Free Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) by K. H. Koehler Page A

behind a path of broken cars, bodies and glassy destruction that littered the street up and down. I was about to let out my breath in relief when the whole street heaved upward and cracked open.
    Like a rancid asphalt egg, it birthed a new kaiju into the world.
     
     
    3
     
    There are things you never forget, things stamped down deep into your memory like footprints in wet sand. The day you fell from a tree and broke your arm. The day you made a fool of yourself in front of a girl you liked. The first time you really fell in love…and the first time you realized the monster was about to get you.
    The sound the kaiju made as it surfaced is something I’ll ever forget. Claws on blackboard, child screaming, woman weeping, knife singing as it sinks deep into your gut. It sounded like all these things. The appendages I had seen were only a small part of the whole beast, I realized. The monster that ploughed out of the massive hole in the street looked like a fish, or frog, or something no one had ever heard of before.
    I scrambled out of the way, amazed at how analytical I could be, considering it was easily the size of a house, and as black as pitch and shining with wet, razor-sharp scales. Its humped back was covered in those snakelike appendages with the Venus flytrap heads, making it look like something out of old H. P. Lovecraft’s worst nightmare. It stank of sewage and death, and the smell of it made me want to gag.
    I didn’t. I was too fascinated by the sight of the thing’s grotesque, barely-formed head, the reddish, heavily-lidded, almost humanesque eyes glaring at me with a cunning and evil intelligence. I stood there, outside the club, listening to a series of popping explosions as the beast tore up various gas mains in its wriggling effort to emerge.
    It finally settled atop the street like a mountain of burning black slime, making that sound again, like it was laughing at me, laughing at the sheer puniness of mankind. I should have been afraid of it. Instead, I swung the burning sword around two-handedly, ready to take another piece out of it. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t much else I could do.
    It eyed me cautiously.
    “ Afraid?” I said, then kicked myself mentally when it dawned on me that agitating a monster was a lot different than doing it to a bully. Bullies didn’t normally try to eat you.
    It hissed at me and leaped into the sky. For a moment the lights of the city were eclipsed as it passed overhead. Then it crashed down atop the roof of the club across the street. The structure exploded under the monster’s weight like it was made of Tinker Toys. I staggered back as dust and debris spilled all the way into the street and surrounded me. I could hardly believe it had moved so fast…or that the whole building lay crushed beneath it in seconds, with everyone still inside.
    The street looked like a demolition zone, surreal, like the end of the world in some post-apocalyptic movie. The only thing missing were the zombies. The creature made that hissing/cackling noise like it was pleased with itself and its work.
    I stared at the overturned cars, the broken bodies, the bloodied glass scattered everywhere. The wind sighed, blowing the yellowish debris around as if we stood on a devastated planet, the victim of a cataclysmic nuclear war. A poster blew against me, then blew away. I coughed as the dust began to clear. I finally saw a girl lying in the rubble at my feet, her fancy club wear ripped to bloody tatters on her still body. Ignoring the monster, I knelt down, pushing aside the debris atop her and checked for a pulse, but she was as lifeless as a mannequin.
    I wiped the soot off her face. She was my age. Pretty. She was one of the girls who had been giggling about me in the halls of my high school.
    My mind went calm, my horror far away. But my anger burned. It burned like the sword I still gripped in my hands.
    I stood up. I swung the sword high overhead, not because I thought I could