Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse

by Christofer Nigro

  “We need to get Izumi-san to a hospital before going to the Diet!” Mizuki said as they sped towards the planned destination.

  “No!” Aya demanded as she held the crying Kimiko closely. “The monster will follow us there and destroy the medical center! Many patients and staff will die!”

  “Aya-san, she is badly sick! Poisoned! She requires a doctor!”

  “There will be someone at the Diet to take her to a hospital far away! Maybe air lift her there!”

  “We cannot count on that!”

  “But we can count on the monster tearing down any hospital we take her to! It will follow us wherever we go! And such a building would be defenseless against the kaiju! The Diet should be well protected!”

  “It is just an animal, damn it! A giant one, but an animal! It may have forgotten about us by now! Do you see any sign of it?”

  “It is something more than just a huge animal, Mizuki-san, and you know it! It will follow, and it will move fast because of its size! I know it is out there somewhere behind us, and you know that too!”

  Mizuki punched the dashboard of the car in angry frustration, but he said nothing more. He knew Aya was speaking good sense, and he needed to heed her words. The well-built and (usually) well-mannered man continued towards the Diet, hoping and praying there would be a plethora of armed soldiers there ready to fight in their defense, along with transport helicopters to speed nearby civilians away. That would be the best chance for them to escape the kaiju, and for Izumi to be spirited to a hospital far enough away that the beast could no longer track her. He didn’t want to imagine any other possible scenario.

  ***

  “What do you mean you have evacuated ‘all but the most essential personnel’ from the Diet?” Major General Nakamura shouted into the phone.

  “You heard me correctly the first time, General,” came the firm voice of a full general from the other end.

  “So, you mean the prime minister isn’t here?” Ren Honda complained while throwing his arms in the air. “Oh, terrific! I need to speak to him about this, dammit!”

  “Shut up!” Nakamura bellowed at the journalist with a rigidly pointed index finger.

  The newsman simply nodded his head while holding out his palms in a position of flustered resignation.

  “What is the general saying?” Risa asked the photojournalist. “Are we really almost alone in this building?”

  “You heard the man correctly the first time,” Ren said with a sardonic parroting of the full general’s presumed words. “I will bet you the full cost of my camera that is what the ranking officer on the other line said. Those military officers are all the same.”

  “How could you not tell us this long before I made this call, General?” Nakamura asked, the severity of the circumstances rendering him unable to fully observe the tone expected of him when addressing a superior officer.

  “That kaiju proved resistant to a major assault by the Self-Defense Force,” the authoritative voice on the other end said. “We needed to get the prime minister and other high-ranking members of the parliament to safety. And all of the regular employees as well.”

  “Then my husband isn’t here either?” Risa inquired while putting her hand on Nakamura’s shoulder.

  The very irate officer swatted her fingers from his person. “Do not interrupt me again!”

  “Hey!” Goro Takiguchi shouted as he moved to defend Risa. “You do not hit a woman!”

  Nakamura stood up and belted Goro in the gut, sending him sprawling to his knees. “You will do just as well in her place!” the general said. “Now I shall give this direct order one last time: do not interrupt me again!”

  Keiko shouted her brother’s name as she and Ren ran over to help him back to his feet.

  “I could have told you that would happen, Goro-san,” the journalist said in his usual trenchant manner. “Men like him only have respect for those of higher rank than themselves. If you have no stripes on your sleeve, or not enough, you get a hit in the paunch rather than respect. Whether metaphorical or, as in your case, literal. Just be thankful he didn’t choose to kick you in the sack instead, or you would have been doubled over on the floor a lot longer.”

  Koji stood up from his chair with his fists clenched. Dr. Sato grabbed his arms before he could move any further.

  “Do not do it, Koji-san,” the zoologist warned him. “Just sit back down. Please listen to me.”

  The young island naturalist gritted his teeth in anger but compelled himself to calm down and take the scientist’s smart advice.

  “Are you aware I have several civilians here being debriefed, Yasojiru-sama?” Nakamura asked the general on the line.

  “I am fully aware of that, Nakamura-kun,” the full general replied. “It was determined that the reports you were taking from them were essential to government intelligence on this kaiju, so we allowed it to continue while we evacuated most of the Diet’s other personnel.”

  “I am a military officer, so I have willingly taken these types of risks,” Nakamura said. “But these are civilians, and it is our obligation to protect them. And Sato-ka may work for the government, but he is not a soldier.”

  “The command is fully aware of what our obligations entail,” Full General Yasojiru said. “But you are obligated to obey us, and it is not for you to tell us what our job is. Quite the contrary, in fact. As we have never dealt with a situation like this before, we have yet to develop a proper protocol for it. So, a decision was made, and that decision put priority on evacuating the esteemed members of parliament. It is your job to respect the judgment of your superior officers and carry out your assignment.”

  Nakamura knew that further arguing would only make his situation worse. However, he was angry enough to strongly consider pushing the matter further.

  It was a consideration interrupted when the door to the chamber once again burst open unexpectedly. This time, however, Mizuki and Aya entered the room. The former carried the now terribly ill Izumi, while the young woman carried little Kimiko.

  “We need your help!” Mizuki yelled.

  “What in the holy hell?” Nakamura said, nearly dropping the phone in his rage.

  “Please!” Mizuki pleaded. “We have a very sick woman here, and the monster is following us! Why are there no soldiers and tanks and whatnot lined up around this place?”

  Sato walked over to them and felt for Izumi’s pulse. “I am not a medical doctor, but I am also not without some training in these matters. Let us get her over to the large table over there and look her over.”

  Mizuki did as requested. Sato was quick to notice the woman’s swollen arm, the puncture wounds at the epicenter of the swelling, and the intense shivering of her body. He then had no further questions about the specifics of her condition.

  “She was bit by one of those giant worms,” the scientist said with an ominous tone.

  “She was,” Mizuki answered. “You have seen this before?”

  “Hai,” Sato said solemnly.

  “I need to go to Mama!” Kimiko cried from a few meters away.

  Aya held the little girl back again. “You cannot do anything to help, Kimiko-san. Let that man have a look at her. He seems to be a doctor of some sort.”

  “As if there weren’t enough of this already!” Nakamura said. He then spoke back into the phone. “These civilians and I are leaving the Diet!”

  “You have concluded the interrogation, correct?” the deep masculine voice on the phone queried in response.

  “We are leaving now, Yasojira-sama,” Nakamura said with an even more biting tone. “I will give you the full report later, after I extricate these civilians from the area.” The general slammed the handset of the rotary phone down on its housing unit to end the conversation.

  “My husband works here!” Risa exclaimed while moving into Nakamura’s personal space. “I demand to know where he is! And I will not accept anything less than a direct answer to that question!”

  “
Wow, that woman must be a devout reader of Fujin kôron,” Ren quipped with a grin.

  “Hai,” Goro agreed. “She is… quite impressive. Where did you find her exactly?”

  “Pick your tongue up off the floor, boy” was Ren’s answer. “Did you not just hear her say she has a husband?”

  Nakamura gently pushed Risa out of his immediate space before responding to her question. “If your husband was an employee here, then he was evacuated with most of the rest of the personnel. I do not know where to.”

  “Why didn’t he call me and have me come with him, then?” was Risa’s next question.

  “Were you home today?” Nakamura inquired.

  Risa recalled that she was not; rather, she was at the beach when this nightmarish adventure began.

  “Well, no…”

  “Wait!” Koji interjected while standing up again. “Did I hear one of you say the kaiju was following you here?”

  “Hai, but I would not worry now,” Mizuki said as he watched Sato tend to Izumi. “We saw no sign of the monster for several miles on our way here.”

  As if on cue everyone in the chamber save for the venom-stricken Izumi jumped with an extreme start as two sets of giant cerulean fingers smashed through the side of the Diet’s central tower and directly into the chamber. The scaly digitals gripped each side of the tear it tore into the masonry and ripped the Diet’s upper pyramidal structure open as if it were cardboard.

  A titanic dragon-like face peered into the chamber and emitted an angry roaring hiss as it spotted not only its most recent quarry, but also a group of targeted prey that had earlier eluded it. If the creature were capable of smiling in sadistic delight, it surely would have then.

  “No!” Aya screamed.

  “The giant dragon is here!” Keiko yelled.

  “Thank you for letting us in on that,” Ren spat with unhappy sarcasm.

  ***

  “I am always prepared for an attack on the Diet!” Nakamura announced as he quickly unlocked his personal cabinet, which he kept there since the chamber more or less served as his office.

  After his experiences as a soldier in the Imperial military during World War II, and the recent concern with retaliation from both Korea and the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General Nakamura made sure he always had at least two of his favored preserved “toys” in close proximity every time he was present in this all-important building.

  The first such artifact he pulled out of his case was a Type 94 infantry mortar launcher, specially modified for hand-held, shoulder-mounted usage. Working by professional instinct, the veteran officer quickly adjusted the firing pin for close range usage and loaded a 90mm shell. The veteran combat soldier aimed the weapon with notable speed just after he swiftly clipped on a belt holding several spare shells.

  “Wow!” Ren said as he headed towards the exit to the chamber. “Our General is going all bushi on that thing!”

  “Now let us see how you deal with a 90 to the face at close range, you hideous bastard!” Nakamura said just before firing off the first shell.

  That initial projectile struck the kaiju on its lower jaw, which concentrated the force of the explosion on a relatively weak part of its facial anatomy. This succeeded in shocking the colossal beast. The amazing monstrosity roared and shook its head in rage as a trail of gray smoke billowed from a small wound inflicted between the dentary and angular portions of its lower jaw.

  Nakamura didn’t waste so much as a nano-second in both loading another shell and firing again. The next mortar exploded directly between Megadrak’s eyes, causing it to shut both orbs and to lash out sightlessly at the building’s central tower. Its claw smashed a huge chunk of material from the pyramidal roof, and the shaking that resulted made it clear to all that the top part of the structure would soon be coming down.

  “As the Americans might say, it is time to go gangway!” Ren hollered as he motioned for the rest of his party to head out the exit.

  “I won’t leave my mama!” little Kimiko screamed as she ran over to the table where her severely ailing mother lay. The woman’s eyelids fluttered a bit and then opened when her ears registered the impassioned voice of her daughter.

  Keiko heard the little girl’s words and instantly felt a huge degree of empathy with her. She ran and embraced the child.

  “My name is Keiko,” she said softly. “What is yours?”

  Kimiko seemed to perceive the strong compassion flowing from the young woman, and it gave the sensation of being covered with a warm comforting blanket.

  “I am… Kimiko,” she replied through tear-soaked eyes.

  “Kimiko-san, your mother would want you to live,” Keiko said as gently as she could under the circumstances, even as tears began streaming from her own light brown eyes. “She would want you to be safe. Please do not stay here to die.”

  “But the giant dragon took my daddy,” Kimiko replied, “and he took my Auntie ’Maya. I loved them. I won’t let it take my mama too. I will stay to protect her!”

  “You… cannot stop the monster, dear,” Keiko said with a calm sense of compassion. “Maybe someday, but not now. The dragon took my mama from me too. I know how you feel, and I do not want you to also be taken from this world.”

  “Keiko-chan, we must go!” her brother Goro shouted to his sibling as he headed for the exit. “You know the general will not hold the kaiju off for long, and this building is coming apart!”

  “Please, Kimiko-san…” Keiko said through beautiful eyes that glistened with moisture.

  The little girl seemed torn between two difficult decisions, until the strained but familiar voice of her mother was suddenly heard.

  “Go… with Keiko, my dear,” Izumi said, who was now fully conscious and forcing herself to get up off the table despite the agonizing pain and weakness coursing through her every internal organ and cell.

  “Mama!” the little girl cried. “You are awake! You come too!”

  “I… cannot, my lovely little blossom,” Izumi said while pushing her afflicted body onto its feet. “I am… poisoned. I will not… make it. But I must… spend remaining moments… helping that… military man somehow.”

  “Mama, no…no, no, no…”

  “Please be… big girl for your momma… and go with… nice lady. I love you now and forever.”

  At that point, Kimiko began crying but gave up all resistance to remain. Something about her mother’s words combined with Keiko’s warmth convinced her to run out of the exit chamber hand in hand with the Takiguchi siblings. They were met at the door by Mizuki and Aya, who had returned to see if Kimiko was all right.

  Risa was just down the hall, holding Ren in place with a strong grip on his arm, apparently to keep him from fleeing before they ensured the little girl escaped with them. That wasn’t too difficult, since the journalist paused to take a few pictures of the kaiju destroying the Diet building as Nakamura made a herculean effort to hold the god-like monster at bay.

  “These pics will be in-cre-di-ble!” Ren spouted with a pronounced emphasis on each of the last word’s syllables.

  When they all saw Kimiko heading out the door with Keiko and Goro, the entire group turned and resumed running down the many flights of stairs that would—hopefully—take them out of the building before it collapsed to the ground like an enormous Tinker toy set.

  Nakamura continued trying to buy the group enough time to escape by launching a third shell at Megadrak. This one struck the monster directly inside its mouth, blowing a gory hole in the more vulnerable surface of its soft, fleshy tongue. This was the first time any of these rivals for global dominance had managed to shed blood from the kaiju, and Megadrak was now beyond incensed.

  The mighty beast thrust its hand towards the offending little adversary, a move that spurred the general to leap out of the way. The military man displayed a degree of agility that belied both his age and weight as he rolled across the still intact portions of the carpet toward his open cabinet. The kaiju’s talons instead stru
ck the floor where he had previously stood, its stubby blue fingers effortlessly smashing through the material and causing half the chamber to sink downwards.

  Though the rolling maneuver caused Nakamura to drop his mortar launcher, he quickly pulled the next preserved artifact out of his personal little armory: a Type 11 Light Machine Gun, a previously much feared battlefield weapon of the Imperial Japanese militia. He slapped a Hopper feed rifle clip into the piece and promptly fired 500 rpms of sizzling lead into the monster’s massive face from less than a yard distant.

  Megadrak hissed with vehement fury as the fusillade of tiny metal projectiles sprayed its facial anatomy, striking its eyes, nasal openings, and tongue. This fearsome salvo still couldn’t pierce its ophthalmic lenses or soft tissues, but the multiple impacts over the course of several seconds still caused a seriously painful irritation to these sensitive portions of its facial anatomy.

  The kaiju retaliated with a quick exhalation that pumped a small but potent cloud of its radioactive mist into the chamber. Nakamura’s upper body was quickly surrounded by it, and the military man was amazed at how much the foggy substance’s aroma reminded him of the cherry blossoms from his late grandmother’s garden.

  That nostalgic trigger of reminiscence lasted but a quick second, however. After that, the mist displayed its true horrific properties, and the officer bellowed in agony as his head, shoulders, and upper torso began blistering and rapidly disintegrating within the tainted cloud.

  Within just a few agonized moments, Nakamura fell to the floor and expired, the remainder of his flesh falling from the top portion of his body to reveal a scarlet-stained skull and rib cage. The military man’s withered tongue detached from its sinewy roots and landed on the now steaming rug as his gaping mouth released one final involuntary gasp.