Running

MARTIN LIVINGS

Perth-based writer Martin Livings has had over thirty short stories published in such magazines as Eidolon, Aurealis, Borderlands, Fables and Reflections, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Shadowed Realms, and anthologies such as AustrAlien Absurdities, Agog!, Daikaiju! Giant Monster Stories, Robots and Time and Outcast. His work has been nominated for both the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, and his first novel, Carnies, is due to be published by Lothian Books in June, 2006.

About ‘Running’, the author writes: “This story was written specifically for the Daikaiju! anthology, and was inspired by the landscapes of Mauritius, a perfect setting for a giant monster story. I thought that most stories of this nature would probably involve fear of the creatures, and I wanted to do something a little different, show a kind of detached fascination and respect for them, the way surfers treat giant waves or climbers mountains.”

* * * *

T

he three of us sit on the beach, keeping a keen watch over the Indian Ocean; the waters are grey, of course, reflecting the grey skies above. I’ve seen photos of Mauritius before, with clear azure skies and crystalline oceans, the sand a brilliant white beneath a blazing sun, but those days aren’t as common as the advertising would lead you to believe, even when there isn’t a major storm brewing off the coast. The gusting winds and occasional smatterings of rain are deceptively subtle reminders that Tropical Cyclone Katrina is on its way, sweeping in low across the ocean, a wall of foul weather rising from the sea to the clouds. But it isn’t the cyclone we’re waiting for, watching for, rather something which is travelling with it, behind it, inside it. Something far more destructive, and far more attractive.

I glance over to my left, where Belinda sits with her long legs stretched out on the pale sand. She’s a statuesque woman in her mid-thirties or so, judging by her background at least. We must look a little like reflections in a funhouse mirror; her hair is cropped short the same as mine, and we’re dressed in similar clothes - black motorcycle leathers with boots and gauntlets. Mine are brand new though, virgin-smooth, untested, while hers show signs of previous use, previous runs: patches repairing tears, edges frayed, the leather as rough as sun-aged skin. I know what to wear from reading about it, seeing videos; she’s simply wearing what she’s always worn. That thought alone makes me feel very humble.

I look away from Belinda, to my right. Ryuichi is there, sitting cross-legged, eyes closed, wearing only a tank top and shorts, his feet dirty and bare. He looks very old to my eyes, though I know he’s only in his sixties; his bare limbs are wrinkled and sunken, but wiry and muscled beneath the sagging skin. His worn face is placid; he barely seems to be breathing, as if meditating. I wonder if he’s asleep. Sitting here next to Ryuichi makes me feel like a baby in the presence of a god; he’s a genuine legend in the field, arguably the first runner, and easily the oldest still participating. When I’d heard he was heading here, I knew I had to come as well. It was probably the only chance I’d have to meet the great man. If the next run didn’t kill him, old age eventually would.

As if he feels my gaze, he opens an eye and looks at me. A smile flitters across his lips like a blown leaf. I blush and looked away, further to my right, behind us. There’s a grassy area back there, set up with umbrellas and chairs for those who simply wanted to enjoy the views of the ocean without getting their feet sandy, lined with palm trees that are swaying quite violently in the growing wind. A Japanese film crew is there, frantically setting up cameras and barking incomprehensible orders to one another. They are understandably excited, of course. In their own way, they’re as eager as we are, perhaps even more so. Beyond them, framed against the dramatic green-coated mountains that jut out at random points throughout the island, the seaside town of Flic en Flac is hunkered down, low and spread out, almost as if it knows what’s coming. Its inhabitants certainly do; most have fled into the ocean in rough fishing vessels, or travelled by any means available into the centre of the island, hoping to avoid the worst of the damage. And not from the cyclone; they’d withstood hundreds of those over the years. No, they’re running from something else entirely.

Running from, running to, running with. One way or another, we all run, sooner or later.

I’d been incredibly lucky to get a flight here earlier in the day, an eight-hour stint from Melbourne, arriving at Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport just shy of noon. The plane had been virtually empty, only the flight staff and myself. It was the first time I’d ever flown, and in other circumstances I might have enjoyed the experience. But I never even looked out of my window, instead using the hours of bumpy flight to re-read everything I’d brought with me in my carry-on luggage, the books that covered sixty-odd years of history, theory and practice. I didn’t even notice that we’d landed; the stewardess had to call me three times before I looked up from my studies. We’d disembarked quickly, heading into the airport, were whisked through customs, then I’d walked calmly through the doors that open into the airport proper, into chaos. Hundreds of people trying desperately to get seats on flights out of the country, screaming children, natives shouting in French and Creole, angry and frightened. I’d never seen anything like it. Luckily Belinda had been there to meet me, holding a sign high over her head with my name on it. She’d freed me from the jostling crowd, and taken me to the deserted town, the quiet beach. To the man who would lead us in our run.

“How long?” Belinda asks, her voice barely louder than the wind around us. I turn to her in reflex, ready to answer that I don’t know, but realize a moment later that she isn’t addressing me, of course she isn’t. Why would she? How could I possibly know?

“Soon,” Ryuichi replies calmly.

“Can you see it?” I ask, nerves making my voice crack a little. “Where?”

The old man smiles slightly. “Right there,” he says, pointing to the shore, not twenty metres from our feet.

I look, but don’t see anything, just water licking the sand like a cat drinking. I hear Belinda take a surprised breath, so I know she’s figured it out. I feel stupid and young. Again.

“The tide,” she whispers, and I see it. The waters are receding visibly, pulling away from the beach, leaving seaweed and tiny panicked sand crabs exposed to the open air. I see this happening, and in my mind I picture the implications, extending into the ocean, towards the horizon. A dip here means that there’s a bulge out there somewhere, a bulge that’s headed our way at a rate of knots. The thought both thrills and terrifies me.

Soon, Ryuichi had said, and he knows about these things. Soon, then. The waiting is nearly over. It’s almost time to run.

I get to my feet and stretch, my leathers cracking along with my joints, both stiff from disuse. Belinda does the same, almost a foot taller than me. She catches my eye and winks, grinning.

“Ready, kid?”

I nod, trying to smile back, though my guts are telling me forcefully that I’m not ready, not by a long shot. I need more time. Minutes, hours, days. Years. I won’t admit it though, not in this company. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I’m not going to let it escape me, no matter how scared I might be. I’ve prepared as well as I possibly can, given the circumstances; I’ve worked out religiously for years to increase my fitness to its optimum, studied hundreds of videos and written accounts of previous runs, even learnt to surf to get a feel for the general dynamics, though nothing can really simulate the real thing with any degree of accuracy. If I’m not ready now, I never will be. I nod again, more forcefully this time, mainly to myself.

Belinda speaks again to Ryuichi, who’s limberly getting to his feet, showing no sign of discomfort or difficulty. I hope I’ll be as fit as he is when I’m his age. Hell, I wish I was that fit now. “Where should we start?” she asks, almost reverently.

The old man thinks for a moment, rubbing his stubbled chin with his fingers. Then he turns and points behind us, past the picnic area where the film crew are still frenetically preparing their equipment, active and noisy as a bag of popcorn in a microwave. “On the street, back there. By the shops.” He seems to be visualizing it in his head, seeing the patterns of possibility, imagining the unimaginable. “Yes, right there should be fine. Yes.” His Japanese accent is faint, eroded by decades of globetrotting, but still there. I guess you never really lose your heritage, even if you lose pretty much everything else.

Belinda nods. “Okay, let’s do it.”

We walk up the beach, Belinda and I leaving deep imprints of our boots in the sands, Ryuichi barely leaving a trace of his passing. As we reach the grass, Ryuichi veers away from us for a moment, crossing to the film crew. They all fall silent as he approaches them, looking at him with a peculiar mixture of pity and awe. Mainly awe, I like to think. He says a few words softly in Japanese, and the crew members look out towards the ocean suddenly. Ryuichi turns away from them, and the film crew’s chaotic bustle returns and redoubles, as they grab their equipment and begin to retreat with an air of relaxed panic. I look out to the ocean as well; it’s a reflex, I can’t stop myself, any more than I could stop myself from flinching if someone faked a punch at my nose.

Is part of the horizon raised now? I can’t tell, not really, but I suspect it is. The other half of the wave is approaching, the peak that matches the dip that’s pulling the ocean back behind us. I turn away, concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. Focus on the moment, that’s the advice Ryuichi himself had written in his book, Life on the Run, a combination autobiography and instruction manual. I’ve read it at least a dozen times. I’m always amazed by how he could talk about his life with such candour, especially about his childhood, about the loss of his family and his first run. The first run.

“There,” Belinda says, pointing back, excitement making her voice tremble a little. “Here it comes.”

I look back over my shoulder again and look at the ocean. Yes, it’s definitely there, cresting the waves. My stomach lurches at the sight of it, even though I’d already seen it in news reports as helicopters followed its path through the shallower waters a few days earlier. It’s faint and blurred, seen through a curtain of distant rain, but it’s there alright. Somehow the sight of it makes it abruptly real, makes everything real. My heart pounds so hard it hurts, and the breath drives out of me like I’ve been sucker-punched in the stomach.

They say that everything looks smaller on television, somehow, even with other objects to offer perspective. I’ve never paid much attention to that until now. The thing is huge, rising from the waters, still only visible from its massive shoulders up. Even through the distant rains offshore, I can see the long, curved spines that run along the length of its head, from its snout up its face and beyond, looking incongruously like a mohawk haircut. Its eyes are shaded by a heavy brow, but I can make out a faint red glow there, like a campfire deep in a cave. Its mouth is closed for the moment, a fact for which I’m profoundly grateful. Its neck is almost nonexistent, its head joining straight up to a barrel chest, only a little of which is visible yet. Its skin is rough, covered with oddly shaped scales that fit together like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Each one must be the size of a car, and I can already see dozens, hundreds of them. At the point where it emerges from the sea, the water is bubbling and roiling like an overexcited Jacuzzi. It must be doing forty, fifty nautical miles an hour, pushing up massive amounts of water as it goes. Pushing it towards us.

I’m frozen in my tracks, a pillar of salt in the shape of a man who foolishly looked back.

Belinda’s gloved hand touches my shoulder. “C’mon!” she hisses, and I’m restored to life in a heartbeat, my limbs suddenly obeying my commands again. I turn away from the ocean once more, concentrate on moving. Belinda and Ryuichi are still walking calmly, and I attempt to do the same. Dead man walking, I find myself thinking, imagining myself on death row in prison, heading for my own execution. But it’s not that at all. Not dead man walking, Live man running.

I watch Ryuichi’s back, remembering the story in his book about his experience in Nagasaki. It was a matter of days after America had dropped the second atomic bomb on the city, setting a tiny sun ablaze over its streets, levelling it in a matter of moments. Some of his family had lived there, an uncle and aunt, and his parents had gone looking for them amongst the rubble, blissfully ignorant of the dangers of radiation. They’d brought their child with them, only three years old, holding his hand tightly and trying not to let him see the twisted figures amongst the debris, arms curled by the intense heat, fists raised. The pugilist stance, it was called, a classic indicator of death by burning. Ryuichi had broken free of his parents and went to play, the ruined landscape a gigantic playground in his three-year-old eyes.

Then it had appeared, the first one seen in modern history. Until that day, we’d believed them to be legends, dragons and wyrms of myth. Figments of superstitious imaginations, primitive fears manifesting in exaggerated tales of giants beasts. We’d been comfortable in our modern, clinical, rational world. Safe from monsters.

Until that day, when the first daikaiju appeared, a hundred metres tall, crashing through what was left of Nagasaki, flattening what remained. It resembled a gigantic lizard raised on its hind legs, though its face was more ape-like in shape, and it had jagged plates lining its back like a stegosaurus. Later on, they would give it a name that became legend, a combination of the Japanese words for ‘gorilla’ and ‘whale’, in an effort to describe something that was, in essence, indescribable. But on that day, in Nagasaki, nobody thought about what it was, or what to call it. They were too busy. Busy running. Busy dying.

Ryuichi saw his parents crushed beneath one enormous foot, mercifully vanishing into its shadow an instant before the impact. It was headed towards him, as unmindful of the child as we are of the insects we crush as we walk here and there. Moving with deceptive slowness, each step like walking through water, but crossing twenty or thirty metres each time. It approached like an avalanche, like a tidal wave.

The boy turned and ran.

* * * *

We step off the grassed area, the hard leather soles of my boots clumping on the rough black bitumen. The road here is uneven and crude, but better than many of the roads we’d driven on earlier in the day to get here. One had been barely more than gravel, a long stretch of straight but hilly road, blocked off at one end with a gate that would have been manned any other day. Today it had been deserted, and we’d opened the gate ourselves, granted ourselves access.

On this day, the island of Mauritius virtually belongs to us. At least for the moment. But in a few minutes, I suspect that ownership will be transferred to the gargantuan creature ploughing towards us through the Indian Ocean. Another glimpse over my shoulder reveals more details as it grows nearer; its shoulders are clear of the waters now, and instead of arms there are maybe half a dozen enormous tentacles on each side, whipping around in slow motion. They must be as long as the creature is high, at least a hundred metres, possibly more. And it continues to rise from the sea, as it pushes a wall of water in our direction. I hope Ryuichi has calculated this correctly; otherwise our run could be over before it’s even begun.

After the first appearance of the daikaiju at Nagasaki, encounters grew more and more common. At first only one would appear at a time, then two or three, coming together as if drawn to one another, battling amongst the cities and towns of men. The devastation was staggering; thousands killed in a matter of minutes, then they would retreat once more, into the mountains and valleys, oceans and lakes, and not be seen again. Expeditions were sent after them, armed with everything from prayers to nukes, but there was no trace of them. They appeared when they chose, and disappeared just as readily. And on those occasions when we had the chance to organize a military response while they were still there, we found that weapons had little or no effect on them, apart from enraging them even further. Slowly but surely, mankind began to adapt: setting up early detection systems, preparing evacuation plans and drills, organizing shelters. Humans are pretty flexible, really. We just learned to run. Mostly away, but not entirely. To begin with, a few film studios realized the amazing potential in these giant monsters, and risked life and limb to capture their rampages on celluloid. These daikaiju films found instant popularity in their home country of Japan, and over the decades they gained a cult following overseas as well. It was the thrill of the danger, without the actual danger accompanying it.

But for some, that wasn’t enough. Some wanted the real thing.

We walk a little while longer, passing a few touristy shops on either side of us, until we reach an intersection. Here the road joins a larger road, on one corner of which is a decent-sized grocery store, not dissimilar to the ones back home, apart from the unfamiliar name, ‘Cora’. Beyond this road, the area becomes more residential, ramshackle houses mingling with newer tourist villas. A lot of the older buildings look like they’ve been added to repeatedly over the years, mixing styles and materials, never quite finished. I read once that the native Mauritians often extended their houses piecemeal as the money was available, resulting in an architectural style I’d categorize as ‘hodgepodge’. Here, at this intersection, Ryuichi stops.

He nods. “This will do.” He looks back over his shoulder, and I do the same. The film crew has vanished, presumably retreating to a safe distance, safer than ours at any rate. All I can see is the beach, and the ocean, and the monster. It’s almost clear of the water now, its hindquarters splitting into four enormous legs, like roman columns covered in barnacles, and I realize that it looks a little like a centaur at this point. I can hear its passage, a dull roar like an airplane heard from a distance, and something else below that - a deep hum that I can’t identify. The wind is picking up, but I don’t think it’s the cyclone yet, just the rush of air that the creature is pushing in front of itself.

Then the wave at its feet hits the beach and explodes, spraying water high into the air, and for a moment I can’t see it anymore. My heart feels like it’s trying to smash its way through my ribs, as the deep guttural crashing of water fills my ears. I’m certain we’re going to be engulfed, swept away by the agitated sea, crushed against the rough walls of some Mauritian house before getting sucked back across the grass and sand and towed out to sea, pulled underwater to a tropical ocean grave. I can see it in my mind, clear as a photograph, clear as a premonition.

It doesn’t happen, of course. The wave gurgles across the grassed area, foaming like detergent, and then washes weakly around our feet. It barely passes our ankles. I look over at Belinda, recognize a hint of the same fear that I’d just experienced, though she covers it up with a thin, tight smile. Ryuichi, on the other hand, looks as relaxed as a yogi.

“Get ready,” he murmurs.

Then there is the first tremor, a minor earthquake, and I know without looking that the creature has reached the land. The sand on the beach is muffling its massive footfalls for the moment, but that won’t last long. Soon it will hit solid earth, not that far behind us. Soon we’ll start to run. My first run. I’ve dreamt of this almost my entire life, and now that it’s actually happening, I’m having trouble believing it’s real.

The road beneath my feet lurches, almost tipping me over, and I yelp once, surprised. It’s real alright. “Be ready!” Ryuichi calls, bending his knees and touching his spread fingers against the rough bitumen. I do likewise, though it’s harder to bend in these damn leather pants. I’m starting to think Ryuichi had the right idea. After all, if something goes wrong, I might as well be naked for all the protection these leathers will offer me. I close my eyes, feeling the vibrations in the street beneath me, trying to see what is happening in my mind. See the centaurine behemoth galloping towards me, each step covering hundreds of feet, each footstep crashing into the ground, sending plumes of dust into the air, and pushing dirt forward, forward, until…

“Now!” Ryuichi cries, but I’m already moving, as the ground beneath me rises sharply. It feels like being in an elevator, my weight suddenly increasing. I spring up and begin to run.

We all run, one way or another.

Ryuichi was the first. In his late teens, a little younger than I am, he travelled to the site of a daikaiju encounter. It was an enormous pig, but with a mane like a lion and tusks the size of city buses, and it was ravaging a small city in the south of Japan. He sought it out, while everyone else was fleeing. He remembered the sensations as a small child, his experiences then, and somewhere inside those terrifying memories he found something wonderful. Watching footage of subsequent monster attacks over the years that followed, he barely saw the creatures themselves, majestic and huge, towering above the buildings like gods. No, what he saw was the ground that supported them, and what it did beneath their weight, their power. How it reacted. How it flowed.

That day, that young man did the unthinkable, the unbelievable. And since then, a small group of crazed enthusiasts have followed, quite literally, in his footsteps, seeking adventure or adrenalin or even some kind of enlightenment at the pounding feet of these monsters. Most everyone else ran away from them, and the maniacal film crews ran to them. But we don’t run away, or run to.

We run with them.

This is the most bizarre feeling I’ve ever experienced, a surreal dislocation. It’s a little like riding an escalator, being pushed upwards and forwards, but the speed of the journey varies wildly. It’s less smooth than surfing, but the sensation isn’t completely dissimilar to that nonetheless. As I run, the road begins to fracture and break beneath my feet, pulling off in different directions. I don’t have time to think; I step hurriedly from the chunk of bitumen I’m riding onto another in front of me, then another, each one falling by the wayside as I pass it. Somewhere behind me, I can hear the creature, its breath hot and wet on the back of my neck like a tropical breeze. Droplets of water splatter on my shoulders, and I hope it’s the cyclone catching up with us, rather than monster slobber. That would be kind of disgusting.

I catch sight of Belinda on my left. She’s running like Hermes himself, winged heels masked by knee-high leather boots. I’m momentarily hypnotised by the fluidity of her run, moving from platelet to platelet like a gymnast, never pausing, never faltering. Never stopping. When you’re running, as the old saying goes, he who hesitates is lost. I can’t see Ryuichi; I don’t know whether he’s behind or in front of us. I hope he’s okay.

The piece of road I’m riding lurches suddenly to one side, and my balance begins to falter. A burst of cold fear splashes up my back, and I react without thinking, quickly shifting my weight and leaping forward, leaving the crumbling bitumen behind me. I hear it collapse, crashing into a thousand pieces of rubble, and I realize how close I was to joining it. I have to concentrate, stay focused. Live man running, or dead man falling. It’s up to me and God to decide which one I am. And the monster, of course.

To my right, I can see the town begin to fade, or what’s left of it at any rate. Flic en Flac has been shaken, flipped upwards on a wave of rock, and then dropped back down in its wake. What remains looks more like a rubbish dump than a seaside tourist town, wreckage and debris spread surprisingly evenly across the ground. Beyond the town, we begin to enter more rural surroundings, huge expanses of sugarcane stretching for miles ahead of us. I hope that the creature sticks to the roads, where the solid ground will help us keep our footing, stay ahead of it, like riding a stormfront. But I know I can’t rely on that. I’ve seen footage of runners getting caught in a tidal wave of soft earth, feet stuck in the sucking mud, dragging like ploughs, until they’re finally pulled beneath the monster’s feet and crushed into the dirt, just messy smears left in its wake. This is an extreme sport, often a death sport. But I feel I have to do it anyway, despite the risks. You’re never as alive as when you’re close to death.

The rock I’m running on begins to list to one side, the left, and I realize that the creature is turning slightly. I don’t need to see it to know this; I can picture the shockwave of earth, imagine its alignment. I know that the front of the wave will always angle away from the direction it’s moving, whilst it veers off to the sides the further around you go. I’m still travelling forward, but I’m leaning left, so my position on the wave is too far to the left of the daikaiju’s path. I’ll have to sidestep in order to continue running. Of course, I could always allow myself to slip off the wave on this side, ride the ever-decreasing ripples of rock back down to ground level, and end the run here and now. It’s a tricky manoeuvre, but hardly impossible.

Ah, the hell with that. I didn’t wait this long and come this far to wimp out now.

I start stepping across, my legs pumping, my breath burning my lungs. I’m starting to tire, I have to admit, and it’s only been a matter of minutes. Running is incredibly demanding both physically and mentally, and it’s starting to take its toll. I ignore the fatigue though, ignore the pain, and continue to run, cutting across the creature’s path. This is where it could go horribly wrong; a miscalculation, a misstep, and I could end up beneath the feet of the beast, monster toe-jam. I can see it to my right now, from the corner of my eye, its breath steaming in the air around its maw, tentacles flailing like an underwater anemone. Its legs swinging back and forth, so slowly, so deadly. The ground is rising higher and higher beneath my feet the closer I get to it. Alarm bells ring in my head.

Turn.

Turn.

Turn!

I turn left and redouble my efforts, trying to get some distance between myself and the monster. My legs are steel springs, my arms pistons in a perfect engine, my brain a supercomputer. I focus utterly on what’s in front of me, striding from rock to rock. I am a legend, a superman, a godling. Invulnerable. Invincible.

A noise to my left catches my attention. I glance across and see Belinda stumble, crying out as she rolls from her platform, head-sized chunks of rock and soil tumbling with her as she vanishes, her yelps of pain cut off suddenly. I watch the spot for a moment longer, horrified. Frozen.

I’m just a man. Barely more than a boy. Flesh and blood, same as Belinda. Less. Vulnerable.

I’m going to die here.

“Go!” a voice behind me screams, and without thinking I obey. My legs work independently, pushing me forward, and after a few stumbling staccato seconds I find my rhythm again. The ground underneath my feet is softening, long broken stalks of sugarcane whipping past me like slalom flags, and I have to dodge left and right to avoid being hit in the face. But it’s still solid enough to support my weight, thank heaven.

“Thought we lost you for a second there,” the voice calls out again, and I glance to my right. Ryuichi is there, further back, closer to the creature, but running almost casually, not a worry in the world. I can’t understand his attitude to the monster at his heels, despite reading his memoirs. If my family had been killed by a monster, I’d hate them, fear them, keep the hell away from them. Instead, Ryuichi seeks them out, not to try to hurt or kill them, but to share an experience with them. To run with them. It makes no sense to me.

“Belinda?” I call back to him, legs moving automatically, boots slapping the mud beneath them fast and loud enough to sound like a drum beat, or a heart beat. Life signs.

He nods in an exaggerated fashion, almost theatrically. “She’ll be fine,” he yells, barely audible over the rumble and roar of the beast’s rough progress.

I relax a little, relieved both for her and for myself by proxy. I’ve seen videos of runners doing what she’d done; it’s similar to a surfer’s ignominious exit from a particularly large wave, painful and dangerous but not often fatal. She’ll be battered and bruised, perhaps even a little broken, but she’ll live. I hope that’s the truth, at any rate. We believe what we need to believe, in order to keep going.

The wind whistles through my buzz-cut hair, my eyes watering a little. I’m keeping a close eye on the ground just in front of my feet now, stepping left and right, back and forward, depending on where the heaving earth carries me. And always I’m acutely aware of the massive presence behind me driving me on, and the smaller one to my side sharing the experience. I wonder for the thousandth time why Ryuichi does this. In his book, he spoke of his reasons, but they were masked by rhetorical questions, so there were no easy answers. The one that’s always puzzled me was simple - six ordinary words – but the old Japanese man seemed to find something more in them, a philosophy that I didn’t understand.

His question was, Why are there no daikaiju fossils?

Ryuichi is waving to me, grinning. I wave back with a smile. He continues to wave, more animatedly than before, and with sudden dread I realize that he’s not smiling, he’s grimacing. And he’s not waving, he’s gesturing. Gesturing ahead at something. I raise my eyes from the undulating soil at my feet, knowing it is dangerous to do so, but suspecting that it would be even more dangerous not to.

I’m right. Worse luck.

We’re headed directly for a mountain. Mauritian mountains aren’t like the gentle slopes back home, where you often barely notice the incline as you climb. No, they are acute lumps of stone, easily taller than they are wide, jutting defiantly at the sky. The one in front of us looks suspiciously like a pudgy finger carved in rock, covered by a thick blanket of dark green vegetation. It must be four or five hundred metres high, dwarfing even the behemoth at our heels. For a moment I’m caught in its majesty, its beauty, its grandeur. Then I snap out of it, and see it for what it really is.

A wall. A huge stone wall. And we’re hurtling towards it.

I look left and right, hoping for a way off the earthwave before we hit, but both Ryuichi and I have been too skilful in our placement; we’re right at the tip of the arrowhead, which is aimed directly for the centre of the mountain. Even if we skipped to the sides, we’d still be smashed against it. I look to Ryuichi for some kind of comfort, some hope, but his posture doesn’t offer much of either. He’s almost back-pedalling, as close to panic as I’ve ever seen him, in all the years of watching the movies of him running. Between us, we’ve had a deadly combination of inexperience and overconfidence. He who hesitates is lost, they say, but they also say look before you leap. And pride cometh before the fall.

I look back over my shoulder, fear falling away from me as if caught in the slipstream. The creature continues to advance, not slowing at all, perhaps not even noticing the mountain. I still can’t see its eyes, just the dull red glow from beneath its brow, but I suspect that even if I could, I’d see nothing there, no intelligence, no will. Looking at it this close, it’s somehow less monstrous, less bestial than from afar, or on a television screen for that matter, stripped of dramatic music and editing.

…no fossils…

Turning back, I see Ryuichi signalling me again. I’m not certain what he’s trying to tell me, so rather than attempting to interpret his motions, I pay attention to his actions. He’s allowing himself to fall back, closer to the creature, and this time he appears to be doing it on purpose. I blink a few times, trying to both clear my eyes of tears and to comprehend what he’s doing.

Then the penny drops. The closer we are to the creature’s feet, the more force will be behind us when it hits the mountain. Too far forward and we’ll be dashed against the rock. Too far back and we’ll be caught between it and the monster. But if we get it just right…

Goldilocks never played for such high stakes.

I slow the pace of my run, feeling the earth under my boots start to jerk and wobble more violently as I do so. We’re closer to this moving epicentre now, and the Brownian motion of the ground becomes more pronounced and chaotic.

I just hope we have time before…

The outskirts of the wave ahead of us crash into the mountain, sending a wall of dirt into the sky. Like a wave breaking on rocks, the soil is scattered into a million directions, raining down on us in large sodden clumps. I have to dodge desperately in order to keep my footing on the ground, which is starting to tilt upwards, rising ominously. I look over at Ryuichi one last time. He gives me a thumbs up signal. I return it, though I wish I were as confident as he is. I hear the monster behind us bellow, just once, as if thwarted by this gigantic rocky finger in its way. I can sympathise.

Then we hit, and I’m flying.

At first the ground is still beneath my feet, pressing them hard as it accelerates into the sky carrying me along with it, rising on a column of soil and sugarcane. Then it falls away, and I’m running in thin air. The gap between me and my footing widens, ten metres, twenty, fifty. In front of me, the vegetation cloaking the mountain speeds past my eyes. It’s impossible to judge how close I am to it. Too close, I’d wager. Any moment now, it’ll slap me hard in the face, and then I’ll be scraped along it like an insect hitting a sloped windscreen, leaving a long smear behind me as I’m sanded into oblivion on the rough shrubs.

Suddenly, the mountain is gone, and all I can see is grey cloudy sky, and distant vistas of fields and roads below me. I realize I was right about how useless my leathers really are.

My stomach turns over, and I realize I’ve stopped ascending, gravity finally taking a firm grip on my ankles. And slowly, almost reluctantly, I begin to free fall. I don’t even think to scream; the sensation is both exhilarating and terrifying, and between the two emotions I’m struck completely dumb. My muscles have gone dead, arms and legs flapping in the wind like a paper doll’s. I look down and see the mountain again, the finger pointing up at me. Now it doesn’t look defiant. It looks accusing. You, it’s saying, you human, you proud, stupid human. This is what happens. Icarus flies too high, Pandora opens the box. Now reap what you have sown.

Then there’s an impact, a tumbling, and everything goes green, then grey, then black.

I’m not certain how long I’m out. It can’t be long, maybe a few seconds. Still, for a short time I’m floating in the dark, warm and safe and numb. It’s bliss. Then there’s water splashing on my face, and I come to. I’m sprawled in the bushes on my back, bent in an uncomfortable position, a warm barrage of huge raindrops splattering on my forehead and cheeks, running into my nose and mouth, choking me a little. I try to sit up, but a sharp pain in my back persuades me to stay put for the moment. Instead, I raise my head and look down at myself.

It’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been, I have to admit. My leathers are looking torn and tattered, and there’s a reasonable amount of blood coming from a dozen or so minor wounds that I can make out, but I seem to be pretty intact, no obviously broken bones. I turn my head painfully to the side, and see that the shrubs I’ve landed on cushioned my fall quite effectively. All in all, it could have gone much worse for me. I’m alive.

“Ryuichi,” I croak, then again, louder this time. “Ryuichi?”

There’s no answer. I try to sit up again, this time ignoring the sharp recommendations of my bruised coccyx, and manage to reach a sitting position without fainting, though my head is spinning like the clouds above me. They catch my eye for a moment, and I look upwards. We’re in the midst of the cyclone now, though I’ve landed in a shallow depression in the peak of the mountain so I’m shielded from the worst of the winds. But over my head, Katrina vents her fury, the clouds streaming in enormous circles across the sky. It looks like we’re almost in the storm’s eye.

“Ryuichi?” I call again, and look around carefully for the old Japanese man, my idol, my hero, my teacher in absentia.

I see him, maybe ten or fifteen metres away from my position. He’s landed in the vegetation as well, though he landed face down. Unfortunately, the tree hasn’t saved him; it’s bare of leaves, a jagged lightning bolt of wood standing upright on the top of the mountain. He isn’t moving, and I know he never will again, not of his own volition. The branch he’s impaled on, through the chest and out of his back, is a darker shade than the rest of the tree, and I realize it’s Ryuichi’s blood staining it almost black. Blood also streams from the old man’s mouth, pooling on the ground beneath him. He has that posture, that near-indefinable body language that speaks of death; I’ve seen pictures of corpses, and of unconscious people, and there’s something about the dead that silently screams out, tells you that the person, perhaps the soul if it exists, is no longer present. Something has departed.

Ryuichi’s life has ended, his long and tumultuous life. I feel tears burn the corners of my eyes, but I blink them away, determined not to cry. This was exactly how he always said he wanted to die, in books and interviews. You really are never as alive as when you’re close to death. And before he died, he truly lived.

I feel a burst of hot, moist air against my back, through the rips and tears in my leathers, and I turn my head and look up. And up. And up.

I almost forgot about the daikaiju. How strange is that?

I’m not afraid, not anymore. If I die here, then this is where I die. I’ll be proud to share a grave with the grand master. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen; the monster isn’t even looking in my direction. It’s raised up, its tentacles stretched to the skies, like a footballer about to take a mark, or an evangelist beseeching the Almighty. And it’s so still - just a slight waving of its serpentine arms in the gale force winds that must be whipping around them. It’s as if it’s waiting for something. I look up as well, follow its gaze.

And then I see it. Right above the mountain, hovering like a halo. At the centre of the storm, the point around which the angry grey clouds rotate, I can see it, just barely through the rain that’s pouring into my face.

The eye of the cyclone. It’s the purest blue I’ve ever seen.

A tiny hole in the clouds has formed there, opened up by the tremendous forces unleashed by the storm. It’s fragile, and fleeting, but it’s there. Then the eye blinks, once, twice, then closes for good. I’m blinking back tears and raindrops, wiping my own eyes desperately, hoping to catch sight of it again. But it’s gone. It takes me a while to accept this. Once I do, I lower my eyes again.

The creature is gone as well.

I clamber to my feet, my knees trembling violently under my own weight. I stagger to the edge of the mountain, where the daikaiju had been just moments before, and look over, but there’s no sign of it, apart from the enormous trail of destruction it has left in its wake. I see that now, from high above, and find it hard to believe that I’d been riding that wave. Running with the monster.

Why are there no monster fossils? There must be a thousand answers to that one, from biodegradable skeletons to ancient animals predating the fossil record. But standing here on shaky legs, hundreds of metres above the torn fields, I can only think of one that seems plausible to me, and I suspect it’s what Ryuichi believed as well.

These creatures, these daikaiju, leave no fossils because they’re not animals, not even alive as such. They’re forces of nature, like the cyclone that still roars around me, or an avalanche that swallows a dozen daring skiers whole. Ryuichi couldn’t hate the monster for killing his parents, any more than he could hate a flood or a drought. Some people might, but not him. All he could do was try to understand it, get close to it. Run with it.

Down below, picking its way through the torn earth, I can see a figure limping, tiny as an insect. I can make out black clothing and short hair. It’s Belinda, making her way painfully towards me. Behind her, driving up in the distance in some kind of open-topped four-wheel drive, comes the film crew, cameras still pointed my way despite the lack of a kaiju to film, dai or otherwise. Belinda waves to me, and I wave back tiredly, leaning on the rocks on the edge of the mountain, ignoring the wind and rain. We’ll do this again, she and I, and perhaps others will join us, new blood to replace the old that’s been spilled.

I smile at this thought, finally understanding Ryuichi’s attitude, his serenity. I don’t know if I’ll ever be as sanguine as he was, but at least I’m on the path now. To be a part of something like this, something so magnificent, that was enough, and it will continue to be enough.

We all run, one way or another.