Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (5 page)

It chilled her. The cold came not because of the belief of others, but because of her own. Denial became slippery. Faith was contagious, and it terrified her as the battlefield never had. The fear was worse than the terror she and every solider under her command had experienced at the first sight of the Eschaton. The fear was worse because it sprang from that encounter. Seeds had been planted at Old Trafford. They had sent roots down to the heart of her identity. As the futility of all her training, of all her decades of experience was revealed, something grew. Now the hymns were bringing this thing to the point of its malignant bloom.

Explosions drew closer. The doom-rhythm of the Eschaton’s footsteps drowned out the crowd. The people faltered. Bickford did not. “The Lord is our Shepherd!” he reminded them. “We shall not want. Now, especially now, we shall not want.”

The Eschaton appeared, blotting out the night sky visible through the roof of the stadium. As distant as its cold eyes were, as minute as humans must be from its perspective, Caldwell felt as if the monster saw and passed a verdict on every soul present. The Eschaton stepped on the west stands, crushing thousands to wet ruin. It was amongst them now, the mountain that had come with fury to destroy the city. And then it waited, as if its actions and those of the insects before it were a form of dialogue.

Or the call and response of prayer.

Bickford began to sing. His voice carried over the screams of the injured and dying. The people, embracing the hope he promised and the faith he provided, joined in.

Tens of thousands strong, the choir sang “Jerusalem.”

~

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green & pleasant Land.

~

“Now,” Bickford said.

Caldwell couldn’t tear her eyes away from the Eschaton. How could she be reading something beyond the animal, however immense, in its posture? How could she be seeing
intent
? Yet she knew that she was. The blossoming inside her began. Even so, she was able to give the order to the crew of the rocket launcher.

Bickford shouted, “Behold the Hand of God!”

The hymn reached its climax. The faith of the thousands was tangible, and Caldwell felt it fly upwards with the rockets. As the fragments of seconds stretched to aeons, she could well believe she had helped forge a holy weapon. She could well believe her brother spoke the absolute truth. She could well believe it was the divine hand itself that rose to strike the abomination that had dared lay waste to the world.

She could believe all these things. She did not, because the far greater belief that she had been fighting was now upon her.

The Eschaton reached an arm forward. With sovereign contempt, it batted aside the Hand of God. The explosions were the sad dissolution of faith.

For a few seconds more, the Eschaton did nothing else. It seemed to be waiting for the full significance of the moment to fall upon the assembly. Beside the Panther, Evans had collapsed into a ball, his head to the ground, defeated. Caldwell looked back at Bickford. Bereft of his illusion, he had fallen to his knees. The full truth of what he had been telling his sister was hitting him. There was a divine force at large in the universe, and he was looking at it. His mouth hung open in an agony of awe.

Caldwell faced the immensity. The Eschaton rumbled. The terrible sucking sound began once more. The fullness of epiphany rocked Caldwell. She was battered by the belief that was knowledge, the knowledge that this was the only deity her world would ever know.

Caldwell didn’t fight the truth, but she didn’t surrender. She flew beyond grief and despair, and seized the only weapon left to her: defiance. Standing upright to the last, she howled at the Eschaton. She shouted into the dread second of final silence.

She was roaring still when the Eschaton opened its jaws wide and gave them all their baptism.

Day of the Demigods

Peter Stenson

Picture this: a reclining, hundred-twenty foot stud propped up on his elbow, giving you a slight wink and suggestive spread of his legs. He’s the rarest mix of pure strength and sensual contours. His stomach is like a stacked row of cars, nothing but rock hard definition. He’s got a linebacker’s neck. His facial structure is nothing but Eastern Block rigidity. His lips are the soft pillowy promises of every romantic comedy; his incisors are Afghani mountains. This stud has the body shape of God, if God were in the form of his Greek sea counterpart carved out of a slab of marble killer whale.

Yeah, now it’s coming to you.

This vision so unimaginable it verges on comical.

But put those doubts aside, because that beautiful, seven ton stud stretched out beneath Los Angeles, working one off while giving a peace sign to his own dazzling reflection in the city’s liquid sewage, that’s this guy, Sweetgrass, the motherfucker who’s about to take Hollywood by storm.

And why shouldn’t I?

My pedigree is the wet dream of every dog breeder. Like all sea-born Kaiju, I was conceived during a blue moon in the depths of the Southern Pacific. But
unlike
my fellow reptilian counterparts, my mom, God-rest-her-soul, was a bit of a…let’s just call her
promiscuous
. She was into groups, inter-species gangbangs, and so there you have it, me, a smorgasbord of the ocean’s baddest creatures. Mix that with the rumor that my great-great grandfather on my mother’s side was Godzilla’s second cousin…yeah, Hollywood, here I come.

Which is where I belong.

Not swimming at the base of oceanic trenches. Not like all my brothers and sisters who think they’re achieving
separate but equal
by cowardly hiding. Fuck that noise. I tell them this, and they laugh. They tell me I’m a mutt bastard, and go ahead and see how much Hollywood would love a freak monster with some obvious giant octopus blood in my heritage (full disclosure, they’re correct about the damned octopus. Instead of a tail, I have a giant gelatin hump with three flaccid tentacles that drag behind me like the lace of a wedding gown). But fuck it. I’m amazing from the front.

I drink the sewage underneath Gold’s Gym in West Hollywood twice a day, and the piss of those dudes has enough Andro to make every muscle (sans my ghetto booty) hard as blood
diamonds. Which brings me to my point: Hollywood loves beauty, but the masses, those who stamp the checks of Hollywood execs with their ten dollar tickets and extra-large, extra-buttered tubs of popcorn, they love beauty with a slight flaw. This makes the beauty attainable. This makes it something they can strive both for and towards. This is my in. This is why I’m going to prove every piece of shit I know wrong, show them that in the twenty-first century, the bastard of an ocean-wide coupling can stroll down Sunset Boulevard, the only inconvenience being too many paparazzi trying to get all up in my shit.

~

There’s this girl. There’s always a girl. She’s technically my cousin, but Christ, there’s not too many of us, so hold off on your judgment because a hole’s a hole. Okay, I was trying to sound tough there. Gema isn’t just a hole, far from it; the
furthest
thing from it. She’s perfection. Like real perfection, not me with my loveable flaws, but beautiful in every conceivable way, her father, a great white that would make Jaws ashamed of his manhood, and her mother, my aunt, both with that sleek reptilian style of amazing. Gema’s the real deal. She’s pure beauty, but that’s not all it is with this girl. Shit no it isn’t. She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s like a guy if a guy wasn’t a dick but just chill, all about binge eating and toying with submarines. I’m not one to toss around the
L word
, but damn, it’s close with this girl.

Which made it all the more heartbreaking when I dropped by the underground volcano where she hangs out, and heard this soft moaning (maybe it wasn’t
soft
). My first thought was of her safety, her wellbeing, her probably being captured and tortured, her needing my help. I wiggled my way through the volcanic rocks. That’s when I saw my sweet Gema reclined against the seabed. Diablo (prick of a Kaiju, cold water type off the coast of Greenland, all about lying low and the procreation of our race) was tucked between her legs giving her fake chow.

I screamed.

How could I not?

Gema chased after me. She kept calling my name,
Sweetgrass, Sweetgrass
, and I let myself believe these were the calls of the apologetic, of the recently-epiphany-experienced, ready to beg for forgiveness and understanding.

I finally slowed because she’s faster than me anyway.

“What the hell were you doing?” she asked.

“Heard something, thought you were in trouble.”

Gema’s got these eyelashes long as tarpon, and when they flutter, small white water ripples. She was doing that as she tilted her head at me. She looked a little sorry, but more pitying.

“He’s…
different
,” she said.

“I’m different.”

I watched Gema’s gaze drop to my stupid gelatin ass and the flaccid tentacles. She smiled the smile of a teacher returning the apple from her grade school student, telling him it was never going to happen.

“He’s special, and I’m getting older, like my eggs aren’t going to stay fresh forever, and—”

“I thought we were—”

“Friends.”

At that moment, I knew Gema was speaking to me in code, as most girls do. She wasn’t saying I’m in love with that fascist Diablo, I love it when he’s downstairs with his snake-like tongue, and it’s never going to happen between us. Not at all. She was saying
I need to see more. I need you to show me that you’re capable of greatness
.

So yeah, that happened. That’s my backstory. That’s why I decided to explore the sewers underneath Hollywood. To get ripped on pissed out steroids. To become bigger than Diablo, both in stature and reputation; bigger than the overhyped Godzilla, him having it wrong with destruction; bigger than Jesus as I soak in a world’s love, me becoming
special
.

~

I’m not retarded. I know monster movies—hell, any movie where something cool happens—is done with computers. But that doesn’t mean it’s better. No, that means CGI is the only tool available to producers, other than horrible puppets of Japanese past. We’re
hypothetical
to humans. We’re bedtime stories. We’re ingrained fears. We’re punch lines. We’re gods, more wrathful than any Old Testament exercising of disapproval, but we’re not real.

And what if we were to become real?

You think a studio is going to turn down a movie—everything real, mind you—with Sweetgrass as a star? Like maybe it’s an alien movie, and the humans are doomed, completely fucked. They call a special professor who’s a little crazy, some dude who smokes joints and talks conspiracies, and they say, “Are your theories real?” This professor laughs, tells them we’ve been real since Pangaea. He shows them where to find me. I’m all swimming around looking like utter destruction. Favors are asked. I’m tough, like
what’s in it for me?
And then the President of the United States says, “Our eternal gratitude.” Boom, that’s all I need, Sweetgrass morphing from angry-misunderstood-loner to team player, savior, but fuck that cross because there’s no need for a martyr when I’m angry.

The answer is no studio would turn that down.

Which is why right now, at six-thirty a.m. I’m balling up my fists, ready to crack through the thin layer of crust separating me from Hollywood. Me from greatness. Me from the undying love of Gema.

Yeah, I’m nervous, just like any Midwestern milkmaid who’s boarding a Greyhound to chase her dreams of seeing herself on the silver screen, but fuck it. Fuck my
friends
who tell me it’s impossible. Fuck Diablo with his oral calisthenics. Fuck my race with their cowardly fear. Fuck movies and their CGI. Fuck them all, because this motherfucker’s coming up.

~

I’ll pay them back for the fifty-foot crater I’ve just put on North Hollywood Way. I’m thinking opening night of
Sweetgrass!
alone, will be enough to cover any damages ten times over.

I stroll down the street. I chose this early time for two reasons: I wanted to pitch myself first thing to Warner Brothers, and I didn’t want there to be a scene. The last thing I want is to become a spectacle before I ink that dotted line.

But maybe people have that shit wrong about New York being the city that never sleeps, because LA’s not too far behind. There’s a decent amount of traffic. A brown UPS truck is coming right at me, then veers right, skidding before it flips. I reach down and rescue this
what can brown do for you?
(And honestly, am I the only one who thinks that slogan is either a reference to heroin or anal sex?). I snatch the truck mid-flip. I bring it up to my face. A small Hispanic man holds onto the steering wheel. He’s screaming, nearly as loud as Gema had been while Diablo got his slurp on. Then the man stops. His eyes are milky quartz. I wink. He’s feeling me. He’s got to be. He’s got to be realizing there is greatness in this world. That there’s wonder and myths and creatures and gods. He’s realizing it all in his moment of speechlessness.

But maybe he’s not, because he lets go of the steering wheel and dives a hundred and twenty feet to his death.

I stare at the little splat of his body. I look around for who may have seen. There are a few other cars on the road, most of them crashed into one another. I stealthily slide my foot over his mushed body and shrug like
don’t know what you’re talking about
.

I know I need to get a move on to Warner Brothers. I don’t have time to be messing around with awestruck civilians. I cruise down the street, a little more careful this time not to squash the dented vans of migrant workers and SUVs of the penile-insecure real estate brokers. My heart nearly kicks through my chest when I see Warner Boulevard. I turn left. Then I see that water tower. I’m going faster. I’m stepping over the literal gates to my destiny. I’m ignoring the
brother manning the guard booth, who’s obviously ecstatic at my entrance, shouting into the walkie-talkie strapped to his shoulder.

The sun’s coming up and it feels right
; the sun and the warehouses and the water tower, everything coming together like I knew it would. I glance at buildings covered with Superman and Looney Tunes logos. I’m imagining my picture next to them. I’m fantasizing about Sweetgrass toys, Hasbro dedicating an entire line to me—Sweetgrass the Badass, Sweetgrass the Destroyer, Sweetgrass the Savior, Sweetgrass the Giver of Cunnilingus—and about the ensuing cosplay with loveable gelatin humps. All of it. It’s happening. It’s fate. It’s me proving myself down as fuck to Gema. It’s me accomplishing the real American Dream—fuck gold, fuck oil, and fuck middle management, and too-steep mortgages—it’s fame, pure and simple. Fame, the declaration that I’m better than you, I won, I beat the game called American Life.

I make my way to a sleek looking office building. Obviously, this is where the execs hang out. So I do, too. There are a few people sprinting around the parking lot, which I chuckle at, thinking it’s true what they say about Hollywood people always being in a hurry.

I wait for maybe five minutes.

Nothing happens.

Like I said, I need this shit to happen right away, so I bend down and peer in the window of the office building. I can see women in slutty business suits and dudes who look like the women in slutty business suits. I tap my pinky nail against the window to get somebody’s attention. The window shatters. I put my mouth to the opening, tell them I’m really sorry about the window, feel free to bill me. They’re screaming. A few of the men, who are as pretty as women, faint. My mouth’s right at the window, and I tell them I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but I’m looking for the man in charge of signing the next BFD.

Everybody’s covering their ears. Most drop to their knees. Somebody throws a minuscule coffee cup at my snout. I tell them again that I’m here to become a star. One girl’s crouched down. She removes her hands from her ears. Each tiny hand is red with blood, which I realize is coming out of her ears. I tell her she might want to get that checked out.

I straighten back up, and notice, for the first time, I have an audience outside. It isn’t really the audience I want. There are three black sedans, which I make as Warner Brother security. Four cop cars. In the distance, I see a precession of cruisers, cherries blaring. I hear something behind me and spin around to see more cop cars. There’s a very slight sensation radiating in my ghetto booty. I peer once again over my shoulder.

Fuck.

During my initial spin-around, one of my embarrassing ED tentacles must’ve caught some air, because it’s lying in a heap of demolished cop cars. I see one officer severed in two, his patrol car making a clean cut just above his utility belt.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

When I get nervous, I apologize. It’s my natural state. Take any sexual encounter in my life, it’s nothing but me groping and begging forgiveness for my inadequacy. Any tension-filled standoff with dudes like Diablo, yup, more of the same.
Sorry, you’re right, I am a piece of shit who doesn’t deserve to live
. And here it is, the most important moment of my life, the proverbial signing day, my coming out party, so of course I’m nervous like a motherfuck—regardless of what I say. I’m insecure, worried about the size of my dick, my fat ass, ashamed of my mutt status because my mom was kind of a slut, terrified of failing at this like everything I’ve ever tried, constantly battling the thought of a solitary life spent along jerking off to my own reflection—and I’m apologizing to each and every one of the gathered people. I’m
sorry-ing
and
I didn’t mean to-ing
with increasing volume. But these people evidently don’t want to hear it, because they’re covering their ears, many of them leaking blood.