by Greg Keyes
That was bad. As much as he hated Godzilla, Mark was sort of rooting for him to win this particular fight, or at least keep the other monster busy long enough to let them get away. But now Monster Zero turned his attention back to them.
He and Vivienne ran like hell toward the others, but he still wasn’t a hundred percent. He saw Coleman running toward them…
A dragon head darted down, fangs gaping. The tiny hairs on his skin pricked up, and a sharp, sulfurous musk stung the back of his throat.
The huge mouth snapped shut.
And Vivienne was gone.
She couldn’t be of course. He must have seen it wrong. She must have been knocked aside or something.
But part of him understood the truth. And he was next.
But he wasn’t. Gasping, stumbling, he made it back to the others. Vivienne was nowhere to be seen.
Oh, God he thought, as the details reasserted themselves. The huge jaws closing on her, the unbelieving look on her face.
Oh, God, she’s gone.
Serizawa was staring at where she had been. He looked like someone who had just been asked a question he should be able to answer, but couldn’t. Then his features began to crumple in on themselves. Mark had never seen him look so beaten or broken.
But Serizawa wouldn’t feel that for long, or anything else, for that matter. Because Monster Zero was coming back for the rest of them.
A plume of flame erupted on the monster, and then another, accompanied by deafening concussions. Monster Zero shrieked and gave ground.
The flying cavalry had arrived – the Argo and its escort of jet fighters. Missiles screamed overhead, peppering Monster Zero with high-yield payloads.
The three-headed dragon screamed again, overwhelmed by the sudden bombardment. It swept the air with its wings, swatting one of the rockets and deflecting it. It spun out of control.
Right toward Mark.
Before he could take more than a step it detonated. The shock wave picked him up like a giant hand and hurled him through space. For an instant he was in free fall, and then he hit something so hard he heard his bones crunch together. Breathless, ears ringing, he lay there, knowing he had to get up, but completely unable to move. Through blurring vision, he saw a huge head rise up from behind the dragon, from the sinkhole, and then Godzilla pulled himself up and launched himself toward Monster Zero, just as another round of missiles struck the gold-scaled Titan.
It was too much for the newly awakened Monster. Attacked from all sides, he broke from the battle, flapped his heaven-spanning wings, and took to the sky.
Then everything blurred away, and Mark didn’t see anything at all.
* * *
For the fourth time, Serizawa turned to say something to Vivienne, who wasn’t there. She would never be there again, but his heart and mind hadn’t accepted it yet. They had been working together for so long, he felt incomplete without her. Half a mind.
He began flipping his father’s pocket watch.
His father had worked for Monarch, too. He had been recruited not long after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Serizawa didn’t learn that until many years later. He’d grown up believing his father worked for a cargo company. It was only when he was older that his father had taken him aside and told him the truth.
There were monsters in the world. They had been sleeping for a long time. Now they were waking up.
The detonations in Japan woke the first one – Shinomura, a festering hive-colony of creatures that resembled a nematode with wings. It began preying on remote islands in Oceania.
Then Godzilla appeared and began to fight it – or, rather, them. A torn-off piece of the first one had regenerated into a second creature. Godzilla killed one, but the other escaped. Godzilla went after it, and when they came together, the military dropped a nuclear bomb on both of them.
The bomb destroyed Shinomura. For many years, Monarch believed Godzilla had also perished in that atomic inferno.
But he hadn’t. Godzilla’s role was to keep the balance. With both Shinomuras gone, he simply returned to whatever deeps he inhabited. When new Titans emerged decades later, Godzilla returned as well.
Now he was back, and it was clear – at least to Serizawa – why. He only hoped he could convince the others. Godzilla was not their enemy.
* * *
Sound returned first, the steady roar of jet engines. Light followed more slowly, and recognition came last. Foster and the others talking, somewhere near.
Mark was back on the Argo, lying down.
He pushed himself up slowly. He felt like one big bruise, both inside and out. Emma. Madison. Vivienne. Had all that been real?
As much as everything ached, nothing felt broken. He struggled to his feet and headed toward the voices.
They were on the bridge. Serizawa sat alone, flipping his pocket watch, not participating in the discussion. He looked kind of out of it. Vivienne’s death had hit him hard. They had been colleagues and friends for a long time.
“Anything on the satellites?” Foster asked.
“Subs have Godzilla hauling ass past Argentina,” Stanton said. “We lost Monster Zero in a tropical storm over Brazil. Scanning the entire southern hemisphere. So far, nothing.”
“Then scan the northern!” Foster said.
The Colonel turned on Coleman.
“I know what I saw, Sam,” she said, “and I’m telling you she pulled that trigger.”
“All due respect, Colonel, you saw wrong. Okay?” Coleman insisted. “She wouldn’t have done that. Christ, she recruited pretty much everyone in this room.”
“Maybe Jonah forced her, right?” Stanton suggested. “Maybe he used Madison as leverage.”
Coleman stood firm. “No,” he said. “It had to be someone else.”
Coleman had claimed to be a big fan of Emma’s, hadn’t he? That was obvious now. And he wasn’t going to like this.
“Emma,” Mark told them. “It was Emma.”
It broke his heart to say it. Like Coleman, he wanted a way around it. Some missing bit of information that would acquit his former wife. But he knew her, and he knew what he saw.
Everyone went silent and all turned to stare at him. He was starting to get used to that.
“Foster saw it right,” Mark pushed on. “It was her. No one forced her to.”
It wasn’t just Coleman. None of the scientists wanted to believe it. It was a tribute to Emma, in a sense, the trust they still had in her.
“Are you sure?” Serizawa asked.
Mark nodded.
Foster turned to face the map of the containment sites. All of them were on red alert.
“First she releases Mothra,” the Colonel said. “And now Monster Zero. Anyone else sensing a pattern here?”
“Yes,” Chen said. “And not a good one. It’s as if she’s trying to start a mass awakening.”
“Well,” Mark said. “It’s just too bad that no one tried to warn you that was gonna happen.”
“Hang on, guys,” Coleman said. “Why the hell would she want to release them? And why would she team up with Jonah, of all people, to do it?”
Serizawa’s face set back into familiar lines. His voice grew firmer.
“We will ask her when we find her,” he said. “So let’s keep looking.”
He met Mark’s gaze. He didn’t say a word, but Mark understood him. It was time to set their pain aside, to be dealt with later. Now was the time to do what needed doing.
* * *
Jonah’s men secured their new location and began setting up for the next phase, making sure everything was patched together. Meanwhile, Emma found a room she and Madison could share.
But she found Maddie sitting in an old radio room, settling in.
“I thought we would stay together,” she said.
Her daughter didn’t say anything, but continued to find places for her things.
“Maddie—”
“Leave me alone,” she snapped.
“Look, I know you’re shaken up—”
“I don’t even know if he’s alive,” Maddie said. “He was there. You just left him. We left him. To die.”
“I never meant for that to happen.”
Tears were starting in Maddie’s eyes, but she didn’t look sad. She looked angry.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” Maddie said. “I don’t want to talk about anything.”
Emma paused, and then backed out of the room. She needed to give her some space. There was time for that now.
Of course it had been hard on Maddie, seeing Mark like that. For that matter, it had been hard on her, too. She wished he wasn’t involved – it only made things more difficult and complicated. Monarch must have dragged him in to help find her and Maddie through the ORCA.
She went to set up her command post. She found Jonah already there. He’d been quieter than usual since Antarctica.
“Dr. Russell,” he said, when she came in.
“Jonah,” she said. She sat down with the ORCA and began checking its calibration.
She didn’t like Jonah. She never had, and the tighter their association became, the less she could stand him. He was a fanatic with no conscience and little if no empathy. For him, there was no means too dirty to see him through to his desired ends.
But she needed him. And now he seemed to be – as hard as it was to believe – hurting.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at him.
“About your daughter? She nearly got us all killed.”
“No,” she said, checking back her anger. “She was only trying to save her father. She can’t be blamed for that.”
“She can indeed,” Jonah returned. “Keep her curbed, Dr. Russell.”
She frowned.
“I meant I’m sorry about Asher,” she explained.
“Oh, that,” he said.
“You two seemed close.”
He shrugged. “He knew what he was into, what he was risking. I’ve known many soldiers who died never knowing what they were fighting for. Ash died for something. So.”
Maybe if he hadn’t tried to shoot Mark he would still be alive, she thought. But it wouldn’t serve her cause to say that, or make anything better. They had to move on, finish what they had started.
“You remember how we met?” Jonah asked her.
“Guam. You tried to hijack the plane I was on. And tried to kill me later.”
“And yet when you came around to the one true church, you turned to me,” he said.
“Don’t be too flattered,” she said. “I knew I could never do this alone. You were the only person I knew who was capable of… this.”
“But that is flattering, in a way,” he said. “It makes me so happy that you saw the light.”
He didn’t sound happy, but then he never did. Satisfied was about as close as he ever got. He also wasn’t right, at least not exactly. He and she shared similar goals, but the outcomes they desired were – quite different.
* * *
Mark’s head was still pounding. He took a seat, leaned against the window, and closed his eyes, desperately trying to get just a little sleep. He couldn’t, though. He kept seeing Emma, pressing that button. And Maddie, screaming. And Vivienne, eaten by that – what to even call it?
“Mark.”
He opened his eyes and found Coleman sitting across from him.
“What now?” he asked.
“Mark, we’ve gotta be sure—”
“Are we still on this?” Mark said. “Yes, I’m sure. I was married to her. I—”
He cut himself off.
“I should have known,” he said. “The minute you guys told me she’d started tinkering with the ORCA, I should have known.”
“This must be really hard for you,” Coleman said.
“Hard. Yeah.”
“Why the ORCA?” Coleman asked. “I mean, she wanted to use it to calm Titans. And she did, at least once.”
“Yeah,” Mark said. “When I was in her office, I found some of her notes on that. She tried to use bio-sonar to calm that thing – Jinshin-Mushi – twice. The first time it didn’t work. She just made matters worse and got a bunch of people killed.”
“She learned from that mistake,” Coleman said. “When she used the ORCA prototype—”
“What else do you know about it? The ORCA?”
Coleman paused.
“Well, uh, I know that you guys went to MIT together. That’s where you first started designing the ORCA, and it’s where you, uh, fell in love—”
“Emma tell you all of this?”
“Some of it.”
“You said you were a fan of my ex-wife. Just how big a fan were you?”
His blue eyes went wide. “Look, no. I mean, I should be so lucky—” he stopped, drew a breath, started again.
“She’s a rock star,” he said. “She’s brilliant, wonderful. Monarch’s wonder-worker, what we all aspired to be. And I don’t understand what’s happened. Why she would do this.”
“Do you know what happened when we tested the ORCA?” he asked. “Did she ever tell you that?”
Coleman shook his head.
“Beautiful day on the Puget Sound. We were just going to try to – nudge them a little. Herd them. Make them turn a couple of times. Instead, they freaked out and beached themselves. But they didn’t stop at that. They kept trying to go inland. Cut themselves up on the rocks. There were five of them. Three of them died. Because we thought it was a good idea to fuck around with nature. That’s why we abandoned it. After our son died, she started talking about working on it again. It’s what broke us up. Well, that and my high-ethanol diet.”
“I’m sorry—”
“I’m getting off-point,” Mark said. “I know her. She thinks she knows what she’s doing, just like the two of us were so damn sure of ourselves before we killed those whales. But these aren’t whales, Sam. A screw-up with these – monsters – I don’t want to imagine.”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Okay. Thanks for explaining that.”
Mark nodded. “Just out of curiosity,” he said, “where are we headed?”
“Mexico,” Sam replied. “I hope you brought some flip-flops and swim trunks.”
TEN
We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
—Francis Bacon, Novum Organum
Keeping track of Godzilla wasn’t much of a problem. In the past he hadn’t been bothered by submarines and drones in his wake or alongside of him, and he didn’t seem to mind now. Mark wondered how they fit into the monster predator’s world. Did he think of them as part of his pack, since they were following but not displaying aggression? Or did he think of them the way sailors on fishing boats thought of the seabirds that circled their craft hoping for scraps?
Whatever the explanation, it struck him as odd, given his behavior toward the underwater base. If he had any long-term memory, he surely knew submarines had weapons.
Anyway, Godzilla wasn’t their chief priority. Finding Emma was.
Foster pulled up a global map and traced a track depicted on it with her hand.
“Godzilla appears to be following the same path as Emma’s Osprey, heading north over South America to here.” She zoomed in to a small island. “Outpost 56 in Isla de Mara, Mexico. We touch down there in ten minutes.”
* * *
La Isla de Mara, an island in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the mainland. The satellite map detailed a dormant volcano with what appeared to be a geothermal plant built into its mouth.
La Isla de Mara wasn’t the only outpost Monarch was worried about. At least six others seemed to have been compromised. Outposts in Thailand, Sudan, Brazil, the American Southwest, and Germany. And one more, in the Pacific.
Skull Island.
Was Emma about to release the Titans in those locations, too? What the hell was she up to, and why? Sure, she’d always respected the things. Liked them, even. Hell, she was a paleobiologist whose wildest wish had come true. Rat
her than study fossils, she got to play with living creatures millions of years old.
But she wasn’t a terrorist, and she wouldn’t work with a terrorist unless she had a really good reason.
The problem was, try as he might, he couldn’t think of a reason that made any sense.
Antarctica was isolated and unpopulated, the Monarch base and a few research stations aside. These other places, though – Cambodia, Mexico, Sudan – they had human populations. Even if the monsters stayed contained, the fight to win back the bases from Jonah’s mercenaries would create a lot of collateral damage. And if Emma managed to release these monsters, it would be much worse.
“What about the people?” Mark asked.
“I’m sorry?” Colonel Foster said.
He pointed to the coastal village near the volcano.
“The people. The people down there in that village who don’t realize they’re gonna be the special of the day.”
“We’ve sent G-Team to begin an evacuation,” Serizawa said.
“Dr. Serizawa,” the bridge officer said, “we have a call on the emergency channel – from Isla de Mara.”
“Answer it,” Serizawa said.
Emma appeared on-screen. She stood in front of a panel of instruments, and she was alone.
He couldn’t take his eyes away. Even now she was beautiful to him. After everything. Because history didn’t restart every second, or even after something awful happened. And his history with Emma was written too deeply in him to be easily erased.
Which made this all the more awful.
“I suppose I should go first,” Emma said.
That snapped him out of it, a little, gave his anger purchase.
“Where’s Madison?” he demanded.