Chapter 5. Terror in the Night.
"Leaving Shauna for the second time proved to be much harder than it had been the first time." Marcus sighed." Before she had only been some girl that I liked and hoped that she liked me in return. I barely knew her when we had left for the Philippines, but as we sailed for China she had become my sweetheart. There wasn't a whole lot do do during the trip and after seven days going stir crazy thinking about her, I decided I would have traded an entire year of my life to have stayed with her for a few more days."
"Yep, I thought about her constantly. And I hoped she missed me as much as I missed her. I lay in my bunk at night thinking about what she was doing, cursing myself for not having the freedom to be with her. But unless I decided to jump off the Enterprise and swim the thousands upon thousands of miles of ocean that were between us, there was little for it. Besides, there was the threat of Baragon that needed answering." Marcus noted with a touch of contempt.
"Sir, can I ask you something?" Penwood interjected. Marcus nodded. "I'm just curious, why does Baragon bother you so much more then Angirus? I mean, by the way you talk about it, you clearly feel differently about the two. I can feel your animosity towards it just in tone of your voice. What's the difference, they're both monsters right?"
"The difference is simple Penwood." Marcus began. "Angirus was a creature that attacked ships, buildings, or vehicles. Usually only vehicles that fired upon him first. Human beings barely even registered with him. People certainly died when Angirus attacked, but that was incidental. He was never malicious in our encounters with him. In his case, people and things usually just got in his way. Now if you read through the reports and examine them closely, you'll find that it was the opposite with Baragon. If he destroyed a building, it was usually because he wanted to eat the people who were inside it. When it attacked, its goal was specifically to target people. It might seem like splinting hairs to an outsider, people died either way after-all, but when you are on the ground and experience it first hand, I can assure you that difference is very important."
Marcus stopped and let Penwood think on it for a moment, though he knew Penwood could never truly understand what he was getting at. It wasn't his fault. He was young and inexperienced. From what Marcus could tell, he had spent a good portion of his career safely in the bowels of the records room. He couldn't begin know what it was like to be on a battlefield and the horrors that come with it. Only personal experience could give him that understanding. Such as it was, Marcus decided to change the topic.
"Well, in any case, life aboard the Enterprise wasn't so bad." Marcus continued. "Joe was still with me and I had made some new friends among the crew over the months. The first was Teddy Goldsmith. He was a little greener than Joe and I and the newest addition to our gun crew. We took him under our wing and showed him the ropes. He was a nice kid from the East Coast, I forget just where from, but his accent sounded vaguely New Yorkish. He was kind of scrawny, even after all those weeks at boot camp. Joe and I did our best to toughen him up and after a couple of weeks he was starting to look ship shape."
We ran drills daily at our post, honing our skills with our five inch cannon. I wasn't sure what good it was going to do against Baragon though. There had been no sightings or reports of him ever coming within fifty miles of the Ocean. Water didn't seem to be his thing. Our the furthest firing battleships could only hit a target within a range of twenty-five miles with their big guns. The range on our carrier was significantly less than that. The biggest things were had aboard were the five inch guns and they weren't really meant for shore bombardment. Mostly they were meant to deter enemy aircraft from raiding the carrier.
Still, it couldn't hurt to be prepared. First rule of combat: be prepared for anything. Baragon had managed to surprise the Japanese a number of times and it had cost them dearly underestimating him. I figured it would be our flyers who would be doing most of the actual fighting. They had the range to reach out a couple hundred miles inland, hit their target, and return home. The higher ups thought Baragon would be vulnerable to air attack if they could just pin him down long enough. He was notoriously slippery.
Joe and I had grown pretty tight with some of the other guys on our gun crew. There were some real stand out personalities like 'BIG' Jim McClaskey, he was the loader for our gun from Texas. Then there was Nick Baker the Gun Captain, he was a little uptight, but overall an ok guy. We managed to loosen him up over time. Next was Jamie Boggs from somewhere down south, he was the powder man and he loved chewing tobacco. He could be a bit hard to understand, but good natured. Randy Garrison was a fellow from the Midwest, Colorado I think. He was the check-sight man and the funniest guy on the crew. Joe was the fuse setter, he stood next to me at our station. Teddy just helped move shells into position. I was the Pointer. It was my job to set the position of the cannon as the gun director ordered and ultimately to fire it. We were on the second turret from the bow of the ship on he left side. There were a few other guys too, but we were less close to them.
Nick, Jim, Jamie, Teddy, Randy, Joe, and I all bunked in the same area, so we spent almost all our time together. Spending do much time in close quarters has a funny way of bonding guys together. We thought that we were the best gun crew in the fleet. We were the fastest on the Enterprise at least, which was a pretty respectable feat. It gave us a little well-needed confidence to face off with what we were up against. Only Joe and I had a close up look at Angirus, so we were a little wiser to the reality of what we were in for, but even we didn't know what we were about to sail into.
Following the battle between the Japanese and Baragon, an entire two weeks passed without any further attacks. Baragon was keeping a low profile. Either he was worn out from the fight or just full up from eating his spoils. Which of these things it was, I could not say. For whatever reason though he was off the map. The Japanese were hoping to catch him in the open and attack him from the sky, but flight after flight of reconnaissance aircraft came up empty.
There was a silver lining in it though. The break in the action gave them a much needed breather to reorganize and bring over more men and machinery. Baragon had managed to cripple their ground operations in Northeast Asia. Given their losses, the Japanese had to re-evaluate their options.
Meanwhile our fleet had arrived and was patrolling the South China Sea. We were too far away to send out planes to search for Baragon ourselves, but Command insisted that we stay far enough south to avoid running into any Japanese warships. With Baragon nowhere to be found, they didn't want to risk an incident. Once he resurfaced we would be able to deploy accordingly.
As it turned out, something else was brewing to the north, something even more dangerous than Baragon. With everything on the mainland going to hell in a hand basket the signs had gone unnoticed for some time, but a strange series of events were unfolding.
The day after Baragon disappeared, a single Japanese fighter went missing while on patrol searching for him. It was assumed that the pilot had run into some type of mechanical trouble. The only clue they had was a brief radio message about a strange whistling noise and then the signal went dead. It was theorized that his engine might have gone out. That would have explained the noise on the recording. Debris from the fighter was later found. As they investigated the wreckage, it was not clear if the plane had exploded in the air or if it had simple crashed. What was clear was the fighter was found in pieces and the pilot had been cut in half. His legs and lower torso were still in the cockpit, but despite searching for hours, they never found the rest of his body. It was a gruesome crash, but nothing compared to what was to come.
The very next day, an entire field of cattle were found dead. It was a nasty sight, a horror the local farmers had never seen before. Hundreds of carcasses torn apart and left to rot in the afternoon sun. Upon examining the scene the investigators concluded that the bodies were in a state of decomposition which indicated the attack must have occurred a few days earlier. Baragon had still been active at that point, so they attributed the massacre to him and wrote it off. I remember listening to the radio report with the guys and thinking it didn't match Baragon's m.o. Earlier reports indicated that his ravenous hunger rarely left anything to be found and there were still plenty of pieces of the steer spread all over the field. Just as telling, was the fact that the attack had occurred much further north than any of Baragon's previous attacks. In fact, it was so far north that it was nearly at the border with Korea.
A few days after the gruesome discovery in the field, a fishing village east of Beijing was destroyed. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it had been flattened. There was no sign of a fire or explosions, but every single structure had been leveled to the ground. The officials who investigated put the blame on a sudden powerful storm that blew in from the Ocean. That sounded like a reasonable explanation on the surface, but there was something troubling about it. The buildings had all collapsed towards the water. What I couldn't wrap my mind around was the huts had been uniformly blown over in the same direction. If there were indeed strong winds from a storm, wouldn't there have been at least a few buildings to fall the opposite direction and not in such a distinct pattern?
All the nearby trees were likewise snapped eastward towards the sea. I got the feeling something was awfully wrong. The path of destruction was also limited to a five hundred yard perimeter around the area of the village. I could almost be sold on the idea of a storm that hits so unilaterally, but for that same storm to also only hit such a narrow stretch of land? That was a little hard to swallow. It didn't seem scientifically possible. Still, no one could put forth a better explanation at the time and none of the villagers were left alive to tell anyone what exactly had happened, so it remained a mystery.
The investigators manged to account for most of the villagers. The majority of them had been crushed inside their homes at the time of the storm. However, when family members of the deceased came to identify the bodies and prepare them for burial, they discovered something else strange. A number of villagers were missing. A head count was preformed it turned out at least a dozen people were unaccounted for. Further searches for them in the surrounding area came up empty. One additional villager was found dead floating in the ocean, but what happened to the rest of the missing people was yet another mystery.
Two days after the village was discovered, a Japanese military supply ship en-route to the port at Dalian was sunk in the Yellow Sea. There had been no distress call. The few survivors reported being hit by a sudden tidal wave that was large enough to capsize the forty-ton ship, drowning most of the crew who were trapped below decks. The survivors had been on the far side of the top deck when the wave him them, so they had no idea where the wave came from. It seemed to appear out of nowhere. The sea had been calm on seconds before. The only clue they had to offer was the same strange whistle the pilot had reported just prior to his death. It was not clear at the time how the two incidents were connected, but it raised some eyebrows.
Later that same evening, a British cargo plane went missing on it's way to Hong Kong. Unfortunately it had no radio equipment aboard and it was over the Ocean at the time of it's disappearance, so there were no clues. It was simply gone without a trace. Whatever happened to it happened fast.
A small Chinese fishing boat did however report seeing a fireball in that area of the distant night sky at around the same time. They had also heard a noise, but oddly, they did not describe it as a whistle. They said it was more like something tearing the fabric of the sky along with a low billowing rumble. It was too dark at that point for them to have seen anything beyond the light of the explosion.
As I read the reports, I felt as though they were somehow all connected, but couldn't quite put together how. On the surface they seemed unrelated. The only thing connecting two of the incidents was the strange whistling noise. But two instances of the noise did not constitute a pattern. The pattern I should have seen, but did not, was that the incidents were happening progressively further and further south each time.
The night after the cargo plane disappeared, the Enterprise picked up an unidentified object at the edge of our radar range. It was roughly one hundred miles north of our position and was moving at an unheard of speed. We assumed that it had to be a glitch, because nothing on Earth was capable of moving that quickly. We were only able to track it for about two minutes before the object went out of radar range.
It was later calculated that it had been moving at speeds in excess of eight-hundred miles per hour. This was shocking to say the least. Our fastest planes at the time couldn't even go half that fast, topping out just under four-hundred miles per hour. We were aware of Japanese planes that could go marginally faster than ours, but nothing that could come even close to eight-hundred miles per hour.
Over the next twenty-four hours it was a hotly debated topic amongst the flight officers and bridge crew. The flyers insisted that something moving that fast wasn't possible. The bridge crew insisted that it was, at least if their instruments had been reading correctly it was. Just in case, the Captain ordered technicians examine every inch of the machinery. After a through diagnostic they found nothing wrong. Everything checked out as operating normally. This set the whole crew abuzz with theories, but there were still doubters.
The next evening, while off duty, I requested to assist the radar officer monitor for it. I wanted to be there to see it for myself if it popped up again. The Captain allowed it, he figured two sets of eyes were better than one. I sat with the radar man for hours waiting for the blip to return. Around 2100 hrs it finally did. It zoomed across the screen at an amazing speed. I almost fell out of my chair I was so surprised and excited.
Apparently it had not been a malfunction or user error, the instruments were reading exactly the same as the night before and our sister carriers Yorktown and Hornet confirmed the same readings from their radar stations. There was indeed an object moving at an unbelievable eight-hundred miles per hour.
Even more terrific than it's speed was the size. Radar back then was pretty rudimentary, so we couldn't tell exactly how big it was, but the blip we got was bigger than anything anyone had ever seen. It was huge and moving fast. The bridge was in an uproar at first, but the excitement of the discovery died down quickly as we started to realize that the object was moving southward, directly toward us. If it maintained its projected speed and course, it would intercept the fleet in about seven minutes.
"All crew to General Quarters!" The captain barked out over the ship's intercom. The whole crew sprang into action, preparing for combat. All across the ship's watertight and fireproof doors between bulkheads were shut and crewmen reported to their battle stations. Marines broke out their weapons and took up their posts securing the ship.
I ran from the bridge to join my team at our cannon. I had a bit of a head start, so I was the first to arrive. I strapped myself in and prepared the equipment around me as I had been trained. Joe and the others arrived shorty.
"Mark, what the hell is going on?" He shouted huffing from running. "Is this some type of drill?"
"No, something big is coming at us!" I warned him. "Get ready, there isn't much time!" I saw the color fall from his face when I said the word 'big'. He understood what that most likely meant. Teddy was right behind Joe and didn't understand. He looked equally scared as Joe none the less. It was going to be his first action and he clearly wasn't ready for it. No one ever is.
"Teddy, just focus on your job and you'll be ok." I assured him. Teddy managed to compose himself and snapped to. The rest of our guys arrived and within moments the gun was loaded and ready to fire.
On the bridge, the radar officer closely monitored the screen. The object had closed the gap to less than two hundred miles already. It was still on a course headed directly towards us. The Admiral ordered the entire fleet to turn right full rudder so that the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers could utilize all of their guns at the incoming threat.
As one, the fleet began to wheel right. At the same time their turrets turned left and their cannons raised toward the sky. It was a beautiful example of a synchronized fleet maneuver. From there, the Admiral ordered the fleet to push forward full speed ahead. Whatever was coming at us, it would have a harder time hitting moving targets. We were as ready as we could be.
Within the bridge of the Enterprise, they continued to monitor the huge radar blip. It was closing fast and would be entering our firing range within seconds. The radar man reported that the target had slowed and was gaining altitude rapidly. It had climbed to from five-thousand feet to nine-thousand feet and it was still climbing. This presented a serious problem. Our radar was only capable of detecting objects as high as ten-thousand feet, so if it went much higher, we'd loose track of it.
Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. It crept up beyond ten-thousand feet and became invisible to our radar. No one knew exactly what to do at that point. We could have opened up with our AA guns and hoped for the best, but even with radar guidance, it wouldn't be very accurate at that range. Firing would also reveal our position on the water. We also didn't know what we were firing at. There was still a slim chance whatever was above us wouldn't become hostile if were left it alone. The fleet just waited, exposed on the open water.
We anxiously looked to the skies, but it was a cloudy evening, so we could not see what was above us any further than four-thousand feet. There was no noise. We sat in our positions weapons ready bobbing up and down as the ship pressed through the waves. The fleet had hundreds of AA guns ready, but at that point didn't know where to point them. Whatever it was should have passed over us by then, so it could have been lurking anywhere above the cloud cover. The tension was getting thicker by the second. The officers vainly tried to use their binoculars to no avail. Time went by moment by moment seeming to get slower. So much time went by that I started to think that maybe it had already passed us by entirely.
The clouds above us began to break up near the middle of the fleet and sliver of moonlight started to creep through to the water below. A destroyer near the right outer perimeter of the formation sailed through into the light. A moment later, the entire fleet could hear a high pitched whistling. It was coming from above and rapidly becoming more intense.
In a flash, the destroyer was cut in half. A massive object, moving too quick to get a good look at, had fallen from the sky and splashed down into the Ocean. The destroyer's magazine exploded from the force of the impact and lit up the night sky and the ships around it. The explosion was intense enough that I could feel the heat from it on my face seven-hundred yards away. Whatever had hit the destroyer was already far beneath the waves. The remaining pieces of the destroyer quickly sank.
The rest of the fleet bobbed up and down violently as a strong ripple effect from the massive object hitting the water sent a giant wave cascading outward. Men had to cling on for life and limb as the force of it bucked them from their stations. A few men were lost overboard on the smaller ships of the fleet, but the crews of the larger vessels fared much better.
The impact pushed many ships out of position and the fleet was in chaos as the formation crumbled. There was suddenly the danger of ship-to-ship collisions as various captains tried to regain control of their vessels and hold their courses. The Admiral called for a fleet wide full stop in an attempt to prevent our ships damaging each other. While there were some near misses, the maneuver paid off. The fleet slowly started to piece its formation back together and regain its cohesion.
There wasn't enough time though. Our attacker suddenly revealed itself from below the waves. It popped up in an explosive fountain that rained down seawater on nearby ships. It appeared to be some type of gigantic flying reptile. The creature was brown and had two large horns jetting out of the back of its crest. Its eyes were sharp and predatory like a hawks. In its beak it was still clutching the section of the destroyer that it had torn away from the rest of the ship.
The creature must have been dissatisfied with what its attack had brought it. It dropped the remains of ship back into the water and bellowed its disappointment. The force of its roar shook the whole fleet. Meanwhile, as I watched the section of destroyer drop, I noticed the spiked and armored chest of the creature. I briefly had flashbacks to Angirus, but this was clearly different beast.
The fleet struggled to maintain it's cohesion. Some of the ships closer to the monster steamed away from it as quickly as possible. Obviously their captains wanted to put some distance between themselves and the monster. Under the circumstances, I think they made the right decision.
One of the cruisers closest to the creature had men running along the deck in panic. The moment seemed to grab its attention. The monster's eyes zeroed in on one of the men and suddenly it struck out at him. In a flash, it had the sailor in its beak. Only the man's upper torso and head were sticking of the creature's mouth. He was there just long enough for the rest of us to hear him shriek before he disappeared down its throat.
After that, the shocked sailors across the entire fleet snapped back into reality and began to retrain their guns at the monster. Most of the guns were pointed in the wrong direction though and resetting them was taking time. As we swung our own personal cannon around on-board the Enterprise, we found that we were blocked by the island of the carrier. We were ready to fire, but had no shot at it.
The ships and gunners that did have a clear line of sight opened up on it. Machine guns rounds and heavier ordnance began to hit the monster on the torso and wings. Enraged, beast lashed out at the closest ship and punctured a gaping hole in the hull with its beak. Sea water began to pour in and the ship began to list.
At that point, one of the battleships finally got its main cannons lined up and fired. However, in the chaos of the fight, it missed its first shot. The miss had not gone unnoticed by the monster though. The thunder of the cannons made it turn its head and spot the heavily armed warship. The creature seemed to understand that the battleship posed a serious threat. It began to beat its wings and take off from the water.
It flapped its wings so furiously that it caused a destroyer nearby to capsize. The creature took to the air and started to circle the fleet. It was rapidly gaining speed, but now that it was in the air, it was more of a presentable target. The entire fleet opened up with their AA guns. Most of the rounds were missing, but there was such an overwhelming barrage that a few shots were hitting home. Most shots that where finding their mark hit the armored chest and wings.
The monster did not seem to care for that. It sped up even more, and as its speed got higher, we heard a strange pop followed by the whistling noise we had heard before. The creature must have been going at top speed, because we couldn't even keep up with it with our guns anymore. Firing at it became pointless.
It rose in the air higher and higher, still circling us and eyeing our ships sharply. It appeared to be planning something. Finally it came back down at us, diving right through the middle of the fleet, pressing it's belly down close to the surface.
Its path brought it directly over the Enterprise. A half a second after it passed over us, we were hit by the force of wind like a hurricane. I was lifted clear off of my seat from the force of the wind. It was like I jumped out of a plane and was free falling for a couple seconds. Fortunately, I was still strapped into the gun-chair, but very other man in my gun crew was swept from the flight deck and blow away, including Joe.
As I came back down into my seat, I turned my had to see what happened to them. I looked back and saw that the metal island of Enterprise was riddled with dozens of small dents from impacts and had red smears of what had been men. I realized in horror that the whole section of AA guns around me were near empty. Only the gunners like me, who were strapped down, were left. The rest of their crews were gone.
Above us, the monster banked left and disappeared back into the clouds. I don't know how long I sat there in shock. The Captain on the bridge announced that the monster was retreating back towards the mainland north of us and that we were out of immediate danger, but I didn't really hear him. All my friends were gone and little else mattered at that moment.