Godzilla - the Official Movie Novelization

by Greg Cox

  Something huge and heavy slammed into the pavement in front of him, blocking his path. A glistening black column suddenly stretched high above his head. Stumbling backwards, it took Ford a second to grasp that what he was seeing was an enormous spiked claw, attached to a limb the size of a redwood.

  No, he thought. It’s not possible. No animal can be that big!

  Then another jointed black limb stretched up from the depths of the pit and smacked down on the ground several yards behind Ford.

  And another.

  And another.

  Ford froze in terror. For a moment, all he could hear was his own breathing inside the gas mask and the rapid thumping of his heart. Nothing in his Navy training or combat experience had prepared him for the sight of the colossal creature rising up out of the darkness of the pit like a living mountain. An iridescent black exoskeleton, made of a hard shell-like substance, covered a vaguely insectile behemoth with at least six limbs of varying sizes. Two sturdy hind legs, with “backwards”-jointed ankles, supported the bulk of the creature’s weight, while a pair of elongated middle limbs extended from the beast’s armored shoulders. A much smaller pair of forearms, resembling those of a praying mantis, protruded from its upper thorax. Glittering red eyes peered out from beneath a flat triangular skull that almost looked like a rattlesnake’s. Saliva dripped from a huge hooked beak. The sheer scale of the creature beggared the imagination. It had to be nearly two hundred feet tall.

  This was no mere “animal,” as his father had predicted. This was a monster.

  The beast kept rising higher and higher, straightening to reveal its true, incredible size. Its titanic form blocked out the sky, hiding the stars. Its immense shadow fell across the sprawling base. Ford waited for the monster to squash him like a bug, but it paid no attention to him. Instead it hunched and grunted, heaving as though undergoing some kind of internal convulsion. Its armored back began to buck and bulge violently. For a moment, Ford allowed himself the hope that the monstrous creature was dying for some unknown reason. Perhaps an adverse reaction to the environment or the radiation in the pit? Or maybe the creature was simply too big to survive. Was it possible he was witnessing its death throes?

  Please, Ford prayed. There’s no room in this world for a monster like this.

  But then its molting back split open in two long parallel gashes, dozens of feet long. Glistening prongs of flesh emerged from the ruptured carapace, unfurling grotesquely into sleek black wings that reminded Ford of a stealth fighter. Blood pumped into the wings causing them to grow stiff and rigid. Thick veins supported a scaly membrane. They stretched and flexed, wet and shimmering. A hard black sheath, that appeared to be made of the same glossy substance as the creature’s exoskeleton, protected the underside of the wings.

  No longer hunching, the creature rose up triumphantly, exalting in its metamorphosis. It bloodcurdling screech could probably be heard for miles away. Spreading its newborn wings, it took to the sky.

  Awestruck, Ford watched it fly away.

  But to where?

  TEN

  More than a day before:

  Sam woke up. Sunlight filtered through the bedroom curtains as he yawned and stretched in bed. It was warm and comfy and he was in no hurry to get up until he remembered that his dad was home and had promised to take him to the toy store today. He sprang out of bed and scampered toward the door in his pajamas. Bare feet expertly dodged the toys strewn across the floor. He smelled pancakes cooking in the kitchen and grinned in anticipation. His mouth watered.

  He loved pancakes—and so did his dad.

  Yet when he rushed into the kitchen, expecting to find both his parents, he found only his mother cooking over a griddle. Confused, he looked around, but his dad was nowhere to be seen. He noticed that there were only two place settings laid out at the kitchen table.

  He knew what that meant.

  But he promised, Sam thought. He said he would still be here in the morning when I got up!

  His mother heard him come in. She turned away from the stove to greet him. She gazed down at him sadly, forcing a smile. He didn’t need to tell her how he felt.

  “It’s okay, babe,” she said gently. “He’ll be back soon.”

  Sam didn’t understand. Had the Navy called Dad back already? He was supposed to be home for two weeks this time. Two weeks, not just one night!

  His mom turned off the stove to comfort him. She knelt down and hugged him as she tried to explain why Dad was gone again.

  “His daddy needed help.”

  * * *

  Now:

  The sun rose over the ruined base. Black smoke rose from the rubble, darkening the sky. The toppled cranes remained where they’d fallen, even though emergency crews had begun the grisly process of carting away the remains (partial and otherwise) of the deceased. Severed steel cables hung in tatters from the edge of the sinkhole. Helicopters circled overhead, observing the devastation below. Survivors were being carried away on stretchers, even as first responders worked overtime to extricate more bodies from the debris. Collapsed gantries and scaffolding had turned the site into an enormous junkyard. Twisted steel beams jutted from the wreckage like abstract grave markers. Sobs and curses filled the air.

  Ford wandered directionlessly through the ruins, ignored and forgotten amidst the disaster scene. His face was caked with soot and sweat. He’d discarded his gas mask and helmet hours ago; radiation poisoning had seemed the least of his worries. Every muscle ached and he felt black and blue all over. A loose pair of handcuffs still dangled from one wrist, which stung like the devil. He stumbled clumsily over the rubble, attempting to stay out of the way of the emergency crews. He’d been searching all night for his father without any luck. For all he knew, Joe was still buried beneath the debris.

  He spied a crowd of medical personnel tending to another batch of wounded. Unwilling to give up, he pressed his way into the makeshift triage unit. Dozens of casualties occupied gurneys, while the overtaxed doctors, nurses, and medic struggled to cope with the flood of patients. Ford was both appalled and discouraged by the number of victims. He didn’t know where to keep looking for his dad. Joe could anywhere.

  Or nowhere, anymore.

  No, he thought. Don’t even think that.

  He’d already lost his mother on this very same site. He’d be damned if he’d see his father buried here, too. Exhausted and sore, he stubbornly worked his way down row after row of casualties. Ford had seen combat, and the aftermath of suicide bombings, but the widespread suffering on display here still got to him—and left him feeling very afraid. His brain was still trying to come to terms with the reality of the gigantic winged monstrosity he’d witnessed earlier. Bombs and terrorists were one thing. He knew how to protect himself—and others—from them. But a creature like that… how on Earth did you stop it? Was that even possible?

  And what was it doing now?

  Worried and worn out, he almost walked by his dad without recognizing him, but then he spotted Joe on a gurney, surrounded by harried nurses and medics, fighting to keep the injured man alive. An IV line was set up to administer fluids and medication. Pressure was applied to the most visible wounds. Joe was caked in blood and dirt, his shredded radiation suit almost unrecognizable. The medics were already peeling the suit from him to get at his injuries.

  “Dad!”

  Ford rushed toward, trying to squeeze past the doctors and nurses, who refused to let him through. He peered anxiously over the shoulders of the busy medics, hoping that he hadn’t found his father just in time to see him die. That would be too cruel.

  Joe’s eyes fluttered at the sound of Ford’s voice. He squinted through a fog of pain at his son. Their eyes met, truly seeing each other for perhaps the first time in years.

  But was it too late for both of them—and the world?

  * * *

  Not far away, Serizawa also wandered through the ruins. He watched numbly as rows of lifeless bodies were zipped unceremoniously into
ugly black body bags. It was like the aftermath of a battle or natural disaster, yet all this carnage and destruction had been caused by a single organism emerging from the cocoon, just as it had burst from its egg sac in the Philippines over a decade ago. History was repeating itself—on an even more apocalyptic scale.

  His clothing was torn and rumpled. He and Graham had barely escaped the crow’s nest before it had crashed to the ground, but many others had not been so lucky. He watched grimly as Gregory Whelan was zipped into a bag. To his credit, the embattled chief scientist had stayed at his post until the bitter end, waiting until everyone else was evacuated, like a captain going down with his ship. Serizawa recalled ruefully just how excited Whelan had been only hours ago, thinking that he was on the verge of a revolutionary discovery. Little had the man known that the “living fuel cell” in the cocoon would cost him his life.

  Goodbye, Gregory. Serizawa bowed his head in respect. You were a good scientist. Your only mistake was not realizing that certain forces were beyond your control.

  “Dr. Serizawa!”

  A deep voice intruded on the moment. Serizawa turned to see a U.S. Navy officer approaching him, accompanied by Graham and a Japan Self-Defense Force captain. A helicopter was revving up behind them, its rotors stirring up the already dusty air.

  “Captain Russell Hampton,” the American officer introduced himself, shouting to be heard over the ‘copter’s spinning rotors. He was a tall, fit man wearing military fatigues, at least a decade younger than the scientist. A bald pate crowned his stoic face, which could have been carved from a block of dark brown granite. “Tactical authority of this situation has been accorded to Admiral Stenz, Commander, US Naval Forces, Seventh Fleet, part of a joint task force. I’m told your organization has situational awareness of our unidentified organism?”

  Serizawa nodded. For more than six decades, a top-secret international coalition known as Monarch had been covertly studying and monitoring evidence of unknown mega-fauna such as the one that had just hatched from the cocoon. Alas, their practical experience in dealing with living specimens was minimal at best.

  “Then I’m going to have to ask you to join me,” Hampton said. He glanced around at the surrounding bedlam. “Are there any other personnel you need?”

  Serizawa considered the question. There was Graham, of course; that went without saying. But was there anybody else? He joined Hampton in scanning the crowd around them. He noticed that Joe Brody, the power plant engineer, was lying injured on a gurney nearby. A younger American, whom Serizawa’s assumed to be Brody’s son, Ford, was looking on anxiously as paramedics scrambled to stabilize his father’s condition. Serizawa recalled the data that had been confiscated from Brody. Serizawa had made sure that the disks and charts survived the disaster, but, now more than ever, he wanted to know everything the trespassing engineer knew about the nuclear disaster fifteen years ago. He pointed decisively at Brody and son.

  “Them.”

  ELEVEN

  The transport chopper roared through the sky toward the USS Saratoga, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered super-carrier more than a thousand feet in length. One of the largest warships ever constructed, the Saratoga rose twenty stories above the water and was accompanied by a sizable naval strike group composed of smaller frigates, cruisers, an oiler, a supply ship, and other support vessels. Aboard the ‘copter, Ford stuck close to his dad while trying to keep up with their rapidly changing situation. One minute, he and Joe had been stuck in the ruins of the base, the next they had been hustled aboard a waiting chopper…

  Hang on, Dad, he thought. Just a few more minutes.

  A medic struggled to keep Joe alive, monitoring the battered engineer’s vital signs, but seemed to be fighting a losing battle. Captain Hampton and a pair of civilian scientists looked on as Joe feebly clung to life. Ford still wasn’t quite sure why he and his dad were now getting special treatment, after being arrested as trespassers before, but he wasn’t about to question this unexpected turn of events. All that mattered was keeping his father alive. They had a second chance to rebuild their fractured relationship, and Ford didn’t want to lose that. He wanted his father back.

  “You were right,” Ford said, squeezing Joe’s hand. His eyes welled up. His throat tightened. “I’m sorry.”

  Joe gazed up at Ford through bloodshot eyes. His voice was weak and raspy as he struggled to speak. Ford leaned in to hear him.

  “Whatever it takes,” he said faintly. “You have to end this…”

  He began to slip away, perhaps for good.

  “Dad—”

  “Whatever it takes…”

  “Dad, stay with me!” Ford exclaimed. “Dad!”

  Joe’s eyes lost focus, staring somewhere beyond this world. Ford watched helplessly as the medic scrambled to save his failing patient, who was fading fast…

  * * *

  The Saratoga’s Combat Direction Center, located below decks, was packed and buzzing. Banks of monitors and work stations, manned by uniformed analysts, were jammed with data feeds. Armed services personnel, sporting the uniforms of several allied nationalities, were crammed into the war room, which reminded Serizawa of the crow’s nest back at the base. The overhead lights were kept dim to increase the visibility of the various screens and graphic displays. A backlit table map projected the creature’s potential courses, as calculated by the incoming data. As the simulations ran, dotted lines crossed the ocean, branching off in all directions, but with most heading east across the Pacific. Each dotted line was accompanied by a flurry of algorithmic probability data: wind speed, currents, altitude, weather conditions, and so on. Quietly observing the operations, Serizawa was just selfish enough to be relieved that the creature appeared to be winging away from his homeland.

  Not that anywhere in the world was truly safe at the moment.

  “Okay! Listen up!” Captain Hampton said, taking the floor. To say that his manner was “brisk” would be an understatement. “Quiet please!” He waited, but not for long, for the general chatter and hubbub to die down. “Briefing is up. New faces. New info. From here out, we do not try to move quickly, we will move quickly.” He turned to introduce a figure to his right. “Admiral?”

  A senior officer, with cropped white hair and a lean, taciturn face, stepped forward. He gestured at a monitor displaying a blurry image of the creature that had emerged from the cocoon. Hushed voices murmured in awe.

  “Good afternoon,” the admiral said crisply. “This is our needle in a haystack, people. A ‘massive unidentified terrestrial organism,’ which from this point forward will be referred to as ‘MUTO.’ The world still thinks this was an earthquake, and it would be preferable if that were to remain so. It was last sighted heading east across the Pacific. However, this… animal’s electromagnetism has been playing havoc with radar, satellite feeds, you name it, leaving us, for the moment, blind as bats.” A frown deepened the well-earned creases on his face. “I emphasize ‘for the moment’ because I have every confidence in the world that you will find it. We have to.”

  His remarks concluded, he surrendered the floor and sought out Serizawa at the back of the room. He extended his hand.

  “Doctor Serizawa,” the admiral greeted him. “William Stenz. We’re glad to have you aboard.”

  Serizawa accepted Stenz’s hand and bowed slightly. He spied Graham beckoning to him from the open hatchway to the command center. He had dispatched her earlier to examine Joe Brody’s findings. He nodded back to her in acknowledgment. He was anxious to hear what she had to say.

  “Will you excuse me, Admiral?”

  * * *

  Joe Brody’s face looked more at peace than it had been for at least fifteen years. His eyes were closed forever, seeing only the next world. Ford could only hope that, whatever had become of his father’s tortured spirit, somewhere Joe was gazing on his wife’s beloved face once more.

  Ford stood by numbly in the Saratoga’s well-equipped medical bay as the body bag holding his father
’s remains was zipped shut. A medic offered him a sympathetic look, but Ford was too stunned to respond. The tears would come in time, he hoped, but right now he just felt drained and lost. San Francisco seemed more than a world away. He wondered how he was going to break this news to Sam. The boy had never really known his grandfather. Would he even understand that now he never would?

  “Lieutenant Brody, sir?”

  A young petty officer intruded on Ford’s grief, as gently as he could. His voice held a distinctly Midwestern accent.

  “Would you please come with me?”

  * * *

  Serizawa and his team had been assigned guest quarters upon the Saratoga. Even on a ship as large as the super-carrier, space was at a premium so the cramped cabin was a tight squeeze, but they were making do. Monarch scientists worked beside Navy technicians, monitoring data feeds at various workstations, even as he and Graham each spoke urgently on their respective phones.

  “Yes,” he reported in Japanese, “the patterns match, but I can’t crack the significance.”

  Joe Brody’s antique zip disks, rescued from the M.U.T.O. base, were stacked on a desk beside Serizawa’s research materials. Scattered photos and reports held fragments of a history that began years before Serizawa was born: grainy images of a gargantuan creature rising from the sea six decades ago, archive photos of an atomic bomb blast on a remote Pacific atoll, shots from the Philippine mine disaster, reports on the Janjira nuclear plant disaster, and updates on the singular cocoon found on the site afterwards.

  It appeared that he and Brody had been colleagues of a sort, pursuing similar lines of investigation all these years.

  What a pity, he reflected, that we never knew each other existed.

  He overheard Graham dealing with the public-relations issue. “Yes, sir,” she said into her phone. “Media is reporting an earthquake. The cover’s holding for now, but if it—”

  A knock at the hatchway interrupted both phone calls. Graham went to answer it.

  “Dr. Serizawa?” Petty Officer Thatch stood in the doorway. He had Ford Brody with him, still wearing part of a rundown radiation suit that had seen better days. The man’s wrist was chafed, but his handcuffs had been removed en route to the carrier. Serizawa nodded at Thatch that it was all right for him to leave Ford with them. Ford’s passport had been found among his belongings; a quick investigation had confirmed that he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, currently on leave. Thatch departed and Graham escorted Ford into the room.