Before he could finish his sentence, an odd sound diverted our attention. Our ears perked up and we waited in silence to see if the noise would repeat itself. It did. What we heard was a slow, sickening, heart-stopping crack. The source of this sound was an egg not twenty feet from where we were standing. We watched in horror as a jagged fracture line opened down the belly of the eggshell. Our feet felt nailed to the floor. We stood there limp-limbed and wide-eyed, watching the thing break apart.
As we slowly backed away, the top of the egg shattered and a glistening gray snout pushed into the air and sniffed hungrily at the odor of fish permeating the room. Its thin, leathery mouth pulled back to reveal a set of perfectly formed incisors. Like its parent’s, this creature’s teeth were raggedly arranged fangs. But since they were still unused, they were razor sharp and bright white. It was an absolutely fascinating moment, and I cursed the fact that we had not brought along a video camera. Roaché was trying to get my attention. He whispered that we should leave the area. But I was too engrossed in this strange miracle of biology and didn’t hear him.
A moment later the first of Gojira’s spawn emerged into the world. The egg was kicked apart from the inside, and a six-foot-tall baby Gojira squinted uncertainly into the lights of the arena. He stood shakily on his hind legs and looked around him. His leathery gray skin was smoother than his father’s, but had that same bluish sheen to it. The bony plates protecting his head, back, and tail had yet to grow to their full size, and there was no evidence of the spectacular, stegosauruslike plates growing from the shoulder blades, but in most ways he was an exact replica of his parent—a chip off the old block. He was still wet with yolk fluids and began cleaning himself with his tongue and claws like a kitten. A moment later he took his first wobbly step away from the shell, then lifted his throat to the ceiling and emitted a squeaky, mewling rendition of his father’s famous wail.
It was not cute. If this sounds cute, it’s only because I have described it badly. The animal was scientifically extraordinary but in no way endearing. I was half expecting, and half hoping, that Phillipe would open up on the newborn with his automatic rifle and kill it on the spot. When it focused its grapefruit-sized amber eyes on us, I heard Phillipe’s voice come over my shoulder.
“I think we should leave now.”
“Good idea.”
We backed away slowly up the stairs, careful to avoid startling the hatchling with any sudden movements. Even though he was a feeble and tiny infant by the standards of his own species, he looked plenty strong enough to tear a man limb from limb. As we slunk away, the dreadful possibility of imprinting crossed my mind. Imprinting is that phenomenon whereby newly born animals, hatchlings in particular, will adopt the first faces they see in the world as parents, no matter what species they may belong to. This is why you sometimes see baby chicks follow dogs, or even cows, around a barnyard. Queasily I noted that the big scale-covered baby in front of us was batting its eyelids at Phillipe and me.
Instead of imprinting, the animal followed a different instinct. He turned away from us and ripped into one of the fishes lying nearby. Born hungry, I said to myself. Not a good sign. As he shook the fish violently back and forth in his jaws, my eyes focused on the small, jagged teeth. If, as I suspected, the species followed the crocodilian form of dental growth, these teeth would be hollow. New and larger teeth would be constantly growing beneath the caps of the present set, keeping up with the increase in body size. Crocodiles go through dozens of sets of teeth in a lifetime.
Again it threw back its head and screeched, a bit louder this time, but apparently not loud enough to be heard at the top of the arena, where Jean-Marc and Jean-Pierre were working. The animal’s cry acted as a primordial alarm clock for his siblings. All around the section of seats we were in, eggshells began to gurgle and crack open. Within the space of a few seconds we were surrounded. We continued stumbling backward up the stairs without once taking our eyes off the fiendish newborns around us.
Of course Phillipe and I were scared half out of our wits, and under the circumstances we tried to remain as quiet as possible. I cannot speak for him, but my only thought at that moment was saving myself, getting out of the arena before these hungry lizards mistook us for edible rag dolls. It never occurred to me to shout a warning to the others, and I’m sure if Phillipe had it to do over again, he would have squeezed off a few rounds at that first baby Gojira. Doing so might have accelerated the hatching process and put us in greater danger, but it would have alerted the members of his team working in the upper levels to what was happening below.
“This is fantastic! Gimme one more second,” Animal whispered.
He and Audrey had emerged through the hole in the center of the arena’s floor just in time to hear the first cry of the first baby Gojira. Animal, obeying a deeply ingrained instinct of his own, hoisted the camera to his shoulder and began filming. The footage he captured is invaluable. He had just enough time to pan once across the ruined forum before the eggs in the foreground began to break open.
Off camera, Audrey’s voice was audible. In a nervous, singsong way she said to the photographer, “Okay, that’s enough. Eggs hatch, baby dinosaurs come out. We get the idea.” She was standing at one of the concrete passageways leading out of the arena and into the floor-level lobby. While Animal kept his face buried behind the viewfinder, she played lookout, making sure none of the sharp-toothed infants came too close. Baby Gojiras were hatching at a rate of a dozen per minute, a spectacular and terrifying sight. Wobbly on their feet for the first few minutes, they rapidly gained skill and confidence. The videotape shows them, within minutes of birth, beginning to search under the arena’s seats for fish. The closest ones were still a safe distance away, but Audrey knew that wouldn’t last long. She stepped up behind the camera and began tugging on Animal’s shoulder. “C’mon, Victor,” she said, obviously out of patience. “Don’t you think we have enough?”
Still filming, Animal turned and answered her question. “Y-Yes, enough. D-Definitely enough,” he stammered, suddenly very anxious. Looking through the lens, he saw (and filmed) what Audrey didn’t see: a rough-skinned baby Gojira, as tall as a grown man, stealing up behind her. The reptile had already wandered out into the concourse lobby and was reentering the arena through the doors Audrey had been guarding. It had a big fish clenched between its teeth and seemed to pose no immediate danger. As Animal continued to speak in unintelligible gasps, Audrey stepped closer to the camera, still unaware of the danger lurking behind her.
“You all right? What’s the matter?” She cocked her head to one side, trying to understand.
“Behind you.”
When Audrey turned around and realized they had company, her reaction was classic. Rather than grab the sides of her head and let loose a bloodcurdling scream, she greeted the predatory lizard pup politely.
“Oh, hello.”
The lizard cocked its head to one side, trying to understand. Then it swallowed the fish in one gulp.
“Let’s just be calm. Don’t do anything to startle them.”
“Them?” Audrey asked.
“Yeah, them.” Animal, afraid to move, used his eyes to point out another baby Gojira, this one sniffing at a nearby cluster of unhatched eggs. Audrey took a quick look around and spotted a potential escape route: the swinging double doors that led to the team locker rooms. But there were two problems. First, the doors were on the far side of the floor, over a hundred feet away. Second, they were blocked by a pair of eggs. But as the curious creatures closed in on them, nostrils sniffing busily, Audrey realized it was their only hope.
She took Animal by the wrist and the two of them began shuffling toward safety, skirting the enormous pit broken through the center of the playing floor. Their strategy, born of mind-numbing fear, was to keep smiling and keep calm. Although both of them had broken out in a cold sweat, they spoke soothingly to the hungry hatchlings, telling them how nice and sweet and pretty they were. It worked. The two baby
Gojiras were content to follow along behind them, bending down now and again to scoop up a fish.
That left them with the problem of getting past the huge pair of eggs blocking the locker-room doors. Although there were several hundred eggs in the stadium, Gojira had laid each one with some care (as evidenced by the fact that not a single one of them had rolled away and broken). The two in question were nestled between the retaining walls in front of the doors. In effect, they guarded the exit like a pair of Humpty Dumpty sentinels. There was barely room to squeeze between them. Animal went first. He turned sideways and tried to step over the narrowest part of the gap, but it was higher than he’d anticipated and he found himself dangling in the air, both feet off the ground. This left him in the dangerous and very uncomfortable position of suffering a double Melvin, an eggshell wedgie. As he struggled, both shells partially collapsed. He landed with the seat of his pants protruding into one shell and his crotch poking into the other. As any man in such a situation would have done, he immediately found a way of making himself a few inches taller than he actually was and hopped to the far side of the barrier. Unfortunately, the embryos in both shells stirred angrily to life, woken from their slumber before they were ready.
Then it was Audrey’s turn. Like one of those people who walk over a bed of burning embers without flinching, she marched straight toward the narrow gap with her head held high. Both shells were quivering, emitting unpleasant sounds and leaking viscous yellow fluid down their sides, but Audrey refused to acknowledge the danger. Turning sideways at the last moment, she brusquely forced her way through the gap. But a leathery brown arm reached out and wrapped its pearl-white claws around her calf.
Audrey yelped, half in pain, half in fear, as she tried to pull her leg away. But the unhatched lizard was strong, and it took a series of well-placed kicks to the elbow before it would let loose of Audrey’s leg. The moment she was free, they blasted through the doors and escaped into the hallway.
By the time Phillipe and I inched our way backward to the top of the stairs, we found ourselves surrounded by inquisitive reptilian newborns. They moved clumsily at times, stumbling over their own feet or crashing to the floor as they learned to step over the stadium chairs. Although they had us hemmed in, they seemed to be in no particular hurry. For the moment they were more interested in gobbling up the huge supply of fish Gojira had left for them.
As we slipped quietly out into the hallway, one of the little monsters came trotting up the steps to follow us. I slammed the double doors closed and held them as Phillipe whipped off his belt and wrapped it around the handles, effectively locking them shut. As he put the final cinch on the knot, the lizard who had followed us eyeballed the Frenchman’s head through the smallish window. It would have made the perfect mouthful. As soon as he was finished, Phillipe reached into his utility belt and took out his radio. He spoke in English. “Everyone outside! Now! Secure the doors. We have to keep them inside.”
Like us, Jean-Luc and Jean-Claude were on the middle level of the stadium. They made it outside in seconds flat and began sliding anything they could find into the door pulls to trap the hungry animals inside. We were aware that this was going to be a next-to-impossible task. All told, there must have been two hundred sets of doors. But at the time it seemed to be our best option.
Unfortunately, Jean-Marc remained unaware of the danger until it was too late. According to Jean-Pierre, who spoke to us by radio, he was in the very last row of the twenty-thousand-seat arena, kneeling in a pile of fish behind one of the sound system’s giant speakers. He was too busy wiring up the explosives to notice the proliferation of lizard life in the tiers below. There were very few eggs on the balcony, but the few that there were had begun to open. Jean-Pierre spotted him and yelled across the cavernous arena for him to get outside. When Jean-Marc heard the warning, he stood up and wiped the fish oil off his hands and onto his uniform. He had just begun moving toward the exit when he saw one of the six-foot-tall babies coming up behind him. He froze in place as the animal sniffed him up and down. Realizing he smelled of fish, Jean-Marc tore off his shirt and tossed it aside, then made a mad dash up the stairs toward the nearest door. The man was fast, but the lizard was faster. It romped after him as if it were a game. The lizard stumbled once, his claws poorly suited to the slick concrete stairs, but easily caught up. He pounced from ten feet behind, flying in feet first and tackling the man from behind. Holding him pinned to the ground with its long claws, it sniffed him up and down before playfully snapping his neck.
Jean-Pierre took refuge in one of the doorways and described the horrific details of what he had seen. He was somewhere on the opposite side of the round building. The last thing we heard from him was that the hallway looked clear and that he would work his way back toward our position. But a few seconds later there was a burst of gunfire and a brief scream. We never found his remains.
Audrey and Animal flew down the long hallway toward a set of doors promising salvation. The large sign hanging above indicated a street-level exit. But when Animal lowered his shoulder and smashed against them, he found out the hard way that they were locked. They were the sort of doors you need a special key to open. Precious moments were wasted before the two of them could admit to themselves the ugly truth of the situation: The doors were not going to open. When they turned around, a group of baby Gojiras was coming through the swinging doors open at the far end of the hallway. The two humans were very, very trapped.
Audrey took Animal by the hand and pulled him straight toward the beasts.
“Audrey, shouldn’t we be going the other way?”
But there wasn’t any other way. Audrey continued walking toward them, telling Animal, “Pretend you’re invisible!” The lizards were advancing toward them, their heads low to the ground and ready to tangle, their long claws clickety-clacking on the hard smooth floor.
“No, seriously,” Animal said, “where are we going?” They were nearly face-to-face with the creatures.
“Right here,” she said suddenly, pulling open the locker room door just wide enough for them to dart inside. She slammed the door closed behind them in time to avoid the snap of an eleven-inch-wide jaw and locked the door. With a huge sigh of relief she turned her back to the door and collapsed against it. Out in the hallway, the reptiles whined. Like youngsters of all species, they were impatient. First they scraped at the door with their snouts, then battered it with the bony plates at the top of their heads. It wasn’t going to hold up very long.
“Great. Now what?”
Animal didn’t have an answer off the top of his head. He scanned the room for another way out, but there were no windows and only the one door. There was an equipment manager’s cage, but it was locked. There were toilet stalls, but the doors were too flimsy. Suddenly an idea dawned on him. “Hey!”
“What is it?” Audrey asked hopefully.
“This is where the Knicks and Rangers get changed before their games.”
“And?”
“That’s it. Just kinda cool. Ewing, Willis Reed, Jean Ratelle—the first Ranger to score more than one hundred points in a season. This is where they suited up.”
“Thrilling,” she said sarcastically. If that was going to be Animal’s contribution, Audrey thought, she had better think of something on her own. She brushed past him and climbed onto a table. “What about this thing?” She reached up and put her fingers through the mesh grille over the air-conditioning duct, then yanked downward. It pulled free, bringing a shower of dust down on her head. “Think we can fit up there?”
“Only one way to find out.”
We sprinted down the foyer to the next set of doors. I let Phillipe lead the way, since he was the trained secret-service agent. Just like they do in the movies, he advanced the last few feet with his back pressed to the wall, then peeked around the corner behind the barrel of his machine gun. He let out a low, pained moan that signaled bad news. I peeked around the corner behind him.
Baby Gojiras w
ere everywhere. Hundreds of them. They had turned Madison Square Garden into a teeming reptilian nursery. Almost as soon as they could walk, they learned to run. And run they did, seemingly for the sheer physical joy of doing so, clocking speeds of (by my rough estimate) forty to fifty miles per hour. I had hoped that as their numbers increased and the supply of fish dwindled, they might begin to turn on one another. After all, most of the larger reptile species are cannibalistic. But quite the opposite process seemed to be under way. They seemed to be forming themselves into packs.
This was strange behavior indeed. All the larger reptiles, such as Komodo dragons and crocodiles, tend to be solitary hunters. But these swift-footed lizards seemed to have inherited an instinct for group cooperation that made them act more like velociraptors, medium-sized dinosaurs. When I saw this, I realized our chances of leaving the building alive were quickly diminishing. “What would Darwin say about this?” I wondered aloud.
Just then a group of five or six of them ran past the doorway. They were jogging around the main concourse, circling the playing area. The last one in the group noticed us and stopped short, only a few paces away. Its long neck twisted in our direction and the slitlike nostrils sniffed at us. Phillipe stepped around the corner and closed the doors just as the animal charged toward us. It slammed into the doors as Phillipe struggled to hold them closed. He grabbed the flashlight out of his utility belt and tried to wedge it between the handles, but it wouldn’t fit. Struggling to hold the animal back, Phillipe looked desperately over his shoulder at me. “Give me something!”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know! Give me something quickly!”
I checked my pockets and looked around the foyer, but there were no three-foot-long iron bars lying around. The lizard slammed against the doors again and swiped at my accomplice with its fore claws before the doors closed on him again.
Then I noticed something. It was right in front of me, hanging on the wall: a firebox with a thick, carefully folded hose behind a pane of glass. I kicked out the glass and handed the end of the hose to Phillipe. As he began wrapping it around the handles, he reached around and unsnapped his phone holster. In one movement he took the phone out and threw it to me without looking. It flew like a dart and would have hit me smack between the eyes if I hadn’t caught it. Where does a guy learn to throw a phone like that? Is it something the DGSE teaches their agents?
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