Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse

by Christofer Nigro

  As for the fifth plane, however, Megadrak chose to kick it across the tarmac instead of crushing it. The kaiju’s incredibly powerful move sent the multi-ton craft sailing through the air as if it weighed mere ounces. The unnaturally airborne plane was flung in the same direction as Ren’s speeding car.

  “The plane!” Keiko exclaimed.

  “Whooaaa!” Ren shrieked as he once more swerved the car to an extreme right.

  Another very close call ensued as the displaced plane just missed landing on the car when it hit the ground.

  The craft’s fuselage began sliding across the tarmacadam towards the airport’s main building, kicking up a huge trail of sparks as it did so. The people inside the edifice heard the tremendous smashing sound outside the windows and saw the plane skidding towards them on its side at frightening speed.

  A percentage of the crowd in the building managed to scatter in time, but another portion were startled into a state of shock and failed to react promptly. As a result, when the craft crashed through the side of the building and tore through the lobby, those immobilized individuals were swiftly crushed to death. Those who were hit by the plane but did not die outright were broken and maimed in a plethora of grisly ways that made them wish they had been killed instead.

  Megadrak lumbered toward the already decimated building and tore off the roof as if it were cardboard. The gargantuan monster was enraged at the sight of several people scampering about inside the structure, and it quickly reached in and grasped nearly a dozen of them in a giant cerulean hand.

  Half of those people quickly had the life crushed out of them by the monster’s powerful grip alone, while the rest of them met their end when the kaiju stuffed them into its ultra-powerful jaws. Megadrak then plowed through the building, stomping on a number of people who had fainted or fallen in the process, reducing them to scarlet splotches around piles of flattened clothing.

  The monster released a reverberating, growling hiss that the few survivors of what would be called the Haneda Massacre continued to hear in their nightmares for the rest of their lives. The great Megadrak thus again declared its territorial supremacy over the former rulers of the planet.

  It was immediately after this instinctual gesture of exultation that the towering creature’s keen ears picked up a familiar sound several meters away. This was the noise emanating from the engine of Ren’s car as it sped out of the airport and headed down a road leading into the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo Metropolis.

  The sight of the many buildings along the horizon, some of which came close to matching the kaiju’s own size, indicated a great concentration of human presence to its primitive but intelligent mind. The gargantuan beast thus perceived the city as a strong challenge to its supreme hegemony over the land it claimed as its territory. This was an affront to the great dragon’s primal cognitive directive that it would not tolerate.

  It could thus think of nothing else beyond proving its dominance over the land by driving every one of these tiny beings out of its newly claimed territory. In the process, it would feast upon or crush as many of its tiny rivals as it could lay its massive talons upon.

  Without further hesitation, the great Megadrak began its trek toward the center of the populous metropole. The kaiju’s amazingly keen vision locked onto Ren’s tiny Subaru, trailing the vehicle toward what it considered to be a vast nesting area of its hated territorial competitors.

  CHAPTER 12: Shocking Japan

  “We need to get Les to a hospital,” Keiko reminded Ren as he drove up the road leading directly into Tokyo’s Chiyoda ward.

  “Do not worry,” the journalist replied while lowering his eyes to inspect the integrity of the camera strung about his neck. “The Diet will get him transported to a hospital somewhere.”

  “Can we not contact them along the way, so they can be prepared for his arrival?” Keiko asked.

  “Sorry,” Ren firmly retorted, “but if mankind should ever invent a type of telephone we can carry along with us wherever we go, that time has not yet come. And I am sure as hell not going to stop somewhere along the way to make that phone call.”

  It was at that moment in the discourse when the four conscious passengers felt a distinct tremulous vibration in the road, accompanied by a sound reminiscent of a battering ram hitting the ground in timed sequences.

  “No…” Keiko wailed as she turned her head to see her worst fear confirmed.

  Ren immediately caught the terrifyingly unwelcome sight in his vehicle’s rearview mirror: Megadrak had nearly caught up to them and was rapidly advancing like a reptilian juggernaut from the depths of Hell.

  “Ah shit!” he exclaimed. “That damned thing never does let up!”

  “And it is gaining!” Risa screamed. “Do something!”

  “I am thinking, okay?” Ren rejoined as he looked about the immediate topography for any type of option that he could use to get the pursuing kaiju off their trail.

  It was just a few seconds later that he spotted a line of transmission towers about 100 meters to their left.

  “Yes!” he shouted. “The gods have answered! Hold on!”

  “What are you going to do?” Goro inquired uneasily as he duly recognized the journalist’s signature exclamation, one which often seemed to precede his initiating some foolhardy act.

  “I am going to drive between two of the towers,” Ren explained. “We will see if I can lure that big bastard into following us directly through the electrical wires. Then we can watch the son of a bitch fry like a chicken on the stove!”

  The car veered off the road towards the grassy section of ground leading to the transmission towers. Megadrak changed its direction accordingly and maintained pursuit. Ren pushed the accelerator as far to the floor as his foot could manage, determined to stay ahead of the trailing giant beast just long enough for the vehicle to pass under the tension wires. The reptilian titan sustained its enormous stride, however, and its relentless pursuit across the distance put the car’s successful escape in doubt.

  “Come on, come on!” Ren shouted as he sped the distance towards the designated spot forty meters beneath the power lines.

  The other passengers each recited silent prayers that the car would not overheat along the way, as Risa’s vehicle had. Or that the hellish beast pursuing them wouldn’t reach the car before meeting the force that awaited it between the steel lattice towers.

  Within mere minutes, the Subaru raced under the space where the aluminum cables hung far above them. Megadrak diligently maintained pursuit, planning to plow right through what it considered to be an ineffectual barrier. Much to the kaiju’s literal shock, however, it was greeted upon contact with the wires by a surge of incredible energy. Having never encountered such a phenomenon before, the giant monster roared in agonized surprise as its massive form was beset by 70,000 volts of electricity.

  Ren screeched his car to a halt about twenty meters away so he could view the spectacle occurring before the occupants of the car.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Goro said.

  “Sorry, but there is no chance I could miss creating a pictorial record of that bastard getting the king-sized equivalent of the electric chair!” the journalist replied.

  Ren had a wide beam on his face as he ran a few feet in front of the parked car to snap a few pictures of Megadrak bellowing and flailing its limbs about in tortured spasms as cracklings arcs of heavy voltage poured through its every living cell.

  “Ha ha! Look at that thing sizzle! I swear I can smell steak from here!”

  The photographer paused for a moment to check how much film he had left. It was his intention to stay put so he could acquire footage of the anticipated moment when the monster’s seemingly inevitable death occurred.

  That mood of elation and excited satisfaction slipped from the journalist’s mien, however, when he saw the kaiju smartly turn its right arm from pain-ridden thrashing to a focused strike against the nearest truss tower. With a single blow, its mighty limb crumpled
the tower’s strong steel lattice as if it were made of cardboard. A second strike from the beast completed its destruction.

  What remained of the erected metallic structure collapsed to the ground like a child’s erector set, pulling the voltage-transmitting cables down in the process. That, of course, ended the electrical assault.

  “Oh no,” Ren lamented. “The bastard pulled the spinning high tension wires down!”

  “It didn’t die!” Keiko keened in anguished rage. “The son of a bitch didn’t burn!” The Takiguchi maiden began pounding her fists against the car window in a state of uncontrolled rage. “I wanted it to burn! I wanted to watch it die!”

  “Keiko-san, please calm down,” Risa said as she grabbed her fellow passenger’s arms.

  The young women’s struggle was interrupted with the sound of the driver’s door being slammed shut as Ren leapt back into the car.

  “We have to get a move on while the monster is still momentarily stunned!” the journalist said. “It is fortunate I left the engine running!”

  Ren quickly took the car out of neutral and began accelerating towards another road that would take it into the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo.

  Megadrak swiped the remaining portions of the now de-powered aluminum wires off itself and shook its massive head to regain its full senses. Having shrugged off the remaining effects of the electrical barrage, the titanic harbinger of the apocalypse roared in anger and resumed its inexorable march towards Tokyo.

  The first major kaiju incursion into a big city was about to occur, and the world would never again be the same.

  CHAPTER 13: There Goes Tokyo…

  The multitude of residents in the prefecture could scarcely believe the evacuation warnings that emanated from their radio speakers. Those who had television sets were astounded and terrified to have their usual viewing pleasure suddenly pre-empted by Nippon newscasters urging them to leave the environs of the metropole in as quick and orderly a fashion as possible.

  The officially issued reports hesitated to use the terms “kaiju” or “daikaiju” to avoid the warnings being dismissed as a cruel joke. Instead, the reports simply informed listeners that a dangerous natural disaster was imminent, and it involved a freakishly large reptilian animal that had now invaded the main Japanese isle of Honshu.

  The public was further informed that Prime Minister Yoshida had declared a national emergency, and martial law would be temporarily declared if necessary to secure full compliance with the evacuation procedures. Finally, the citizenry was assured the Self-Defense Force, with aid from the American military, would be acting promptly to deal with the threat. That would include helping with the mass evacuation.

  Several listeners or viewers wondered if the warning description actually constituted some bizarre new code for a military attack by a foreign nation, possibly from the Soviet Union in angry retribution for Japan having become an ally of the United States following its defeat in the war. Or perhaps a military assault launched from Korea due to the strategic presence of US military bases on the Land of the Rising Sun. Nevertheless, most of these people heeded the warnings and reported to designated evacuation centers if they were unable to depart the city by their own means.

  Alas, those who so happened not to be tuning into their local news station, or were simply out and about when the emergency evacuation request had been broadcasted, were obviously unable to act on these warnings. They were soon about to discover the situation in a much more direct fashion.

  ***

  Kotaro was a fixture at the famed Tsukiji fishing market for over thirty years. The unusually tall, pepper-haired man specialized in mollusks of substantial variety, so his outside stand was often a popular stopping point for the many connoisseurs of the island nation’s sea-based cuisine. As of about 3:25 p.m. on this particular sunny afternoon in late June, all had been normal in the market up to that point. As per usual, a recurring customer—a graduate student in the field of marine biology named Toto—was doing more perusing than purchasing.

  “I find these oysters with the blue shells quite fascinating,” the young scholar said. “How do you manage to procure them in such abundance?”

  “I belong to a cult that knows exactly where to find blue oysters,” Kotaro snapped. “Now, if looking at them is of greater interest to you than eating them, I suggest you purchase a photograph or painting at one of the art shops over in Ginza. You would be taking up far less needless space at my stand if you did that.”

  “Well now,” Toto replied, “I do not mean to inconvenience you or your other customers, so I shall purchase one to take back to the university lab with me, okay?” He received no response. “Kotaro…?”

  But as Toto noticed, the mollusk-selling entrepreneur was distracted by something of considerably greater magnitude. His full attention was centered on the gargantuan form of Megadrak, which had appeared behind a ten-story building directly across the street.

  The amazing beast was easily able to peer over the huge edifice, and its eerie emerald eyes were fixed upon the tiny beings scuttling about on the street below it. The kaiju had not yet chosen to act on its surroundings, but was for the moment concerned only with scoping the immediate area, courtesy of the hawk-like visual acuity its enormous eyes were endowed with. Its approach failed to be heard over the normal hustle and bustle of the crowded city street, and thus far only Kotaro had noticed it.

  “The radiation must have spawned it,” the seafood merchant muttered quietly to himself.

  Toro took on a bemused expression in response. “Huh?”

  “It never fails to happen,” Kotaro continued to ruminate aloud. “As some wise men once told me: History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of man. May the gods save us all.”

  “What are you talking about, Kotaro?” Toto asked incredulously. “I already told you I would pay for one of those blue oysters, so if you are implying that nature enacted some type of ‘folly’ by allowing me to be born, that is quite rude of you…”

  Toto cut himself off when he finally realized that Kotaro wasn’t speaking or alluding to him in any manner, but was instead referring to something situated behind and above them. The young graduate student turned around to behold the gigantic object which had captured the fish salesman’s attention. It was a form of life that his impressive academic mind could scarcely comprehend. The youth’s mouth sprung open, unable to emit the horrendous scream it was his intention to release, and the shock sent him falling back against Kotaro’s stand.

  Toto’s terror-induced tumble knocked over an entire box of the marketer’s prized azure oysters, shattering several of their shells on the sidewalk and rendering the interior meat worthless. Ordinarily, such an occurrence would have enraged Kotaro beyond words; yet at this moment he found the accident completely unworthy of his concern. Instead, the purveyor of fine mollusks kept his glare facing upwards at the striking green irises of Megadrak.

  “The Beast of the Apocalypse,” Kotaro murmured aloud, recalling verses he had read in the Christian Bible. “It is Leviathan manifested.”

  It was at this point that other pedestrians noticed the daikaiju towering over the large warehouse across from Kotaro’s stand in the fish market. The first few observers who recovered from their initial shock to begin screaming seemed to serve as the catalyst for Megadrak to move from simply scrutinizing its strange environs to actually acting upon it.

  With an ear-splitting roar that morphed mid-wail into a cascading serpentine hiss, the kaiju drove its hands into the masonry that comprised the upper section of the warehouse it stood behind, crumbling the top four floors and sending a rain of brick and concrete down on the crowd below. Several people were crushed under the larger pieces, while others were merely stunned or knocked to the ground upon being struck by small-to-medium chunks of the dislodged stonework.

  Megadrak quickly picked out the five people who were laid low but still alive. The reptilian giant reached down and scooped them up in its enormous
mitts; two in its right hand, and three in its left. The draconic kaiju viciously bit the two people in its right hand in half, causing the upper torso of one and the lower extremities of the other to fall back to the ground. The other half of each bisected corpse were presumably swallowed, as they were never seen to fall from the beast’s maw.

  The three people in the kaiju’s other hand screamed in unmitigated terror when they saw exactly what type of horrific fate awaited them in mere seconds. Megadrak would waste no time in validating their dark expectations: it dispatched the trio by clenching its digitals into a tight fist, which caused the hapless trio’s remains to trickle out between its fingers like sauce squeezed from a condiment packet.

  Megadrak followed that act of slaughter by plowing clear through the remaining lower stories of the building. This reduced the remainder of the structure to rubble while barely slowing the kaiju’s stride. It cleared the street before it in a single step, where it found itself standing now just two meters from Kotaro’s market stand.

  The utterly terrified Toto fainted at this point, his thin body slipping from its perch on Kotaro’s wooden display table and down onto the pavement. The kaiju reached down and skewered the unconscious student’s abdomen on the sharp talon of one of its three-and-a-half-meter fingers. It lifted him up like a miniature shish-kabob before flinging his eviscerated carcass over a mile distant with a casual swing of its hand.

  For another several moments, the gigantic beast locked eyes with Kotaro, who returned the monster’s stare with like intensity. The two very different beings shared a gaze for roughly a minute before the great kaiju inexplicably turned and began walking to the right, choosing to pursue the fleeing humans in that direction rather than killing the seafood merchant.