Bang. The lizard threw himself against the doors once more. Phillipe held tight against the rope. “Contact the military,” he grunted, “and get them to send a bomber to blow up this building before these things escape.”
“What? How am I supposed to do that?” I began to explain that just because I was an American, it didn’t mean I could personally call in the U.S. Army. He cut me off.
“Call 555-7600. Tell them it’s a Code Dragonfly. That should get you through.”
The guy was amazing. Not only had he planted an electronic listening device on the mayor of New York City, tapped into the U.S. Army’s communications network, and fast-talked his way past a heavily guarded checkpoint, he also knew the military’s top-secret code word—which, I discovered later, is changed every twenty-four hours. For a brief moment all I could do was stare at him in awe.
“What are you waiting for?”
I snapped out of it and manually speed-dialed the number as this Parisian James Bond took off down the curving concourse to seal the next set of doors. My call didn’t go through. I redialed but got the same results over and over. Bee-bah-bue: “All circuits are currently busy. Please hang up and try your call again.”
Praying for a miracle, I allowed myself to imagine that Hicks and the army were sending in the cavalry, that last-minute reinforcements were about to arrive and save the day. But in recent conversations with Elsie Chapman and Mendel Craven, I learned that nothing could have been further from the truth. The military had no idea of the trouble we were in. In fact, Hicks, flush with his victory over Gojira, had temporarily forgotten about the possibility of a nest altogether.
According to my fellow scientists, the command center was beginning to empty out. Admiral Phelps, after holding a press conference, had hopped on a helicopter and headed back to his headquarters. General Anderson was also gone. But Mayor Ebert was still there. After finishing a very loud telephone call to the head of Manhattan’s chamber of commerce, he hung up and marched over to Colonel Hicks, determined to bring an end to the evacuation. It didn’t matter that the colonel was huddled in a low-key conference with a bunch of high-ranking military officials. Ebert was on a holy crusade, representing the citizens of New York City, whose anger had reached biblical proportions.
“Do you men have any idea what is going on out there?” the mayor boomed. “We have people who don’t want to sleep in the rain again, we have traffic jams, we have pissed-off mobs around the bridges and tunnels. My phones are ringing off the hook with people demanding to be allowed back into Manhattan. And I say: Let my people in!”
Hicks glanced at his watch and tried to placate the irate politician. “We’re sending divers into the river now to retrieve the body. We’ll rescind the evacuation order as soon as we have him. It won’t be much longer.”
“That thing’s dead,” Ebert exclaimed. “Kaput! What the hell is the problem, what are we waiting for?”
Hicks smiled that stonewalling, pleasant-under-pressure smile of his. “We’re doing everything we can. If you’ll just be patient for a few more minutes …”
Elsie and Mendel could see that he was serious. As soon as Gojira was confirmed dead, Hicks was going to let people back into the city. Perhaps the only reason he hadn’t done so already was that Mendel had explained to him that aquatic reptiles could hold their breath under water for long periods of time. The bigger the lizard, the longer it could stay submerged. The remote possibility that Gojira was unconscious but still alive was the only thing holding Hicks back from lifting the barricades. As he turned away from the mayor Elsie intervened. She put her arm under the colonel and steered him away.
“Alex, sweetheart, we need to talk.” That raised a few military eyebrows. “Before people are allowed back into the city, we’ve got to look for the nest.”
Hicks knew she was right, but he tried to pass the buck. “That’s not been approved,” he said.
Elsie’s disappointment was written all over her face. “What if Nick is right?” she asked. “What if there are eggs that are going to hatch soon? This could be our last chance to do something about it.”
Hicks hung his head and thought for a moment. Before General Anderson and the other top brass had left, they had agreed the evacuation would be canceled as soon as Gojira was officially pronounced dead. The idea of searching for the nest had been quashed for lack of evidence. But the possibility had continued to haunt the colonel. Luckily, he had come to trust his three scientists—even after one of them had been unceremoniously booted off the project. Very reluctantly he decided the nest was a dangerous possibility.
“Corporal Elms, organize a search party. I want a complete, block-by-block sweep of the entire city and subway system.”
When Mayor Ebert heard these words, he went off like a five-dollar firecracker. He squawked so loudly, they could hear him in Weehawken. “You, sir, do not have the authority to do that!” And, technically, he was correct. Hicks wasn’t authorized to make that decision. But he ended the politician’s tirade before it could swing into high gear. According to Elsie, he put his bulldog face inches away from Ebert’s and bared his teeth. With an intimidating whisper, he dared the mayor to try to stop him.
The supply of fish inside the Garden was almost gone and the baby Gojiras began to squabble with one another over those that remained. It wouldn’t be long before they began venturing outside the nest in search of other food. As the Frenchmen worked frantically to secure the doors, I was still making phone calls. When I couldn’t get through on Roaché’s cellular, I tried my luck at a bank of pay phones but got the same results. Bee-bah-bue: “All circuits are currently busy. Please hang up and try your call again.”
Phillipe returned from one of the many concession stands with a couple of extension cords and immediately wrapped one of them around the handles of the nearest door. As he ran past me on the way to the next entrance, he called out, “What did they say?”
“I can’t get through. The circuits are jammed.”
Jean-Claude and Jean-Luc ran up from opposite directions to report that all the doors on the upper level had been barred, in one way or another, from the outside.
“Good work. Tell Jean-Pierre and—” Phillipe began, before quickly remembering the men were gone. He came to where I was standing, took the pay phone receiver away from my ear, and hung it up. “Nick, you have to go to the outside. My men and I will hold them here as long as we can. You must go and get help.”
Clearly we needed help. But I didn’t think their staying was going to do much good. And I said so. But Roaché was already issuing battle orders. Without another word to me, the three of them took off running in different directions. At that point, we were still unaware that the baby Gojiras had begun to escape the arena. I was reluctant to leave the secret-service men, but there was no time to argue. I pushed through a set of doors and took a winding staircase down toward street level. At that point I was less concerned with my own safety than with that of the brave, doomed, hopelessly outnumbered Frenchmen I was leaving behind. I admired them for doing what was necessary. If the baby Gojiras broke free of the building, there would be a million places for them to hide while they grew to full size.
Even before I made it to the bottom of the stairs, Jean-Luc was dead. Phillipe told me later that a few seconds after they’d split up, he received word that the animals had freed themselves. Jean-Luc told him that one of the barred exit doors had been torn loose at its hinges, and although none of the baby Gojiras were in sight, he saw pieces of fish in the hallway. “Wait, I hear them” were the agent’s last words. As Phillipe listened, he heard the menacing clickety-clack of lizard claws in the background. Then the radio went dead and he heard the distant echo of gunfire.
“Jean-Claude, what happened to Jean-Luc? Can you see him? Jean-Claude? Jean-Claude?” Nothing more was heard from either man, and I can only imagine the grisly way they met their end.
I tore down the stairwell and burst through the door at the bottom. As
it swung closed and locked behind me, I realized I didn’t know which way to go. The curving hallways of the round building offered no clues. I took a guess and headed left, keeping my eyes peeled for an exit. Finally I spotted one and increased my speed. If I was lucky, I told myself, there would be soldiers stationed nearby, and they would use their radios to call for backup. But my plan was interrupted by a loud crash ahead. One of the unsecured doors into the stadium blasted open and a dozen scaly, man-eating infants spilled into the hallway, tripping and falling over one another. They sprang up immediately, demonstrating the wicked agility they’d inherited from their father. I slammed on the brakes and slid to a halt, then quietly began backing away. The baby Gojiras watched me curiously but allowed me to escape. Once I had backpedaled around the bend in the room, I turned and broke into a full run. But I didn’t get very far. Another pack of them was coming from the other direction, and I found myself surrounded.
I raced over to an elevator and pounded on the call button. The little light popped on, and I heard the gears and pulleys groan sluggishly to life.
“Come on, come on,” I begged, pecking mercilessly at the call button. Like a herd of muscle-bound ostriches, the reptiles came trotting toward me from either direction. “Not good. This is not good.” My heart tried to climb out of my throat when they started sniffing at me with those infernally wriggling nostrils. I began to despair of the doors ever opening when, at the last possible moment, came the soothing little pling and the doors rolled open. I leaped inside. Frantic to escape, I held my finger down on the door-close button, which, of course, made absolutely no difference at all. “Why don’t these things ever work?” I yelled. The noise excited one of the creatures, and it rushed toward me just as the doors began slowly rolling closed.
He thrust his snout into the elevator and snapped at me. His razor-sharp teeth sheared a button off the front of my uniform. The doors closed and put the bold baby Gojira in a headlock. Panicked, I kicked him several times in the head with my boot and stomped down on his flat, bony forehead. Eventually I succeeded in pushing him away from the elevator and the doors sealed. I took a breath for the first time in thirty seconds as the elevator jerked upward. Only then did I realize that in my frantic attempt to close the doors, I’d punched every single button on the control panel.
The doors opened again at the mezzanine level. Directly in front of me was another group of the agile, hungry lizards. They had ransacked one of the snack bars, and the one closest to the elevator was tearing into a ten-pound plastic bag of popcorn. He seemed as surprised as I was, but not one tenth as scared. He dropped the bag of junk food and wriggled his fleshy nostrils in my direction, sensing a more nutritious meal. Once again I beat a tattoo on the door-close button, smiling idiotically at the creatures.
“Oops,” I said, apologizing for the interruption, “wrong floor.”
When at last I returned to the midlevel concourse where I’d left my companions, I found something worse than hungry man-sized lizards. There was an automatic rifle pointed at my head and a finger on the trigger.
“Hey, it’s only me!” I said. Roaché lowered the gun and we both took a deep breath.
“What happened?”
“They’re loose,” I panted. “I couldn’t even get to the lobby. There are too many of them. They’re all over the place.” As I spoke I flipped open his cellular phone and hit redial. Bee-bah-bue: “All circuits are currently busy. Please hang up and try your call again.”
We heard another noise. It was directly overhead and seemed to be coming from one of the big ventilation ducts. The barrel of Phillipe’s rifle followed his eyes toward the ceiling, and suddenly the entire vent collapsed. Yelling and screaming, two bodies spilled onto the floor. I recognized the one in the beret and, despite the circumstances, felt strangely glad to see her.
In a flash Phillipe had the muzzle of his gun butted against the back of Animal’s skull. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. The cameraman lifted his hands in the air and closed his eyes as tightly as he could.
“It’s okay. I know her,” I broke in.
The secret-service operative glanced in my direction and seemed impressed. He mistakenly assumed the two of them were somehow working with me. But he didn’t extend them a very warm welcome. He took the gun away from Animal’s head but quickly stepped over him to where the video camera was lying on the floor and crunched it with his boot. The camera broke into several pieces.
Animal was furious. “Yo, Frenchie, what gives? Why’d you do that?”
Roaché looked at him with those heavy-lidded eyes and explained, “No cameras.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked Audrey, helping her up.
She didn’t seem all that happy to see me. “I thought you said there’d only be ten or twelve eggs.” As if it were somehow my fault.
“I was wrong,” I admitted.
We heard snouts thumping against a nearby locked door. The lizards, eager to expand their hunting grounds, were reacting with increased frustration to boundaries and obstacles. Almost immediately the thumping intensified. Very soon our quiet hallway would be a saurian stomping ground.
“Do you have a radio?” Phillipe asked. “A walkie-talkie? Anything we can use to contact the outside?” They didn’t.
“What about the phones?”
“All the circuits are overloaded.”
For a moment we stood there considering our options, listening to the horde on the other side of the doors becoming more and more aggressive.
Suddenly Audrey lit up. “I know! I know a way. I know how you can get a message out of here.” She was awfully pleased with herself, but the smile disappeared when the door gave way and the first baby Gojira tumbled headlong into the hallway. Its claws couldn’t find much traction on the smooth floor tiles. One by one his nestmates followed him into the corridor.
“This way,” Audrey cried as she took off running. We chased after her, and the baby Gojiras chased after us. Their razor claws clicked against the hard floor as they came barreling toward us, filling the hallway with their screeching. Unbelievably, Animal turned back. He couldn’t bear to leave the scene without retrieving what he’d come for. He wanted the videotape out of his camera, but by the time he got it, the herd was nearly on top of him. He jammed the tape into the pocket of his jacket, threw a trash can into their path, and broke into a mad sprint. He was truly a maniac.
At the end of the hall Audrey took us through a door that led to a carpeted hallway. As soon as Phillipe made it through, I slammed the door closed, certain Audrey’s cameraman friend was lunch meat. Just to make sure, I peered through the small pane of security glass and saw him come tearing around the corner. The lizards, on the verge of pouncing, lost their footing as they made the turn and went crashing into one another. Even after this lucky break, Animal barely made it inside before the animals caught up to him. I deadbolted the door a split second before the leader of the pack tried to bite me through the glass.
We hurried down the carpeted corridor past the luxury boxes that overlooked the arena. They didn’t look especially luxurious, just like a bunch of cells with corporate-looking furniture, full bars, and ceiling-mounted television sets. Without looking back, Audrey explained where we were headed.
“Come on, the broadcast booth is right over here.”
“How do you know?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Our station covers the Ranger games.”
We looked back down the hallway. The dead-bolted door was still holding, but we could see it wouldn’t keep them back for long. The animals were screeching in frustration on the other side, testing the strength of their new claws by ripping into the metal. Realizing there was not a moment to lose, Audrey tried to pull the door of the broadcast booth open. It was locked.
“Stand aside,” Animal warned us. He lowered his shoulder and plowed into the door. It didn’t budge an inch, and the cameraman folded over in pain.
Gently and politely Phillipe pushed
him aside and used his machine gun to shoot the lock to pieces. He then held the door open and invited us to enter. I felt around on the wall until I found the switch plate and turned on the lights. By the time I turned around and saw that we were in a room crammed full of audio and video equipment, Audrey was already seated at the room’s computer terminal, booting up.
“The computer here is on an intranet,” she told us. “It’s a direct feed into the WIDF computer system.”
I didn’t want to rain on her parade, but I’d been on the phone for the last twenty minutes and knew the circuits were flooded. “Your station isn’t going to have an easier time contacting the military than I did. They’ll just get a busy signal.”
I knew I’d stumped her momentarily because she started chewing her lip.
“Hold on a sec,” Animal said, a light bulb going on above his head. He looked at me. “You were on the inside. You were working for them. Didn’t they monitor the news broadcasts?”
“That’s right. They did.”
“Then what the hell, we’ll go live! We’ll broadcast right from here. Hopefully they’ll see it.” He switched on the room’s television set. Charles Caiman’s talking head filled the screen. He was out in the rain doing a live stand-up report. From the end of the hallway we heard the screech of metal shredding. Phillipe immediately began pushing furniture and equipment toward the only entrance to the broadcast booth.
SIX
Big Ed dribbled mustard down the front of his brand-new shirt. Mumbling a string of curses, he set aside his sandwich and reached for a paper napkin. After moistening it with a bit of diet soda, he did his best to daub the stain away. He was seated in the same spot he’d been in almost continuously for the past twenty-four hours: a swivel chair parked in front of the mixing board inside WIDF’s mobile studio. On the main monitor he could see Charlie Caiman doing a live stand-up.
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