The brief respite afford to it allowed Mishipeshu to writhe out from beneath Animikii’s grip. The water panther struck at Animikii, sinking its fangs into the mighty thunderbird. Corrosive poison pumping through its body, Animikii tried to rise once more into the sky, but the weight of Mishipeshu brought it slamming back to earth.
A slap of Animikii’s wing broke Mishipeshu’s hold, sending the water panther slamming into the base of Daly Center and obliterating the fountain set before it. With its beak, the thunderbird pried loose the cobra-like fang Mishipeshu had left embedded in its body.
The water panther crashed through the lower floors of the skyscraper, but instead of working itself free it clawed its way higher, crawling through the inner structure until it was above its foe. Blinking its partially regenerated eyes, the reptile glared down at the thunderbird. Erupting from the face of Daly Center, Mishipeshu pounced upon Animikii.
The thunderbird lifted into the air in that brief instant before the water panther could strike. Mishipeshu hurtled past it, slamming face-first into the street. Before it could wriggle away, Animikii dropped down upon the stunned reptile. The fanged beak ripped at Mishipeshu’s wounds, tearing slimy goblets of flesh from the beast. Throwing its head back, Animikii forced each morsel of flesh down its gullet.
Again, the defenders of the city tried to assault the wounded monsters. A tank platoon rumbled out from behind the corner of Clark Street, opening fire on the two beasts. Animikii rose from its dying prey. The thunderbird’s eyes flashed lightning, its wings swept forwards in a titanic gale, catching the electrical discharge and transforming it into a crackling skein of death. The tank crews were cooked inside their armored machines by the electric hurricane.
Animikii soared upwards, the wounds dealt to it already mending as the regenerative properties of Mishipeshu’s flesh was absorbed into the thunderbird’s metabolism. Once again, Animikii flew across the city, landing upon the spire of Willis Tower. The thunderbird settled upon its perch and cackled in triumph. Then it swept its gaze across the concrete canyons, over the artificial constructions of centuries of industrialization and mechanization, of ruthless consumption and exploitation.
Mishipeshu had been freed from its ancient slumber by such things, these corrupt essences that inflicted such disharmony upon the world. As Animikiii tried to render its own essence into that phase which should allow it passage into its own plane of existence, the thunderbird found conditions too hostile to the effort. The imbalance inflicted by the men who had so greatly profaned the land was too immense for Animikii to overcome.
The thunderbird’s cackle became malignant, its stormy eyes glaring down at the fleeing crowds. The few who remembered the old Ojibwa legends might have appreciated how insignificant the destruction of Mishipeshu was beside the advent of Animikii. The water panther was a monster that would prey upon men, devour them like any beast of prey. The thunderbird was different. It didn’t prey on men, it judged them and destroyed all who didn’t please it.
In this modern world of steel and smoke, of greed and hedonism, how few would be spared the wrath of Animikii?
The Turn of the Card
James Swallow
Streamers of ash fell from the sky in a gray rain, leaving lines across the grassy expanse of the landing strip. Overhead, plumes of heavy smoke drifting eastward from London blotted out the weak sunshine, making it seem more like nightfall than morning.
The little municipal airfield at Rochester was overflowing with activity in the wake of the evacuation, vehicles going to and fro, light planes and helicopters arranged nose-to-tail where they had been squeezed into every last square meter of space. Aircraft had been arriving since dawn, fleeing the exclusion zone that had been imposed by the military. Many were dangerously overloaded, and there was talk of a twin-engine Beechcraft that had augured into a nearby hillside and killed everyone aboard, too heavy to clear the tops of the cinder-dusted trees.
But now, the arrivals were leaving again, given their meager rations of fuel and ordered to fly south toward the channel coast, away from the city and whatever the hell was going on there.
London was a ghost town. The evacuation order had blared from every television screen, every radio, every webpage and cell phone. In droves, the capital’s populace fled toward the hoped-for safety of the Home Counties – and now an eerie kind of stillness was spreading from the city in the wake of the black fire-smoke.
In the dead of night, the absence of noise lingered in the air. London had been silenced, a city of more than eight million people emptied in less than a day.
But when there was a sound, it carried; the skirl of RAF jets circling high, the faint and irregular rumble of buildings collapsing. And now and then, animalistic shrieks echoed off the low cloud. Sounds made by unnatural things, things with lungs the size of football pitches and throats wider than railway tunnels.
~
All this was pushed to the back of Hannah Brook’s mind as she opened the door of the pre-fabricated hut where the rest of India 99’s flight crew gathered. Like her, they had all been wearing their midnight blue jumpsuits too long and were all caught in that place between fatigue and nervous energy. Predictably, there was something resembling an argument in progress as Sergeants Dillon and Bramwell shot each other hard looks over stryrofoam cups of strong, dark builder’s tea. Patel and Haines, the two observers, looked on and said nothing. No-one had heard her enter, so Brook hesitated in the shadows by the door, listening. The folded map she held in her hand crumpled as her fingers tightened of their own accord.
“Bollocks,” Dillon said, with his characteristic grimace. He ran a hand over his shaven head, shaking it. Thickset and glowering, out of uniform he might have looked like some thuggish hooligan straight off the terraces, but in the Metropolitan Police Service colors he was more the immovable object that had cowed many a criminal into taking an easier option. “You’re having a laugh.”
Bramwell folded his arms. “You think anyone is up for joking right now?” He was a total contrast to the other man, whipcord thin and a head taller than Dillon, smooth where the other sergeant was rough. “Look at that.” He jerked his thumb at the television in the corner of the room, still tuned to the same rolling news coverage it had been showing since they arrived. “That’s happening, Rob. That’s real.”
Patel cleared his throat politely. The young man was a recent transfer to the Air Support Unit, with them for less than a month from the regular force, and his dark face was filmed with sweat. “I think…people would know if it wasn’t true.” The strain in his voice was clear. Like all of them – like everyone on the bloody planet – he was struggling to get his head around what was happening.
At his side, Haines—skinny, pale and fretting—just nodded glumly and said nothing.
On the screen, grainy footage from what was clearly a handheld camera flickered and jarred as the person shooting it tried to maintain their footing. With the sound muted, everything had a strange, surreal cast to it. Hannah recognized a view from the banks of the River Tyne, the shot looking up the channel that cut through the city of Newcastle. She’d had an aunt who lived up there, a sister on her mother’s side, back when she was still a teenager. Hannah remembered the red brick buildings in the northern town, and the great span of the wide arched bridge that crossed the old industrial waterway.
She could see the bridge there on the screen, parts of it visible over the shoulders of the giant machine that stood ankle deep in the wide river. A hulking construction made of tarnished brass and blackened steel. It resembled a great shelled terrapin standing on its hind legs. A cruel, beaked face crested the end of a serrated neck, framed by wreaths of steam billowing from tall smokestacks growing out of its back. The camera blurred as the shot shifted focus, zooming in and then out again. Hannah glimpsed the shapes of broad metal cogs turning inside the machine-thing’s barrel chest, and thick hawsers drawing taut as bulky arms, ending in metal talons, rose up into a defensive posture.<
br />
“Is there a man inside that?” Patel wondered aloud. “Is it…a robot?”
“I heard the Navy found it,” said Bramwell. “Some mad scientist put it together at the bottom of a Scottish loch when Victoria was queen. Been rusting away until… Until someone decided to start it up again.”
The story seemed unbelievable, and yet there it was, real and true. Hannah watched a text-ticker moving right to left across the bottom of the screen, and realized with a start that the footage was being broadcast live. She saw something about an attack on the city, a name that didn’t connect with anything she knew—Chelonra—and then the camera was whipping around again as a massive shadow fell over the image. Ice crystals formed around the edges of the lens and suddenly, inexplicably, in the middle of a summer morning it was snowing.
Another one of them – another giant – filled the image, wading downriver to meet the brassy machine leviathan with heavy, purposeful steps that sent surges of water up to swamp the banks. Floes of ice formed in the wake of its passing, as if it radiated a powerful cold.
This one resembled a polar bear, maybe a hundred meters high, the pure white of its fur marked with strange symbols that seemed to give off a faint glow. The sight of it had captured the attention of the camera operator with such power that the shot never wavered, for the moment, the incredible threat the bear-beast represented forgotten in the shock and awe of its arrival. Spines of blue sea ice charted a line down its back, and as it advanced, it flexed great paws that ended in shiny black claws, each one of them the size of a car. The creature tensed and opened its mouth to challenge the other giant with a soundless roar.
“What is it doing?” muttered Haines, finally finding his voice.
“It’s gonna kill that other one,” said Dillon grimly, looking up to catch sight of Hannah.
On the screen, the white-furred creature charged forward as the great machine released a ray of sun-bright fire from an aperture on its chest. The spell that had held the cameraman’s rapt attention broke and the view became chaotic as the person holding the rig ran away in panic. There were brief flashes of new snowdrifts on the Tyneside streets as the lens swung about, the blurred motion of legs and then a single, perfectly clear image.
The immense, towering bear, patches of its fur ablaze, slamming the Chelonra machine into the green-painted steel frame of the Tyne Bridge, with such force the suspended road bed crumpled and split.
“How are we supposed to beat something like that?” said Haines, the color draining from his face.
“We’ll play the hand we’re dealt,” Bramwell told him.
Hannah crossed the room and switched off the television. “I need a crew,” she told them. “To go into the city.”
“To… to Newcastle?” said Haines, his face creasing in confusion.
“Not Newcastle, you idiot,” snapped Dillon. “London.” He eyed Hannah severely. “That what you mean, Brooky?”
She held out a scrap of notepaper, and on it was a near-illegible scrawl. “I’ve been calling… Trying all the staging posts around the perimeter.” The moment she had to say it out loud, she found her strength starting to ebb, her fear rising to fill the void. On the way back from the radio hut, she had been certain of herself. But looking them in the eyes now, the full weight of what Hannah was asking for was upon her. “My uncle,” she said, the words falling from her lips. “He’s still in there, inside the cordon.” She shook her head. “I can’t leave him behind.”
Dillon and Bramwell exchanged looks. Both of them had been flying with Hannah Brook long enough to know about her past, that she had been raised by the eccentric lecturer at King’s College after her parents had died. Both of them also knew that she had an obstinate streak that had seen her discharged early from the Army Air Corps. The Army’s loss had been the Metropolitan Police’s gain, but the years had not smoothed away Brook’s rough edges.
Bramwell released a breath. “Hannah. Listen. Operations haven’t given us another tasking yet, but they will. We can’t just take off on our own-”
She gathered up her flight helmet from where it lay on a nearby bench. She jerked her chin toward the window, at the blue-and-yellow EC 145 Eurocopter parked a few hundred meters away. “Don’t get me wrong,” she told him. “I’m not asking your permission, Sarge. I’m telling you. All I want to know is if you’re going to help me.”
Patel got to his feet. “I’ll come.”
“What?” Bramwell’s manner shifted toward annoyance. “Do you have any idea what’s going inside the perimeter?” He came closer to the pilot. “Everything within the M25 has been classed as a no-go zone. Everything. You realize what that means, yeah?”
“The military are planning to flatten it,” Haines said, grim-faced.
Hannah held up the map in her hand. On it, the area ringed by M25 orbital motorway had been hastily crosshatched in red marker; the great circular road, which surrounded London, was now the line of demarcation. Each interchange along its length was now a strongpoint barred by tanks and mobile artillery units. It was a cage for the creatures that she had heard screaming in the night.
“Where is he?” said Dillon.
Bramwell rounded on him. “Rob, you’re not seriously—”
Dillon held up a hand to silence him. “Brooky. Do you know where the old man is?”
She nodded, tapping the middle of the map with a gloved finger. “The British Museum. When this all kicked off, he went there. He said he was going to look for answers.”
“What are you going to do if we get in and he’s not there?” Dillon’s craggy face softened.
Hannah swallowed the jolt of fear that possibility brought forward. “I have to be sure.”
For a long moment, the sergeant said nothing, then he nodded briskly. “’Course you do.” He made a turning motion with his index finger. “Better spin it up before we change our minds, then.”
Bramwell placed a hand on Dillon’s chest to stop him and both men tensed. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I owe her,” Dillon said, low and firm. “Come to think of it, so do you.” A silent communication passed between the two men. Months before, caught on the leading edge of a thunderstorm racing up from Kent, India 99 had been struck by lightning, and it had only been the expert piloting of Hannah Brook that had enabled the crew to live through it. That day, the slight, athletic woman with the dark hair and haunted eyes had saved all their lives.
Bramwell scowled, then nodded. “All right, fine. We’ll go.” He turned and pointed at Haines. “Except you, Mike. Someone has to stay behind and lie for us.”
The observer’s shoulders slumped, but he could barely keep the relief from his face. “Thanks…I mean, okay…”
Patel grabbed his gear and trailed after Hannah as she made for the door. “You don’t think…they’ll shoot us down, do you?”
“I’ll keep us in the weeds,” Hannah promised him. With each step she took, she forced the fear and the panic into a dark, distant part of herself, calling instead on her training, her skills. I can do this. I will do this.
As the four of them crossed the apron toward the helicopter, their boots crunching on the drifts of cinders, Bramwell came alongside her. When he spoke, his voice was low so only she would hear it. “Hannah, look, if this is about you trying to make up for what happened to John…”
At the mention of her fiancé’s name, Hannah was immediately aware of the engagement ring under the leather of her flight gloves, and again her fist tightened. “I’m not leaving someone else behind,” she told Bramwell, and reached up to open the helicopter’s cockpit door.
Ten minutes later they were speeding westward, low and quick, gently rising and falling as India 99 followed the nap of the earth toward the city.
~
The M25 flashed past beneath them as the rotors clattered through air still clogged with dusky embers, the dark band of the highway a jumble of empty cars where Londoners had forsaken their stalled vehicles on the exod
us from the doomed city.
Someone saw the helicopter go, and over the guard channel a stern voice barked out the police helo’s call sign with military authority, demanding that India 99 turn back immediately. In the operator seat next to Hannah, Sergeant Bramwell leaned forward and switched off the radio.
“We’re committed,” he said simply.
Hannah nodded. “Thanks, lads,” she told them, a swell of pride rising briefly in her chest.
They flew on in silence for a while before Dillon called out from the cabin behind her. “How we gonna do this, then?”
“We should follow the river.” His nose buried in a map, Patel traced a finger along the line of the Thames. “The smoke won’t be so thick over water.”
“Copy,” said Hannah, shifting her hands on the cyclic and collective sticks.
Patel opened his mouth to say something else, but then the observer caught sight of the streets passing below him and he lost the words. Hannah remembered the studious young constable was from south of the river, brought up somewhere in Streatham – and they had to be flying over his part of town at that very moment.
She chanced a look out of the cockpit as they flew over the tops of apartment buildings. Nothing moved down there, no people, no vehicles. At junctions, traffic lights were still operating, forgotten in the chaos of the evacuation and signaling at empty streets. Here and there she saw evidence of small, human-scale disasters – an elevated railway station crammed with stalled trains, a vehicle on fire that had been left to burn, a school playground filled with lines of luggage abandoned in the rush to escape.
“You see anyone?” Dillon asked, craning his neck.
It flashed past so quick she could only register the sight as a fractional image, but from the corner of her eye, Hannah saw a bed sheet that had been painted with the words ‘The End Is Nigh’ tethered to the balcony of a tower block. Four bodies, large and small, hung at the ends of ropes that had been tied to a balcony rail, necks broken.
Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters Page 46
