The secret agent took quick stock of the situation and dispensed his expert opinion. “Running would be a good idea.”
And run we did, scrambling into a nearby alley only a moment before the enraged animal pounced in our direction. His nose smashed against the buildings at the head of the alley as we ran for our lives. On both sides were the service entrances to large office buildings and apartment houses. Before we got very far, Gojira began bulldozing his way toward us, using his brute strength and burrowing skills to rip apart the structures behind us. Even with those huge obstacles in his way, he was gaining on us!
Audrey stumbled on the wet ground and fell. I hydroplaned to a halt, then hurried back to help her. By the time she was on her feet again, we were caught in a shower of flying building materials. I took a brick in the head, adding yet another lump to my growing collection. Leaning on each other, we ran blindly through the downpour. Phillipe called to us over the raging sea noise and waved us into an even narrower space between two adjoining buildings. We made it into this narrow passageway—it wasn’t more than six feet wide—only a moment before a huge clawed foot smashed down in the alleyway behind us. I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw that Gojira had gotten himself temporarily stuck, his body far too wide for the narrow alley.
We ran between the buildings until we came out into another street. Desperately I searched everywhere for signs of the military. I wanted to see tanks and rocket launchers converging from every direction. But the street showed no signs of activity.
Phillipe bolted across the street and yanked open the door of an abandoned yellow cab. In a blur of movement he drew a screwdriver from his utility belt, popped the ignition device off the steering column, and hot-wired the car. The whole process couldn’t have taken more than fifteen seconds. The guy was amazing.
Even before we realized exactly what he was up to, we followed him across the street and started piling into the cab. We weren’t completely inside when the engine turned over and Agent Roaché put the pedal to the metal. Animal’s feet dragged along on the street as the tires spun and the car fishtailed out into the center of the road.
Fortunately, he was able to pull himself in as we sped away.
Unfortunately, our escape route was blocked by the sudden appearance of a giant three-toed foot that spread across two of the street’s four lanes. There was no time to stop or turn around. We were already going too fast. Phillipe tried to swerve around it, but it was too late even for that. The view out the front windshield became one big toenail, and the next thing we knew, we were moving upward. The curved claw formed a ramp that sent us airborne, flying ten feet in the air. The vehicle bottomed out hard when we landed on the other side of the foot.
I don’t think Phillipe so much as blinked. He gunned the engine once more and accelerated up the street as the creature roared in frustration. I watched the speedometer needle climb past fifty, then sixty, then seventy, and it occurred to me that a crash at that speed would leave us just as dead as would a stomp from an irate megaton lizard. I buckled my seat belt just before Phillipe hit the brakes and swerved around a corner.
Even though I knew I wouldn’t like what I saw, I spun around to look out the back window. At first all I could see of Gojira, fifty yards behind and closing, were his powerful legs. Then the window filled with nostrils and teeth as he snapped at us. One bite would have crushed the cab like an aluminum can.
If Phillipe was fearless, Animal was just plain crazy. As he watched the giant jaws thrashing only a few feet away, he maintained his concentration on another project: He was determined to get the video camera he’d taken from the broadcast booth powered up. When the red light finally blinked on, he hoisted the camera to his shoulder and started filming. “Better step on it, Frenchie, we got company back here!”
“Which way should I go?” the driver demanded, careening into a fresh turn.
“Cut uptown!” Audrey gasped. “Take Fifty-seventh to Eighth.”
“Are you nuts?” Animal asked her. “Take the FDR, mon ami.”
Like a clap of thunder, the jaws snapped closed again, inches from the cab’s back end. Phillipe swerved onto a new street.
“The FDR? In the rain? Absolutely not. Phillipe, take the West Side Highway.”
“The West Side Highway’s under construction,” Animal pointed out.
“Yes, I know that, Animal, but there isn’t any traffic today, so it won’t slow us down.”
“Make up your minds!” the Frenchman roared.
Audrey and Animal, in unison: “Take Broadway!”
Phillipe immediately swung the taxi into a long skidding turn before blasting off once more in the direction we’d come from. Up ahead we could see the smoking pit of the now defunct Madison Square Garden. We were going around in circles, I realized. It looked as though it would only be a matter of time before Gojira caught us and exacted his revenge.
Finally military backup arrived. A small convoy of Humvees, the vehicles sent out to search for us and bring us back to New Jersey, rolled into the intersection ahead of us. At the time, Phillipe had the cab moving at about ninety miles per hour and was still accelerating. The driver of the lead Humvee slammed on his brakes to avoid plowing into us. The vehicles behind him reacted too late and they piled up like dominoes in a chain-reaction crash. As we rocketed past, a rain-spattered blur of yellow, I caught a glimpse of Sergeant O’Neal sitting inside the lead vehicle. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought I saw his lips form the words “What the hell?”
I spun around to look out the rear window. Gojira, still pursuing us, came through the intersection a second after we’d shot past and stepped down on the front bumper of O’Neal’s vehicle, flattening it.
It must have been with huge reluctance that the sergeant picked up the radio handset and called in to the command center to tell Colonel Hicks the bad news: “He’s back.”
Inside the cab, it took a moment for my brain to register what I’d just seen. I blinked and turned to Phillipe. “That was O’Neal. I know him. Turn back.”
He flashed me an incredulous look. “What are you talking about? I can’t turn around now.”
I reached forward and pulled the cab’s license off the dashboard. It was stamped with the vehicle’s registration number: MN44. Although Phillipe must have thought I’d lost my marbles, I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“Do it!” I yelled, “Turn around now!”
There was no time to argue. Perhaps he sensed I knew what I was doing. Perhaps not. In either case, he tapped down on the brake pedal with the precise amount of force necessary to send the cab into a graceful 180-degree slide.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said without taking his eyes off the two-hundred-foot-tall lizard flailing toward us down the boulevard.
Actually, I knew exactly what I was doing. Every taxicab in New York City has its own radio frequency, all 12,187 of them. Once O’Neal had our cab’s call numbers, it would be a simple matter of finding the company’s headquarters, breaking in, locating the vehicle roster, adjusting the bandwidth setting on the radio, and speaking into the microphone. So you see, I knew what I was doing. I just had no idea whether there would be time.
Phillipe hit the gas and we shot forward into the mouth of danger. If the beast had simply lain down, our cab would have been flattened under his plated belly like a bloody banana peel. But it was personal now, and he wasn’t going to be satisfied with killing us indirectly. Instead, he fumbled for us with his fore claws, intent on picking us up. He might have succeeded if he hadn’t been charging forward at full speed. Like a professional stunt driver, Agent Roaché swerved his way between the leviathan’s grasping fingers, raced past his hind legs, and narrowly avoided a swipe of the tail.
Who could blame poor Sergeant O’Neal for looking nauseated and confused? Not only was there a mysterious taxicab joyriding through the evacuated midtown district, but it had an incredibly large and destructive reptile chasing it—a r
eptile that had been pronounced dead more than two hours earlier. Before he saw us roaring toward him for the second time, he’d been on the horn to Hicks, explaining the latest change in the situation and asking for the F-18 jet fighters to be sent back to the city.
As we flashed into the intersection and swerved around the squashed nose of his Humvee, O’Neal dropped his radio and ran. He and his men scattered in all directions for cover. I leaned as far out the window as I dared, trying to show them I was me, and tossed the cab’s ID plate onto the street. A second later Gojira followed us past the spot, this time stepping on the back half of O’Neal’s car.
SEVEN
It didn’t surprise me to learn Phillipe Roaché was a phenomenal driver. He hurled the car in one direction after another, zigzagging through the slippery streets without once losing control. He kept the furious creature off balance and half a block behind by turning at nearly every corner, using the street grid to his advantage. By a circuitous route we reached Broadway and headed north up the wide-open roadway.
When we’d driven a couple of miles without catching sight of our nemesis, we slowed down to about seventy miles per hour. Although I’m not superstitious, I cringed and tried not to listen when Animal looked out the back window and announced, “Hey, I think you lost him.”
The rest of us moaned, fearing that Animal had just given the beast his cue to come back onstage. And indeed, Gojira stepped out from between a pair of buildings several blocks in front of us. In the backseat, Audrey reached over and swatted Animal on the forehead. “Why’d you have to say that?”
We were hemmed in by skyscrapers on either side. Rather than speeding forward to the next corner, Phillipe brought the cab to a gradual halt. He shifted into reverse but didn’t back up just yet. As we idled in the middle of the avenue we looked ahead and saw the lizard lower himself to his forepaws and settle into a crouch. He seemed to be breathing heavily, and for a moment I allowed myself the optimistic delusion that the loss of blood was sapping his energy. Perhaps if we drove around long enough, he would simply collapse.
Too late I realized what he was preparing to do. He sucked in a long drink of oxygen, his flanks ballooning outward, then exhaled. He forced the air out of his lungs with all his strength, sending a tornado-force blast of power breath in our direction. This foul-smelling wind lifted cars into the air, bent street signs back, and shattered all the plate-glass windows. The whole swirling mess blew toward us. A newspaper-vending machine tore free of the sidewalk and smashed down on the hood of the cab. Phillipe gunned the motor and we rocketed backward, avoiding the worst of the airborne debris. Just as I was scraping myself off the dashboard, he slammed on the brakes, and my neck snapped halfway into the backseat. Shifting on the fly, he ground the transmission into drive and squealed into another narrow alleyway.
Our path was cluttered with dumpsters, cardboard boxes, locked chain-link fences, and all manner of large, impassable obstacles. Obviously, we were trapped. I was already deciding which way to run when Phillipe stopped the car. But he showed no signs of pulling over. In fact, he accelerated and blasted his way through one barrier after another. By the time we slammed through a locked gate and bounced into the next street, both fenders were mangled and the bumper, which had nearly come through the window at us, was lying across the bent hood, interfering with the windshield wipers. Phillipe reached out the window and tossed it aside. Believe it or not, the headlights were still working.
“This time I’m pretty sure we lost him,” Animal chipped in.
“Shut up!” we all screamed at once. Murphy’s Law asserted itself once more and the creature, walking erect this time, leaped into the intersection behind us. He sucked another storm into his lungs, then unleashed it in our direction. This time his power breath was strong enough to tear big chunks of asphalt right off the street. We felt the wind lifting the rear of our cab into the air as Phillipe jerked the steering wheel violently to the right and sent us sliding around another corner.
The next thing I knew, we were headed up Park Avenue at 130 miles per hour, which is a pretty good speed to be going if you’re trying to get away from a man-eating lizard. Unless, of course, the man-eating lizard is faster, in which case it’s a terrible speed, especially in the rain, because it makes veering into side streets utterly impossible. I looked behind and saw Gojira was gaining on us.
“Gotta slow down, French Fry, gotta turn again,” Animal offered from the backseat. I glanced over at Phillipe, wondering what new surprise he would pull out of his bag of tricks to save us this time. But he had his eyes locked on the rearview mirror, and for the first time I noticed him sweating. It’s a bad thing when the secret-service agent you’re depending on to save your life begins to perspire. It can only mean you’re running low on options. I knew I’d better do something, and do it fast.
“In there!” I yelled. “Go into that tunnel.” We were coming up on a construction site of some sort. Behind a herd of sawhorse roadblocks was the entrance to the Park Avenue midtown express tunnel. The work lights outside had been left on, and this drew my attention. Phillipe reacted at once, veering over mounds of loose earth and crashing through barricades. We shot down the entrance ramp and into the tunnel just before a set of six-foot-long claws stabbed through the night and sank into the pavement.
Almost as soon as we were inside, we screeched to a halt. The inside of the tunnel was packed with bulldozers and other equipment. This time there would be no driving right through it. Phillipe deftly flipped the car around in another 180-degree skid.
“Can you teach me to do that?” Animal asked.
The driver grunted noncommittally and looked through the front window down the telescope of the tunnel. Just outside, five hundred tons of enraged lizard was throwing a monumental temper tantrum. He knew he had us trapped. He let loose several of those trumpeting shrieks and dug great heaps of earth away from the entrance with his fore claws. Every few seconds the claws disappeared from our view, only to be replaced a second later by a gigantic eye, burning bright with hate. We were in big trouble.
“Now what do we do, smart guy?”
That was a darn good question. I wasn’t quite sure. But, for the moment at least, I seemed to be the person in charge. “Turn out the headlights,” I said to Phillipe, thinking out loud.
He did, and we were plunged into a darkness so complete, we could have been parked at the bottom of an inkwell. My companions made a series of moaning noises to express their displeasure with how things were going, but at least for the time being we were safe. Every time Gojira moved away from the mouth of the tunnel, enough light filtered in to allow us to see one another. But I, for one, kept my eyes on him. The work lights outside lit him from below. We sat there for several minutes, mostly in the pitch blackness, as the angry giant stood guard over the only escape route. We were in no particular hurry to go anywhere. Once again all the light was blotted out when Gojira lay down, belly first, sealing off the tunnel. That’s when the cab’s radio crackled to life.
“Dr. Tatata, Dr. Totato … Nick! Nick, can you hear me?”
I groped around the dashboard until I found the radio. “O’Neal, is that you?”
“That was a pretty nice trick with the license. I’m sitting in the office of the cab company right now. Where are you?”
“You’ve got to help us,” I told him. “We’re in the, the … where are we, Audrey?”
“Park Avenue midtown tunnel.”
“We’re in the Park Avenue midtown tunnel and he’s got us pinned down in here. We’re safe as long as he doesn’t ou—oooouuuuwhoooo!” I screamed. The cab was moving. Gojira had hyperextended one of his long arms and his claws were scraping against the front bumper and hood. Phillipe threw the car into reverse and sent us plowing fifteen feet backward through whatever machinery or equipment lay behind us.
“Nick? … Nick, you still there?”
I couldn’t speak; none of us could. We sat frozen in the grip of fear, listening to thos
e six-foot fingernails straining to reach the cab. We held our breath until the light at the end of the tunnel appeared once more. The arm pulled away and once again we were inspected by the giant eyeball.
“Nick, can you hear me?” I heard him add to someone with him, “I think we lost them.”
“Yes, no, go ahead. We’re here.”
“Listen, you guys have to lure him out into the open. Somewhere we can get a clear shot at him. Maybe take him into Central Park, or out onto the FDR Drive. Think you can do that?”
“Why the hell not?” Animal said sarcastically. “Do they want us to wash him up while we’re at it? Get him to brush his teeth, maybe? Give him a manicure?”
I was a little confused. “Can’t you just, you know, blow him up? I mean, he’s right outside the entrance. He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere.”
Phillipe and O’Neal answered my question in stereo. “The F-18s can’t get a good look at him unless he’s out in plain sight.”
So much for my brilliant plan. I thought that once O’Neal had our frequency, he’d be able to rush in with the cavalry and rescue us. Instead he was asking us to bring the beast to the cavalry. Luckily I came up with another idea.
“Where’s the nearest suspension bridge?”
“Brooklyn,” Audrey said.
I explained what I was thinking to O’Neal and asked him if that would work. He responded that if it worked, my strategy would be “super-duper.” He really said that.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath and staring down the tunnel, “let’s go!”
Nothing happened. Finally I heard Phillipe’s voice ask, “And how exactly would you like us to do that?” I hadn’t exactly forgotten that Gojira was blocking our path; I was merely choosing to ignore him temporarily. The big lizard had started digging again, intent on reaching us and making us pay for our crimes. He’d spiked his head into the narrow opening and was burrowing, forcing his way slowly forward. The walls of the tunnel began to give way. The next time he reached for us, there would be nowhere to hide.
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