Luke patted Jason on the side of his neck, “Commander, this horse has stood by me through several battles already. There is no way that I am leaving him behind. Plus Chimera is used to taking orders from either me on foot or from the horse. I don’t think that now is the time to start introducing him to new venues of instruction.”
The Commander nodded, “Okay, then let’s get on the launch vessel.” Luke led Jason onto the long boat connected to the side of the Argos. The launch reminded Luke of the types of boats that took Tom Hanks ashore in Saving Private Ryan. It looked like a long metal box with no top that was loaded with three Hummers and Horse. Luke smiled to himself when he thought that those things were a great opening to a joke. The launch was being lowered to the boiling water when the siren sounded on the Argos. Luke looked up to see to the massive turret guns on deck turning toward the riverbank. A second later, hundreds of sailors appeared on deck with rifles aimed at the shoreline as well. When the siren stopped, the turret guns and the sailors opened fire on the army of the dead.
The sound was deafening! Luke felt the urge to reach up and cover his ears from the sounds of the guns and rifles firing non-stop above him. He peered over the side of the launch to see body parts flying as explosions ripped into the seemingly endless horde of the dead. The zombies seemed oblivious to the fact that they were being attacked. Their rotted minds had only two driving thoughts: to spread the plague to anyone that they encountered and to join the Colossus when they were called to do so.
The launch came to a rest on the boiling water and the heat inside of the vessel quickly grew unbearable. Jason was bucking and lifting his hooves off of the scalding hot bottom of the launch. Luke felt as if he was literally being cooked alive. Ardan gave the order for the launch to head to shore and Luke was thankful that the trip only took a few seconds. When they hit the riverbank, Luke quickly pulled the suffering Jason ashore to allow his hooves to cool down. As Luke stood on the riverbank with Jason, a hand from the one of zombies that had been blown apart grabbed his foot. Luke grimaced at the appendage and then kicked it into the boiling water.
Luke looked at the Argos to see the bay door opening to reveal Chimera. The blitzkrieg from the Argos stopped for a second so that Chimera could hear Luke’s commands. The kaiju roared at the boiling in front of him. Luke felt for the monster but from the battles that he had already been through, Luke knew that Chimera would be able to survive a quick swim through the scalding water. He lifted up his speaking horn and shouted, “Chimera, follow me!” Chimera looked to Luke then down into the bubbling water. The beast hesitated for a brief moment then he waded into the river. The water came up to Chimera’s shoulders and the kaiju roared in pain as the top layer of skin was boiled off of his body. Chimera came ashore and looked to Luke who quickly threw the beast a reinforcer cube.
When the monster was eating the cube, the gun fire from the Argos erupted again cutting down more of the thousands of zombies that were still between Luke and the city. The Argos was only firing for a few seconds when the water alongside the ship exploded, revealing a massive shark like creature with long thin arms at its sides and a row of spikes running down its back. Luke thought that the megalodon that Diana had shown on the screen was terrifying enough but Asag was far more terrifying than any prehistoric shark. The monster’s long arms reached up onto the ship and he pulled himself up so that the top half of his body was slumped across the deck. Asag’s bulk caused the ship to list toward him, sending dozens of sailors sliding into his snapping jaws. Luke was about to direct Chimera to attack Asag when Commander Ardan grabbed him by the shoulder, “No! We have our own mission and our own problems!” Ardan pointed to the city and Luke saw the army of zombies heading toward them. At the back of the army, the Colossus of Death of was making his way out of the city and directly for Chimera.
The turret guns aboard the Argos began to fire at Asag at near point blank range. Even the shark god was unable to withstand the barrage at close range. He released his grip on the ship and slid back into the river. Asag continued to swim alongside the Argos for a moment then he took a quick turn and slammed his body into the hull of the ship. The blow prompted the sailors to run to that the side of ship and fire at the monster. While all of the attention on one side of the ship was focused on Asag, a stone hand came out of the water on the opposite side of the ship. An eight foot tall rock monster dug his hands into the hull of the Argos and it began to climb up the side of the ship. The rock monster was halfway up the side of the ship when two more sets of stone hands emerged from the water and grabbed the hull of the ship as well.
Ardan screamed to his team, “Open fire with your rifles! Save the flamethrowers for the Colossus!” The members of SEAL Team Sigma began firing into the mass of corpses approaching them. The first twenty or so zombies were cut to shreds but without the additional firepower of the Argos, the team was only delaying the inevitable. Seeing the futility of their approach, Luke yelled, “Stop firing!” into his speaking horn so that the SEALS would hear him over the gunfire. The SEALS stopped firing and looked at Luke. He pointed to Chimera and shouted, “We have the world’s largest living bulldozer! Let’s use him!”
Luke grabbed his speaking horn and the pointed over the massed zombies at the quickly approaching Colossus, “Chimera, attack!”
Chimera roared and beat his chest at the foul creature that he had battled once already. Chimera fell to all fours then began walking through the approaching zombies. Hundreds of the recently deceased were crushed as Chimera’s tremendous weight came crashing down on them. The Colossus itself began walking through the zombies, crushing many of its followers and causing more to cease following it and to join its horrible mass. When the two creatures met in the middle of the amassed zombies, the number of the walking dead that was between them had been reduced to less than half of what it was only moments before. The two kaiju came together and began grappling atop of the zombies. Luke watched as Chimera lifted the Colossus off of the ground and slammed him on top of his followers. Luke almost laughed at the fact that the Colossus was nowhere near capable of matching Chimera in terms of strength when Chimera was dehydrated, exhausted, and injured. What chance did the horror have against a rested and healed Chimera? Luke’s thoughts returned to what was happening around him when the gunfire erupted again. Even though Chimera had greatly reduced the amount of zombies attacking them, there were still literally hundreds of corpses that were trying to peel the men out of their hazmat suits and expose them to the plague. A zombie had grabbed Luke and he quickly swung his rifle like a club and knocked the foul creature’s head off. The arms of the corpse continued to reach for him and he was forced to have Jason buck up and use his front legs to crush the zombie’s body into paste. He looked up to see more zombies coming toward him and at the back of the zombie horde he could see Chimera stomping on a half reformed Colossus. Just behind the battle, he could see what looked like the corpse of a woman sitting with her legs crossed and floating in the air. Luke assumed that she had to be the death goddess who Diana thought might be using the Colossus as an avatar. It was at that moment, that Luke realized the true threat the Colossus posed to Chimera and his team. The Colossus could be reduced to nothing over and over again by Chimera but the creature would continue to reform until Chimera was either exhausted or until there were no bodies left to reconstruct the abomination. Even if there were no bodies, the death goddess would simply recreate the Colossus somewhere else and send it into the world again. Luke now understood that to stop the Colossus they needed to stop the goddess who was pulling his strings.
There were at least fifty zombies between Luke and Commander Ardan. Luke galloped closer to the horde of zombies that were overwhelming SEAL Team Sigma. When he reached the horde, he briefly looked up to see the reformed Colossus and Chimera grappling once again. This time Chimera pushed the Colossus to the ground. It crashed into the desert hard, crushing many of the corpses that made up its legs and backside. Before the Colossus cou
ld even attempt to stand up, Chimera stepped forward and with claws extended he slashed at the horror tearing off its face and a large part of its chest. The blow sent the torn up remains of zombies raining down on Luke. As Luke was dodging the falling body parts, he looked over to see a large contingent of zombies walking over to reform the damaged part of the Colossus. In an attempt to dissuade them from reforming the giant, he began to fire his rifle into the horde and to scream. A large portion of the zombies turned away from the partially destroyed Colossus and toward Luke. With several hundred zombies facing him, Luke dug deep inside himself to find the courage to do what he needed to do next. Luke completed his soul searching exercise and he opened his eyes to see that the zombies had almost reached him. With the corpses almost upon him, Luke attempted to summon his courage, then he turned Jason around and directed the horse to run away from the horde.
Parsons and Diana were watching from the bridge of the Argos as the sailors continued to fire down on Asag who maintained his position alongside the ship. Parsons’s keen eyes saw something on the opposite side of the ship from where the sailors were positioned. He snapped his head around to see three ten foot tall bipedal humanoids composed of rock lumbering across the deck of the ship. A second later Diana saw them as well, “The sailors can’t hear them coming over the gunfire; we have to help them. The rock monsters will crush those men in an instant!”
Parsons removed the safety from his sidearm, “I am going to help them. You stay here.” Parsons ran out of the bridge and headed for the deck. Diana watched him go then said, “The hell I am going to stay here.” Diana looked around to see if there were any weapons nearby and she was discouraged not to find any. She shrugged and said to herself, “I guess that I will just have to improvise something.” A second later, Diana was running out of the bridge and toward the deck.
Parsons ran onto the deck to see the rock monsters tearing apart the turret guns that were one of the main offensive weapons of the Argos. Parsons aimed his gun at the nearest monster and unload the ineffectual weapon on the creature. The rock monster ignored the bullets and proceeded to smash the turret into scrap metal. Once the turrets were destroyed, the rock monsters began heading for the sailors who were still firing at Asag. Diana dashed out onto the deck with a fire extinguisher in her hands. She ran in front of two of the rock monsters and emptied the canister on the creatures. The foaming mist didn’t slow down the creatures at all but as the wind blew the mist onto the sailors, it caught their attention and several of them turned around to see the rock monsters closing in on them. The sailors who saw the coming danger began firing on the rock monsters. Diana threw herself flat on the deck as a spray of shards of rock and bullet fragments began to fall on her. She rolled to her side to see the horrifying form of Asag jump out of the water and throw the upper half of his body back onto the deck. His massive weight crushed over a dozen sailors. The men who were crushed were the lucky ones as many of the sailors were being snapped up by Asag’s jaws where they were shredded to death. Diana rolled the other way to see the rock monsters tearing apart sailors two and three at a time with their massive hands. The few remaining sailors gathered around Diana. The sailors were firing frantically in both directions as Diana found herself trapped between the crushing fists of the rock monsters and the gnashing jaws of the gigantic shark god!
Luke was racing back to the riverbank where he could see the shark-like Asag thrashing around the deck and swallowing sailors whole. He looked behind him to see a group of over fifty zombies following him. Luke began to turn Jason in a wide arc. He arced back around the zombies to see Chimera once again stomping the remains of the Colossus into the Earth. He also saw another horde of zombies heading toward the Colossus to reconstruct it. The good news was that between the zombies that were chasing him and the zombies going to reconstruct the Colossus, Ardan and his remaining men only had few zombies to contend with. Luke switched on the radio inside of his hazmat hood, “Ardan, this is Luke. Take a look to your left! Do you see the zombie woman floating in the air? I am guessing that she is actually the goddess who is controlling the Colossus. You and your men need to attack her! I have an idea to get rid of the Colossus and the zombies, but the Colossus may just come back as long as the goddess is around! You guys need to take her out for good!”
Ardan replied, “We are on the goddess. I hope you have good plan. Chimera keeps trashing that thing but it just keeps reforming.”
Luke shouted, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this!” Luke pulled Jason to a stop in front of Chimera and the Colossus. The Colossus had reformed again and it was once more trying to strangle Chimera. Luke pulled off his hazmat hood and prayed that he would be spared the effects of the plague while at the same time accepting that if had to die to stop this horror then he was willing to do so. Luke put his speaking horn to his mouth and pointed at the Colossus, “Chimera, pick up!” The kaiju reached out, grabbed the Colossus, and lifted the writhing creature over his head. Luke yelled again, “Good work! Now follow me!” Luke turned and road Jason toward the horde of zombies that was still following him after he had made the wide arc by the riverbank. Luke rode Jason as close to the zombies as he could without going directly through them. The horde began to turn around at the same time that Chimera began walking through them crushing scores of zombies with each step. Luke smiled, so far his plan was working. Chimera was crushing zombies and he had the Colossus lifted over his head. It was at that point that Luke felt a burning sensation on his face. He didn’t need to pull off his hazmat mask to know that lesions were forming across skin. He took deep breath; if he was going to die he only needed a few more minutes. He just had to make it to the riverbank and give Chimera one more command. From there, nature would take its course.
Ardan and his men closed in on Akhkhazu. Ardan and two other men positioned themselves directly in front of her and fell to one knee with their rifles pointed at the goddess. Ardan began to fire on her and the other two men on either side of him did the same. As they were firing hundreds of bullets at the death goddess, the other two men with flamethrowers quickly ran up alongside Akhkhazu. When they were in range of Akhkhazu, their flamethrowers jumped to life enveloping Akhkhazu in flames. The barrage continued until Akhkhazu floated out of the flames and looked directly at Ardan. She spoke to him in her hollow voice, “You dare to challenge a goddess of death? You shall suffer!” Akhkhazu moved with speed beyond comprehension from one man to the next tearing off their hazmat suits. A moment later, Ardan and his men fell to the ground covered in lesions. Akhkhazu floated past the men and headed for the riverbank.
Luke had finally made it to the riverbank with Chimera carrying the Colossus right behind him. There were still some zombies near Luke that Chimera had not crushed and they were reaching to pull Luke off of Jason. Luke knew that it didn’t matter. All that they would do is pull off his hazmat suit and expose him to a plague that he already had. Luke looked at the Argos to see Asag still thrashing about on the boat. Blood was pouring off of the deck on either side of the god from the men and woman that he had chewed to death. Luke was a teacher. He didn’t know much about ancient gods, but he was required to teach earth science and each year he taught a lesson on sharks. Luke had taught his students how sharks could smell blood in the water from a mile away, how they were opportunistic feeders, and how anything that bumped into them they would bite to see if it was food. Luke’s vision was getting dim when he saw Chimera looming over him with the struggling Colossus still above his head. Luke pointed at Asag and hoped that the creature was as much shark as it was god when he gave Chimera the order to throw.
Diana saw the sailor standing in front of her, smashed into a pile of blood and bones by a massive rock fist. She rolled to her left as the same rock fist came crashing down where she was laying only a second before. She looked at Asag and realized that she could only roll one more time before rolling into the jaws of the shark god. Tears were streaming from her eyes when she saw Chimera standing at the edge of
the river holding the Colossus of Death over his head. She watched in disbelief as Chimera threw the Colossus at Asag. When the Colossus crashed into Asag’s back, the shark god began thrashing wildly. The Colossus slid off of the back of Asag and into the boiling water of the river. Asag flopped off of the deck and attacked the readily available source of food that was the Colossus. Diana stood up and ran to the side of the ship, putting as much distance between herself and the rock monsters as possible. She peered over the edge to see the Colossus struggling in vain against Asag. The shark god was tearing the Colossus to shreds as it pulled the giant of intertwined corpses under the boiling water. On the shore, she could see hundreds of zombies throwing themselves into the boiling water of the river. They were attempting to reach the Colossus but the river boiled the flesh off of their bones before they reached the giant. Diana spun around to see a rock monster standing in front of her. She closed her eyes expecting to die when she heard a loud explosion and was nearly knocked into the river as chunks or rock flew around her. She opened her eyes to see Parsons holding a smoking bazooka over his shoulder. She also saw several other sailors aiming bazookas at the remaining two rock monsters. She screamed with joy when they explode as well when shells connected with their rigid bodies.
Chimera: Scourge of the Gods: A Kaiju Thriller Page 15
