by Greg Keyes
“You think so?” she said. “But that would be too easy. My father thinks a lot of me. He trusts my intelligence. He trusts it so much he is always testing it. He told me where to bring the HEAVs and gave me instructions about the power source. He failed to mention our primate friend would be involved. Probably his little joke. I’m sure he knew that I would either figure it out or you would tell me. That’s my dad. Always thinking of my betterment.”
“Okay,” Nathan said. “I’m sorry he—”
“Oh, get over it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I have. One day I’ll inherit a multi-billion-dollar empire. I can deal with a few head games for that, even if it does give me daddy issues.” She nodded, as if to herself. “So,” she continued, “you’ve got a plan to get the monkey…” He made a little face. “Fine,” she muttered. “I know he’s not a monkey, you know. To get Kong the rest of the way?”
“Yes,” Nathan said.
“Great,” she said. “The HEAVs should be in Antarctica by now. Sounds like we’re still on.”
“We’re still on,” Nathan agreed.
* * *
As Ilene zipped herself into the dark blue flight suit, Jia continued to stare at the one provided for her.
See, Ilene signed. It’s just clothes.
Looks strange, the girl replied. Tight.
We need to wear them, Ilene said. So we can stay with Kong.
Jia frowned. I like my clothes, she said. My maiden shawl…
Ilene knelt down in front of her. You can keep that on, she said, taking the red shawl and settling it over the girl’s head. It can be your hood, okay? And you can keep your necklace and circlet on, too.
She held up the little suit. It looks tight, but it’s okay. It will help protect you.
Jia took it from her, held it gingerly. Then she nodded.
For Kong, she signed.
Apex Facility, Pensacola
The Apex facility wasn’t so hard to break into now that most of it lay in rubble. Madison, Josh and Bernie had to evade a few security guards half-heartedly patrolling around the wreckage and cross some yellow tape. After that, most the obstacles were rubble related.
“So what’s the plan?” Madison asked.
“We find out what’s on sub-level 33,” Bernie said.
They turned on their flashlights and followed Bernie across a fissure in the concrete.
“I don’t have the right shoes for this,” Josh complained.
“Keep it moving, Tap Water!” Bernie said.
A moment later, they stood at the mouth of a dark tunnel that had collapsed so as to slope downward.
“All right, Mad Hatter,” Bernie said. It wasn’t clear to Madison if he was talking to her or to himself. “Down the rabbit hole.” He and Madison shared a complicated fist-bump before they sat on the incline and he slid down to the next floor.
“Are you sure we can trust him?” Josh whispered to Madison, as she prepared to follow.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Josh said. “Well, maybe because he mostly says crazy shit all the time and carries a bottle of whisky from his dead wife like a gun?”
“I think it’s romantic,” Madison said. Then she slid down after Bernie.
“I really don’t understand women,” Josh said, behind her.
* * *
“This all looks really different than it did before it was smashed up,” Bernie said, as they made their way through darkened, debris-strewn corridors. “I mean, I used to work here. I used to use that bathroom right down there.”
“I feel some of these details aren’t needed,” Josh said.
“Thing is,” Bernie said, “I like it better this way. Quiet and destroyed. Oh, man did I hate this place. I’ve never been so happy to be unemployed.”
“Are you sure you’re unemployed?” Madison asked. “I mean, on the news they were saying they would find jobs for everyone.”
“Yeah,” Bernie said. “Everyone alive. With any luck, they think I’m dead.”
“You faked your death?” Josh said.
“I didn’t report in,” Bernie said. “Last time I checked I was on the missing list.”
“Won’t that worry somebody?” Josh said. “Your mom, or dad, or … somebody?”
Bernie stopped for a second. He looked down at the floor. Then, after a breath or two, he continued on.
“Anyone ever tell you you talk too much, Tap Water?” he said.
“Honestly,” Josh said. “All the time.”
They came to a security door; Bernie used a screwdriver on the control panel to jimmy it open. They entered a long hall, collapsed in most places.
“This whole place came down,” Bernie said, looking around. “And there was this … eye.” He shone his torch through a broken wall; inside was a great hollow space, with lots of severed wires and conduits. As if something had been hastily pulled out.
“What are we looking for?” Josh asked.
“No, no, no,” Bernie muttered. “It was right here. I swear to God, it was right there!”
Madison was noticing something else.
“Hey guys,” she said, motioning to an elevator. “Anyone know where this leads to?”
She stepped in. Whatever the condition of the rest of the building, the elevator looked like it still had power.
Bernie and Josh followed her in.
“You believe me, right?” Bernie said to Josh. “’Cause I know there was something there.”
“Sub-level 33,” Josh said, as Madison pushed the button. “How deep does this thing go, Bernie?”
“Hell,” Bernie muttered. “It goes to hell.”
* * *
When the elevator door opened, they were no longer looking at a ruined facility, but a highly functional one. Sub-level 33 was obviously way below the damage Godzilla had caused; the Titan had scraped off the top of an anthill, but most of the nest was underground. They must also be far below sea level, Madison figured. That made her a little nervous, but the dozens of people going about their tasks were the obvious, more immediate worry. No one seemed to have noticed them arrive, though, or at least didn’t give them a second glance if they did. Unauthorized personnel on this level were probably unheard of. If you got off the elevator, you belonged. And Bernie, at least, had on the right outfit.
Still, they moved away from the elevator immediately.
The space itself was enormous; in the distance she saw techs at control panels, but most of the area immediately in front of them was occupied by lozenge-shaped transportation pods with blue LED lighting tracing their contours. A crane had just lifted one of the pods and was conducting it toward a large pair of doors set above the level of the floor. As she watched, the doors opened, revealing a tunnel. The crane placed the pod in the tunnel and the doors closed.
“What is all of this?” she asked.
“Breakaway civilization,” Bernie said. “I mean, c’mon. This is page one in the Apex-playing-God handbook. Huh? I mean, the Illuminati running a shadow economy all to fund a hidden colony for the elite in case any of these governments or mega-corporations accidentally hit the doomsday button.” He looked at Josh, walking away from him. “Makes a lot of sense, if you think about it,” he insisted.
“Ah,” Josh said, dubiously. “Yeah.”
Madison took that in. Monarch had bunkers all over the world designed for civilization to hide out in in case thing went really badly, and they had in fact been used three years ago. She had been in the one near Boston. But this didn’t look like a bunker. The voice on the loudspeaker kept calling out destinations—Mexico was the one she caught—and times so that it was more like a train station.
“Maglev,” Bernie muttered.
“What?”
“The manifest. Said something about maglev. That must be what these things are.”
“Yeah,” she said, slowly. “I think you’re right.”
Madison had seen prototypes and working models of advanced magnetic l
evitation trains while hanging around Monarch, and she had ridden the maglev train in Shanghai, one of the few already in use. This looked a lot like a next—or maybe next-next—generation version of that. When in operation, the pods would be suspended above a track using one set of magnets and propelled by another set. As a result, there was no friction between train and track to slow it down. Accelerated like a metal slug in a railgun, the only thing limiting its speed was the amount of energy put into the acceleration, the drag of gravity, and air resistance—and she was willing to bet that further down that tunnel the atmosphere would be pumped out, creating a near vacuum where the upper velocity could be faster than a supersonic jet.
Bernie had his notebook out and was scribbling like mad. Madison understood the train. But the rest of it, what was actually going on here…
She heard footsteps approaching.
“Someone’s coming,” she said.
They were close to one of the maglev cars now; the three of them ducked in to hide.
When the footsteps faded, Madison peered out the train window opposite to the door they had come in. Outside, Apex workers with flashlights were loading something into another train from huge pallets; giant egg-shaped objects with fetus-like shadows floating inside.
“Oh, my God,” Madison said. Because she knew what they were. She had never seen one in person, but in her time with her mother she’d learned plenty about them.
“They look like eggs,” Josh said.
“Skullcrawlers,” she said. Massive semi-reptilian monsters from Skull Island, these were the chief antagonists of the island’s alpha, Kong. Nasty, terrible things by all accounts. “What’s Apex doing with Skullcrawlers?”
“Um … Madison?” Josh said.
She turned to find out what he wanted, and then she saw. The car they were in was already packed with Skullcrawler eggs.
“Oh, crap,” she said.
“Yes,” Bernie said. “I think maybe it’s time we leave. I’ve got a podcast to record, and—”
He was cut short by the metallic sound of the door they had come though gliding shut.
“What was that?” Bernie asked.
The whole car jolted and then started to lift up.
“Uh, guys?” Josh said. “I think we’re moving.”
“No kidding,” Madison said.
They were being lifted up by a crane, in fact. But as far as she could tell, looking down, still no one had noticed them. They had just become unwitting additions to a shipment of Titan eggs headed—someplace.
Josh and Bernie were using brute force trying to get the door to open but having no luck. Josh did finally manage to pop a panel open that had a screen inside with routing information.
“Oh,” he said.
“What?”
“It says we’re heading to Apex headquarters—Hong Kong.”
Bernie seemed to relax. He even smiled. “Hong Kong,” he said. “That means we’re going to get some answers.”
The doors opened, revealing the tunnel again. The crane settled them in, and they bumped forward until the doors closed behind them. The car began to rise up into the air. Madison flicked her eyes nervously around the Skullcrawler eggs that took up most of their space. She felt as if the walls of the pod had shrunk to fit her skin, making it hard to breathe. What if the eggs sensed food and hatched early?
“I hope that these guys don’t mind that we’re tagging along,” she said.
“What happens if they hatch? Do they, you know, get on your face?”
Madison shook her head. “Hatchlings are fully independent at birth. Just smaller versions of the adults.”
“Okay,” Josh sighed.
“They’re born starving,” Madison said. “They will just straight-up eat us.”
Josh stared at the nearest egg. “No, please,” he said.
A few yards down the tunnel, the car took off like a rocket. She glanced back at Josh, at the fear on his face, and she wanted to tell him that it was okay, she was scared, too. But knowing Josh, that would have the wrong effect, give him license to panic. As long as he thought she was okay, he would try to hold it together, if for no other reason so she couldn’t make fun of him later.
Instead, Madison tried to piece together exactly what was happening. Hong Kong? That meant the tunnel they were in ran all the way beneath southern North America and then the entirety of the Pacific Ocean. That was one hell of a tunnel. And Apex had built it all without anyone knowing about it, with maglev technology? And if there was one tunnel like this, how many more were there? How many places could Apex ship massive cargoes of Titan eggs or whatever without the risk of being noticed?
Even some of Bernie’s crazier conspiracy theories were starting to sound more reasonable. This was going to be some ride.
“Here we go,” she said.
Antarctica
“Yeah, whatever,” Sergeant “Class” Zivkovic said, flipping off the handset.
“What’s up, Sarge?” Ryan asked, wiping frost off his gloves.
“Just Eskibel out on the point, yanking our chains again,” Class said.
“What this time?” Ryan wanted to know. “Another man-eating penguin?”
“Something like that.” He looked past Ryan at Martin, who was clicking his rosary beads again.
“Martin,” he said. “You okay?”
“I don’t like this place, Sarge,” Martin said. “All those people, just straight up murdered at the outpost. You know they laid out there almost a year before anybody ever came and got ’em?”
“It’s a deep freeze here, Martin,” Class said. “I’m sure the bodies kept just fine.”
“Yeah, their bodies,” Martin said. “But…” He trailed off.
“You think there are ghosts here, Martin?”
Martin looked stricken. “Sarge, you know I do,” he said. “People have souls. When we die, sometimes they go on. Sometimes they don’t get far at all. I feel like some of these are hanging around, y’know?”
Class sighed and nodded.
Personally, he didn’t believe in ghosts, but it had been a bad business, the massacre at Monarch Outpost 32. A bunch of mercenaries lead by an ecoterrorist and a rogue Monarch scientist had engineered it and blasted the frozen Titan Ghidorah out of its icy tomb. After that, of course, all hell had broken loose. The old base had been mostly destroyed by the explosion and the ensuing fight between Ghidorah and Godzilla. But the Monarch guys and the government had found something else to merit their attention out here on this godforsaken frozen continent. The Vile Vortex. They were a few miles from the old outpost, but they had done recon there earlier, and it had left some of the men shaken—Martin in particular. And the new site about three klicks south of them—well, it had its own weirdness.
Why exactly he and his men were here hadn’t been explained to him, only that they should report in if they saw anything other than birds.
“Yeah,” Martin said, suddenly, apparently not done with whatever it was he felt he needed to say. “I know you all think I’m crazy, but yeah. I mean they’ve got the freakin’ gateway to hell right up there, and things—bad things are hanging around.”
“That’s not what it is,” Class said.
“Yeah? The ‘Vile Vortex,’ then. You know what happened to the last poor souls who tried to go in one of those.”
“Soldier, get a grip,” Class said. “Nobody is asking you to go in, are they?”
“No, sir,” Martin said. But after a moment he went back to his rosary.
“So what was it, Sarge?” Ryan asked.
“What?”
“Eskibel. What was he yanking your chain about?”
“Oh,” Class rolled his eyes. “Monkeys. Eskibel said to keep an eye peeled for flying monkeys.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Okay, then. And maybe a wicked witch or two.”
Class was just calling in another report when they heard the thuttering in the distance. The sound was unmistakably helicopters, and a lot of them. Dozen
s, maybe.
“Choppers,” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Class replied. “Must be our flying monkeys.”
“You know what’s going on, Sarge?” Ryan asked.
“That’s above my pay-grade, soldier,” Class said, as the sound drew nearer.
He strained his eyes to see through the fog. Well, it wasn’t fog really, but instead a fine mist of snow and ice particles suspended in the Antarctic air, but the effect was the same.
He saw them then, heavy-lift choppers, flying in formation.
Then he looked lower, at the immense shadow below them, something lying in a bowl-shaped mesh net bigger than a football field.
“Oh, shit,” Ryan said. “It is a flying monkey.”
Sure, Class thought. If a monkey was the size of the freaking Chrysler Building. But he was aware his jaw was hanging open and shut it deliberately.
He tracked the huge ape as it passed over them, suspended by cables from the helicopters above.
“Well,” he said. “There’s something you don’t see … ever.”
Behind him, Martin’s prayer grew a little louder.
“Piki ába ish binili ma. Chi hohchifo hát…”
“Martin?”
Martin broke off. “Sarge?”
“Go ahead and pray,” Class told him. “And uh, you can include the rest us, if you want.”
“Sure,” Martin said, and started again, in English this time. “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
FOURTEEN
There is only one untouched reservoir of raw materials left in the world, and that’s in the region known as Antarctica. An area larger than the combined area of the United States and Europe. The American government is sending a naval expedition to that region. The purpose is to train our navy in polar operations so that it may better perform its function of preserving the peace upon the seven seas of the world. Beyond that, the American government is seeking to do its share in the discovery and release to the world of the unknown treasures of Antarctica in the interest of all mankind.
James V. Forrestal,
United States Secretary of Defense,
in the documentary
The Secret Land, 1948
Antarctica
