Mayday: A Kaiju Thriller

Chapter One

I don’t care how many times you’ve seen Maydays fighting on TV, you’ve never really experienced a Mayday until you’re right next to one. It’s the smell, you see. The faint scent of earth and sweat and shit always hung over the island, but here, not a hundred metres from the creature’s massive body, the stench was so thick I could barely breathe. I’d been working on the island for nine months, but I’d never got as close as this. It takes a special occasion to get me down to the Mayday pits. I figured a dead Mayday qualified.

Mud squelched in my shoes as I trudged towards the colossal creature. The rain had been coming down like hellfire for two days straight, turning the whole island into a quagmire. My broad-brimmed hat formed gutters that kept the rain off my face but sent it pouring down the back of my trench coat. Most of the other Volkov personnel were more appropriately attired. The Bio teams swarmed around the Mayday like ants, dressed in clear plastic ponchos and gumboots. A group of five of them scaled the dead creature’s underbelly, using the mud-stained fur as handholds. Each hair was as thick as a mooring line. Overhead, three Volkov helicopters buzzed like flies.

I pulled my handkerchief out of my pocket—it was soaked from the rain—and held it across my nose and mouth as I approached. The Mayday’s colossal mouth hung open like a cave, a thick purple tongue rolled out into the mud like a Persian rug. One of her two black eyes stared at the heavens, rainwater pooling in the eyelids. Yllia’s official data sheet said this Mayday was 72 metres high, or 136 metres from head to tail, with a 158 metre wingspan. Yllia was the smallest of the five Maydays and the last to awaken, but she was still one of the largest creatures any man had ever seen. White fur coated her from her bulbous head to the tips of her forked tail. Her four arms—each ending in three delicate scythed claws—were folded beneath her, sinking into the mud. Even lying down she towered over me like a tsunami about to break. One thin, butterfly-like wing lay open across her body; the other was folded up, out of sight. I’d watched her in a hundred fights, hovering above her opponents, swooping down with a speed that belied her size. And before that, over a decade ago, when she’d terrorised Western Europe, throwing psychic waves ahead of her that drove the citizens of dozens of cities to mass suicide. No matter whether it was sleeping or fighting, a Mayday was always moving—an antenna twitching, muscles the length of a train flexing and relaxing. It was unnerving to see one so still, so dead.

Through the crowd of scientists gathered around Yllia’s left rear paw, I spotted a familiar giant in a navy blue raincoat gesturing furiously at one of the scientists. It was always good to see the staff getting stuck in. I rolled up the bottoms of my trousers to keep them out of the mud and went over to see what kind of trouble Healy was getting himself into.

Dominic Healy stopped in mid-sentence—hand still raised in defiance—as he saw me approaching. Healy was a black English kid about fifteen years younger than me, barely twenty-six, but he was easily over six and a half feet tall and as heavy as a fridge. He’d been the assistant to the last Head Investigator, and when I took over the job I figured I’d at least give him a try before sending him packing and getting someone new. Within an hour I’d decided to keep him. The kid was smart and feisty and he worked like a dog.

I gave up on the handkerchief and offered Healy a grin as I moved between Healy and the scientist. Healy returned my smile with the same look of frustration he’d been aiming at the scientist.

“Look at this shit, Boss. They’re walking all over everything. The whole pit’s been turned into a swamp. We could’ve found footprints, or fibres, or—” He turned his attention to a scientist driving a sampling drill into the thick flesh of Yllia’s paw. “Hey! Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing? This is a—”

I slapped Healy on the shoulder. “It’s all right, leave them alone. They’ve got jobs to do as well.”

“But this—”