Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

by James Swallow

  Golden fire ripped out of all four of Kashikoi’s eyes, tearing into the snake fiend. The wave of heat rushed back at Haruki as the ouroboros instantly recoiled, releasing its grip and using its strange fins to wind its way sideways, back and away from the injured mammoth amphibian.

  Kashikoi lunged fast toward the retreating two-headed snake, his immense size no impediment to his speed. The ground shook hard at each impact of the massive claws, and as Haruki fell to his side, he saw the immense tortoise creature’s left head snap open and clamp down hard on the snake thing’s neck, just behind one head. Steam rose from the ouroboros’s body where the powerful jaw had snapped, and the snake tried to recoil, but Kashikoi’s neck unexpectedly yanked backward, pulling the twisting snake into the air. As soon as its head at the other end had cleared the ground, Kashikoi swept a powerful foreleg at the monster and released his hold near the opposite head. The effect was the snake monstrosity being hurled through the air, as if it weighed no more than a fly batted away by a human hand.

  But the creature was coming for Haruki and the others.

  Haruki turned and moved toward the girl. Dakota was on the other side of her, having just gained his feet again. The other two teens had fled. Haruki ran into the girl and pushed her into Dakota, and the three of them tumbled down the side of the sand pile to the bottom, just as the top of the pile erupted in a spray of sand.

  The ouroboros swept just barely over their heads. It flew further down the street and slammed through two buildings, twisting and winding all the way. Haruki and the other two struggled to their feet yet again, as the winding snake slithered out of the rubble and back toward them, retracting a head at one end, and then striking up and forward. It would clear Haruki’s position by several feet, so his eyes naturally shot upward to watch the snake strike. Its tongue shot out, as it raced at an incline up through the air. It spewed a searing line of pink energy from its mouth, the jaws open nearly at a 180 degree angle, all fangs pointing forward. The energy beam shot across the sky and scored along the side of one of Kashikoi’s two necks. The tortoise-beast started to fall backward.

  Haruki turned back in time to see the other end of the snake was coming his way, and staying low, near ground level.

  Dakota had seen it, too.

  Haruki had just a split second for his eyes to meet Dakota’s before both men were in action.

  Haruki raced toward the American, but he moved instead for the beautiful girl. She was looking upward, as the mega-tortoise fell over backward onto its shell in excruciating slow motion. Haruki shifted his angle for her, as his eyes swept back toward the quickly advancing snake head. It shifted in mid-flight, its oversized eyes—larger than trucks—suddenly twitching, as its inner eyelids closed vertically, before retracting open again. It twisted its head in mid-flight.

  It had seen them.

  Haruki lunged, just as Dakota reached the girl and pivoted. Dakota shoved the girl, throwing her directly into Haruki’s arms. Haruki wrapped his arms around her as they fell to the side. He twisted so he would land on his back, cushioning the girl from the fall.

  But no one was left to save Dakota.

  He tried to turn at the last second, one arm cocked back as if he meant to punch the monster in the mouth. But the jaws were wide open, the immense fangs all pointing directly at Dakota as several of them skewered him from behind, right along the edge of the creature’s mouth. The long fangs ripped out the front of Dakota’s body. Then the huge snake mashed its mouth shut, folding Dakota’s pierced corpse in half and grinding him into several pieces, some of which fell to the ground as the beast’s head flew past. Haruki saw a leg and part of the pelvis still jammed between the gargantuan teeth before the ouroboros passed over him.

  The girl had not seen, as her face had been turned toward Haruki’s chest. And her long wavy hair had flopped over to cover her face. Haruki turned to his side and twisted to his knees, dragging the girl up. He swiped his hand across her face, pushing her hair back. Her face was gaunt and pale. She was in shock. He bent down and put his shoulder into her waist, hefting her over him like he had seen firemen carry victims.

  He ran down the street, focusing on his footing amongst the rubble. When he was past the second building into which the ouroboros had crashed, he turned to catch sight of the battle one last time, before rounding a corner of a still-standing steel factory building.

  Kashikoi had indeed landed on its steeply rounded bulbous back, but the beast kept rolling. Its giant back claws had dug in, the momentum carrying it around and up. The immense thing was now standing on its hind legs like a man. The ouroboros had fired its terrifying pink mouth rays again, but they appeared to do no damage to Kashikoi’s armored belly. The rays shot past Kashikoi too, though, and when they did, they obliterated any man-made structure they found.

  Just before Haruki rounded the building’s corner, he saw the move that was coming. Kashikoi was bringing both its forelegs, and the jagged, scarred claws on their tips, inward to crush on the sides of one of the ouroboros’s heads like a vice grip. The boom shook the wall of the building, as Haruki rushed past, the girl unconscious over his shoulder. He stopped only three times before he made it to the harbor and a ship that took him and the girl to Yakushima Island, south of the main islands of Japan.

  ~

  “Who won the fight, father?”

  Jiro looked out over the landscape of bones in the distance, most easy to see from their new vantage, high on the massive grassy hill near the center of the island. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun shone brightly across the strange landscape. Shinobi had been frightened by the bones at first, but upon seeing them closer, after the two had fixed the light on the lighthouse, the ever-present thick carpet of green moss that covered much of the island and the ancient bones somehow charmed the lad. Jiro stood up and stretched his lower back, then smiled.

  “Kashikoi dragged the ouroboros to the sea, but the beast was revived by the water and escaped.”

  Shinobi stood and pretended to stretch his own back, as he had seen Jiro do. The boy often imitated his father. Jiro smiled again.

  “So…the world believes that the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was from Atomic bombs?”

  Jiro grunted. “Most people. Even many with the sight have no reason to doubt history. But history is always written by those who win in conflicts, Shinobi. The Americans claimed the credit for the destruction—who knows what they saw as being responsible.”

  The man started down the grassy hillside, and he could hear his boy following him.

  “What happened to Grandfather Haruki, then?” the boy inquired.

  “He and the woman married. They moved north to Wakkanai, and he took the job as lighthouse keeper of the surrounding islands. But your grandfather never lost the sight, Shino. Like you and I, he kept his ability to see the creatures his whole life. Your grandmother—my mother—forgot what she had been through just months after it happened. They were both nijū hibakusha. Double survivors. Japan has officially recognized 165 hibakusha as having survived the destruction of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but your grandparents were actually 166 and 167. But they never told anyone. Your grandmother’s memory of the event was muddled at best, and Haruki could never tell anyone what had really happened. He kept track of Kashikoi, though, as the creature moved north through the islands of Japan, in the days after the war. The beast was much more careful in its travels then, he said. Almost as if it was aware of the terrible destruction its battle with the ouroboros had wrought.”

  Jiro fell quiet as he descended the rest of the hillside. As Shinobi scampered down behind him, he looked again to the sky but there was no sign of another storm. Still, they would get inside the lighthouse to sleep for the night long before darkness fell over the necropolis.

  As Shinobi reached the level ground at the base of the hill, he paused and tilted his head. Jiro could see that his son was working out how to phrase his question. He waited on the boy.

  “
Why are there so many bones here? Why this island? And why is Kurohaka Island not on any of the maps?”

  “This is where he took the ones he defeated.”

  Shinobi’s eyes widened.

  Jiro nodded. “Kashikoi defeated many threats against Japan, and when he killed another giant beast like the ouroboros, he would bring it here. Remember, some of the corpses here are actually monsters that were dying and came here voluntarily. Some of the bones are from creatures that died and were transported here by teens with the sight.”

  Jiro started walking for the lighthouse. “My father tended the light that would keep most sailors away from this island, and he received a government check from both Japan and Russia to tend to the outlying islands as well. I took the job from him, just as you will one day take the job from me.”

  Jiro noticed Shinobi’s absence after another handful of steps and turned to look back at where Shinobi remained rooted to the ground, at the foot of the steep hillside.

  The boy had a perplexed look on his face, until he finally asked his burning question.

  “What happened to Kashikoi?”

  Jiro looked at the boy, then raised his eyes to the immense hill behind him. Then he lowered his eyes back to the child and raised one eyebrow.

  Color drained from the child’s face as realization sank in. The boy turned to stare at the side of the hill, upon which they had been perched all afternoon. The hill which was not a hill. Jiro chuckled and turned toward the lighthouse.

  “We tend the light, and we protect the protector. Come now, Shino. It will be dark soon.”

  Occupied

  Natania Barron

  Maker:

  Julian moves through the narrow sewers and drainage pipes without hesitation. More a mole than a woman, she navigates with perfect precision, her thick boots trudging through every kind of detritus provided by the city. She is immune to the bloated rats, the stench, the slimy mold crawling up the side of the glistening brick. It’s only the things out of place—the sound of a small gator slipping into a stream, or an unanticipated moan—that would stop her. And nothing does for quite some time.

  Then, just as she is about to take the final twist toward her own alcove, near Berfa the Engine, she stops cold. Something glows. Not the light of a lantern or candle, not even the odd luminescence of the mushrooms that sometimes grow in the depths. It is something blue and cold and frosty.

  Creature:

  We have been asleep for so long; so long that all is dust. Our tongues. Our eyes. Our bodies. Our shrunken phalluses. These sick and sad reminders that we had bodies, once. That we felt the power of blood, felt the coursing of the Holy Spirit within us. Tasted and rutted and blazed. We were passion and power and knowledge. Too much knowledge.

  A thousand thousand years, and we have suffered in the miasma of loss and excommunication and forgotten our names. Once, we were feared, favored, loved. Now, we only whisper to ourselves, with no knowledge of our names or our purposes. One among us was a healer; another a poet; another still a guardian and warrior of a kind rarely seen. We were astronomers and visionaries and, for no reason other than our lust for life, we were cast aside. Forgotten.

  We have lived without hope. What power made up our bodies has been dispersed so far and wide that we have given into the monotony. The pain. Suffering gave way to anger and back again to suffering, and it has gone on so long that we had forgotten that once, before we had been reduced to such nothing, we had plotted. Planned. Planted seeds, however far-flung, of the hope of rebirth.

  A sword. Forged from the heart of a star. Melted down and changing hands, century after century, passing borders and oceans. Coveted, cursed, stolen. Our last hope.

  Maker:

  Julian curses. She cannot help herself. The sudden disruption causes her to stumble, losing her footing, twisting her ankle. It cracks under her weight, sending bright sparks of pain up the side of her leg and she gasps in spite of herself, wishing she had opted for another route. The last thing she wants is discord. Her routine is all she has—it’s what keeps her from losing time and whatever else precious she has left to her.

  Part of her is sensible and says that she ought to keep moving, albeit slowly, back to her enclave. It is the safest option, and safety is one of Julian’s most intense concerns. She knows how difficult it is to languish in pain and suffering after safety has been ignored. With a gloved hand she reaches up and touches the stump of her ear, feeling the ragged bumps and twisted skin, hearing the strange scratching noise such a motion produces.

  But the light. That blue. As she braces herself against the wall and finds her way toward breathing more regularly, she notices that it flickers and dissipates with a certain rhythm. Not quite a pulse, but it is regular. And there’s a smell, too. She feels as if she can remember the scent, but not entirely; it’s a distant memory. A part of her brain fires, but she can’t attach any strings to the thought. It just floats a moment, and then is gone, no connection made. But the memory is not a warning. What’s left in Julian’s mind is something burning and bright, something strong and dangerous.

  Julian slides across the grimy bricks and twists her head to get a better look. Her glasses are dirty enough as it is, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Her eyes are still dazzled by what she sees. The luminescence emanates from a small object, half buried in the mud and mold at the base of one of the drains. The color is cold, she thinks, even though she hasn’t touched it yet. As if it were ice. Which is strange, she realizes, because she is very hot and very sticky. The room is not cold. The color is cold.

  Why would it be here, she wonders? Perhaps there was a deluge above and it got knocked clean. Perhaps someone threw it down here to hide it. Or to get rid of it. Such a beautiful thing should not be let go of, Julian thinks.

  Either way, Julian doesn’t think much as she lunges forward to grab it. Every muscle in her crooked body twists as she moves—faster than she has moved in a decade—and as she tumbles forward into the muck, she wonders for a moment if it is pulling her. If the cold and light is reaching toward her, desiring her touch as much as she desires its.

  She gasps, seized with a strange concern that someone else will take the object, and in a moment, she holds it in her hands, blinking down through grimy lenses, dazzled.

  Scissors. A pair of scissors. When she touches them, whispers rise around her like steam.

  Creature:

  We all shout out as one. That touch! The touch of a human, but not entirely human. We feel her body, know her immediately as a descendent of ours. One of our children, a thousand generations removed from the perfect babes we birthed upon the earth. She is a broken, weak thing, and has no idea what she has in her hands. No concept that we, the Watchers, are rising up from the depths in ecstasy—have waited nigh a million years for this moment.

  It is pain and anguish and love and grief we all feel in that moment. Through that cursed, magic metal, that single touch is as powerful as the breath of life we were once given. How small it has become. How simple. What was once a flaming sword, wielded by the greatest among us, has now become a tiny thing.

  The touch is enough to wake us, to rouse us, but she must do more. She must remember what she is. She must awaken, herself.

  We wait. We have waited long, it is true, but we would not exist if we had not waited so long. So, again, we pause. We draw breath. We poise on the edge and anticipate.

  Maker:

  The scissors are so cold, so perfectly cold, in her hands. Julian smiles, tries not to laugh as she covers them up with a piece of burlap to dampen the light. They are so beautiful. So ornate. So delicate. It reminds her of the kit her mother had, back when she lived Above. The scrollwork looks almost Eastern, and she runs her fingers along the side and smiles. She loves the cold. It’s a welcome cold. A bright cold. The cold of stars in the firmament.

  We are a many. We are a waiting. We are a hunger. We are a watching.

  She has heard the voices before, and she is not afraid
of them. In a way, she is relieved. That the whispers have intensified means she’s less mad. It means that something—this pair of scissors—has been waiting for her all these years. It means her work has not been in vain. It means the years of ridicule and scorn…

  But no one has ever understood Julian, not even Brother Barrier. No one except her companions, all awaiting her in her nook. And that is where she goes, her breath caught in her throat as she makes her way without hesitation, the scissors pressing against her breast as she navigates the sewer to the place of her own.

  There are half a dozen locks on the door of her space, and she quickly goes about releasing them, though she fails twice on the third lock. When she finally makes it inside, she is breathing so heavily her spectacles start fogging up. Julian won’t let go of the scissors, even though they bite into her hands with their unearthly cold. Her whole arm is numb now, up to the elbow, and she takes a quick stock of the room.

  The specimens line the room from floor to ceiling, in jars and boxes and cans, depending on the individual situation. Arms, legs, fingers and toes are the uppermost tier, while the most easy accessible drawers and shelves are lined with the more delicate matter: eyes, tongues, and silvery webs of nerves and veins. Most are preserved, thanks to Brother Barrier’s help attaining ingredients and fluids from Above.

  He has always been oddly fascinated with her work, even though it has nothing to do with the steam pumps. The day he stumbled upon her, she was terrified he would judge her, make her stop. He wore the robes of a priest, after all. But instead of fear, he was full of awe. Awe and support.

  What specimens aren’t preserved wait in the experimental section, one level below. As Julian takes the burlap off the scissors, something miraculous happens.