Godzilla

by Greg Keyes

  As he passed the last of the Lamassu guardians, he knew it was now done. He was surely past the point of no return. If he turned around, his only reward would be to spend the rest of his short life in misery. He had seen people die of radiation poisoning. It was no way to die.

  The light ahead grew brighter, like a sunrise. Sunrise was usually associated with hope, not death. But even though he knew this sunrise was killing him, it still signified hope. Not for his own small life, but for all life. He was doing the right thing.

  But he was still mortal, and part of him was deeply terrified of what was about to happen.

  The sub was beginning to sputter and spark, dying as he was. But they didn’t have far to go.

  He surfaced into… majesty. The feed from the probe had not done this place – this palace of a god – justice. He climbed out of the sub and allowed himself a moment, rooted in awe, to let his eyes drink it all in, before the fierce, invisible rays destroyed his sight.

  The cavern was grand beyond his imaginings. Part of it seemed to be natural cavern, but the handprint of humanity was everywhere. Sacred carvings, glyph-covered monoliths, temples, statues that evoked dozens of ancient human civilizations, the prototype of them all. It was fitting, this mixture of man-shaped and natural, as fitting as the relationship between humanity and…

  Godzilla.

  The Titan lay upon a stone platform in the center of the place, at the top of a long, very broad staircase. Fountains of molten rocks sprayed up around him, draining down the sides of the temples into the waters below.

  He felt the presence of holy ground, that sense of simultaneously being very small but part of something immense.

  So many years of his life he had spent searching for this creature. First, as a legacy to his father’s work, but over the years, he had more and more come to understand Godzilla’s place in the world. And thus his own purpose.

  A purpose he fulfilled now.

  And he found he was no longer afraid.

  Carrying the bomb in its case, he started up the stairs. Stanton was right; already the more distant reaches of the cave had become blurry. His limbs trembled. The radiation was sleeting through him, destroying the very cells that composed him. But he put one foot in front of another, each footfall a moment in his journey, each more difficult that the last. The darkness began to close around him.

  When he reached the summit, he did not know it at first. But then his failing eyesight focused, and he saw Godzilla was there. His lungs were burning; the heart in his chest – like his pocket watch – no longer kept proper time.

  He kneeled, set down the case, and opened it up. With quivering fingers, he started the timer. Twenty seconds. All the time he needed.

  He took out his pocket watch and looked at it one last time. Remembering the man who had given it to him.

  Things like this should pass from father to son, he thought. But it was too late for that now.

  A vast moan of pain shook the chamber.

  His body did not want to stand again, but he made it, using all that remained of his dogged tenacity.

  He removed his helmet.

  The air was harsh with burnt stone and steaming water, the largest sauna in the world. It was nearly too much for him, but that was okay.

  Up close, Godzilla’s wounds were terrible, and immense. His dorsal spines were barely flickering. But he would heal. He would rise again. And he would fight for their world. He would bring balance.

  Serizawa could barely breathe now, and his body felt like the ash of a burned leaf – still holding the form, but none of the color or life.

  Godzilla’s eyes were open, watching him come. And although it was impossible, he believed that he saw recognition there. Compassion.

  He was there now. He stripped off one of his gloves and laid a hand on the Titan’s scales.

  “Goodbye, old friend,” he said. He closed his eyes. There was light.

  * * *

  They couldn’t stick around to make sure Serizawa succeeded. If he did, and they were still in the neighborhood, the shock wave from the explosion would rip the sub apart.

  It might yet.

  “Thirty thousand yards until we’re outside the convergence zone,” Bowman said, as the sub raced – or at least limped quickly – away from the sunken city and its fallen god.

  What if Serizawa hadn’t done the job? It was a big if. He might have died before arming the bomb. The submersible might have malfunctioned, like the drones. What if there was something in there other than Godzilla, ready to destroy anyone who entered?

  They couldn’t go back and try again. They had more nukes, but no more submersibles. If Serizawa didn’t make it, they were out of options.

  But then, behind them, a star was born, pure light shining in the abyss.

  Mark breathed a sigh of relief. It was done. Whatever happened to them now…

  …became a serious question as the submarine began to shake. “Shock wave incoming! Five seconds,” Bowman counted down. “Three seconds—”

  When the shock wave hit them, Chen grabbed Mark’s hand. He was so surprised he nearly forgot they were about to die. He gripped back. It felt good. Warm, familiar.

  Then it felt like Godzilla had stepped on his chest as the submarine was suddenly accelerated to speeds it was never meant to withstand. Steel groaned, shrieked – snapped, as the ship began tearing apart. He smelled sea water and ozone and – burning. The lights flickered wildly. And still they were deep, surrounded by blackness.

  But then a faint light appeared above them, growing brighter, as they were hurled toward the surface by the expanding edge of the explosion.

  They broke into the air, tossed up by a tower of water. Mark lost all sense of what was happening; the acceleration faded, was gone, he was weightless—

  They slammed back down on the surface of the ocean like a breaching whale.

  But when it all sorted out, they were floating. Maybe not for long, but for now. The power was still on, if a bit jittery.

  He was still holding Chen’s hand.

  He didn’t let go.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  Breathless and wide-eyed, she nodded. She didn’t let go either. He thought how long it had been since he’d held anyone’s hand, had the simple comfort of being physically in touch with another human being. It was especially nice in the face of pure terror…

  “Bowman,” Crane said. “Send a distress message to the Argo.”

  * * *

  They donned rainslickers and popped the hatches of the submarine, climbing out on to the upper deck beneath the thundering dark sky. Rain spattered in fits and starts. Waves crashed against the sub, rocking it beneath Mark’s unsteady feet.

  All he could see in any direction were the gunmetal crests of the sea.

  Bowman launched a rescue flare. It shot up, burning brightly, but its glow was dimmed when it reached the low-hanging clouds. It would be a wonder if anyone saw such a feeble light in the gloom of Ghidorah’s storm.

  Mark looked around them with binoculars, searching for anything peculiar in the sea. Blue light, a strange wave, some sign things had gone the right way...

  “Anything?” Chen asked.

  He shook his head, doubts creeping in. What if they’d been wrong? What if the bomb hadn’t cured Godzilla, but had – well, blown him up? He was in a weakened state. He had survived nuclear blasts before, but that had been decades ago, an earlier technology. What if Serizawa had died for no good reason? Hell, the very idea that anything about these monsters was much better than a wild guess was crazy.

  Which made him crazy. It had been his idea. And if he’d been wrong, if he had Serizawa’s blood on his hands…

  The ocean began to boil and churn – not normal waves or odd crosscurrents, but building up, bulging, like the explosion they had just caused, only slower. The sea was being pushed up from beneath.

  And light, blue light, shone through the waves.

  The jagged spin
es of Godzilla’s dorsal crest emerged like a mountain range, crackling and dancing with energy. His head breached the surface, rising high above as waterfalls sheeted down around him. Up and up he rose, the tons of displaced water rocking their comparatively tiny craft. Chen took a step forward, tilting her head to watch him tower above them.

  The Titan turned his head toward the wild heavens and a blue shaft of energy erupted from between his jaws, stabbed up into the dark clouds, through them, igniting them from within. It seemed like an affirmation, a celebration of his sudden recovery – but also a challenge, casting light into Ghidorah’s storm.

  Maybe nobody had seen the rescue flare. But someone might notice this…

  His victory dance over, the huge saurian bent down toward them, as if noticing them for the first time, his gaze picking over what to him must seem like insects. But Godzilla knew human beings. He had worked with them before. They had just seen the proof of that.

  “Mark?” Chen said.

  He noticed Crane reach for his sidearm.

  “Nobody move!” he said.

  He stared straight into Godzilla’s eyes, and damned if the son-of-a-bitch didn’t stare back. Like it was trying to say something. And he did – or at least something passed between them, something that went into the core of him, and for the first time since Andrew’s death Mark didn’t… hate.

  Godzilla wasn’t the enemy.

  Everything seemed to slow down, drop away, until he could hear only his own breath and heartbeat – and Godzilla. Like when he listened to the wolves, but deeper, clearer. The rhythms of his own body were melding with the Titan’s, harmonizing…

  And he understood what Emma had done. What made the ORCA work.

  Godzilla broke their mutual gaze, leaving him shaken, amazed, but with a sense of almost religious clarity.

  Godzilla turned, dove into the sea, and pushed through the waves.

  Mark snapped out of it and turned to Chen.

  “I know how to find them,” he said.

  Before he could clarify, a sonic boom shattered the air above. He looked up, fearing to see Rodan, or Ghidorah, or some other air-bound death-dealer – but it was the Argo. She didn’t look great – she was battered, and smoke poured from her in several places – but to Mark, she was beautiful. She was here, and she could take him to Maddie.

  * * *

  Sam was there to meet Mark and Chen when they boarded the Argo. He must have seen something in their faces, or maybe he had been counting and realized Serizawa wasn’t with them. Then he looked at Serizawa’s notebook, still clutched in Mark’s hand, and his face fell as he realized the truth.

  “Let’s make him proud and not screw this up,” Mark said.

  “Oh, God,” Sam said. “How did he—”

  “By saving us,” Chen told him.

  * * *

  “What’s the latest, Sam?” Mark asked, as they reached the bridge. Here, too, there were signs of the Argo’s travails. Scorch marks, dead control panels. But they were still in the air, so nothing crucial had gone dark.

  “Right,” Sam said. “Okay. Where to start – uh, we think Emma activated the ORCA somewhere near Boston – that’s why Ghidorah and Godzilla are both headed that way. But we still can’t pinpoint its exact location without that missing piece of the ORCA signal—”

  “I’ve got the missing piece,” Mark said.

  Sam’s expression became excited and… knowing. As if he had already guessed.

  “It’s Godzilla, right?” he said. “I mean, I know we already tried—”

  “It’s not Godzilla,” Mark said.

  He brought up his earlier work, the ORCA’s waveforms all separated out. The others grouped around, watching.

  “It’s us,” he said.

  “What do you mean, us?” Foster asked.

  “Emma combined the bioacoustics of Godzilla with a human’s to create the ORCA’s signal. The creatures just think it’s another apex predator.”

  “Well, we are a bunch of horny, murderous carnivores,” Stanton said.

  “Yeah,” Foster said. “It’s real poetic. Now what?”

  “We track it, we find it, and we get my daughter back,” Mark said.

  Stanton took a big pull from his flask and gestured at a video feed of Ghidorah.

  “Great,” he said. “What about Moe, Larry, and Curly over here?”

  “Godzilla will bring balance,” Chen said.

  Stanton, obviously a little tipsy, favored her with a skeptical stare.

  “Oh, I get it,” he said. “A little of Serizawa’s old ‘let them fight’ action. Always loved it when he said that.”

  “No,” Mark said. “This time, we join the fight.”

  TWENTY

  From Dr. Chen’s notes:

  But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, Earth gave birth to her youngest child Typhon. He was born from the love of Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. Strength was with his hands in all that he did, and the feet of the strong god were untiring. From his shoulders grew an hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvelous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear; and again, at another, he would hiss, so that the high mountains re-echoed. And truly a thing past help would have happened on that day, and he would have come to reign over mortals and immortals alike.

  —Hesiod, Theogony, circa 700 BCE

  Sam had told Mark that Emma had turned on the ORCA; he hadn’t told him that it had effectively paralyzed most of the Titans. Only three were known to still be active: Ghidorah, Rodan – and Mothra. Emma knew what she was doing. It appeared she had changed her mind. After all, she wasn’t trying to kill everyone.

  Ghidorah was, though, and the ORCA signal wasn’t slowing him up at all. Or Rodan, for that matter, probably because he was so close to Ghidorah.

  So right now, if Mothra was still on their side, it was two-vs-two Titanwise. But as for the human part of the army, they didn’t have all that much to join the fight with. Only a few ships from the fleet had escaped Ghidorah’s wrath. More aircraft had made it and were desperately trying to find places to refuel and rearm before rejoining the fray.

  Now that he knew what the secret sauce was, Mark was able to fiddle with the signal and get a better fix on it.

  Sam was right – the ORCA was thumping out its tones in the Northeast.

  In Boston.

  It was hard to believe it was coincidence that Emma would return to the city they once lived in to send out her signal. There were better places to do it, if she wanted worldwide coverage. He didn’t see Emma’s meticulous planning in this. It was improvised. When Ghidorah seized control of the monsters she thought she was in charge of, it must have been a bit of a shock. Now she was doing what she could. But why Boston?

  There was a bunker there, he remembered. One of Monarch’s hideouts. Had she been there all along – since Antarctica? She must have been.

  Maybe she thought it would put Maddie more at ease, to be near her old home. Possibly there was some more practical reason that hadn’t occurred to him. At this point it was hard for even him to predict Emma’s actions.

  By dribs and drabs, the remainder of their fighting force came together, and once more they drove toward a battle with a creature wielding power beyond all understanding.

  But this time they had a monster of their own leading the way.

  * * *

  For Emma, it was easy enough to guess what Maddie was up to; she had used the ORCA before to distract Monster Zero. But the signal was coming from Fenway Park, so this wasn’t a random shot in the dark by her daughter; she had to have ov
erheard her and Jonah speaking. Maddie was implementing Emma’s own plan.

  Which meant her daughter had known she was risking her life.

  She had always been proud of her girl, but this – this was impressive. She’d managed to steal the ORCA from under the noses of Jonah and his men, make it out of the bunker undetected, cover the many miles between here and the stadium, hook the ORCA to the loudspeakers, and find the right frequencies to transmit.

  And only just now was Jonah aware of any of it.

  A little luck and male pride had been on Maddie’s side. One of Jonah’s men had eventually admitted to being shot with a stun gun by her. When he came to, the ORCA was gone. He’d tried to find her himself rather than tell Jonah. He’d known what kind of hell he would catch from the other guys for being beaten by a twelve-year-old girl. Not to mention whatever punishment Jonah came up with. But when his own search failed, he reported his failure. That’s when Jonah went to the control room and found the ORCA gone and the signal thubbing away on the monitors.

  It was done. But Maddie was in terrible danger, whether she knew it or not. Boston was evacuated; there was no one to alert. She had to get there herself.

  Emma rounded up a few of Jonah’s men to help her pack up a Humvee. They were nearly done when Jonah himself showed up.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “I don’t have time to argue about this, Jonah,” she said. “I’m getting Maddie back.”

  “Not with my men you’re not,” he said. “Emma, you said this was about the greater good, that the planet deserved a clean slate. But now you’re prepared to put all our lives in danger because your little girl is missing?”

  Of course. She knew he didn’t care about Maddie. He’d threatened to have her killed, after all. But if she framed this in practical terms, maybe he would get out of her way.

  “The ORCA—” she began. Jonah cut her off.

  “The ORCA no longer matters,” he said. “Man does not control the laws of nature. And neither do you.”

  Emma regarded him, feeling everything slipping away from her. She’d hoped to be gone before Jonah found out. But he wasn’t going to stop her.