Free Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters by James Swallow, David Annandale, James Lovegrove, Larry Correia, Peter Clines, C.L Werner, Timothy W. Long, J.C. Koch, Natania Barron Page B

they had to Hiroshima. The world was talking about American weapons that could level a city, but Haruki knew better.
    This hell was not from the West.
    The storm was approaching. Massive clouds had formed at the northern edge of the city. As the residents of the battered outskirts took shelter underground in grubby dirt tunnels and cramped wooden bunkers, Haruki raced along the broken, rubble-strewn streets, leaping trash heaps and scrambling over fallen walls, tumbled wood, shattered plaster, and the ever-present terra cotta tiles that littered the ravaged city. He had been to Nagasaki once before, and loved that the old ways were still intact with regard to architecture and design. But after what he had witnessed in Hiroshima, he knew that even concrete and steel would have offered little protection from what was coming.
    It had taken him two days to get here from the ruins of Hiroshima on the last of the three packed, refugee trains that had made it out. He had seen the final devastation, with the terrifying pink rays of death spewing from the snake-like creature’s mouth. He had watched out the windows of the train, from a distance. A distance of miles, but even from that far away, he had felt the heat of the blast. Haruki understood that few would have survived the snake-beast’s frantic battle with the gigantic, squid-like monster. He and the others had all fled—all the way here to Nagasaki, but Haruki was one of the only people to have seen the beasts. The others all spoke of bombings and of some American super-weapon. Or they spoke of earthquakes and floods. Even of American troops invading.
    Haruki remained silent, listening to the conflicting versions of the event. He understood that these people had seen the devastation and the destruction, but he knew they would all have different interpretations of what exactly it was that had murdered an entire city. He had lived with that discrepancy since he was a child, when he first saw the monsters in the world, and he had realized few others could. He came to know that only first-born teenage children could actually see the world the way it truly was. Like other teens, he should have lost his ability to see the creatures when he became a man, but for some reason, with him, the sight had never faded.
    As the train pulled in to Nagasaki, he overheard some teenagers whispering quietly near the rancid stinking lavatory, which was little more than a closet with a hole in the floor of the train and the rails rushing by below. They were comparing their events of what had happened—and pouring derision over the multitudes of conflicting versions of the story they had heard the adults tell. They had seen the giant beasts, just like he had. Haruki had gone over to them and spoke softly.
    “I saw what you saw. You’re not crazy.”
    The teens had been startled by his admission, but nodded, grateful for it.
    Haruki understood the haunted look in their eyes. He’d had it in his own since he was fourteen. He’d tried to find the teens again in the throngs of packed humanity swarming off the train and into the station, but he lost sight of them in the sweaty masses.
    He was going to try to find a ride to the harbor, but the roads were blocked pretty heavily to the north of town, from the damage sustained days earlier by Allied bombing raids. Looking north to the approaching gray storm clouds, Haruki had opted to run for it instead. He needed to move rapidly south through the shattered residential neighborhoods, before he would pass through the industrial factories and the Allied prison camp, on his way to the southern harbor. He knew if he waited too long, any sea-worthy ships would be gone.
    An underfed dog with patches of dark fur leapt out of a trash pile, snapping and barking at Haruki as he ran, but he ignored the noise, one of many sounds all blending into the hurried roar of a wartime city. As he came closer to the fence-line of the prison camp, he felt a hot breeze rip