I glanced up. The monster was holding a screaming human being in her talons, eyeing it curiously. Then, as I stared, fascinated, the big beast slowly crushed the life out of it as a man would an insect. Then she shrieked in triumph, and moved again toward us.
I could see the underground entrance now. I gave a frantic shove to get us into the doorway and to safety before the thing swooped down on us and crushed us all to pulp.
Nobody could breathe. Like a wave rolling onto the beach, the entire crowd on the sidewalk pushed and forced itself into the underground passageway, just as the big beast smashed a building on the corner into rubble.
It was the Berkeley Hotel. I didn’t say a word. Moira must have seen too. Sean and his mother, Maighréad, were surely dead.
A gas line burst in the shattered pavement. A geyser of flame shot into the air. I could hear the shrieks of the burning people near it as they tried to escape the flames. We were wedged in so tightly in the entryway to the underground that none of us could move. Dust and smoke beat down on us. We stumbled over the steps to the platform. As we did so, someone next to me cried out in horror.
I looked up at the ceiling. Bricks popped out of the vaulted archway, showering down into the crowd. I saw a woman’s head split open. She sank out of sight. The crowd gaped upward.
I grabbed Moira and Joe and we forced our way through the crowd onto the subway tracks. Others followed. I could see the tunnel ahead, a vast cave of darkness. Bricks poured down around us. Cement peppered us. The crowd was battling itself now, trying to dodge the disintegrating ceiling, murderously insane in its struggle for self-preservation.
“Hurry up!” I screamed, literally carrying Moira with me. Joe needed no urging. An old man stumbled into me.
There was a ripping, tearing sound them, a strident mechanical sound above the shouts of the crowd. I looked back over my shoulder. A huge talon broke through the ceiling of the underground platform. It groped down through the hole toward the squirming crowd.
Down the tracks to our back, a headlight pierced the gloom. A subway train was approaching the platform. I could see the motorman’s face as he looked up into the ceiling above him and saw the huge claw. He screamed and frantically tried to apply the brakes.
It was too late. As I watched, too stunned to move, the train was inundated by an avalanche of collapsing stone and dirt as the monster smashed against the tunnel from above with all the pressure of her body. The train vanished in a pile of brick and rubble.
Water burst from the ground. A water main had broken. A cascade of spray shot high into the air. Broken glass showered down onto the crowd of people now half on and half off the subway platform, fighting their way toward where we were.
We turned and ran ahead, the water from the broken main spreading about us rapidly, lapping at our ankles.
Moira went down. I cried out to her and tried to pull her to her feet. She shook her head, closing her eyes in pain. It was her ankle.
I lifted her in my arms, the water swirling about my knees now. I pushed through the water, with Joe ahead of me, trying to clear the way. People in various stages of hysteria and emotional frenzy poured by on each side of us, desperately trying to keep above the water that was fast enveloping us all.
The ground shook again. I looked up, fearful that the entire tunnel was collapsing about me. But nothing happened. We kept pushing on until we came to a turn in the tunnel about a hundred yards further on.
The water piled up around us, first to the waists, then to the shoulders. I lifted Moira above my head, stumbling along, my head going under every other step. Joe was fighting the current that enveloped us.
Then, as I glanced up, I saw something that looked like a ventilation shaft.
“Joe!” I cried, gesturing upward.
He turned. He nodded, and came to us, where we were struggling against the current, and tried to pull the two of us along with him toward the shaft. Floating timbers collided with us, making movement almost impossible. A human body floated by, face up, eyes staring.
Joe found the ladder in the darkness and climbed up first, reaching back for Moira. I lifted her up to him, pushing her from below. The three of us scrambled upward. A man followed just behind us. The water rose about us as we ascended, almost as if it were reaching out to catch our ankles.
Cold fresh air poured down over us and Joe called back: “Here we are!”
Ten more rungs and I fell out onto the pavement of a cluttered street. Joe dragged me to my feet. Moira stood beside me, her dress plastered wetly to her body, her breasts and hips clearly outlined. A redness in the sky flickered and glowed. Fires were burning all about us.
“Where are we?” I asked, turning and looking around.
Joe shook his head. “No idea.”
“ ’Tis cold I am!” Moira shivered, holding me tightly.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Where in hell’s the car?”
“Way over to the north, I’d say,” Joe muttered.
We moved slowly and stumbling forward in the street cluttered with broken glass, split timber, and smoking rubbish. A huge searchlight beam flashed into the darkness ahead of us. The glare caught a gigantic green shape clearly. The monster!
She was moving down a street at right angles to us, heading toward the river and Westminster Bridge. I now know the street was probably Birdcage Walk. The searchlight held to her head, moving along with it. She roared out a challenge, and we could hear the far-off answering cry of Gorgo in his enclosure at Battersea Park.
This made the mother monster flail her talons about. The powerful tail thumped the pavement and shook the ground. The sky behind the monster glowed in a sudden flare of light.
A second searchlight joined in, covering on the head from another angle. And a third. And a fourth. They all centered on the monster’s head. Smoke and dust poured up around her now, highlighted by the searchlights.
I recognized one landmark ahead. Big Ben. The monster was approaching Westminster Bridge at the House of Parliament. We ran forward. The monster saw the big tower. She moved directly toward it. The searchlights followed her.
An earth-shaking series of explosions made the buildings around us tremble. Huge fiery missile-like streaks shot into the air near the monster’s neck. The missiles all missed except one. That one exploded directly in the monster’s face.
“Missiles!” yelled Joe. “They’re trying to bring her down with missiles!”
“ ’Twill not bring Ogra down,” Moira said softly.
She was right.
The monster roared at the tower of Big Ben, grasping it in her massive talons. The beams of light focused on Big Ben. Again another cluster of missiles sailed into the air, around the beast’s head. Two of them hit the tower.
The big beast began shaking the tower now, somehow identifying it as the origin of all her troubles. Bricks flew out of the tower, showering the earth. Stones plummeted. There was a rending, snapping, final sound. The searchlights clearly outlined the big tower as it shook for one last time, and snapped in the middle. The top half, with the world-famous big clock, smashed down into the darkness of Westminster Square.
One searchlight abruptly swung to an awkward angle, it did not move. All four beams of light came to rest, pointed crazily in the sky, unaimed.
The monster moved away from us, going up along the river side of the Houses of Parliament. With a gigantic flip of her massive tail, she began breaking in the walls of the Houses of Parliament, flinging debris and broken bodies in all directions.
Dust and dirt poured back over us, combining with the clouds of smoke already sifting onto us from the buildings as the remains began to burn.
Then suddenly, without the least warning, the beast slid down into the waters of the Thames near Westminster Bridge, and vanished.
Arm and arm, Moira and I waded through the murk and gloom after Joe, joining the hundreds of crazed people, wandering about without purpose in the darkened, rubbish-cluttered st
reets.
Bleeding and covered with filth, perspiration, and mud we pushed out into a demolished wasteland of pavement, and broken walls. Around us loomed the skeleton-like shells of dead and gutted buildings. Ghostly shadows of lost souls roamed about, pitifully picking at mountains of rock and wrecked household things.
Moira sobbed, covering her eyes with her hands. “ ’Tis the end of the world!” she wept. “Take me from it!”
Joe plowed ahead, past St. James Park, searching for street names. Then he signaled us to follow him. In the gloom I tripped over broken window sashes and a cracked bathtub, perched crazily in a pile of wood splinters. I dragged Moira to the corner where Joe was grinning, pointing.
There, in front of our bloodshot eyes, stood the Frazer-Nash. We climbed in, exhausted. Joe flipped on the starter. It was a miracle. The engine caught instantly.
“Where to, kid?” he asked, grinning wolfishly.
“Battersea Park,” I snapped. “We’re going to let that damned Gorgo out. Then maybe we can shake this monster.”
Joe’s eyes narrowed. He took a breath. “Sam,” he said slowly, “you were right. You and Moira. I was wrong. I’d be a damned fool not to admit it now.”
He started the car, turned around, and we shot through the street clogged with abandoned automobiles and strewn with piles of rubbish and an occasional corpse.
Chapter 15
We passed through the demoralized city, skirting the Thames on Grosvenor Road. The monster was nowhere in sight. She apparently had submerged temporarily. Or perhaps she was off on another tangent wrecking her special type of devastation on the beleaguered city.
We crossed Chelsea, roared into Battersea Park, and came to a stop near the monster’s enclosure. We were amazed at the activity around the place.
A kind of command post had been set up near Andrew Dorkin’s office. Temporary telephone connections had been strung in, a field switchboard set up, and an army operator sat at work in front of it.
To one side stood an army colonel talking on a phone.
A huge temporary panel containing voltage and amperage dials had been erected in the open. A couple of electricians were showing the set-up to two men. I could see who they were: Professors Hendricks and Flaherty.
As we got out of the car and passed by the colonel on the phone, I heard him say: “The circuits have just been completed, sir.”
The colonel nodded at something he had heard on the phone, and lifted his hand. Instantly the needles on the dials jumped into life. I could see one of them center on 50,000 volts. Then after a moment, it went to 100,000 volts. Then to 150,000 as another switch was thrown.
I whistled. That was a lot of voltage. I wondered where it all came from. Then I recalled having heard that one of London’s biggest generation stations was located at Lots Road in Battersea Park. Perhaps the entire set-up here had been hooked in directly to the dynamos.
I motioned to Moira and led her over to the circus wagon. I wanted to gather up my stuff to get it ready for transport. I didn’t care where I went, as long as I got out of that cursed area.
Over my shoulders I saw that Joe had gone to join the two professors. They were chatting among themselves.
I told Moira to wait for me and I mounted the steps of the circus wagon. When I pulled the door open I was greeted by a wild cry of delight.
“Sam!”
“Sean!” I cried in astonishment. The little guy jumped right up into my arms. I set him down, and Moira bent over him, hugging him, crying out with great gusting sobs.
“Tú atá slánsábháilte!” she gabbled at him in Gaelic. “You’re safe and sound! Oh, Sean, Sean I thought you were dead!”
“No. ’Tis me. And I’ve a surprise for you.”
Moira looked up, puzzled. I glanced around. “Surprise?”
Sean stood aside and called into the wagon. “Máthair.” He grinned back at me as a slender, blonde, gentle-eyed woman stepped out onto the steps and walked down to us.
“Maighréad!” cried Moira, and rushed into the woman’s arms.
“The moment we found you’d not gone to the hotel, we came out here to search for you,” Sean explained seriously.
“The hotel was destroyed,” I said. “By the monster.”
Sean nodded. “ ’Tis as we both said.”
“I know.”
“But these wires,” Sean went on. “ ’Tis like a machination of the devil. What is it all for?”
“To stop the monster, Sean,” I said. “With electricity.”
Sean shivered. “ ’Tis not fair. They should both be let go. Ogra only wants her baby.”
“You stay here,” I ordered them. Moira nodded, chatting in Gaelic a mile a minute with her stepmother Maighréad.
I strode off across the field toward the command post. I joined Joe and the professors in front of the big board.
“Four million volts and full amperage,” Hendricks was nodding. “The wires won’t take any more.”
I nodded to him and to Flaherty. “Whose idea was it to set up the net here?” I asked.
Hendricks looked at me a moment. “The generating station for the London Underground is located in Battersea Park. We’ve hooked it directly. The monster is sure to come here, with her one inside the enclosure.”
“I see. Do you think four million volts will do the trick?”
Hendricks shrugged and turned to the colonel. “It’s the most we can provide.”
“It has to work,” the colonel whispered tensely.
Suddenly everyone turned to Gorgo’s enclosure. The beast was lifting its head in a mournful cry.
Almost instantly, in the distance, came a powerful roaring bleat from across Battersea Park.
“Hit those lights!” somebody cried, and the big searchlights went on, poking fiery fingers into the night sky. The ground began shaking, and then we could all see the awesome shape of the huge monster as she appeared above the silhouetted trees of Batersea Park, caught in the searchlight beams, moving forward with her steady, stolid plodding. Trees snapped in two, and branches crashed to the ground.
Around us now the circus animals roared and prowled restlessly. They could scent the danger in the air.
The monster roared out again, voicing her challenge to all of us, and telling Gorgo she was coming to him.
Gorgo thrashed about in his enclosure. He approached the wires lining the cage and beat his head against them. There was an instantaneous flash, and Gorgo reeled back, howling in pain. He slid down into the water of the tank, crouching and snarling, cooling off. Then he moved out again, eyeing the wires and the enclosure malevolently.
The big monster screamed out and moved closer. The shadowy body towered over us like a mountain. Trees continued to go down in front of the massive feet and tail.
The sound of fighter airplanes filled the air. I looked up. I could see them humming overhead like angry hornets. The first plane, the leader of the V formation, went into a dive, heading straight for the huge monster. As it dove, it fired two missiles. Both missed the monster, exploding on each side of the big head.
The plane pulled out of its dive, turned, and climbed. A second plane followed it, loosing two more missiles. The earth shook as the missiles blew up in a tree nearby.
The big beast leaned down over us, reaching out her powerful talons toward the enclosure where she could now plainly see Gorgo. Gorgo was staring up at her.
She reached her talons out toward the high tension wires, and immediately blinding electric sparks cascaded up and down like a shimmering curtain of fire. Another plane dove at her from above, loosing two missiles which exploded with blinding intensity close to us.
Rearing back from the display of electricity in front of her, the huge mother monster reached out and slashed at the wires with the talons. A blinding sheet of lightning streaked from wire to wire and she cried out in pain. Her whole body shuddered with the terrific impact of four million volts. Gorgo joined in with a sympathetic scream.
&nbs
p; The huge mother beast reached up and began tearing angrily at a giant pylon erected near the enclosure to carry the wires in. The steel tower shook and trembled and then crumpled in the middle, bringing down all the high tension wires with it. The whole tangled mass exploded in a blinding flash of light, heat, and orange smoke.
At the same moment one of the diving planes loosed two more missiles at the enclosure, tried to pull out of the dive, but caught a wing tip against the top of one of the high power-wire pylons. The plane veered crazily spinning around in a horizontal circle, pinwheeling to the ground.
Its passage lopped off tree tops as it continued in its erratic course downward. It slid into the ground at the border of the London gas tanks nearby. The plane exploded. One instant later the city gas tanks went up, one by one, in a deafening roar that shook the ground and sent clouds of smoke pouring into the skies.
Flames shot upward, painting a vivid background to the dramatic conflict centered at Gorgo’s enclosure.
I held my hand in front of my face. The heat was intense. The continuous flare of missiles and electric static blinded me. No one said a word. People about me were frozen into immobility by this amazing and titanic struggle of animal power against electric power.
The big mother monster became enraged at the fire and the noise all about her. She reached up into the top of the nearest extant pylon, grasped it tightly, and began rocking it back and forth. Electricity crackled and snapped, sending blue flashes out in all directions. The monster gathered together four of the pylons, and tugged at the bundle.
Electricity shot through her on its way to the ground, making her entire body tremble and vibrate. The greenish phosphorescence of her outer layer changed color to a dazzling blue, and then to a crimson reddish hue. But she still struggled. The pylons uprooted. She hurled them high into the air. Millions of live wires, torn from their insulators, wriggled about the park, like fiery snakes, burning and scorching everything in sight.
I turned just in time to see one of the hot wires uncoil and strike Joe’s Frazer-Nash. In an instant the entire car disintegrated, blown into bits. It shuddered and became a mass of flames and smoke. I turned back to Gorgo’s enclosure. The huge mother monster was ripping at the last of the power wires. All the lights about the area had gone out now. Flames from the burning London gas tanks in the distance silhouetted the whole scene in an eerie red glow. I saw the big mother monster reach down and rip up the steel strands of wire that had been carefully constructed over the enclosure to keep Gorgo inside.
Gorgo Page 14
