Kaiju Rampage Read online

  The kaiju was bearing down on Eagle 4 as Eagle 1 approached it from its right side. Captain Martin laid into the monster with Eagle 1’s cannons. The heavy rounds dug huge holes in the beast’s sides. It squawked and hurled itself away from Eagle 1’s line of fire. The kaiju was gravely injured and tried to break away from the engagement raging around it. Captain Martin refused to let the monster go.

  Eagle 1 closed on the wounded kaiju, its engines being pushed to their limits, as Captain Martin fired another two missiles. The wounded kaiju didn’t have a prayer for avoiding them, hurt as it was. They made contact with the kaiju’s back as they exploded, turning the kaiju into a mess of charred and exploding flesh.

  Captain Martin allowed himself a smile. It quickly twisted into an expression of grim determination driven by fear as he saw Eagle 1 was the sole survivor of the Lee’s air wing that was still in the sky. Everyone else was gone. His quick look around also told him that at least six of the kaiju remained in play, and all of them were now coming after him. It was unbelievable that such creatures could take out an air wing, much less so quickly, but they had.

  Alarms sounded in the cockpit of his fighter signaling that one Eagle 1’s engines had just gone offline. Captain Martin knew he had pushed them too hard. As Eagle 1 lurched in the sky and he adjusted his heading to help compensate for the lack of power, the kaiju overtook him. The last thing Captain Martin saw before he died was the talons of a massive foot closing over the canopy of his fighter above. He barely even had time to scream.

  ****

  The Lee’s C.I.W.S. was going wild attempting to engage all the lesser kaiju surrounding the ship. Wherever its stream of fire intercepted the hordes of kaiju, the creatures died by the dozens. It wasn’t enough, though. There was simply too many of the things.

  Admiral Hall had ordered Colonel Stockholm and all available personnel to arm themselves. If the kaiju managed to get into the ship’s interior, all was lost. There would be no stopping them. The plan was to stop them before they ever had the chance to do so. It was up to Stockholm to make sure that happened. He sent marines and ready-action teams accompanied by personnel who were normally noncombatants to every exterior deck of the Lee. Stockholm led the team who were attempting to hold the main deck himself.

  Gunfire rang out all around Stockholm as his men got into position. Two of them, who were carrying S.A.W.s, did their best to hold the bulk of the kaiju at bay. Each of the kaiju was different from the others. All of them, though, stood between seven and nine feet tall. Some had legs, others moved about on two primary tentacles that functioned as legs. Stockholm even saw a few who had lower bodies that resembled snakes who came slithering across the deck towards their prey. And that’s what Stockholm felt he and his men were—prey. Whenever one of the Lee’s defenders fell, numerous kaiju piled onto the body, ripping away it with their teeth and claws.

  “Hey ugly!” Stockholm called at a group of kaiju who were devouring the remains of a lieutenant he thought had been named Haney. Three of the seven kaiju raised their heads, their burning eyes turning in his direction. Two of them had chunks of Haney in their mouths as they did so.

  The goat-horned head of one of the kaiju in the group around Haney that had looked up burst as Stockholm put three rounds from his M-16A into the thing’s skull. Its body careened over backwards, thudding onto the deck. The other kaiju left Haney’s body where it lay to charge towards him. A communications tech, drafted into the defense of the ship, moved up beside Stockholm as the colonel made his stand. The tech clutched a 9mm in a two-handed grip and was busy emptying the weapon’s mag. into the kaiju even as Stockholm flicked his M-16A to automatic and held down its trigger. Their combined fire tore the group of kaiju apart before they got within six feet of where Stockholm and the tech stood.

  The battle was going badly. Stockholm could already see that it was lost. There were already hundreds of the lesser kaiju already aboard the Lee and more continued to scale the sides of the ship with each passing minute. Stockholm heard one of the two S.A.W.s nearby jam and go silent. The soldier who had been firing it cursed loudly before a kaiju that resembled a cross between a chicken and jellyfish of all things engulfed the soldier in its tentacles. The S.A.W. clattered to the deck as the soldier died from the creature’s stings, his flesh swelling and splitting even as he jerked about in the creature’s grasp. The soldier with the other S.A.W. turned to vaporize the kaiju with a stream of point-blank fire. The jellyfish kaiju exploded in a shower of black ooze and pulp.

  Stockholm heard the tech next to him grunt. He whirled to see the horn of a kaiju protruding through the man’s sternum. The kaiju rose to its full height as it flung the dead tech off of it. The kaiju towered over Stockholm, easily standing nine feet tall. Stockholm didn’t even blink. He just pointed the barrel of his M-16A at the creature and blasted it with a trio of three-round bursts. The kaiju went staggering backwards to topple onto the deck. It was a good bet that monster wasn’t dead, but Stockholm’s attention was torn from it by some idiot shouting, “Fall back!”

  There was nowhere to fall back to. The kaiju had overrun the exterior decks of the destroyer and surrounded the position he and most of the others were still trying to hold. Stockholm wanted to shoot the idiot who had yelled the order but had no idea who it was in the crowd. Besides, the three of his men who had turned to run had been cut down by the kaiju as soon as they had left the relative security of the tightened circle his other men had formed.

  Each one of his men who fell took several of the lesser kaiju with them, and the soldier with S.A.W. was still proving to worth his weight in gold, but even so, it was just a matter of time until all of them were dead himself included.

  A kaiju with four arms, each of which was more like a blade than a true arm, leaped into the circle of the Lee’s defenders, slashing wildly. One man howled as the monster severed his spine from behind him. Another lost his head to a quick swipe of one of the monster’s arms. The monster slid its third arm deep into the side of a soldier who had managed to halfway turn towards it. It twisted the blade about inside the man’s body, showing rows of long, razor-like teeth in a feral, gleeful grin as it did, too. Its fourth arm stabbed at Stockholm. He managed to block the thrust with his rifle. The weapon was ruined in the process, but the act saved his life.

  Stockholm’s hand tore a grenade from where it dangled on the side of his belt. He pulled its pin with his teeth as his other hand drew his sidearm from the holster on his hip. Stockholm’s pistol cracked over and over as he emptied half the pistol’s magazine in the four-armed kaiju’s mouth and eyes.

  He was alone now. Stockholm could hear distant gunfire from other parts of the ship, but the men near him were all dead. As the kaiju closed in on him, he smashed the live grenade into the chest of the closest one. He felt his hand be torn apart by the blast at the point of impact before shrapnel from the grenade slammed into him and all the kaiju around him.

  ****

  Admiral Hall, his helmsman, and the Lee’s communications officer were the only people left on the bridge. Hall had sent everyone else to engage and try to stop the endless waves lesser kaiju that were still swarming onto the ship. The Lee’s C.I.W.S. had long fallen silent. An armored kaiju that resembled a beetle had crawled its way to the weapon and taken it out, ripping it from its emplacement and throwing it over the side of the ship into the water.

  The door to the bridge was sealed and welded shut. It wouldn’t hold long, though. Already Hall could hear the fists of the frenzied kaiju on its other side slamming into it with all their strength. The door buckled in its frame, metal bending inward.

  “Sir,” Jake, the ship’s helmsman said, trying to get his attention.

  Hall looked at the man, half-dazed. It took a moment for him to realize that Jake was offering him his sidearm. Bridge officers weren’t supposed to be armed, but Hall had everyone he could get armed before the lesser kaiju had attacked the ship in force.

  Taking the weapon, Hall
nodded his thanks. “You armed?” he asked the communications officer.

  She shook her head in the negative. “No, sir. Didn’t think I would need to be.”

  “We need to get out of here, sir,” Jake urged him. “That door is going to give any second.”

  “There’s no point in running, Jake,” Hall told him in a sad voice. “This ship belongs to those monsters now. There’s nowhere to run to.”

  The look Jake shot at him made it clear that the helmsman regretted giving him his weapon.

  “Look!” the communications officer screamed, pointing at the forward window.

  Admiral Hall and Jake turned to see its glass was covered in the bodies of kaiju with sucker-like hands. The monsters were attached to the window and using their dome-shaped heads like hammers trying to crack it. They were succeeding, too. Hall wondered if there was any end to the number of abominations contained in the kaiju’s ranks.

  The bridge door came flying inward. The kaiju trying to push through it had actually knocked it loose from its frame and sent it spiraling, end over end. The poor communications officer was caught between the door and her console. She died like a cartoon character crushed by a dropped piano. The only difference, Hall thought, was the amount of blood.

  Jake had no weapon but charged to meet the kaiju anyway. He died instantly as the mandibles of an ant-headed kaiju caught and closed about his neck. Jake’s head bounced off the bridge’s deck a few times before rolling to a stop in the bridge’s far corner.

  Admiral Hall thought about shoving the 9mm pistol in his hand into his mouth and squeezing its trigger before the kaiju reached him. He didn’t, though. It would have been a dishonor to the men and women he had led into this fight. Hall brought the pistol up and managed to fire a single shot that splattered the ant-headed kaiju’s skull before the rest of the kaiju swept over him, knocking him to the floor beneath them. His screams echoed off the walls of the bridge as clawed fingers, pincers, and teeth shredded his flesh until he lay unmoving in a pool of his own blood.

  ****

  Lieutenant Sam Worley and his tactical officer, Harper, were having a really crappy day. Harper sat beside him in the copilot seat while Ensign Carpenter manned the cabin door mounted M60D. Worley was thankful for the sound suppressant aspect of his flight helmet as Carpenter continued to hammer away with the weapon at the kaiju that ran amok over the Lee’s exterior decks. It was easy to see that the carrier was lost. They would have been dead, too, had he not ordered the others aboard the Seahawk and managed to get the bird into the air before the kaiju overran the last of the carrier’s rapid response teams of marines. The other Seahawk the Lee carried was now a burning pile of wreckage upon the flight deck.

  Worley and his crew had attempted to provide support for the troops attempting to defend the carrier but not even adding their firepower had proved enough. The kaiju’s numbers were just too great. He and his crew had watched as the last of the carrier’s defenders had formed a tight circle in the middle of the flight deck and tried to stand their ground. The battle hadn’t lasted long at all, and now those men were dead. Worley had allowed Carpenter to vent some of her anger on the monsters, even after the last of the soldiers below fell, but now it was time to move on.

  The destroyers of Task force Gamma Red hadn’t fared any better than the Lee had. All of the ships of the American force they belonged to were nothing more than swarms of rampaging kaiju. And the ships of the Japanese DESRON they had been assisting were shattered messes of flaming wreckage that burned brightly as they drifted upon the waves.

  “What in the devil do we do now, Sam?” Harper asked.

  Worley didn’t have an answer to that question. So far, the winged kaiju that had decimated the F-16s and F-18s of the Lee’s air wing had left them alone. In truth, Worley had no idea where the winged monsters had vanished to once they had finished with the fighters. He doubted they had left the area. Most likely, the things were high above their Seahawk, hiding in the clouds, somewhere. Maybe the monsters deemed that a lone copter was below their attention, or perhaps they were just waiting for the right moment to come swooping down on it. There was no way to know for sure.

  Worley shook his head. “Head for Tokyo,” he said. “That’s all we can do. If we stay here, we’re dead like everyone else.”

  “Hey, Carpenter!” Harper shouted on the trio’s shared comm. link. “Cool with it the M60! The last thing we want right now is to draw attention to this bird!”

  The M60 fell silent in the copter’s rear as Carpenter answered, “Roger that.”

  “Tokyo then,” Harper said, nodding towards the horizon.

  Worley pushed the Seahawk’s engines to their max as the copter flew across the sky, leaving the Lee behind it.

  ****

  Colonel Yuri was the onsite CO for the columns of armored vehicles and tanks that lined the docks of Tokyo harbor. There were reports coming in that the joint American/Japanese naval task force had been destroyed by the kaiju approaching the city. That meant any minute now, it would be up to him and his men to do what the Navy had failed to do. General Akio’s orders were clear. There could be no retreat no matter how the battle went.

  Night had fallen, and the docks were lit by huge searchlights, their beams panning out across the waves of the harbor. All that could be done was to wait for the kaiju to come. The wait was not a long one.

  The kaiju rose from the water. There were four of the monsters in all, each of them was a horrid abomination that writhed above the waves, their bodies the shape of snakes. At least that was what Colonel Yuri thought at first. His jaw fell open in shock and terror as the kaiju continued to rise and he saw that what he had thought were four different kaiju were, in reality, the heads of a single monster. When it had risen to its full height, its snake-like heads above its body, the kaiju towered a good four hundred feet high. Two heads hissed, one reared back giving a vicious roar, while the fourth was silent, its mouth filled with crackling blue energy that danced and flashed over the rows of its fanged teeth.

  “All units, fire at will!” Colonel Yuri shouted.

  The tanks lining the docks rocked the night with fire from their main guns. The sound was like a chorus of thunder as a barrage of shells rocketed towards the kaiju. Explosions rippled all over the kaiju’s chest. Rounds designed to pierce the heaviest of armor did little more than gouge at the thick scales that passed for the kaiju’s skin. The secondary weapons of the tanks joined in, orange tracer rounds slashing through the night as bullets poured into the kaiju by the thousands.

  Colonel Yuri saw that the massive kaiju had no arms but two thick legs supported the monster’s body as it waded towards the docks. Its wide, rounded body swayed beneath the amount of firepower his tanks were hitting it with. Even so, it came onward. Its fourth head struck first. It shot forward like a striking snake to unleash a bolt of blue lightning. The bolt hit not one but two tanks that were close together in the defensive formation that lined the docks. The energy danced over their armored hulls like a raging electrical storm. Colonel Yuri heard the last cries of those two tank crews as they were cooked alive inside their vehicles.

  The two hissing heads struck next. Their mouths opened as they hosed the docks with wide cones of fire so hot that the armor of the tanks the fire made contact with turned to slag. Metal melted, running like candle wax to pool around the now misshapen remnants of the tanks. The destruction those two heads inflicted in their initial attack was devastating, half a dozen tanks lost in mere seconds.

  The roaring head struck last. Colonel Yuri could see bulges working their way up its throat to its mouth like there was something alive inside the kaiju that was pushing out of it. When the roaring head opened its mouth, it spat boulder after boulder towards the docks. The huge rocks crushed the tanks they hit, but they did far more than that. They shook the docks themselves as their weight came crashing down them. Entire sections of the docks broke apart, dumping the heart of Colonel Yuri’s battle line into t
he water. Yuri could see that the huge rocks had been swallowed by the kaiju earlier, and the beast was now vomiting them up as weapons to be hurled at its enemies. He knew the kaiju couldn’t possibly have that many more of the rocks inside it, but he couldn’t chance another attack like the one his tanks had just been hit by.

  “Get those tanks off the docks!” Yuri raged at the closest officer to him before he addressed his men himself over his unit’s comm. link. “Keep firing but fall back! I say again, fall back!”

  The tanks still able to respond to his orders began the slow process of a backwards retreat, even as they continued to hammer the kaiju. The kaiju was beginning to show the effects of their constant barrage. Areas of the monster’s scales had been blown away, and black pus oozed from those wounds into the water around its legs. Though Yuri could see dozens of such wounds on the kaiju’s chest and upper legs, none were bad enough or deep enough to truly slow the kaiju down. It lumbered on towards the remains of the docks and the city of Tokyo beyond them.

  The two heads that had spat fire and the electrical head all struck again in unison, decimating another third of Colonel Yuri’s remaining forces as his tanks did their best to clear the docks and regroup on the solid ground behind them. Yuri knew he had to come up with something and fast. He needed a means to hurt the kaiju more and slow it or soon he wouldn’t have any tanks under his command left.

  “All surviving battle capable units, aim for that thing’s heads!” Yuri shouted. “We need to take them out before they take us out!”