“Let’s go!” I shout and Isabella and I take off down the now steaming West Flamingo street, following after Solrin.
Despite sprinting as fast as we can the kaiju leaves us behind in only a few enormous bounds and leaps at Plague Doctor as she bobs forward. Solrin’s leap carries him over a thrust of the much larger kaiju’s proboscis and lands him on her head.
Solrin is the closest in size to Taisaur out of all the kaiju I’ve seen so far and that means that Plague Doctor’s head is just about the same size as him. She sinks down and back on her many legs from the impact but her feet never move. She shrieks and begins bobbing up and down, trying to dislodge him.
Max has gone with the same opening gambit I would have. All of Plague Doctor’s natural weaponry, from her proboscis to her stinging tail and even her limbs—they’re all geared towards a downward attack. Considering the absurd size of the alien creature that makes sense. She’s a hunter of other, smaller kaiju. Attacks from above, however, aren’t something she’s really equipped to deal with.
As evidenced as she shrieks and begins staggering from side to side like a drunk crab as she fails to dislodge Solrin and the golden kaiju proceeds to tear into her, raking her face repeatedly with his rear claws and trying to sink his fangs into what passes for her neck. Her staggering carries them through several buildings and the pair crash southward, narrowly missing the overpass as they smash through the freeway.
That’s good. For one thing we need that overpass intact so we can pass under it. For another, the farther away their fight is from us, the better. After everything we’ve been through, I don’t want my epitaph to read “squished.”
What’s less good is when Plague Doctor begins to freaking roll. The sound of all that mass striking and rolling across the ground is joined by the thunder of buildings falling. The ground beneath us shakes and I trip. I stagger several feet, arms windmilling wildly as I try to regain my balance. I do an instant later, just in time to pull myself up short as a large piece of rubble impacts the street right where I would have run into otherwise.
I stagger back, only to realize I can’t stop as shadows fall over us. Isabella curses, her voice barely audible over the raining debris and the sounds of battle. Solrin’s been dislodged and hurled back through the air in our direction, along with what looks like the better part of half a building.
We sprint for all we’re worth as the urban blizzard hits. A chunk of something catches my shoulder and sends me spinning. I catch myself as I hit the ground and spot Isabella a short way ahead of me as her feet are taken out from under her by part of a sign that bounces off the ground. She’s flipped and hits the pavement hard.
I scrabble my way over to her and grab her arm. We pull ourselves upright just in time for Solrin to hit the street behind us and send a shockwave through the earth. I’ve never been able to say for certain how heavy any of our kaiju are. A couple hundred tons seems to be lowballing it.
One minute we’re on our feet, albeit barely, and the next we’re airborne because the ground has decided to do its best impersonation of a bucking bronco. We hit hard, leaving skin on the pavement, air being driven from our lungs. I roll over in time to see Solrin stagger to his feet, shaking his maned head with a snarl.
That hurt, Max says.
“Ow,” I say.
“Pussy,” Isabella says, pushing herself up. She’s bleeding from a cut over her eye and its spilling down over her face like warpaint.
Past her, in the sky, I see a cloud of crimson needles floating our way. Solrin and Plague Doctor must have wrecked a ton of webbing and sent them airborne. If those hit me it’ll suck but if they hit Isabella…I just got her back!
I’m on my feet. “Run! Go for the overpass!”
No sooner do I speak than Plague Doctor is back, bearing down on Solrin. He dodges her proboscis but the stinger swings up from underneath in an uppercut that nearly rips through him. Max’s kaiju is sent toppling, blood spraying from the wound. His HP bar plummets. Then it continues to slowly drop. He’s been poisoned.
He regains his feet, but too late to counter attack. Plague Doctor is doing her best to keep on top of him, stabbing down with her legs like spears and striking again and again with her stinger and proboscis.
It’s all he can do to dodge the barrage of attacks and then he can’t. A claw-like leg stabs into him, spilling blood and dropping his HP bar further. Solrin is flipped over like he weighs nothing and takes a stinger strike to his belly. He roars in pain, and then in fury.
His mane and rage meter both flare and he releases the Solar Wind straight up into Plague Doctor. She hisses and shrieks as it washes over her. It’s hard to tell if it’s doing any real damage but it sure as hell pisses her off. The alien kaiju goes berserk.
Her many legs begin stamping the ground over and over again, rattling the buildings still standing along the street, breaking away parts of them so that they avalanche to the ground. Isabella and me reach the overpass right then and are shielded from the worst of it.
Solrin’s not so lucky.
The needles that had been stirred up arrive and while they have no apparent impact on Plague Doctor, it’s obvious that they hurt Solrin. He bellows and tries to break away from Plague Doctor to regroup. The movement carries him our way and Plague Doctor follows.
It’s like having a mountain fall upon you. The sky not covered by the overpass vanishes above us, swallowed by the forms of the two falling kaiju. We’re going to die.
“Run!” I don’t know why I scream it. It seems the thing to do. Isabella keeps running and I keep running after her.
The two kaiju hit the overpass and tear through it.
Concrete, rebar, and kaiju blood spill over us and consume the world.
Chapter Thirty-Five
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The world is darkness and thunder. Not a distant rumbling. An immediate, palpable thunder that shakes through me and everything else. Every roar, impact, and tremble of the ground makes me brace for the crushing weight of the collapsed overpass to come down and crush me and Isabella. I can hear the sound of the piled up concrete shifting overhead beneath the steady cacophony of the two embattled kaiju.
“Isabella?” I call out. “You okay?”
“I’m buried under a freeway,” she replies from somewhere I think is only a few feet ahead of me. “No. I am not okay.”
I’ll take it.
“How the hell aren’t we dead?” I wonder aloud. “I can’t think of any reason this whole thing hasn’t come crashing down on us.”
“Shut the hell up!” Isabella’s voice is somewhere between a shriek and a hiss—a remarkably human parallel to Plague Doctor’s own cry. Not that I’ll ever admit that to her. “Are you trying to make it come down on us?”
I roll my eyes. How the hell is wondering how it’s staying up more likely to make it come down? You know what, don’t answer that.
“Do you have any idea which direction the Pearl is?” I ask, even though I know it’s pointless.
Even if one of us does know which direction the theater is relative to us, and to be clear that someone is not me because I am completely turned around, I don’t see how we could make it there. The fact that my eyes haven’t adjusted yet means that there’s no light for them to adjust to. We’re completely trapped beneath the rubble and it could come down on us at any minute.
I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight app, momentarily blinding myself and earning a curse from Isabella, who covers her eyes with her forearm. “A little warning next time.”
I was right, she’s only a little way ahead of me. If the lines on the street beneath us are anything to go by we now have a direction to move if any of this stuff shifts. Of course, if it shifts, we’re probably going to die. The fact that that realization hasn’t sent me into shock or apoplexy probably says more about my burnt out and desensitized state of mind than any
kind of courage. I’ve been nearly killed so often lately that the possibility of a couple giant rocks falling down and pulping my head hardly seems like a big deal.
Not nearly so big a deal as the undeniable fact that I’ve failed. I can’t bring myself to check the timer on the Kaiju Wars app. It’ll take hours to be dug out of this mess. Hours. Plural. As in way more time than I have to get to the Pearl Theater and broadcast the signal that will induce the miracle cure. And of course, that assumes that there’s anyone around to dig us out.
There’s no telling how long Vegas will remain under quarantine now that Plague Doctor’s put in a second appearance. There are fewer people for it to infect in the city this time around, mostly by dent of everyone else who was infected before already being dead, but who knows. Maybe it’s sickness will spread out when it makes Las Vegas into its new nest.
I can just imagine us being trapped down here for days while that thing has free reign until finally the US military drops a nuke on us. Bright side, we’re already in an improvised bunker. Double bright side, if the rubble doesn’t shield us from the nuclear blast, we’ll be dead before we realize it failed. Yay positivity.
The next impact is bigger than the ones before it and the rubble overhead shifts and cracks. I throw myself forward, taking Isabella to the ground and throwing myself over her. I wait, expecting to feel the crushing weight of countless tons of concrete to come down atop me. It doesn’t.
In the shadowy light provided by my phone she looks up at me with a raised eyebrow. “You know, that stuff would crush us both. You being on top of me wouldn’t actually keep me from getting squashed.”
My ears burn but I don’t move. “I’m used to long shots by now.”
I’m also used to them failing. So why does it suck so much more this time around? I should have known better than to get my hopes up. Hope is such a traitorous bitch.
“You know,” I say, deliberately selecting her word choice in an effort to keep my tone light. “I think I kind of liked the idea of being a hero. You know? The getting to be the good guy for once.”
Isabella’s hand finds my face. Her touch is tender. “Aaron, do you know why I like you?”
“¿Yo hablo algo de español?”
She punches me in the arm. “Be serious, Aaron.”
“I have no idea why you’d like me,” I admit. “Isabella, most of the time, I don’t even like me.”
She sighs. “You’re not a quitter, Aaron. You see what needs doing and you do it. You don’t stand around whining about it or trying to find someone to blame—you just handle things.”
Another huge rumble. I curl myself over Isabella in an effort to protect her head as the rubble shifts again above us. The fight above must be getting brutal.
“Like I said,” Isabella laughs. “Not a quitter.” She shakes her head. “You’re not going to stop trying to save me, are you?”
And that’s why failing this time sucks so hard, I realize. Isabella. I’m not just letting her down, I’m letting her die. She’s going to get sick again and even if she doesn’t, she’ll have a front row seat to all the death that’s going to come about as a result of my inability to follow through.
Before I realize it, I’m kissing her. The earth shakes.
“And I’ll never stop,” I say when our lips come apart.
The earth doesn’t stop shaking.
The rubble overhead crunches and shifts. Dust falls upon us. Then small pieces of concrete. A large chunk hits my shoulder.
The overpass is coming down atop us. I guess this is how we die.
“Pendejo,” Isabella says. Her legs do a complicated maneuver around me. All of a sudden, it’s me on my back and she’s on top of me.
“No!”
The concrete rains down in bigger and bigger chunks before the entire thing gives way and rushes down like an avalanche. The light of my phone vanishes beneath us and the solid wall crushing us.
Only we’re not crushed.
The weight is coming down on us, the pressure greater and greater, but Isabella is between it and me and somehow, she’s holding it up and off of me. I can feel her face twisting as she shouts only inches from my face. I can feel her arms straining to either side of me. She’s holding up at least a ton of concrete and it’s killing her.
“Isabella!”
Her body writhes atop mine, contorting, twisting. Rubble spills around her, striking me in the face.
She goes still. When her eyes open directly in front of mine, they’re red.
Not red as in bloodshot. Red as in they are solid red orbs with catlike pupils shining with inner light.
Isabella opens her mouth, revealing gleaming fangs that would do any tiger proud, and roars. The sound is deafening. I can’t even hear the kaiju fighting over us. Spittle flecks my face and ringing fills my ears, drowning out her own roar. She’s damaged my eardrums.
Still roaring she shoves upward. Pieces of the overpass fall away from us.
She twists and writhes in the shadows and I swear I can see her growing bigger. Her clothing begins to rip, revealing thick hide with corded muscle. Something moves around us. A snake? Rubble is sent flying as Isabella’s tail pulls free and scatters it like pebbles.
She grabs me like I’m a doll and in a second, we’re free, standing in light and air. I hadn’t realized how hot it was under there. We probably wouldn’t have lasted as long as I’d thought. The oxygen would have been used up even if the whole thing hadn’t decided to come down atop us.
Isabella drops me and staggers back, shaking and clutching herself.
I was right, she’s bigger, pushing seven feet.
Her skin has turned purple and is covered in silver stripes. Her legs are feline and spikes line her back, flowing all the way from between her shoulders, which I can see as she turns in place trying to take stock of herself, all the way down the powerful tail that’s at least as long as she is tall.
She takes herself in, then turns to gape at me, eyes glowing red, mouth full of gleaming fangs. Her ears have become long and pointed, sticking out to her either side of her head. “Aaron?” she says, voice a little deeper and more than a little unsteady.
“Isabella,” I say, because what the hell else can I say?
There’s no mistaking the resemblance between her and Taisaur. Nor the power she’s just displayed taking the full weight of the collapsing overpass and then pulling us out of the debris. My girlfriend has become a miniature kaiju.
Chapter Thirty-Six
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I hold up both of my hands in what I hope is a soothing gesture. Miraculously my phone is still held in one of them. Guess I really am a millennial. “We’re going to figure this out.”
How the hell are we supposed to figure this out? My girlfriend just turned into a were-kaiju. Is that even a thing? How did this happen? But I know how it happened.
The blood transfusion. Her sudden recovery comes into a whole new light. Whatever the chip’s done to me to make me immune to Plague Doctor’s illness and allow me to turn into Taisaur, it’s done this to Isabella.
I did this to her. I failed her.
Solrin smashes into the ruins of West Flamingo, almost all the way back where we’d started. He’s bleeding from multiple wounds, most of which look like giant punctures. A few are oozing viscous green fluid and he’s missing several golden scales. His rage meter is empty. His HP bar isn’t far off.
Plague Doctor looms over him, chittering in what can only be joy. The sound is sickening and makes me feel like I’ve got cockroaches skittering about inside my stomach.
“Later,” Isabella says. She grabs me in a bridal carry and takes off down the road. She’s fast. Really fast. If being carried like a blushing bride wasn’t so embarrassing, and of course if my life wasn’t in danger of being snuffed out at any second, this would be one hell of an exhilarating ride.
I
look back as we go and watch as Plague Doctor shoves her proboscis into Solrin and begins to draining him. His blood flows through her needle and into her, seeming to glow beneath her semi-translucent brown carapace. Solrin’s HP slowly drops. As it does, several wounds he inflicted upon Plague Doctor close up.
“Oh damn,” I whisper, but my voice is lost to the wind.
She doesn’t just suck other kaiju’s blood; the stuff heals her. Like some sort of kaiju vampire. Because she wasn’t terrifying and powerful enough already. She freaking regenerates when she hits us. How the hell is anyone supposed to be able to beat that thing?
I barely have time to watch Solrin vanish before we’re inside the Pearl Theater. Isabella is moving so fast it isn’t funny. She carries me through hallways and doorways in a blur until we burst into a room full of screens, control panels, and all kinds of electronic equipment.
“This is the broadcast room,” she says, just about dropping me as she hurries to get everything booted up. “Okay, I remember how to do this…” she freezes with her hands on one of the control panels. It’s not the stupidly complicated looking control panel she’s staring at though.
She rotates her hands, taking in the purple hide and silver stripes covering her bare forearms. Her fingers are tipped with claws. She mutters something indistinct under her breath and rocks back. The motion makes her tail move and it knocks over a chair.
She jumps, spinning around and nearly impaling me with one of the spikes on her tail. “Whoah!”
She flinches back. “Sorry! Oh, God. Don’t look at me!”
She shakes her head. Then the whole building shakes. Plague Doctor must be right outside. Dammit.
“Isabella,” I say, taking a tentative step towards her and hold out my hands. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Her tail lashes out and smashes the chair she just knocked over into pieces. “I have a fucking tail!”
Kaiju for Dummies Page 18