Kaiju for Dummies

by Nicholas Knight

  And then my anger peals away. That’s the best word I can think of for it. Instead of overlaying my thoughts like a layer of saranwrap it’s just a piece of the overall thinking machine. I can think and feel. God, it’s been too long since playing the game. I’ve missed this feeling, this sense rationality.

  I am in control, not my anger. And because I’m in control I can think clearly enough to realize that Isabella would never go out on a date without taking her phone. She’s a daredevil and doesn’t mind putting herself at risk for the sake of others, but she’s not stupid.

  “Why do you have her phone?” I ask, barely restraining myself from growling the question. I’m not a kaiju right now. I’m a person. Snarling at other people is frowned upon.

  “Because we need to talk and I don’t have your number,” she says.

  That’s…odd. It’s very unlike Lusitania.

  “Also, Daddy is monitoring my phone,” she adds.

  Ah, that makes a little more sense. Lusitania’s father is a senator for Nevada. He had not been happy when she’d disobeyed him to stay behind in Oxford after Titanocobra’s attack. I could only imagine what I would do if I had his wealth, power, and a daughter who’d nearly been killed. Overprotective doesn’t begin to cover it.

  And despite her language, Lusitania has always presented herself as a perfectly composed princess and daddy’s girl…which makes the way she answered the phone weird. Not because she’s insulting me, but because I’ve only ever heard her be so crude in the game. Normally she wears her mask like armor and never lets anyone see the super-bitch that is the real her.

  For her to not even bother with the mask and admit right up front that we need to talk means that something serious is going on. “Are you okay?”

  She snorts. The sound isn’t even remotely princessy. Who the hell is this person and what has she done with the ice queen?

  “There’s a fucking kaiju attack in Huntsville and I can’t do a damn thing about it,” she says. “No, you dick-less, maggot-fuck, things are not okay.”

  “I’m hanging up now,” I say.

  “That was one of your friends,” she says in a rush, trying to catch me before my thumb can hit the little red circle and terminate the call.

  I’m quiet for a moment. Long enough that I’ve confirmed her suspicion.

  “You need to get to Vegas,” she says. “Right now.”

  That was abrupt. “Okay, why?”

  “Because we need to do something about this and the way things are with Daddy, I can’t,” she says. “We need to fix the situation and then stop your friend.”

  “You mean, you need me to come help you out so that you can go back to killing other kaiju,” I say. Lusitania specializes in being a PKer, a player killer, in Kaiju Wars Online. Taking out other player’s kaiju is exactly what her kaiju, Halira, is built for. And in all honesty, Halira is probably the best choice to stop any players who decide to attack Earth with their own kaiju. She is fast and she is lethal.

  It’s Lusitania’s turn to go quiet. She stays quiet for so long that I begin to think we’ve been disconnected.

  “Get to Vegas, Aaron,” she says, and hangs up.

  Chapter Nine

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  It’s half an hour before I pull up to my RV parked beside the driveway that leads up to Mom’s house. Technically I own the house while she owns the RV, but her ALS has gotten worse. Where before the wheelchair was sometimes optional, that’s no longer the case. Also, I want the best for Mom. Much as we both love the RV, and treasure the memories we’ve made with her, the old girl is on her last leg.

  The thought feels like the final nail in my coffin after everything that’s happened this night. One more blow, reminding me that I won’t have Mom for much longer, that she’s dying a little each day, and that there’s not a damn thing I can do to help her.

  Or is there? As I look past the RV to the front porch, where Aida’s Toyota Corolla is now parked, I remember Dr. Warden’s late-night visit.

  Dr. Warden is the creepy head-shrink who put the microchip in my hand and got me out of jail to play his backer’s, the mysterious “Game Master’s” kaiju game. He’d told me that everything was changing and that they were taking the game out of beta. He’d also heavily implied that they had the technology to help Mom.

  I didn’t believe him. I still don’t. The man is manipulative beyond comprehension. Also, he’s just plain evil. There’s no other two ways about it. He and the Game Masters are sick. I don’t understand why it is that they’re doing what they’re doing but the way Dr. Warden acts, all of this seems to be some kind of game to them. A game with real lives on the line.

  All of a sudden, I have to see Mom. She’ll be mad as hell that I haven’t called her back yet. I know not talking to people seems to be the root of all my problems lately but after all that I’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours I couldn’t bring myself to break the habit before coming home. I’m tired, exhausted really, and my brain feels like it’s been put through a trash compactor and shoved back into my still splintered skull.

  The lights are on inside. From the vague flickering, she’s got the TV going.

  I don’t knock, I just step inside, and find Mom in her chair watching the news. Scenes of Megaptera trashing Huntsville and destroying the prison are playing over and over again. The footage changes and now there’s an aerial view of me standing right next to Megaptera as he blasts the living shit out of the prison. Oh, fuck.

  Mom turns to look at me. Her eyes are red. She’s been crying but she’s not anymore.

  “You asshole, Aaron,” she says, voice barely more than a whisper.

  The reporter on the news picks that time to helpfully inform the viewers that witnesses had seen me, unidentified thankfully, running towards the kaiju. Oh yeah, I’d only thought I was in trouble before.

  “What were you thinking?” she demands, pulling away from the sofa and wheeling towards me. I upgraded her to an electric wheelchair only a few weeks ago. Expensive piece of machinery that. At least it lets her still be mobile. “Why didn’t you call to let me know you were safe?”

  “Aida—"

  “Yes, I had to learn from a stranger that you’re still alive.” She stops less than a foot away from me and if she was still capable, I know she’d be up out of that chair and in my face. Whether to hug me or to slap me I don’t know. For a weirdly paradoxical moment I want both. I deserve to be slapped and dammit if, sappy as it sounds, I could do with a hug.

  Aida steps out of the kitchen holding a pair of steaming mugs. “Aaron! Where’ve you been?”

  I take a deep breath. It’s harder than it should be. Coming inside suddenly feels like it was a very stupid idea. I have to talk now. There’s no getting around it. And all I want is to collapse into bed and go to sleep.

  “I know the player…the kaiju, who attacked Huntsville,” I say to Mom. “I was trying to figure out what the hell he was doing—”

  “What do you mean you know the player?” Aida demands. “Aaron, my husband. Is Samuel…?”

  I shake my head. “Megaptera destroyed the prison. If anyone survived it was because they weren’t inside.”

  “Megapter—you know this thing.” The mugs fall from her hands to shatter on the ground and spill coffee everywhere. No one moves to clean it up. “This creature…was there a person…someone did this?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I thought…thought I could find out why he did it. Maybe talk him and the others out of doing more.”

  “More?” Aida says.

  “Aaron,” Mom says. “You promised, you promised that you were done with kaiju. With all of this.”

  “I know I did, Mom, it’s just….” I trail off.

  Breaking news has just lit up the TV screen. Even this late at night, or early in the morning, New York City is recognizable. So is the immense green kaiju. Xenatlas has come
to Wallstreet.

  I stare. What the hell am I seeing? Given Megaptera’s Boston accent, I’d have expected him to show up in New York City. Xenatlas though? What the hell is he even doing?

  Unlike Megaptera, who’d trampled his way across town, Xenatlas seems to be moving carefully. Or as carefully as a monster easily over three hundred feet tall can move. Every step he takes shatters glass and crushes streets. Pipes rupture sending water spraying up into the air. Good grief, if he moves just a little faster the buildings around him might just come down. They will for sure if he turns wrong.

  Despite the hour, there are still people swarming the streets because it is New York. Looking at everything, it seems that Xenatlas is moving so slowly to deliberately give people time to get out of his way. Instead of looking like an attack the whole thing just looks awkward. If it weren’t for the deliberate direction into Manhattan’s financial district, finally leaving Wallstreet behind, it would be easy to mistake Xenatlas for some poor gentle giant who’s just gotten lost. A kaiju tourist.

  “Aaron?” Mom’s voice brings me back to the living room.

  “That’s Xenatlas,” I say. “What the hell is he doing in New York?”

  “You know that thing?” Aida says, she’s staring at me.

  I nod.

  Xenatlas comes to a stop in front of a building. Compared to everything else on the southern tip of Manhattan it’s not terribly impressive. No tourist would ever stop there. It’s just a part of the background, another steel and glass tree in the teeming urban jungle.

  Xenatlas lifts one, massively clawed hand, and brings it down on top of the building. It crumples like tissue paper. He roars and then all the care he’s shown to this point disappears. He goes berserk. In an instant the building is nothing more than pile of rubble.

  But more than just his target is affected. Xenatlas is too big and the area too densely populated by structures never meant to stand up to earthquakes or large impacts. I watch in horror as buildings come down like dominos around the kaiju.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  Xenatlas stands over the ruins, breathing hard. Then he’s gone. He’s logged out.

  And my mind is made up.

  Despite staying in the RV most of the time, I have a room in the house. I make my way to it on autopilot.

  “Aaron, where are you going?” Mom calls.

  “I’ve got to pack,” I say.

  “Pack? What are you talking about?”

  “I need to catch a plane to Vegas,” I say. “There’s…someone there who I think can help. Together maybe we can stop this.” I don’t know why I stop myself from telling her about Lusitania but it feels like the right thing to do.

  “Aaron, no more kaiju,” Mom says. “No more putting yourself in danger.”

  “I have to go, Mom,” I say.

  “You…you…I’m calling your father.”

  I groan and hear her wheeling back into the living room and start talking into her phone. There’s not anything Dad can do, but he can do more to stop me than Mom. I have to move quickly.

  Only, I can’t leave Mom here by herself. Shit. Why did it take me so long to realize that? My brain is so tired it’s not working right. I’m so slow and introspective that I don’t even notice Aida standing in the doorway.

  “You really know what’s going on with these monsters?” she asks. Her lower lip trembles but she holds herself tall and proud. She keeps twisting her wedding bands around her finger.

  It should be a punch to the gut, a reminder of the friend I lost today. It isn’t. I’m too numb and tired to feel much of anything. Slowly I nod. “Yeah.”

  “And you’re going to stop them?” she asks.

  “I’m going to try.” Honestly, I’ve got no idea how to even go about stopping them, but I’ve got to do something. This all seems too hard to verbalize though, so I’m left holding her gaze and trying to convey this all telepathically.

  I think she gets it though because Aida jerks her chin in some kind of acknowledgement. “I’ll stay here and look after your mom.”

  I blink in surprise.

  “You will?”

  She nods. “I will.” Then her eyes turn intense, the kind of intense that would make me absolutely terrified if she had a weapon in her hand. “You just stop these fuckers.”

  Chapter Ten

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  I fled from Kerrville. Not proud of it, but that’s exactly what I did.

  I did this for two reasons. First, if I slowed down, I’d stop. And second, I couldn’t stand to argue with Mom. If I hadn’t left when I did, there’d have been a confrontation. She might have even managed to make me change my mind. I would have had to tell her face to face why I was leaving her to go do something dangerous and expressly against what she wanted for me.

  I’d found myself struggling since moving to Kerrville to argue or disagree with her. It isn’t her fault. It’s just hard, knowing that she isn’t going to be around much longer. Watching her become less and less mobile and independent every day. I can’t deny her anything. And now…I am a coward. I can’t face denying her now.

  There’s a part of me whispering what a relief it is to be gone. To not have to see her and watch what’s happening to her. That says this whole ordeal with the kaiju is just me finding an excuse or escape, just like I was doing with my job before, driving all the way to Huntsville just to check on a busted radiator.

  I have a moment of epiphany after I get my plane ticket, where I fully understand and appreciate what she was trying to do by sending me away to Ole Miss before. Mom was attempting to spare me from exactly this.

  The drive to the airport in San Antonio feels like it takes even longer than the one from Huntsville. I called Isabella and Lusitania back and coordinated my arrival with them. It was a short talk and all around abrupt. I got the feeling they weren’t really free to talk.

  The only flight I could get out to Las Vegas from San Antonio made a stop first in Albuquerque, which I had to rush to make, but only after making me wait until after lunch time for the initial flight.

  I arrive in Vegas earlier in the evening than I expect, feeling gross, tired, and hungry. I haven’t showered since yesterday and all I’ve got with me is a backpack with some change of clothes and toiletries in a backpack. The chip in my right-hand charges my phone whenever I hold it there, so no need to worry about a charger. I managed to sleep on the flights themselves but not before and those few hours aren’t enough to make up for the fumes I’m running on. I’d just about kill for a good cheeseburger, followed by a hot shower, and a long night of uninterrupted sleep.

  I suspect none of these things to be forthcoming.

  I catch a cab when I arrive and tell the cabbie to take me to the Pearl Theater, which is where the girls told me to meet them. I quickly pass out in the back of his car and wake up what feels like seconds later as we pull up in front of some tall, curving building that says The Wynn in glowing, stylized font. There’s trees and a big pond with a waterfall in front of it.

  The cabbie looks like he’s taking me up the drive up to the hotel.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I ask.

  “Trading cabs,” he says. “I drop you off here. Another driver will pick you up.”

  “If you couldn’t take me all the way there you should have said so,” I snap, everything from the last twenty-four hours boiling out of me. “Stop the cab.”

  “What?”

  “Stop the fucking cab,” I say, and something in the way I say it must convince the guy I’m serious because he stops. I tally up and get out. A quick check on the phone reveals that the Pearl Theater is only a few miles away. Easy enough to walk.

  I start walking and almost immediately come upon a pirate ship in front of another casino. Interesting. I pause for a moment to take it in, then push forward.

  The Vegas strip is crowded but not overbearing.
I don’t have people pushing in on me from all sides but I am very much aware that I am in a crowd. Every couple of yards is a man handing out flyers or business cards with scantily dressed women. I can almost mark my progress by their regularity.

  Mostly I see signs and buildings. There’re advertisements everywhere, a lot of them for what I guess are shows. More of them have naked or near naked women, though there’s a handful of naked man-chests and washboard abs on billboards.

  I quickly realize that distance down this street is a tricky thing. I see a building, a casino, and think I’ll be at it soon. I’m not. Everything is further away than it looks and it makes me feel like I’m making no progress at all.

  It takes me a little over an hour to make the walk. I’m sweaty, sore, and irritated on top of everything else when I walk up the Pearl. This part of Vegas isn’t quite as crowded, at least not until I draw near and see the crowds milling about. There must be some event going on tonight. Why the hell would Lusitania and Isabella want to meet here of all places?

  I’m going to have to wait in line and fight the crowd just to get inside.

  With a sigh I settle in to do just that when an elegant female voice reaches me. “Aaron! Over here!”

  Without the adage of “Fuckwad” or some insult about my junk, I almost don’t recognize Lusitania’s voice. Which is weird to think about. I never used to think “foul mouth” when I thought of Lusitania. I knew she was angry and ugly inside, but she never let anyone see that side of her. Now, it’s almost weird seeing her standing there, dressed in white, once again looking like a perfect princess.

  I almost miss the men in suits standing just a little way off, watching her and now eyeing me intently. Bodyguards? From their reactions I can guess that they are expecting Lusitania to be meeting up with someone. I can also guess that they didn’t know that someone was me.

  Until recently, Lusitania and her family hated me. No, hate’s the wrong word. They were repulsed by me. Are, rather. Senator Church thinks I’m a waste of space and who knows what his wife thinks. I can only imagine she loves her sister a great deal because it was thanks to her that Senator Church made some calls that got me into Ole Miss.