The anchor is freaking out. Beautiful señorita talking rapid-fire to the camera, trying to hold it together but failing. I catch at least one word. Monstruo.
Shit bricks. Not again.
A distant rumble shakes the whole building. Jorge has the little-kid eyes going—all big and scared. “Es aquí.”
We follow him out the door, even Mickey Lopez, sober now despite half a dozen Sauza shooters. Nobody says a word. Together, we wander out into the cobblestone street and squint against the rain. A few cars stop, their drivers stepping out, searching for the noise like us. Our eyes trace down the coastline, towards Playa de los Muertos—Beach of the Dead.
“Dios mio.” Diego crosses himself.
The monster emerges from the ocean and stomps to shore, moonlight gleaming off its scales. It’s a big one… Real fucking big. Bigger than the resort hotel it collides with, knocking a six-story tower to pieces like it was a Lego toy. Its footfalls are distant rumbles, drowning out the broken screams of concrete and steel.
We all do the frozen in shock thing until the creature throw its head back and shrieks. Even miles away, it’s like a thousand fingernails on a thousand chalkboards. I cringe and cover my ears.
The shriek dies and my ears start their blood-pulsing thump… thump… thump. So loud I barely hear my cell phone ring.
~
Two days ago…
Carlito Diaz waited for the rain to stop, and then snuck into the playground nestled next to the Samba Vallarta hotel. Mama said he was too old for the swings and merry-go-rounds, him turning nine last month, but Carlito didn’t care. He still loved playgrounds.
He ditched his school bag and started with the slide—whooshing down a few times, the rain puddles soaking his uniform shorts. It was against the rules, him being here. The playground was for hotel guests not for a chambermaid’s kid, but there weren’t any tourists out, so Carlito felt safe. If one of the groundskeepers yelled at him, he’d just run off like he always did. Carlito was good at running.
He quit the slide because of the bruise on his butt – a gift from Ernesto Santos from school. Ernesto was twelve, and short for his age but still bigger than Carlito. A bull dog kid, with fat stubby arms and wide shoulders. Every day, Ernesto cornered him at school and kicked him in the ass, laughing at the little yelps Carlito made. Carlito ran away when he could, but that only made it worse later on when Ernesto caught up to him.
Carlito tried the monkey bars next, but they were too slick, so he gave up and wandered to the beach. He still had an hour before his mother got off work, so he found a stick and scratched pictures into the wet sand. Mostly sharks chomping down on Ernesto and his pendejo buddies.
He spotted the loco egg-thing buried under a pile of seaweed. It was all veiny, like a bug’s wings, but with shiny metal pieces clinging to it. And…was it glowing? Carlito’s heart revved its engines. He knew he shouldn’t touch it, but he couldn’t help himself. It was like the egg-thing was calling to him, faint whispers creeping in from the back of his brain.
It felt sickly warm. Carlito drew his hand back, and the egg-thing cracked open – making machine click and clack noises. Something scuttled out.
Carlito’s brain said, “Just a crab. Just a crab. Just a crab,” like it was trying to convince him, but Carlito knew it wasn’t. Crabs didn’t have black snake skin or weird metal chunks stuck to their slimy bodies.
Carlito stumbled backwards, sitting down hard in the wet sand. Quick – the thing that was not a crab scampered up his body and crawled onto his face. A wet needle sprung out of its belly, switchblade-fast, stinging Carlito’s eyeball.
He screamed and sprung to his feet. Clicking and whirring, the crab thing detached itself from Carlito’s face and plopped to the ground. Carlito was so busy running away he didn’t notice the thing dissolve like a salted snail.
Hot tears rained down his cheeks. He shut his eyes tight, trying to will away the acid pain. That’s why he ran right into Ernesto Santos.
“Carlito.” The older boy stood up near the playground, blocking Carlito’s path. “What’d you crying about now, maricon?”
“Please, Ernesto. I need to get to the hotel. A spider… it bit my eye.”
“A spider? No crap. Let’s see it, eh?”
Carlito covered his eye. “Let me go.”
“Show me, you little shit. Show me and maybe I won’t beat your ass.”
Ernesto wrenched Carlito’s hand away. The bully’s face went pale and his mouth hung open. “Puta madre,” he whispered.
The skin around Carlito’s eye stretched and swelled, creating a pulsing bubble of quickly rotting flesh.
“Leave me alone!” Carlito shoved Ernesto, both hands ramming into the 12 year-old’s chest. Ernesto went airborne. His body cleared ten feet before slamming hard into the jungle gym. Bones cracked. Ernesto slumped to the ground. His head bent at a crazy angle, his spine snapped in two.
With his one good eye, a horrified Carlito stared at the bully’s broken body. Then he ran.
~
“Got two words for you,” I say into my cell. “Fuck and No.”
I shut the phone off and walk back into Murphy’s pub. Bending over the bar, I pluck up a bottle of Jameson’s, pouring myself a healthy slug. Diego the bartender doesn’t say shit in protest. Too busy emptying the register and grabbing bottles of top shelf Patron. Then he and the boys are out the door, running for their lives without so much as a “vaya con dios.” I can’t blame ‘em.
Azteca 7 News has videos going now. Shaky glimpses, taken by amateur photographers with camera phones. It’s all frantic blurs of slick gray reptile flesh and horrible jagged teeth.
I’ve seen three others just like this one, close up. One off the coast of the Philippines six years ago. Another stomping its way towards Saint Petersburg, in ‘09. And a third last year in Indonesia—the “Jakarta Mauler,” killer of more than 50,000 men, women, and children.
By morning, the global media and Twitterverse will give this new monster a slew of nick names (Sombrero Stomper comes to mind). But to guys like me—Task Force M operatives—the beasts will always be known collectively as Megas. As in MEGA-fucking-big aliens sent to destroy mankind.
I’m throwing back my lonely Jameson’s when static blurs out the nightly news. A crew-cut dude replaces the cute señorita, the dude sitting in a windowless, black-walled room. I know the guy – Ronald Briggs, USMC, retired as far as the world is concerned. But he’s still got that Marine Colonel swagger, even if his civvies say otherwise.
“Lieutenant Grimes. I don’t like being hung up on.”
I stare at the TV, doing a mental recount of my drink tally. “How you doing that, Briggs?”
“Got a kid here who can hack any smart TV in the world in five minutes or less. Gotta love the geeks, huh?”
“Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant. You’re the only one around. Shit luck, I know, but we need you again. The thing dropped orbit before we even knew it was coming.”
The aliens use organic landing craft—“landing” being a misnomer. “Crashing” is more accurate. They break atmosphere disguised as meteors, splashing down in deep ocean waters. Then the craft splits open and out swims the monster, ready to wreak havoc.
More rumbles from outside, the Mega doing his own version of shock and awe. “I’m on shore leave,” I say. “For the rest of my life.”
Briggs leans forward, giving the camera a big dose of fifty-yard stare. “Twenty million. That’s how many people live in the Greater Mexico City area. You want all that blood on your hands?”
I don’t say a word. Feel my jaw go tight. Shake my head.
“Didn’t think so,” says Briggs. “Besides, we already got an ID on the host. He’s right there in Puerto Vallarta.”
“How’d you find him so fast?”
“Hackers got a data-mine hit. Some nurse took a snapshot of the poor bastard with her phone. Posted it on friggin’ Instagram. Some
humanitarian, huh?”
I consider pouring myself another shot, but decide against it. “And you say he’s in Vallarta?”
“Practically in your backyard. But I got to warn you, you’re not going to like it.” Briggs gestures to someone off camera. Two seconds later, a photo fills the screen.
Briggs is right. I don’t like it. Not one fucking bit.
It’s a kid. A cute, scrawny local boy, maybe eight or nine years old. And I was just ordered to kill him.
~
Yesterday…
Carlito sat up in his hospital bed, fighting sleep. He was afraid to even close his good eye—the one not bandaged up like a mummy pillow. Every time he did, a thousand voices flooded his brain, all whispering to him at once. They spoke in wet, growly gurgles. Carlito imagined that’s how alligators sounded when they talked to each other underwater.
And there was something even worse than the whispers. Sometimes Carlito saw Ernesto, slumped against the jungle gym, his neck twisted, his eyes like dirty window glass. Carlito wondered if he’d go to Hell for killing the bully. It was an accident, wasn’t it? Sure, he pushed Ernesto, but how did Carlito get so strong all of the sudden? Even now, as the fever made him sweat and shake, Carlito felt bigger somehow. Like there was this little churning engine inside of him, feeding his muscles with electricity.
San Javier Hospital smelled of bleach, like momma’s hands after scrubbing hotel toilets. All around him, machines beeped and hissed. Carlito had a whole room to himself, and doctors checked in on him every hour. They talked outside his door, trying to whisper so Carlito couldn’t hear them. The doctors didn’t know what was wrong with him. Even a little kid knew that was bad.
“Why don’t you take a nap, mijo.” His mother returned, a child-sized woman with streaks of gray woven through her black hair. She had gotten real scared when she first saw Carlito’s bad eye. Started screaming and crying. Carlito could tell she was still scared, even though she tried hiding it. “Some sleep might make you feel better.”
“Okay, momma.” Carlito rolled over and pretended to sleep. He was really tired, and the medicine stuff the nurses gave him made his head all woozy. Maybe he could close his eyes for a second…
Darkness engulfed him. There were no whispers this time, only the surge and swell of deep ocean waves. Moonlight filled his vision, so bright it made him cringe. He could see the distant lights of a city on the shore. Somehow he knew it was his city—Puerto Vallarta. He was viewing the place through someone else’s eyes. No, that was wrong. Not someone… Something.
The thing swam towards shore. Coming for him. But that wasn’t the scariest part. Something else frightened Carlito even more, a sinking feeling he tried pushing down but couldn’t.
He wanted the monster to come.
~
The Host. No one really understands the science behind it, although a few Task Force eggheads pretend to. Most believe that a Mega is nothing but a brute slave to some extraterrestrial intelligence. To control the beasts, the aliens create a psychic link with a human, which they infect via a parasitic scout (we call them Chigs). Once infected, the host becomes the aliens’ telepathic mega-phones, transmitting instructions to their super-sized shock troops. Search and destroy Earth’s population centers.
But there’s an upside. Cut the psychic link between monster and host, and the brain strain gives the Mega an uber-seizure. Put simply, kill the host and you kill the beast. Easy right?
Just one problem. I don’t dig the idea of putting an eight-year-old in the grave. I’m funny that way. So I decide to stop the Mega instead. It’s a three step plan…
Step 1: Borrow a vehicle.
Step 2: Make my way to the monster’s location.
Step 3: … I have no fucking clue.
Unfortunately, the only available vehicle is an abandoned scooter sitting outside the nail salon next to Murphy’s. Quite a sight I make—two hundred twenty pounds of U.S. Marine, buzzing up Vallarta’s rain-soaked hills on a friggin’ pink Honda Metropolitan. But I still gain mucho macho points in the eyes of my adopted Latino brothers. While they race away from the carnage, I charge towards it. Families gawk at me as they flee the scene in pickups and VW busses. I can read their minds. Gringo loco.
Explosions rock the street. Smoke swamps the air, filling my lungs with hot ash. To my right, flames hiss under the dribbling rain as they consume buildings and cars. To my left, a downed power line slithers on the cobblestones like a snake in its death throes—the electricity in its veins doing the snap, crackle, pop. I hear the Mega shriek again. Goddamn that hurts. It takes every ounce of my training not to turn tail and run.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Thunderous footfalls drown out my scooter’s engine. I still don’t have a visual, but I can smell the monster from here. Fill a plastic bag with fish, leave in the sun for a week, then pour the slop on a rotting corpse. That’ll give you an idea of the stench. No doubt about it, I’m closing in.
A Mexican Army Humvee rumbles by, splashing me. It’s the open-air version, a couple of scared soldiers up front, carrying G-3 battle rifles. A third guy in the back mans a .50 caliber Browning machinegun. I know from experience, a few hundred rounds from the Browning might agitate the Mega—like poking a bear with a thumb tack. The rifles won’t even tickle. I need a little more bang-o for my buck.
The scooter slip-n-slides as I bank down a wet side street, then steer back onto the main drag. I get twenty yards when eight tons of vehicular manslaughter fills my vision. Holy shit doesn’t cover it.
It’s an armored personnel carrier, flung through the air like a GI Joe toy. I lean into a controlled skid, laying the scooter on its side, trying hard to avoid decapitation. The APC sails over me and crashes into a storefront. Once upon a time the building was a bank. Now it’s a pile of rubble.
I get up, feeling hot road rash burning down my leg. The broken remnants of Humvees and helicopters litter the cracked street. They’re joined by a horde of bloody bodies, some torn to shreds, others crushed. And looming above it all is the Mega—200 feet of nightmare come to life. Gray snake scales cover a hide stretched over sharp bones. Jagged spines trail down a massive tail, pulsing with serpentine veins. Its skull head rolls unnaturally on giant shoulders. Its eyes burn white in deep-set sockets.
The thing lets out a bowel-shaking growl and shows its rotten fangs. Then it stomps towards a squad of Mexican soldiers and SWAT guys hunkered down at the end of the street. The Mega’s ridged tail whips back and forth, smashing taquerias and souvenir shops in its wake. Muzzle flashes light up the night and bullets ping off the beast’s armored hide like Tic Tacs.
The monster stops its march long enough to deal with a sniper nest. It shovels a pair of screaming soldiers into its mouth and chomps down. Bloody chunks of human meat rain on the street below.
I’ve seen stabbings and gunshot wounds and limbs blown off by IEDs. All of it pales in comparison to the horror of a Mega rampage. In a few short bounds, the creature reaches the barricades and squishes soldiers under its gargantuan feet, mushing them into a gory pudding of blood, bone, and organs. The rest of the soldiers scurry away. The Mega cranes down and chomps on a fleeing SWAT sergeant. Poor bastard doesn’t even have time to scream. Razor teeth sheer his torso off, leaving only his legs. Momentum carry them a few jerky steps before they wind down and crumple to the ground.
I chase the Mega up the street, side-stepping what’s left of its victims. A few cling to life, but they’re far beyond my help. One soldier crushed by a block wall holds a rocket launcher in his death grip, an old 100mm Blindicide. Aka the “Tank Killer.” Other than African warlords, I had no idea anyone still used these things. It’s basically a Cold War bazooka. No way will it stop the Mega, but if I get a lucky shot—maybe nail it in the eye—I might slow the monster down long enough for backup to arrive. A shit plan, but it’s the best I have.
I sling the launcher and grab the dead man’s pack, loaded with an extra HEAT round. Even half-drunk I can
outrun most men. But the Tank Killer slows me down and the Mega’s stride is longer than Usain Bolt could handle.
The Mega cuts left towards Playa de Oro and Vallarta’s marina. Across the waterway, a line of major resorts faces the ocean. These are the city’s biggest buildings, and even during the offseason hundreds of tourists flock to them. Not to mention a platoon of hotel workers. The guests will be huddled in their rooms about now or in exquisite hotel lobbies, eyes glued to TV news. Waiting to be corpses in multi-million dollar tombs.
My lungs heave and my heart does an impression of a thrash metal drummer. I reach the shore and spot the Mega wading across the harbor, swamping nearby yachts. The water barely slows its march. Catching my breath, I shoulder the Tank Killer and take aim. Why did I even bother? The monster carries most of its armor in its back. At this range, my 100 mm bottle rocket would barely break its skin.
Then I see it—a small tanker moored to the docks, no doubt used to refuel cruise ships. I shift my aim. Slow my breath. Not yet. Wait for it. Wait.
The Mega sloshes right next to the tanker, starting its climb up the shore. I fire.
The HEAT round punches into the tanker’s hull, and the ship goes up in a sun-hot flash. I reel back, shading my eyes against the explosion. The Mega thrashes and screeches. Flames engulf the giant, hopefully boiling its alien blood.
I reload my last rocket and hit the monster again. The boom is a firecracker compared to the tanker’s blazing eruption, but the Mega flinches and lets out a death howl. It’s an alien cry, but I can hear the desperation in it. Still burning, the monster hunches over and sinks out of my sight, flames dancing above it on the water’s surface.
I give the Tank Killer a thank you kiss and let it thud on the ground. Somewhere in a hospital, a little boy is waking from his nightmare. He’ll live to see another day, never knowing how close he was to getting his throat slit. Would’ve been for the greater good, and all that shit. Small fucking comfort.
A muffled shriek kills my good mood. The Mega explodes from the watery depths, steam rising off its burnt scales. For one heart-stopping moment, it turns my way and glares at me with those unholy, white eyes. Then it lumbers to shore, the marina crumbling under its mass. The monster is only three hundred yards from the biggest resort in Puerto Vallarta, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop it.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 15
