Bearing its ticking prize, the male flew over San Francisco.
TWENTY-THREE
Panic spread through the Tac-Ops center. Screens shorted and went black. Frantic analysts and technicians struggled to restore contact with the city. Paper maps were spread out atop a portable chart table, charting blast radiuses and fallout patterns from a new ground zero. This was beyond a worst-case scenario. This was a potential catastrophe beyond anticipation.
“Fifty-four minutes and counting!” an analyst called out.
Admiral Stenz stared in horror at the digital clock on the wall. The mechanical device continued to count down the minutes and seconds to detonation. They had less than an hour before the warhead exploded — and now that winged monster was carrying it into the city.
“It’s right in the middle of downtown, sir,” Hampton reported, confirming their latest visual reconnaissance of the male’s flight path. He started to elaborate, but Stenz cut him off.
“How many?” the admiral demanded.
“At least a hundred thousand,” Hampton said. “But we put in a shielded detonator. Nothing can stop it remotely.”
In other words, we can’t deactivate the damn bomb from here, Stenz thought. Their precautions against the MUTOs’ electromagnetic auras were coming back to bite them. But who could have expected that the male would hijack the warhead and bring it inland?
I should’ve, that’s who.
But there would time enough to crucify himself later. Right now their top priority, even beyond containing the monsters, was that ticking nuclear warhead. If they couldn’t defuse it remotely, then somebody was going to need to get the job done on-site.
“Both bridges are down,” Martinez informed him, as though reading his mind. “All roads into the city are jammed with cars, and we’re seeing electrical disturbances as high as thirty-thousand feet.”
The feverish activity in Tac-Ops slowed as the seeming hopelessness of their efforts sank in. Time was running out and so were their options. The odds against them felt insurmountable, but Stenz refused to give up. Failure in this instance was more than unacceptable. It was inconceivable.
Almost a hundred thousand people.
“Find a way to get men in there,” he ordered. “We need to disarm that warhead.” He turned to Serizawa, who had been keeping his own council during the escalating crisis. The scientist stood quietly off to the side with his colleague, Graham. “Your alpha predator, Doctor. ‘Godzilla.’ You really think he has a chance?”
Serizawa turned toward the rear of the trailer, where large plate-glass windows looked out over the fogbound bay and the imperiled city beyond. Even from this distance, the male could be glimpsed soaring over San Francisco, pursued by Godzilla, who was wading majestically toward the blacked-out waterfront. No longer detained by tanks or jet fighters, the invincible leviathan was closing in on his primordial prey, driven by a powerful biological instinct.
“The arrogance of Man is thinking Nature is in our control, and not the other way around.” Serizawa turned solemnly toward the others and nodded gravely. “Let them fight.”
Elle ran for her life, along with everyone else still downtown. Thousands of terrified men, women, and children ran through the streets. Panicked people crowded toward a BART subway entrance, seeking shelter from the titanic monsters that had invaded the city. Billowing plumes of smoke and fire rose to meet the falling rain. Abandoned vehicles clotted the streets. Elle squeezed between an unmoving taxi and a delivery van as she tried to make it to the stairs leading down to the subway. The frantic mob carried her along; she couldn’t have changed direction if she’d wanted to. She glanced wildly around her, afraid that the disaster would find her before she could reach safety. She had waited for Ford as long as she could, but obviously they had run out of time. Skyscrapers and office buildings blocked her view, but wide concrete canyons offered fleeting glimpses of the madness that had come to her city.
A giant winged monster, looking something like a huge alien insect, perched atop two adjacent high-rises, straddling them as though there were stilts. Despite her terror, Elle couldn’t look away. It was one thing to see a blurry image on TV or the internet; it was something else altogether to actually see a creature that big with your own eyes and be confronted with the escapable fact that such monsters truly existed. According to the news reports, this was the male “MUTO” and there was a female running amok as well. The creature lifted its head. An ear-piercing howl issued from its jaws.
The ground rumbled in response, throwing Elle to the ground. She threw her hands out in time to keep her face from hitting the wet pavement. Rushing feet pounded past her, and she grasped just how scared Sam must have been when he’d nearly been trampled outside the hospital. She struggled to get to her feet even as the tremors increased in intensity. Through the crush of weaving bodies around her, she gaped in horror as, up the hill in Chinatown, an entire intersection bucked as though it was the epicenter of a quake.
Pavement cracked, wide fissures splitting the asphalt. Steam spewed from broken pipes. Several blocks away, the trembling intersection sank beneath ground level, briefly forming a deep crater, before erupting upward with explosive force. Chunks of cement and blacktop went flying as another monster, even larger than the first, surfaced from beneath the city. Eight giant limbs, each sporting vicious claws, pulled the grotesque body up onto the demolished pavement. The female screeched back at the male.
Oh, God, no, Elle thought. Not the other one, too!
More bodies shoved past her, obstructing her view of Chinatown and the new creature. She clambered awkwardly to her feet and rejoined the frenzied mob fleeing the creatures. The subway entrance beckoned her and she stumbled down the steps toward the gloomy, unlit station. National Guard members began to herd her through the entrance as they prepared to shut the emergency doors behind them. Elle didn’t like the idea of being locked underground in the dark, but it was better than staying out in the open in a city overrun with giant monsters.
Just as she reached the bottom of the steps, a fierce roar trumpeted across the city. The riveting growl was even louder and more intimidating than the strident howls of the MUTOs. Despite her desperate quest for shelter, Elle turned toward the source of the bellowing roar, as did all the Guards and awestruck citizens around her. Eyes bulged and jaws dropped as Elle and the others stared up the stairs at the riveting sight above. Oh my God, Elle thought.
Godzilla rose from the bay and stepped onto the land. His thunderous tread shook the earth as he stomped through industrial shipyards and piers. Office buildings and warehouses were reduced to splinters beneath him. A cable car was crushed beneath a great, clawed foot. His tail whipped behind him, toppling entire buildings. Smoke and flames and billowing clouds of dust and pulverized concrete obscured some details of his appearance, but his overwhelming size and power rendered Elle speechless and made her feel like a minuscule insect by comparison. Godzilla’s pitiless eyes fixed on the MUTOs, his ancestral foes. A furious roar shattered windows across the city and left Elle’s ears ringing. Everyone around stared up at the raging behemoth in awe and terror.
A giant now strode the earth, terrible in his wrath.
Elle had only a moment to absorb this humbling realization before the Guards pulled her all the way into the station and slammed the corrugated steel doors shut behind her. Impenetrable blackness replaced her view of Godzilla, but his footsteps still shook the station. Petrified people clung to each other in the dark, but Elle was alone with her fears.