Kaiju Preservation Society(39)

I tried to get up, but couldn’t see to look where to run. The creatures were swarming around me now, making it hard to find a place to put my hand to prop myself up. I began to hyperventilate. I was definitely going to be dying now.

Someone reached down and yanked me up off the jungle floor, and started grabbing the creatures off of me and hurling them away. It was Tagaq, obviously.

“Hold still,” she said, snatching the creatures and hurling them away as if they were nothing. Most of the creatures ran off at this point; a few tried a second attack, launching at me. Tagaq kicked away most of them and caught one mid-leap, punching it in the air, which I would have thought very cool, were I not presently wetting myself, and had she not been the one who had put me out there to be attacked in the first place.

In a few minutes, we were all alone, standing on the jungle floor.

“You are fine,” Tagaq said to me.

I screamed at her.

“You are fine,” she repeated. She poked my suit. “Quilted carbon fiber. They would have poked at it for years and never gotten through it.”

“You could have told me that!”

“I could have,” she agreed. “But I needed you to feel this in your heart. What you’re feeling now.”

I was about to yell at her again, but stopped. “Okay, one, fuck you,” I said. “This is a super-shitty way to do this.” Tagaq said nothing to this, waiting. “Two, fuck you, you’re right, I get it now.”

“Good,” Tagaq said. “Because here is another thing. The tree crabs that attacked you just now are the least dangerous things you’re going to find here on the jungle floor. Much worse will be things that feed on the tree crabs, of which there are many. Much worse than them are the things that feed on them. And worst of all are the kaiju parasites.”

“Not the kaiju?”

Tagaq shook her head. “We are beneath their consideration. Their parasites, however, are very interested in us.”

I started to ask something and stopped. I looked at Tagaq and looked around. “Why aren’t we being attacked?”

Tagaq pulled something out of the pocket of her jumpsuit and showed it to me. “Ultrasonic,” she said. “The tree crabs hate it.”

“And the things that eat the tree crabs? And the things that eat them?”

“We have other things for them. I’ll show you.” Tagaq looked around. “I know you’ve been told to chaperone tourists. They always want to see the jungle up close. They want to feel they’ve seen the true world here. If we showed them the true world here, they would all be dead. And do you know why?”

“Because they don’t feel it in their hearts,” I said.

“And we don’t have the time to make them feel it.” Tagaq motioned to where we are. “So, we bring them here, to this spot, and we lie to them that this is the true face of this world. They should be glad we do it, and that we make them believe it.” She pointed to me. “But don’t you believe it. Ever. Because you’ll walk other places in this world. And it will take you before you can scream. Understand?”

“Yes,” I said, meaning it.

“How are you?”

“Honestly? I’m pretty sure I pissed myself.”

Tagaq nodded. “Let’s go back and get you out of this and changed, and we’ll start again.” We started walking back to the elevator.

“Did you do this?” I asked her as we walked. “The first time you were on the jungle floor.”

“I did.”

“How did you do?”

She looked at me. “I shit myself running.”

“That … makes me feel better.”

She grunted. “It’s the ones who don’t you have to worry about.”





CHAPTER

14




“Exciting day in maternal kaiju observation,” Aparna said to the group as she entered the cottage after her shift in the lab. She was the last of us to be done with her work for the day; we were waiting on her to go to dinner.

“So exciting you’re making us late for food?” I asked. I was on my second day of ground training with Riddu Tagaq, so I was very ready to eat.

“You tell me.” Aparna opened up her laptop, which had been in sleep mode; it woke up and displayed the last thing that had been on her screen, which was a picture of Bella from on high, care of the aerostat stationed above her. We all peered at the photo.

“Bella shit herself,” Niamh said, after a second.

“She did not,” Aparna replied, annoyed.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Because Niamh is not wrong. That looks like shit to me.”

“Bird shit specifically,” Kahurangi said. “Like the most mighty seagull shit that has ever been taken.”

“‘The Mighty Seagull Shits’ is a good band name,” I observed.

“It is not,” Aparna said. “And it’s not shit. Bella just laid her eggs.”

“By shitting herself,” Niamh said. “Not how I would do it, but okay.”

Aparna made an exasperated noise. “It’s not shit, okay? It’s kaiju natal jelly. It’s a nutrient-dense medium for her fertilized eggs, and it’s fascinating.” She pointed to the spatter that was allegedly not the largest seagull dump ever taken. “That jelly contains everything the embryos developing in it need to survive their development inside their ovum. There’s a transfer of nutrients and waste. It’s almost placental. But that’s not all it does.”