The battlefield became deathly still. Yeltsin stared at the mass in awe at the Kaiju gave one final shuddering gasp before expiring. He felt it in his bones. The blood-chilling roar which had begun from blocks away, one that told him that he had won, that Lemura had won.
The victory cry of humanity was powerful enough to shake the very foundations on which Lemura was built.
Two days later...
Governor Pietro Lanstum was dead, his body somewhere in the rubble of the formerly grand walls of Lemura. Like so many others, the Governor died when the Mother Kaiju had breached Lemura's walls and let the smaller monsters inside. According to the report, Yeltsin had read over, the Governor's personal guard had died to the last man to keep him alive. It simply hadn't been enough, and the Governor had fallen amidst the seething hordes of Dog Kaiju. The whole mess left Minster Yeltsin dealing with more than most men could stand to bear.
He had started smoking again from the stress, luxuriating in the cigarettes he had found hidden deep in the supply stocks of an old storage warehouse. There was vacancy of power in the civil government with Lanstum's death, and no time to fill it properly. The Lieutenant Governor hung herself upon the breach in the walls, though her part of the city had not even been touched, being safely protected by the east wall. After that, Yeltsin had no idea who was still alive.
Over thirty-five percent of Lemura's population had been lost to the attack, and most of its armed forces were dead as well. Entire sections of the city were in utter chaos, ruined beyond repair. In those places, looting, rape, and the law of the gun reigned while Yeltsin struggled to assemble the manpower to restore order. With the high casualty count amongst the military, he was forced to rely on a less-than-adequate police force.
Worst of all, Lemura's primary power grid was completely offline. Teams had worked around the clock to repair it, but the best estimates told him it would be at least a matter of days until any real progress could be seen. In the meantime, the citizens of the city were forced to use oil heat, if one could find it, or risk starting a fire in their homes to keep the survivors fed and warmed. It was not a comforting thought, one Yeltsin knew was at the top of his list of things to accomplish before they could truly say that Lemura still stood, and would remain the bedrock of humanity.
Yeltsin found himself not only Lemura's Minister of War, but acting Governor as well. The collapse of the civil government left him no other choice, and this was one position he did not want to have. He would establish elections as soon as he was able, but since restoring the safety and security of the citizens of Lemura took precedence, he figured elections would occur in three months, at the soonest.
He rubbed his aching eyes. He vaguely remembered what sleep was like as he popped his second stimulant of the day and set aside the report of Lanstum's death. Lanstum’s death was unfortunate, for the man was, if anything, an effective administrator. The loss of his lieutenant was a lesser hit, but still one that he could have done without. There were so many tasks to be completed and no guarantee that the Kaiju wouldn't be returning to finish what they had started. The singular piece of good news amongst the darkness was that Dr. Bach had survived. The Trident that had carried the Doctor and the troops to the island returned to Lemura several hours after the Mother Kaiju had fallen, emerging from the waves and scaring the few soldiers guarding the beachhead against any surviving Kaiju. The Trident had lost its wingman in exchange for the cowardly pilot Knight, and none of the Dogkillers who went to the island returned alive. Conflicting news, to be sure, but Yeltsin was pleased that at least one Trident had survived. A tentative plan had been formed to go see if there were any survivors, but deep down, he was almost certain that there weren’t any. In addition, he was reluctant to send the only surviving Trident and its pilots out into the unknown. Not until he had secured the walls of Lemura.
Yeltsin hadn't gotten the chance to see Dr. Bach yet, but doing so was near the top of his list of priorities. Dr. Bach had proven himself an invaluable asset to not only Lemura, but also the continued survival of the human race. His spontaneous creation of a Kaiju “muting” device was being looked at as a defense to be placed in Lemura, amplified by the massive power grid – assuming, he mentally corrected as he slid the report across his desk, the power grid was ever restored.
The light of the rising sun outside his office caught Yeltsin's eye. He shoved aside the piles of work on his desk and moved to the window. Despite the state of the city, for the first time in a long, long while, he realized that he believed mankind stood a decent chance against the monsters from which the oceans had given birth. It was a terrifying feeling, elation.
He smiled. It was not born of fear, or tinged with grimness. It was something he had forgotten, thought lost in the realization of war and extermination. It was a happy smile.
“Long live Lemura.”
*****
Deep in the bowels of Marianas Trench, a singular shudder shook the ocean bed around the slumbering beast. Wings, pressed flat against the massive back, twitched ever so slightly. Creatures unseen by humanity’s naked eye began to stir amongst the depths. Something caused a far-off underwater volcano to begin erupting, spewing lava and ash into the dark waters. In days, it would begin to form a new island, a new home for a new breed of the dark.
Nothing natural lived at these crushing depths. If Yeltsin had known was lay here, resting, undisturbed for millennia, he may have joined Lemura’s Governor in death. Nothing could have prepared him for a creature of such magnitude. It was too large to comprehend, too strange for the mind to accept it. Fortunately, for him, and for all mankind, it remained still as the island formed. Nothing could disturb the creature’s sleep yet. Time was not right, reality not quite bent enough for it to arise.
A single eyelid twitched as the beast lay dreaming. Its children began to spawn forth once more, to devour, kill, and to conquer. Slowly from the depths they came to the island of ash and rock to begin anew. It would take a while, but they had time. They settled in beneath the island, these Kaiju.
...and they began to adapt.
Read on for a free sample of Menagerie. It’s the worlds strangest zoo. And they have all just escaped!
Chapter One
There were certain sensations that didn’t belong in this room – the razor-sharp blasts of wind mixed with sand for instance, the distant cries of panic – sensations that tried to bleed in but were fast pushed away. The bedroom was dark and quiet, the boy was perhaps seven years old. That’s how he remembered it. This is how it always recurred.
Something was amiss in his dream. He was frightened. And with good reason. In spite of the phosphorescent stars glowing happily from the ceiling, the inviting softness and warmth of his bed sheets, the knowledge that his parents lay asleep in the next room – despite all his sense of security there was an overriding feeling of dread.
Because the sound of claws scratching on the wooden floorboards inside his closet was real.
It had awoken him from his dreams. It taunted him. And if not for the chair he had wedged under the closet doorknob before he’d fallen asleep, those claws would surely now be scuttling across his bedroom floor, over his soft and warm bed sheets, dancing in a frenzy upon his quivering flesh.
Tearing, ripping, suffocating.
He pulled the sheets up over his head. Maybe if I stay still the thing will go away! But how could he be still? With his heart clamoring around in his chest, his panting growing louder, his head spinning until he could barely control the whimpers that escaped through his chattering teeth.
Those panicked shouts outside came louder, closer, harder to push out. His face grew hot. The blazing sun had somehow blasted through his bedroom ceiling, piercing the night with a harsh measure of daylight.
A thunderous explosion somewhere to his left. Screams.
Awake. The tarp covered Gomer’s body, made it hard to breath. He spit sand and blood and pushed it off. His memory wasn’t sharp, but clearly something had struc
k him down. Sore from head to toe, Gomer struggled to his feet, the punishing sand storm determined to knock him back over. A broken metal panel lay beside him – the likely culprit – as well as chunks of debris from a tent.
He gained balance, felt his head for blood. Nothing, just an ache. Took a moment to catch his breath. He adjusted his goggles and peered into the swirling ruddy sands. His men had done alright during his involuntary leave of absence; the creature was stuck in a resonance field, twitching spasmodically but definitely secure.
“Didn’t think we had ya, ya bugguh!” growled Alfred. He threw a clenched fist in the direction of the enormous beast that towered overhead, and then turned and plodded towards Gomer, planting his feet hard into the dune to fight the wind. Alfred Dandy was a stoic sort of man, forever trying to hide the fact he was now in his late seventies. Every so often though, Gomer would spy a conceding wince of pain spread briefly across his face from his failing knees or spine.
He halted next to Gomer and patted him roughly on the back. “Have a nap, did ya?”
Gomer brushed it off. “Anyone else hurt?” He squinted through his dizziness.
“Oh, one gent got pierced through the thigh. Another took off, God knows where,” he tutted in disgust. “Hard to find good help these days, isn’t it though?”
Alfred replaced his World War II pistol back in its holster. He carried that ancient thing everywhere, a reminder of his days as a bombardier. Gomer knew it would be ineffectual against any of their quarry but had stopped teasing the old man ages ago.
Gomer Horsenick surveyed the scene. The Rub’ al Khali Desert was an unforgiving arid wasteland no matter the season, rewarding its inhabitants with a little better than an inch of rain in a good year. It didn’t help he’d spent however many minutes lying half-buried beneath a tarp. His throat burned. He unscrewed his canteen and drank from it, and then pulled his goggles off.
Eight men were employed to assist Gomer and Alfred, Saudi villagers who couldn’t turn down the relatively sizable pay. The few of them who remained now stood gawking at the thing they’d captured. They had heard rumors about a sand monster destroying neighboring settlements, devouring families. The locals called it shayṭān thaᶜbaan – devil snake. The proper name was Pilantoreptus, not that this mattered to these men frozen in amazement and fear before it.
The creature loomed nearly fifteen feet tall, its snake-like body covered in scales and barbs. Yellow eyes darting about ferociously, lean body coiled tight, muscles straining in vain to break free. The Pilantoreptus were few in number these days, though were plentiful during the Paleogene Period. The global climactic changes that had wiped out the dinosaurs had largely spared these desert-dwellers who were well accustomed to fluctuating temperature extremes.
Jutting from the sand here and there were devices alive with motion: whirring dials, spinning radar dishes and flickering lights. A metal tube had been used by Gomer to emit a sonic boom into the earth, a sound that drove the agitated beast to the surface; it was now silent, its job done. In its place, an amplifier had been turned on, and the resonance field it created stilled the serpent.
It tried to lash out its pointed tail, now caked in dried blood and sand. It hissed a deafening white noise but was quickly brought back in line by the resonance field. The creature withdrew with a violent twitch and a vibrating fit before it went calm.
The temperature gauge on one of Gomer’s instruments read one-hundred-twenty degrees. That was sure to rise as the midday desert baked. No time to waste.
“Alfred, call ahead to the ship, will ya?” he shouted over the winds, racing to one of the two trucks. “Make sure it’s fueled and ready.”
“On it, old boy,” returned Alfred, who stomped on degenerated knees towards the other truck. He pushed past one of the locals, still immobilized with shock, while he glanced remorsefully at the scattered bits of crates and finely calibrated instruments that the Pilantoreptus’ tail had smashed.
Before Alfred Dandy continued into the truck, he scoffed at the hired help once more and shook his head. “Cretins.”
•••
The cargo ship sped uneventfully along quiet ocean waters from Jeddah to New York. Its hull carried cars, barrels of oil, building materials… and a heavily sedated Pilantoreptus. Up in the dining cabin, Gomer’s men were mid-supper.
Rex Burk felt blessed to be among the present company. He left a fellow redhead named Clodagh in Galway to join the expedition to Saudi Arabia. On their last date, he waited for permission to make a move, but permission never came. And so he spent the night staring up at the movie screen, timid, their elbows touching in awkward silence. He was worried when they hugged at the end of the night that she’d feel the effect she was having on him. If she did, she didn’t let on. He left her that night just as he had a hundred times: frustrated yet hopeful.
The next day his uncle told him about the expedition, and within a week he had plane tickets to Switzerland where he would meet up with the others. He called Clodagh to let her know he’d be gone for a few months, first to the Middle East and on to the States. It would be risky, he admitted. He couldn’t divulge much about the journey, in large part because not much had been revealed to him. She said that she’d miss him, that he should stay safe, that few eighteen-year-olds get this sort of opportunity handed to them.
Maybe Rex was hoping for something more – tears perhaps? But that never came. They said their goodbyes and hung up.
And here he sat in a cramped metal compartment, slightly seasick, watching men much older than he shoving canned food down their throats and getting steadily drunk.
“Not keen on the sardines, chap?” Alfred smiled with boisterous charm. “I’ll take ‘em off yer hands.”
It took a moment for Rex to register he was being addressed. “Oh. No, not really.”
Alfred reached across the table and stabbed his fork into the oily fish on Rex’s plate. “Good source of calcium, my boy!” He dangled them in front of Rex’s face before tossing them into his own mouth.
The smell of the sardines turned Rex a shade greener. He belched quietly, which helped, and dabbed sweat from his brow.
“Feelin’ alright, kid?” Gomer looked up from his plate. “Haven’t found your sea legs yet, I take it.”
Alfred leaned over and whispered something into Gomer’s ear. Gomer nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Sorry we couldn’t have you along in the desert. But you’ll see action when we get back.” Gomer raised his mug and gave the boy a smile of reassurance.
“That’s fine. Just been an honor to be here, sir.” Rex sat upright and smiled weakly. “My father, Bartley Burk, God rest his soul, said you were a fine fella and I was to be sure to give you me all, sir.”
“Gomer. Gomer’s fine.”
Alfred leaned in again to whisper something else.
“Ah yes,” said Gomer, his memory jogged. “Bartley Burk. A good man.”
“I never met me Da, but he left me a letter. Gave to it me Uncle Emmet. Said I was to come work for you when I was man enough. So here I am. Sir.”
“Well,” started Gomer.
“A man.”
“Yeah, well...welcome, Rex. And call me Gomer.”
Rex felt a bit more at ease as he pushed the peas around on his plate. His thoughts returned to Clodagh, certain that she would wait for him until he returned. This was something he needed to do; surely she understood that. And anyway what was it they said… absence makes the heart grow fonder. Or was that abstinence? Either way, Rex had been dogged by the feeling he wasn’t quite the man she desired. Not just yet. Perhaps the time apart would allow him to clear his head, to come back stronger.
A song broke out among the inebriated men, bringing Rex back to the narrow room.
“We’ve been sailing ‘round the seven seas. The men are ripe with fleas! But rest assured, those beasts are lured and brought down to their knees! Grab em, nab em, net em, pet em, throw em in the hold! Come back home then out we go,
it’s time for us to leave!”
The fellows cheered and threw back their ale.
Gomer stood. He was tired, not in the mood to socialize. He exited without a word and made his way to his cabin, still wobbly from the day’s events.
Sitting in bed, he finally allowed himself to take in a deep breath, followed by sigh. He worked his aching shoulder around. Nothing serious. He leaned back.
Gomer was a long way from that bedroom in Dayton where he had spent most his childhood, a long way too from those phosphorescent stars and books about magic that had lined his shelves. Nearly forty years and many miles away from that sense of safety. That was the last time Gomer would feel truly safe.
He peered out at the full yellow moon hovering above the sea, as yellow as that monster’s eye down below, staring down at him hard and unblinking.
It would be easier to live his life as if monsters didn’t inhabit this world. He could relax at night, never having to peek under beds or around corners. But that would be self-delusional, something that became all too evident in Dayton.
At his bedside was a piece of luggage, and in that case was a wooden box large enough for a pair of spectacles. He opened the box and took out the glasses with lenses made of prisms, put them on and gazed again at the moon. After a moment, a dark winged shape passed above, nearly eclipsing the bright round spot. Gomer gritted his teeth, removed the glasses.
Nearly forty years and many, many miles away…
•••
A deer jumped onto the road, springing out of the cornfield in the darkness of the night. It stopped, caught in the glare of a row of approaching headlights.
Four trucks rattled down the unpaved road towards their destination, covered with tarp, kicking up dust. They entered unwelcomed into the silence of the farmland, raised hell, then rumbled on, leaving the lonely cornfield to sulk in the moonlight.
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