Date: 2016-08-07 04:00:00+00:00
Description: When a hunting expedition goes missing during a freak earthquake in the Australian Outback, the Alice Springs Police Department sends out a search team to find the missing hunters. Instead, the rescue party discovers a newly-formed canyon in the heart of the Outback. Nothing could have prepared them for the horror that awaits them as they find themselves besieged by gigantic flying monsters and mutant lizards. Kaiju Canyon is an action packed journey into primordial terror, where every step you take may be your last.
Publisher: SEVERED Press

KAIJU CANYON

S.T. CARTLEDGE

Copyright 2016 by S.T. CARTLEDGE
www.severedpress.com

THE SUICIDE FOREST

Some people called Cooper a functioning alcoholic, but they didn’t know him very well. Few did.

He entered the local pub, the Suicide Forest, and found it empty. It was a place of dark-wood furniture and low-hanging lights. The TV was muted. The fans didn’t stop spinning. This time of year, they never stopped spinning. The bartender had dark eyes like a spider. She leaned against the counter with her skin softly, slowly transforming from a solid to a liquid state. She stared at Cooper all the way from the door to the barstool.

Cooper placed a file on the bar, examined the spirits on the wall, and said, “I’ll take a Kraken with cola.” Sweat dripped from his hair and beaded on his forehead.

“You’re the new cop, yeah?” she asked, placing the spiced rum on the bar.

He nodded. Took a sip. “I’m the new detective, yeah,” he said. “Name’s Cooper. You heard anything about the missing persons around here?”

She laughed and held out her hand. “Mia.” They shook hands. “You’re a big city guy, aren’t you?”

He nodded again. “I came here from Melbourne, yeah. Why’s that?”

She leaned in a little. “Rumours spread quick in towns like this. Everyone around here knows about the missing people. This is your first case, huh?”

“Yeah, I started today. What can you tell me about the people. You know their names, yeah? Know what they’ve been up to?” He picked up his file and flicked through it.

Mia pointed at the two seats next to Cooper. “The Hodgins brothers, Mark and Lewis.” She pointed at Cooper’s seat. “Josh.” She continued along the bar, giving names to the stools. “Carol. Steph and Chris Foster. Domino. All in their thirties. They drove down south about a week ago for a hunting trip. They were meant to be back a few days ago, but no one has heard from them.”

“What were they hunting?” Cooper asked.

“Rabbits and foxes, mostly. Maybe kangaroo.” She shrugged. “They were meant to be back two days ago.”

“Huh,” he said. He couldn’t imagine going hunting in this weather. He couldn’t imagine an animal existing in this heat that didn’t turn to soup or vaporise. The sun outside was merciless.

Mia wet a tea towel and wrapped it around her neck. The water dripped from her collarbone, mingled with her sweat, and ran down her chest.

He closed the file. “What kind of a name is Domino?”

“It’s European. He came to Australia with his parents when he was a teenager. He’s lived here probably twenty years or so. Big guy. He’s like a second father to me. Are you on your lunch break or something?”

He was halfway through his drink. “Something like that, yeah. These people, they’re all like family to you?”

Mia nodded. “What’s your plan? Rally up the locals, get a big search party going?”

He wiped the perspiration off his glass and ran the cool water across his forehead. He shook his head. “Can’t do that. Haven’t you heard about the earthquakes?”

“I’ve heard about them. I wasn’t sure it was true. I thought it was a joke. We didn’t feel anything here. We don’t get earthquakes often, and when we do, the news is all over it. We just had rumours to go off.”

“No, they were real. I’m guessing they were too far from town to make headlines. Either way, it’s not safe to send volunteers into an area so far out when we don’t even know the damage.” Cooper had been here one day and already he felt drained. He finished his drink.

“But the damage is already done. If the earthquakes are what caused them to get stuck, the more people we have to help the better. The earthquakes must have happened, what, at least two or three days ago? The land should have settled by now. There shouldn’t be any risk left when we get there.”

“The risk is that the earthquakes haven’t stopped. They’re still going strong. I’ve never come across anything like it. We have no idea what’s going on. I think they wanted to keep people from going into panic mode.”

“No shit,” Mia said. She stepped back from the bar and leaned on the bench behind her.

“You’re not going to panic, are you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I can’t believe it. I was hoping they just had such a good time they lost track of the days, or they forgot to call us up and tell us they’d be back a little later.”

“Well,” Cooper said. He collected his file and stood up. “Thanks for the drink.”

“That’s it?” Mia said. “Is there anything else I can do to help? I know these people.”

“Sorry, but everything I need is in this file. I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Wait.” She came around the other side of the bar. “If you had everything you needed to know, why come here?”

“They didn’t have anything to drink back at the police station.” He thought it was odd to call a pub the Suicide Forest. Even more odd that this was the only one close to the police station and that all its patrons had vanished on a hunting trip while the outside world was on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

“You’re going to search for them right now? On your own?” She grabbed his arm.

He stopped. “Sure, why not? I’m just wasting time waiting around the office for the others to get their act together.”

“But you don’t know the area. You don’t know the people. You said it yourself—it’s dangerous out there and there’s no knowing what it’s going to be like when you get there.”

“Are you done lecturing me?”

She sighed. Shook her head. “You’re right. We can’t waste time while they could be out there dying. I’m coming with you.”

He turned away from her and pushed through the door. She hung back a moment, her head stuck in a tailspin, trying to process the information. What did she just commit to? She ran the scenario through her head again. Cooper had short hair and blue eyes. Big muscles. Why did that matter? He was the new cop in town. He had no idea what he was doing. Of course she couldn’t let him go off on his own. She threw her towel on the bar, grabbed her bag, turned off all the lights, and switched the open sign to closed.

He was on the phone when she came outside. She locked the pub. There were only the two vehicles in the dirt parking lot. She hopped in the passenger seat of his Land Cruiser and waited for his call to end.

He paced around the car a few minutes, staring at the ground, kicking up dust. Mia could hear lots of “yeah’s” and “nah’s” and other short replies before he hung up. He hopped in the driver’s seat, glanced at Mia, and started the engine.

“That was the police chief, yeah?” Mia played with the radio station.

“Yeah,” he said.

“He doesn’t want you going off on your own, right?”

“Of course.”

“But you didn’t tell him, did you?”

“I didn’t tell him, no.”

“He knows you’re going anyway. But he doesn’t know you kidnapped his daughter.” She watched Cooper for a reaction. A surprise at the relation between the two.

“Police Chief Harris is your father, huh?” he said. He turned the radio down a little and he turned the air con up. “That’s gotta suck.”

Mia shrugged. “He is who he is. Turn left up here,” she pointed out the intersection. “You don’t seem to care what he thinks of you.”

“I don’t even really know the guy.” He turned.

“So you don’t really care what anyone thinks then, huh?”

He shrugged. “Not really, no.”

The road became wide and empty ahead. The signpost listed a few towns ahead spread far apart. The remote middle Australian bushland became more remote by the kilometre.

THE TOWN WITH NO NAME

Robert and Rodney sat across from each other in the conference room, a large map spread out on the table between them. There were countless markings scribbled across it. Black lines drawn for possible paths taken. Red circles carved out giant blocks of land to search. Blue crosses marked likely camping spots. The sections of the conference table that weren’t covered by map had fistfuls of paper littered across them. Notes, photos, witness statements, all the latest data from the weather bureau.

There were two giant coffee mugs on the table which they drank from religiously.

All this had come together over the past sleepless twenty-four hours. Robert and Rodney both agreed this was the worst time to get a new guy on the squad. Robert lifted his mug for the fourth time since he’d finished it off.

“Where’s that new guy at?” he asked. “The least he could do is make us some damn coffee.”

Rodney nodded. “Doesn’t he realise what we’re working on at the moment? There’s no time for a …” he checked his watch, “two-hour-long lunch break. I’ll need another cup in a minute, too. I bet this guy won’t last a week.”

“I bet he won’t last a day,” Robert said.

“He’s left town on his own already.” Harris stood in the doorway. “I just got off the phone with him. He said he was doing some more investigations around town, but I don’t buy it. I just think he didn’t like playing secretary to you two and decided to have a crack at playing real cop instead.”

“Come on,” Rodney said.

“We weren’t that hard on him,” Robert replied. “Besides, he doesn’t have the experience of a bush detective.”

Harris entered the conference room and examined the map. “I know. I’m with you on this. But I’ve got a cop on his own, disregarding orders, heading out into unknown and unforgiving territory. What direction do you think he would have gone in?”

Rodney circled a red ring with his finger. “Here’s the most likely area. It’s a popular hunting spot and the group has been known to go there on occasion. There are a few outlying areas here and here they could have gone.” He pointed other spots out. “But he’ll be heading down here to begin with. There’s no other place he’d start his search. You want us to go find him?”

“I want you to go find him. Pack up and go. Call me when you track him down.” Harris left the twins shuffling their paper into boxes. They folded the map, cleared the table, and in minutes it was like they were never there.

***

When Cooper put his sunglasses on, it felt as though the world had been dipped in chrome. The reds of the desert became golden. The sun became steel. The old dusty road stretching out for days became futuristic, shimmering heat rising up and forming a molten mirror of the sky. Cooper pushed the Land Cruiser beyond one twenty, one thirty kilometres an hour, chewing up the road and spitting out dust clouds that arose in the rearview mirror.

There was dirt and dry bushlands everywhere they looked. Trees so dry their branches looked like bones. Like ancient animals who had died reaching to the sky. Reaching out and pleading for the mercy of the gods. Shouting at Mia and Cooper as they drove by, indifferent. The trees made no sound but the wind through dead leaves.

They didn’t care much for dead leaves. Dead people were the ones they cared for. They’d have liked to keep them living if they could.

“I’ll bet that my dad has already sent the Jackson twins to come find us,” Mia said. Her feet were propped up on the dashboard.

“Good,” Cooper said. “They were getting nowhere doodling on maps.” He went to turn the air con up, but it was already blasting on coolest. “Have those guys ever dealt with a missing persons case before?”

“There have been a couple,” she said. “None that they’ve actually solved though. You’ve solved a few?”

“Yeah, I’ve solved a few. And I didn’t solve them sitting around a conference table debating every single goddamn option.”

Mia’s phone rang. She checked the number, let it ring out.

“Who’s that, your father?” Cooper asked.

“Yeah,” she said. A few moments later, a voicemail appeared.

Hi, honey, just checking up on you. I noticed you’ve closed up the pub early. I know you’re concerned about the missing people, but I hope you’re not planning on doing anything foolish, like heading out bush on your own. It’s dangerous, but everything’s going to be okay. I’m on the case. Just … call me when you get this, okay? Love you. Bye.

The voicemail played loud enough for Cooper to hear. He pressed through the silence. “What’s it like having him as your dad? Can’t be easy.”

“He just thinks he knows everything. He wants to always know where I am and what I’m doing, who I’m doing it with. I mean … he’s just overprotective, is all.”

Cooper’s phone rang. He checked the number. Harris. He let it ring out, no message. “Just a little overprotective? He’s high-strung. I want to like the man, but he doesn’t make it easy.”

“He’s not a saint, okay? He’s human. You’ll just have to get used to it.” Mia shifted to face out the window.

The trees darkened and grew deeper shadows. The sky grew purple in the dusk.

“What’s your mother like, then?”

She shrugged and said quietly, “I don’t remember.”

The stars blossomed and hung there like ever-watching eyes. Sleepless, the constellations counted on Mia and Cooper to find the missing hunters and bring them safely home. They told themselves they would. They drove fast and quiet into the night.

***

They didn’t speak for hours. They didn’t really need to. The Land Cruiser speeding through the bush formed a mechanical lullaby which kept them tempered against the fury in their heads, calming them against the stress of loss and failure. The constant reminder these people need you hammering deep into both their skulls. There was an urgency here that went beyond simple concern and well-wishing for others.

The high beams illuminated a distance of the road ahead. Cooper gripped the steering wheel tight with knuckles white and arms tense, searching the bush in the peripheral glow for a kangaroo. Because the last thing they wanted was to crash, becoming stranded out here, becoming another rescue mission, hoping the other detectives were not far off. These were just the mind games that played through Cooper’s head, scenarios of ill fortune, plagues of memories distorted. A side effect of fatigue from driving out here for so long.

He thought the road would never end. He thought Mia had melted into her seat, a silent accessory to the vehicle. The next posted town was over a hundred kilometres away, yet there was a light up ahead. Mia snapped up from the window and leaned forward.

“Is that a town?” she asked.

He saw the light ahead. A red glow and smoke forming in the dark of night. Floodlights cut into buildings broken. A combination of hope and dread. It sure looked like a town.

“I thought you grew up around these parts,” he said.

There was a sign on the outskirts of the town. No name, just the words POPULATION: 100. The town itself was less of a town and more of a dump. The streets had no signs. The buildings were collapsed. Most of them had been burning and were now just embers and rubble. The Land Cruiser pulled up, charcoal crumbling beneath tyre; it was impossible to tell what was the black of the roads and what was the black of everything else that had melted to them. There was nothing here to be salvaged or saved. They got out to investigate.

With a torch between them, Cooper and Mia searched the streets, following the warm glow of embers, searching for anybody around who could fill them in on the details. Clearly the earthquake had destroyed all the buildings, but what had burned them up so wild? A thunderstorm?

Stranger than all the burned buildings was the lack of bodies. No one dead or alive out here in the streets where the damage had happened not twelve hours ago. Had they all been evacuated? Surely the police department would have known about that. If anything, they would have been evacuated to Alice Springs.

But this town didn’t even have a name. It barely even had people.

The one building still standing was still burning. It was the community hall, and it was barely standing on its own, but it was fairly blazing. The smoke blew this way and brought with it the stench of burnt bacon. The wood panels and the door and window frames burned through and fell out one by one, sitting in the dirt, smouldering. Piece by piece, the building became exposed. It revealed the bodies of the townsfolk, a mass of sad bodies blistered and burned. The ground trembled and the community hall cracked and split and the walls fell down. Part of the roof, too.

There was no saving these people. Even if they called in the fire brigade, what was the location? The town had no name. It was just a small place on a long road where some people had erected some buildings and called themselves a settlement.

Cooper felt a stab of guilt for bringing Mia into this. But she wanted to come. She knew it was work. She wanted to help.

She wanted to go with him as much as she knew her father would have wanted her to stay. Her father knew the law as well as any police chief should, but he understood little about the laws of youths. She was forbidden to leave, so she left.

The road was broken or split in some places. The ongoing quakes were strong. They were transforming the landscape effortlessly. In the night they didn’t care what creatures were swallowed into their gaping abyss. The quakes continued; the town died out. The embers were going, going, gone. The light in the torch was beginning to dim. The replacement batteries were back in the Land Cruiser.

“I think we’ve seen enough here,” Cooper said. “Let’s keep moving.”

“I’m good to go,” Mia said.

The only thing left here was the heartache of strangers. They felt for these people but could do nothing.

***

Back at the Land Cruiser there was another one parked beside it. The twins Robert and Rodney Jackson were waiting for them. Twin detectives on the case, just now catching up. These guys were in their fifties. Tanned skin wrinkled. Receding hairlines, short hair bleached bone white. Eyes a dark brown, almost black. They had nailed the steel gaze of hardened detectives decades ago. They had matching light blue shirts, precisely folded collars, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Grey pinstripe pants. Black leather shoes. Black leather belts. Badges clipped at their waists, shining chrome. Matching aviator sunglasses. Mirror finish.

“Were you planning on letting us in on your investigation, Detective Cooper?” Robert said. “Or do all the city cops do the lone wolf thing?”

Cooper walked up to Robert. “I just had a hunch that I’d have more luck finding the missing persons by actually looking for them. I could have told you they weren’t hiding out in the police station, but I didn’t want to spoil your fun.”

Rodney had wandered around the back of the vehicles and was on the phone to Police Chief Harris.

“What’s he doing, ratting me out to the boss, yeah?” Cooper walked around Robert and approached Rodney. “You tell Harris if he’s got a problem with me going out in the field he’s going to have to come out here and deal with me himself.”

“You hear that, boss?” Rodney said. “He’s got Mia here. Want us to bring her back to town?”

“Look around, guys. Don’t ditch the case just so you can bring the girl home. She wanted to help. Why don’t you ask her if she wants to stay or go? You hear that, boss?” Cooper hopped in his Land Cruiser and rolled down the window. “Your call, Mia. What’s it going to be?”

Rodney hung up and the twins approached Mia.

“I want to find these guys. I want to bring them home. I know you do, too,” Mia walked around them to join Cooper. “Don’t make stupid decisions because that’s what my father wants.”

“He’s on his way down,” Rodney said. “We should at least wait for him.”

“He’ll catch up, guys,” Cooper said. “The campsite’s not far up ahead. You can hang around town if you want, but I’m telling you now, you don’t want to.”

The twins remained standing there, staring at Cooper and Mia as they drove off into the distance. Cooper may have been an insubordinate jerk, but at least he seemed determined to solve this case. At a glance, the town was a smouldering mess. It didn’t make sense for the hunting party to have stopped here. There was nothing here that their campsite wouldn’t have provided. They would have just made the straight run back to Alice Springs.

Out of curiosity the twins took a few moments to check out the town, just in case there was anything to clue them in on the case, something the new guy might have overlooked. They didn’t question his dedication. His skills were yet to be proven. His attitude had already been revealed. They found the community hall crumbled away; bodies spilled across the ground. With handkerchiefs held over their mouths, they took a closer look at the burned people. All definitely dead. None of them the people they were looking for.

There was a haunting feeling about the place. How could so many people live so close to Alice Springs and none among them be a familiar face? Even accounting for the burns, they found nothing close to someone they knew. Cooper was right. They couldn’t linger.

The road beckoned them to follow. The bush was wide and vast. The tremors were real.

THE BLOODHAWKS

Harris hung up the phone and threw it across the room. He yelled and kicked over his chair. At this time of night, the office was empty. He snatched up his phone and threw open the door. It banged against the wall and swung slowly back. He leaned against the door frame, sinking into it. He closed his eyes and disappeared into his mind, where his counselor spoke to him in a soothing voice, telling him to take a deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out. Take a deep breath in. Hold it. Let it out.

He cursed Cooper for endangering his only child, and he cursed himself for letting this guy rattle him so easily. His counselor would be disappointed. She wouldn’t use that word, though—disappointed. It was such a negative word. She would tell him that the negative energy was clouding his judgement. But venting was part of the process. He needed to find the calm within himself, to find his focus. She would tell him to rationalise the situation from Cooper’s perspective. But Cooper didn’t even know Mia. She was just a girl. She didn’t deserve to be put in danger like that. He had no right. And how could she do that to her father? How could the thought of him not even cross her mind? Couldn’t she see how much it would hurt him if anything happened to her? Couldn’t she see that he needed her as much as she needed him?

He could feel the anger bleeding through his body, that negative energy bubbling within. Cooper was reckless. A fool. Yes, he wanted to solve the case, but he was exposing himself and, more importantly, Mia to unnecessary danger by failing to stop and assess the risks involved. Guys like that, Harris knew, they were just a time bomb waiting to go off. It wouldn’t be long before someone got hurt, and he’d be damned if it would be his daughter.

Harris scrawled a barely legible note and left it on the front desk on his way out. Instructions for the officers on the early shift tomorrow. Then he was gone.

He closed his eyes again, digging through the curses to find the shrinking space where his counselor was hiding, where she too had her eyes closed; he breathed deeply and prayed he would find the strength within himself to pull through these toxic thoughts and find a more healthy object to focus his mind on.

He opened his eyes to the dark road ahead, void of all traffic. He pictured in the distance the names and faces of all the missing people somewhere out there. Do it for them. He lit a cigarette, match hovering in front of his face in shaking hands. The cigarette helped with the breathing, helped with the focus, helped to blow the clouds of negative energy away.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d left the office for a case like this.

***

Mia’s phone rang, her father trying to get in touch with her again. She let it ring out again. He left another message.

Hi, honey. Um, it’s me again. I got a call from Uncle Rod saying you’re heading down to the campsite with Cooper. [A deep breath.]

Yeah, I just wanted you to know I’m not mad at you. I’m just… I worry about you, you know. I’m coming down so, uh, I’ll see you soon. Love you. Call me back. Bye.

Cooper glanced at Mia. He waited for her to say something.

She didn’t.

“He’s like two different people right there,” Cooper said. “That’s not the same father who sent the twins out to spy on you.”

“I know,” Mia said. “I’ve grown up around detectives. I know their game.”

“Do you know my game?”

“Sure,” she said. “You knew you’d never get those guys out of the office so long as you were honest with them. You know time is crucial. You wanted to get straight to the job. You did what was necessary to get to it. You knew my father wouldn’t want you taking the lead so you did what was necessary to get them out here to get the job done. That’s all you want. That’s all you ever want out of a case, to get the job done, right?”

Cooper nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

“If my father weren’t so strict you wouldn’t have had to drag him into this mess. He hasn’t been out in the field in years.”

“I think it’ll do him some good. Right now it seems like he’s got no idea what he’s doing. He was too hesitant. These things cost lives.”

“Why did you let me come with you? How can you be sure I’ll be an asset, not a risk?” Mia asked.

“I can use all the help I can get. You follow your gut. You know these people and you know the land. You wanted to help; I can’t deny you that.”

“And you really think we can find them?”

“Sure we can, yeah.”

The earth rumbled. Cooper gripped the wheel tight and slowed down a little.

“Did you feel that?” he asked.

“Was that another earthquake?”

He nodded. “Feels like it.”

The tremors grew stronger down the road. The Land Cruiser jostled like it was falling apart, and they slowed to a crawl that took them far too long to reach the campsite.

The bush was awakening to a blood red dawn. The tremors stopped and gave way to a harsh silence. The stillness in the air was electric. Even the wind itself was muted. Up ahead, the road was deformed. A chasm split open wide across the bush, wider than they thought it possible for an earthquake to yawn.

As they drove closer to it, they saw the birds circling overhead. They looked like hawks in shape and phoenixes in colour. There were a few of them landed at the edge of the chasm, pecking at some carcass on the road. Cooper and Mia pulled up nearby. The birds were big. The carcass was bigger. A kangaroo? Cooper ran at the birds to shoo them. A couple of them fluttered a few metres away. The others screeched at Cooper and went back to digging into their meal. They were bigger than a small child. Their bronze beaks were stained with blood, and their feathers were too, but the natural fiery red of their feathers created a camouflage so you couldn’t tell where the bloodstains ended and their natural colour began.

That carcass was no kangaroo. A limb fell out. Bloody fingers, wrist slit from sharp talons. A shirt sleeve torn to shreds.

“Oh my god, it’s Josh!” Mia ran at the bloodhawks and jumped over the body, trying to protect it from them.

They screeched and flapped. Eyes golden black, enraged, they scratched their claws at her back. Cooper yelled at them and flapped his arms to shoo them off her. They pecked at Josh’s feet and fingers. Their bellies were filled with flesh, but their beaks were still craving. Cooper ran and stomped and yelled; he picked up rocks and threw them at the soulless birds until they flew off, dipping into the chasm, leaving the two of them with hearts pumping hard and sweat sticking their hair and clothes and blood to them.

Mia lay over Josh protecting him long after the birds were gone. Her body shuddered, and she sobbed hard into Josh’s lifeless shoulder.

Cooper stood there breathing heavy, doubled over, wincing.

The twins pulled up and got out of their vehicle. They stared from Cooper to Mia sobbing and hugging the body. Back and forth between the two they stared.

“What happened here?” Robert asked.

“We found Josh,” Cooper said, indicating the body. “Ravaged by wild birds.”

The twins ran over to Mia and Josh. When Mia pulled herself up, the twins flinched at the sight of the bloody corpse. “What the fuck!” Robert said.

They turned away. Rodney got on the phone to Harris. “Hey, boss, yeah, it’s real bad. Found Josh mauled to death. The others are M.I.A. There’s a … looks like a canyon’s formed out here. Must have been from all the earthquakes. Their camp site must have been destroyed. Just keep coming out this way and you’ll find us. We’ll be waiting for you.” He hung up. “Oh, god.”

THE CANYON

“We’ll be waiting for you?” Cooper said. “Really? There are six others missing down there and you want to wait around for the boss?”

Rodney glared at Cooper. “What else do you expect us to do? We can cover more ground with all of us here. Just give him some time.”

“We don’t have time. You saw what those birds did to that body. I don’t want the same thing happening to the others if I can help it.” Cooper opened up the back of the Land Cruiser and ripped into his backpack, digging for his water bottle. He pulled out a towel and handed it to Mia. “You’ve got blood on you.”

She wiped off the blood. “Please,” she said. “We just want to find the others. Don’t make this about following orders.”

“I can’t believe you two,” Robert said. “You,” he pointed at Cooper, “you’ve got no right coming out here and calling the shots. And you,” he pointed at Mia, “you should show more respect for your father.”

“I would if he granted me that same respect. And you two aren’t any better.” She handed the towel back to Cooper. “Let’s go. You need me to carry anything?”

He stuffed the towel in the backpack and put it on. He handed her the water bottle. “You don’t have to make this awkward,” Cooper called back to the twins. “You can come with us if you want. Cases like this, they’re not about who’s right and who’s wrong. They’re not about hierarchies. You just have to get the job done, no matter what. Can’t waste time waiting around.”

The twins thought about it a moment. The new guy made sense. He didn’t seem totally unreasonable. He was an abrasive asshole, but he was right.

“Wait up,” Robert said. “We’ll come with you.”

“I thought you might, yeah,” Cooper said.

“But we’ll be leaving markers for Harris to follow so he can find us,” Rodney said.

“Yeah, go for it, guys. I’d be worried if you didn’t. Grab your shit.”

They got their own backpacks and followed Cooper to the canyon’s edge. They took a moment to scan the area, the earth torn wide open, raw red, a space much larger and deeper than they could have expected. Now the maps became useless. Now they had to read the land, go where the clues led them. They climbed down the rock into the unexplored domain.

Off in the distance they could hear the screeches from the flock of birds.

Rodney pulled a blanket from his backpack, a big red thing. With his knife he hacked a chunk out of it and stuck a rock on top of it. A marker. He checked his phone in case he could get in touch with Harris to let him know about the markers. No reception. Robert checked too. No luck. Cooper and Mia confirmed that they too had no reception.

Cooper set the pace for the others to keep up. He wasn’t wasting any time here.

Robert and Rodney were constantly looking back, keeping an eye on their markers. When one became hard to see in the distance, they stopped and tore off another one and set it down. Harris was a smart guy. He’d be able to track them.

“Have you got an actual plan, Cooper, or are you just running blindly through the bush?” Robert asked.

“I’m not running blindly. The road was leading to the campsite before the canyon formed, yeah?” he said. “I’m just following the course the road would have taken, trying to find where their campsite would have fallen down. From there we should be able to learn more. I’m guessing you’ve never been in this exact situation. Until you come up with a more productive plan, keep your mouth shut and eyes open, yeah?”

The sun came up to noon and burned its way to ‘fucking hot’ in no time. They searched for shade, but all the trees were uprooted. The rocks were hot and unforgiving. There were few shadows to be found.

There were some sections jutting out of the earth where the rock had formed giant columns; there were cracks where massive sheets of earth had split down various paths. Where the rocks hadn’t crumbled, they formed giant cliffs whose tops seemed like a distant heaven. The cliffs provided shadows that deepened as the afternoon progressed.

They never stopped any one place for long, rationing out their food and water sparingly. At this point they didn’t know how many days they were going to be in this canyon, how long they could look and find nothing. It was possible that they could go weeks without finding anything but whatever beasts crawled down here.

No one mentioned the possibility of turning back. The longer they walked the less time they had to make it back to the vehicles. The thought of dying out here was a real fear. Each of them had burned in their memories Josh’s body torn to shreds.

There always seemed the ever-present call of those vicious birds. Here they came, flocks moving far up high, calling to others, echoing amongst the walls and walls of rock, never quite settling in the dirt. Fuck those guys. The sky was filled with enough of them. Bad omens in the sky. Conjured mythic birds with bright red feathers coloured like the blood of devils. Coming to take everything away from them. Stripping them down to nothing, pulling flesh from bone.

There were caves, too. Sections where the earth had cracked and formed an opening big enough to walk through. They didn’t yet feel like spelunking was the answer. There was something strange about them. Some of the caves seemed too cavelike to be formed coincidentally by abnormal earthquakes. The canyon itself became more unsettling the deeper into it they went. Like the canyon and the caves had existed here for hundreds or thousands of years.

The caves could have been home to ancient tribes living off the land. Those bloodhawks which seemed to be everywhere here could have been part of a massive and vibrant ecosystem which died off hundreds of years ago. Maybe the earthquake had just revealed something which had already existed here for so long, undiscovered, and the hunters, and now the rescue party, were the only ones in the modern world to witness this natural beauty.

Farther along they discovered bushes and trees growing, thriving like this wasn’t an ordinary barren wasteland. A mystery space preserved so completely, yet fragile and subject to change at the turn of another earthquake.

A piercing screech filled the air and pulled the rescue party from their wonderment and placed them back on edge. The hundreds and hundreds of bloodhawks in the sky scattered as a giant bird flew over the canyon. From up high, the prehistoric-looking beast cast its massive shadow across the earth. The group watched, paralysed, as another flock of birds emerged from the beast’s wings. Her children were still larger than any bird they had ever seen, bright red mega-bloodhawks, attacking the smaller ones, tearing them down, a violent skirmish in the sky.

The group moved closer to the cliffs and the caves, watching with a disturbed fascination as the new flock circled lower and lower, their figures looming larger and larger. Screeching murder. The group backed into a cave and waited in the shadows for the moment to pass. The smaller bloodhawks bashed into the rocks and crashed into the ground around them and left them wondering how they could possibly fight off a flock of those things if it came down to that.

They all had the sinking feeling inside that this was the worst sign for the ones they had come out here to rescue. If they’d been fending off beasts like that for the past few days, they had no chance. Zero. It seemed like the only option from here was for the rescue party to retrace the markers and get the fuck out while they still could.

REUNION

The bush was for crickets and for lizards, for birds and rattlesnakes and bone-dry trees in rusted motion. The correlation was there, the image of bush and nature, but the landscape was distorted, skewed, jarring. The stars came out to spill their stories.

The rescue party set up camp in the cave for the night. The birds had settled, revealing an impossible quiet throughout the canyon. Cooper and Mia sat just outside, leaving the twins to rest.

“How can anyone sleep in a place like this?” Mia asked.

“Yeah, I don’t think they can,” Cooper said. “I could close my eyes, but my mind would still be running, cycling through the details, picking apart the case piece by piece, turning it inside out, asking the same questions over and over again, wondering why the answers never get any clearer. We know we won’t find anything in the night. Don’t want to get lost. Don’t want to get injured. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. The best we can do is give our bodies a rest, even if our minds can’t.”

“Have you always been that way, or just since you were a cop?” she asked.

“Probably a bit of both. I’ve always had a hard time shutting my mind off, but I think the detective job has kicked it up a notch.”

“You think that’s the reason you became a cop?”

“I think it might be one of the reasons,” Cooper said. “But mainly I think I just saw a gap in the justice system, and I thought I was the right guy to fill it.”

“I think if I had been born a guy, I’d have been pressured to be a cop,” Mia said. “Like it’s some family tradition all the guys have to uphold. I think my dad would have liked that better. A child who’s easier to relate to.”

“You’ve lived in Alice Springs your whole life?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied.

“You think he doesn’t know how to deal with you because you’re a girl?” he said.

“Something along those lines.”

“I don’t think you would have followed in his footsteps either way. It’s just not who you are. Don’t worry, he doesn’t really ‘get’ me either.”

Mia leaned into Cooper. “He’s had it pretty rough, doing the whole ‘single parent’ thing. Out here it’s just so easy to feel isolated. I mean, here I am, jumping into cars with total strangers just because I’ve lost the people closest to me. I’m afraid. I’m lonely. My father thinks he’s got his issues under control, but really, he doesn’t. What else have I got left to lose?”

Cooper wrapped his arm around Mia and pulled her closer. “You’re stronger than you realise. We can’t give up hope yet. Yeah, the odds aren’t great, but I’ve seen worse before. I’ve been in uglier situations than this. I’m glad you tagged along with me.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s crazy. I feel like I’ve known you for years.” She rolled onto him, her face so close to his. “Some people, you just know them and trust them from the first moment.”

“That’s another detective’s instinct you’ve picked up,” Cooper said. He could feel the warmth of her breath. The sweetness of it. The night was too dark to see her face, but there was the silhouette of her and there was the gentle shine of her eyes.

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “It’s just an instinct that kicks in. Everyone has it. Some people just listen to it better than others.”

“True,” Cooper said.

She kissed him softly on the lips, then whispered in his ear, “It’s nice to pretend our problems aren’t so big when we’re together.” She stood up and said, “It’s nice to try to forget about them, even for a moment.” She walked back into the cave. “Good night, Cooper.”

“Good night, Mia,” Cooper replied.

***

Cooper and Mia lay side by side in the cave. His arm crossed over her. In the comfort of each other they slept. They dreamed of giant birds swooping down and picking the flesh off the faces of the hunters. They dreamed of bones snapping in the birds’ massive beaks. In the dream, they were attacked. They were falling. They were in small towns and big cities being crushed by these birds, by the mother of these birds, a kaiju crashing through the streets. Onlookers screamed and fled, crashed their cars and tumbled out, lifeless, bleeding to death. They turned their heads to the sky, and Mia heard them scream the beast-bird’s name, “Biomega.” They screamed it over and over again. Louder and louder, a wave of rabid birdsong. She saw the people transforming into birds, “Biomega” becoming their war cry. Cooper in this dream was laid out flat on his back, now seeing only stars, struggling to breathe, suffocating as pressure around his neck felt tighter and tighter. He woke up with Harris’s chunky fingers clutched around his throat.

His instinct upon waking was to halt the sensation of falling. He jerked from his restless sleep, pushing into the strangle and cracking his skull against Harris. The fingers released and Harris fell off him, taking a moment to regain his feet while Cooper tried to wheeze some air into his lungs.

“Keep your hands off her, you mongrel!” Harris boomed, his rage echoing through the cave. He stood there no longer as police chief, but as irrational father.

Cooper massaged his throbbing head, still drowsy from waking up. “What … the fuck,” he said, “is wrong with you?!”

“Dad?” Mia said, rolling over, stirring from her sleep. “What are you doing?”

He jumped on Cooper again, launching a series of punches down on his face and body. “Don’t. You. Dare,” he said, each word landing with a punch, “Touch. Her. Again!”

“Dad!” Mia jumped up and grabbed his body, trying to pull him off. “Stop it. Stop it!”

He ripped her arms away, knocking her down. “No. If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t be in this mess.” He turned back to Cooper and continued to punch him.

Cooper now lifted his arms to block the swinging fists. “She chose to come here,” he wheezed. He coughed up blood. “I haven’t done shit to her.”

“You put my little girl in danger. You should have stopped her!” Harris said.

“Look what you’ve done,” Cooper said, nodding to where Mia had fallen.

She sobbed, limbs splayed at awkward angles as she picked rocks out from fresh scrapes on her skin.

Harris glanced over at her and took a deep breath. “Mia, I’m sor-”

Crack.

Cooper landed a solid punch to Harris' jaw. Harris slid off Cooper onto the ground.

“Fuck you,” Rodney said.

The twins threw themselves at Cooper.

“Stop!” Cooper yelled. The force scratched his throat. “Have you guys forgotten why we’re here?” His limbs were raised, guarding his face and body. The twins paused. “The chief should have known better than to fly off the handle like that. You should know better, too.”

They stopped and helped Harris to his feet. He was a little sluggish at the moment. He lifted his head to stare daggers at Cooper.

“We can settle this later,” Cooper said. “I didn’t come out here to steal your precious little princess from you.”

Robert helped Mia up and then Cooper. They packed their swags up and left the cave. Cooper rinsed his mouth out with water and tasted only blood.

The bloodhawks had returned to the sky. The carcasses of the ones who had died the previous day were mostly picked clean. Some were still being picked apart by other birds. Some were being snapped up by lizards. The birds that had fallen were fairly large. The lizards were larger. They snapped the bird bones with ease and crunched them. They tilted their necks and watched lazily as the rescue party wandered through their domain.

The lizards looked like some thousand-year-old species, a secret gem which should exist only in distant Galapagos dreams. They were bigger than any Komodo dragon caught on film, yet they looked nothing like them. If anything, they looked like they could be the ancestors of the thorny devils which roamed around these parts. With claws hard and sharp like nothing else, they ripped apart the bird skulls and scooped out the juices and the brains inside with a lick of their long, violet tongues.

The ones that weren’t snapping and swallowing every last scrap of carcass were lumbering through the canyon in the same direction as the rescue party. It was like they were migrating somewhere. Did lizards even migrate?

The group tried to keep their distance from the prehistoric beasts. It was unnerving as hell to stare at a creature like that only for it to stare right back. Lick its tongue. Whip its tail. Snap its jaws. The lizards sniffed the air and wandered past.

The Jackson twins led the rescue party, knives out ready to stab a lizard if it came to that, although its size would make it challenging to fight off if one decided to attack. They also had their guns drawn to fire off warning shots if necessary.

Cooper and Mia hung back a little, each keeping an eye looking back in case there were any lizards coming up on them from the rear. Harris hung in the middle of the pack, dragging his feet in the dirt, half keeping an eye on Mia and Cooper.

“Why did you have to come out here, Mia?” Harris asked. “You would have known it was dangerous, right?”

“I don’t need your protection,” she said. “I don’t need you to look out for me, and I don’t need you to protect me from boys.”

“That doesn’t mean you should throw yourself in harm’s way to prove a point.”

“I’m not trying to prove a point,” she replied. “I came out here because I want to find these guys. Isn’t that why you came?”

Harris paused a while, walking in silence. He let out a heavy sigh. “Do you think … I failed you as a father?”

“What?”

“Was there something wrong with the way I raised you?” He hung back to walk beside her.

“I think I turned out fine,” she said.

“But was there something wrong with the way I raised you?” he repeated.

“I wouldn’t have nominated you for any ‘father of the year’ awards, but you had it rough. We both did.” Mia held his hand and squeezed it.

He smiled. It wasn’t exactly quite what he wanted to hear, but it was good enough.

THE JINGO LIZARDS

The farther down in the canyon they went, the more likely it seemed that this place would go on forever. In distance and in time. The canyon opened out wide, continuing deeper into the earth. The cliffs were steeper; the horizon was more distant. Getting found out here would take a search party of hundreds of people with nothing else to do. And years. It would take years. A military operation to drive out the bird-beasts and the lizards. In this wide expanse they could see just how many lizards lived here, and just how many birds. The lizards ranged in size from family dog, through horse, up to elephant-sized. The birds were all bigger than cats, and some looked big enough to crush a house should they land on one. None were as big as Biomega though, and all the birds too were headed in the same direction as the lizards. Deeper into the canyon, ever deeper, with the expanse growing ever larger, wider.

They all seemed aware of the rescue party, though none of the beasts seemed to care. That didn’t put the humans at ease though. Those powerful jaws and long claws. The peculiar markings, the thorn patterns covering the lizards, each one unique. These creatures were like a rhino crossed with a porcupine. They were each a wandering killer cactus of the wild.

The bloodhawks often didn’t go near the lizards. The lizards let out a guttural roar every time they tried. On occasion the birds swooped and claimed a small lizard to take up high and drop, smashing it on the rocks to pick that dark meat to shreds.

Completely surrounded by the pack of lizards, the rescue party searched nothing; they only shuffled forward with the pack, hoping the lizards wouldn’t snap and suddenly realise that easy prey was so close. The lizards seemed far too focused, like they were being hypnotised or controlled.

The rescue party knew they couldn’t break through the mass and make a run for it. There just wasn’t anywhere here for them to run to. At the least, it was possible the hunters had gotten caught up in this migration too. Maybe they had been swept up to the far side of the canyon and the rescue party would wind up there too.

Cooper was running escape scenarios through his head. He examined the natural flow of the canyon and tried to think of what the hunters might have done in this situation, if they had survived up to this point, where they might have gone. He thought of how easily the lizards snapped up those bones, left nothing behind, how those birds smashed their prey against the rocks and picked them to shreds. There might not even be anything left of the hunters to find.

He thought back to the first clue, Josh’s mutilated body. How come Josh wasn’t in the canyon? He must have lost the others and decided to make a run for it. By the way his body was still more or less intact, Cooper thought he must have collapsed from exhaustion or dehydration before the bloodhawks set upon him, otherwise they would have smashed him to bits before devouring him.

“I think the hunters probably made it into hiding,” Cooper said. “Probably sheltered in one of these caves.”

“Why do you think that?” Rodney asked.

“Josh,” he replied. “Have you noticed the way the bloodhawks kill their prey? He must have already been dead when they found him, meaning that he must have been separated from the group, and he was trying to make a run to save himself. He probably thought if he could make it to the nearest town he could call in help to rescue the others. Poor guy never made it that far.”

“Yeah? So what about that means they’re hiding in a cave?” Robert asked.

“Well, if Josh made it that far on his own, I don’t think the birds and the lizards were here yet. I think the earthquakes must have … awakened them, I guess you could say. Otherwise he would have gone into hiding too. I think they fell into the canyon when the earthquakes started. I think one or more of them must have been injured, and I think they tried to get back out, but they crawled into hiding when the birds and the lizards came along.”

“That’s great,” Rodney said. He stopped walking and turned to face Cooper. “But have you counted how many caves we’ve passed? There are hundreds of them here, probably thousands. How do you expect us to find the one they’re hiding in, if they’re even here at all?”

The group stopped. The lizards continued to shuffle around them.

Cooper stepped in close to Rodney. “If you think we’re wasting our time here, you’re welcome to turn around and go home.” He stared at the older detective and waited for a response. “Good. That’s what I thought.” He walked past Rodney and took the lead. “If you were stuck out here and you had to hide from these creatures, how would you let others know where you were?”

“You’d place some sort of marker outside the cave,” Mia said. “Anything that stands out in the bush. A shirt, a shoe, a bag. The bigger, the brighter, the better.”

“Bingo,” Cooper said. “We don’t need to search every cave. We just need to search for their marker.”

They continued on in silence, scanning the cliff walls for caves, scanning the entrance of the caves for markers. They began to see markers in the earth. A strange-shaped branch. A rock positioned in an unusual way. A wreath of bones around a pile of skulls. So many things seemed to appear intentionally designed, but they also screamed ‘bizarre natural phenomenon.’ They didn’t venture into any caves for fear of finding beasts within. Some dark and menacing creature they couldn’t imagine, a mutant form blending lizard and bird-beast into some dragon monster. These thoughts fueled their nightmares throughout the day. Each eye which met their own was the very eye of madness. It dwarfed them, drained them of strength, gazed deep into their souls and left them with only hopelessness and despair. The eyes of these beasts told them countless narratives, each one with an identical ending: All the ones you seek are dead.

The lizards stared at them, thorned faces, opened their mouths and clicked their tongues. From deep within their throats they made a two-toned sound that slowly and deeply echoed through the canyon as if taunting the rescue party. Jin … go. They called to each other across the pack as along they went. Jin … go. Loud and slow, the call of the lizards crawled inside their heads, the jingo lizards of central Australia, the wildest of the wild, an avant-garde chorus more violent than any carnivorous bird.

Then the sound of the bloodhawks and jingo lizards murdering each other descended on the canyon. The lizards surrounding them went wild. They ran into the massive cluster of feathers and scales and thorns, claws and jaws and beaks. Flesh and blood and bone.

Cooper called for the others to follow him, and he took off climbing some nearby rocks to a higher plateau where the mass of lizards wasn’t so dense. What lizards were here were wrestling with the bloodhawks. They smashed against rocks and tumbled over the edge. They kicked and scratched and growled and screeched. The bodies flew recklessly about the place while the rescue party tried to dodge them on their way to the closest cave.

Crawling from the caves there came more jingo lizards. They launched into the air and ripped the bloodhawks down, chomped their necks, then attacked the others.

As the lizards proceeded to strip down and outnumber the nearby birds, more of them paused to watch the rescue party. Before long, there were dozens of lizards watching them. These bloodthirsty beasts with black eyes and red claws dripping with bird blood.

One of the jingo lizards lumbered towards them and rose on its hind legs and made that sound. Jin … go. Jin … go.

It roared and shifted its weight.

Then it paused, a blade sticking through its chest. The blade was pulled out through its back and hacked into its neck. A machete cutting with strength and precision, missing the sharp thorns and sinking into the tough, muscular flesh. Shotgun blasts sounded off nearby, sending the closest lizards flinching back. The beast in front of them fell down dead, its neck half-hacked off, and there was Mark, standing with his machete dripping. There was his brother Lewis, and there was Carol, their guns cocked and loaded, a warning to the beasts here to keep their distance. The rescue party had become the rescued.

“Come,” Mark said. “Stay close.” He ran off and the group followed.

Lewis stayed close to Mark at the front of the pack, firing off regular bursts of gunfire, scattering the lizards ahead to clear the path. Carol brought up the rear, wielding a hunting rifle as a warning to anything which dared to come near them. The cops had their rifles out too.

“Hey, Lewis,” Mark said, “pass me your blade.” He took Lewis’s machete and handed it over to Mia. “There’s a cave not too far ahead we’ve been using for shelter,” he called out to the group.

The canyon had quickly become a battlefield littered with dead birds and dead lizards, only the largest and strongest of them surviving to rip into the carcasses and feast. There was no way the group could intimidate or take down an elephant-sized jingo lizard or bloodhawk, but those creatures didn’t even bother targeting living prey that was human-sized. They had enough meat now to satisfy themselves for weeks.

Once the group got close, the rescue party could see which cave was theirs. A barricade had been set up with branches tied together and rocks providing the weight to hold it in place. A large blue tarpaulin tied to it to signal to a rescue team. Mark wrenched the barricade aside and each member of the group zipped into the shade: Lewis, Cooper, Mia, Harris, Robert, Rodney.

“Carol,” Mark called out.

She had fired her rifle at a swooping bloodhawk. She fired again. The bird hovered near her, squawking like mad.

“Lewis!” Mark said. “The shotgun, quick!”

Carol had stopped to reload; fumbling, she raised her rifle again. Another shot and the bloodhawk flew off, leaving a trail of bloody feathers. She turned towards the cave and saw a lizard standing in her way. “Mark!” she said. “Help me!”

He fired the shotgun. The lizard moved towards her. There was another one. Mark ran a dozen steps towards her and fired again. No reaction. Another two lizards. Four, five, seven. They came out of nowhere and surrounded her. More bloodhawks swooped down, cutting through the lizard pack, attacking her.

“Mark!” she called out. “Lewis, help!” Her cries turned to screams.

Mark tried to rush in to help her, but Cooper held him back.

“Carol!” Mark yelled.

He tried to wrench free, but Cooper held him strong, slowly inched him back into the shelter. They could see the strips of flesh being torn off, disappearing into the mouths of the mad beasts out there. They could hear the bones snapping and the screams giving out to the cold ghost of her, and then she was only the silent, lip-smacking meal of the wild animals painting her blood on their faces and necks.

THORNELIUS REX

A dim light cast out into the cave; a small rechargeable lantern sat in the middle of the group.

“Now, what’s the plan?” Mark asked. He looked to Harris and waited.

Harris held his head in his hands.

“Tell me you’ve got a plan, Harris,” he said.

“Look around you, Mark,” Harris replied. “What about this place makes you think we know what’s going on? What makes you think we know how to deal with this situation?”

“What happened to the others?” Cooper asked.

“We got separated,” Mark said. “As soon as those lizards came out, they drove us apart. We couldn’t find them again.”

“We found Josh,” Cooper said. “The birds got to him before we did.”

“No sign of the others?” Mark asked.

Cooper shook his head. “Hey, did you pass that small town on the way here? The one that doesn’t really have a name?”

“Yeah. Why’s that?”

“It was mostly destroyed by the earthquakes. A lot of fire damage, too. Couldn’t figure out how an entire town could catch fire like that.”

“What does that have to do with anything, Cooper?” Harris asked.

“Must have been that giant bird-thing that’s been flying around. We’ve seen it a few times on our hunts,” Mark said. “Like a dragon. It breathes fire and everything.”

“Are you sure?” Harris asked.

“Take a look around. I don’t believe half the things I’m seeing around here. That doesn’t mean I didn’t see them. I saw a fire-breathing bird.”

“Biomega,” Mia said.

“What?” Harris said.

“I saw it, too. The bird. I had a dream about it last night. People were calling it ‘Biomega.’ Queen of the birds and all that flies.”

“So how do we get out of here with that thing dominating the sky and Thornelius Rex dominating the land?” Mark asked.

“Thornelius Rex?” Cooper asked.

“If Biomega is queen of the birds, I’d call Thornelius Rex the king of the lizards. If I’d take a guess at what’s going on here, it’s some sort of species war, one trying to wipe out the other. We’ve seen Thornelius Rex once too. While we were out hunting scraps down so we didn’t starve to death. We’re also running out of water. We can’t hide out here much longer.”

“What about tunnels?” Rodney asked.

“What about tunnels?” Mark said.

“You know. There are all these caves. Have you explored where they go? Could be a way out,” Rodney said.

“This one isn’t,” Mark said. “We made sure it was empty before we set up our barricade. This cave’s not very deep, and we reckon the others wouldn’t be very much deeper. Besides, you know what lives in most of these caves?” He paused, leaned into the lantern light. “Jin … go. Jin … go. Every cave, I’m telling you. If any of these caves lead anywhere, it’s to more goddamn lizards.”

“It was just a thought,” Rodney muttered.

“Why don’t you take us back to the place where you split up with the others?” Cooper said.

“Get real. This place is swarming with monsters. We’d never make it there alive. There’s no escape here,” Mark replied.

“So let’s all just kill ourselves now, yeah?” Cooper said. “Pass me the shotgun. I’ll do you first.”

Mark stood up and grabbed his gun, backing away from Cooper. “Hey, what the hell is your problem?”

“I’m not the one giving up here. Yes, I know the canyon is full of dangerous little beasties. We all know the risks involved here. The thing is, if we stay here arguing, we’re dead in a couple of days. If we leave, we could be dead in a couple of minutes, or we catch a lucky break, and maybe we could make it out of here alive.”

“Is that your best plan?” Mark asked. “That we catch a lucky break? Luck won’t do shit for us out here.”

“I’m not saying we throw ourselves into the jaws of these creatures just so we may or may not find the other missing three, but if the option is there, if we find a clear path, we might as well take the shot. Back before the birds and the lizards attacked each other, they showed zero interest in us. If we try to find your friends and it’s too dangerous, we’ll just have to leave them. But we’d better at least try to make it out of here.” Cooper stood up and shouldered his backpack. He walked towards the barricade. “Are you guys coming with me or not?”

Mia followed. Then the Jackson twins. Then Harris. The Hodgins brothers lingered for a moment longer. Cooper held the barricade open for them.

“I don’t know who you think you are,” Mark said, “but you’re an asshole.” He brushed past Cooper out into the canyon.

“Just doing my job,” Cooper replied. He replaced the barricade. “You lead the way, partner.”

Out here, Carol’s body had been picked clean, bones splintered and sucked dry. The beasts had moved on. Mark led the way through the canyon, which was now littered with dead beasts. They kept an eye on the sky for the birds, and eyes on the land for the lizards.

“There have been a lot of earthquakes since we’ve been hiding,” Mark said. “We’ve just been glad the cave didn’t fall in on us, but I’m not sure if we can find where we lost the others. The canyon keeps changing on us. Even when we’ve been out collecting meat, every time has been different.”

“We’re not leaving your friends behind without at least trying to look for them,” Cooper said.

“You think I want to give up on them?” Mark said. He turned and faced Cooper. “You don’t think I want to find them, huh? They’re my friends out there, going through the exact same shit we’ve been through. We’re falling apart here. Give me a fucking break.”

“I’m just doing everything I can,” Cooper said.

“Not helping …” Mark replied. He brushed Cooper off and kept walking. “Pretty sure we lost them up over there somewhere.” He pointed off vaguely in the distance, over a wide chasm.

Up ahead, a loud roar came out of the chasm. The earth trembled a little. Then it trembled a lot. What felt like another big earthquake coming along.

Going against their better judgement, they went towards the chasm, where they felt the tremors at their strongest. There, over the edge, deep down in the earth, the jingo lizards had gathered around a massive lizard slowly crawling from a massive cave. It was larger than several city blocks, longer than most skyscrapers were tall. Its head was outside the cave; when it came into the sunlight, they could see its golden lizard eyes were larger than most of the lizards gathered there. At least a dozen eyes spread out across its face. Giant sharp horns on its face, stained dark with blood, stabbed the air. It opened its mouth and roared again, thousands, possibly millions, of teeth in its long, wide, gaping maw, receding from its jaw to deep within its throat. Jagged teeth for ripping flesh, for catching giant beasts and never letting go. It lumbered out of the cave, each heavy step shaking the earth, crumbling rocks tumbling from the cliffs.

“Thornelius Rex,” Mark said. “This is the closest we’ve seen him.”

The monster was so large he didn’t notice the other lizards he stepped on, crushing them to instant pulp. He clutched a fistful of lizards in his claws and tossed them into his mouth. Fully emerged from the cave, he began to claw his way up out of the chasm. The jingo lizards followed.

“Come on,” Cooper said. He had started moving away, following the perimeter of the chasm around.

He wasn’t going to pass right by them, but they had to take the space while they had it. The group followed Cooper. They stayed close, kept their distance from the edge as the earth shook with every step Thornelius Rex made. He was the earthquake maker. He must have awakened in the bush, maybe in some underground cave system, causing its collapse, tearing the earth open into this canyon.

The tremors became heavier. The earth rumbled. It was splitting again. The chasm became wider. It split farther, fracturing right up to the cliff which shot up to the surface. The canyon was only getting deeper. The chasm was uncrossable on one side and on the other side there was the massive lizard-beast monitoring his domain.

As Thornelius Rex shuffled off into the distance with his progression of lizards following behind, the bloodhawks flooded through the sky down into the chasm to collect the scraps he left behind, and they followed even in his wake, picking apart the injured and mutilated beasts which were crushed by his hind legs and tail. They flocked through in a moment, and in another moment they were off chasing the king of the lizards.

This left the group with only one option: to climb down the chasm into Thornelius’s nest.

THE FLOCK

Down here, there were hundreds of small fissures in the earth. Cracks where the smaller lizards slept. Cracks formed from the weight of Thornelius Rex. Countless caves formed deep and dark through the earth where countless lizards crawled, where there were massive underground lakes of fresh water from which they drank and to which they must return. The broken eggs in abundance from which these beasts were born.

The group gazed into the dark void of these caves and witnessed this nightmarish naturescape. They looked into the cracks of the canyon, which were increasing the canyon's volume as the underground continued to break its way out. They feared the potential of more beasts and larger ones trying to birth their way out into the land.

“Let’s make this quick,” Cooper said. “If we split up and search the area, we want to head up and out before any of those guys come back. If the others are down here, they’re most likely trapped or injured. Call out. Let them know we’re here. If they’re down here, hopefully they’ll hear us and they’re able to call back out to us. Does that sound okay?”

They nodded and murmured agreement.

“Good. Let’s go.”

The chasm became a chamber through which their voices echoed. Bouncing off rock, the names of the missing reached out, pausing at intervals, waiting for a response. They bellowed their voices down caves and waited, heard the same voices bouncing back, or bouncing out another cave. Hearts hammered, hoping something other than a human would not answer them.

“Guys,” Lewis called out. “Guys, come over here!”

They gathered around the entrance of a cave, a corpse laid out on the rocks. The body, human, mostly picked to pieces, had no face, very little flesh. It was a miracle the skeleton was still more or less all there.

“It’s too small to be Domino,” Lewis said, “too big to be Steph.”

“Chris,” Mark said.

“Hello?” A voice echoed from the cave. Female. “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Who’s there?” Another voice. Male.

“Steph? Domino? Is that you?”

“Mark? Lewis? Carol? Josh? Are you all there?” Steph hobbled into the light, followed by a big man, Domino.

“Thank God, you’re alright.” She hugged Lewis.

“We thought we would never see you again,” Domino said. He squeezed Mark in a tight hug.

They looked over at Harris and Mia, Cooper, Robert and Rodney. Then back to Mark and Lewis. Their joy of discovery blurred with a sad confusion. “Where are Josh and Carol?” Steph asked.

“Yeah, they didn’t make it,” Mark said.

“Heh, they’re the lucky ones,” Steph said. “What are you guys doing here?” she gestured at the rescue party. “You think we’ll make it out alive?” She shook her head. “There’s no getting out of here alive.”

In the sunlight they saw Steph’s body was clawed, bitten, bruised, and bleeding. The scabs were large and colourful, most likely infected. Domino was in similar shape.

“We’ve got nothing down here,” Steph said. “Nothing. We’ve been hiding in these caves, picking at the leftover lizard meat. Haven’t been able to keep much of it down. Couldn’t … couldn’t bear the thought of letting those beasts take Chris away. I don’t think …” she gazed up at the steep rock walls surrounding them. “I don’t think I can make it up these walls. Leave me. Please.”

“No,” Mia said.

The group stopped and looked at her.

“We will not leave you behind,” Mia said. “We’ve come too far and risked too much just to let you give up. We’re going to make it out of here. I don’t give a shit if you don’t think you can. You’re exhausted, you’re sick, you’re hurt. But I’m exhausted. We all are. We can’t let that hold us back. I can’t stand the thought of losing you, too. Get up front and start climbing, before Thornelius comes back.”

Steph glared at Mia.

“The tremors are getting weaker,” Cooper said. “He’s still moving farther away. We have the time to get you safely out of here. Start on that rock there,” he pointed at a large boulder near the base of the cave. “We’ll help you up. Just follow the crevices up. It’ll get much easier towards the top. Here,” he stepped up on the boulder and gripped the hard edges of the rock face. “Just watch what I’m doing. I can test to make sure the rock won’t break off on you.”

She stood there, watching. Pale faced, she looked like she could vomit or pass out, or vomit then pass out. She took a deep breath and stepped forward. She looked over at her husband’s body and said, “I miss you so much already.”

Her limbs felt like they were on fire. They felt dead and heavy, and she thought she was going to drop at any moment. The higher up she climbed the more dead weight she felt dragging her down.

“Keep going, Steph,” Mia said. “I’m right behind you.”

Behind Mia was Domino. He was big, and though he too was sick, he was still strong. He was concerned, climbing up, where the others had little risk, that each hold he used to pull himself up, each moment he pushed into the cliff with his feet, that it would just take one piece of rock to break off under his weight, and he would slide and slice holes in his body, deep and long, and he would fall and then his bones would be broken and then there would definitely be no escape for him.

Harris and the Hodgins brothers and the Jackson twins worried too that he would slip and fall and take them out on the way down. This nightmare worsened when a small group of bloodhawks cried out and came down circling near them.

Cooper pulled himself over the ledge and reached an arm down to pull up Steph. One by one, they made it to the surface on the other side of the chasm. The bloodhawks circled lower and the flock grew larger in number. With guns and machetes out, the group left the chasm behind them and warned the bloodhawks to keep their distance.

The group moved quickly now that the path was mostly flat. Ahead the canyon looked unfamiliar, the earthquakes from Thornelius Rex had mutated the earth, causing it to rise and fall, break and shift in random places. In the distance it continued to shift where they could see the bulk of his body thundering through the earth.

Again, they found themselves guessing roughly in what direction they should go. Where the vehicles were left just outside the canyon, if the canyon hadn’t yet expanded that way to consume them. The bloodhawks swooped down and the group fired their guns, swung machetes at them, created a hole where birds once were, and in a moment those holes were filled by another dozen birds. A hydra flock, growing larger, a cloud pressing down on them with feather and beak and claw. More came from the distant reaches of the sky, clusters of them knitted together so thick and dense there was no breaking through the birds. They had never seen a flock like it. There were no lizards to be hunted, only the surviving men and women here.

Birds of a feather flocked together, hunting human flesh.

They could no longer see into the distance, the haze of bloodhawks was so thick. They would run out of bullets before long, too, and the machetes couldn’t hold off a flock of this number. Traveling blind, they could no longer see the canyon’s edge; its shape and direction were a mystery, a memory which was hazy at best. The bloodhawks pecked and clawed at them, and they held up their blades and arms to protect their faces and bodies.

They ran knowing they would never outrun the flock, but knowing there was nothing else they could do. They ran blindly, despite their illness and exhaustion. They ran blindly, trusting that the group could stick together. They ran blindly, hoping that the gods of fortune were smiling down on them and that they would run straight into a cave and find some shelter from these feral flying beasts. They ran until their legs turned to jelly and they coughed lungfuls of feathers and dust. They ran and tumbled over a ledge, every one of them, not knowing even what was right in front of their feet, and they each rolled and tumbled down a slope, red rocks cutting into them, and sank into a cold body of water.

They held their breath and their bodies stayed under. The cold soaked through their clothes; sweat and blood washed off them. Their throbbing wounds calmed, but their heads still throbbed hard. The nightmare call of the birds rang through their skulls underwater. The bloodhawks remained above the surface, swooping at the splashes that they saw, landing on the bank, pecking at the dirt.

One by one the group came up for air, taking gasping breaths into their lungs, scooping handfuls of water to their mouths. This was a fresh relief inside the mad red canyon, but still they looked around and found themselves floating down a river with an audience of bloodhawks lining the banks, curtaining the sky, focused all along the river, forming a tunnel of sorts.

The guns, soaked, were now useless. They held onto their machetes as the only defence they had against these beasts.

A loud screech penetrated the air across a great distance.

The bloodhawks all stopped their frenzy, turned, and flew towards the screech, their mother’s call. The thrashing water returned to calm. The survivors pulled themselves from the water, lying on the riverbank, breathing deeply from exhaustion and near drowning. Adrenaline coming with the brush so close to death. Suffocation by feathers. They slowed down and drank from the river and already Steph and Domino were looking better, the blood and dirt washed from their bodies, the colour returning to their faces.

In the bloodhawks’ absence, the sky swelled with orange and red storm clouds. Thunder broke the sky and cracked inside the canyon. The rain fell thick and heavy, red.

THE STORM

The rain brought mixed feelings. At first there was joy. They didn’t think the birds would be back for a while. The rain was cool and refreshing. It kept the blistering sun away. They could walk in this weather without getting overheated or dehydrated.

Domino tilted his head back and stuck his tongue out to catch the rain. As it trickled down his tongue towards his throat, Domino realised it wasn’t right. It didn’t taste like water. He spat it out but couldn’t get rid of the taste. Bitter and metallic.

He bent over coughing and hacking. “What is this?” he asked.

Robert caught a few drops on his wrist and smelled it. Licked it. Swished it around his mouth and spat it out. “Blood rain?” he said.

It bloodied the river water. It came down harder. The rocks became slippery, and then there came a sense of dread. They couldn’t climb the canyon cliffs in this weather. While the rocks were wet, there was no escape. Thunder cracked louder, closer to them. In the flash of lightning they could see the silhouette of Thornelius Rex in the far distant corner of the canyon. More thunder and another flash of lightning and off in the sky to the other side there was the shadowed figure of the bird-monster, Biomega. The rain came down harder.

They ran through the canyon, slowed by the slippery rocks, eyes locked on the nearest cave in which to wait out the storm. It was all they could do. It felt as though some cosmic power was keeping them there for a slow torture.

“That’s it, we’re done for,” Harris said, throwing his hands into the air. “We can’t fend off those beasts. We can’t climb out in these conditions. We can’t call for help. Our supplies are running low. We’re lost. We’re exhausted. We’ll probably wind up with severe hypothermia after being drenched in this … rain.” He gestured to the blood rain outside. “We weren’t properly prepared for this.”

Cooper rolled his eyes. He lay flat on the cave floor. “We never could have prepared ourselves for this,” he called out.

“We could have gathered a larger team, figured out a contingency plan, a proper form of communication in this situation,” Harris said.

“Could have. Should have,” Cooper said. “Never would have done it, though. Hindsight is pretty sweet, isn’t it?”

“And you,” Harris stooped over Cooper. “You should never have brought Mia into this.”

“Not this again,” Mia said. “If we hadn’t left when we did, we wouldn’t have made it here in time.”

“You don’t know that!” Harris said. He turned to face her. “You shouldn’t even be here!”

“Oh yeah, because it’s too dangerous for me to risk my life for these people, but it’s perfectly okay for you to do it? You’re such a hypocrite!”

“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” Harris said. “Look what’s happening now. You want to be in this situation?”

“What if I stayed back in town? What if I stayed and you went and you never came back? How is that fair?” Mia asked.

“It’s not about fair. It’s about keeping you safe.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. Stop trying to control me. Stop trying to hold me back. You know Mum never would have wanted that,” Mia said.

She walked deeper into the cave, leaving her father smouldering in silence.

Harris began pacing around the cave’s entrance. Cooper followed Mia. The others hung awkwardly somewhere in between.

“Hey,” Cooper called out into the darkness. “You there?”

“Yeah,” her voice echoed softly from a little farther down.

He followed her voice and the gentle sobbing which came after. He sat down beside her.

“Hey,” he said, “we’re all doing it rough out here. He doesn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“I know.” She sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve. “It’s just frustrating. He just doesn’t get it. And it’s so shit how he’s trying to blame you for everything.”

Cooper let out a sigh. “Yeah, he’s a bit of a pain in my ass, isn’t he?”

Mia laughed.

“Hey,” he said, “at least we did what we came out here to do. We found these guys. The rain will clear. We’ll go home. Get the military to nuke this place. You’ll patch things up with your father. It’ll be just fine.”

“How can you say that?” she said. “How can you be so calm and sure?”

“What else can I do?” he replied. “If I focus on staying calm and rational, I can try to make the best logical decision in the moment. I just want to get the job done and get everyone home safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. As soon as you start hesitating and breaking down, that’s when you make mistakes. I can’t have that. For me. For you. For your father. For the twins. For the hunters. I’ve got to keep it together or else I’m going to fail. We’ve got too much to lose here. I can’t give up hope.”

“Is that why you transferred to Alice Springs?” Mia asked.

“What do you mean?” Cooper said.

“Something happened at your old job. You let someone down?”

“You’re a true detective’s daughter, you know that?” he replied. “Yeah, I was working a serial killer case. It felt like something which was pulled straight from one of those cop shows. The guy was picking women up in bars, drugging them, raping them, and dismembering them. Not always in that order. We found the bodies always tied together with strings and hanging from a bridge or tree or lamppost, dangling like mobiles or puppets.”

“That’s sick,” Mia said. “I hope you caught him. Fuck …”

“Yeah, we did. I’d been compiling the case from the evidence for months. He knew how to stay under the radar. He was very clean, very thorough. I’d never seen such cold-blooded shit before. I thought I had everything figured out. I had all the details memorised. I knew his plans, his schedule. I knew who he was. I just needed to track him down. I knew there was another victim being dragged into his game. That’s what it was to him, a game. And by the time I caught up with him, I was too late. I was too late.”

“You can’t blame yourself for that,” Mia said.

“I played the case over and over in my head. I thought of every piece of evidence I didn’t connect quick enough. The questions I could have asked in my investigations but didn’t. Heading to the crime scene, every detour I could have taken to save those precious moments fighting with traffic. And when I got there … he handed himself over to me. I had every opportunity to arrest him, but I shot the guy. This monster thought he could roll over and take his punishment pain-free. I shot him, maybe half a dozen times? A dozen times? I don’t know. I only remember the satisfaction of bringing him slowly closer to death, knowing I missed all the vital areas, knowing he would feel the pain and have nothing to ease the suffering. I could spare no mercy for such a wicked being, knowing I came so close to saving this poor girl’s life, and when she needed me, I wasn’t there. Abuse was my coping mechanism.”

“That wasn’t your fault, you couldn’t have known. You said it yourself. Hindsight is pretty sweet,” Mia said.

“Yes,” Cooper replied. “I say that now.”

A resonating scream filled the cave. Long and agonising, it pulled Cooper and Mia from their moment and took them towards the light of the entrance.

There stood Domino, hollering, surrounded by the others, blood dribbling from every orifice on his face. His eyes were wide and mad, full of terror. He launched himself at the closest of them, Mark, who fell to the ground. Teeth bared, Domino tore into Mark’s neck. Mark cried out in pain. Lewis cried out in panic. Lewis and Steph grappled with Domino, trying to lift the hefty man off Mark. They tore him away with help from Harris and the twins, but Mark’s jugular was bleeding badly.

“What the fuck!” Lewis yelled. He shoved Domino to the ground, but Domino got right back up and charged at Lewis, teeth gnashing like some rabid zombie.

Cooper grabbed one of the remaining machetes off the cave floor and approached Domino with it raised and ready to swing.

Domino reached Lewis before Cooper had the chance to attack, and Lewis slung him around. Domino tumbled to the ground. Lewis jumped on him and punched him in the face. Blood spattered from it. Domino, still yelling, tried to grab Lewis, tried to bite him. Lewis punched again. Harder. No apologies. He looked into the man’s eyes and knew Domino was no longer there, no longer human. There was only a monster in human form.

Mia and Harris huddled over Mark, trying to put pressure on his wound, trying to convince him it would be okay. His body was turning cold. A puddle of blood had formed around him. There was no stopping the bleeding. He shivered, skin turning grey, hair stuck to his face from the blood and sweat, eyes bugging out of his head. He coughed and wheezed and gasped and grunted. There was no relief for him, only more pain.

Lewis punched Domino over and over again. He punched Domino’s mad face so hard and so much that his skull caved in and he finally stopped resisting. Tears poured down Lewis’s face, his body shaking, knuckles bruised and bloody, skin torn up. He fell off Domino towards his brother and tried to whisper words of comfort.

Mark struggled to gasp for air before expelling a forced sigh. He stopped shivering and his body went limp. He was quiet. His eyes were vacant. Mia and Harris stepped back to give Lewis this moment.

“What do you think could have done this to him?” Mia asked.

“Infection?” Cooper suggested.

“Who knows what was in the rain he drank,” Rodney said.

“He didn’t drink much of it,” Robert said.

The group stared awkwardly at Robert, examining him for signs of illness.

“You tasted it, too,” Rodney said. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” Robert replied. “Really. We should get moving, anyway.” He pointed outside. “The storm’s clearing up.”

THE JACKSON BROTHERS

They were cold and numb. Their clothes were soaked. Their bodies shivered from a combination of fear and cold. Robert stepped out into the sunlight. Rodney followed close behind, and the rest came out and felt the warm glow of sunlight sinking into their skin. They walked to keep warm. They followed the murky river through the canyon roughly in the direction from which they thought they had originally come. The general consensus was that they needed to head in a vague west-ish direction, but none were completely sure.

The clouds had mostly cleared from the mostly birdless sky. Robert led the group, and the others kept their eyes on him. If anything happened, if madness triggered, they would know.

Cooper ran the scenario through his head. He’d never seen such an illness before. He’d never seen such rain like that. He’d never seen a human snap and lunch on flesh. He’d never seen such birds and such lizard-beasts. Never seen a canyon suddenly appear in the desert. If the group could make it back to Alice Springs, they could get a doctor to examine Robert, see if he showed any signs of illness. Maybe there would be a clue to what had happened to Domino. See if the remainder of the group were affected. If they made it that far in the first place.

If Robert was sick, they should restrain him. There were enough environmental risks out here without running the risk of cannibalism amongst your own people. But Cooper wrestled internally with the logic, with their lack of knowledge about everything that had happened. Why Robert and not the rest of them? They didn’t even know if the cause of the … illness was blood rain related.

Robert didn’t look like a fevered madman. The sky was blue. The birds here looked more or less like birds you’d find in the bush. No bloodred hawks, no massive prehistoric beasts. For a moment Cooper entertained the thought that perhaps this was all just some collective delusion, a series of wild frenetic hallucinations caused by severe dehydration and exhaustion. He dismissed the thought. The wounds were real. The memories were real.

Cooper, Harris, and Mia clutched the three remaining machetes. They followed Robert closely. They had the image burned into their minds of Domino’s face distorted with bleeding, that face remembered in all the stages from ‘undone’ to ‘punched into oblivion.’ Lewis had his shirt wrapped around his throbbing fist and needed no reminding.

With each passing moment came a lifting sensation, like the madness had passed and perhaps the canyon was now willing to release them.

They were torn. Like they were holding onto Schrödinger’s hope, a dream far off in the distance at once both alive and dead. They were exhausted, spent completely beyond belief. They tried to travel quickly while the path was clear and the sun was burning. It wouldn’t be long before sunset, and then their minds would descend into paranoia, imagining beasts lurking in the night.

Every sound a haunting.

Every voice a nagging argument for their failure.

The loved ones gone died because of you.

The mistakes made rest on your shoulders.

You’re sick and tired, and wouldn’t it be great if you could end things here and blame some fevered madness?

Couldn’t you just swing that machete? Bite that flesh? Push her over that ledge and watch that body break?

The vehicles appeared on top of the canyon in the distance, the sun reflecting bright and low in their windows. They wouldn’t reach them by nightfall, but the reassurance of seeing them, and knowing that tomorrow they could head home, might have been enough to keep the doubting voices outside their skulls for one more night.

They paused where they were and drank in the natural beauty, letting the horror of their recent descent drip away for a moment. Then Robert collapsed.

Harris and Rodney rushed over to him and tried to help him up. Robert struggled. He cried out in pain. He punched Harris with a wild left hook. He grappled Rodney and dragged him down. The grey-haired twins scrapped and rolled in the dirt.

“Snap out of it!” Rodney yelled.

Robert yelled back, unintelligible. He had begun bleeding out from his eyes and nose and ears.

“Listen to me,” Rodney shook Robert. “We’re brothers. You know me. You know who I am. Don’t do this to me.”

Harris got to his feet and approached the twins again. Cooper came towards them from the other side, but there was no getting between them.

Before Cooper or Harris or any of the others could register what was going on between the two, Robert was on top of his brother, pinning him down with his knees, a machete picked up off the dirt and raised high above his head, ready to swing. He brought it down, sinking it deeply into Rodney’s shoulder. Rodney screamed out in pain. Then, a loud, piercing screech echoed out into the canyon, followed by the screeches of the returning frenzied flock funneling through the canyon.

Biomega’s return.

Robert pulled the machete back, screaming. He tilted his head towards the sky and saw the bloodhawks coming back. Like Domino, he seemed totally disconnected from his former self. He recognised nothing of the scene before him. The people. The landscape. The birds. He seemed cognisant of only the violence the weapon in his hands might perform and the defenceless creature struggling beneath his weight.

“Stop him!” Mia called out, tear-streaked, and paralysed with fear.

Harris saw the machete in Robert’s hands and recognised the blade was his. The wounds inflicted, the pain and suffering, his burden to bear. And yet he too was immobilised.

Robert was a lost cause, too far gone into madness to bring him home safely.

Rodney was dying.

Lewis and Steph were weaponless. They could not approach Robert.

Cooper was once again faced with a killer and his victim, a monster with no conscience and the body he decided was done with living.

The next moments unfolded in Cooper’s mind, a discourse of engagement, with possible events resulting in probable outcomes. Cooper scanned his premonitions for the right one, forming a lucid plan of motion to keep the victim’s life from bleeding out. He envisioned action precise and graceful like a ballet, but the reality came hard and fast, with teeth, like rabid dogs going at each other over scraps of meat.

He saw the scene unfolding in slow motion, and as Robert raised the machete to hack into his brother a second time, Cooper charged at him and bowled him over, sent him tumbling through the dirt away from the wounded detective.

They wrestled for the machete while the others watched, stunned, at a distance from the two men. When they rolled a little farther from Rodney, the others rushed to his aid, applying pressure to his wound, telling him he was going to be okay.

There was a lot of blood loss, but the wound could have been deeper. The machete could have done a lot more damage. They put the pressure on and kept it on. He winced, but at least he wasn’t dying right away.

Robert was wild and strong. It seemed the infection had energised him with fury. He had no idea who he was or where he was or what he was doing. Only blind confusion and rage compelled him.

Cooper ripped the machete away from Robert, clutched it in his hands, and received a frenzy of fists smacking every inch of his body that Robert could reach. Robert grabbed at the machete, clutching the blade, cutting deep into his fingers, screaming no more than he had throughout this illness. He didn’t care. He felt no pain and showed no sign of weakness, letting up only when Cooper wrenched the blade from his hands and brought it down on his head once, twice, three times.

Robert’s skull split open, his brain bisected. It leaked dark fluids and released a foul stench into the air. His blood pooled around his head, which lay there on the canyon floor, motionless.

With the scent of death hanging thick in the air, the bloodhawks would be raining down on them any moment now.

The others helped Rodney to his feet, a torn t-shirt wrapped crudely around his shoulder, strips tied tightly to apply pressure. He saw his brother lying there, cracked open like a human piñata. He felt the anger peel away. He knew a brother couldn’t do this to another. He knew that man in those last moments was not his true twin but a monster who couldn’t be recovered.

THORNELIUS REX VS. BIOMEGA

Lewis and Mia supported Rodney between them. He was hurting and moved slowly, and it seemed there would be no way they could get him up and out of the canyon. The group focused then on putting some distance between themselves and Robert’s body. They didn’t want the bloodhawks coming down on them, too, if they could help it. Getting away from the corpse served as a distraction. It bought time and allowed a moment to breathe. To stop, let Rodney rest, catch his breath, regain a little of his strength.

The edge of the canyon, the vehicles, they were right there for the taking. So close, yet so far away. Time and energy were draining from the survivors. They were caught in a dilemma: should they seek shelter or attempt escape?

Biomega was looming over the canyon, and her giant beasts of a feather flocked to cast great big shadows down over the red earth. There came also the lumbering boom-shake of footsteps emerging from the east from the giant lizard-beast, Thornelius Rex, his sights set on a direct collision course with Biomega, bringing the swarm of jingo lizards with him to tear up the canyon and leave no bird unbroken.

The group hoped they wouldn’t get caught up in the crossfire but knew surely, somehow, as fate would have it, they would. They hoped the madness which had infected Domino and Robert would not affect the rest of them. Those two had tasted the blood rain, but it had soaked into the others’ clothes, their hair, their skin. What if that madness would possess them all in time?

Biomega reared her head and breathed white hot flames into the darkening sky. In the distance, Thornelius Rex stood up on his hind legs and slung giant blades from his arms into the sky towards Biomega.

The group had gravitated towards the rock face of the canyon. They would either have to hide out in another cave or try to make a climb for it. They walked slowly; they were tired. Their feet dragged through earth, their shoulders hung heavy. Their losses had left their minds and bodies fractured.

“You didn’t need to kill him like that,” Harris said. “You could have stopped him. We might have been able to save him.”

“You did nothing to help,” Cooper said. “There was no stopping him.”

“You’re so impulsive. You don’t listen. You’re selfish, arrogant, aggressive. I never should have taken you in.”

They stopped walking. Cooper and Harris faced each other.

“Yeah?” Cooper said. “You’d rather that Rodney were dead, too? How about Lewis? How about Steph? We never would have found them if I weren’t here. I’m here to help these people. You’re the selfish one here. You blame anyone else for your own mistakes.”

“You really think so? You think it’s my fault you dragged Mia into this? You had no right to control her like that.”

“Dad, please …” Mia said.

“Yeah, I do think it’s your fault. You’re the reason she’s so distant. You can’t read people for shit. She’s not some object to be controlled or manipulated. You can’t strip her of her free will and say it’s for her own good, or that it’s for her own safety. That’s just not how it works. No wonder you’re a terrible parent. You don’t understand a thing about your daughter; you probably never truly understood your wife. Do you ever stop and listen to the people around you?”

“You leave her out of this,” Harris yelled.

“Do you ever stop and listen to yourself?” Cooper asked.

A fist smacked Cooper in the jaw. Mia shook her hand and stepped back.

“You’re an asshole,” Mia said.

Cooper turned to face her, feeling his mouth for blood.

“You just can’t say shit like that,” she said. “You’re not wrong. But you don’t get to say it. He’s my father. These are my issues. Not yours.”

“Honey, please,” Harris said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Shut up,” she said. “I came here for me. I came here for them. I didn’t come here for you or him.” She gestured towards Cooper.

“He’s pulling us apart! He’s toxic. Can’t you see? He’s gone mad. Look into his eyes, he’s turned.”

The earth shook and rocks tumbled down around them. The giant beasts collided; talons and claws, beaks and jaws, flames and thorns came together. There was an earthquake tremor like nothing they’d felt before.

Harris charged at Cooper, knocking him down, ripping the machete from his hands.

“What the fuck are you doing? I’m fine!” Cooper yelled out. “You’re mad!”

Harris punched him in the face. “You’ve got no respect for rules.” Punch. “No respect for order.” Punch. “For authority.” Punch. “For the sacred bond of family.” Punch.

Mia screamed something at him, but he couldn’t make out the words.

He stood up, swaying, laughing, crying, screaming at Cooper, a lumbering maniac pointing and waving the machete around. “Get up,” Harris said.

Cooper’s face was bloodied and was rapidly blooming into bruises. He rolled onto his hands and knees and spat blood. Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. His left eye was swollen to a slit.

For a moment the others thought the blood-rain infection had taken over Harris, too. He was mad, yes. Enraged. Fired up and angry. But this was just madness caused by extreme deprivation, stress, and fear.

Biomega blasted a bright hot flame into Thornelius Rex’s face. The beast roared and jerked his head back, grabbed in his claws a lizard the size of a dump truck and tossed it at Biomega. The bird swooped aside, flying straight into Thornelius’s jagged fist. She screeched and fell. Her flock, fighting amongst the swarm of lizards, broke off from them and attacked Thornelius Rex instead.

Cooper ran from Harris. He bumped into Mia and pried the machete from her shaking fists. “Stay back,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She stepped back and Cooper turned around. Harris stood there, machete raised, and he brought it down on Cooper to find it caught on a horizontal blade. Cooper kicked him in the gut, sending him stumbling backwards. He charged at Harris and swung his machete at the blade which now hung limply at Harris’s side.

Harris was blinded by rage; his thoughts were clouded; his reactions were slow. The blade clanged and his arm jerked away.

With his free hand, Cooper clutched Harris’s arm and, with his machete-wielding fist, punched the asshole in the face.

Harris’s head jerked back violently with each punch, and Cooper kept on punching, holding Harris’s arm tight, keeping his body close, with each punch trying to knock the senselessness from him. Harris dropped the blade, and Cooper let go. He kicked the machete aside.

“Cooper, stop!” Mia yelled. “That’s enough.”

He nodded and approached Harris no further. Harris sat down, blood dripping from his face, his coordination lost, his mind jostled to jelly. He giggled softly on the ground.

Mia made to approach her father, to examine his wounds and help him to his feet. She wanted to try to let him know where he was and what was going on, what the poor, desperate fool had done to himself in trying to hang on to his pride.

She tried to approach him, but a bloodhawk landed between them. She screamed. The thing was a giant, at least twice as tall as they were. It crowed at Harris and clawed at the earth. Another one landed, then another, then another.

“Harris,” Cooper called out. “The time for games is over. Get up and grab your machete.”

“Get up, Dad, please!” Mia begged.

Harris rolled and stumbled. He fell towards the machete and struggled to wrap his fingers around it.

Cooper slashed at the bird nearest to them, hacking into its back. It screeched and jerked its head towards him, and he sliced at its chest. It pecked at him, and he tumbled away, giving Harris the time to grip his own machete and stand up.

Lewis approached them with the third blade raised, trying to take down the same bird Cooper had attacked. It was frenzied, pecking wildly at them and flapping its wings so aggressively that the creature became unapproachable. Harris hacked at its tail and did little harm. Cooper and Lewis kept out of its pecking distance, relying on their peripherals to keep from getting pecked or swooped or clawed by any other. They swung their blades blindly, hoping to hit the creature’s beak or neck, should it stretch close enough to try to peck their eyes out.

Mia and Steph huddled with Rodney, praying hard that the other bloodhawks wouldn’t see them, wouldn’t think to approach them while the others were causing all the chaos and noise.

Then, below the high-pitched bird sounds, came the unmistakable call of the lizards, “jin … go, jin … go,” followed by their thorned bodies, razor-sharp claws, and powerful jaws. These beasts outnumbered the birds, and outsized them. They snapped and lashed out at the bloodhawks, ripping them into pieces like the humans never could. And everything the lizards did to the birds, they could do to the humans, too.

“Harris,” Cooper called out, watching the delirious man miss by metres as he tried to hack and slash at the birds. “Harris! Come on, we have to get out of here!”

The lizards and the birds crowded the area, but unless the group made a run for it now, they wouldn’t escape. It was likely there wouldn’t be another chance. Cooper ran over to Rodney and the girls, helped them lift him up. Behind them, Lewis slung his blade at the looming beasts, trying to keep them at bay. Harris, however, was still in battle mode, hell-bent on cutting every one of them down.

“Come on, Harris! We have to go! Now!” Cooper yelled back.

“Dad, please don’t do this!” Mia said. “Please! Don't be a hero. Come on!”

More bloodhawks and jingo lizards came between them. Harris tried to swing his blade, but his energy was waning. The bloodhawks descended on him and began to rip the poor man to shreds.

Mia tried to wait for her father to pull through, but Cooper grabbed her arm and led her away. They had no time to spare for sympathy here.

Out in the open, Thornelius Rex and Biomega thrashed and clawed into each other, ripping a bloody mess into the terrain, gouging deep crevices into the earth. The lesser giant beasts, the bloodhawks and the jingo lizards, attacked each other in a giant monster turf war, ripping the bush apart, ripping the canyon wider with each collision. This terrain wouldn’t hold much longer. The giant beasts showed no sign of conceding to the other. Once they were done with this place, there would be nothing left. They would move on to destroy new territory.

In spite of the chaos of their escape, the group managed to help Rodney hobble as fast as he could. Mia and Steph carried him along while Cooper and Lewis hacked threateningly at the air, at the monsters lurking nearby. They yelled and clanged their machetes on the rocks, hoping the noise would make them seem bigger and more dangerous, mad creatures to avoid. They slashed at any beast which came near them, and for any beast they injured, there were countless others nearby waiting to leap upon the wounded and rip them apart.

Hurt and dead humans were just collateral damage. The earthquakes were just collateral damage. The nameless town of one hundred burned to smouldering ashes, just another casualty. The monsters were bigger and stronger and more violent. They needed no weapons or technology. They needed only awakening in order to rule the canyon, and then they could spread their limbs and rule the wild, slaughter beasts better than any human ever could, eliminate the humans from their towns and keep expanding outwards.

These beasts were creators of a violence which could be stopped only with bombs.

The humans were near, but the bombs were distant.

It was a lizard-eat-bird-eat-lizard world right here.

THE SUICIDE FOREST, PART II

The group reached the edge of the canyon, escaping the destruction by the beasts. They wasted no time in climbing the rock wall, fearless of the thought of it crumbling in the earthquake rumble which came from the warring beasts. They could have remained below and been pulled apart, or climbed and fell and been pulled apart; instead, they climbed and made it to the top as survivors.

Their energy was beyond depleted. They ran on fear; their fuel was the thought of avoiding a painful death.

Even Rodney, who was pale from blood loss, barely able to move his arm without suffering, had that same saturation of adrenaline coursing through his body. At least the climb was not so steep, and he could pull his way up one-handed most of the way.

At the top, he collapsed, exhausted, and one by one the other four rolled over onto the flat earth, each incredulous that the vehicles were still there. Lewis fished through Rodney’s pockets for the keys and, with Steph, helped him up and laid him out across the back. They left Cooper and Mia to their Land Cruiser; the pair lingered back a moment to process the extraordinary situation they had just been through.

“Look at your face,” Mia said, touching the bruising gently.

He winced. “Is it really that bad?”

She nodded. “You’re banged up pretty good.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “About your father. I shouldn’t have punched him up so hard.”

“Stop it,” she said. “We were all there. I saw it, too. I was so scared, I didn’t know what was going on.”

“I should have held back. I could have saved him. I just … I don’t think I wanted to.”

“Stop it,” she pressed. “Don’t do that to yourself. Yes, it’s … fucking awful. But he shouldn’t have been so hard on you. He is … was a foolish, foolish man.” She leaned into Cooper, sobbing and sniffling.

He patted her gently and held her close.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I had had the chance to know him better. This whole experience has been fucked up.”

They sat up on the bonnet of the Land Cruiser, held each other in their arms, staring out into the brutal landscape of the canyon. The stars brightly illuminated the monsters within; they could see the silhouettes of the beasts fighting relentlessly, Biomega and Thornelius Rex cut, bruised, and broken, but not letting up. It seemed as though they would be warring with each other forever. It seemed so surreal, so distant.

“It was because of him,” Cooper said.

“What?” Mia asked.

“It was because of him, your father, that we could escape. If he hadn’t kept fighting like he did, they wouldn’t have been distracted by him. They would have got us all.”

Mia sobbed and sniffed and agreed. She slid off the bonnet.

“You ready to go?” Cooper asked.

She nodded.

***

They sat in the Suicide Forest, Cooper and Mia, Lewis, Steph, and Rodney at the bar, the “CLOSED” sign lit up, lights on low.

Rodney had had a minor infection, which was treated easily, and his shoulder healed up as well as he could have hoped. The scar tissue kept his movement in that joint restricted, but he could learn to live with it.

Steph and Lewis leaned into each other, trying to find in each other some comfort for what they had lost out in the canyon.

The ghosts hung coldly across the bar. There would be no more hunting trips. There were countless empty spaces in all their homes, small and quiet, but resonating largely and loudly inside them, following forever wherever they went. The guilt of reaching out to others for help, knowing that they were undeserving of that help, that they should have stayed behind where their other halves remained.

Cooper and Mia sat a little farther from the others; on opposite sides of the bar, they poured and drank and felt the warmth between them slipping away.

They were just strangers who happened to go through so much together, and yet Mia lost everything, while Cooper really had nothing here to lose.

“So why is this place called the Suicide Forest?” Cooper asked.

“It’s been in my family for generations,” she replied. “Each time it gets passed down, it gets renamed, reinvented. Only its heart remains.”

“You inherited this place from—”

“From my mother, yes.” She took a deep breath. “My mum had called this place The Black Dog. She suffered from depression. She acted like it was her own personal burden to bear, and I guess this was her way of projecting her illness onto a physical thing. Like, by making the black dog a real thing, she could shrink its impact. She could make it a place which brought other people happiness, which would reduce its control over her even more. But … my father was never the understanding type. I don’t remember much about my mother, but I remember she fought with Dad a lot. He didn’t really know how to deal with her illness. He didn’t know how to help, and that just drove him to be frustrated and angry and bitter. It stressed them both out, until one day she disappeared into the bush and never came back.”

Cooper sat there staring into the background of the bar. He sipped his spiced rum and listened.

“The Suicide Forest is my way of remembering her. It feels to me like I brought a piece of her back. To me … this is a space where people can find comfort among friends and family. It’s not meant to be the happiest place on earth, but no matter who walks through that door, they’re not alone. You’ve got friends here, so long as we’re open. So long as the drinks are cold and the taps flow beer, I’ve got an ear to lend. I feel like that’s what my mum would have wanted.”

“That’s so kind of you,” Cooper said. “I wish I could stay around, but I don’t think I could cope, after all that’s happened.”

“I don’t blame you,” she said.

“Yeah, I think I’m done playing detective. It’s not my game anymore. I’m probably going to go back to Melbourne, connect with old friends, and see where things go from there.”

“Well, I’m handing over the pub. Lewis and Steph said they’d be interested in taking it over. It’ll help take their minds off of everything, but I think it would just make things worse for me.”

Cooper nodded. “Yeah, do what’s right for you. Are you planning on sticking around Alice Springs?”

“I don’t know what I’ll do now,” she said, “but I know I can’t stay here. There’s nothing left here for me now. I’m done with this chapter of my life. I mean, I’ll still be back to visit family from time to time, but I need to get out and live a little.”

The case file had been passed on to higher authorities. The canyon and surrounding area was a closed site now, a military operation. It was in safe hands, but still, neither Cooper nor Mia felt comfortable staying in Alice Springs, knowing what was lurking in the outback just beyond.

Each of the group had signed a nondisclosure agreement, keeping the beasts a secret. The rest of Australia and the rest of the world would never know what had happened out there in the mystery canyon with the mystery beasts; the entire town with no name had been completely erased, too.

The families of the survivors and the survivors themselves had been greatly damaged, but life continued.

Cooper leaned across the bar and gave Mia a kiss on the cheek and slid a napkin across the bar with his number written in black Sharpie.

“Call me any time, day or night, whenever you want. You’re not alone. I’ll be there for you.”

He patted her back and left. As she watched him walk towards the door, already she felt so alone.

The End

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Kaiju Rampage

Captain Daichi watched his crew hard at work on the deck of the Hiroaka. The day had just begun, but already the ship’s hold was filling up with fish from her nets. Daichi had never seen the kind of loads his men were hauling now before in his life. It was almost as if something out there in the water was driving the fish his way. He whispered a prayer of thanks and smiled. This was Daichi’s first run as captain. He had feared he would not live up to the expectations of his father and let the old man down. Even at the age of thirty-one, Daichi was somewhat afraid of the old man. Though his father was pushing eighty, he could still make his words cut deeper than the sharpest of swords.

The two of them had never seen eye to eye. Daichi had never wanted to be a part of his father’s fishing company, much less the captain of the old man’s best remaining boat. Daichi had dreamed of being a writer, going to America, and becoming a star. At first, he had some success. He had sold his first ever story to a paying magazine and almost immediately got an offer to write one for another. That sort of thing was rare in the writing world, and Daichi allowed himself to believe that he could make it. He spent the next few years doing his best. His work sold, he made money, but it was never quite enough or dependable enough to be all he did in terms of a job.

Daichi’s father had been there for him, if at a price. His father had given him just enough work to keep him afloat and chasing his dream for a time. After five years had passed, his father became more and more demanding of him, pushing more and more work onto him. His father’s health had begun to fail with age. The old man needed someone who could take over and continue to bring honor to the family name. Daichi was the only son. He had three sisters, but his father wanted him, not them. His father held with the old ways and wanted Daichi to surrender his failed dream to step up and do what he had been born to do.

When this fishing season had started, the old man had given Daichi a choice. Take over as captain of the Hiroaka or leave the family business behind for good. Daichi had known it was no idle threat. Either he stepped up or he was out. His self-published sales were down, and short stories weren’t paying what they used to, not that it had ever been enough. With his rent already close to being late and a stack of bills on his desk, Daichi was left with no choice. Now, here he was on the deck of the Hiroaka, doing the job he had sworn as a child he would never do.

The Hiroaka was an old ship, only weighing in at a displacement of around one hundred and fifty tons. Her entire crew, counting Daichi himself, was composed of two dozen sailors. She ran nearly one hundred feet from bow to stern. What she lacked in size and crew, though, she more than made up for in the tech aboard her. Her sonar and comm. gear was top of the line. That fact was one of the few things Daichi liked about her.

Natsuo approached him wearing a concerned expression that gave Daichi cause for worry.

“Good morning, Natsuo,” Daichi offered.

“Captain Daichi, sir,” Natsuo responded with a quick nod of his head. “I would be most grateful if you would accompany me inside.”

“Is my father calling again?” Daichi asked. His old man, though wheelchair bound, had followed him to sea in a sense, thanks to the very state of the art gear that Daichi liked that the Hiroaka had onboard. Even in the worst of storms, the ship’s communications worked flawlessly.

“No, Captain Daichi,” Natsuo told him. “There is something you must see.”

Daichi grunted his consent and moved to follow Natsuo to the heart of the small ship where her helm controls and sonar station were. Tomo, the ship’s comm. and sonar specialist, was there waiting for them. Tomo got up from his station as Daichi entered. He gave Daichi a quick bow of respect.

“What is it, Tomo?” Daichi asked. “Natsuo has been rather vague about why you needed me here.”

“With good cause, Captain,” Tomo said. “We did not want to cause a panic.”

Daichi’s eyebrows rose at the bizarre disclosure. “Panic? What are you talking about, Tomo?”

“Look for yourself, sir,” Tomo told him, gesturing at the sonar screen.

Daichi studied the screen. At first, he didn’t have a clue what Tomo was trying to show him, but then he saw it. The blip was so large Daichi had thought it was just part of the screen.

“What is that?” he asked.

“We don’t know, Captain,” Natsuo told him. “Whatever it is, though, it’s coming straight for us.”

“And fast, too,” Tomo added. “It’s moving at twenty knots.”

Daichi glanced back at the sonar screen, quickly doing the math in his head. “So we have about ten minutes until whatever that is reaches us?”

Tomo and Natsuo nodded in unison.

“Could it be a ship?” Daichi asked. “Have you tried hailing it?”

“I don’t think it’s a ship, sir,” Tomo said. “Something about the way it moves. . .”

“We have tried making contact with it, Captain,” Natsuo informed him. “On every channel available to us. There has been no reply.”

Daichi rubbed at his cheeks with the fingers and thumb of his right hand. “I am man enough to admit I don’t have an answer to this one. Both of you are more experienced with all this. What do you suggest we do?”

“Run, Captain,” Tomo said almost instantly. “We certainly can’t fight something that size and that fast if it’s hostile. The Hiroaka is a fishing boat. Yes, we have some small arms aboard in case of pirates but nothing that could give us a chance against something like that.”

“I have to agree, sir,” Natsuo nodded.

“The men are in the middle of pulling up the nets,” Daichi protested. “All the fish in them here will be lost if we run. And what we will tell the rest of the crew? Won’t running cause exactly the sort of panic you were hoping to avoid?”

Neither Natsuo nor Tomo had an answer.

“You said this thing is moving at twenty knots correct?” Daichi asked, still weighing his course of action.

“Yes, Captain,” Tomo replied.

“The Hiroaka’s max speed with her engines at full is only eighteen knots,” Daichi reminded them. “If we run and whatever that thing is decides to come after us, we won’t be able to outrun it.”

Natsuo and Tomo stared at him, waiting for his orders.

“The call is yours, sir,” Natsuo said. “Whatever you decide to do, though, Captain, I suggest we do it quickly.”

“Fine,” Daichi grunted. “Tell the crew what’s going on and pass out what weapons we do have aboard. There’s no point in keeping them in the dark at this point. They’ll know something is badly wrong as soon as we give the order to abandon the nets.”

Daichi paused, taking a breath before continuing. It hurt him to give up the fish, but he could see no other option. “Tell them to drop the nets. Tomo, get down to the engines and make sure we get all the speed out of them that we can. Natsuo, set a course away from whatever that thing, maximum speed.”

Tomo and Natsuo hurried to carry out his orders while Daichi moved to watch the chaos that began on the ship’s deck as soon as Natsuo started barking orders through the loudspeakers.

The crew outside looked absolutely terrified as they cut loose the nets they had been reeling up. He could see in their faces, even from where he was looking out the window of the small control room of the ship. The fear in those expressions only grew as Natsuo ordered the men to pass out the weapons from the ship’s weapon lockers.

Daichi’s attention became focused on the horizon beyond the Hiroaka’s forward deck. He picked up a nearby pair of binoculars and raised them to his eyes. Out there in the distance, he could see the something massive cutting through the waves towards the ship. Daichi felt sick as the full scale of its size sunk in. The thing was many, many times the size of the Hiroaka.

Natsuo was spinning the wheel around madly, turning the Hiroaka away from the approaching contact. Daichi could already see that even with the engines straining at full power, it wasn’t going to be enough.

Some of the sailors on the deck who had already been given small arms opened fire at the massive creature streaking towards the ship. Shotguns thundered and pistols cracked rapid succession. Daichi had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at how futile their shots seemed given the size of the thing coming at them.

In the last instant before the creature plowed into the Hiroaka, it rose partially up out of the waves. Its head was horned. A great horn protruded from each side of its skull, and a third larger one rose from the middle of its forehead. Its body was covered in thick scales that reminded Daichi of the scales of python, all yellow and black. It gave a roar that left everyone aboard the Hiroaka screaming in pain and clutching their ears before the creature dropped its head back into the water. The window in front of Daichi blew out. Shards of glass exploded, burying them in his flesh. Blood spurted in splashes of bright red from one piece ripped open the side of his neck. Daichi stumbled backwards to collapse onto the floor.

The monster struck the Hiroaka at a speed well over twenty knots. The hull of the fishing vessel folded inward with the squeals of rending metal. The impact was so great that the Hiroaka was lifted from the surface of the ocean and sent toppling over onto its side before it completely broke apart as the monster plowed through it, tearing it to pieces.

Kaiju Rampage is available from Amazon here