by Greg Cox
Then the lights went out, taking all the glowing neon with it. Strident bells and buzzers went silent, while people looked up from their games with varying degrees of surprise, concern, and annoyance. Roulette wheels slowed to a stop. Cards went unplayed. Piped-in music gave way to anxious muttering, as nervous gamblers scooped up their chips for safekeeping. Cut off by design from the outside world, the casino floor was suddenly a murky, inhospitable cavern. Puzzled staff and visitors waited for some sort of announcement concerning the blackout, but the P.A. system was apparently down too.
All that could heard, coming from somewhere outside the casino, was a piercing, inhuman howl that seemed to be drawing nearer.
* * *
Elle paced restlessly around her kitchen, keeping one eye on the TV news in the living room. The horrifying footage was playing continuously and only seemed to get worse every time she saw it. She’d watched every minute over and over, half-hoping, half-dreading that she’d catch a glimpse of Ford amongst the chaos, but so far there had been no sign of him, even though, according to Sam, Ford had called from the Honolulu airport right before the monsters attacked.
“Yes, Ford Brody—Japan to San Francisco,” she repeated into the phone at her ear. Pacing in her hospital scrubs, she fought to keep panic at bay. “Look, I know your systems are down,” she pleaded to the frazzled-sounding airline representative she’d finally managed to get hold of. So far he hadn’t been much help. “What? No, wait! Can I leave my number just in—?”
A click at the other end of the line cut off the call.
“Damn it!” she swore, slamming the phone down onto the kitchen table. The curse came out louder than she intended, startling Sam who was sitting at the table eating a bologna sandwich.
He looked up at her with a worried expression.
She hurried over to comfort him, pulling him close. To be honest, the hug was as much for her benefit as his.
“It’s okay,” she said, trying to reassure them both. “Daddy’s going to be okay.”
She wished she could believe that.
* * *
Once again, Ford found himself aboard a C-17 Globe-master bound for home. Crammed in among the other soldiers, all of whom were decked out in combat gear, Ford felt out of place in his beaten-up civilian attire. He rubbed his chin, which was badly in need of a shave. He suspected he could use a shower as well. He had been on the move for days now.
Fortunately, his new traveling companion didn’t seem to mind his lack of hygiene.
“I’m Queens all the way,” Sergeant Tre Morales volunteered, as if his New York accent wasn’t proof enough. He proudly shared photos of three generations of Morales. “Mi familia. My wife’s from San Francisco, but we dragged her over.”
Ford felt bad that he didn’t have any photos of Elle or Sam on his person. “We’re just across the Bridge.”
“Kids?” Tre asked.
“I have a son. He’s four. Sam.”
“I’m having a daughter,” Tre said.
Ford appreciated the conversation. He knew he probably ought to be trying to get some sleep, but he was too uneasy knowing that a pair of feuding monsters was heading toward America. He wasn’t going to be able to relax until he knew that Sam and Elle were safe.
“You gotta be psyched about that,” he said, regarding Tre’s upcoming blessed event.
“Oh, yeah. Super-psyched, ‘cause we’re due next week.” Tre grinned, but Ford could hear the genuine tension behind the sergeant’s joking tone. “I really wanted to wait until after the apocalypse to have kids, so, yeah…”
His voice trailed off.
Ford wanted to reassure Tre, but was still searching for the words when the light coming through the plane’s windows suddenly shifted direction. Changing course, the C-17 tilted hard to one side, throwing the seated soldiers against each other. Ford tensed up, concerned with what this might mean. Elle and Sam were waiting for him. The last thing he needed was another complication or detour.
“All right, heads up!” An Air Force loadmaster ducked back into the hold from the cockpit. He spoke loudly enough to rouse any napping soldiers. The stripes on his uniform identified him as a staff sergeant. “We have new orders, new destination. Get geared up!”
Ford frowned. Did this mean they weren’t heading to San Francisco after all? Rising from his seat, he approached the loadmaster. The tilting floor beneath him made walking a challenge.
“Hey, Staff Sergeant, what’s the word? We’re just trying to get home, right?”
The loadmaster shook his head. “Another one of those things just popped up in Nevada, sir. Tore through Vegas, heading for the west coast. We don’t stop it now, there might not be a home to get back to.”
Ford’s blood went cold. Another creature? Heading west from Nevada?
Toward California?
* * *
Elle was running late by the time she got to work. San Francisco General Hospital was located in the heart of downtown, and treated thousands of patients every day, but she had never seen it this crazy before. Emergency vehicles, including fire trucks and ambulances, packed the loading area out front, while dozens of paramedics were already on hand, preparing for a flood of casualties. It looked like every EMT in town had been called into service. Elle felt a twinge of guilt for not getting here earlier, but she had been trying—and failing—to find out what had happened to Ford in Hawaii.
With Sam in tow, she made her way through the hustle and bustle to the nurses’ station on the ground floor. Her supervisor, Laura Watkins, greeted Elle with visible relief. Like the area outside, the E.R. was a madhouse, full of doctors and nurses dashing about and getting ready. The hospital was the only Level 1 Trauma Center serving the 1.5 million residents of the city and surrounding county, so it often took the brunt of any major accidents or disasters.
“There you are!” Laura exclaimed. The head nurse, a fortyish brunette, had coped in her day with everything from earthquakes to multi-car pile-ups, but Elle had never seen her this stressed. “Thank God. What a mess.” She didn’t waste time chiding Elle for her tardiness. “Okay, where do I need you most? Get that triage unit off its ass. We’re just about to start catching overflow from Nevada and no one’s even got an estimate yet. I’m gonna be right here, so Sam can stay with me. He’ll be fine.”
“Thanks, Laura.” Elle sat Sam down at the station and handed him a coloring book and crayons. “Honey, I’m sorry, but you need to wait here while Mommy works, okay?”
Sam glanced around, visibly troubled by all the commotion. Even a four-year-old could pick up on the anxiety and agitation in the air. Still, he nodded bravely; this was not the first time Elle had been unable to find a babysitter. She leaned over and planted a firm kiss on his forehead, before reluctantly tearing herself away to get to work. A television screen in the waiting area, intended to occupy bored patients and their loved ones, aired live footage of rampant destruction in some small town further east. It seemed that the carnage was no longer confined to Hawaii. Elle shuddered as she hurried past the televised images of crushed and smoking ruins. Glancing back, she saw Sam staring at the TV, ignoring the coloring book in his lap.
She wished she could turn the TV off, but there was no hiding from the nightmare that had invaded their world. This was no harmless creature feature or childish fantasy.
The monsters were real now.
* * *
The penthouse suite at the MGM Grand Hotel was an exercise in opulent luxury, boasting a well-stocked bar with marble accents, a spacious dining area complete with fine linen tablecloths, a king-sized bed, a deluxe Roman spa tub, a full-equipped entertainment center, and a view to die for. Intended for high rollers only, the lavish suite was the height of elegance.
Or at least it had been.
A brigade of firefighters stomped through the suite, searching for survivors. The hotel’s entire façade had been ripped away, so that the far wall facing Las Vegas Boulevard no longer existed. Smoke and wind blew i
n from outside. Emergency helicopters buzzed loudly through the sky. The exhausted firefighters paused before the gaping hole where the wall and picture windows had been. They gazed out in shock and awe at the apocalyptic vista below.
A deep chasm cut across the famed Vegas Strip, where the claws of an enormous beast had gouged the street and sidewalks all the way down to the bedrock. Thousands of displaced and traumatized tourists and casino employees staggered amidst the shattered pavement, while an army of first responders was overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Water gushed from ruptured pipes. Flames erupted from the ruins of the Strip’s gaudy casinos, hotels, and attractions. New York-New York had been reduced to splinters, its faux Statue of Liberty defaced, its replica Empire State Building obliterated. Across the way, on the other side of Tropicana, the mock medieval turrets and battlements of Excalibur had been torn down by a genuine monster, who had wreaked havoc all along the ravaged boulevard. A half-scale copy of the Eiffel Tower had been snapped in two. Mountains of rubble filled the Venetian’s canals. The Luxor’s great pyramid and matching sphinx were history. It was as though the MUTO was symbolically laying waste to the entire world.
It felt like a prophecy.
* * *
The Saratoga was speeding across the Pacific, making thirty knots, but the crisis had obviously reached America before the carrier and its attached strike group could. In the briefing room, video feeds captured shocking views of the Las Vegas strip being torn apart by the second MUTO, the one that had just broken loose from the Yucca Mountain facility. Soldiers and scientists crowded before the monitors, gaping at this latest threat. Smoke and static obscured the video feeds, making it difficult at first to compare the new MUTO to the immense winged arthropod that had hatched from the cocoon in Japan, but Serizawa managed to make out its appearance.
Instead of six legs plus a pair of wings, the new MUTO had eight limbs in total: two sturdy hind legs, similar to those on the first creature, two sets of elongated middle limbs, and two smaller forearms on its upper thorax. Like the earlier organism, the creature was a chimera that defied ready classification, but, if pressed, Serizawa would have labeled it some manner of gigantic semi-arthropod. Its dark, iridescent exoskeleton, composed of a thick, chitinous material, displayed shades of blue and red. Its backwards-jointed hind legs rested on two squat claws, but its upper limbs ended in hooked talons. A flat, anvil-shaped head boasted glittering red eyes and beak-like jaws.
“You’re telling me this is a female?” Admiral Stenz asked. “Which means these things can procreate?”
“I’m afraid so,” Serizawa said. Sexual dimorphism would explain why two radically different creatures had hatched from identical egg sacs. Such gender-based variation within a single species was not uncommon in nature. “They’ve been communicating.”
Just as Joe Brody tried to warn us, he thought.
“The female remained completely dormant until the male matured,” Graham explained.
“And if they mate?” Stenz asked worriedly. “After that, then what?”
Serizawa did not mince words. “There won’t be an after.”
Stenz didn’t need it spelled out for him. The admiral was no biologist, but he could grasp the dire implications of the creatures reproducing. Two MUTOs, plus Godzilla, were bad enough, but if they started breeding…
“Let’s put all options on the table,” Stenz said.
Hampton nodded. “Our analysts have drawn up a nuclear option, sir.”
“Nuclear?” Graham reacted in shock. “You can’t be serious. They’re attracted to radiation.”
“Exactly,” Hampton said. “We get them close and kill them with a blast.” He called their attention to the map table, where the two MUTOs were converging toward the western seaboard, with Godzilla in pursuit. Current projections suggested that their ultimate rendezvous was San Francisco. “Their EMPs make remote targeting impossible. But if we rig a warhead with a shielded timer, put it on a boat, and send it twenty miles out… the radiation lures the MUTOs, the MUTOs lure Godzilla, and we detonate with little risk to the city.”
Serizawa said nothing, but his expression darkened. He took out his pocket watch and twisted the stem, an old habit that utterly failed to reassure him. To the contrary, it only increased his apprehension and dismay.
“That’s assuming everything goes perfectly,” Graham said, still skeptical of Hampton’s alarming nuclear scenario. “But if it doesn’t?”
“If you have another answer, Doctor,” Stenz said, “I’m all ears. But conventional arms are only slowing these things down… at best.” He weighed his options before reaching a decision. “We’ll need presidential approval.” He turned to Hampton. “In the meantime, get the warheads prepped and moving to the coast.”
Graham looked on speechlessly, visibly aghast, as Hampton hurried to carry out his assignment. With the decision made, the other scientists and soldiers filed out of the briefing room to get back to their respective stations. Graham departed as well, but Serizawa lingered behind, still toying with the antique watch. Within minutes, only Serizawa and the admiral were left in the cabin.
“You look like you have an opinion on this,” Stenz said.
Serizawa placed the watch on the meeting table and slid it over to Stenz, who picked it up. The admiral’s puzzled expression made it clear that he wasn’t sure where this was going. He examined the watch.
“It’s stopped,” he noted.
“Yes,” Serizawa said. “At 8:15 A.M.”
A look of understanding came over Stenz’s face. “8:15 A.M. August 6, 1945?”
“Just outside Hiroshima,” Serizawa said.
Stenz handed the watch back. He seemed uncertain how to respond. “Quite the collector’s piece.”
“It was my father’s.”
And with that, Serizawa exited the room.
SEVENTEEN
The female MUTO’s trail of destruction was visible from the air. Acres of American farmland had been devastated by the creature’s passage, the gentle geometry of patterned fields left brutalized in the monster’s wake. Crushed barns and silos were ground into the clawed earth. Anxious farm animals roamed among the ruins of scattered family farms. Nor were the ensuing small towns and suburbs spared. Highways were flattened. Entire neighborhoods and housing developments were razed to their foundations, their former residents fleeing in panic just ahead of the destruction. The wreckage of abandoned malls and shopping centers, schools and churches, joined a seemingly endless disaster zone that stretched west for as far as the eye could see.
Ford was shaken by what he’d seen from the transport plane. Even with everything he’d witnessed overseas, this struck far too close to home. It felt as though the nightmare that had begun for him in Janjira fifteen years ago was still stalking his family—and the country he’d pledged to defend. And now there were three monsters?
“Okay, everybody off!” the loadmaster ordered. “This is as far as we can fly.”
The C-17 had touched down on an evacuated airstrip somewhere east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The rear doors of the plane opened and the troops disembarked into the harsh sunlight. After being cooped up in the hold of the Globemaster for hours, Ford’s eyes needed a moment to adjust.
He spied a small town less than a mile away—and crashed aircraft further in the distance. The loadmaster saw him staring at the smoking wreckage.
“We’re well within range of its EMP,” Staff Sergeant Hultquist explained. “From here on out, it’s by land or not at all.”
Ford understood. Dr. Serizawa had explained to him about the MUTO’s electromagnetic pulse, the effects of which Ford had personally witnessed in Japan and Honolulu. He deduced that the crashed planes marked the current borders of the second MUTO’s field of influence.
He felt glad to be on solid ground.
Along with Morales and the other soldiers, he was crammed into a waiting troop carrier that was part of a larger convoy heading toward the front lines o
f the conflict. More planes were landing, disgorging yet more personnel, to be transferred into additional carriers. Ford was impressed by the scale of the mobilization. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in Iraq or Afghanistan. The military was pulling out all the stops to deal with the rampaging monsters.
He hoped that would be enough.
The convoy pulled into a small town whose name no longer mattered. What had once been Main Street, U.S.A. was now a war zone, lined with abandoned cars, charred storefronts, and smoldering debris. A toppled water tower was being cleared away. Broken glass and scraps of newspapers littered the ground. Dry air reeked of smoke and ash. Bloodstains remained on the pavement. No surviving civilians could be seen anywhere; what was left of the town was now a military staging hub. Jeeps and Humvees were parked at every corner. Troops hustled in and out of the few standing buildings, carrying out the duties with a definite air of urgency. Shelling could be heard in the distance.
It was hard to believe that this had once been somebody’s hometown.
The carrier braked to a stop and the soldiers piled out of the vehicle. Uncertain where to report to, Ford took a moment to survey his unreal surroundings. He had wanted to return home, but not like this. He glanced around, trying to figure out some way to get from here to San Francisco—and his family.
