At The Hands Of Madness

by Kevin Holton

  “I’m no angel.” He stared at his blackened hands. “None of us are.”

  Grover briefly pinged Mari’s Bluetooth before we fled the city entirely. He came back with the earpiece, but not her. When we asked, he just shook his head.

  Steve and I felt the same guilt. I might’ve felt worse, knowing my actions catalyzed this chaos. After all, She reacted to me shunning her, not to everyone else. My betrayal set her off. Whatever happened now, the blame fell, in part, to me. NAFTA had done more than his fair share. If he felt guilty, he didn’t deserve to. Same to Cindy.

  Grover lit a fire because he couldn’t do anything else. Despite sitting cross-legged in the flames, his eyes were dark, his chin resting on his fists. Steve wasn’t much better. He hadn’t even offered to break out the whiskey, whether to celebrate Medraka’s death or take our minds off the new creature, whatever She was calling herself now.

  None of us could say her name. It felt too familiar, and her callsign too dire. So, ‘She’ would have to suffice.

  “I still don’t understand. How did this happen?” Lisa said, her scorched-closed stump bandaged tightly. Shock still limited her ability to help, but we knew she wouldn’t let us keep her resting. Warrior refused to sleep when lives were on the line.

  “How it happened? Simple. Heartbreaker did what he did best.” Grover’s voice crackled like the flames surrounding him, each annunciation smoldering with danger. His hands still hadn’t returned to normal.

  Lisa looked my way, concerned and angry. “You, what… shot her?”

  “He started talking about contingency plans in case She lost her shit, and She didn’t take too fuckin’ kindly to that. Lover boy broke his girlfriend’s heart.” Steve sat as close to the fire as he could without getting burned.

  Had I acted differently, maybe she would’ve given up control on her own, removed the helmet without a fight. Spared all those people.

  “Hey, enough.” Lisa glared at them. “Look, from what I’m hearing, yeah, he screwed up, but she made her own decisions. She’s the one killing people, not him.”

  We fell silent for a moment. Wheelchair Kid reached for the radio, but stilled after I shot him a harsh glare. Flames crackled and hissed as another building collapsed in the distance. She’d stopped rampaging a while earlier, disappeared to parts unknown, but Great Bend’s buildings kept falling, one by one.

  “Guess it takes crazy ex-girlfriend to a whole new level,” Grover said, with a hint of a grin. It cast strange shadows on his face, and for a moment, despite the light, he was wreathed in darkness.

  “I’m not sure crazy’s the right word.” I didn’t make eye contact, but they all looked at me, confused. “You get told something your whole life, you believe it. But she’d said to me she never had the power to avoid the psychiatric world. That people thought she was weird, and she wound up ordered by the court to take medication, allegedly for her own safety. But what if she wasn’t? What if she’s been normal the whole time, just stepped on, beaten up, overlooked? What if being told she’s different is what made her different?”

  Lisa nodded thoughtfully. “When the world is insane, you go mad to fit in.”

  “So you’re saying it’s all our faults?” Grover cocked his head.

  “The fuck did I do?” Steve looked offended, but I couldn’t be sure if he was faking it.

  “Not you, specifically, you big lug.”

  I cut them off. “What I’m saying is, when you spend your whole life in the dirt, getting kicked around, you start wanting to throw a few kicks back, and she’s got a nice set of steel-toed boots.” Glancing over at Grover’s eager look, I added, “Yes, pun intended.”

  “Well, jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, but I sure as hell can.”

  Steve buried his face in his palms and muttered something about how he never should’ve shown Grover those memes. Lisa snapped, bringing them back to focus. “Enough jokes! We need a plan.”

  “I wasn’t joking! She’s made of metal—well, the Collective is, more or less—so maybe I can, you know, melt her. Melt the robots. Fire got past Medraka’s shielding. If I catch her off guard, maybe I can get past hers.”

  “Or we haul fuckin’ ass out of here, fake our deaths, hide in the sewers like the god damn Ninja Turtles, and see if she cuts the shit once she’s got no one left to hunt. She’s mostly pissed at Heartbreaker over here, so let’s start with him.”

  “We’re not running away, and we’re not faking anyone’s death,” Lisa ordered, and they quieted, out of ideas.

  We talked for a while and got absolutely nowhere. Without Lisa’s modified cannon, more of Medraka’s blood, or another psychic, we wouldn’t be getting past her mental shielding. Even Grover would be useless so long as she could flick him away like a gnat. Explosives might have a chance, but it would take a lot of strategy to pull that off.

  Eventually, conversation died. With nothing left to say to the remaining half of our Core Division, it seemed high time to make an executive decision. After all, he’d beaten the odds.

  I stood up, grabbed the satchel Akila gave us, and made my way to Wheelchair Kid. “What’s your name?”

  “M-my name? It’s… James.”

  “Well, James. Here.” I opened the case, handing him one of the nanobot syringes. “Akila gave us these. Supposed to be one for each of the core members, but one of us is obviously out of the picture. They’ll adapt to do whatever you want. Focus on making them a different frequency than the others—don’t want you to get brainwashed—and maybe they can help you walk again.”

  Everything I said was speculation and bullshit, but hey, he didn’t know better. Was it so wrong to give him a little hope?

  He held the needle tight, looking off toward Great Bend. “Thank you. I… I think I need to think about it.” His tone gave no indication to which way he leaned, but his gaze drifted back to his legs, and I had a suspicion as to what he’d do.

  “Of course.” I nodded. “In the meantime… turn the radio back on.” He did, but wasn’t listening. His mind held other ideas now.

  Newscasters from all over the world told of what occurred at Great Bend, but none of them had the full story. None of them knew for sure about the Nanites who sacrificed themselves to become a weapon, or the lone woman wielding it. No one told their listeners about the soldier who fought to save a world that never appreciated her, or how the one person she trusted pushed her over the edge from instability to monstrosity.

  In the distance, yet another building fell, the sound more echo than impact. If we stood a chance at stopping this daikaiju, this shapeless creature born of a tortured mind, we’d need supplies, and troops, and a new camp, and at least a dozen miracles.

  All we had was a bright fire, a dark sky, and each other.

  That would have to be enough.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse.

  INCURSION #1: TOKYO, 1954

  CHAPTER 1: The Beginning of the End

  Goro Takiguchi had always enjoyed the simple life of a fisherman. His home village of Kenta was located roughly twenty miles west of Yokohama, within the Tokyo Prefecture that sprawls over the east-center portion of the great island of Honshu. A plentiful supply of giant blue-finned tuna has always thrived in the waters surrounding this area of the Pacific, allowing those of Goro’s vocation to eke out a reasonable living despite the impoverished conditions often faced by rural residents of the archipelago.

  The recent departure of the US Occupation forces from the island nation and the escalation of the US-supported post-war reconstruction efforts due to the “lucky tragedy” of the Korean War led to a fortuitous economic development: the metropolitan markets of the Tokyo Prefecture’s various special wards were now more than happy to buy all the fish Goro and his fellow inhabitants of Kenta could catch. And the supply was such that even without these regular sales throughout the prefecture, the town residents never had to worry about going hungry.

  Un
fortunately, this quiet life of comparative security was soon to be shattered; Goro and the twenty-six-year-old fisherman’s fellow citizens of the more bucolic regions of Honshu were to become the epicenter of a nightmare that would easily surpass both the devastation of the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  It was a nightmare that was destined to eventually engulf the entire planet, initiating a chain of horrific events that would forever alter the security of humanity’s exalted position on the planet’s food chain. That tragic turn of events for the world was about to begin here, on what appeared to be a pleasant summer morning in the quaint little hamlet of Kenta.

  Goro approached his favorite fishing location--a small but sturdy wooden deck constructed by his fellow villagers—soon after dawn commenced on June 23rd. When he arrived with his bamboo fishing rod in hand, he found his good friend and frequent partner-in-fishing Tatsuo already sitting at the deck and eagerly placing bait on the end of a metal hook. The thirty-seven-year-old man of modest looks and means evinced a wide beam on his weathered, tan countenance upon seeing the colorful sartorial selection his younger friend chose to wear that day.

  “You come to fish dressed in an aloha shirt?” Tatsuo asked with a wide grin. “It hardly matches your bucket hat, and if you hoped it would attract the fish I must say it’s much more likely to scare them off. It nearly scared me off!”

  “You are not so funny, Tatsuo,” Goro replied with a rumpled half smile. “This shirt cost me a lot of coins, not to mention the cost in both yen and hours it took getting a train from Yokohama to Tokyo. I had to go into Shibuya to acquire this wearable work of art. And it is not intended for catching fish, but for snagging a lady! As my father always advised, ‘A man must look his best if ever he wants to have a household to become the head of.’”

  Tatsuo grinned again, exposing his ugly yellowed teeth. Goro always hated when he did that. “I am somehow convinced your father did not exactly have that shirt in mind when he gave you this pithy advice.”

  “Will you kindly stifle the negative comments, Tatsuo?”

  “Well, I see no evidence that shirt has worked for you thus far. It is good your job is catching fish and not women, hai?”

  Goro sighed in an exasperated manner as he sat beside his friend and regular colleague in tuna procurement. He was determined to wipe Tatsuo’s eye-sore of a smile from his sardonic visage, but since he didn’t have the heart to do it with his fist, he realized words would have to suffice. “Fire with fire,” as the ever-acerbic Tatsuo himself may have put it. He was thus quick to hurl a stark rejoinder at his fellow fisherman.

  “And I see no evidence that your drab attire and rotting teeth are working to your advantage in the task of lady-catching either. So, you should be thankful that the fish do not mind, otherwise you would be as poor in the pocket as you are in terms of companionship. Please do forgive my frankness, especially considering you never hesitate to speak with full candor yourself.”

  Unfortunately, this comment only served to trigger a display of Tatsuo’s unsightly beam rather than dispelling any further appearances of it.

  “My young friend, you just validated my point rather than refuting it. If I were inclined to visit the dentist and those over-priced garment shops in Shibuya, I too may look better. And I too may end up failing to secure a wife despite those expenditures, much the same as you. Will you next be spending countless yen on one of those television sets in the hope of showing greater appeal to a lady?”

  Goro finished securing a lure on his long bamboo pole before emitting a frustrated huff and flipping the wiry line into the murky waters. “You know, perhaps I will indeed save up for one of those televisions! They are selling widespread in America, and if our nation is ever to become as prosperous as them…”

  “You mean, should we strive to become more like the culture that dropped two atomic weapons on our land not even ten years past? Who occupied our home until just two years ago, and dictated policy to our parliament? Who put our leaders on trial in Tokyo for war crimes? Why wasn’t their President Truman put on trial for his decision to blow multitudes of people to oblivion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and relegate multitudes more to radiation poisoning?”

  “The war was initiated on our end, Tatsuo, and you know it! Prime Minister Hideki should never have thrown his lot in with the likes of those German fascists!”

  “Perhaps you should have the kōgan to tell that to the many innocents still blinded and horribly scarred by the toxic radiation of those bombs. That was as much the folly of Truman as of Tōjō. It was not our misguided PM who had the button of such a horrific weapon under his finger.”

  Goro tugged on his line in frustration, hoping to incite a tuna to take his bait, before turning back to his friend and continuing their heated exchange. “That is oversimplifying things! At least America is helping us recover.”

  Tatsuo displayed his abhorrent yellowed teeth again, only this time in gnashing vexation rather than in the form of his usual caustic smile.

  “Are those Western orokamono helping to reconstruct the eyes and tissue of the innocents burned away by the blast waves of those atomic weapons? Or giving others some antidote to their continually decaying flesh? Do you know they are continuing to unleash the radioactive hell from those bombs in the Bikini Atoll region? That is barely over 3,000 kilometers from us! And the purpose of that is to test their effectiveness for possible use against the Soviet Union, who were among the US’s ‘allies’ during the war!

  “Do you know what effects that unleashed radiation may have on the flora and fauna of the sea, which I needn’t remind you are the very forms of life we depend on for our food and livelihood?”

  Much to Tatsuo’s irritation and surprise, Goro failed to continue the argument, but instead tugged his bamboo rod while peering into the seaweed-filled waters.

  “Are you even listening to me?” Tatsuo threw his rod on the deck in annoyance.

  “Not now, Tatsuo,” Goro answered while never dropping the odd expression marring his plain features. “There is something wrong here. Something is caught on my line, but it… does not feel like a tuna. Hold on, I am going to try reeling it in.”

  The young procurer of aquatic food began tugging with all his might, and it soon became clear that whatever he was pulling in happened to be alive. “I can feel something tugging back, so my line isn’t just caught on a rock. Something living has taken the bait. Help me a bit, will you?”

  Tatsuo grumbled but quickly put his own rod down to answer his friend’s request for aid. Neither of the two men were athletically endowed for their respective age groups, but their combined strength proved sufficient to overcome the resistance of what was on the other line and successfully reel it in. After seeing what Goro had caught, however, both men immediately wished they had not.

  Hanging from the hook of Goro’s line was an organism that outwardly resembled a caterpillar of freakishly large size with a reddish-hued warty hide and no visible eyes. The worm-like creature also possessed a wide maw bearing four large projected fangs that it was using to grasp onto the line’s metal hook. The hideous creature was slightly over fifteen inches long, and the end of its tail bobbed back and forth of its own accord while its anterior mouth remained latched onto the barb of Goro’s hook. The movement of the tail served as a continuous reminder that this anomalous grotesquerie was a living creature evidently spawned on the same planet the men called home.

  “What in the name of my revered ancestors is that?” Tatsuo queried.

  Goro, for his part, was so taken aback by the sight that he dropped his rod on the deck’s wooden surface. “I cannot answer that as I’ve never seen anything like it before. I have never seen any type of worm or caterpillar move like it does, either, with that weird sort of spasm. What a horrible-looking thing!”

  As the younger fisherman stepped back due to an involuntary urge to put distance between himself and the hideous annelid, Tatsuo startled his f
riend even further by walking up to the writhing thing and picking it up by the end of its tail. He subsequently held the bizarre organism from his fingertips to inspect it. Goro found himself both sickened and alarmed by this bold action.

  “Tatsuo! You shouldn’t touch that thing! We have no idea what it is, and I think we should just kill it.”

  Tatsuo was careful to hold the elongated wriggling creature a few feet from his face as he looked at it with a combination of revulsion and fascination.

  “You worry too much, little man. It is simply a worm of some sort. I have handled critters like this all my life, and this one is simply exceptionally large and ugly—”

  Much to Goro’s horror, his friend’s reassuring statement was ironically and abruptly cut off as the spindly creature swiftly bent itself back and locked its squarish maw onto Tatsuo’s wrist. Its four needle-like teeth sunk deep into the man’s skin, and blood spurted from the perforated epidermis like a mini-geyser.

  The besieged fisherman screamed in agony as he grasped the nightmarish annelid’s tail and desperately attempted to yank it out of his flesh. However, the curved shape of its tail enabled the worm to firmly maintain its grip, and all Tatsuo succeeded in doing was causing the torrent of blood spewing from the wound to become larger. Goro immediately went into a full state of panic.

  “Tatsuo! Stop pulling on it, you’re ripping more blood vessels open! Tatsuo, listen to me, damn it!”

  But Tatsuo’s own state of panic was so severe that he refused to take heed. He thus continued pulling fruitlessly on the worm as waves of agony and nausea assailed him. A combination of extreme pain, blood loss, and panic caused him to fall on the surface of the deck. He then continued to scream and yank at the horrid annelid while lying on his back.