West continued to swivel his F-51 through the sky about ten meters above the still exhaling Megadrak, silently thanking great Jehovah that he managed to avoid the infernal deluge wrought by the mighty kaiju. However, the monster appeared undaunted and trudged over to the building across the boulevard where one of the aircraft it knocked from the sky had crashed. The downed jet was now aflame and sending a trail of smoke from the section of the structure which its fuselage protruded from. The kaiju grabbed the blazing remains of the craft and yanked it out the side of the building from which it was embedded with a single mighty heave.
The dragon-like giant seemed indifferent to the sizzling heat of the burning metallic object in its massive blue hand, at least for the several seconds required to accomplish the amazing feat it intended. Again, as if by some advanced native cunning unknown to all other non-human members of the animal kingdom, the kaiju held the blazing wreckage several meters in front of its open maw, after which it expelled another stream of its dreaded oral mist. The fog-like rivulet blew through the flames, which again ignited the torrent of flammable, billowy gas into an enormous blowtorch.
The stream of flaming mist quickly struck West’s haphazardly maneuvering jet, melting both the craft’s metal hull and the flesh of the pilot within. The soldier’s blaring screech of pain pierced through the intercom systems of squad leader Captain Kenny Sterns and First Lieutenant Jerry Lemke.
The fast-oxidizing aircraft was now free of any human control, and it careened downward toward the severely damaged but still extant building that the Goya family called home. The downed craft resembled nothing less than a blazing meteor as it crashed clear through the uppermost floor of the edifice, blasting the entire eastern side to pieces and removing any last vestige of structural stability.
At that point, Amaya Ito was stepping down the final floor of the remaining staircase with one arm around her aggrieved younger sister Izumi, and the other holding the still insensate little Yuki. As soon as the F-51 hit the building, the entire structure trembled and began collapsing in on itself; and this when the small party of survivors were all just a half flight up from the first-floor door that provided egress from the building.
“Izumi, we need to get out of here this instant!” Amaya yelled.
The danger this presented to her daughter was sufficient to break the newly widowed woman from her fugue, and she grabbed Kimiko out of Aya’s arms. Izumi dashed for the exit with her daughter in tow as fast as she could.
“Hurry!” she shouted to her sister and the rest of their entourage behind her.
Mizuki and Aya followed closely, with Amaya lagging somewhat behind since she had the additional weight of Yuki in her arms. Kimiko was now screaming and wriggling in her mother’s grasp as the world she knew and called home for all seven years of her life literally began collapsing around her. At the same time, the little girl seemed to realize her father was being left behind. Was he staying there to protect their home from… something?
What went through Kimiko’s tortured mind would remain a mystery to the fast-fleeing group as her mother ran quickly enough to reach the first-floor exit in record time. She shouldered the already weakened front entrance door open, with Aya and Mizuki following her out in short order. The latter two stopped, however, when Izumi suddenly ceased running and turned around. They all witnessed the building crumbling to the ground with a thunderous clamor that threatened to shatter their ear drums.
The soot thrown up from the building’s dramatic implosion added to that the dark gray clouds of smoke that had accumulated in the aftermath of the bombs and rockets directed at the Megadrak. This gave the vicinity an eerie, oppressive ambience that was hard to put into words, but Izumi hardly cared. Her main concern was for the two who may not make it out of the collapsing structure that formerly served as her happy home for eight years of an abruptly terminated marriage.
“Amaya!” she screamed in horror, only to see the silhouetted figure of her sister emerge from the front entrance while the door detached from its hinges when she pushed it open.
Izumi’s older sister managed to escape just a few seconds before she and little Yuki would have been crushed under hundreds of tons of concrete, metal, wood, and plaster. Amaya’s younger sibling mused that the timing was nothing less than a minor miracle.
“I am here, Izumi!” Amaya said as she ran beside the billowing cloud of soot darkening the street to her right.
“Oh, thank all my ancestors!” the younger sister exclaimed as tears of joy streamed down her face. “We must make it to the car now. It is parked right up the street.”
“Hai, I know where you usually park it,” Amaya replied as she was catching up to their party. “I still hear some aircraft overhead, but I cannot see through that grimy cloud to tell if…”
Amaya’s intended line was cut off as a huge, scaled, cerulean-skinned hand suddenly darted out of the gray fog and snatched up both her and the little boy she carried. It pulled them upwards in a blur of motion, and a moment of unnerving silence followed. Izumi would never see her sister again, and it took no proverbial rocket scientist to understand why.
“Auntie ’Maya!” little Kimiko screeched at the sight, while her mom just stood glaring in shock, still not fully able to accept the trauma-inducing sight her eyes had just recorded.
“Oh dear… gods,” Mizuki muttered under his breath. “Izumi, we have to go now! Show us where your car is! Aya-san and I do not own one!”
“Auntie!” Kimiko screamed again. “Mama, bring her back! Make the giant hand give her back!”
Mizuki ran up to the shell-shocked young woman and violently pulled her to face-to-face with him. “Izumi-san, you must snap out of this! We need to go! That giant creature is still out there! I know what just happened is horrible, especially after everything else you just lost, but your daughter is still alive and you must save her!”
“Izumi-san, please listen!” Aya pleaded in compliant desperation.
It was that moment the devastated former housewife heard a hissing sound that appeared to emanate from a point high above them in the billowy gray cloud of soot that obscured the opposite side of the street. It was a chilling cadence that segued into a resounding roar, and then rolled back again into a sound akin to a predatory serpentine hiss. After a moment of stunned silence, she finally saw its source when the Brobdingnagian form of Megadrak emerged from the cloud to stand just down the block from where Izumi’s group stood—a group that seemed to continue diminishing in size with disturbing rapidity.
“We must go!” Mizuki shouted to break the entire group out of their torpor.
“Give us Auntie ’Maya back!” little Kimiko demanded through tears as Izumi raced down the block towards her parked car.
The running party quickly reached the end of the boulevard to where they would find her 1949 Isuzu, a vehicle able to comfortably seat four. Unfortunately, Megadrak had by then spotted the group, and it began moving in their direction. With its enormous stride it would be on them in seconds, and Izumi was on the verge of fainting at the mere thought of meeting the same fate as her sister and the hapless toddler lost along with her. At least poor Yuki wasn’t conscious for it was the closest thing to a reassuring thought her beleaguered mind could produce.
Just then, a salvo of bombs was dropped onto the great kaiju’s back, courtesy of Capt. Sterns and Lt. Lemke directly above it. The creature roared in anger at the sudden multiple explosions against its ultra-thick reptilian hide, and it turned its gargantuan head to see exactly where in the sky the offending source of those stinging objects happened to be. Immediately spotting the twin crafts about twenty meters above it, the monster whipped its massively long tail upwards, intending to swat the flying nuisances out of the air.
“Evasive maneuvers!” Sterns shouted into his cockpit radio, and both he and Lemke veered their respective aircraft into a looping Immelmann in opposite directions.
“That was fuckin’ close!” Lemke exclaimed.
Sterns then heard the crackling of his radio system which informed him that command at Yokota Air Base was coming through.
“Squad leader, come in,” the voice said.
The captain responded appropriately, only to receive the following orders: “Do not engage this… kaiju any further at this time, Captain. The loss of all but two of your squadron including yourself made it clear to us that we need to hold you in reserve until we can mount a better resistance.”
“What are your further orders, General?”
“I want you and your remaining squad member…”
“It’s First Lieutenant Lemke, sir.”
“I want you and the lieutenant to take to a high enough altitude that you are both out of the creature’s attack range, but sufficiently low so you can follow it and keep track of its movements.”
“Aye, sir. You heard the general, Lieutenant. Stay on my tail as I move up.”
As ordered, Lemke followed his squad leader to a much higher altitude. But not without a bit of protest along the way.
“Sir, there are still civilians down there trying to escape. Should we not continue to distract the monster until they do?”
“We… have orders, Lemke. There is no guarantee we can distract that thing sufficiently, not without being destroyed ourselves, or destroying those civilians in the process anyway. We need to reconnoiter as ordered for now. We’ll get another crack at that bastard, mark my words.”
***
A few minutes earlier, the distraction caused by the air soldiers paid off for Izumi’s party as they raced down the block, where she recognized the pale blue color of her Isuzu. Her mind was so addled due to extreme emotion, however, that she at first ignored a certain detail that didn’t look “correct” to her: what appeared to be a reddish hose with a ruddy texture draped over the roof and driver’s side. No, it cannot be…
Regrettably, the retreating survivors of their now collapsed building did indeed just discover precisely where the third displaced Glyceracon had landed. The massive worm was stunned from the fall, but its wiry body and simple, widely distributed system of internal organs enabled it to survive without terminal injury.
As the people approached, the worm—which had evidently been resting to convalesce—suddenly sensed the presence of viable prey. Exactly what it needed to regain sufficient strength to make its way back to the dermal scales of its kaiju host.
The monster coelomate stirred, raising its hideous ventral region and extending its grotesque, four-fanged proboscis. It emitted the mutant species’ distinct piercing squeak as it bared its quartet of hooked teeth and prepared to sink them into its closest victim.
Izumi, however, had had enough by this point. Her extraordinary sense of grief was spontaneously channeled into a fiery rage that was utterly volcanic in its intensity.
“Izumi-san, it is one of those worm monsters!” Aya warned.
“Nooooo!” Izumi screamed at the squealing monstrosity before her. “You will not take another from me!”
The enraged widow became a slave to her burning rage and startled both her compatriots and herself by dropping her daughter and physically rushing at the giant annelid. Before the still weakened creature could react Izumi shoved her arm deep down into the worm’s widely gaping maw, grasped a fistful of its soft internal organs, and with a single adrenalin-charged surge of strength the woman tore the viscera clear out of the Glyceracon’s mouth.
She then howled in further rage and threw the dripping organic material onto the ground and began stomping on it repeatedly.
The worm itself squealed from a level of agony its primal mind could scarcely understand as it swung its anterior back and forth while crimson ichor and further small chunks of its internal organs spewed out the gullet. It then raised its head in the air for what seemed like a final spasm and regurgitated a final chunk of organic material before flopping down over the side of the vehicle. The horrific creature ceased all movement along with each of its bodily functions.
“I… cannot believe she did what… she just did,” Mizuki said with a look of astonishment on his face.
Aya simply turned and upchucked a stream of bile on the concrete.
Little Kimiko, now standing on her own, yelled from a tear-moistened face, “I am glad you killed it, Mama! So glad!”
Izumi kicked what passed for the dead annelid’s face aside as she inserted her key into the car door and opened it. Mizuki ran to the passenger side without needing to be told, while Aya scooped up Kimiko and hastily jumped into the back seat.
No sooner had the driver inserted another key in the ignition and started the engine than they all felt the street shaking behind them. Izumi could see Megadrak’s massive leg in the rearview mirror, just as Aya turned and looked out the back window.
“Izumi-san, it is coming again!” she warned. “It is coming for us!”
Not a moment later Izumi struck her foot on the accelerator pad and the vehicle took off with its wheels loudly screeching on the asphalt. The car just barely missed being grabbed by Megadrak, which caused the kaiju to roar in frustration and engage pursuit.
“I cannot believe the air defense could not destroy that thing,” Mizuki lamented.
“It is gaining on us!” Aya screamed.
“Mama, go faster!” Kimiko shouted.
“This car is fast!” Izumi replied to her passengers as she applied more force to the accelerator. “My Jun always got us the best. The monster will not catch us.”
What the fleeing party were not aware was precisely how lucky they were that the kaiju had temporarily depleted its supply of gaseous corrosive produced by the sac-like glands in its mouth. It was thus forced to demolish at close range for the time being, which would require pursuit. That was no major problem for the beast, however, as its gait was considerable and its determination relentless.
“It is after us!” Aya bellowed hysterically. “Where will we go?”
“The only place I think we can guarantee we will receive protection from the Self-Defense Force,” Izumi replied in a somber monotone. “The Diet.”
CHAPTER 17: Live or Let Diet
Izumi Goya drove her Isuzuas fast as she could down a route in the Kantō region towards a certain building located at the address of 1-chome, Nagatachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo. The newly widowed housewife was determined to reach this point, which she and the rest of her party believed would be the most heavily defended area of the city.
Throughout the drive, Aya continually looked out the back window to see if there was any sign of Megadrak following them. The young woman held Izumi’s daughter Kimiko in her arms, with the little girl by then making no sounds other than a soft sobbing.
“Are we clear, Aya-san?” Mizuki queried as calmly as he could from the front passenger side.
“I do not see it,” she replied without attempting to hide the trembling that coursed through her entire body. “But I know it is there, somewhere, following us. Izumi-san, can you not go any faster?”
“She is pushing the vehicle as much as dares,” Mizuki responded for the driver, who declined to answer. “If she does this any harder, the car may overheat, and if that happens…”
It was then that both Mizuki and Aya noticed the vehicle was beginning to swerve in an erratic manner. The former, being in the front seat, looked towards their driver, whose facial expression appeared to be indicative of a person in a stupor. Copious beads of sweat flowed down their brow onto her face, and her color had taken on a whitish pallor. At first, he presumed this was caused by the several traumatic losses she had just experienced in succession.
“Izumi, you must pull yourself together,” he said. “I understand all you have been through, but if you allow this to cause you to drive with reckless abandon…”
Mizuki then noticed one side of her lips beginning to tremble while still failing to respond to his lecture.
“Izumi, are you listening to me?”
It was at this point Mizuki happened to notice the
horrid purple swelling that surrounded the puncture wound she had received on her arm from the Glyceracon during the incident at her apartment. He also saw a thick layer of pus forming around the center of the ugly laceration.
“Dear gods… Izumi-san, your arm!” the good-hearted neighbor exclaimed. “You need to stop the car!”
“She cannot stop, Mizuki-san!” Aya insisted. “The kaiju will get us if she does!”
“Mama!” Kimiko screamed after raising her head.
“No, she must!” Mizuki retorted while grabbing the steering wheel with his strong, bulky arms. “The worm that bit her on the arm must have had poisoned fangs! She is very sick!”
Izumi was no match for the strength of Mizuki, especially not in such an ill state of health. As a result, the car swerved about two meters off the side of the road into a field of grass. He rushed out the passenger side and over to the driver’s, where he pulled the door open and lifted the sickened woman out of the vehicle. She offered no resistance but simply collapsed in the man’s arms, her entire body now quivering as if she was suffering a convulsive fit.
“Mama!” Kimiko yelled again as the little girl attempted to run out of the car to her mother. It took most of Aya’s strength to hold Izumi’s panicking daughter in the back seat of the vehicle.
“Mizuki-san, you have to hurry!” Aya cried. “I know that thing is behind us! Even if we do not see it, it is there somewhere! Hurry please!”
Mizuki was indeed moving as fast as a man his size could, pushing Izumi into a sitting position in the passenger seat. He then ran back over to the driver’s side and took hold of the steering wheel.
“I am going as quickly as one could be expected to under the circumstances!” Mizuki snapped at his histrionic fellow traveler. “Just tend to the girl, and I will take over the driving!”
The husky man took the car out of neutral and pushed down on the accelerator, U-turning around in the grass and steering them back onto the road. He found himself turning his head and looking back to see if Megadrak was descending on them. There was still no sign of the kaiju, but he found himself with the same unsettling feeling that plagued Aya: that the titanic monster was close behind, perhaps just outside their field of vision, and could appear again at any moment.
Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse Page 17
