That leap was probably the only serious mistake he’d made since coming to Manhattan, but it was to be his last. The cables interrupted his fall, and he crashed headfirst onto the roadway, where he found himself caught again in the semitransparent cage of wires. The bridge shook furiously as he struggled to find his feet and continue the chase. The motion wave that came up behind us and snapped the bridge like a blanket tossed us high into the air. We landed precariously close to the edge, nearly spilling over the side and into the drink. But Phillipe took it all in stride; just another day at the office for a secret-service agent. He maintained a slow but steady pace over the undulating roadway. We drove under the second tower and were able to speed up again as we approached the far shore.
The cables were taking their toll on Gojira’s strength. The entire bridge vibrated as he screamed out in anger and frustration.
We reached the Brooklyn side of the bridge which was crowded with military personnel and civilians waiting to be let back into the city. We skidded to a stop and jumped out of the cab. We didn’t dare go any farther and lead him into the crowds. If he could push through those last wires, he would have us. We had run out of real estate. When I looked back, the creature’s head was twisted into a garrote of cables, hanging off the side of the bridge and over the river. But he still hadn’t lost sight of his goal. He craned his neck in our direction and screamed.
I believe he took the sight of us standing audaciously out in the open as a taunt, one that stoked the fires of his hatred once more. With a surge of strength he ripped his head free. But in doing so he stumbled backward, entangling one of his hind legs.
The noose was tightening.
In the distance we heard the F-18s coming in for another pass. Phillipe was sitting half in and half out of the cab, listening to the military radio and the conversation of the fighter pilots.
“Target is locked in and stable.”
“You are red and free. Stallion ten, Fox two, make your runs.”
“Roger that.”
“Stallion twelve, Fox three, you are also red and free, follow them in.”
“Roger.”
In the blink of an amber eye, a quartet of warplanes dropped out of the clouds, ripping through the sky like small darts thrown at a very large target. They came in low, hugging the river, their engines roaring. They looked almost comically puny, dwarfed by the size of the colossal lizard struggling midway across the span.
I felt another pang of empathy for Gojira. The harder he thrashed against the cables, the more entangled he became. As the jets swooped toward him he turned his head to look at them. I may be reading too much into his behavior, but it appeared to me at the time that he seemed to know what was coming. He filled his lungs with air, preparing to lash out at the jets with his power breath. But the first set of guided missiles was already deployed, sailing toward the bridge. He jerked to one side, dodging the first set of missiles, but the others connected. They slammed squarely into his chest and abdomen. Huge bloody chunks of his body sprayed into the air, and he shrieked in pain.
But he wasn’t finished yet. Drenched in his own blood and badly mauled, he tore free of the cables and ducked under the second barrage of missiles. They sailed past him and disappeared under the surface of the river without detonating.
For the last time he staggered to his feet and focused his eyes on our tiny figures, standing below him next to our cab. He stood up, stretching to his full height, and tried to cry out in that distinctive, screeching wail. But the only sound that came from his throat was a rasping moan, a gurgling death rattle.
When he heard the jets coming in for their final run, he looked briefly in that direction. But a moment later he chose to ignore them and turned his attention back to us. I think he knew it was finished.
He had come all the way from his home in the South Pacific, obeying a biological impulse that told him to find a nesting place for his young. By chance, his migration brought him to Manhattan, which at first must have seemed like the ideal place to accomplish his simple goals. He went about his business without realizing how much hardship he was causing. In spite of his prodigious intelligence, he had simply been following the dictates of nature—he had been born into this world with no expectations beyond frolicking for food and perhaps leaving some offspring behind. But it was not to be.
The missiles fired away from the jets and streaked toward the bridge. Gojira took a final, unsteady step in our direction before they ripped into his neck and rib cage. In quick succession, a dozen explosions carved craters deep into his tough flesh. His massive body convulsed as he struggled to scream once more.
Like a felled redwood, he leaned toward us and toppled, all two hundred feet of him. The crowd of stunned New Yorkers at the foot of the bridge screamed in unison as the shape plunged toward us. Then I realized that, even in death, he might still get his revenge on us. I grabbed Audrey by the arm and pulled her along, retreating. Phillipe and Animal were right behind us.
We turned around just as Gojira’s enormous head came crashing down onto the bridge. It landed directly on top of the taxicab, crushing it like a paper cup. The bridge swayed violently and the steel cables moaned, threatening to pull loose from their mighty anchors. But the bridge—or what was left of it—held, and the swaying slowly subsided.
I took a few steps back toward the creature’s head, which towered above me. One of his hundred-pound eyeballs was pointed in my direction, but I don’t think he saw me. The nictitating membrane was half closed and the iris had a glazed, weary look. He blinked slowly and exhaled, the breath of life slipping out of him.
I felt like rushing over to him and trying to offer him some comfort. I wanted to explain that we’d only done what we had to do. The earth just wasn’t big enough for both our species. But in the end I just stood there. And then he was dead.
All of us had fallen into a stunned, reverent silence. It melted away as the mob of rain-soaked New Yorkers began to applaud, nervously at first, but then vigorously. In a moment I heard a great rousing cheer go up, and when I turned around, a couple of thousand people were streaming onto the bridge toward us. Soldiers and civilians alike, all of them cheering, came up and surrounded us with congratulations and thankful pats on the back. We were all crazy with joy and relief. Even Phillipe seemed elated. I noticed him duck into the backseat of the cab for a moment, but then he turned around and lifted Animal off the ground with a great bear hug. Although it was uncharacteristic, I thought nothing of it at the time. Later I would realize why he had joined the celebration with such enthusiasm.
I can’t explain how relieved and glad I was that it was finally all over—especially since I was still in one piece. A big, silly, uncontrollable smile spread across my face as I pushed through the crowd exchanging hugs and handshakes with perfect strangers. For a moment I lost Audrey in the crowd, but I quickly made my way over to her. My grin must have been infectious, because we both stood there beaming at each other like a pair of dopey cartoon characters. News crews jostled their way through the crowd, clawing and scratching their way toward us. They had broadcast the entire confrontation live to TV sets around the world and now they wanted follow-up interviews.
As I would learn later, the whole city—the region, the nation, the planet!—was at that very moment bursting out into one giant victory party. In the command center Colonel Hicks threw his clenched fists into the air and laughed. Elsie was so overwhelmed by the moment, she threw her arms around the person closest to her and planted a big wet kiss on his lips. Since this person happened to be Mendel Craven, she met with a rather passionate response. At the Palotti apartment in New Jersey, Lucy and a roomful of refugees bounced and cheered and swapped high fives. Everywhere that people were following the story, they felt the exuberant rush of victory over an unbeatable foe.
Flashbulbs started popping like mad all around us. The news photographers and camera crews had muscled everyone else out of the way. Reporters crushed in around us, shoved micro
phones under our noses, and began shouting questions. I grabbed Audrey and we headed for shore.
“How did you discover the nest?”
“What was it like inside the Garden? Weren’t you scared?”
“Are you angry the army booted you off the project?”
“Is it true the French created the monster?”
“How did you get Godzilla to follow you onto the bridge?”
I draped my arm over Audrey’s shoulders and flashed them that same stonewall smile I’d learned from Colonel Hicks. “Sorry, guys,” I yelled without breaking stride, “but I’ve already promised my story as an exclusive to another reporter.”
“Watch out! Move it, pal! Out of my way!” A slender little man in a yellow rain slicker came elbowing his way viciously through the crowd until he stood directly in our path. He wasn’t much taller than a dwarf and his expression changed radically the moment he saw us. A warm, sweet smile spread across his face and he extended his hands to us, as though he were welcoming good friends back home after a long absence. Audrey recognized him.
“What do you want, Caiman?”
“Audrey, baby, we did it! We got the exclusive!” He laughed and clapped and hopped up and down Rumplestiltskinesquely. “It’s beautiful, you’re beautiful, everything’s beautiful. We got the story!”
She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. “We got the story? I don’t think so.”
His smile evaporated into thin air. “Look, young lady, this Godzilla story could be your big break if you play your cards right. Just remember who you work for.”
“Not anymore, Chuck.” She leaned close and filled him in on a piece of late-breaking news. “I quit. And by the way,” she added with a smirk, “it’s Gojira, you moron.”
Animal was yelling and waving his arms to get our attention as he zigged and zagged his way through the rain-drenched celebration. His expression told us something was horribly wrong.
“What is it? What’s the matter?”
“Did either one of you take the tape out of the camera?” he was desperate to know. Audrey raised her hands in the air to show that she was clean, and I assured him I didn’t know anything about it. But if the truth be told, I had a pretty fair idea of where the cassette might have disappeared to.
I glanced around the crowd and asked, “Where’s Phillipe?” He’d been standing there a moment before but had somehow disappeared. Like a bloodhound on a cold trail, Animal wandered through the crowd scouring the deck of the battered and half-ruined bridge for any sign of his missing video. “Damn! I couldn’t have just lost it. What’d I do with it?”
A phone rang. It took me a few moments to notice the ringing was coming from my pocket. I looked down and realized I still had the cell phone Phillipe had tossed me. I pressed the TALK button.
“Hello?”
“It’s Phillipe.”
“I thought it might be. Hi. Hey, where are you?” I used sign language to tell Audrey who it was. Together we scanned the area, wondering if he might be calling from a nearby pay phone.
“Tell your friends I will return the videotape after I have removed a few items from it. National security.”
“I understand.”
“Also, I wanted to say au revoir, and thank you for your help, my friend.”
Before I could return the sentiment, the line clicked and went dead. “Au revoir,” I said into the dial tone. As I was putting the phone away, Audrey looked at me with a quizzical reporter’s expression.
“Who was that French guy, anyway?”
“Who, Phillipe? Just some insurance guy.” She looked up at me skeptically. I kissed her before she had a chance to ask any more questions. I’d intended for it to be a quick peck, a brief distraction. But once my lips were touching hers, I think the both of us forgot what was happening around us. We wrapped our arms around each other and kissed and kissed and kissed, drinking in all the dizzying sweetness of the moment.
The night had come to a fairy-tale ending. We’d crept through dank underground tunnels where we were nearly squashed, survived our encounter with the horde of baby Gojiras, destroyed their nest, and barely eluded Gojira as he pursued us madly through the city. To recycle something Lucy Palotti said, we had come within a chihuahua’s butt-hair of getting killed. We’d gone into the heart of radiation-mutated darkness and come out the other side to be greeted like heroes. Naturally, I was a little lightheaded. And as I stood there locked in lip-to-lip delirium with the woman who had saved my life as many times as I’d saved hers, I had a mild out-of-body experience. It was not unpleasant. I imagined myself lifting into the air and looking down on Audrey and myself. I continued floating upward, lifting above the bridge, until I saw the bright lights of the command center far across the Hudson behind Manhattan’s impossible crowd of skyscrapers. Below me, Gojira’s vast body slumped peacefully on the half-ruined bridge. It was a perfect moment, a perfect evening, a perfect ending.
EPILOGUE
Well, that’s my story. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it, and that maybe you’ve learned a thing or two. One of the most difficult things about writing this book has been resisting the urge to speak more about environmental issues. I went back and cut out all the long speeches.
I would, however, like to say one brief thing in closing. In recent years we’ve discovered that the earth’s ecosystems are deeply interconnected and surprisingly fragile. We know, for example, that chemicals dumped into a river in Mexico can hurt the wine crops in Italy, or that driving to work instead of using mass transit depletes the ozone layer, which leads to more cases of skin cancer as well as the phenomenon of global warming. There are hundreds of examples, but the point is that harming the environment in one part of the world can have indirect but powerful repercussions in another. That’s why we all have to start taking personal responsibility for our environment. Of course, after my work near the Chernobyl power station, where I’ve seen up close what the disaster has done (and is still doing) to the area, I’m especially sensitive to the dangers posed by nuclear contamination. For example, we’ve witnessed a 2,500 percent increase in the number of cases of thyroid cancer since the accident. Unless we act to reverse the effects of our damaging actions, I wouldn’t be surprised if we find other such anomalies in the not-too-distant future. Bumblebees the size of Apache helicopters? A real-life King Kong? Earthworms that collect samples of scientists and take them back to their labs for dissection and analysis? If we continue along the path we’re on and don’t clean up our act, the next mutant species we confront might even be ourselves.
Okay, end of sermon. I promise.
I couldn’t be happier about how things turned out for Audrey. She’s a big-time reporter now who’s proving she’s not a one-story wonder. WIDF offered her Caiman’s job, and she was tempted to take it just so he’d be shipped off to a station in Poughkeepsie (not that there’s anything wrong with Poughkeepsie). But he’s still anchoring the ActionNews broadcast five nights a week. Audrey accepted a position with one of the major networks and is stationed in New York City, her new hometown.
Elsie Chapman is supervising the postmortem on Gojira and offered to take me on as part of the team. But I decided against it. Gathering and dissecting earthworms may not be as sexy as conducting the autopsy on Gojira, but ultimately it may be more important. I haven’t lost my faith in those oversized worms. Many highly distinguished scientists from around the globe are volunteering to help solve the scientific riddles posed by Gojira’s appearance, but only I can finish my work with the worms. By the way, one of the experts Dr. Chapman has brought in is Mendel Craven. Rumor has it that he is currently at work on a book in which he postulates that Gojira laid a second clutch of eggs on a small island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea before continuing his migration. From what I hear, the eggs hatch and the baby Gojiras grow to adulthood before they are discovered by a team of scientists. He’s calling it Cretaceous-period Park, or something like that. I hate to say it, but the whole idea sounds rath
er ludicrous to me and I don’t know if anyone will be interested in reading that sort of make-believe. As usual, Dr. Craven is mixing his science with large doses of fantasy.
It wasn’t long after Phillipe disappeared that I saw the French agent again. His picture started showing up on the covers of magazines with captions like “Is this the man who created Godzilla?” A whole series of photographs began surfacing: Phillipe on the beach near Great Pedro Bluff in Jamaica, planting the listening device on Mayor Ebert’s collar, and driving the Humvee through Manhattan dressed as an American soldier. No one knows who took the photos. Naturally, the ministers in the French government launched an investigation into the matter, and they learned everything. When Phillipe’s role was made public, he was instantly declared a hero. The next day he was fired. I got a post card from him not long ago. It said: Nick, now it is safe to tell everything. See you soon, P.R. Although he and his men broke quite a few international laws, we owe them a great debt. If they hadn’t been willing to lay down their lives in order to destroy the nest, the rest of us would probably be spending our days scampering under rocks to avoid a growing population of gigantic reptiles.
As for me, now that I’ve completed this project, I’ll be headed back to the Ukraine to finish up my worm research. It shouldn’t take long. I feel I’m close to isolating the physiochemical process causing the abnormal growth and hope to publish a paper in one of the scientific journals sometime later this year. My working title is “Size-Indexed, Radiation-Correlative Mutations of Annelid Morphology in Ecologically Distressed Environments.” Keep an eye out for it.
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