by Greg Keyes
“Prepare for landing!” Barnes said.
“Check it out,” Martinez said, still watching Godzilla. “Dude’s lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Through the smoke, Mark saw what Martinez meant. Godzilla was pulsating with a fiery orange light, the air around him distorted by heat waves. This was new – nothing like this had been observed during the big lizard’s last trek across the globe.
“Stanton, you guys seeing this?” Mark said, over the radio.
“Oh, we’re seeing it,” Stanton said. “But definitely not liking it.”
Stanton paused. Mark could almost see him going over the readings, calibrating data flow.
The Osprey dropped lower. They were almost on the ground.
* * *
Stanton studied his instruments, while Sam glanced nervously from him to the strange light radiating from their friendly Titan.
“Godzilla’s radiation levels are going through the roof,” Stanton informed him. “We’ve got about twelve minutes before he goes thermonuclear.”
“What do you mean?” Foster asked.
“I mean in about twelve minutes it’s gonna be a bad day to be a Red Sox fan.”
* * *
“Guys,” said Sam’s voice on the radio. “You need to find the ORCA, grab Madison, and get the hell out of there. Whatever Serizawa did to Godzilla worked a little too well, because he’s about to explode like an atom bomb.”
Barnes looked around. The Boston skyline burning; jets and choppers flaming out, and two monsters straight out of the apocalypse were going at it hard and bloody.
“Roger that,” Barnes answered. “Prepare for landing.”
* * *
As the Osprey dropped down, Martinez crossed himself: Barnes closed his eyes. Others – men and women Mark didn’t even know the names of – were steeling themselves in one way or another. Preparing to die, if that’s what was coming. Looking at the chaos around them, it seemed a fair bet that some or all of them would. Mark felt a lump gather in his throat, and a profound gratitude. Like Serizawa, these people were ready to make the ultimate sacrifice.
The Osprey bumped down onto the field at Fenway Park, and the soldiers surged out.
Golden lightning struck, and the first two out the door were incinerated, their lives cut short in less than a heartbeat.
It was horrifying, but the others piled out anyway, and he was right behind them.
Fenway Park was almost unrecognizable. The once huge left field wall – the Green Monster – had been obliterated, and much of the stadium itself torn to shreds. Mark stared up through the broadcast booth, or at least where it should have been.
That’s where Emma and Maddie would have been, right? Patched into the sound system. Ghidorah had figured that out, too.
He leapt out of the Osprey, nearly twisting his ankle on the rubble that covered the diamond. Smoke stung his lungs.
“Maddie?” he shouted. “Madison?”
No one answered. Nothing moved in his line of sight except for G-Team; he didn’t see anyone else, living or dead.
They fanned out to search. Godzilla and Ghidorah were just getting started; lightning jagged all around them, along with a flaming meteor storm of dead aircraft. The air stank of burning jet fuel.
He began fearing finding his daughter almost as much as he feared not finding her. Because to find her like Andrew would be unbearable.
She’s not here, Mark thought. She was never here. Emma came by herself. She left Maddie someplace safe.
But he had to know, so he couldn’t stop looking. Because if she wasn’t here, he didn’t know where to look for her. The Monarch bunker, maybe. But another chopper had been dispatched to check that out.
“Over here!” Martinez shouted.
Mark rushed to the sergeant’s side, fearing the worst, trying to prepare himself. But what Martinez had discovered wasn’t Maddie, or Emma.
It was the ORCA, and it wasn’t in very good shape. It lay inches beyond the edge of a debris field crushed into the contours of an enormous foot.
He picked it up, studying it, this link to his family. Maybe Emma had just hooked it up to the stadium and taken off. But then why was it down here, and not in the smoking hole that had been the broadcast booth?
On closer inspection, he saw the machine was banged up and singed but maybe not beyond repair.
The ground rumbled, and gas and steam suddenly surged up from beneath them. Godzilla and Ghidorah, still rumbling. “We gotta go!” Barnes yelled. The monsters were coming back their way.
Two of the commandos grabbed Mark and hustled him toward the Osprey, but before they had gone no more than a few steps one of Ghidorah’s feet stomped down on the aircraft. The Osprey exploded, sending them all reeling back and adding to the mass of flames already surrounding them.
Godzilla reared up and blasted Ghidorah with his atomic breath, knocking the dragon back toward them.
But then a new light burst down from above, a familiar blue radiance. He saw broad, oval wings sweep back, the orange-ish eye marking toward the ends. Mothra’s sonic boom rumbled across the ruined field as she dove into Ghidorah like a hawk diving down on a snake.
This was as close as Mark had been to the giant insect. As her name suggested, she was a bit moth-like, but a lot better armed than most moths he had seen. Her back legs were bent like a grasshopper’s and her two front sets of limbs were long, deadly, and clawed like the forelimbs of a praying mantis. But those weren’t her only weapons. A long, wicked sting projected from the tip of her thorax. Webbing jetted from her jaws, arresting Ghidorah’s fall and sticking all three heads to a skyscraper. One of the heads ripped free and began tearing at the webbing, but then Godzilla was there, plowing into Ghidorah, knocking him clean through the building. Mothra swooped in for the kill.
Rodan burst from clouds, like the flaming avatar of some ancient vengeful god. He speared straight for Mothra, his half-molten wings folded back, striking her like a meteor and tearing her from her flight path. He wrapped her in the furnace of his wings. Mothra shrilled in agony as the soft down on her body caught fire. She struggled to escape his grasp, tearing at him with her claws as the two of them went soaring past.
And Mark and G-Team were alone on the field.
What was left of them. Still reeling, Mark took a head count. Barnes and Martinez were okay; Griffin looked hurt.
The rest of the team was just – gone.
He didn’t have a lot of hope that they would fare any better. Gas mains beneath the stadium had ignited; flame and steam jetted from the ground, as if the rain of debris wasn’t enough.
Barnes and Martinez helped Griffin to her feet.
Well, they weren’t flying out; they would have to walk. But where? The stadium was now an inferno, columns of flame licking at the sky. Any direction they went would end with them as torches. But they had to do something. Find a weak place in the wall of fire, run through it, fast...
And then something did burst through the flames – from the other side.
A Humvee.
With Emma at the wheel.
“Get in!” she said.
No one moved. Barnes and the others exchanged suspicious glances.
Mark didn’t blame them. She’d caused all this, and now she wanted to help?
Just then, a fighter jet crashed, right behind them. That ended their hesitation in an instant; all of them jumbled into the vehicle, Mark included. It no longer seemed like a time to be picky.
Mark took shotgun, still not sure this was all happening. It seemed completely unreal, like maybe something had smacked him in the head and this was all a coma dream. But dream or reality, he had some questions.
“Where’s Madison?” was the first and most important.
Emma’s brows came down.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I thought she was there!” She swerved sharply to avoid the chunk of aircraft that had just crashed in front of them.
“Well, she’s not there,” Ma
rk said. “Hopefully you’re as good at finding her as you are losing her.”
“I didn’t lose her,” Emma said. “She ran away.”
“Gee, I wonder why—”
“Oh, don’t start,” Emma said.
“Don’t start?” he said. “You tried to kill me.”
“Can’t blame that kid,” Mark heard Barnes say. “If I had these two for parents, I’d run away from home, too.”
Emma slammed on the brakes.
“What did you just say?” she demanded.
“I said, if I had the two of you for parents I’d run away from home too!”
Emma looked at Mark.
“Home!” they both said at once.
Emma stepped on the gas.
* * *
Maddie couldn’t stop crying, and every minute her panic threatened to strangle off her reason.
Something had given way inside of her.
Nothing lasts, she thought, as her feet slapped the pavement and her heart pounded in her ears.
Nothing. Not Mom and Dad, not Andrew. Not me. Not Boston. Everything’s going away.
Boston had always been her happy place, the quiet point in her memory where everything had been good, where they had played bocce on the Common, making up their own rules as they went along. Where her favorite climbing tree had been, her backyard jungle, the sushi place around the corner Andrew always wanted to go to, where he tricked her into eating wasabi by telling her it was green frosting. The zoo, the museums, the boats on the harbor, the library where she had checked out her first book.
That place only existed in her imagination now. Looking back on it, the damage had begun when they returned there from San Francisco. The fights between Mom and Dad. Dad leaving. But it was still their home, a place that he might come back to. Those bad feelings could have been mended with better ones. But now, as she fled along Beacon Street, monsters were literally tearing it all down.
She’d felt brave when she started all of this. Determined. But now it was all too much. Too much death, anger, fear, betrayal.
Too many monsters.
She had to make it home. In her core, she knew if she could only reach their old house on Beacon Street, she would be safe, despite everything.
The house was still there, miraculously, in the midst of chaos and hell. The townhouse where they had lived, just on the edge of the Common.
She paused outside, panting, no longer quite sure of her logic. It was just a house, right?
Something huge crashed on the Common just yards away, an inferno with something writhing within it – wings, thrashing claws, long, insectile legs. Not Godzilla or Monster Zero… her mind couldn’t sort it out. She didn’t want to look anymore.
She ran inside the house, slammed the door, and put her back against it. She slid down to the floor as the house began to shake. She covered her ears, drew her knees up to her elbows, and screamed, as she realized that this place was no safer than anywhere else. It was just a straw house surrounded by very big bad wolves…
Across the room, old family photos rattled on some shelves.
That family in those pictures. She understood now. Like her Boston, those people existed only in her memory.
* * *
It looked to Sam like they were winning. Between their missiles and a supercharged Godzilla, and Ghidorah not being able to heal as fast as he was being wounded. He looked to be trying to fight free and escape again, but Godzilla stayed one step ahead of him.
Their losses were unthinkable. The fleet, all those pilots and sailors, Dr. Graham, Serizawa – all sacrificed themselves to bring them to this moment. There were other Titans out there, but with Godzilla in charge instead of Ghidorah – well, if things didn’t get better, maybe they would at least not get worse.
Mothra and Rodan were still battling it out. Locked together, the winged Titans crashed into a bridge. It crumpled on impact, and fire splashed everywhere, like napalm, setting ablaze everything it touched, including Boston Common.
Oh, no, he thought.
Mothra sprang up, found purchase on Rodan’s back and slashed her claws deep into him. Rodan screeched and leapt into the air, slamming his wings down, so both of them careened through a skyscraper and vanished from sight. Flame exploded inside the building and began rapidly climbing, floor by floor toward the sky.
Not that far away, Godzilla was still slaughtering Ghidorah, even without Mothra’s help. He slammed his opponent with his tail, sent him reeling into a building. Ghidorah flapped frantically and managed to get a few yards off the ground before Godzilla snapped his jaws shut on one vast wing, twisting his head so as to throw the dragon to the ground, sending a ringed shock wave carrying debris and smoke for hundreds of yards through the burning city.
That’s gotta hurt, Sam thought. Come on, finish the bastard off.
Godzilla seemed to have the same thought. He roared, and from his open mouth the blue beam of his atomic breath pressed Ghidorah back, shrieking in pain.
All the while, Godzilla pulsed brighter and brighter. Ghidorah’s golden glow had dimmed to a sickly, intermittent yellow.
The big lizard fell upon Ghidorah, hammering him. Ghidorah, on the ropes, was just trying to escape. One of his heads snaked out, struggling away from its tormenter, as if it somehow thought it could separate from the common body, strike out on its own. Maybe it could. If Ghidorah could regrow a head…
But that’s not what the dragon had in mind. Sam saw the real target just before Ghidorah’s wayward head got there – damaged high-tension lines, showering sparks down into the street.
Ghidorah gaped wide and bit down on the wires.
Despite the damage downtown, most of Boston and its suburbs still had power. Now every light for as far as Sam could see strobed, going dark, lighting back up, dimming again as the power grid struggled to deal with a sudden, massive drain on the system.
Ghidorah blazed back to full charge in an instant; the golden lightning gathered in him and blasted from all three heads, knocking Godzilla off the ground, hurling him hundreds of feet to the harbor, where he crashed into a shipyard.
TWENTY-TWO
The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control, and not the other way around. Let them fight.
—Ishiro Serizawa, 2014
Godzilla clambered back to his feet and went at Ghidorah again, but Monster Zero had learned something. One of his heads snaked out and bit into what looked like a power plant. He rose to his full height, wings and heads outspread, the baleful, eldritch light gathering again. Hundreds of branching bolts spread into the sky, jagging through jets and helicopters, a chain reaction that continued even after Ghidorah himself subsided, leaping to every metal object in the sky. Dozens of aircraft, all gone in seconds. A bolt hit the Argo, and everything flashed gold. The ship shuddered and pitched, and Sam thought they were done.
But their systems held. He took slow, deliberate breaths, trying get his pulse to ease up.
“Godzilla’s radiation’s reaching critical mass,” Stanton warned. “Six minutes till he blows!”
“Order all the remaining craft to retreat,” Foster said.
There couldn’t be that many left to retreat, Sam thought. He had lost count of the fallen, long ago.
In the distance, Ghidorah celebrated his victory with another universe-rattling roar. Then his stretched out his great wings and took to the air, headed toward where Godzilla lay stunned. The worst and largest of the gashes on his necks were already closing up.
Mothra was losing her fight, too. Locked in midair, the two Titans tore at each other viciously as they bowled through the city, smashing through buildings, leaving fire in their wake. But Rodan had kept the advantage. Mothra was badly burned, but worse, the flying reptile had pinned her against the top of a skyscraper and had a grip on her wings, which he began shearing into with his vicious beak. Without her wings, she was certainly doomed. Mothra swiped at him with her claws, but Rodan suddenly detached from her and flew off.
But not far. He was only building his speed. He smashed into the giant insect and snapped at her head. Mothra, braced against the building, squirmed out of the way. He made another try.
He missed, and then screeched in agony. He reared back, trying to fight free of Mothra.
But he couldn’t. Mothra’s sting was buried in his chest, all the way up to her thorax.
Rodan’s thrashing weakened. His flames subsided.
She retracted the sting; fire licked within the wound as the flying reptile dropped away, vanishing into the conflagration he’d ignited.
Mothra clung to a toppled building, convulsing, her bioluminescence fading. She had killed Rodan, but it didn’t look like she had much longer herself.
* * *
The Humvee roared up Beacon Street, swerving around burning aircraft, girders, piles of brick. Through the chaos, Mark caught occasional glimpses of familiar things. The corner store was untouched, the coffee shop was recognizable, although soon the fire raging nearby would destroy them too. Boston Common was ablaze, its familiar trees now torches. Their house was just across the street from it. It should be just up ahead.
Through the smoke, he searched for the familiar roofline. He should be able to see the third stories of the row from here. Instead he saw – distance.
Emma slammed on the brakes, her expression already beginning to crack.
The house had collapsed into a smoking pile of rubble.
Off in the distance, the monsters were still fighting, planes were crashing, ships sinking. The world as he knew it was ending. And as he stared at the wreck of the last place his family had called home, he didn’t care.
If Maddie had really been in there – his mind wouldn’t let him go any farther. She couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible. Not again.
“Maddie!” he shouted, lunging from the car and diving into the ruins of their townhouse, tossing aside bricks and smoldering planks. Emma worked beside him, a ragged desperation evident in every movement of her body. Barnes and Martinez pitched in, too, pushing aside the wreckage. Mark’s hands smarted from a hot spot on one of the boards; sweat and smoke stung his eyes. A weird, acrid scent drifted on the breeze, like burning insects and cotton candy. Something exploded in the distance.