Kaiju War Prelude
Based on Pacific Rim by Alex Irvine
It is almost 7 a.m. and the San Francisco Bay is breathtaking this morning, as you drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. You are tired from your overnight shift working at the Port Authority, but right now the view of the Bay is spectacular. The air is clear and the water is the most amazing azure you have seen in quite a while. Your favorite song fills your car, and the traffic ahead is moving briskly. As icing on the cake, you are off tonight for a long weekend in Las Vegas.
You absently tap your fingers on the wheel to the beat as you run through a mental checklist of everything you need to do before you make the drive to Sin City.
Suddenly, your car jerks to the right. You wrestle the steering wheel straight and slam on the brakes. Your heart thunders in your ears as you screech to a halt. The car behind you barely misses your bumper, but a pair of cars in front of you is not so lucky. As you sit trying to understand what’s happening, you feel the familiar shudder of an earthquake. You brace yourself, feeling glad to be off the Golden Gate. The quake subsides, and you get out of your car to help the people ahead of you.
“You okay?” you ask the addled-looking lady in the car nearest you. A child is crying in the seat behind her.
She looks up at you with vacant eyes, nodding mechanically. Trying to reassure her, you smile.
You hear a string of obscenities from the SUV that the lady hit. A burly man with fire in hit eyes thunders out.
Instinctively, you hold up a hand and say, “Hey, man, take it easy.”
The big man, blinks at you, and looks at his bumper. He is still fuming, but his shoulders sag as he calms.
An aftershock almost causes the both of you to fall over. This one was sharp, only lasting for a moment. You right yourself, just in time to feel another one.
Strange, you think to yourself. That one felt closer.
You and the man look at each other, silently probing for answers.
You look at him. His face looses all color, and his jaw goes slack. Pure, unfiltered terror frames is face. Without knowing why, you follow his gaze as he looks back at the Golden Gate. When you do, you see the stuff that nightmares are made of.
Your eyes try to take in a being so massive that its head towers over the tallest points of the majestic old bridge. It is like something out of an old Japanese monster movie. Kaiju. The word springs unbidden from a place in your brain where fairytales are kept. This thing (you would later find out that it was code-named Trespasser) was humanoid, reptilian and prehistoric, all at the same time. Its jagged maw was open, fangs rimmed by a bright yellow light that burned from deep inside the monster's belly.
Your mind reels, you can barely breath. An oppressive fear roots you in place. Vaguely, screaming filters into your mental fog. Pandemonium swirls around you as other travelers notice this otherworldly avatar of destruction. Strangely, no one flees. The creature surges toward the bridge where cars are locked in their final gridlock. Down there, people are running. There is nowhere for them to flee.
Trespasser's mass edges up to the bridge. The monument to man's achievement groans in protest. You feel the vibration deep in your soul. The bridge twists, metal screaming. Without any visible effort, the Kaiju walks right through it. Thousands of people and vehicles fall into the San Francisco Bay's eternal embrace. In the blink of an eye, their souls are lost to the sea.
Trespasser roars. It is a sound so loud and powerful that it threatens to sear your mind. Car windows shatter and sirens wail. You are snapped out of your trance. You rush back to your car, but with all the people running, driving is impossible. So, like everyone else, you run as fast and as far away from the Bay as you can. The sounds of Trespasser's thrashing and the quake of his movements, chasing you away from the city like some invisible phantom. You never look back.
The Kaiju War has begun.
