Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters

by James Swallow

  “The Inuit people call her Tornaq,” said the professor. “She is the fury of the Arctic made real. And there are more!” His voice rose as he snatched at the papers, waving them at Hannah and Dillon. “Gaonaga. Kagiza. Taligon. Names unspoken for thousands of years, but the knowledge of their coming was given to our ancestors. I know this, my girl. By God, it is true, all the things I was pilloried for by my peers, all fact!”

  He didn’t see her gripping the photo of the one he had named Taligon; the monster made of bone spikes, armored scales and orange-hued crystal. Hannah glared at the image, transfixed by it. Remembering.

  Dillon ran a hand over his head. “You’re saying all that Mysterious World bollocks about ancient astronauts is real?”

  Outside, there was another low rumble as titanic opponents clashed miles distant, but the professor didn’t seem to hear it, nodding at the other man’s question. “In a way, Sergeant Dillon. I have found a set of commonalities to all the ancient cultures that feared and revered these beasts.” He became enthused as he explained. “All of them speak of unseen ‘masters’… An ephemeral god-race that act like the pantheon of old Greek myth, meddling in the affairs of our world by influencing the creation or unchaining of these creatures. These kings and queens of the monsters, these Kaijujin, they are what bring the beasts to Earth! It is their sport, just as you or I might play a game of cards…” His tone turned bitter. “And they have returned to plague our world.” He gestured around them. “Even now, they’re watching us. Watching this city fall.”

  Dillon shook his head. “You get a lot of folks questioning your sanity, do you?”

  “Yes,” admitted the old man. “But not so much now.” He held up the scanner device, scooping the rest of his materials into a battered leather satchel with the other hand. “A friend, a physicist of my acquaintance, built this. She believed like I do. She discovered a rare kind of cosmic radiation that occurs around all incidences of Kaiju activity… Not just in the beasts themselves, you understand, but in the events that surround them, even the circumstances of their birth…” He waved the scanner in the air, and the unit’s chirping quickened. “I believe it is some sort of residual effect, a by-product of the Kaijujin exerting their influence into our dimension. A telepathic fingerprint, if you will.”

  “Right,” said Dillon, after a moment. “I have to say, mate, I have no idea what you’re on about. Science was never my strong suit. But clearly you believe what you’re saying, and I know enough to know that you need to talk to smarter people than me about your…” He trailed off. “Kay-ju-jus.”

  The professor didn’t answer. The noise from the scanner was growing louder with every passing second.

  ~

  Patel shot Bramwell a look and instinctively shrank closer to the parked helicopter. A low, bone-deep murmur resonated through the streets. It was unmistakably an animal growling, but one huge and powerful and very close. In the wake of the noise, the ominous silence fell again.

  “You reckon they’re gone?” said Bramwell. The sergeant whispered the question, his eyes wide. Patel had never seen the man so afraid before. Now Brook and Dillon had left them, it was as if Bramwell had given up on maintaining the pretense of a brave face.

  For the past few minutes, the two men had listened to the slow, steady approach of the battling beasts, the unearthly snarls and the crash of breaking masonry. Now there was nothing, and their fears filled the stillness for them.

  When the creature screamed again, the shock of it made Patel cry out in surprise. There was a scuffling, crashing thunder, and a huge shape rose in the sky. It blotted out the sun as it spun over them; a crimson-skinned monster covered with bone spikes and a great crest like the helmet of a samurai. Something had gathered up this gigantic alien creature and hurled it bodily through the air. Strange, luminous blood rained down on them from wounds in the red beast’s flesh as it passed over their heads and collided with the Centre Point tower two blocks south. The Kaiju vanished into a howling torrent of gray smoke, falling out of sight as the office building collapsed on it, burying it under a heap of glass and rubble.

  A storm of bright sun-fire lit the clouds and the red thing’s opponent took to the air, rising on a surge of crackling energy. Revealed in all its obscene glory, the second creature was some kind of mutant therapod dinosaur, all talons and spines and mottled scaly armor. Misshapen crystal spars emerging from its broad back cast a rippling light over everything, and in defiance of gravity, wings made of fire snapped at the air, lifting it up to survey the damage it had done.

  “We have to get out of here!” shouted Bramwell, vaulting into the helicopter’s cockpit. “Right bloody now!”

  Fire began to rain from above, fat orbs of flame streaking away from the creature’s wings to blast blackened pits in the buildings all around them.

  Hannah stared at the picture of the beast with the spines and the flame-wings. Taligon; a name from an Arabian myth, a tale told by nomads of a sky-demon that stalked the desert bearing death for the unworthy. This was the thing that had killed her lover John only two weeks ago, and the pain of his loss was so raw and so strong it was as if it was happening again, right now.

  Crashing across the countryside from where it had made landfall on the Welsh coast, the monster had obliterated everything that lay before it – and in one of the cars it had immolated as it flash-burned the traffic on a highway, Hannah Brook’s fiancé had died in agony

  She had been there that day. In the dark corners of her heart, she wished she had died there, too, but some quirk of callous fate had decided otherwise. The fires had spared her, the blast throwing her free while poor John burned with her name on his lips. Hannah could not understand why she still lived.

  She crushed the picture in her hand as a rumble shook the walls of the museum and Hannah snapped back to the moment.

  Her uncle staggered, trying to keep his balance as he peered at the screen of the scanner device. “I don’t understand…” he began, glancing toward Hannah and then back to the unit. “The energy patterns… Something is different, it’s nearby...”

  The questions forming on his lips never had time to coalesce. With a scream of tortured air, a ball of flame crashed into the roof of the British Museum, and the building shuddered violently. Stone and steel spilt as the structure cracked.

  “Run!” bellowed Dillon. “This place is gonna come down on us!”

  ~

  Bramwell dropped into the pilot’s chair and slapped at the engine controls, frantically trying to spin up the rotors. He had watched Brook do it a hundred times. How hard can it be? Panic pushed him on, and he felt a surge of relief as the Eurocopter’s motors engaged. The drooping blades began to move, agonizingly slowly, slicing through the smoke as the parkland around them caught fire.

  Patel craned over his shoulder. “Sarge, what are you doing? You’re not a pilot, you can’t fly this thing!”

  “I’ll figure it out on the way!” he snarled back. “Unless you want to get out and start walking? No? Then shut the hell up!”

  “Wait!” the young observer grabbed the other officer’s shoulder. “You can’t just go. Brook and Sergeant Dillon, we can’t leave them behind!”

  Bramwell jabbed a finger at the canopy, pointing toward the side of the museum building across Bloomsbury Street. Fires were taking hold there, and part of the northern annex had crumbled into ruins. “They’re already dead! I never should have listened to that stupid girl-”

  “No!” Patel grappled with Bramwell’s hands as he tried to pull on India 99’s control sticks. “I won’t let you!”

  The sergeant let go of the cyclic and shot back his elbow, catching Patel in the chest and knocking him into the rear cabin. “Shut up. You’ll thank me later.” Sweat streaming down his face, Bramwell silenced the voice in his head echoing Patel’s words and worked the controls. He could hear the observer behind him, calling into his Airwave handset, trying to warn Brook and Dillon.

  With a jerk, the he
licopter slipped to the right, the skids bouncing over the grass – but it began to rise, wobbling and turning under the sergeant’s inexpert handling.

  India 99 was just over five meters off the ground when a fast, low form burst through the foliage and leapt at the aircraft’s underside. Blurring like an image seen through rain-slick glass, the gecko-creature slipped across distance by some unknown, alien means. Its shiny blue skin still wet with river water, it had not given up the pursuit of its airborne prey. The Kaiju that Professor Brook had called Kagiza rose, jaws open wide, and clamped its mouth around the boxy fuselage of the helicopter.

  Its body weight dragged India 99 back to earth with a thrumming whine as the helicopter’s twin Turbomeca engines overloaded. Kagiza landed, limbs splayed, and bit down on the machine. Rotors screeched and snapped as they chopped at the earth. With a burst of smoke and gasoline fire, India 99 exploded. The gecko-beast was blown back, trailing blood, flesh and shattered fangs. Bramwell and Patel perished, the life crushed from both men in an instant.

  ~

  Dillon’s gut twisted as he heard Sanjay Patel die, the observer’s final cry of pain cut short over the crackling radio channel. He had liked the plucky young constable, liked Patel’s earnest manner and fresh-faced enthusiasm for the work of being a copper; and now the poor lad had been snuffed out like a doused candle, his future cut short by some monstrosity that had no right to exist outside of cartoons and comic books.

  He’d raise a pint for Sanjay later, even one for that fool Bramwell, if they could get away. Now was no time to dwell. Their ride home was gone, and the British Museum was coming apart all around them. Dillon kept running, pushing the Prof before him as he went, desperate not to let anyone else get captured by the unfolding chaos.

  Under the curve of a wide glass roof, they sprinted across the great atrium in the middle of the building, making for the main entrance. Fires burned everywhere, crackling through the contents of the gift shop and consuming priceless relics from cultures far away and long dead. Dillon had a sudden, bleak flash of London a thousand years from now, the dust of the city being sifted by some future archeologist trying to piece together the cataclysm that had destroyed it.

  Then the thought was gone as he caught his leg on a broken piece of brick and fell in a heap. Hannah spun around, reaching out to pull him up, but he waved her away. “Look out!”

  From where he had fallen, Dillon could see straight up, and in the center of his vision was a sagging section of roof support, the metal spars warped by the heat of the fireballs raining from the sky. Even as the words left his mouth, a ragged section of the roof detached from the frame and came crashing down into the atrium.

  He heard Hannah scream out her uncle’s name as the old man was struck by the falling girders.

  Dillon scrambled to his feet, but even as he moved to Hannah’s side, he knew it was already too late for the professor.

  The old man lay against a slab of stone, a spar of metal protruding from his chest. Blood grew in a red blossom across his tweed jacket and he gulped in a shaky breath of air. “Oh dear,” he managed, his words soft. “That’s torn it.”

  Even as he spoke, the color was draining from his cheeks. Dillon had seen injuries like this before at road traffic accidents, and he knew that the elder Brook’s life would be measured in moments.

  Tears streaming down her face, Hannah took up the professor’s hand, and he gave a wan smile, touching her cheek. “My girl. So glad you are here. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  She was shaking her head, refusing to accept what was happening, but the old man had already given himself over to the truth. He flashed a look to Dillon and the sergeant gave him a grave nod. The professor returned it, and that was communication enough. I’ll make sure she’s okay, Dillon vowed.

  “I came to save you,” said Hannah. “You’re all I have left.”

  “No,” he told her. “You have your friends. And you have saved me, Hannah. You did it every day. You will save me.” With effort, he pointed at the leather satchel containing his scanner device and notes. “Take that. Get it out of here, get my work to the right people. Sergeant Dillon was right, it needs to be…seen by people in the know…” He coughed, and pink foam collected on his lips. “You’ll save me Hannah, you’ll prove to all the people who thought I’d lost my mind…that I was…I was right.”

  “Uncle…”

  “I do love you so, my girl.” He squeezed her hand. “You have to survive… Both of you.”

  The words were a great effort, and they were his last. The professor’s eyes became glassy and dull, and Dillon bit back a rush of sorrow as the old man’s fingers slipped from Hannah’s grasp.

  Outside, the firestorm had not abated, and the building continued to shake, destroying itself by inches. Dillon took a breath and placed a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “Brooky. We’ve got to go.”

  “Everyone is dead,” she breathed, so softly he almost didn’t hear her over the noise. Hannah flinched and clutched at her gut.

  “Not everyone,” he insisted. “Not yet.”

  The pilot gave a slow nod, then leaned in to plant a delicate kiss on the old man’s face. In the next second, Hannah’s expression shifted and all the terrible emotions churning inside her had been shut away. She took up the satchel and shot Dillon a hard look. “We need to get to the river. Without the chopper, it’s the only other fast way out to the cordon.”

  Dillon nodded and pointed into the street. “I got an idea.”

  ~

  The black Porsche convertible had been probably been dumped by some rich city banker in the panic following the evacuation, but Dillon made good use of the car by hotwiring the ignition and sending them pell-mell down on to the Kingsway, back in the direction of the Thames. Hannah gripped the door frame for dear life as the sergeant pressed the Porsche’s pedal to the firewall and mounted the pavement, scraping paint off the car as it grazed low walls and bollards.

  She risked a look over her shoulder and regretted it. The blue lizard creature, Kagiza, was coming at them in a loping run, and for a second Hannah thought it would have them, but then the bigger, red-hued monster emerged from a side-street. Rains of dust and wreckage streaming off its shoulders, it grabbed the tail of its smaller rival, whipping it off the ground in a jerk of motion.

  Gaonaga, she remembered, that was the crimson beast’s name. It slammed Kagiza into the glass frontage of an office building and left it for dead. Hannah saw it turn to watch them flee, in time to see the massive, spiked form of Taligon fall from the sky and barrel into it.

  Taligon and Gaonaga crashed together with a thunderous blast of noise, talons and teeth flashing as they attacked one another. Alien fire sparked between them, conjured from within the flesh of the beasts, and Hannah flinched as an overspill of lambent energy crawled over the roadway behind them.

  Her fear went away for a moment, and she suddenly understood what that cameraman up in Newcastle had experienced – a true moment of shock and awe at the sight of the battling Kaiju, a clarity. Nothing would be the same now these creatures walked the earth. The world would forever be changed by them…and by whatever powers were compelling these colossal beasts into existence.

  Then Taligon was bounding down the road after them, jaws snapping in anger, and that fleeting moment of wonder hardened into new terror. The thing that had taken those she loved was now coming for Hannah Brook, and her gut stiffened with sympathetic pain. She heard the scanner unit inside the satchel chattering wildly as the monster’s shadow fell over them.

  “Here we go!” called Dillon, slamming the car through a slalom of parked double-decker buses and out on to the embankment near Temple Pier.

  Taligon’s heavy footfalls were so powerful that their encroaching impacts made the lightweight sports car bounce off the tarmac, and suddenly Dillon lost control of the vehicle. They collided with an iron fence and the Porsche’s emergency airbags deployed with a crump of displaced air.

  Daz
ed, Hannah pulled herself from the seat as darkness fell all about her. She felt a strange static charge tickling her skin. It was some side-effect of the great creature’s internal stores of energy, leaking out into the air. Too afraid to look up, she dragged Dillon from the driver’s seat and on to the road, her uncle’s heavy satchel pulling on her shoulder as she moved. The sergeant was barely conscious, knocked almost insensate from the car’s crashing halt.

  Propping herself under his armpit, Hannah marshaled all the effort she could and pulled him toward the pier, crying out with exertion.

  She felt a slow gale of furnace-hot air waft over her. It was dry and it stank of rotting meat. Taligon’s breath clogged her throat as the creature’s huge jaws levered open. Unable to stop herself, Hannah looked back and saw the Kaiju glaring at her, mouth open and hideously fanged, a baleful fire-glow building in its throat.

  All at once she wanted to know why the beast had such hate for her. Hannah had never felt so small, so inconsequential in her life. First John, then home and her uncle – why did these gargantuan fiends want to destroy everything about her?

  Defiance bubbled up from inside Hannah and she shouted at the creature. “Do you hear me?” she bellowed. “Are you listening, Kaijujin or whatever you are? Just leave us alone! We’ve done nothing to you! This is our home, not yours!”

  If it understood her, Taligon gave no sign. Instead, it reeled back and gathered death-fire in its mouth, seconds away from release.

  A great red blur came out of nowhere and shouldered into the spined Kaiju with a violent crunch of bone and flesh. The crested creature Gaonaga attacked its counterpart with brutal, swift ferocity, and Hannah staggered back as the road cracked and broke under the force of it.