He spied a crowd of medical personnel tending to another batch of wounded. Unwilling to give up, he pressed his way into the makeshift triage unit. Dozens of casualties occupied gurneys, while the overtaxed doctors, nurses, and medic struggled to cope with the flood of patients. Ford was both appalled and discouraged by the number of victims. He didn’t know where to keep looking for his dad. Joe could anywhere.
Or nowhere, anymore.
No, he thought. Don’t even think that.
He’d already lost his mother on this very same site. He’d be damned if he’d see his father buried here, too. Exhausted and sore, he stubbornly worked his way down row after row of casualties. Ford had seen combat, and the aftermath of suicide bombings, but the widespread suffering on display here still got to him — and left him feeling very afraid. His brain was still trying to come to terms with the reality of the gigantic winged monstrosity he’d witnessed earlier. Bombs and terrorists were one thing. He knew how to protect himself — and others — from them. But a creature like that… how on Earth did you stop it? Was that even possible?
And what was it doing now?
Worried and worn out, he almost walked by his dad without recognizing him, but then he spotted Joe on a gurney, surrounded by harried nurses and medics, fighting to keep the injured man alive. An IV line was set up to administer fluids and medication. Pressure was applied to the most visible wounds. Joe was caked in blood and dirt, his shredded radiation suit almost unrecognizable. The medics were already peeling the suit from him to get at his injuries.
“Dad!”
Ford rushed toward, trying to squeeze past the doctors and nurses, who refused to let him through. He peered anxiously over the shoulders of the busy medics, hoping that he hadn’t found his father just in time to see him die. That would be too cruel.
Joe’s eyes fluttered at the sound of Ford’s voice. He squinted through a fog of pain at his son. Their eyes met, truly seeing each other for perhaps the first time in years.
But was it too late for both of them — and the world?
Not far away, Serizawa also wandered through the ruins. He watched numbly as rows of lifeless bodies were zipped unceremoniously into ugly black body bags. It was like the aftermath of a battle or natural disaster, yet all this carnage and destruction had been caused by a single organism emerging from the cocoon, just as it had burst from its egg sac in the Philippines over a decade ago. History was repeating itself — on an even more apocalyptic scale.
His clothing was torn and rumpled. He and Graham had barely escaped the crow’s nest before it had crashed to the ground, but many others had not been so lucky. He watched grimly as Gregory Whelan was zipped into a bag. To his credit, the embattled chief scientist had stayed at his post until the bitter end, waiting until everyone else was evacuated, like a captain going down with his ship. Serizawa recalled ruefully just how excited Whelan had been only hours ago, thinking that he was on the verge of a revolutionary discovery. Little had the man known that the “living fuel cell” in the cocoon would cost him his life.
Goodbye, Gregory. Serizawa bowed his head in respect. You were a good scientist. Your only mistake was not realizing that certain forces were beyond your control.
“Dr. Serizawa!”
A deep voice intruded on the moment. Serizawa turned to see a U.S. Navy officer approaching him, accompanied by Graham and a Japan Self-Defense Force captain. A helicopter was revving up behind them, its rotors stirring up the already dusty air.
“Captain Russell Hampton,” the American officer introduced himself, shouting to be heard over the ‘copter’s spinning rotors. He was a tall, fit man wearing military fatigues, at least a decade younger than the scientist. A bald pate crowned his stoic face, which could have been carved from a block of dark brown granite. “Tactical authority of this situation has been accorded to Admiral Stenz, Commander, US Naval Forces, Seventh Fleet, part of a joint task force. I’m told your organization has situational awareness of our unidentified organism?”
Serizawa nodded. For more than six decades, a top-secret international coalition known as Monarch had been covertly studying and monitoring evidence of unknown mega-fauna such as the one that had just hatched from the cocoon. Alas, their practical experience in dealing with living specimens was minimal at best.
“Then I’m going to have to ask you to join me,” Hampton said. He glanced around at the surrounding bedlam. “Are there any other personnel you need?”
Serizawa considered the question. There was Graham, of course; that went without saying. But was there anybody else? He joined Hampton in scanning the crowd around them. He noticed that Joe Brody, the power plant engineer, was lying injured on a gurney nearby. A younger American, whom Serizawa’s assumed to be Brody’s son, Ford, was looking on anxiously as paramedics scrambled to stabilize his father’s condition. Serizawa recalled the data that had been confiscated from Brody. Serizawa had made sure that the disks and charts survived the disaster, but, now more than ever, he wanted to know everything the trespassing engineer knew about the nuclear disaster fifteen years ago. He pointed decisively at Brody and son.
“Them.”
ELEVEN
The transport chopper roared through the sky toward the USS Saratoga, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered super-carrier more than a thousand feet in length. One of the largest warships ever constructed, the Saratoga rose twenty stories above the water and was accompanied by a sizable naval strike group composed of smaller frigates, cruisers, an oiler, a supply ship, and other support vessels. Aboard the ‘copter, Ford stuck close to his dad while trying to keep up with their rapidly changing situation. One minute, he and Joe had been stuck in the ruins of the base, the next they had been hustled aboard a waiting chopper…
Hang on, Dad, he thought. Just a few more minutes.
A medic struggled to keep Joe alive, monitoring the battered engineer’s vital signs, but seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Captain Hampton and a pair of civilian scientists looked on as Joe feebly clung to life. Ford still wasn’t quite sure why he and his dad were now getting special treatment, after being arrested as trespassers before, but he wasn’t about to question this unexpected turn of events. All that mattered was keeping his father alive. They had a second chance to rebuild their fractured relationship, and Ford didn’t want to lose that. He wanted his father back.
“You were right,” Ford said, squeezing Joe’s hand. His eyes welled up. His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”
Joe gazed up at Ford through bloodshot eyes. His voice was weak and raspy as he struggled to speak. Ford leaned in to hear him.
“Whatever it takes,” he said faintly. “You have to end this…”
He began to slip away, perhaps for good.
“Dad—”
“Whatever it takes…”
“Dad, stay with me!” Ford exclaimed. “Dad!”
Joe’s eyes lost focus, staring somewhere beyond this world. Ford watched helplessly as the medic scrambled to save his failing patient, who was fading fast…