Kaiju Winter: An End Of The World Thriller

by Jake Bible

  Kyle squints into the gloom and then sees what the man is trying to show him. A trail. Just before the road curves, there is a barely visible trail. It must have been the one the group originally came down off the mountain by. That means the bunker isn’t too far away.

  Even with the size of the creatures bearing down on them, Kyle clings to the hope that the bunker will still hold up and be the sanctuary they need. He nods enthusiastically and then realizes their problem.

  The doctor. Her horse is ahead of the others and he has no idea how to get it pointed in the right direction.

  He kicks his heels and spurs his horse faster, which is a feat unto itself considering the speed the animal is already going. His horse protests, but a luckily timed roar from half the monsters gets it moving and it gallops up to Dr. Probst and her horse.

  “You have to turn him!” Kyle yells.

  “WHAT?” Dr. Probst screams.

  “YOU HAVE TO TURN HIM!” Kyle repeats, pointing up at the curve and the trail that has become more visible as they get closer. “WE HAVE TO GO UP THERE!”

  Dr. Probst looks ahead then down at the reins in her hands. “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “You don’t have a choice!” Kyle yells. “The bunker is up there!”

  “The fucker is where?” Dr. Probst shouts.

  “No, the BUNKER! THE BUNKER is up there!”

  “OH!” She shakes her head. “I can’t steer this thing!”

  “Just hold on tight with both hands!” Kyle says. “Then yank to the right when I say so! You have to yank hard! Got it? Yank hard!”

  Kyle isn’t sure if the doctor understands him or not, since she just keeps looking from where the trail is, and down to the reins in her hands, over and over.

  “PAY ATTENTION!” Kyle shouts and a wave of sadness hits him as he realizes he sounds just like his grandma.

  Dr. Probst finally stops her Rain Man act and nods at Kyle.

  The curve gets closer and Kyle lowers his head as he leans his body down over his horse. He starts to count off in head, trying to figure out the timing of when he’s going to yell at the doctor. The trees fly past him and he takes a deep breath.

  “NOW!” he shouts and pulls hard on his horse’s reins. The animal protests with a loud whinny, but is going so fast it can’t stop or pull up. It changes its direction slightly and heads right for the trail.

  Kyle looks over and is pleasantly surprised to see the doctor’s horse is right behind his, same with Gil and Tiff’s, as the ground switches from broken asphalt to cracked and loose earth. The horses slow slightly as the trail starts to climb and the land goes from level to a steady slope. But the animals’ speed only decreases a small amount as they drive themselves madly forward up the trail and along the mountain.

  More foam flicks from Kyle’s horse’s mouth and the animal’s eyes are almost rolling in its head. He knows the horse doesn’t have long before it pushes its body to collapse. Yet as much as he’d like to stop so the animal doesn’t drop dead under him, he knows he has to keep it going as far as possible. Stopping means the monsters will catch up and Kyle doesn’t want to think about what will happen then.

  The trail twists into a switchback and Kyle is almost certain his horse is going to just jump off the side of the mountain, but it slows enough to follow the marked path and keep climbing.

  Still heading up, but facing a new direction, gives Kyle a view he’s not sure he wants to see. There before him are the monsters. Four legs each, they stomp through the forest, crushing everything in their way. Trees snap like toothpicks, boulders crack and turn to dust under their weight. The few birds left in the area cry out as they try to fly out of the way, but many are swatted to the ground by gargantuan hands, knocked out of the way like gnats.

  The trail switches once more and Kyle is thankful he no longer has to stare at the abominations. Then he feels his horse stumble a bit and his heart leaps into his throat. The trail keeps going and going and Kyle’s horse is struggling against the ever increasing incline. He can feel the thing under him start to shake uncontrollably and he knows it’s not just fear making the animal quake. He leans forward and yells words of encouragement into the horse’s ear, while patting the animal’s neck over and over, but he has no idea if it makes a difference.

  They make it to one more switch in the trail before the horse lets out a harsh cry and grunt. The poor thing’s front legs collapse underneath it and in a split second, Kyle finds himself flying through the air as he’s thrown over the horse’s head. He slams into the trail and rolls a few feet before grabbing onto a small pine. He swallows hard as he realizes he is inches from rolling right off the trail and taking a nice hundred foot plunge down the mountain to the lower switchback.

  “You okay?” Gil asks as all the horses pull up, the trail blocked by Kyle’s suffering horse.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Kyle says as he gets to his feet. “But we can’t stay here.”

  “No shit, kid,” Gil says. “Climb on the doctor lady’s horse and let’s keep moving.”

  But in answer to that, Dr. Probst’s horse snorts, coughs, and then sits down hard. Its eyes roll up in its head and it falls to the side, dead before it fully hits the ground. Dr. Probst is able to jump free and keep from being crushed, but it’s Kyle that really saves her as he lunges forward and grabs her by the pack.

  She stands at the edge of the trail, her arms out and eyes looking down at the drop as Kyle slowly pulls her back.

  “You alright?” Kyle asks.

  “No,” she states bluntly. “I’d be fucking crazy if I was.”

  More roars get them focused again and Kyle pulls at the doctor as Gil and Tiff get down from their horses. They grab what gear they can, and start jogging up the trail, their exhausted bodies being pushed almost as hard as the poor horses they leave behind.

  “How much further?” Dr. Probst asks.

  “A couple miles,” Gil replies.

  “Oh, God,” Dr. Probst says. “We’ll never make it. They’ll get us before then.”

  As they keep climbing, they take another switchback and are once again facing the giant monsters, but this time, they are close to shoulder level on the things.

  “I can’t understand them,” Dr. Probst says, more to herself than to anyone around her. “They aren’t possible.”

  “They look possible right now,” Gil says. “Scary fucking possible.”

  In seconds, the beasts are parallel with the four terrified humans. Kyle focuses on the trail, but his whole body tenses, waiting for when they will be snatched from off the mountain and popped into a monster’s mouth like a handful of peanuts. He laughs at the thought since the things’ hands are so big, they wouldn’t even come close to being considered a handful.

  “What the hell could be funny right now?” Dr. Probst snaps. “This is no time to laugh.”

  “It’s always time to laugh,” Gil says. “Let the kid laugh. Could be his last.”

  Kyle stops laughing.

  ***

  Lu huddles between Lowell and Bolton as they sit in the dank, dark basement of what they figure out is one of the city hall annexes. Above them, they hear the sounds of stones crashing down as the monsters rip at the walls to get in at them.

  “Persistent fucks,” Lowell says.

  “We can’t just wait here for the building to come down around us,” Bolton says. “We need to figure a way out.”

  “Just kick back and relax, Sergeant Slaughter,” Lowell says. “We aren’t going anywhere. Might as well get comfortable, because this is where we die.”

  “We aren’t going to die here,” Lu says. “I refuse to die in a municipal basement with a criminal and an ex-boyfriend. We are getting out.”

  “Really? And how will we do that, Marshal Optimist?” Lowell laughs. He coughs as he chokes on a breath of dust that fills the air. “Slip up through the air ducts like in the movies? You realize that nowhere in the world are there buildings with air ducts big enough for real people to c
rawl through, right?”

  “Yeah there are,” Bolton says. “Been stuck in a few.”

  “Stuck, exactly,” Lowell says, “because they weren’t big enough!”

  “No, because I had to wait three days before my target showed his face,” Bolton says.

  “Three days in an air duct? How’d you take a piss?” Lowell laughs.

  “I held it for 36 hours,” Bolton replies. “Then I went in my pants. I always take adult diapers on a long hide op.”

  “Bullshit,” Lowell says. “You did not piss in your pants.”

  “I did,” Bolton says. “Pretty common to do. The only problem is I couldn’t move around after that. The piss smell would leak out and since I was in an air duct that meant someone would come looking for the source.”

  It’s too dark in the basement for Bolton to see Lowell’s face, but if he could, he would have seen the man shaking his head in a mixture of awe and disbelief.

  The crashing from above grows louder and Lowell pounds his fists on the floor.

  “What we need is a fucking airstrike to come in and kill those fucks,” Lowell says. “But that’s not happening.”

  The thought of an airstrike makes Bolton realize he’s forgotten something very important during all of the chaos and running for their lives.

  “Son of a bitch,” Bolton says as he scoots away from the other two and starts unlacing one of his boots. “I’m a fucking moron.”

  He gets his boot off, and then grabs the heel. He carefully works a fingernail into one of the grooves and gives it a flick. That section of the hard rubber slides a fraction of a millimeter and he keeps at it until a small compartment in the heel is revealed. Bolton laughs and holds up a small black disc with a glowing red center.

  “Here’s our airstrike,” Bolton says. “Well, not quite, but it could be our way to talk to the outside world.”

  “How is that mini Magic 8-Ball going to get us out of this basement?” Lowell asks as he watches the glow disappear when Bolton lowers his head to the disc.

  “It’s not,” Bolton says. “But it does give us a reason to try.”

  “I already have a reason,” Lowell says. “It’s called staying alive.”

  “We’re safer down here than out there,” Lu says then crawls over to Bolton. “What is that?”

  “Coordinate Locating Device,” Bolton replies. “The CLD tells me where I need to go when all other forms of communication have been cut off.”

  “Great,” Lowell says. “Where do you need to go?”

  “Not a clue,” Bolton says. “I need a map of the area in order to figure out where the longitude and latitudes of the location are.”

  “You don’t have that shit memorized in that super soldier brain?” Lowell laughs. “Some hero you are.”

  “Shut up,” Lu snaps. “I’m sick of your wise cracks.”

  “My wise cracks?” Lowell replies. “Gee, Officer Krupke, I’m so sorry for misbehaving.”

  “We need to find a map,” Bolton says. “This is a municipal building, right? They have to have maps around here. Anyone see what offices this place holds?”

  “Nope,” Lowell says. “Missed that when running from the things trying to eat us.”

  “What are we going to find if we can get a map and then make it to the coordinates?” Lu asks. “Is it an extraction point?”

  “No,” Bolton says. “It’ll be something they’ve airdropped. Should have a sat phone at the very least. Maybe supplies, if we get lucky.”

  “And you know how lucky I’m feeling right now,” Lowell snorts.

  Lu stands up and looks towards where the old stairs lead up to the first floor. “Let’s get going.”

  “Whoa! Shouldn’t we think this through?” Lowell protests. “If you listen very carefully you’ll notice that our company hasn’t left.”

  A massive crash punctuates his words.

  “I doubt they’re going to leave anytime soon,” Lu says. “And I’m sick of waiting around. Let’s find a map, figure out where we are going, and get the fuck out of here.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Bolton says and makes his way to Lu.

  “That sounds like more of an outline,” Lowell says, getting to his feet and following the other two to the stairs. “But, hey, I always thought I’d die in prison staring at three grey walls and a set of bars. Getting eaten during the flying monster apocalypse is a much cooler way to go out.”

  The three make their way carefully up the dark stairs, with Bolton taking point. He wishes they had weapons of some kind, but they lost everything on the streets of Coeur d’Alene fighting the monsters. Not that the bullets did any good. They might as well have been throwing rocks.

  “That way,” Bolton whispers, pointing down the dark hallway as he pushes open the stairwell door. “See if you can find a directory, something to tell us what offices are here.”

  Bolton watches the space in the building where there should be a wall, but is nothing but open air looking out onto the hellish street beyond. The monsters have stopped attacking the building and are back to concentrating on cleaning up the streets, their giant mouths hungrily gobbling up every corpse they can find.

  Bolton swallows hard as he backs up the way Lu and Lowell went, his eyes never leaving the nightmare. He can’t stop himself from staring as one of the monsters tears a man’s arms off with its two front legs, and then tosses the meat into its open, multi-toothed mouth. He can almost swear that the thing is smiling and happy as a dog with a bone.

  Then it stops chewing and looks towards the building. Its black eyes bore right into Bolton and it instantly reminds him of a mission that almost went very wrong when he and his team found themselves in the middle of nearly fifty sharks down in the South Pacific. The monster’s black eyes are just like a shark’s, nothing but predatory hunger and violence.

  With half an arm hanging from between its teeth, the thing turns and lumbers over to the building, its neck stretching as it gets closer and closer. Bolton doesn’t move. He freezes up against the wall, his pulse rate skyrocketing.

  “Connor?” Lu whispers as she starts to come back around the corner to find Bolton.

  “Stop,” Bolton hisses. “Stay right there.”

  At the sound of his voice, the creature growls low, making Bolton’s balls want to crawl up into his stomach. The thing lowers its head and extends its neck as it gets to the building. Bolton watches in terror as the monster’s head gets closer and closer, filling most of the hallway with a stench of sulfur and rotted meat.

  Another growl, this one much louder, tests the strength of Bolton’s bladder, but the soldier doesn’t budge from the wall. Foot by foot, the beast pushes its head and neck into the building and Bolton can see that the thing doesn’t have nostrils so much as a row of pits along its upper lip, similar to a lot of snakes he’s seen. Are the monsters reptiles of some sort? Do they have the same cold-blooded characteristics? Bolton makes a mental note not to forget that observation.

  The head stops only a meter from Bolton and only his years of training keep him from running screaming.

  Bolton’s eyes are on the creature’s eyes and they stare, a stalemate of species. He studies the thing’s body, how its neck is almost snake like, how the wings seem to fold into the beast’s back as if they could be tucked away and hidden, how it doesn’t seem to breathe, or at least Bolton can’t feel a breath on him or see the monster’s chest moving like it would with normal respiration.

  But it has lungs enough to produce an earsplitting shriek as its head lunges towards Bolton without warning.

  “Move!” Lowell yells as he pushes Bolton out of the way, a fire axe in his hands.

  The monster’s head comes right for him and Lowell brings the axe down with all of his strength, the blade hitting the beast right on the snout. It rocks back and howls, but for all Lowell and Bolton can see, the axe did nothing but piss it off.

  “Title office!” Lowell yells, grabbing Bolton’s arm and pulling him around th
e corner. “Maps! Lots of maps!”

  “I got one of the whole region!” Lu yells as she comes rushing from an office up ahead. “As long as whatever it is, is in Idaho, Eastern Washington, or Western Montana, then we are good!”

  The building shakes as the monster shoves its whole body inside and giant claws lash out, splitting the floor right where Lowell and Bolton had been standing.

  “Go!” Bolton yells, waving Lu on. “Run!”

  Plaster falls everywhere and the building shudders and takes a lurch to the left as the monster rips apart the hallway behind them, its body too big for the narrow space. Walls crack and collapse and Bolton can actually see the building start to sag around them, its structural integrity beyond compromised.

  “There! That window!” Bolton yells as he points ahead of them towards the end of the hallway and a large double window.

  He grabs the axe from Lowell, not missing a step, and cocks it over his shoulder as they race at the window. Just as they reach it, Bolton brings down the axe, shattering the surprisingly intact glass, and he lowers his shoulder and leaps through. Shards of glass tear at his clothes and he feels cut after cut along his arms and back. Lowell and Lu are yelling at the top of their lungs as they leap after. They all find themselves in a narrow alleyway between buildings.

  “Oh, God,” Lu says as she looks at the mouth of the alleyway. “What is that?”

  “Bodies,” Lowell says. “Looks like our winged overlords are stashing corpses as a snack for later.”

  Bolton looks behind them and sees nothing but trash cans and a three story brick wall. He hefts the axe and turns back to the wall of bodies that blocks their way out.

  “Only one way through,” he says as he steps up to the bodies and starts cutting.

  He hacks and whacks at the corpses, sending offal and blood flying everywhere. Limbs come loose and tumble at his feet while bloated bellies burst, spilling putrid guts onto the dank concrete. Bolton tries not to gag, but his gorge won’t obey and his vomit joins the puddle of yuck that stands an inch around his boots.