Kingdom Of Monsters (Book 1)

Kingdom Of Monsters (Part 1)

I never really believed in monsters or aliens for that matter even though I grew up reading stories about them in comic books and stories and seeing them on TV. But childhood was a different time for me, a time when I believed in anything that sounded magical, extraordinary and out of this world. The worst thing happens when you grow up and life stops becoming magical. All those things you believed in, giant monsters of the deep, aliens from another world, the Easter Bunney, even Father Christmas, you find out, were just works of fiction, created by people with vivid imaginations. And so I grew familiar to ways of the world, to society. My life followed the same path I was told I should take, what all young kids should take, that they should study hard at school, get good grades, go secondary school, get good grades, go college, get good grades, then uni and then get a job. From there you get married, have kids and then have to work even harder with long hours to support them. Then, before you know it, you are getting old and you wonder where you life is going. That was the stage I was at when it all happened. When a single event took place that changed the course of the world forever.
Like I said before, I never really belived in giant monsters until one came out from the ocean depths and made land in New York. I saw it all on the news. It was on literally ever TV station across the world. At first, I thought it was a terrorist attack, that perhaps they had detonated a nuclear bomb that levelled the whole city. But when I saw the first pictures come through, that was when my world was turned upside down, and my belief in monsters was reignighted. The first images were not very clear at first, some taken from cell phones and camcorders. There was a lot of smoke about created from the debris of collapsed buildings. You only saw what looked like a large slithery tale in one shot, a foot that was padded with large claws that literally dug into the concrete, tentacles that looked like they were picking up cars and throwing them about and the shadowy outline of part of its body. The creature must have been over sixty feet tall. It looked amphibious in nature, with dark scaly skin, a large bulbous head with rounded saucer like eyes that were jet black and a cavernous mouth full of long, serrated teeth. Coming out from the sides and back of it's body was a writhing mass of tentacles, each one longer than its body. It had attacked without warning, rising up from the ocean depths and creating a mass tidal wave that had swept through the entire city. Any boats at the New York dockyard were caught up in this massive tidal wave and sent crashing into buildings and cars. Anyone in the vicinity of the wave stood no chance. Like a bulldozer, it came crashing in, tentacles and all, smashing, crushing and knocking down buildings as if they were made of balser wood. Within less than fifteen minutes, it had destroyed almost half of the city. Nobody was ready for it, and many people died from it's rampage. The military was deployed but by the time tanks and planes had taken it down, it had already destroyed the whole city and millions were dead as a result. New York had become ground zero. The world mourned its dead. There was a debate as to where this creature came from. They couldnt examine it's body as most of it had been obliterated by the military. Some theories had been put forward that it had come from the Marianna Trench, the deepest and most unexplored part of the worlds ocean. Others said that maybe it had come from outta space. But it was later found out that no unidentified ships had been seen in orbit. Other outrageous theories suggested that it was either an interdimensional creature that had found its way into our world using a portal of some kind, and then there were others that suggested it was a creature that had been here on this planet before the dinosaurs, that somehow it had been in awoken from a deep slumber deep beneath the earth and had found its way to the surface through the ocean.
I didn't care too much for the debates or these theories. All I was worried about was whether there were more of it's kind waiting to rise up from the ocean depths. If so, they posed a threat to all life on this planet.
Months passed without incident. New York had become a tomb, the city literally uninhabitable due to the high levels of radiation permeating throughout the fallen rubble of what was once a sprawling metropolis. Many Americans blamed the military for their use of nuclear weapons. Even though they did the job, it created more damage than what the creature had inflicted on New York.
Much of the conflict in the world had come to an abrupt halt. Nations that were once at conflict with each other had been brought together. Whether the world was aware of it or not, the whole collective conciousness of humankind had been brought together from that one fateful day.
Then it happened again, first in Manila, Philippines, then Moscow followed. Soon there were reports of giant creatures cropping up everywhere. On the beaches of California, there was a mass military standoff between seven of these creatures. Many people died that day. Even though the monsters were stopped by the use of nuclear weaponary, governments soon learned that using this method was creating unrepairable damage to the planet. They knew this was not going to stop and so plans were drawn out to combat this new emerging threat. For the first time in over sixty years the militaries of all the superpowers of the world finally came clean about the kind of technology they had been secretly developing, there was a public outcry about this as it soon became clear why our economy had always experienced its booms and busts, its depressions and recessions. It was all about taking money out of the economy to fund these secret projects. I almost thought there was going to be a worldwide revolution from this, but people soon realised that the new weapons and technologies our governments had been secretly developing were now our only chance against the growing tide of kaiju attacks. God only knew what else our governments knew and what they were not telling us.
Kaiju, that what they were calling them. I never knew the meaning of the word until now. Its Japanese for giant beast and there were more of them sighted. The KRU was unveiled in London. It was the British branch of what had become the worldwide defense and attack arm of NATO. Whether it was a new thing that NATO had been formed or whether it had been around for a long time, I did not know. What I did know was that the Kaiju Response Unit would be the last line of defense from the relentless hordes of Kaiju. I was pilot before the first Kaiju attack in New York took place. I spent years flying experimental planes for the military. Being a pilot was something I never expected to become. I never understood what drew me to this particular career. I guess it was the thrill and excitement of adventure. But in time, it soon became just another job. I had never seen combat before, but that day a colonel working for the Kaiju Response Unit came to visit, was the day I would enter this frightening war against these unknown creatures. He showed up on a rainy day in Nantwich, my hometown, standing there in my doorway as tall and proud like any miltary colonel would
He was an old man in his early sixties. His face was hard, the wrinkles barely noticeable from his battle worn features. I could see from the scars on his cheeks that he had been in combat before. He was quite well built for his age and he carried many medals on the navy blue uniform that he wore. He introduced himself as Colonel Drake Sanders. He must have been a well decorated soldier and his service in the British army was a long one. In his hands he a folder with papers in it, a file that contained every bit of information there was to know about me.
" Your names Glenn Riley," he said, taking out papers from my file. " You served with the RAF for fifteen years, testing new aircraft?".
" That's right sir," I confirmed to him.
" But you've never been in a combat situation?" he said, putting the file aside.
He gave me that really serious look. " Even though you are not combat trained, you were still one of our countries finest pilots and I'm here to make you an offer to join the Kaiju Response Unit".
" You want me to fight Kaiju?" I asked him, surprised.
" Look son. I wasn't too thrilled to ask you to join the most elite fighting force on this planet," he admitted. " But I couldn't dismiss the fact that you are one fine pilot and that you came highly recommended. It's just what we need for the type of craft we are planning to deploy against the next Kaiju attack on British soil".
Now I was curious. " What kind of flying craft are we talking about here?"
" The most advanced fighting craft in the world," was his answer to me. " It took forty years to design and build and it has more firepower than the whole of NATO put together. You will be manning this craft and fighting alongside others who have been selected to combat the Kaiju threat".
In the whole course of an hour, he showed me the blueprints of the craft he was talking about. It looked like a flat metallic silver disk, but according to Sanders it held over fifteen types of weaponary, had the kind of firepower that made nuclear weaponary look obselete and was guaranteed to be more than a match for any fifty foot monster that dared come out of the sea and attack any land populated city. He also showed me pictures of the kind of Mechs that they had been secretly designing. Mech's as he explained were giant robots, standing over fifty feet tall and packing awsome firepower. They were operated via remote control and he even showed me the one that I would be fighting alongside. It looked like some armoured medieval knight that had undergone a futuristic makeover. It's Codename was Chrono Nova and it was yet to see combat.
With all this information he had shown me, it kinda ignited suspicion and curiosity within me. " You sound like you had been preparing for this war against the Kaiju for a long time," I commented to Sanders. " Did you people know this was going to happen".
Colonel Sanders hesitated for a moment before answering. " Because I am offering you a job with the KRS and I know you will accept, I will be straight with you...Yes we knew about the Kaiju invasion for a long time and that is why it has taken so many decades to prepare for this". He looked away, almost absent minded, his eye's portraying a tiredness about them, the sign of a man who had seen too much fighting. " To be honest, we never thought this war would happen so soon. All our calculations were decades off, and the majoritory of our weaponary has never been tested. But there is not time for that now".
"So what do you want me to do?" I asked him. " This is obviously an offer I cannot refuse because I want to protect my family and all the families of the world against this emerging threat, so where do we go from here".
Colonel Sanders nodded approvingly, pleased that I had accepted his job offer, but not suprised as deep down, he must have known I would snatch it up instantly. He took out a piece of paper from his file which looked like a contract and told me to sign along the dotted line.
I did so without even reading the whole document.
"So when do we start?" I said to him.
He grinned at me. "Right now," was his reply...