Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse

by Christofer Nigro

  The worm was thus delivered a mortal blow that finally forced it to detach from its victim’s sternum. It bent its anterior portion back in a curled position while emitting a screeching wail of pain, thus setting itself up for another bullet. Itaru’s next shot ripped a fist-sized hole into the side of the creature’s pale red flesh, after which its fatally injured tubular form was sent rolling down the craggy mountainside to move and ravage no longer.

  “Make sure to get the small ones!” Koji demanded. “Do not let them go! They are also very dangerous, and if left alive they will eventually become one of the bigger worms.”

  “Could Hudji still be alive?” Gillam asked his superior officer.

  “He isn’t moving,” Akira responded. “And I see no sign of his chest being pushed up and down by his diaphragm to indicate breathing.” The scientist hesitated and sighed for a split second. “Constable, I think you should do… what must be done.”

  “But wait, we do not know for certain…!” Koji cried out.

  It was too late, however, as Gillam fired off a shot that caused the smaller worm feeding on whatever blood may have been left in the man’s apparently lifeless body to explode like a sausage-shaped water balloon, the impact of which also blasted off Hudji’s right ear.

  “Dammit, I didn’t mean to…”

  Akira gritted his teeth before answering with, “Do not be distracted by the damage you inflicted on the man; I assure you he is dead.”

  “Are you absolutely certain?” Gillam asked the professor.

  Itaru pointed his revolver and let off the next shot, one which blasted a bullet clear through Hudji’s head. This effectively caused the victim’s skull to burst into shards of bone and brain matter, thus insuring the quick dispatching of the other small worm.

  “We can be absolutely certain now,” the constable replied.

  Despite being upset at the lawman for what he believed to be an insensitive comment, Koji nevertheless knew better than to challenge the officer when he was in his present mood. Hence, the younger man remained quiet while removing his hat in honorable respect for the kindly fellow island resident whose life had met an undeservedly cruel end.

  “I am truly sorry for that,” Itaru said in a reproachful tone.

  “It… had to be done,” Akira replied consolingly.

  ***

  “My god! Look!” Gillam cried while jutting his index finger in a direction leading up the dormant volcanic mountain.

  The other men’s attention was thus drawn to the top of the hillside, where they would behold a most unpleasant and alarming sight.

  Four more of the larger worms began extricating themselves from crevices at the topside of the hill, as if attracted to the scent of blood flowing in the veins of the humans assembled below. Itaru and Gillam, both professional law officers, were the first to draw their revolvers and open fire.

  Two of the giant annelids were struck by the lead projectiles, and hemoglobin-saturated ichor spurted from each wound like oil from a punctured tanker. Both fell before the barrage and one of them slid down the hillside to within a few yards from where the men stood.

  The other two über-worms began moving down the hill with their grotesque, frighteningly swift snake-like undulations, more than willing to face the bullets for a chance to get a taste of the culinary succulence pumping through the men’s circulatory systems.

  Gillam ran forward and jumped over the bullet-ridden body of the worm that slid down the hill, landing a few feet in front of it to get a closer shot at one of its still animate brethren. This proved to be a fatal error on his part, as the creature at his back wasn’t actually killed. The injured mutant coelomate suddenly thrust its hideous head upwards, extended its fanged proboscis, and sunk the bio-metallic projections into the back of the man’s neck.

  The officer screamed in shock and agony, dropping his firearm as he was dragged across the hard ground as the creature coiled its bleeding body around him like a boa constrictor.

  Itaru shouted Gillam’s name and aimed his gun at the lower body segments of the monster worm attacking his deputy. He fired a shot, gambling that the annelid’s bulbous physique was thick enough that the bullet wouldn’t penetrate all the way through and perforate Gillam’s abdomen. The Glyceracon’s tube-like form gyrated with the impact of the bullet, and more scarlet ichor poured out of the newly inflicted wound. The worm’s subtle but horribly noticeable rhythmic movements ceased, and this time it appeared to be truly dead.

  “Constable, look out!” Koji hollered as another of the giant worms descended on the lawman while his attention was still focused on the plight of his friend and colleague.

  Itaru turned and pointed his firearm, but he too late to stop the worm’s charge. It turned out he needn’t have worried, though; Koji blasted the creature’s extended proboscis clear off with a shot of his own.

  As the mega-annelid reeled from the serious injury, squeaking loudly while it swung its head about in a series of gyrating spasms, Itaru finished it off with two more quick shots. An attempted third shot resulted in the empty chamber of his revolver clicking to indicate it was empty. He decided to tend to the gravely injured Gillam before reloading his piece.

  Itaru grasped his strong hands onto the front section of the dead giant worm, its jaws still attached to the back of the trembling officer’s neck. The constable proved unable to dislodge the beast’s fangs from the man’s flesh, so he found himself forced to resort to bracing the heel of his foot to Gillam’s shoulder to gain some traction. He pushed down with his leg while simultaneously pulling with his hands in the opposite direction. After roughly thirty seconds of extraneous effort, Itaru finally succeeded in ripping the worm’s bloody maw from his friend’s Splenius capitis.

  Unfortunately, a large chunk of the man’s epidermis was torn off along with the worm’s forced detachment. The now mortally wounded lawman released a tortured gasp and his eyes bulged in their sockets as he began bleeding out from the wound.

  “Shit!” Itaru exclaimed.

  The stoic constable immediately resigned himself to the fact that he lacked the time and means to staunch the blood flow and save Gillam’s life, so he respectfully pushed the man’s eyelids shut and proceeded to re-load his revolver.

  Akira proved less than a good shot with a gun, but he did manage two hits on one of the remaining three worms that slithered down the hill. The giant annelid released a squeal reminiscent of a pig meeting its fate in a slaughterhouse upon being struck. It spat chunks of bloody ichor from its open maw before falling and going still. However, another attacking Glyceracon dodged two more of the scientist’s shots with its erratic, writhing movements as it undulated towards its intended meal.

  Akira’s revolver clicked empty as he attempted to blow a hole into the worm’s outstretched mouth, which was now a mere few inches from his face.

  “No!” the scientist screamed in mortal terror as blood spattered all over him.

  It wasn’t his own blood, however. That red fluid spurted from the gaping, extended mouth of the worm as Koji shot it through the side of its projecting proboscis. He then fired his final bullet into what seemed like the neck region of the annelid. The awful creature screeched in an ear-splittingly shrill fashion just before its dead body fell onto Akira. The worm’s hefty weight took the older man clear to the ground.

  “Get it off me, get it off!” the zoologist shouted while spitting out droplets of its blood-like ichor that leaked into his mouth.

  Koji rushed over to the professor and dragged the dead annelid’s body off him. After that, the scientist got on his knees and began sticking his index and middle fingers down his throat to forcibly trigger his gag reflex. As intended, he soon began to vomit copiously.

  “Akira-san, what are you…?”

  The scientist uttered a response between his several uncomfortable and messy upchucks. “Need to… regurgitate the worm’s fluid that I swallowed… it could be radioactive, I must not get contaminated…”

&nb
sp; Itaru had just finished reloading his pistol only to be forced to drop it without firing a single shot as the final worm lunged upon him. The constable’s powerful arms managed to grasp its neck area and keep its anterior region from latching onto his face.

  Despite his valiant struggle and impressive strength, the officer knew the creature was stronger than him and would soon break his grip. The futile nature of his resistance was made all the more evident when the worm’s fanged proboscis began extending, but the lawman was determined to continue resisting to a bitter end that was but seconds away.

  When Koji heard the skirmish, he instinctively turned from the still violently retching Akira and pointed his revolver… only to remember at the last minute that its chamber was empty.

  “Hold on, constable!” he shouted as he struggled to stick ammo into his empty gun.

  Desperate to buy the young naturalist the time he needed to reload, Itaru managed to brace himself against the ground with his left leg for leverage while delivering a strong turning kick to the worm’s head with his right one. That action merely served to knock its proboscis aside, and the mutant coelomate quickly turned toward him again.

  Itaru made good use of the roughly two seconds that move bought him by pulling the combat knife he kept handy in a belt sheath and began stabbing the creature repeatedly on the side of its projected bowel. The monster coelomate squealed in agony as reddish coelomic fluid spurted out of the numerous intestinal perforations its intended prey had inflicted.

  After a few more seconds of that, the creature’s violent writhing and pain-racked screeches were stifled as two bullets penetrated its anterior in quick succession. The annelid’s elongated body fell unmoving onto Itaru, who promptly pushed it off him.

  “Are you okay, constable?” Koji queried with concern as he ran over to the officer.

  “I am alive,” the lawman answered with a gruff tone.

  “And Gillam…?”

  Itaru went silent for a second before responding in a low monotone. “He… is not alive.”

  “Oh no,” the young man said as he looked at Gillam’s mutilated body lying a few yards distant. “Those loathsome bastards...”

  Itaru was by then back on his feet and offering what consolation he could. “There is nothing more we can do for him. He served and died with honor. For now, we should see to the professor, as he looks in a bad way. I have not seen anyone throw up like that since the time my cousin Innoue ate some bad clams.”

  The three men took a moment to exhale sighs of relief, thankful to be among the living despite their downcast manner over the loss of Gillam. This reprieve wouldn’t be enjoyed for long, however, as a far larger and vastly more destructive terror would soon rear its voluminous head.

  CHAPTER 6: The Giant Behemoth

  Koji and Itaru helped the still retching Professor Akira Watanabe to his feet, which were quite wobbly at this point. Koji patted his newest friend on the back several times to aid him in chucking out the last of the gastro-intestinal contents that he was attempting to expurgate in the hope of avoiding radioactive contamination.

  “Let it all out, Akira-san!” Koji said as he continued to strike the professor’s back with an open palm.

  “Must you… hit so hard, Koji-san?” Akira queried as he endeavored to regain his composure despite his reddened face and sore throat.

  “Do not be a baby about this,” Itaru snapped. “After what you have just endured, surely some mere hard slaps to your back are not beyond your tolerance.”

  Akira rubbed his tearing eyes. “The point is, why add more pain to what I have already endured?”

  Koji abruptly changed the subject by shifting his attention to the dormant Fujimainā volcano. “There is something I have been meaning to tell you gentlemen; something I noticed right after we dispatched the last of those worms. There is something strange about the ridge at the top of the hill. The one where the worms came down at us from.”

  “What do you mean?” Itaru asked.

  “Well, not only does it look different from the granite composing the rest of the mountain, but I will swear on my ancestors’ graves that I never saw it there before.”

  Itaru took a closer look. “Koji is correct. That is very strange…”

  That sentiment proved an understatement of incalculable magnitude when the unfamiliar-looking section of the mountain suddenly began moving, which caused the conventional volcanic hillside to shake and rumble.

  “Could the volcano be active again…?” Koji mused aloud.

  His question was answered in the most terrifying manner imaginable when the unfamiliar section of the hilltop rose up to fully reveal itself as a gigantic, cerulean-hued reptilian monster. The same one, unbeknownst to the three men at this point, had destroyed the fishing vessel Ao Iruka mere hours earlier, slaughtering—and in some cases devouring—most of the ship’s crew in the process.

  “By all my ancestors…” Akira whispered in shock at the unbelievable sight his eyes bore witness to.

  Itaru simply stared at the monster with an ominous expression, completely at a loss for words.

  “Daikaiju…” was all the completely frazzled Koji managed to utter. A giant mysterious beast it certainly was, and that was all that registered in his mind for verbal expression.

  The newly emerged kaiju, the first humanity would encounter, opened its tremendous maw and released a resounding combination roar and hiss that froze the marrow of the three men standing at the bottom of the hill beneath it. Even the intrepid Itaru shuddered and found his flight impulse triggered.

  Seeing the three small figures below it, the bipedal, dragon-like kaiju lifted one of its enormous claws and smashed a portion of the dormant volcano to pieces. This act deliberately sent several tons of falling rock and debris rolling down the slope toward the tiny creatures that the über-beast considered territorial rivals to its alpha position on the planet.

  “Move!” Itaru exclaimed as he grabbed his two friends by the back of their shirts and pulled them into fleeing from the deadly landside that was bearing down on them.

  “We’ll never make it!” Koji cried.

  “Just shut up and get behind here!” Itaru retorted loudly as he directed the other two to leap behind a particularly large rocky outcropping.

  Koji helped direct the still dazed Akira to kneel behind their granite barrier alongside Itaru and himself. The young man gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as the falling rocky debris either rolled past them or smashed to pieces against the protective outcropping.

  The dust from the shattered strata that impacted against the huge rocky shield spilled over their heads and outstretched arms in large quantities, a chilling reminder they were facing a creature with destructive power far beyond that of even an entire horde of the mutant Glyceracon. There was barely enough room for all three of them behind the barricade of shale, but it seemed as if it would do its job and hold fast against the landslide the kaiju set upon them.

  When the incessant sound of rolling and crashing rocks finally subsided, Itaru signaled the others to follow him and head for the police hut in the village. The two followed the constable’s command, but while rushing past the mountain they heard the kaiju’s distinctive bellowing hiss again. They turned to see that the titanic beast had rounded past the mountain and was now crashing through the foliage directly on their heels.

  The fact that it towered so far above the largest of the trees made it transparently clear they were dealing with a beast considerably larger than anything known to exist outside the tales to be found in world mythology.

  “The kaiju is chasing us!” Koji screamed. “It must intend to follow us into the village!”

  “We need to reach the police hut and get Eda out of there,” Itaru said as he loaded his revolver, despite realizing how unlikely it was that his trusty firearm could even slow such a creature down. “The rest of the people will be in the fort by now, and we need to lead the kaiju in a different direction.”

  �
��But where, exactly?” Koji queried as he began falling into a state of acute anxiety.

  “We must lead it to the ocean, grab one of the canoes, and get it to follow us offshore” was the constable’s reply.

  “But what if that kaiju can swim?” the young man rejoined. “That must be how it got to the island, and it may move far faster in the water than three men in a canoe.”

  “How many dinosaurs could actually swim?” Itaru said.

  “It actually does not resemble any dinosaur, or any other giant prehistoric reptile known to the paleontological record,” the still wonky Akira muttered. “That kaiju is far larger than anything that is known to have existed on this planet. It would tower above even a Brachiosaurus, let alone a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which indicates it is not likely a dinosaur despite the superficial resemblance and apparent reptilian traits.”

  “Must you be so pedantic at a time like this?” Itaru griped. “What I meant was it simply looks like a dinosaur, so it may have similar limitations.”

  “It does not matter what it is!” Koji said. “The monster is likely aquatic, and that means it will quickly catch us if we take a canoe into the ocean!”

  “If our sacrifice is what it takes to keep the villagers safe,” Itaru retorted, “then that is what we must do!”

  The young man face-palmed himself. “Oh, dear gods!”

  “Koji, he is… right,” Akira coughed out. “I am not a native of this island, but I too must help save these people if I have little chance of saving myself. If I am fated to die then I would prefer my death to serve a noble purpose.”

  “I know,” Koji said as tears streamed down his eyes. “But… never mind. Let us just do this, damn it.”

  The conversation was halted when the trio realized the kaiju’s enormous stride was enabling it to rapidly catch up to them. Realizing that they may never make it to the shoreline, Itaru quickly barked a strategical order.

  “We need to scatter in different directions and confuse it! I’ll head for the police hut, you two take separate directions to the beach. After I retrieve Eda from the station, we will meet you there.”