Kaiju Spiders?” he asked Caulder.
Caulder stared out the window for a moment. Then, his face grew dark and grim. “Neither. Let the Air Force handle them. We’re not equipped for a ground war against Spiders. We’ll go back to base and regroup. We need some armored vehicles and heavier firepower. Take us home, pilot.”
The Blackhawk dropped until it barely skimmed the tops of trees and power lines. The Wasps remained near the crater, forming a large swarm, and ignoring the chopper. Seconds later, the first group of F-18s began firing missiles into the swarm. It was like stirring a hornet’s nest. The Wasps broke into small formations and went after each aircraft. LaBonner watched two F-18s go down with their engines clogged by Wasp bodies before he turned away. The pilots were valiant, but too few to make a difference.