Toxic behemoth a kaiju t.., p.12
Toxic Behemoth: A Kaiju Thriller, page 12
***
Vinnie’s henchmen had also been discovered. The vile humans had been at a bar called Lou’s, a place they frequented. The behemoth let his serpents have the men for themselves, for the human scum were just pawns. It wanted the man in charge, Vinnie.
Four serpents surrounded Vinnie’s mansion before two of them stormed in, crashing through windows, one via the garage and one through the front door, the heavy oaken wood splintering like kindling as the serpent crashed through and wedged its way past the frame, stretching it out. They found him and his family in the large living room. Vinnie fired his handgun at the creatures as they slithered in, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate the hides. His wife was snatched up, along with his two children. Vinnie cowered in a corner as the creatures hissed, his wife and kids wrapped up in python-like style. They screamed and begged for him to help, but he only whimpered, begging for his life. Then the serpents slowly squeezed the life out of his family and he had to listen to their screams of pain, then the crushing of their bones and the popping of their organs.
He sat scrunched up in the corner, tears streaming down his cheeks, his pants piss and shit laden. He wondered why the creatures weren’t finishing him off, the agony of waiting too much to bear.
***
The behemoth continued to strike out against the attack on itself. Its hide was tough, but faltering in places, the damage adding up. There were cracks in its armor now, its flesh exposed and bleeding. It had less and less to use to defend itself. The serpents were few and many of its tentacles were too short to intercept incoming attacks due to the damage they had taken. The human assault was relentless, like a poked and prodded beehive.
The need for vengeance was too great for it to care about itself. Seeing through the serpents’ eyes, hearing what they heard, it could taste revenge, the human condition wickedly delicious. They had saved Vinnie for it, kept him from escaping, and made his suffering great by hurting his loved ones, killing them slowly.
The physical pain racking the behemoth’s body was forgotten; its steps picked up, hurried. It practically ran, crushing apartment buildings, homes, people, cars and anything else in its path.
When it reached Mill Basin, it saw the ocean beyond, the sight filling it with hope that once it was finished, it could return to the sea and leave the human world behind.
It stood over the mansion, barely able to fight off the incoming aerial assault from above, its tentacles all but finished. Then, using its thinnest of tentacles—having saved it for this moment—it extended it into the home. The appendage found the living room in seconds. The serpents backed away as it moved in and coiled the tip around Vinnie’s ankle, then dragged him outside.
***
Stoddard couldn’t believe what he was seeing. All the chaos and destruction and the creature just stopped. It didn’t seem to care about being hit anymore, as if its concentration was on the house. They continued to fire upon it as the behemoth pulled a man from the house and held the dangling morsel in front of its face. If the creature inhaled too deeply, the human—like a speck of dust—would be gone. It stared at the person, its head tilting ever so slightly from side to side, like a dog watching the outside world through a living room window.
“What the hell is it doing?” someone asked.
“That’s exactly what the Pentagon wants to know,” Jeffries said.
“Are we supposed to stop, sir?” Jimenez asked.
“No, but they want to know who it’s holding.”
“This thing gets weirder and weirder . . .” someone said.
As great as the want to know what the creature was doing, the goal was to stop it, bring it down, so the attacks poured on.
***
The behemoth continued to ignore the pain riddling its body and secured its catch by wrapping it up in a thicker tentacle. There was no way it was taking a chance its prey would be harmed or killed by anything other than itself.
Wanting a moment to relish its revenge, the behemoth reached down and scooped out chunks of earth, ripping out waterlines and cement, and hurled the debris at the planes, hitting a few and causing the rest to scatter.
Given a few moments of peace, the behemoth brought Vinnie before its eyes. It ground its teeth, jaw muscles bulging. It wanted to communicate, let the wicked human know why it was there for him. But it could not speak, couldn’t even fully comprehend its human characteristics, but it knew it needed to kill this man in order to ease its pain.
The tentacles slithered up Vinnie’s leg like rapidly moving creeper vines and encompassed his body in seconds, leaving only his head unobstructed so the monster could relish in his screams.
The suckers along the tentacles attached themselves to Vinnie, then began to eat. The teeth-lined orifices devoured the man’s flesh slowly, the behemoth wanting the man to feel every bite. He screamed in pain, spittle flying from his lips, eyes bulging in terror and disbelief. Muscle was removed, fat and tendon too, leaving just enough flesh around the man’s torso for him to remain alive, even if only for a few more moments. Blood covered the behemoth’s tentacle, the sucker mouths trying to lap it all up. The meal was but a crumb, but the beast savored it, tasting every cell.
With blood bubbling from Vinnie’s mouth like the foaming of a rabid dog, his screams gurgled sobs, the creature opened its mouth and flung the dying human inside, then swallowed him whole.
Vinnie was gone. Dead. No more.
The behemoth felt no different, had no sense of satisfaction. The pain radiating in its heart was still there, as present as ever. It didn’t understand.
Pain began riddling its flesh again as the human attack resumed. Its time to relish was over. It needed to react, to protect itself, to fight back. But it couldn’t move. It didn’t understand why its internal angst wasn’t gone. It just didn’t make sense.
Frustrated, it stomped the ground like a spoiled child that doesn’t get his way. If the pain wasn’t going to leave it, then what was it supposed to do? How could it live with such hurt? It had no idea where to go or what to do and bellowed a cry that shook the nearby houses’ foundations and set off every car alarm in the area.
It staggered as its legs took solid hits from three missiles. The behemoth managed to catch itself before falling. It was a bleeding, oozing mess of wounds and sores. It wanted to die, to let the humans have their revenge for all the devastation it had caused. It was evil like Vinnie, had killed so many in its path to revenge.
It couldn’t meet its end this way. There had to be more to its existence than this. A reason it was made to be, had been allowed to live . . .
The behemoth pushed itself up, got its feet under it and rose. It knew what it had to do, the idea hitting it like a punch to the gut. The weight of its actions caused its legs to wobble, but it didn’t go down. The reason for its existence was so obvious now. It had a lot to make up for. Maybe never would be able to. But it would try. The humans might never accept it, forgive it, but that didn’t matter anymore.
Its rage and sorrow were gone, as if shaken off, like water from a dog after a bath. A new type of energy and exuberance filled it, despite the condition of its battered body. It needed to leave. To hide. Disappear for a time. Let things die down. Then it would keep watch over the humans. It would be their protector. Do something good, for its past life human life, as well as its current one, were awful. Dark spots on humanity.
A moment later, it took off running, jumping into the bay, trudging through the shallow waters, avoiding any craft it saw. The planes followed it, hammering it with their weapons, but it accepted the pain. It had prodded the bees’ nest and deserved its sting.
When it finally reached the open sea, it dove, and followed the ocean floor’s descent, going deeper and deeper where the sun’s rays refused to travel and the humans were another world away.
There, the behemoth remained, eating, healing and living. Years later, it would return to the surface periodically, keeping an eye on the mortal world, making sure they were protected from things like itself, should there ever be any others.
The End
Read on for a free sample of Hell Walks: A Kaiju Thriller
ONE
“I’ve never seen a dead one,” Caitlin whispered.
“Me neither,” Frank replied. His voice was barely even a whisper, but it carried clear as a trumpet across the vacuum which seemed to have enveloped the group. Was anyone even breathing? Frank sure as hell wasn’t, not that he always had a choice. His lungs felt particularly weak in this, April’s damp precursor to dawn. There had been little rain lately but the grass was slick with dew and the air moved like oil over bare flesh. It made Frank feel sick. Sicker.
Caitlin was knelt behind a slab of concrete, which had probably once been part of a blast wall. It lay embedded in the earth at a diagonal angle, as if it had been thrown into the air and then dropped, which was very possible, but that had been long ago. Moss stained its surface and gathered inside gaping lightning-bolt cracks.
Frank was about to speak to that, but Caitlin’s sister beat him to it. “That wall’s not safe. Come over here,” Autumn said, beckoning. Her voice was a protective hiss and a bit louder than any of them would have preferred. Frank heard someone that was crouched behind him sigh – probably Dodger, who, if he didn’t have a sarcastic comment for everything, made sure at least he was heard. For her part, Caitlin didn’t so much as make a face at her older sister. Instead, she moved away from the concrete slab and joined Autumn in the relative shadow of a skeletonized car. Looked like it had been a compact, the kind Frank had once driven to an advertising agency where he wrote dubious copy about fat-free snacks. His mouth watered a bit at the thought of chocolate. God, how long had it been since chocolate was a thing?
“You ever see a dead one?” Caitlin asked Chia.
The old man’s face creased in a sort of wincing smile and he shook damp wisps of gray from his forehead. “Never have, sweetheart. Heard of them. Seen pictures, but we always steered clear of the real McCoy.” Chia sounded regretful that they’d taken a different course of action this time, but their hand had been forced by...
Well, no sense breaking it down now, Frank thought. There were eight men and women huddled behind a line of blistered dead cars, waiting for dawn to break so that they could welcome the nightmare sight of a dead giant. “Them’s the facts, deputy. Now y’all just settle down. Pretend you’re in a pew on a Sunday. Hell, maybe today is Sunday.”
After hearing Chia’s words, Caitlin seemed a little less eager to see the real McCoy. There was once a time when the nineteen-year-old would likely have had her face in a smartphone and dissociated herself from the terrible tension and wonder that gripped them all. Hell, Frank would have too. As much as he’d always criticized the way that phones seemed to isolate everyone from one another, he’d more often than not preferred that little bubble of seclusion, especially in a waiting room, an elevator, bus, or Thanksgiving. That infrastructure, as far as he knew, was gone now. The only news and information came either from direct experience, or from the reports of other nomads they passed in the dark. Those reports were about as trustworthy as Frank’s ad copy. If a microwave cheeseburger that will help whip you into bikini shape sounds too good to be true, just stop thinking!
He supposed he’d been a professional liar back then. The stakes were different now. There wasn’t such a thing as a little fib anymore. There weren’t even fairy tales. There were only awful realities. The dragons were here now.
The edge of the sky on the eastern horizon bled a dark blue ichor. Dawn would be here before they knew it. From that point, the plan was to identify the location of the rumored fallen monster and give a generous berth as they continued east. From then on? South, maybe. South was usually good. Especially considering they were currently in the Midwest, where nearly any direction was good so long as it led away. This was Missouri, to be specific – Frank was pretty sure the pile of rubble they sat in at present had once been the city of Independence. To think they’d ventured this far into the hottest of hot zones, and all based on what someone had dared call a simple fib. However, this was no time for ruminating. The blue was spreading across the sky and soon they would see.
Frank sat on his butt in the road and glanced past Chia, their de facto leader, to the group’s two newest additions. It was too soon yet to tell whether these would become permanent members or just drift away. Frank suspected the former. The kid, a seventeen-year-old called Duckie, was clearly disabled. There was nothing about his appearance that suggested it – he was only as disheveled and frail as the rest of them – but it had been his blaring exuberance when he’d run at them yelling, “We seen a Little One that’s dead! It’s right up there and it’s dead!”
This had been the previous evening. The kid had emerged from a crumbling auto dealership just as the group was walking past it, and God how he’d been hollering. It was as if it were the greatest thing in the world that a Little One lay just a few miles ahead.
Quebra was the only armed member of the group and he’d drawn a bead on the kid immediately. The kid was frozen, face slackening, bewildered, and perhaps dismayed at the reaction. The rest of the group, Frank included, had just stared.
“You’re a little too excited, son,” Quebra had said in his flat tone of authority. His stance rigid, he’d followed Duckie in his sights as the kid wavered from side to side, face ashen.
“You sick?” Quebra called. It seemed the only reasonable explanation for running blind at the group of strangers, for yelling at the top of one’s lungs. Kid had to be infected.
Duckie had said, “Yes,” almost shamefully, hands falling at his sides.
At that moment, Quebra was training an AR-15 on the kid. Frank remembered watching Quebra’s tensed forearms, the only part of him not swathed in camouflage. He remembered wondering if the soldier was just going to shoot the kid right then and there, all business, no mercy, and if that wouldn’t have been the right thing.
Then a woman’s voice had called from the auto dealership. She’d stepped through a shattered display window and shouted shrilly, “He’s not sick, not like that!” She was middle-aged and frizzy gray hair (they all had at least a little) fanned out around her head. She held her arms out pleadingly and walked toward the street.
“We’re not sick,” she’d said, more softly. She pulled up the sleeves of her ratty cardigan sweater and pushed the hair back from her neck. “Duckie,” she called, “pull up your shirt and show them. Very slowly.” To Quebra she added, “He’s unarmed. He’s a child.”
Quebra had not moved in all that time and did not reply then. His silence said it all. Doesn’t matter if he’s a kid. If he’s armed or infected, that’s what matters. Not that Frank believed Quebra to be a cold man. He was just a man who did the things no one else could bring themselves to do, things that had to be done.
Duckie, with an almost comical slowness, as if he were mocking the woman’s command, had peeled his navy blue sweatshirt up from his waist. He’d pulled it up past his pecs and then, at the woman’s direction, had turned in a slow circle to show his bare torso, front and back. He was clear of sores. Quebra had lowered the rifle a millimeter.
“He’s mentally disabled,” the woman had said. There hadn’t been any exasperation in her voice – no tone of How could you not know? How dare you? – but Frank had heard a certain weariness, the weariness of someone who has made a firm and loving commitment and who is being exhausted by it. He remembered thinking she must be his mother.
O’Brien, as it had turned out, was Duckie’s Special Education teacher, or had once been. She had explained that Duckie’s family was dead, as was hers, and she’d been shepherding him across the Midwest ever since. She’d gone from an educator to a full-time caretaker, and Frank supposed it was because neither she nor Duckie had anyone else left. He hoped there wasn’t anything weird going on between the two, though that thought seemed ridiculous now in the early hours of dawn, as he watched O’Brien sponge dirt from Duckie’s face with a spit-moistened sleeve.
After accepting O’Brien and Duckie, the group had rested up inside the auto dealership until dark and then had resumed their trek on a path which allegedly contained a dead giant. They had moved with painstaking slowness, stopping often, and so it was only now that they sat in this car-choked stretch of road next to ruined blast walls, and waited to see the creature – the Little One, as Duckie and so many others called them. Duckie, however, did it with no trace of irony. He did it because, in spite of the fact that the Little Ones were some three hundred feet tall, there was simply a much bigger one standing to the north. Them’s the facts.
There they sat as the sun played chicken with the night sky. Frank, an ad man with bad lungs and joints that screamed whenever he shifted. Chiapperino, an old fart originally from Queens who exhibited an almost superhuman patience and incredible empathy with people – and who had said nothing during Quebra’s confrontation with Duckie. Duckie himself, who was a nice kid even if a little loud sometimes. He had to be reminded frequently that there were human monsters of which one must be wary. O’Brien was every bit the part of a surrogate mother. She looked to be about Frank’s age, forty-ish, though weathered as they all were.
Caitlin and her sister Autumn were also recent additions to the group. Caitlin’s long hair was startlingly dark, maybe because it was unwashed, although it seemed healthy. That was why it caught Frank’s eye so often. The girl was attractive to be sure, but Frank’s mind, even in its most idiotic recesses, no longer processed the sight of a girl in that way. Those idle, often ugly thoughts which seemed to crop up regularly in a man’s brain regardless of circumstance, had been retired when the shit hit the fan and deeper instincts took charge. Autumn was pretty too, and her hair seemed smooth and clean, even if it had to have been at least a month since they’d had enough clean water to wash anything. Autumn’s hair was red. Somewhere along the way, while traveling alone with her orphan sister, Autumn had taken the time to break into some Walgreen’s and apply scarlet hair dye. She looked maybe thirty, “Cate” being her kid sister. Frank only really thought of her in reference to Caitlin, because Autumn had been careful so far not to exude a lick of personality. She was fiercely guarded. Though Caitlin was more outgoing, Autumn kept her on a short leash and the tension in it was apparent on rare occasion.
