Hunkered down behind the available cover, the troops shared frustrated looks. The warhead was apparently down in the sinkhole somewhere, but how were they supposed to get past the female to reach it? Ford glanced at his ticking wristwatch. Time was running out.
Now what?
Ford was stumped, uncertain how to proceed, when booming footsteps shook the night. The thunderous tread triggered immediate flashbacks to Honolulu Airport — and his first sight of an even more colossal monster than the MUTO guarding the pit. The ground shook beneath Ford. Looking back, he already knew what he was going to see.
Godzilla lumbered toward them, cresting the hill behind them. His eyes narrowed as he spied the female. He dropped into a defensive crouch, like a fighter preparing for battle. He threw back his head and roared loud enough that Ford’s heavy-duty helmet provided no protection at all. There was no mistaking the primordial fury in that roar; Ford realized in horror that he and the other soldiers were stuck between the two monsters.
The female responded to the challenge with a defiant howl of its own. It sprang from the sinkhole and skittered across the ruins to face Godzilla. Endangered troopers dashed out of the way of her great, clawed limbs. Ford saw a hind leg crashing down toward him and dived for safety only seconds before it flattened the crumpled SUV he had been hiding behind. Rolling across the broken pavement, he saw the MUTO slam into Godzilla with extreme force. Grappling furiously, they tumbled down the hill, disappearing into the smoke and fog.
This is our chance, Ford realized.
The soldiers sprinted toward the unguarded sinkhole, peering down over its rim. The size and depth of the pit was even more impressive up close; it was possibly even bigger than the sinkhole that had swallowed the nuclear power plant in Japan. At least a block of homes and buildings appeared to have fallen into the pit. Ford did not relish climbing the crumbling, debris-strewn slope in search of the missing warhead. Fires burned down in the stygian depths of the abyss. Smoke rose from below.
Bennett employed his tracker. Rapid clacking pointed the troops toward an open fissure leading down into the side of the sinkhole. A hellish orange glow emanated from what looked like small cave opening. Ford felt the heat of burning wreckage as the soldiers cautiously ventured through the entrance and found themselves inside an uprooted Victorian row house, hanging upside-down from its foundations. An inverted staircase looked like something out of an M.C. Escher drawing. Tinny music issued from an antique music box lying sideways on the ceiling. Ford felt as though he’d stepped through the looking-glass into some sort of surreal fever-dream.
This just keeps getting weirder and weirder, he thought. I can barely remember what normal is anymore.
The troops hurried through the capsized house and out an open doorway. Leaving the bizarre setting behind, they found themselves faced with an infernal vista that could have easily passed for the lower pits of Hell. A huge cavernous burrow had been carved out beneath Chinatown, littered with debris from the ransacked city above. Bits and pieces of the city were strewn about randomly. An overturned gasoline tanker was partially buried in the rubble. A bronze dragon guarded heaps of broken refuse. A church steeple lay on its side.
They descended to the floor of the cavern. Thankfully, their flashlights were working better now that the female had charged off to fight Godzilla. Bright white beams soon located a huge organic shape hanging like a stalactite from the ceiling above them. It took Ford and the others a moment to realize that they had found what they were searching for: the nuclear warhead was encased inside layers of a hardened, translucent secretion. The outermost layers of the shell were still wet and viscous. They oozed slowly down the sides of the trapped weapon.
Ford gazed up at the suspended warhead. He could only assume that the male had brought his prize to the female, perhaps as some sort of courtship ritual. No doubt Serizawa and Graham would have a theory to explain how it all worked, but Ford didn’t care about that right now. All that mattered was disarming the bomb before the detonator went off.
At least we’ve found it, he thought hopefully. Perhaps we still have a chance.
A tremor shook the cavern, causing dust and gravel to rain down on them. It felt like an earthquake, but Ford knew better. The earth was shaking because of the titanic conflict being waged above. Godzilla had hunted the MUTOs halfway around the world, but now the chase was over and the final battle was underway.
With a nuclear warhead added to the mix.
TWENTY-FIVE
Godzilla clashed with the female in the blazing ruins of the Financial District. Sky-high smoke and flames provided an apocalyptic backdrop to their savage combat, which was being fought furiously amidst the demolished skyscrapers. Godzilla snapped and slashed at the female, who locked her jaws onto his scaly shoulder. The mighty saurian towered at least fifty feet above the vicious, multi-legged parasite and was significantly heavier and stronger as well, but female did not back off. Grimacing in pain, Godzilla tore himself free from the MUTO’s fangs and spun away from her. His spiked tail whipped around to lash the female, who was sent tumbling down Broadway, carving out another swath of destruction. Her flailing arms and legs smashed through buildings large and small. Flames and explosions erupted in her wake.
Sensing victory, Godzilla closed in for the kill. The desperate female hurriedly righted herself and swung one of her clawed middle arms at Godzilla, but he dodged the attack and charged forward to pin her against a high-rise office building. The MUTO thrashed and screeched as Godzilla pummeled her with his fists and snapped at her twisting head and thorax. His jaws were going for her skull when the entire building suddenly collapsed under the force of the struggle. A mountain of sundered steel and concrete caved in on thefemale, burying her beneath the debris.
Snarling, Godzilla loomed above his fallen foe. He raised his right foot over the female, preparing to squash her into the ground, when the male came swooping down from the sky to defend his mate. The winged MUTO barreled into Godzilla, knocking him off his feet. Locked in combat, the monsters rolled across the district, grinding landmark buildings into dust. Their growls and screeches were matched by the rumble of disintegrating hotels, banks, and museums.
The earth shook all the way up to Chinatown.
The seismic shocks were coming fast and furious, causing the entire cavern to tremble and heaps of debris to shift in an unsettling manner, but Ford and the other soldiers redoubled their efforts to liberate the ticking warhead from the hard, resin-like substance it was encased in. They had already managed to break the weapon loose from the ceiling and lower it to the floor of the cavern; now they were chipping away at the sticky secretion with the butts of their rifles. Concentrating on the tip of the re-entry vehicle, they managed to expose enough of the casing that, grunting with effort, they could begin to pry off the nose cone.
Here it comes, Ford thought. Almost there…
To his surprise, the remaining secretion began to pulse with light. Did we trigger that with our hammering, Ford wondered, or was it the tremors? The cool effulgence grew in intensity and began to spread throughout the cavern. The soldiers backed away momentarily, caught off-guard by the unexpected bioluminescence. The glow rippled upward to light up the entire cavern. Ford glanced at the ceiling, where the wavering light now appeared to be concentrated, and gasped in shock.