Horns blasted loudly across the bridge, but the caravan of buses remained snarled in traffic. The vehicles crept forward, their drivers jostling for inches. Inside Sam’s bus, somebody started throwing spit wads at the other kids. A paper airplane flew by Sam’s head. A teenager complained that he was starving. Sam tried to ignore the ruckus. He wished everybody would just calm down.
The TV had said a monster was coming. A monster named Godzilla.
The roadway started to rumble beneath them and everyone got very quiet very fast. It felt a little like an earthquake, but then Sam spotted a convoy of army tanks and Stryker vehicles rolling onto the bridge’s vacant inbound lanes. The intimidating armored vehicles took up defensive positions on the bridge. Their big guns swiveled to face the ocean, which was hidden from view by a thick bank of fog. Sam remembered the toy soldiers and tanks he’d played with on the floor at home.
The dinosaur always wins, he remembered.
Sam gazed out the window, both scared and excited to see what the guns were aiming for. Drizzle streaked the windows, making them harder to see through. He wished there was some way he could wipe them clean from the inside. He pressed his nose up against the window.
THWACK!
Without warning, a seagull smacked headfirst into the window, startling Sam, who shrieked in alarm as more and more birds slammed into the bus, leaving bloody smears on the glass. The entire bus started freaking out as a whole flock of panicked gulls came flying inland out of the fog. Squawking loudly, they flapped frantically toward the city, as though desperately trying to escape… what?
He’s coming, Sam realized. The monster from TV.
Eyes wide, he glimpsed a huge shadowy form approaching through the fog and rain.
A rear guard of Navy LCS vessels ringed the entrance to the Golden Gate strait leading to the bay beyond. Sailors manned the ship’s powerful Mark-100 57mm naval guns. The approaching creature had simply dived beneath the earlier blockade further out at sea, but no one knew if he would resort to the same tactic again. This time a confrontation was all but inevitable.
Along with his fellow sailors, Ensign Mark Pierce waited tensely. They understood too well that this was the Navy’s last chance to keep the sea monster from making landfall — and that so far the beast had proved unstoppable.
Here he comes, Pierce thought. God help us all.
Computer-controlled, the fifteen-ton guns pivoted to take aim at the emerging shape as it began to rise high above the water. Peering through the mist, Pierce made out a tall, upright form ridged with jagged spikes or fins. The shape kept rising higher and higher until it towered above the surface of the sea like a newborn volcano. Pierce estimated that it had to be at least two hundred feet tall.
Jesus, I knew this thing was supposed to be big, but…
The shape grew higher and closer with every moment. The guns waited for the creature to fully reveal itself so they could target its head and chest. Great torrents of water cascaded off the sides of the creature until Pierce realized that what he’d assumed must be the head was just the pointed top of a large scaly appendage that swayed ominously back and forth above the water. The horrifying truth hit him like a thunderbolt.
That’s not the monster! That’s just the tip of his tail!
Two nearby ships suddenly keeled up from below, capsizing as the rest of Godzilla’s colossal body rose up from the strait behind them. Violent waves slammed against Pierce’s ship, causing it to pitch sharply. The startled seaman was thrown across the deck. Landing on his back, he stared up in shock at the titanic beast.
Walking upright on two prodigious legs, the giant reptile was nearly four hundred feet tall. His ponderous footsteps echoed through the fog as he waded toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
Godzilla’s appearance shattered the traffic jam on the bridge. Buses lurched forward, honking and ramming each other as they rushed to get off the bridge before the monster reached it. Tanks and Strykers opened fire all at once, unleashing a deafening barrage full of smoke and fire. Geysers of water sprayed high into the air where the explosive rounds struck the waves. Scorching salvos of advanced anti-tank ammo blistered Godzilla’s hard, scaly hide, causing him to flinch and roar in pain. He swatted furiously at the projectiles, as though they were a swarm of angry bees. The rounds chipped away at the armored plates protecting his mammoth form, but, weathering the inferno, he kept on coming.
Sam watched from the bus in both fear and fascination. Godzilla was not just a dinosaur. He was a giant dinosaur, and he was heading straight for the bridge, despite the army’s attack. The bus driver swore and leaned on his horn, alerting the other drivers that he was coming through no matter what. He hit the gas and the bus surged forward, tossing the kids back into their seats. Nurse Laura had to grab onto a seatback to keep from falling. Sam’s gaze swung back and forth between the far end of the bridge and the monster getting closer and closer. The nearer the Godzilla got, the bigger he looked.
And the smaller Sam felt.
Roaring furiously, Godzilla waded into the military’s fiery assault, which was obviously not going to slow him down for long. Sam held his breath, terrified that his bus was not going to make it across in time. He stared at Godzilla’s giant fangs and hoped that being eaten by a monster wouldn’t hurt too much.
“C’mon, c’mon!” the bus driver exclaimed. A gap opened up briefly in the traffic and he floored the accelerator so that the bus shot forward and cleared the bridge. Everyone was too scared to cheer, but Nurse Laura gasped in relief, sinking into an empty seat next to Sam. He had never seen a grownup look so scared before. She was pale and shaking.
We made it, he realized. We didn’t die.
Turning around in his seat, Sam gaped as, braving the heavy artillery, Godzilla reached the Golden Gate Bridge and tore right through it as though it was made of cardboard. The magnificent orange towers collapsed and thick steel cables, each nearly a yard in diameter, snapped like rubber bands as the monster smashed through the bridge midway across its span. The concrete roadway, with its six lanes, crumbled to pieces. Tanks and soldiers, along with ruptured cables and great slabs of bridge, spilled into the strait, falling hundreds of feet into the foaming water below where they disappeared beneath the waves and fog. The tanks and Strykers had done their part, Sam realized, slowing Godzilla long enough for the buses to make it to safety, but they couldn’t save themselves. Godzilla was just too strong.
Maybe nothing could stop him.
Godzilla waded into the bay, his gargantuan contours still partly veiled by the thick fog and rain. Snapped steel cables and mangled pieces of the bridge trailed from him like torn vines. He lifted his head toward the sky, as though sensing something. He snarled in anticipation.
Seconds later, a squadron of F-35 fighter jets screamed in over the bay. They homed in on Godzilla, letting loose with an onslaught of armor-piercing rounds and guided missiles. The high-tech weapons pocked his armored hide and pierced whole dorsal fins, inflicting more significant damage than the land-based forces had. Godzilla reeled in pain, obviously feeling the injuries. His clawed forearms slashed uselessly at the planes, which were careful to stay above his reach. They strafed him, then circled around for another run.