Falling at nearly 125 miles per hour, he passed quickly through the clammy mist, somehow managing to avoid being electrocuted by a random bolt of lightning. The downtown area — or what was left of it — came into view. The devastation was staggering. Despite what he’d already witnessed overseas, Ford was shocked by what he saw.
A giant sinkhole, much like the one in Japan, had swallowed Chinatown. A wide path of destruction, like the one in Hawaii, had torn across The Embarcadero to Telegraph Hill, where Godzilla and the male MUTO could be glimpsed fighting amidst crumbling high-rises and residential buildings. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed up from the war zone. Fires blazed within the demolished buildings. As in Honolulu, Godzilla had the advantage of size over the other monster, but the male appeared in no hurry to retreat this time. The winged creature was standing its ground, with the surrounding neighborhoods paying the price. Angry snarls and screeches were punctuated by crashing buildings. Thunderclaps, reverberating overhead, provided a percussive soundtrack to the cataclysmic tussle, whose outcome seemed far from certain. It was survival of the fittest — on a grandiose scale.
Ford dropped between rows of buildings that blocked his view of the battling monsters. He tugged on his ripcord and was yanked upward as his main canopy deployed. A square, “ram-air” parafoil inflated above him and he used the steering toggles to come in for a landing on a rubble-strewn street somewhere in the ruins of the Financial District. He touched down with an awkward stutter-step onto the cracked and broken pavement, without actually falling or breaking anything, and stumbled to a halt.
Whew, he thought. Made it.
He was relieved to be back on solid ground again. Tugging off his oxygen mask, he took a deep breath of real air, which smelled of smoke and ash. He glanced around warily, but did not spy any monsters in his immediate vicinity. Smashed skyscrapers jutting up from the ravaged streets suggested that the monsters had already passed through this district, leaving little intact. Night had fallen so that only the glow from scattered fires illuminated the darkened city. From the sound of things, however, the beasts were still raging several blocks away. It dawned on him that he’d had yet to see the female MUTO, the one that had attacked the missile train. He had to assume that it was abroad as well.
Better keep my eyes out for that bitch, he thought.
Shedding his ‘chute, which was draped over the rubble, he hastily rescued a rifle and flashlight from his gear bag and fitted the light to the barrel of his gun. A gust of wind blew aside the voluminous nylon canopy, exposing charred human bodies lying amidst the debris, half-buried beneath fallen chunks of masonry. A blackened arm stretched lifelessly from beneath a mass of crumbling concrete and rebar.
More collateral damage, Ford realized, of the timeless feud between Godzilla and the MUTOs. He winced at the sight, wondering briefly whom the burned bodies had belonged to and what families would mourn them, but he also knew that the death rate would skyrocket unless he and his comrades completed their mission and disarmed the stolen warhead. He had to keep moving.
Anxious to reconnect with the others, Ford looked up and down the damaged and deserted streets. The unsettling darkness failed to mask the extreme damage done to his hometown. Once known as “The Wall Street of the West,” the Financial District now looked as though the Big One had finally hit. Gleaming towers of glass and steel, built to withstand all but the most powerful earthquakes, were now smoking husks. A toppled skyscraper leaned precarious against its neighbor. Broken glass, mangled steel beams, and crumbling blocks on concrete littered the streets and sidewalks. Elevated sky-bridges had crashed to earth. The Transamerica Pyramid, once the tallest structure in the city, was missing its tip and several of its upper stories. Abandoned cars, trucks, and buses had been crushed by falling debris.
Ford stared aghast at the devastation. The monsters had done all this — in less than an hour?
A titanic roar jolted him back to the crisis at hand. Ford spotted more soldiers running up a street one block over. He hustled after them, readying his gear on the run. A rifle hadn’t done him much good against the female up in the mountains, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to go up against the creatures unarmed. Better to go down fighting if he had to.
Panting, he caught up with several other soldiers. An EOD specialist named Bennett was busily assembling a device that resembled a Geiger counter, while the other soldiers conferred tersely, comparing notes on what they’d seen on the way down. Ford figured that some of them were still coming to grips with laying eyes on the monsters for the first time.
Bennett finished assembling the tracking device. It started clacking immediately, especially when he pointed it up toward Chinatown, where the warhead was reported to be.
“We’re moving up the hill,” their jumpmaster said gruffly. “Keep it spread out. Move out!”
The soldiers took only a moment to get their bearings before jogging up Grant Avenue. Within minutes, they passed through the ruins of the “Dragon Gate” at the southern entrance to Chinatown. Fallen ceramic tiles shattered beneath their boots, while the head of one of the gateway’s two guardian dragons stared up from the rubble. Advancing into the heart of Chinatown, they hurried past trampled shops, temples, banks, and restaurants. An upended cable car lay on its side, squashed bodies spilling out of it. A street lamp crafted to resemble a bright red pagoda leaned precariously over the obliterated avenue. Colorful flags and banners lay trampled on the ground. As they neared the crest of the hill, the infernal orange glow of an unseen fire could be seen through a dense wall of smoke. The veiled flames, and the clacking of the tracking device, drew the troops on.
Getting warmer, Ford thought. Let’s hope we don’t run into any company.
One by one, the soldiers warily entered the haze. Ford found his visibility cut almost to zero and relied on the flashlight mounted on his rifle to pierce the smoke. He aimed the beam at the ground before him to keep his footing, but then his flashlight dimmed. He smacked it with his palm, hoping to restore it, but the beam kept flickering. By now, Ford knew that meant.
A MUTO was near.
He wasn’t the only soldier experiencing technical difficulties or aware of their significance. He spied other flashlights sputtering in the smoke. Alert troops hefted their weapons and took cover behind wrecked and overturned cars. Ford darted behind a crushed SUV. The jump master, Quinn, whistled and put a finger to his lips, signaling quiet.
Damn right, Ford thought. The last thing they wanted to do was attract a monster’s attention.
But while the rest of them kept quiet, the tracking device was clacking louder than ever. Ford flinched at the racket as Bennett aimed the device straight ahead at the smoke and flames. He nodded at Quinn, who got the message.
The warhead was close.
The wall of smoke thinned out, revealing the female crouched above the giant sinkhole Ford had spotted from above. An involuntary shudder went through Ford; the last time he’d seen this creature, it had been tearing apart the bridge and locomotive in the mountains, sending Tre and Waltz and the others to their deaths. It hadn’t gotten any less terrifying in the interim. Its six lower limbs straddled the pit, while its smaller forearms were still large enough to qualify as enormous. Drool dripped from its beak. Its bony carapace caught the glare from the fires. Lightning flashed overhead; Ford wondered again if the MUTO was somehow causing it.