Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller

Chapter Twenty-Eight

We sat against the broken car in the shadow of the Maydays and watched the Alliance fleet grow on the horizon as the sun slowly climbed into the sky. They’d arrived just in time to do absolutely nothing. Typical.

It was going to be a long wait before they got to us, but we weren’t going anywhere. We were near the coast beneath four frozen Maydays. We weren’t hard to spot. A little first aid had made sure none of us had died in the couple of hours since the Maydays went still, and careful rationing of the Panadol kept us from passing out. All five of us would be seeing the inside of a hospital once we got back to the mainland. Lindsey looked like she’d just come out on the wrong side of a heavyweight prize fight. Between me, Su-jin, and Dr Russell, we had enough broken bones to keep an orthopaedic surgeon in caviar and fast cars for the next year.

Priya had come out the best of us, nursing some nasty whiplash but with all her limbs intact. For some reason I didn’t understand, she still held the infant. It was in stasis now like the rest of the Maydays, contained within a translucent pouch of greenish-grey fluid. It was still an ugly little bastard.

The morning wore on. I watched Priya for a while, mostly to keep my mind off the pain. After a few minutes, she glanced at me and met my eyes. I nodded at her. A half smile flashed across her face, and then it was gone. It hadn’t been a smile of happiness or relief. Not yet. It was an acknowledgment. She was right. It had been up to us to stop them. Not because we were the only ones who could. But because it was our responsibility. Our penance. I could see the pain on her face. Her body had survived the ordeal, but I figured her mind had a lot of healing to do.

After another hour or so, Dr Russell started crying silently. We let her. After a while, she stopped.

When the throbbing in my foot and arm became almost too much to bear, I leaned back on the car and looked up at the Maydays above us. It was unnerving, seeing them frozen like giant statues. “How long do you reckon they’ll stay like that?”

“It’s hard to say,” Dr Russell said. “We don’t know exactly what triggered them to leave stasis in the first place. Maybe they were on a timer. Maybe there was something else, some change in the environment that they detected.”

“What will the Alliance do with them?” Lindsey asked. “Because my vote is to load them on a bunch of rockets and send them into the heart of the sun.”

“Seconded,” I said.

We hadn’t seen or heard from anyone else since Tempest had stopped screaming. The rain had finally stopped, at least for a little while. I didn’t know where the other handlers were. Probably alive. I’d have to ask after them later. Except I still didn’t know their names. Oh well. Nuts to it.

None of the others had any way to contact their family and loved ones. I knew Lindsey was itching to head back to the port, make sure her girlfriend was alive. And I’m sure Priya must’ve been thinking the same about her own family. But it was hard to tell with the blank mask she was wearing.

Me, I was just ready for a break and a nap. And some morphine. And maybe a smoke. I hadn’t yet decided whether or not to quit again. I hadn’t decided much of anything. There’d be time for that later. Once I worked out who I was now. And who I wanted to be.

“Say,” I said as a thought occurred to me. “How sure are we that these five Maydays and the infant are the only ones who survived the parasite infection all those years ago? What if there’s others in stasis somewhere, at the bottom of the ocean or buried underground?”

Everyone was quiet for a few seconds. I felt their eyes on me.

“Escobar,” Dr Russell said. “Shut the fuck up.”

I nodded. “Okay.” I glanced up at the frozen Maydays, then out to sea. “I guess we’re all out of work now.”

“I guess we are,” Lindsey said.

“Anyone know someone who runs a trucking company?”

“What?” Dr Russell said.

“I used to have this fantasy about becoming a truck driver. I know, I know, what the hell do I know about driving trucks, right? But there’s this little town I know of, and they’ve got this cafe where they make the best damn custard tart in the world. And in this cafe there’s a shelf of paperback novels.”

“Boss,” Lindsey said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I grinned and closed my eyes. “Never mind. Never mind.”

THE END

~~~

This book is available now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple and Smashwords. Find out more at www.chris-strange.com.

Thanks for reading!