Godzilla

by Greg Keyes

  “Oh, shit!” Martinez yelped. “Above us, nine o’clock!” Barnes glanced up to see the monster, filling half the sky, wings folded at its sides, diving straight toward them.

  “Griffin!”

  “Kind of busy here,” she said.

  She banked hard and down. Barnes felt the blood drain from his head. He gripped the .50 caliber harder, trying to stay behind it. Rodan’s head appeared, plowing right toward them. With a shout he began firing straight at the thing’s face.

  Then they dropped into a steep dive, and the monster’s head was out of frame, although it seemed to take forever for the body to finish going over.

  “I think he likes us,” Barnes said.

  “I think you’re right,” Griffin said, “’cause he’s coming back for another pass.”

  * * *

  Lights flickered back on and air began to blow through the vents again. Mark’s heart was hammering, though. Underwater, in the dark, with the air growing stale, everything shrinking in on him – what they hell was he doing here? He should be out in a field, with wolves, where you could see what was coming at you. Where the only wall was the horizon.

  “Damage report,” Crane said.

  “Fire in torpedo room is out,” Bowman said. “Atmosphere is stable. We’re banged up, but we’ll make it.”

  “Make it where?” Mark asked.

  “Can’t fix our position,” Bowman said, “but inertial says we’re six hundred miles from departure.”

  Mark wondered if he’d heard that right.

  Six hundred miles. Even at a hundred miles an hour that would take six hours, and Mark was pretty damn sure no submarine could go that fast, not even some souped-up Monarch tub. And the lights had been out for a lot less than six hours.

  “That can’t be,” Crane said, echoing Mark’s thought.

  Weirdly, Stanton was beaming.

  “I knew it!” he said. “That vortex was a tunnel into the Hollow Earth!”

  Crane looked at him as if he was speaking an unknown language.

  “Subterranean tunnel system that connects the entire planet?” Stanton said. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I told you, Chen!”

  “Shut up, Rick,” Chen said.

  The Hollow Earth was an old idea. It had probably started before humans were fully modern, when they used shallow caves as homes and explored the deeper ones, once they had fire. In the 1600s, Edmund Halley – the same guy the comet was named for – went a little farther and proposed the whole planet was hollow. For a couple of hundred years the notion had been entertained by scientists and crackpots alike and resulted in a fair amount of early science fiction.

  To most geologists in the twentieth century, the Hollow Earth was just that – science fiction.

  In the 1970s, Dr. Houston Brooks proposed a hybrid model, claiming that the Earth and deep oceans did, in fact, contain cavities of immense size. He tried to test his hypothesis on Skull Island – with catastrophic effects. While he had gathered evidence of deep cave systems, the definitive proof for his larger theory was still lacking.

  Until now, maybe. If Stanton was right, Mothra had led them right into a vortex to bring them where they needed to be. To Godzilla. Debate as to what exactly had happened could wait. Whether they had really moved six hundred miles or it was an instrument malfunction, they were where they were, and they needed to get on with their mission.

  “One-second emergency blow forward,” Crane said.

  The sub lurched ahead.

  “Doctor?” Crane said, looking to Serizawa.

  “Launch probes,” Serizawa said.

  The feeds from two small drones appeared, illuminating the way ahead with long searchlights. The sub followed along, approaching strange, twisting shapes still too vague to make out. But even from here, they seemed somehow unnatural.

  “Lights on,” Stanton said. “Cameras good. Range one thousand yards.”

  The sub and its twin guides crept through the darkness. Mark wondered how deep they were, how many tons of water pressure were pushing against their hull. He decided he didn’t want to know.

  The occasional flicker of movement in the search beams reminded him that there was life, even down here, where sunlight never penetrated, where photosynthesis was impossible. Land and shallow seas only accounted for about a third of the Earth’s surface. Most of the world lay beneath perpetual night.

  A dark shape loomed and suddenly resolved as a woman’s face, pale and ghostly. Mark took an involuntary step back.

  “Jesus!” Stanton exclaimed.

  But then the frame widened. It wasn’t a corpse or a mermaid, but the figurehead of a ship, a galleon, centuries old.

  It wasn’t alone. Dozens of wrecks were visible in their searchlights, many piled one upon the other. A Viking knar raised its dragon figurehead from the shatters of triremes, galleys, cogs, and frigates. The harrowed cylinder of a vintage submarine, a diesel-powered beast from the last world war, lay near the broken remnants of a clipper ship and a warship that had probably last seen the surface in the 1910s. All drawn here by the vortex, as they had been, hammered onto the anvil of the abyss.

  Mark realized how fortunate they had been to survive, not to end up as part of this ships’ graveyard.

  But not only ships were rested here. Amongst the wrecks lay immense bones – ribs, long bones, skulls, bony plates.

  And Mark noticed something else.

  “Wait a second,” he said. “Pan right.”

  There was light in the darkness, a pulsing reddish fog, not coming down from the surface, but rising from the sea floor at the bottom of a trench, where lava was boiling up from fissures in the earth, flowing across the sea floor in braided streams, flooding around fantastic structures that simply could not be natural. Some were more disjointed Titan bones, but others – were not.

  Through the murk, crumbling statues the size of skyscrapers appeared, along with temples, state buildings – the remains of a cyclopean city. Breathtaking arched colonnades reminded Mark of Roman buildings like the Colosseum; in other places the architecture seemed more Greek or Egyptian, and here and there resembled the ornate architecture of Southeast Asian temples. And through it all streamed an increasingly larger and brighter river of molten rock.

  On many of the buildings and monuments, Mark could barely make out what might be hieroglyphics, bas-reliefs of strange beasts and much smaller humans. One of them clearly resembled Godzilla.

  “What is all this?” he asked. “Egyptian? Roman?”

  “No way,” Dr. Stanton said. “This is something else entirely, something way older.”

  Much larger murals came into view, and now Mark fully recognized what he was seeing. Depictions of Godzilla, Mothra – and yes, Kong. Beneath them, smaller figures were arranged in various form of respect, or service, or – worship.

  “All the legends,” Chen breathed. “The stories. They’re true. They really were the first gods.”

  She began taking stills of the ancient carvings.

  This changes everything, Mark realized. Emma was right. She had certainly screwed up and gotten untold numbers of people killed, but the link between humans and these ancient beasts was now inescapable.

  What he found most remarkable was that absolutely nothing in the poses of the human figures suggested fear, or intimidation. Awe, yes, maybe worship. But also cooperation.

  This was the coexistence Emma and Serizawa had so often spoken of. That he had dismissed as nonsense. The Titans were part of the natural order, and always had been.

  But there was another story here, too. It was clear the city hadn’t been peacefully abandoned and allowed to deliquesce. Almost everything had been scarred, scorched, or blasted. The sea bottom bore the cratered scars of some ancient cataclysm.

  The murals of man and monster ended – not because the ancient artists had finished, but because their work had been blasted to pieces. Whatever harmony had once existed in the place had been destroyed, drowned like Atlantis. Had this civ
ilization existed above, in the sunlit world, brought into the deeps by some geological event? Or had this once been a vast cave, filled with air, lit by some unknown light source?

  Either way, who – or what – had brought about its downfall? A war of Titans fought with the aid of human beings? If so, given all the monster bones, things didn’t seem to have gone very well for anyone.

  Except, perhaps, Godzilla.

  And what did that mean for them? Was this the fate of his own civilization, to be swept away and forgotten?

  “If the earth and stones could only speak,” Stanton said, “the stories they would tell us…”

  “Dr. Stanton,” Serizawa said, “any sign of Godzilla?” Mark realized that of all of them, Serizawa was the least distracted by the strange wonders of this place. He was still focused on the task at hand.

  But of course, what they were seeing only confirmed what Serizawa had already been certain of for years. He was way ahead of them in being able to absorb all of this.

  “Yeah,” Stanton said. “The probes are picking up a pretty big radiation blob just past that range.”

  “Set a course,” Serizawa said.

  * * *

  Madison pushed through the woods as fast as she could. She kept imagining Jonah behind her, gun in hand. Feeling the bullet hit her in the back. Or would she feel it? Maybe everything would just – stop.

  She didn’t want to find out.

  She came across a winding two-lane road and started down it. She no longer had enough elevation to see the city, but she had a good sense of where it was. She was in suburbia now, passing the entrances to cul-de-sac neighborhoods. Most were quiet, already empty, but now and then she saw a family still packing up. Once some people in an SUV stopped and offered her a ride, but when they learned she was going into the city, they shook their heads and moved on.

  Her road joined a bigger one, all strip malls, shopping centers, office complexes, and finally to an interstate, and that wasn’t quiet at all. Cars packed it bumper to bumper, on both sides of the divide, all going the same way – out. They were mostly ground to a halt, and the drivers weren’t happy about it. That was okay; honking and screaming she could deal with. More difficult were the people on foot, weaving between the automobiles; it was like swimming upstream, and the ORCA was heavy. She was already more than tired, and still had a long way to go to reach Fenway Park.

  Downtown, the evacuation was kicking into high gear. Sirens wailed near and far. Jets slashed through the skies, and she made out helicopters and Ospreys taking off and landing in the distance.

  She stopped to rest, eat, and drink, but never for more than a few minutes.

  At least she felt safer now. The odds of Jonah finding her in all of this mess had to be pretty low.

  By the time she got within sight of the ballpark, the crowd had turned, no longer flowing out of the city but toward Fenway, which she now saw was one of the evacuation hubs. They were using the ballfield to stage airlifts. She watched hopefully as another group of craft lifted off. The evacuation seemed to be going well. Maybe more people would survive, this time.

  No. They would. She would see to that. But with all of these folks pouring into Fenway, it was going to be a little trickier then she had anticipated.

  She merged into one of the lines, where people were being herded into the stadium by cops and soldiers. Every few minutes the loudspeakers reminded them all to remain calm, that evacuation ships would be departing every fifteen minutes. It was like being in a theme park, except here if you didn’t get on the ride in a timely fashion, you died.

  A few places in line ahead, a little girl was clinging to her dad. She looked terrified. Madison made a funny face, and the girl smiled and then turned away.

  A moment later Maddie saw her chance. No one official was looking, and the line had gotten her as far as it could. Just ahead a door informed her that only authorized personnel were allowed through it.

  She authorized herself, found it unlocked, and slipped inside. She discovered stairs and followed them up, working her way toward the broadcast booth. She had never been to it, but she had seen it from the cheap seats. She had a general idea where it was.

  This part was easy. Despite the massive crowds outside, in here it was deserted.

  She wondered what her dad was doing right now. They had been here together a few times, just the two of them. Neither Mom nor Andrew had been big baseball fans. She had never cared that much about the game herself, but she liked spending time with Dad, and she liked the atmosphere, the cheese fries, the popcorn.

  She hoped he was still okay.

  She hoped Mom was okay, too. That Jonah didn’t take it out on her. She knew he might.

  It took a little longer to find the booth than she would have liked, but find it she did. From here she had a first-rate view of the evacuation through the giant glass windows, and for a moment she just absorbed the view.

  Then she turned around and got to work.

  Opening up the ORCA, she began patching it in to the stadium’s speaker system.

  Someone had left a screen on. She listened as the newscaster droned on.

  “Massive storms and other disasters triggered by the Titans have forced millions to flee major cities. And with D.C. hit hard by a Category Six hurricane that has left the capitol completely flooded, this is the single greatest disaster in human history. The grim search continues as people around the world sift through the debris of leveled homes in the hope of finding missing loved ones. And though this sight is heartbreaking, it is in no way unique. Cities around the globe have fallen under the wake of what many are calling ‘The Rise of the Titans.’”

  Madison pulled up a bioacoustic waveform on the ORCA, then cranked up the volume on the stadium speakers. Now all she had to do was hit the button.

  EIGHTEEN

  From the notes of Dr. Serizawa:

  First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.

  —Hesiod, Works and Days, circa 700 BCE

  The sub drifted through the spectral city toward something large, much larger than the other buildings. At first Mark thought it was a seamount, or another wall of the trench, but as they drew nearer, and it gained definition, he saw that it was a gigantic sculpture carved into a living stone face. It was a doorway of sorts, not on a human scale, but on a Titanic one. Carved on either side of the structure’s base were two huge, three-clawed feet.

  Through the cyclopean doorway, lava cascaded along a tunnel that rose in a series of large steps, eventually forming a larger fall that created the river over which they had been sailing. At the far end of the tunnel, a familiar blue glow limned the exit into – somewhere.

  “I think we should stop,” Stanton said, studying his instruments.

  “Why?” Serizawa asked.

  “Because I still wanna have kids one day,” Stanton replied. “Preferably without flippers.”

  He pointed to his instruments, which showed radiation readings redlining.

  “Full stop,” Crane said. “Hover the ship.”

  The three drones continued on without them, dwindling into the tunnel, but their feed continued.

  “It’s way hot in there,” Stanton said. “Probes aren’t gonna last long, but I’m picking up his radioactive signature up ahead. It’s weak but it’s there.”

  He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when the feed from one of the probes ceased, quickly followed by another. The third kept
going. A moment later, it entered a vast cavern.

  “Okay,” Stanton said, “we’ve got O2, CO2, methane – looks like some sort of air pocket.”

  “Can you surface into that?” Mark asked.

  “You got it,” Stanton replied.

  Mark stared at the stream as the probe rose into the atmospheric cavity.

  Within lay a vast temple complex, and although the probe feed was starting to lose resolution, they could see him, Godzilla, splayed out, a fallen deity in the heart of his own temple, lava breaching up from beneath him.

  “Oh my God—” Mark breathed.

  “—zilla,” Stanton finished.

  Then the probe failed.

  “Say goodnight, Gracie,” Stanton said.

  “Pull up the last frame,” Serizawa said.

  Mark was numb. There was the thing that had killed his son, beaten. Helpless. Logically, he knew they needed the monster alive, but emotionally, he wasn’t quite there. He might never be. But that wasn’t the point. Serizawa was right. He had to confront this.

  Serizawa zoomed in to the volcanic vents surrounding Godzilla.

  “There,” he said. “Those bits. They’re the source of the radiation.”

  “That’s why he returned here,” Chen said. “He’s feeding. Regenerating.”

  “This is his home,” Serizawa said.

  The two scientists shared a look of satisfaction.

  “That’s how he survived so long,” Mark said. “Always adapting. Evolving. It’s incredible.”

  “Welp,” Stanton said, “he doesn’t really need our help, dude’s got this covered, right? He just needs a nap.”

  “No,” Chen said. “This process could take years. Even decades.”

  “We have to proceed as planned,” Serizawa said.

  “Hold on,” Stanton objected. “We’re talking about launching a nuclear torpedo to revive a giant monster. That’s not exactly like a jump-starting a car.”

  “We have one more complication,” Commander Crane said. “Our weapons systems were damaged during the crash. We can’t launch.”

  That does put a kink in the hose, Mark thought. Maybe someone should have mentioned this a little earlier.