Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization (29 page)

Ford gazed up at the suspended warhead. He could only assume that the male had brought his prize to the female, perhaps as some sort of courtship ritual. No doubt Serizawa and Graham would have a theory to explain how it all worked, but Ford didn’t care about that right now. All that mattered was disarming the bomb before the detonator went off.

At least we’ve found it
, he thought hopefully.
Perhaps we still have a chance.

A tremor shook the cavern, causing dust and gravel to rain down on them. It felt like an earthquake, but Ford knew better. The earth was shaking because of the titanic conflict being waged above. Godzilla had hunted the MUTOs halfway around the world, but now the chase was over and the final battle was underway.

With a nuclear warhead added to the mix.

Godzilla clashed with the female in the blazing ruins of the Financial District. Sky-high smoke and flames provided an apocalyptic backdrop to their savage combat, which was being fought furiously amidst the demolished skyscrapers. Godzilla snapped and slashed at the female, who locked her jaws onto his scaly shoulder. The mighty saurian towered at least fifty feet above the vicious, multi-legged parasite and was significantly heavier and stronger as well, but female did not back off. Grimacing in pain, Godzilla tore himself free from the MUTO’s fangs and spun away from her. His spiked tail whipped around to lash the female, who was sent tumbling down Broadway, carving out another swath of destruction. Her flailing arms and legs smashed through buildings large and small. Flames and explosions erupted in her wake.

Sensing victory, Godzilla closed in for the kill. The desperate female hurriedly righted herself and swung one of her clawed middle arms at Godzilla, but he dodged the attack and charged forward to pin her against a high-rise office building. The MUTO thrashed and screeched as Godzilla pummeled her with his fists and snapped at her twisting head and thorax. His jaws were going for her skull when the entire building suddenly collapsed under the force of the struggle. A mountain of sundered steel and concrete caved in on thefemale, burying her beneath the debris.

Snarling, Godzilla loomed above his fallen foe. He raised his right foot over the female, preparing to squash her into the ground, when the male came swooping down from the sky to defend his mate. The winged MUTO barreled into Godzilla, knocking him off his feet. Locked in combat, the monsters rolled across the district, grinding landmark buildings into dust. Their growls and screeches were matched by the rumble of disintegrating hotels, banks, and museums.

The earth shook all the way up to Chinatown.

* * *

The seismic shocks were coming fast and furious, causing the entire cavern to tremble and heaps of debris to shift in an unsettling manner, but Ford and the other soldiers redoubled their efforts to liberate the ticking warhead from the hard, resin-like substance it was encased in. They had already managed to break the weapon loose from the ceiling and lower it to the floor of the cavern; now they were chipping away at the sticky secretion with the butts of their rifles. Concentrating on the tip of the re-entry vehicle, they managed to expose enough of the casing that, grunting with effort, they could begin to pry off the nose cone.

Here it comes
, Ford thought.
Almost there…

To his surprise, the remaining secretion began to pulse with light.
Did we trigger that with our hammering
, Ford wondered,
or was it the tremors
? The cool effulgence grew in intensity and began to spread throughout the cavern. The soldiers backed away momentarily, caught off-guard by the unexpected bioluminescence. The glow rippled upward to light up the entire cavern. Ford glanced at the ceiling, where the wavering light now appeared to be concentrated, and gasped in shock.

No longer hidden in darkness, thousands of bulging egg sacs hung from the ceiling, which was positively encrusted with the pulsing organisms. Ford recalled the photos Serizawa had shown him upon the
Saratoga
as well as the egg he had briefly glimpsed on the underside of the female MUTO in the mountains. As nearly as he could tell, these new sacs were identical to the ones found in the Philippines fifteen years ago. The ones that had eventually spawned the two MUTOs.

They’ve already mated
, he realized,
and this is their nest.

The fertilized eggs continued to flash, as though reacting to their food source being disturbed. Something had to be done about the eggs, Ford knew, but first they needed to deal with the warhead or nothing else mattered.

The nose cone came loose, clattering onto the floor of the nest. The soldiers huddled around the exposed warhead and detonator. Flashlight beams penetrated the small window above the timing mechanism. The intricate gears continued to turn and engage, ticking down to Armageddon. Moving carefully, despite the urgency of the situation, the men took hold of the warhead by a set of metal handholds and eased it out of the cone-shaped reentry vehicle.

Easy does it
, Ford thought.

* * *

Godzilla was outnumbered two to one. Acting in tandem, the MUTOs circled their relentless foe, who was undaunted by the odds against him. His eyes narrowed in anticipation of the parasites’ attack. His nostrils flared and he bared his fangs. He roared defiantly, challenging the MUTOs. He had not come all this way to shrink from the battle.

The MUTOs were prey. Dangerous prey, but prey regardless. They had to be destroyed.

Howling in unison, the MUTOs pounced on him from above and below.

* * *

A tremor shook the subway platform, causing dust and debris to rain down from the ceiling. Trapped underground, while giant monsters overran the city above, Elle and throng of other frightened people backed away fearfully from the thunderous impact. A baby cried in the arms of a young couple who huddled together fearfully, protecting the child with their own bodies.

Alone and scared, Elle didn’t know whether to envy them for being together or to be thankful that Sam was hopefully far from the embattled city by now. Probably a little bit of both.

She squinted at her phone. There were no new messages from Ford, not that she was likely to get a signal down here. She hoped to God that he was safe and on his way to find her. But would there still be a city left by the time he got here? It sounded like armies were clashing up above.

The lights flickered overhead and her phone died. People gasped and looked up in alarm as the lights sputtered and died, throwing them all into the dark. Panicked people screamed. Blackness swallowed them, so that all that was left was fear—and the earth-shaking sound of monsters destroying the city.

Be careful, Ford
, she thought.
Wherever you are.

* * *

The soldiers lowered the heavy warhead onto the floor of the nest. Divorced from its massive rocket boosters, the warhead was still at least ten feet long and five across. On closer inspection, it was obvious that the casing had been badly damaged during its travails. Bennett tried to pry open the access panel to the timer, but the metal was warped and refused to budge. Quinn and a few of the others added their strength to his, but it was no use. The latch was jammed.

“It’s sealed shut,” Bennett said. “We need time to get this open!”

“We don’t have time,” another soldier objected. “Let’s haul it out of here!”

Ford shoved his way to the front of the huddle and knelt down beside the warhead. He extracted a kit from a Velcro pocket on his flight suit. He unsealed the kit to expose a set of intricate tools, including screw drivers, crimpers, surgical scissors, forceps, tweezers, and a dental mirror. They were similar to the tools he had used to disarm any number of explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had never used them on a nuclear bomb before, but…

“I can do it!” he insisted. “Just give me some light!”

Flashlight beams converged on the latch, providing a steady white light that Ford vastly preferred to the rippling glow of the agitated egg sacs. He tried to tune out the pulsing bioluminescence, and the rumble of the warring monsters, to concentrate on the task at hand. The warhead was the primary threat now. Everything else, even Godzilla, was secondary.

I can do this
, he thought.
I
have
to do this.

* * *

The city trembled as Godzilla dropped to one knee, besieged by the MUTOs. The parasites’ combined assault was enough to stagger even the mighty leviathan. The male dived at him from above, gouging Godzilla’s dorsal fins with his claws. Broken shards of fin rained down onto the pulverized streets, adding to the heaped debris, even as the female sprang at Godzilla, slashing at his throat with her talons, which sliced through his scaly armor to the vulnerable flesh below. Blood seeped through the bony plates. The female howled triumphantly.

Godzilla reeled beneath the joint attack, but did not fall. His maw opened wide and, choking and gasping, he exhaled a gust of rippling, super-heated vapor. A spark ignited at the back of his throat and a searing blast of blue-white fire sprayed from his jaws.

Taking the full force of the Godzilla’s volcanic breath, the female screeched in agony and collapsed in a heap of twitching arms and legs. Her chitinous exoskeleton was scorched and blackened in places. Ichor leaked from cracks in her shell. Eight limbs vibrated spastically. She wasn’t dead, but she had been hurt and stunned by the blistering incendiary attack. Unable to defend herself, at least for the moment, she was ripe for the kill.

Godzilla climbed back to his feet, like a mountain thrusting up from the earth, and glared at the downed female. He opened his jaws once more, intending to incinerate her completely, but as his fiery breath flared up the male flew in low overhead and clapped his iridescent black wings together. A luminous pulse rippled through the air and snuffed the bioelectric spark in Godzilla’s throat. The draconic flames belching from his jaws sputtered and died out.

Godzilla blinked in confusion. Smoke billowed from his nostrils. He tried again to summon his most powerful weapon, but felt only an irritating tickle within his gullet. The spark refused to ignite. The flames would not come.

Frustrated, he glared at the soaring male, whom had interfered with his kill. He snarled and gnashed his fangs. His tail whipped back and forth in anger.

The male had done this to him. The male would suffer.

* * *

Flashlight bulbs exploded inside the nest, so that only the glow of smoldering wreckage and the strobe-like luminosity of the hanging egg sacs lit up the underground burrow. Startled soldiers swore profanely.

“Another EMP!” Bennett exclaimed.

“Bulb just blew,” another EOD specialist blurted. “I’m out.”

Still trying to get at the bomb’s sealed timer, Ford squinted at the jammed latch, which was stubbornly resisting his efforts to get it open. The dimming light only made his task harder. He could barely see what he was doing.

“I need more light,” he said.

In charge of the operation, Quinn made a command decision. “Time for Plan B. Let’s get this thing out of here! Come on, come on!”

Ford understood the man’s reasoning. If they couldn’t disarm the bomb, then maybe they could still get it out to sea before the warhead detonated. He stepped back and let six burly soldiers hoist the warhead by the handles on each side. Grunting in effort, they toted it back the way they’d come, retracing their path up the rubble-covered slope to the inverted doorway of the topsy-turvy Victorian home. Gathering up his tools, Ford hurried after them, only to pause on the threshold of the buried house. He glanced back over his shoulder at the multitude of pulsing egg sacs encrusting the ceiling. There had to be dozens of the eggs, each capable of hatching yet another MUTO.

The enormity of the threat was not lost on Ford. Two MUTOs were bad enough, but an entire swarm of them?

Uh-uh
, Ford thought.
Not a chance.

He signaled the other men to go on without him. One way or another, he had to end this.

* * *

Godzilla and the male faced off amidst the burning skyscrapers. They eyed each other warily, each seeking an advantage or opening. The MUTO glided between the surviving high-rises, keeping just out of reach of Godzilla’s outstretched forearms and claws. Baring his fangs, Godzilla dared the male to get closer.

But the standoff gave the female a chance to recover from Godzilla’s fire breath. Singed and smoking, she rose up on her hind legs and lunged at Godzilla. Hatred burned in her crimson eyes. She screeched in rage, out for revenge.

The male attacked simultaneously.

* * *

The upended gasoline tanker was right where Ford had seen it before, partially buried in debris on the floor of the sinkhole. Ford clambered up the exposed underbelly of tanker to reach the pipe valve and hammered at it with the butt of his rifle. He was beyond exhausted, but adrenaline and fear for his family kept him going. A couple of solid whacks bent the valve. Encouraged, Ford pounded it again—and the valve snapped off altogether.

Fuel gushed from the pipe, the gasoline smell invading Ford’s nose and mouth. The fuel spilled down the belly of the tanker onto the floor of the pit, where numerous small fires still smoldered. The gas washed over the bronze dragon and the other debris, streaming toward the flames.

Ford wasn’t going to stick around for the fireworks. Leaping down from the tanker, he landed roughly on the loose debris, twisting his ankle. Despite the pain, he sprinted out of the cavern, making tracks for the surface. His boots pounded against the ceiling of the upside-down Victorian.

This was going to be close.

* * *

The MUTOs pressed their attack, ganging up on Godzilla. He staggered backwards down a wide, wrecked boulevard, inflicting yet more damage to the city with every faltering step. His jagged fins scraped against a red granite building, shredding its elegant façade. Gasping for breath, he choked on the swirling smoke and ash and the volatile gases filling his lungs. He tried to burn it all away, but his hot breath caught in his throat, scalding it. Boiling blood and saliva trickled down his gullet.