Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters by James Swallow, David Annandale, James Lovegrove, Larry Correia, Peter Clines, C.L Werner, Timothy W. Long, J.C. Koch, Natania Barron Read Free Book Online Page B

the masses, those who stamp the checks of Hollywood execs with their ten dollar tickets and extra-large, extra-buttered tubs of popcorn, they love beauty with a slight flaw. This makes the beauty attainable. This makes it something they can strive both for and towards. This is my in. This is why I’m going to prove every piece of shit I know wrong, show them that in the twenty-first century, the bastard of an ocean-wide coupling can stroll down Sunset Boulevard, the only inconvenience being too many paparazzi trying to get all up in my shit.
    ~
    There’s this girl. There’s always a girl. She’s technically my cousin, but Christ, there’s not too many of us, so hold off on your judgment because a hole’s a hole. Okay, I was trying to sound tough there. Gema isn’t just a hole, far from it; the furthest thing from it. She’s perfection. Like real perfection, not me with my loveable flaws, but beautiful in every conceivable way, her father, a great white that would make Jaws ashamed of his manhood, and her mother, my aunt, both with that sleek reptilian style of amazing. Gema’s the real deal. She’s pure beauty, but that’s not all it is with this girl. Shit no it isn’t. She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s like a guy if a guy wasn’t a dick but just chill, all about binge eating and toying with submarines. I’m not one to toss around the L word , but damn, it’s close with this girl.
    Which made it all the more heartbreaking when I dropped by the underground volcano where she hangs out, and heard this soft moaning (maybe it wasn’t soft ). My first thought was of her safety, her wellbeing, her probably being captured and tortured, her needing my help. I wiggled my way through the volcanic rocks. That’s when I saw my sweet Gema reclined against the seabed. Diablo (prick of a Kaiju, cold water type off the coast of Greenland, all about lying low and the procreation of our race) was tucked between her legs giving her fake chow.
    I screamed.
    How could I not?
    Gema chased after me. She kept calling my name, Sweetgrass, Sweetgrass , and I let myself believe these were the calls of the apologetic, of the recently-epiphany-experienced, ready to beg for forgiveness and understanding.
    I finally slowed because she’s faster than me anyway.
    “What the hell were you doing?” she asked.
    “Heard something, thought you were in trouble.”
    Gema’s got these eyelashes long as tarpon, and when they flutter, small white water ripples. She was doing that as she tilted her head at me. She looked a little sorry, but more pitying.
    “He’s… different ,” she said.
    “I’m different.”
    I watched Gema’s gaze drop to my stupid gelatin ass and the flaccid tentacles. She smiled the smile of a teacher returning the apple from her grade school student, telling him it was never going to happen.
    “He’s special, and I’m getting older, like my eggs aren’t going to stay fresh forever, and—”
    “I thought we were—”
    “Friends.”
    At that moment, I knew Gema was speaking to me in code, as most girls do. She wasn’t saying I’m in love with that fascist Diablo, I love it when he’s downstairs with his snake-like tongue, and it’s never going to happen between us. Not at all. She was saying I need to see more. I need you to show me that you’re capable of greatness .
    So yeah, that happened. That’s my backstory. That’s why I decided to explore the sewers underneath Hollywood. To get ripped on pissed out steroids. To become bigger than Diablo, both in stature and reputation; bigger than the overhyped Godzilla, him having it wrong with destruction; bigger than Jesus as I soak in a world’s love, me becoming special .
    ~
    I’m not retarded. I know monster movies—hell, any movie where something cool happens—is done with computers. But that doesn’t mean it’s better. No, that means CGI is the only tool available to producers, other than horrible puppets of Japanese past. We’re hypothetical to