Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse

by Christofer Nigro

  “I am Goro Takiguchi!” the bearer of that name shouted from his bed on the other end of the room. “What you have heard is true, Honda-san. You need to warn the public about this. My friend Tatsuo is already dead because of one of those worms! And what these other two patients have said…”

  “That is enough, Takiguchi-san!” Matsumoto loudly interrupted. “We do not need to incite a nationwide panic, and I told you the military and other proper authorities will handle this through proper procedure.”

  “No, Takiguichi-san is right!” Koji interjected. “We cannot afford any of this ‘national security’ smoke and mirrors nonsense. The people need to be warned, and now that Honda-san is here, you will have to kill me to stop me from telling him everything!”

  “Please, call me Ren,” the photog said with a smile. “Using honorifics is so old-timey.”

  The major’s face turned a dark crimson with rage, and he released his grip on Ren to approach Koji. “How dare you threaten to undermine the government’s efforts to properly deal with this matter!”

  “You are undermining the public safety by keeping any of this secret!” Koji stated firmly. “Honda-san—Ren—please have a seat, for we have a story to tell you.”

  “I am pleased to oblige your hospitality,” Ren replied as he reached over and pulled a chair behind him.

  Matsumoto, however, angrily pulled the chair away before the journalist could sit on it, causing the journalist’s buttocks to slam down against the hard floor.

  “Oww! Hey, that was rude!”

  “Guards, drag this camera-carrying orokamono out of here!” the major commanded before turning his attention back to the insolent Koji. “And you will keep your mouth shut, or I will exercise several of a hundred different ways I can shut it for you. Permanently, if necessary.”

  “Hey, watch the jacket!” Ren complained as the two guards grabbed him. “I just got it pressed. And you almost made me drop the camera again!”

  “Then you shall have to silence me as well, Major” was Goro’s statement as he emerged from his bed and stood protectively in front of Koji.

  “And me,” Akira said as he, too, got up from his bed to stand beside Goro in defense of the Imotojima native.

  Dr. Sato displayed a confused expression as he stood clearly torn over whether to do the right thing, even if it may have cost him his lucrative career with the government. His standing reputation as being cooperative with authority was essential to maintaining that career.

  “Then you may all consider yourselves under military arrest!” Matsumoto bellowed with the intensity of an angry lion. “Guards!”

  Sato then surprised both the military officer and himself by suddenly speaking up. “Um, Major, perhaps you should give a bit of leeway to these men. I also saw this Megadrak, the kaiju that Watanabe-ka and Koji-san also bore witness to. Perhaps we should consider at least giving some sort of preliminary statement to our visiting Honda-san?”

  “Call me Ren,” the reporter said with another of his toothy smiles.

  “You shut up!” Matsumoto exclaimed while jutting his index finger directly into the journalist’s face. His irate gaze then turned to Sato. “Are you joining these men in their insubordinate and potentially treasonous behavior, Sato-kun?”

  “No, Major!” Sato said with due haste. “I am simply suggesting, in my capacity as a scientific advisor to all branches of the government, that perhaps the public interest would best be served if we…”

  Sato never got to deliver his advice, however, as an airman third class officer abruptly burst into the room.

  “Major Matsumoto!” the soldier shouted. “An extremely massive animal of an unidentified nature has been sighted swimming on the surface of the ocean. It was reported moving through the Uraga Channel toward the island of Odaiba!”

  “Oh wow,” Ren stated. “I’d best get to the bay as quickly as I can. Gentlemen, you can wait to give me the interviews, as it would seem your story is on its way to Odaiba of its own accord!” With that, the journalist rushed out of the room. “So much for keeping the lid on this one, eh, Major?” was the final verbal barb the journalist threw at the irate officer before disappearing down the corridor outside.

  “How many people live on Odaiba right now, Major?” Akira inquired with notable trepidation.

  The major sighed. “There are a few settlements there, as well as the Daiba National Park, which attracts… a fair number of visitors.”

  “Or maybe more than a fair amount,” Akira rejoined, “considering it is now the middle of the day during the early summer season.”

  “Oh, dear ancestors…” Goro said as he sat on Koji’s bed while burying his face in his palms. “Major, my mother and younger brother live on Odaiba. My mother works as a cook for the park staff. I need to get there now!”

  The major grabbed the frantic fisherman as he attempted to run out the door. Despite his struggles, Goro had no chance of breaking the much bigger and stronger man’s grip.

  “To the contrary, what you need to do is stay put!” Matsumoto commanded. “There is no way you can help them, and you would only expose yourself to the danger too. I will radio Yokota Base to get us fully apprised of the situation. The air and maritime forces will intercept the Megadrak, if that is what the approaching animal is, and allow a transport unit to get the island evacuated.”

  “You have no idea how powerful and resilient the Megadrak is, Major” came Akira’s warning.

  “I must concur with the professor on that,” Sato stated. “I saw Megadrak withstand a direct military assault—an assault that included high-caliber rifles and grenades.”

  The major was already on the room phone talking to the commander of Yokota Base, however.

  Goro was quick to take advantage of Matsumoto’s diverted attention. “I refuse to let you keep me here while my family is endangered!” the fisherman declared as he dashed out of the room.

  “Goro-san, no!” Akira shouted while forcing himself to get out of his bed.

  “Let the fool go,” Matsumoto said as he completed the emergency call and replaced the rotary phone’s receiver. “We have considerably bigger problems to concern us with, and the military cannot account for every hysterical action taken by a civilian.”

  “With respect, Goro-san was on Imotojima,” Akira replied, followed a short bout of coughing. “He has no inkling of what Megadrak is capable of. He has to be halted…”

  The professor suddenly ceased moving towards the door when he was halted by a far more severe coughing fit. That was followed by the scientist grasping his forehead with his right hand and his stomach with the other. His face had taken on a disturbingly white pallor.

  “Akira, what is wrong?” Koji asked while jumping from his bed and running over to his new friend.

  “Koji-san, I… feel… quite sick…” the scientist answered before suddenly vomiting on the floor. Specks of blood were visible in the spattered bile.

  “No… I must be… contaminated.” Akira’s eyes rolled into his head as the man collapsed onto the floor.

  “Akira-san! We need to get a doctor in here now!” Koji yelled.

  Matsumoto pointed to one of his guards. “You! Summon a doctor immediately!”

  “Ryôkai!” the petty officer replied in acknowledgment as he exited the room.

  Koji bent down and held his friend’s hand, alarmed at how the scientist’s nearly unconscious body was trembling as if he had a severe case of the chills. “Hold on, Akira-san! Help will be here in moments. Please, please stay with us.”

  Sato had by now also hurried over to the fallen scientist. The biologist checked Akira’s pulse on both his wrist and his throat then looked at Koji with a despondent expression.

  “No!” the young naturalist shouted. “No, I will not let you die, Akira-san!”

  ***

  Captain Earl Kendall could scarcely believe his eyes as he stood on the deck of the American Essex-class battleship known as the James Biddle. And this even though
he was using sophisticated binoculars with a 50x zoom capacity to view the enormous beast swimming at surprisingly high speed between the Bōsō and Miura Peninsulas surrounding Tokyo Bay.

  “Dear Lord in Heaven,” he said to his first officer, Commander George Harkness. “The reports from the Japanese government weren’t exaggerating in the least about the size of that… kaiju, I believe they called it. God help us all.”

  “I thought they called it ‘Megadrak,’ sir?” the second-in-command griped as a means of fighting the shock at what he was seeing.

  “A kaiju is a giant mysterious beast, or something like that, in the Japanese lingo. Megadrak is the official name one of the scientists who had first encountered the thing in the Ogasawara island chain gave it. Translates into ‘mega-dragon,’ or some such. But that’s not of paramount importance right now. What is important is that the Yoshida Doctrine says we’re obligated to protect Japan, so we need to blast that thing to pieces. It’s been implicated in several human casualties already.”

  “But, sir… what is it, exactly? It’s bigger than a humpback whale, but it doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen outside of a book on fairy tales.”

  “Let’s just call it a kaiju. We need to prepare the turrets and wipe that horror off the face of this planet.”

  The command was spoken, and within a few minutes the vessel’s twin rapid-fire .38 caliber guns commenced the planned assault. Megadrak’s entire head and back were above the surface of the water, looking much like a gigantic cerulean-skinned alligator with pointy, frilled ears. The kaiju made an easy target for the James Biddle’s tactical officers, but that hardly proved of any advantage when the ship’s high-powered bullets bounced off its scaly hide with the creature scarcely noticing the attack.

  “The artillery seems to have no effect, sir!” Commander Harkness announced.

  “Dear Jesus, how is that possible?” Capt. Kendall lamented. “How could any animal, no matter how big, be so impregnable? This thing must defy every law of science we know.”

  “Sir, at the rate the creature is traveling, it will reach Odaiba in approximately twenty minutes,” a naval petty officer came on deck to report.

  “We need to try an aerial assault,” the captain said. “Get four of the Thunderjets in the air and have them launch a sortie.”

  “Aye, sir,” the petty officer said as he ran to convey the message.

  Within minutes, a quartet of the already prepped Republic F-84 straight-wing Thunderjets ascended from the deck of the massive aircraft carrier and were promptly on the attack. The pilots immediately soared to within several meters of the rapidly swimming kaiju and unleashed the full fury of their M3 Browning machine guns on the azure leviathan. Even when fired in unison from so close a range, however, the 300-rpm gunfire seemed to have no effect besides severely irritating the giant beast.

  Megadrak took the mini-fleet by surprise when its previously submerged tail broke the surface of the salty water and swung at the aircraft like a massive scaly whip. Two of the fighter jets failed to evade this unexpected attack and were knocked from the sky with comparable ease to a hornet being slapped asunder by a human-wielded flyswatter.

  One of the twin Thunderjets crashed against the surface of the ocean with a booming crash. There the 38-foot long craft rolled on the waves until it came to a halt and bobbed about like a twisted metal rod. The pilot was alive but suffering from severe whiplash and a concussion. His eyes opened just in time to peer out the cracked window and see the enraged kaiju change direction and head right towards his wrecked aerial craft.

  Since the pilot’s debilitating neck injury made it far too painful to utter a scream, the man had no choice but to sit silently as Megadrak grabbed the damaged jet from the water and crushed it in its massive jaws. The solid steel hull crumpled under the irresistible pressure like tinfoil. The pilot’s still living and conscious body was pulped to death in a split second.

  The second smitten jet was to meet an even more destructive fate, as the unconscious pilot was unable to even attempt to veer the craft away from a collision course with the James Biddle.

  “My God!” Capt. Kendall bellowed. “Everyone get below deck immediately! Jump overboard if you can!”

  Unfortunately, no one managed to accomplish that before the earthbound Thunderjet crashed into the middle of the ship’s spacious deck. The wreckage skidded across the metallic surface of the vessel to slam into the other eight aircraft situated there, some of which harbored other pilots who sat awaiting possible take-off orders. Five of them were killed instantly as the sliding wreckage of the downed craft smashed their own jets into a distorted mass of metal. The result was all the sitting airmen being either crushed or skewered by pieces of shattered metal and glass.

  The engines of several of these jets quickly exploded, with several members of the crew who were present on the deck being summarily immolated. Some of them weren’t killed outright, but set aflame, and the captain and first officer looked on in horror as they watched their fellow seaman scurry about erratically while screaming in agony as the flames gradually and painfully consumed their bodies. The two officers soon became ill not only at the horrifying sight, but due to the overwhelming stench of burning flesh and hair that flooded the deck.

  A few of the fire-stricken seamen managed to jump off the sides of the vessel, desperately hoping that the waters of the Pacific would nullify the infernos their bodies had become. Wisps of smoke could be seen wafting from the points where these men went underwater and doused the burning flames, but none of them resurfaced afterwards. It was obvious they either died from the shock, or their muscle tissue was burned so severely that they were unable to swim back up to the surface.

  “Sir!” was the last word Capt. Kendall would ever hear, that being the frantic voice of his first officer motioning for him to turn around.

  The captain looked to see Megadrak bearing down on the blazing ship, its upper torso now extending above the water’s surface. The kaiju’s clawed reptilian hands were reaching out menacingly in their direction, its enormous jaws open with wisps of misty fumes billowing out from within and wafting about in the ocean breeze like iridescent smoke.

  Kendall immediately resigned himself to his fate. He spent his last few seconds of life reciting the Lord’s Prayer before the kaiju snatched him off the deck of the shattered Essex-class vessel and squeezed his fragile little body so it burst like a lanced cyst.

  In contrast, Harkness gave into his flight response in a harried attempt to escape the clutches of the massive beast. He soon found himself nearly running into the boiling flames that were feeding upon the spilled jet fuel and rapidly consuming any remotely combustible part of the ship. The smell of the burning flesh, trailing through the air off the immolated seamen lying scattered about the deck, forced him to stop and dry heave. This need to retch put a pause on his escape plan, and the delay was exacerbated when the path of the spreading blaze intercepted the west end of the deck from where he intended to jump.

  The man then desperately looked about for someplace, any place, that wasn’t aflame and where he may hide from the kaiju’s notice. Before Harkness could locate such a place, Megadrak’s enormous head suddenly rose from the water just off the port bow of the James Biddle… mere meters from the section of the deck where the first officer stood.

  Harkness attempted to run down the steps leading to the cabin below, only to have the kaiju exhale a stream of its oral toxic mist directly over some of the burning patches of deck between it and the retreating man. The mist proved to be not only radioactive but also to have a highly incendiary base, as the foggy stream quickly became a gigantic organic blowtorch that enveloped and incinerated Harkness like an ant exposed to the flicker of a cigarette lighter.

  The oxidizing mist would swiftly engulf the rest of the remaining ship, causing the 270-meter transport vessel to explode as if a thousand tons of TNT were placed inside of it. Despite being a mere four meters from the ship, the mighty Megadra
k seemed unfazed by the force and tremendous heat released by the detonation, and none of the makeshift shrapnel resulting from the exploding hull penetrated its hide.

  The two remaining Thunderjets conferred and radioed their American superior officers stationed at Yokota Air Base for further instructions. Much to their relief, they were told not to re-engage Megadrak but to return to headquarters for debriefing. It was determined that another sortie on the kaiju would likely result in their deaths as well, and survivors of the operation were needed to provide a full report of the monster’s capabilities. The duo of craft quickly ascended a few hundred meters into the sky and headed for the Tokyo Prefecture at top speed.

  After taking a few seconds to examine the fiery results of its handiwork, Megadrak raised its dragon-like head and released a resounding combination roar-hiss that echoed across the expanse of the Uraga Channel. Thus was its dominance and supremacy declared over the world, from which it would tolerate no competition from the tiny beings that seemed to infest its territory. The lightly illumined mist produced by the mutated air sacs in Megadrak’s enhanced respiratory system billowed forth from its cavernous maw with this roar, as if using the radioactive particles to mark the atmosphere with its unholy signature.

  The apocalyptic beast then casually turned and resumed its rapid aquatic pace toward the artificial island of Odaiba. The failure of the American military to halt its progress would not go unnoticed.