"Brace for impact!" is not the phrase anyone wants to hear.
But phrases are as indifferent as monsters. They do their damage and wander off, unaware. The Philippines has a lot of phrases and even more monsters.
"Tayo!" the young greaser said, skinny and bronze, his skin smoking, but not from the crash.
"Wh...what?" asked the Army man, confused, weakened, a streak of blood rappelling down the face.
"Get up!" the young man's eyes burned black as if they faded out. "Listen to me very carefully. Plan's the same, even though Dorothy Forever got clamped. I go stall the thing. You set up the weapon and hit it hard. Got it?"
The Army man's eyes dilated. He tasted blood and fear seeped into the heart.
"Private Elvis Presley, do you understand me?"
He snapped his body off the fractured floor and saluted. "Sir, yes, sir! I'm on it. We both have our orders."
"Nah, puting lalaki, you got orders. I got a stash of money waiting on me to get this done. Let's go!" He offered Presley one of those cool cat handshakes and jumped out of the rocket, body fuming, growing larger. That was Carlo for you. Musician. Rogue. Halimaw hunter.
The polar opposite of Elvis Aaron Presley. Ballistics degree. Scientist. Sometime crooner. Drafted into This Man's Army.
He shook off the dizziness only to receive a headache in return. "Where'd he...? Right. Come on. Focus! Rocket down. Weapon. Is the weapon in fighting form?" He surveyed the interior while outside, the world trembled.
"Right. Island of Samar. Crash landing. A dog from Imperial Russia. Mutation. Rampage. Okay." Presley staggered to the rear of Forever, turned the wheel on the heavy door. Nothing. Punch. Kick! On the second attempt, he got it to creak open a half foot and slip inside. There she rested, undisturbed and glorious.
The Atomic Degrader. The Private couldn't handle the nuclear physics that went into the murderous part of the weapon. But by God, he knew every inch of the huge cannon, the barrel, and the 155 mm shell containing the deadly bomb. Those mechanisms were drafted by his hand.
Presley rushed to the device then froze. There on the deck lay Holly and Kennedy, skulls shattered. Oh God, they volunteered for this. So young, so damn young. He wanted to vomit and leaned on the barrel, letting his creation support the weight of this day. "I'm gonna make this right, boys." He wiped incessant perspiration from a heavy brow. "You won't have died in vain."
No. Don't touch them. Not a single hug or tear. Get the dog tags. Suck it up. Do the work.
He tiptoed around the bloody miasma and ran the diagnostics. Pressure gauge. Check. Firing assembly. Check. Feed tray and ammo chest. Check. Like a machinegun howitzer, Presley thought. Ain't nothing madder than this baby.
Dorothy Forever shook, her metal skin shrieked. Presley toppled backward, barely grabbing the handle to the cockpit of the vehicle hosting the Degrader. She rocked and rolled, a tin can kicked about by the vile power of Mother Nature's mutated wrath. Presley held on for dear life. He managed to force a beaten body into the vehicle while the rocket came to a creaking, moaning halt.
Presley shoved his behind into the driver seat and forced the ignition. Hard reverse coaxed the rear door, already in shambles, to flee. The Degrader Fast Track, as those with the big rank dubbed it, looked like a gun-mounted mobile platform, aside from a square of armor plating to protect the driver. Presley cared not for caution. He wanted action, adrenaline, a smidgen of vengeance. He drove off into an open land of wild grasses, swaying flora, and indomitable hills in the distance.
"Out of the ruins. Out from the wreckage. Can't make the same mistake this time!" He drifted off for a second regretting a battle eight days ago against a different monstrosity. A smaller one, less of a hassle, they had said. Until Presley and company got a little too cocky, young boys playing knight in the wastelands. And that was from a much farther, safer distance.
One of those steep hills suffered an amputation. Trees, airy clouds of dirt blasted off for the heavens, struck by nothing more than a gargantuan phantasm, two will-o-wisp orbs above a seething cavern of black fangs. Presley gunned the Fast Track in its direction. Wind gusting by from the speed could hardly tame the humidity. Sweat on a steering heel. The grit of sand particles between the teeth.
There she stood against the wounded hill, bleeding a glowing vitae. Laika, Russia's space dog. Or rather, the new, grotesque form she had assumed since crashing down into a cauldron of radioactive bacterium. Ebony-fanged, furless, muscle tissue exposed homonculus titan. The privat recalled how, just in getting to the Philippines, he stood in an airport brimming with civilians sporting Laika T-shirts. How sad was this situation?
In the haze, Presly couldn't make out what gave the beast its gnarly shoulder wound. He only knew it to be a sizeable searing of flesh that put the creature into a yin yang spin of enraged weakness. Perfect.
He mashed the brake. The Fast Track skid to a halt perpendicular to the Used-to-be-Laika ahead by the damaged hill. Presley jumped out of one seat and into the top most one behind the Degrader. He released the safety lock to drop down the stabilizing legs. BANG. The Fast Track treds lifted off the warbly ground, replaced by four titanium legs that sank spikes into the soil. Presley pulled back the chamber feed bolt. The first shell clanged into position. He dropped the bolt, then turned the know in haste. Range. Azimuth! The beast looked in his direction. the private gazed into its abysmal maw and decided he wanted to die of old age.
Trigger squeeze. BOOM. He held back on it, letting the Degrader do it merciless work in full form. The entire Fast Track wobbled. Presey went deaf from the bang baby sonic boom autofire. He had forgotten the headphones. Too late. He was in the war now.
A line of degenerate fire streaked across the horizon in a sickening shade of green. Three rounds struck the poor hill and sent it to an early grave. The remainder of the first burst clipped the beast's right ear, singed its scalp, ruptured the eye into a liquid pus bomb and placed a definite crack along the muzzle.
A howl rumbled the world. Grasses bowed low. Boulders toppled down. The beast came down from the uproar to drop into a low, sinister charge. At the weapon.
Presley gasped. He hurried to wind the gears into the porper firing arc but by God, was the beast like lightning. It had him. Dead to rights, she would scoop him and this contraption right into her ominous throat and swallow them down, down, down into a canine Purgatory.
He stared oblivion in the face. Then the beast went sideways, struck by the Sun. Presley blinked, rubbed eyes dried out immediately by the passing white star. No. The Sun rushed in the form of a man, a man whose body was x-ray translucent. The skeleton visible, white fumes and lights pulsating from it. Fully a good forty feet in height. Not as big as the beast by far, but energized enough to give it a run for its money.
"Carlo?" Presly yelled, eyes burnt.
"DON'T JUST STAND THERE! DO SOMETHIING!" The voice had not the same resonance as Laika Howl, but it held its own eerie cacophany. He punched the beast in the muzzle before sending a ripple of acidic light down its left side.
Presely blinked and slapped his temple. Near deaf. Half blind. The mission from earlier pounding facts into a weary head. Carlo, Monster Hunter, or halimaw as the locals called them. He heard the Brass call the guy the Sun Skull. Just thought it was a crazy nickname, like a lot of the gangs give boys over here.
"COME ON, HERO! I'M DYIN' OUT HERE!" Beast had one of Carlo's arms in its cracked muzzle death mouth.
"We don't need--!" Presely sat his offense aside and slapped the Degrader. "Come on!" He angled the weapon to the left where the battle between man and beast kicked up earth and pounded ancient rocks to dust. Second burst, same as the first.
The beast took it in the hind and rear legs. Its emaciated tail blew off into blackened crimson flakes like lava as it hardens. The beast went down. Sun Skull pried open the jaw with his freed hand and offered the beast a mouthful of atomic energy. The canine skull illuminated, fractured, shrank. Detonated. The entire body began to shrivel, courtesy of the top secret concoction in every round fired by the Atomic Degrader. Monster today. Half life ash tomorrow.
Carlo the Sun Skull shrank down to human proportion as he cried out in agony. The arm was just about skinned, a husk of bleeding musculature and two fingers bent backward. He collapsed into a bed of long grass.
Presley jumped off the weapon and went to him. "Carlo? Hey man, you gonna make it? Holy Hell, look at your arm!" He raced to the rocket's grave for the first aid kit.
Time passed. Arm bandaged. Carlo doped up on pain meds, sleepy smile on his youthful face. Presly bloody, still hard of hearing, smoking a Camel. They were sitting there in the grasses watching the sky clear into a peacetime blue.
"Not so bad, hero. Not so bad." Carlo's voice a whisper. He knew he would heal. Mutations in this part of the world all had one thing in common: regeneration. But boy, would it hurt! Best not to dwell on it.
"I ain't no hero. We don't need them anyway. What we need is to mass produce the Degrader and we can solve this monster epidemic by year's end."
"Don't get your hopes up. Ow." The meds were wearing off faster than Carlo would have liked. Another effect of irradiated life, or 'exaggerated evolution', as the Big Brains caled it. Meds work, but mutation kicks them to the curb in a hot flash. "We don't need..another...hero..." he sang weakly.
"What's that?" Presley asked.
"My thing. I turn my victories...into verse. Got a band..."
Presley looked out into the landscape of murdered hills and ashen dog. "I like it. Got loads of time to wait on to see if or when the chopper to pick us up. We can work out the lines."
"Yeah? Guess...we should. Gonna need a hit song to calm people...after they find out we...killed the world's most...beloved dog." Carlo laughed. It hurt.
"We don't need another hero!" they belted in unison.
"We don't need to know the way home!" Presley crooned.
"You sure about that?" Carlo asked, laughing. "Ow! Dammit!"
They laid back on the grass. "I mean, I think it works. I'm keeping it, if you want. Let's keep it going."
Carlo turned to look at this strange American. He had made a point over the years to make dealing with any of them strictly business. After all, they were much of the reason his homeland had these horros. Starmaster was USA stamped experimentation. "You ain't half bad, Press."
"Who?"
"You heard it. Now you're...stuck with it."
"Then I get to pen the lyrics."
Carlo shrugged, whined. "Deal. Ready?"
As pteradon gulls caught thermal updrafts and black tank crabs crawled up from a tortutred sea, 'We Don't Need Another Hero' echoed across the wilds of Samar.
(Dedicated to Dave, my oldest friend and brother. Carlo was one of his ideas. RIP)