Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

by James Swallow

  The railway tunnel through the bare granite peak called Devil’s Cap was being assaulted from four points. Two teams of thirty men each worked simultaneously from the east and west, and another pair from the center of the mountain itself. They’d sunk a shaft midway through and lowered the Celestials in, but the hand derrick used to hoist the rubble out had finally failed and they’d had to halt the center work for about five weeks while a twelve ton steam engine, the Old Judah, and its tender, were stripped of their wheels and hauled up the mountainside from the railhead at Gold Run by the Indians and oxen. They’d finally settled the engine down over the shaft last week, and built a sturdy wooden enclosure over it to hold back the snow.

  Yet the 440 engine was not chugging along. There was no ringing of chisels and hammers, no intermittent, muffled explosions, no nothing.

  Tom Tolliver and a couple of the Paiutes who ran the engine were standing expectantly outside the enclosure, smoking. All the west end tunnel coolies were milling around chattering like it was tea time.

  “What’n the name of the Blessed Virgin’s holy hymen are you yellow niggers doin’ standin’ around?” Joe roared through the speaking trumpet when he got in their midst, Chow Lan running alongside him. “Get to work!”

  There was a lot of muttering and head shaking, a lot of heads turning towards where some of the Indians, too, were standing around.

  “Where’n the hell’s Hesutu?” Joe Blas demanded.

  He came forward at the mention of his name, a lanky, long haired redskin with a wispy mustache, hide boots and a knife through his belt, a big black hat pulled low over his eyes.

  “Here, boss.”

  “Alright now, boyo,” Joe Blas said lowly. “’You the one been fillin’ these heathens’ ears with a lot of guff about the Devil bein’ in the center of that grand high rock?”

  “I didn’t say no such thing, boss,” said Hesutu, smiling with his dark eyes.

  Joe looked back at Chow Lan, who shrugged and adjusted his spectacles.

  “That what they tell me!” Chow Lan protested, encompassing the crowd of Chinamen with a sweep of his arm.

  “I didn’t say it was the devil,” amended Hesutu. “What I said was, Dzoavits is in there.”

  “What?”

  “Dzoavits,” Hesutu said again. “It’s like a giant. Eats babies. But don’t make no mistake, you all keep breakin’ up Dzoavits’ mountain, he’ll come out and eat you too. He ain’t particular, what I hear.”

  “What are you on about?” Joe demanded.

  “Some say it was always there,” said Hesutu. “Some say it fell from the sky. It’s big enough to blot out the sun. It went after Dove and her children in the old times, but Badger dug a hole, and tricked Dzoavits into it. Then Dove threw hot rocks down over the hole and trapped him inside. It was up there,” he said, pointing to the rise on which sat the snow covered building housing Old Judah. That’s why they call this place Devil’s Cap. He’s been in there since.”

  Joe Blas bunched and unbunched his fists at his sides. It was all he could do not to grab up this crazy Indian and drown him like a kitten in the Celestials’ tea barrel.

  “Boyo,” he said through his teeth, “you’re gonna stop talkin’ this bollocks in front of my coolies, or so help me I’m going to boot your red arse into the happy huntin’ ground.”

  “Can’t you feel it, white man?” Hesutu asked, staring at the summit. “At night, when you’re sleepin’ in the shadow of that rock? Can’t you feel it watchin’ you?”

  Joe Blas tucked himself in with a bottle of tarantula juice every night. His own mother’s shade could stand waling at the foot of his bed until the break of dawn and he’d snore through it. But he was no believer in bugaboos. He had turned his back on all such nonsense when the English had taken his father’s farm and the old man had died on a boat bound for New York City. There was no God but what the priests made up to fill their coffers.

  “Skipper Noah’s whiskey dick, man! The only eyes I feel at night are those of Boss Crocker in Sacramento, waitin’ for us to bust through the other side of that damned rock. Now, will you tell these gullible sonsabitches the truth, or is it a walk over the rocks to Coburn Station you’ll be wantin?”

  Hesutu chewed his lips a minute before answering.

  “If you aim to continue along your course, then I b’lieve I’ll take my leave. Won’t no place be far enough away from here once you let that thing loose. You take my advice, dig over t’the north instead, through Donner’s summit.”

  “Oh so it’s a surveyor you are now, eh?” He blew up at last, hollering through the megaphone in the Indian’s face. “You get the fuck down off my mountain, chief, or I’ll club you like Sebastian!”

  Hesutu held up his hands and walked away, shaking his head.

  “Alright, boss. But you stay here, you’re gonna get swallered up like Jonah.”

  Joe turned to the gathered Chinese, all of them huddled together and whispering.

  “Shut your gobs, you noodle suckin’ yellow pagans!” he hollered through his speaking trumpet, stomping through their midst and clambering up on a boulder to shout down at them good and proper. “Chow Lan tells me you won’t work because you’re afraid. Don’t fear any devil in that mountain, fear me. You want to bring your yellow wives and your little slant-eyed nippers over here from the old country? Well, you know that takes money. Each of you has a contract with the Central Pacific Railroad at twenty eight dollars a month. Twenty eight dollars! Can you make that washing dishes back in San Francisco, or sweeping up the Five Star Saloon down in Dutch Flat? How old will your children be by the time you save enough money shoveling shite? Will they remember your ugly faces? Will your wives? How long before they let some other opium smoker in to buck their sideways cocktroughs? You want to see your kith and kin, see the other side of that rock. If not, pack up your stinkin’ cuttlefish and your bamboo shoots and your goddamned piss warm tea and point your squinty faces west, because that’s all you’ll be taking with you. I don’t pay any man till the job’s done.”

  One man, Lo Shu, stepped up, scowling.

  “We work long time a’ready! We earn—”

  “You’ve earned nothing, you little squint! Get back in line or I’ll fetch your skull so grand a clout you’ll forget your father’s name, if you ever knew it to begin with. I’ll say it again, and slowly so’s it’ll penetrate your muley heads. No work-ee no money. Savvy that?”

  This set up a frenzy of protests from the men, but again Joe shouted them down.

  “Read your contracts, you goddamned ignoramuses. Or get Chow Lan to read ‘em if you can’t or don’t believe me.”

  Some grabbed Chow Lan by the shirt front and shouted questions at him, and after a bit he explained to them that yes, the gwailo was correct. They were contracted for the end of the job. The only way to leave early with a paycheck was to lose a limb.

  “Now you know where you stand?” Joe yelled, when Chow Lan had finished his spiel. “Reform your gangs and get to work, and no more of this heathen tripe about monsters and devils.”

  The Chinamen grumbled and scowled, but after lingering, they grudgingly went off to their respective jobs.

  Joe Blas stood on the rock with his hands on his belt until the last of them had climbed up to the summit and Tolliver signaled to him and went inside the engine house. A minute later Old Judah wheezed to life. The sharp whistle signaled the delayed start of the work day.

  The sun peaked behind Devil’s Cap and shone like a halo, causing Joe to look away, eyes watering. He reached into his coat pocket and took a pull of firewater, shivered and spat.

  ~

  In an hour the gangs were in full swing, hammering at the rock, filling it with powder, and blowing holes as if Hesutu’s talk had been a bad dream. Joe wasn’t surprised. He knew money dispelled more demons than holy water and crucifixes.

  The work was slow and tedious. They could expect to get about seven inches a day all in all if they kept it safe, eight if Jo
e booted their arses a bit. But the latter usually led to blown off fingers and worse. The Indians and the whites wouldn’t dangle in a basket over a cliff face with a barrel of blasting powder, and he didn’t like to waste Chinamen. If they fell behind, of course, they were a commodity to be spent. Blasting could be a dicey business, but he had never lost a white man yet, although admittedly the company didn’t count how many Honest Johns had gone to China feet first.

  There was a subterranean explosion, the summit gang blasting in the center shaft. The priest came out of the snow tunnel, a bamboo pole over one of his sturdy shoulders, a powder keg filled with fresh tea bouncing on either end.

  Joe watched the priest set down his burden, lift the lid off the big communal tea barrel, and pour the steaming new stuff in.

  “Hey, Priest!” Joe called, since he had never learned the man’s name.

  The priest replaced the lid of the barrel, picked up his pole and the empty kegs, and came over.

  “You speak-ee English, yeah?”

  The priest nodded.

  Joe pursed his lips. He knew that one.

  “That ain’t no answer. Yes or no?”

  “I speak English,” the priest said, with only a faint accent.

  Joe raised his eyebrows.

  “I’ve known priests. Lots in my day. But you ain’t like them. You don’t ask for nothin.’ You don’t tithe, you do a fair bit of work around here, free of charge. So what the hell kinda man are you?”

  The priest shrugged. “Just a man, like you.”

  Joe rankled. “Like me? Mary Magdalene’s festerin’ cunt, you are. What’s your angle, Priest? I can’t figure it.”

  “Angle?”

  “What’re you doin’ here?”

  The priest looked puzzled. “I am working. Serving, when I can.”

  “Servin’ who?”

  “Them,” he said, glancing at the coolies lining up for fresh tea. He turned back to Joe. “You.”

  Joe snorted. “What the hell could you do for me? And why?”

  “If we do not take care of each other, who will?”

  “Who said that? Buddha?”

  The priest nodded.

  Joe spat in the snow. “And that’s the shite you tell these coolies to keep ‘em in line?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Religion. It ain’t nothin’ but a means of controllin’ the poor and ignorant. And who’s poorer or more ignorant than them pigtails, bustin’ their scrawny arses for twenty eight dollars a month.”

  “How much do you bust your arse for a month, Boss Joe?” the priest asked.

  Joe bristled. “That ain’t none of your affair, boyo. I’m a free man with no ties. I can leave anytime I want to. I’m beholden to neither man nor God, no, nor Buddha neither. I walk me own road.”

  “One path is better than no path, but the right path is best of all,” said the priest.

  “And you figure what you preach is the right path. Aha! Now you’re talkin’ like a priest.”

  The priest smiled thinly and bowed. “Please excuse me. I have work to do,” he said.

  Joe grinned. “Sure, go ahead. I respect a man who knows when he’s beat.”

  “To win a thousand battles is good, but to win one battle over ourselves is great,” said the priest, bowing again before turning to go.

  Joe frowned. What the hell did that mean? He didn’t know just why had taken a sudden interest in the priest. Boredom maybe. All his minor curiosity fled his mind when the door to the engine house atop the summit flung open and Tolliver stumbled out, drenched in blood and black with powder, a plume of smoke billowing out behind him.

  He nearly fell down the mountain, but one of the Paiutes rushed out and caught him.

  “Hey boss!” the Indian yelled.

  Joe cussed and trudged up the incline. He heard a crash behind him and all of a sudden the Chinese priest was climbing alongside him. Halfway up the top, the ground shook hard and rumbled. A pile of loose rocks tumbled free and one struck Joe bloody in the head. The priest grabbed his shirt and kept him from falling. For nearly a full minute they hugged the rock, watching the trees sway and shed snow down on them. It was like gripping a bull trying to shake them loose.

  “Earthquake!” he managed to yell.

  Below, the coolies working the west tunnel ran into the open shouting, dirt and rubble sliding from their shoulders.

  Bushy bearded Jesus, he had never felt one this bad. It seemed like it would never end. He glanced up and saw the wood enclosure trembling atop the summit. His heart sank when he heard a crack and saw part of the roof shift. The Paiutes spilled out and fell to their bellies just as the roof collapsed inward, the whole structure crashing flat over the engine and the tender. Debris slid down the embankment, carrying a couple screaming Paiutes with it.

  Joe put his head down and quietly willed the engine not to fall from the mountain. Christ’s bloody breechclout, they would be here another year if they lost it. What would he tell Crocker? He had talked big to the priest about being footloose and fancy free. Damn if it didn’t look like he really would be. Sure, he’d get the blame, even for an earthquake. And Crocker would put some other mick in his place. It’d be back to Fisherman’s Wharf for him, bareknuckle fighting, spittin’ teeth, and pissin’ blood and whiskey till a good job came his way again, if it ever did.

  He looked over at the priest, but he was gone. Fallen or carried off by a boulder or bit of rubble, no doubt. But no, Joe saw him above then, springing nimble as a goat from rock to rock, even in the midst of the shaking, making his way up to the summit.

  Joe held on for dear life, and watched as the priest reached Tolliver where the Paiute had laid him when the shaking had started. He lifted the bloody man up in his arms and hurled himself over the edge like a madman. But instead of tumbling to his death, he skipped lightly till he reached the bottom of the hill, and then knelt there over Tolliver, shielding him from falling rocks with his own body.

  No priest Joe had ever seen was like that.

  The shaking stopped, and he looked up at the pile of wood and snow that once covered the engine, and saw Old Judah’s smokestack poking through.

  “Well thank Missus Lot’s salt tits for that!” he exclaimed.

  Just then something burst from the side of the rock to his immediate left. It looked like a huge, mossy mass of tendril roots.

  Joe was so surprised he relaxed his grip on the stone and fell backwards.

  Well, that’s the end of me, he thought, as he plummeted into the open air. He supposed he would land on that rock he had been standing on before, and be broken in two. If he was lucky, he might squash a Chinaman and be saved.

  But neither happened.

  Instead, he felt a dull impact on his upper back and behind his knees, and found himself sagging in the surprisingly hard, strong arms of the priest like a suckling baby.

  He looked at the priest in surprise, and noticed the inside of his forearms were tattooed…no, not tattooed. There were designs branded on his skin, puffy scars in the shape of a fanciful Oriental dragon on his right arm, and a tiger on his left.

  He put down his feet.

  “Ta, boyo,” Joe muttered.

  But the priest wasn’t looking at him. No one was. The coolies and the Indians were uniformly staring wide eyed up at the top of Devil’s Cap.

  The mass of tangled roots that had surprised Joe were moving, waggling like great knotty, long nailed fingers.

  Because that’s what they were.

  He didn’t want to believe it, but when the splayed things shot further out causing the rock to crack and crumble, they were on the end of an immensely long, muscular arm, shaggy with stringy gray hair stained brown by the dirt.

  The top of Devil’s Cap moved. It rose and fell once, like something beneath were testing the weight, then it swelled again, enough to tip Old Judah and its tender off the slope at last. The noise of all that iron and steel rolling down was a terrible cacophony, and a few men were caug
ht up in it and smashed flat.

  Something burst through the snowy cap…no, not something. What had Hesutu called it?

  Dzoavits.

  It erupted from the stone, doing to Devil’s Cap in seven seconds what it would have taken another eleven months for them to do with hand drills and blasting powder.

  It was immense. At least a hundred and fifty feet tall. Another arm punched through the side of the rock and it extricated itself from the encasing rock like a fat man wriggling out of a barrel. It was moundish, with a huge hairy hump between its muscled shoulders, covered with spiky, quartz-like protuberances of a muddy hue. In the center of its chest was a hint of a head, framed by long, scraggly gray-black hair. There was an overlarge disapproving mouth that stretched almost from shoulder to shoulder, and was hung with fleshy lips and shot through with a row of yellow, serrated shark teeth. Above that maw, two bulging red eyes glowed. The thing opened its mouth, took its first cold breath of fresh air in God only knew how long, and let out a terrifying, protracted howl, which washed over them in a wave that drove them all physically back in horror.

  Rocks cascading off its body, it pulled itself free of its prison, revealing a pair of strange, spindly, kangaroo-like legs that ended in long grasping black talons. It seemed to rest on its massive arms, and use them for locomotion, like a great gorilla, or a man with withered legs.

  The horrible thing perched atop the ruins of Devil’s Cap and surveyed the countryside, a newly emerged monarch. It sucked the air with its ponderous lungs and regarded the milling men below.

  Joe tried to run, and tripped over Chow Lan, who had fallen sprawling in the snow and was groping for his spectacles. The Chinese and Indians were in full route, except for the priest, who knelt beside Tolliver, yelling in Chinese at the men who passed, apparently urging them to take him with them.

  Joe heard gunshots, and looked over. Several of the Indians and white men in the camp had seen the thing and had emerged from the snow tunnel. They were firing at it with shotguns and muskets. Joe almost laughed as he scrabbled to his feet.