* * *
Still aboard the Mir space station, Dr. Mishra observed the object that approached the earth. The more he learned about it, the more he believed that the thing was no asteroid.
Though his theories about what it might be were dismissed as nonsense by his colleagues, Dr. Mishra continued to file daily reports to NASA, and continued his research aboard the space station well beyond the time when he was scheduled to return home.
To Dr. Mishra's eyes, the object was behaving too oddly to be natural. Was it a spaceship? An aberration? Or something else?
His gut feelings told him that it was far from harmless, and he watched its movements with increasing trepidation.
Of course, Dr. Mishra knew that gut feelings would never convince a community of scientists of anything. But, in truth, as he continued his observations, he hoped sincerely that his colleagues would turn out to be right, and that he would be proved dead wrong.
* * *
On Tuesday, July 20, at around two on a hot South Dakota afternoon, Dr. Birchwood wiped the sweat from his brow, swallowed hard, and grabbed the radio.
Rodan had begun moving around in its nest of debris and broken railroad cars. Something was happening.
Putting his eye to the lens of the telescope, Dr. Birchwood depressed the button that activated the video camera. Now he was shooting telescopic footage of the creature's activities even as he watched.
Dr. Birchwood jumped as Rodan suddenly raised its head. The creature cackled, and the sound echoed across the hills. Rodan reached down and knocked something around inside the nest with its beak. The kaijuologist saw it was a huge piece of the off-white eggshell.
Suddenly, a second, much smaller, head peeked over the edge of the nest. The baby was brown in color, but lacked the crown of spikes its parent possessed.
Yes! Dr. Birchwood thought excitedly. Rodan's egg has hatched!
As the excited scientist watched, Rodan lifted the baby Pteranodon gently with its beak. Dr. Birchwood noted that the chick's wings were still stubby and unformed. The infant seemed relaxed in its parent's beak, instinctively sensing it was safe. Then Rodan spread its wings wide and leaped into the air.
Dr. Birchwood scrambled for his radio. He snatched up the device and keyed it. Then he took his hand away from the button again. As he watched, following the beast with his telescope, Rodan circled the nest three times.
Then, without a second glance, the kaiju flew off in a straight line. It was heading due north, toward Canada and beyond, to the north polar region.
Dr. Birchwood watched the vanishing creature. Then he looked down at the radio in his hand. He opened his fingers and let the communications device drop. It crashed to the rocks at the bottom of the hill, where it exploded into a dozen tiny pieces.
I guess I've got communications problems, he thought slyly. Too bad I couldn't alert the authorities.
Squinting into the afternoon sky, Dr. Birchwood watched as Rodan headed toward its solitary home with its hatchling.
"You're either the last of your breed... or the first," he whispered as the creatures vanished over the horizon. "Good luck to the both of you..."
* * *
Aboard the Mir space station, Dr. Mishra blinked in shock and surprise. The mysterious object that he had been observing for days seemed to have moved forward in a flash of blinding light. The scientist quickly increased the magnification of his telescope.
He paled when the outline of the object finally became clear. He could plainly make out two gigantic solar sails or wings and what looked like three long, snakelike projections.
At his side, the radio beeped. Dr. Mishra keyed the mike and spoke into his headset.
"Dr. Mishra here," he said. There was a pause, then Dr. Carl Strickler's voice came on the line. He was excited.
"I see it!" cried Carl. "It is an alien of some kind... a living thing, flying through space!"
Dr. Mishra nodded, but did not reply. Then Dr. Reyes came on the line. "I think the speed of that object is decreasing," he announced. "Can you confirm, Dr. Mishra?"
The scientist aboard Mir scanned his instruments. "Yes," he replied after a moment. "It is slowing"
The delay between transmissions seemed very long. Finally, Dr. Reyes came on the line again. "We will have to tell the authorities," the scientist announced. "I hope to God that this... thing... plans to bypass our planet."
Dr. Mishra remained silent. He had known, in his gut, that Earth had been this creature's final destination all along.
And it was my plan that freed it, Dr. Mishra thought grimly.
* * *
By July 25, it was apparent to all that the creature in space had slowed down significantly. The scientists agreed that it must be moving under its own power... but they did not know what that power was.
They did know that if the creature kept to its present speed, it would arrive above the earth in the last week of December - on or around the first day of the new century.
The ominous news was kept from the public because the governments of the world hoped that the creature, whatever it was, would simply fly past Earth and back out into deep space. They also spoke of launching a new series of nuclear missiles - this time in secret.
At NASA's Deep Space Observation Station in Houston, some of the younger technicians, who had been enjoying the antics of the "Prophetess of Doom" on MTV, started calling the strange phenomenon in space "King Ghidorah."
The name stuck.
As "King Ghidorah" approached, constant communication was maintained between Mir and the celestial tracking stations on Earth.
Dr. Mishra, who had already been in space for thirty days, decided to remain aboard Mir, monitoring the creature's advance, until the end of the year.
* * *
Though Godzilla was cutting a swath of destruction across the center of Kansas, kaijuologists weren't the only scientists chasing across the plains in search of knowledge.
At about noon on Friday, August 13 - a hard-luck day - the National Weather Service storm-monitoring center in Topeka issued severe storm warnings for five counties in northeast Kansas. By two o'clock, the storm brewing looked severe enough to produce a Category Five tornado, with wind gusts at up to 150 miles per hour.
Following the storm's path, a convoy of five vans crammed with meteorological equipment streaked along the highway near the town of Cummings.
When chief meteorologist Dr. Henry Dubois glanced out of his window of the lead van, he saw a funnel cloud forming about a mile ahead. He nudged his driver, a graduate student in climatology named Dexter Runsel. The youth stepped on the gas.
"We got one!" Dubois cried into his CB radio. The other members of the storm-chasing team whooped and put the pedal to the metal, too.
Suddenly, Dubois saw a service road that might get them closer to the point where the storm would touch the earth. He pointed, and Runsel put on the turn signal and took the bend without slowing down. Dust trailed out behind the lead van, and the other vehicles had no trouble following.
In the second truck, another graduate student, named Jim Paulis, noticed a military detachment on the main highway. The soldiers cried out and pointed at the passing storm chasers. Some of them waved their hands above their heads.
"What's that about?" Paulis cried over the noise of the road. Professor Kelly Ridgeway, the driver, glanced at the soldiers as the van streaked by them.
"They're probably trying to warn us that there's a tornado brewing ahead!" she replied. "They don't know that we're looking for one!"
Jim nodded. "Yeah," he said as the van increased speed to catch up with the lead truck. Unfortunately, nobody on the team was paying much attention to the news. They knew that Godzilla was somewhere in Kansas, but they thought they were far from the scene of his rampage.
But the storm chasers were wrong.
"Is that another funnel?" Dr. Dubois cried, pointing ahead where a black shape moved against the overcast sky. The doctor turned toward the radar operator in the back
of the van.
"Something's out there," the technician cried. "And it's big and solid."
"It's coming down," the driver shouted, staring at the funnel cloud. Dr. Dubois turned around as the van screeched to a halt in a cloud of dust. As the van settled, huge drops of rain began to pelt it, and the winds kicked up.
Dr. Dubois jumped out of the van. His assistants were scrambling out behind him, dragging their monitoring equipment. But when they saw the shocked look on their professor's startled face, the group turned as one and stared out toward the descending tornado.
Standing, legs spread and tail flailing in the middle of a Kansas cornfield, Godzilla roared defiantly at the funnel cloud that came to earth fifty feet away from him.
The winds were so powerful that they almost knocked the storm chasers down. The technician looked at his instruments.
"It's a four!" he cried. "At least -" The rest of his words were lost in the storm.
The team of storm chasers set up their video equipment and watched as an epic struggle unfolded - in essence, an unstoppable force was about to meet an immovable object.
Less than a mile away, the crops were sucked up into the dark twisting mass of the storm's funnel cloud. The great beast Godzilla squinted his reptilian eyes against the buffeting winds that tore at his flesh.
Angrily, Godzilla bellowed again. Blue flashes ran along the creature's back. He blasted the funnel cloud with his flaming breath. The blast of radiation was sucked up into the funnel along with everything else. Blue flashes seemed to mix into the cloud like cream in a swirling cup of coffee.
Then the funnel spun forward and struck Godzilla full on. Debris battered and blinded the monster.
Suddenly, his trunklike legs were swept out from under him. The earth shook for miles around as Godzilla tumbled to the ground. The wind continued to batter him, rolling him over a huge barn and silo that was nevertheless dwarfed by the kaiju's sheer magnitude.
Godzilla roared again and belched more fire. The blue streak disappeared into the funnel. Flashes of fire could be seen as debris in the funnel cloud caught fire from Godzilla's rays.
The twister snaked sideways and struck Godzilla a second time. Still struggling on the ground, the enraged dinosaur tried to grapple with the storm. His tail flailed wildly as the full force of the tornado battered itself out against the incredible, near-immovable bulk of the giant mutant.
In the next few seconds, the funnel actually broke itself apart against Godzilla, scattering debris all around the area.
Grunting, Godzilla lumbered to his feet.
Then, as the storm chasers watched in disbelief, Godzilla's roar of victory and defiance echoed across the plains of Kansas.
* * *
That evening on every news channel across the country, America viewed the startling footage of Godzilla brawling with a Category Four tornado.
The sight had an unexpected impact on the country.
Many Americans were beginning to see Godzilla not so much as a monster, but as a force of nature. Suddenly, it didn't seem so terrible that the creature's trek across the nation could not be stopped.
After all, neither could a tornado.
26
THE BATTLE
OF GARY
Monday, September 13, 1999, 3:44 P.M.
Joint Command headquarters
Gary, Indiana
Godzilla moved east into much more densely populated areas of the United States. When he crossed the Missouri River, he was only twenty-five miles south of Omaha. Many suburban areas were destroyed, and once again, the president's decision not to interfere with Godzilla was questioned.
Despite the radioactive plague that had ravaged parts of California after the unsuccessful helicopter attack, and the fact that parts of the Gunnison National Forest had suffered ecological damage after the failed G-Force assault, some still pressed for another attack on Godzilla. There was economic as well as political pressure.
The governments disaster relief funds were exhausted, and hundreds of thousands of people were still homeless. Mining and agricultural interests suffered in Godzilla's wake, and in some regions the crops were never planted or harvested. The United States was having to import basic foodstuffs from its neighbors.
The stock market continued to plummet, and matters only got worse as Godzilla neared America's industrial heartland. The "Big Three" auto companies talked about moving their manufacturing facilities south of the border until the Speaker of the House of Representatives slyly reminded them that a dangerous and destructive kaiju had ravaged Mexico, too.
Research continued on re-creating the sound lure invented by Japanese scientist Dr. Nobeyama, which had been used once to successfully draw Godzilla away from Japan. But even though the scientists duplicated the frequency of the sound, Godzilla wasn't responding to it anymore. One kaijuologist suggested that the lure might only work at certain times - like a mating call, which only worked if the creature was "interested."
Finally, as Godzilla neared the Great Lakes region, a plan was developed to force him away from Chicago. After long consultation with civilian and military authorities, the site of a third attack on Godzilla was selected.
The "line in the sand" was drawn at Gary, Indiana.
* * *
General Leroy Cranford was put in charge of joint military operations. A veteran of the Gulf War and Bosnia, he possessed a level head and an organized mind. The president asked General Cranford for a strategy, and the general went to work.
First, a double wall of high-tension electrical towers was built to form a corridor through Illinois and Indiana. The electric "fence" was meant to herd Godzilla away from Chicago and toward Gary. The real attack wouldn't occur until Godzilla reached a huge, abandoned industrial park located outside the city, on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Construction began on the trap. A former steel-processing a plant outside Gary was transformed into a deadly gauntlet. High-explosive chemicals were brought in. Mines filled with poisons and flammable chemicals were planted.
On the last day of September, as cold autumn descended on the Midwest, the combined forces under Cranford's command waited for Godzilla to approach.
* * *
Though Godzilla was obscured by a misty rainfall that soaked the battlefield, his approach was announced by the rumble of his monstrous footsteps.
Inside the cramped quarters of the M1A1 Abrams main battle tank, the soldiers waiting to spring their trap felt the earth move under the tank treads.
Sitting in the commander's station of the sixty-three-ton main battle tank, Lieutenant Chick Patterson wiped away the sweat that beaded on his oil-stained face. Then he used a rag to wipe off the eyepiece on his periscope before peering through the lens again.
Another rumble rocked the tank.
Patterson scanned the area through the GPS sight - an extension of the gunner's own targeting system.
All he could see was a wall of swirling fog. But Godzilla was close now - he could feel it. The lieutenant cursed the weather yet again. The mist was so thick it obscured even the walls of the ruined industrial facility a scant seventy feet away. It was the worst day of weather the battle group had endured in their three months in Indiana.
The big fear during preparation was that Godzilla would arrive in the dead of night, or in the middle of a snowstorm. But this rain and wet fog was much, much worse. It even confounded their computer-enhanced targeting systems.
It was a bad omen that Godzilla had picked today of all days to arrive.
Suddenly, the radio speaker crackled. "Lock and load," an emotionless voice announced. Finally, the code releasing the attack had been given.
Lieutenant Patterson looked down at Private Greene, the fastest loader in the battalion. It was his job to feed the cannon round after round of ammunition. Above Private Greene sat Sergeant George Hammond, in the gunner's station. Private Willy Hernandez sat in the driver's seat, gunning the diesel engines, ready to move at a second's notice.<
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The job of the 72nd Tank Battalion was not to stop Godzilla. They were there to force the monster into the box, where the traps that the scientists designed would be triggered.
With luck, they might never have to fire a shot. If Godzilla kept on walking in a straight line, between the two lines of high-tension electrical towers, then everything would be fine.
But it wasn't going to be that way, and Patterson knew it.
"I see something!" Sergeant Hammond announced, automatically reaching for the handle of his gun.
"Load!" Lieutenant Patterson commanded, peering through his viewer. In a battle against a human enemy, the tank commander would usually specify the type of ammunition to be used. But a new type of ammunition - a Teflon-coated depleted-uranium shell - was about to be tested against Godzilla. To the soldiers' dismay, the experimental shells were the only type they carried.
"Up!" Private Greene announced as he slammed the shell home.
Suddenly, the curtain of fog parted, and a black wall of rutted flesh appeared in front of the line of tanks. The gunner swiftly elevated the main gun twenty degrees. He centered the cross hairs on a section of Godzilla's neck. His finger closed around the trigger.
"Wait... wait..." Lieutenant Patterson and the other tank commanders' eyes were locked on two bright yellow lines painted on either side of the abandoned factory's parking lot. As long as the monster kept between those lines, they were to hold their fire. But if Godzilla moved to either side, then the tanks there were to open up - driving him back to the center of the park.
It sounded fine - in theory. But when Patterson saw Godzilla emerge from the fog, he wasn't prepared for the size of the monster. Somehow, the lieutenant was expecting something along the lines of the T.rex in Jurassic Park.
Godzilla was much more impressive than that!
Patterson kept elevating his periscope up and up, until - finally - he focused on Godzilla's reptilian head. The eyes seemed to gleam with feral intelligence.
The earth shook again as Godzilla took another step closer. As the gunner traversed the turret, keeping the sight on the creature's throat, Godzilla abruptly shifted his weight and turned, his tail lashing out and slamming against the factory.
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