by Greg Keyes
Hope would have to be enough for her. And love.
She dodged the Humvee around piles of rubble and the few buildings still standing, working for every second she could get. The ORCA continued throbbing away, and Ghidorah was right there. She spun the wheel, careened around a pile of burning debris, straightened up, pushed the pedal all the way down.
Everything went gold, then white, as pain like she had never known jagged through her body, striking every nerve like a match. The agony didn’t last long; as it faded, she was away and rolling, bouncing, until the Humvee fetched up against something and stopped.
She’d been thrown clear, she realized. Not that that meant much. She couldn’t feel anything. But her vision was still clear. Ghidorah stooped toward her, sniffing…
She wasn’t scared. There wasn’t anything else he could do to her.
Come on, you bastard, she thought.
Behind Ghidorah, an orange glow appeared, a colossal shape eclipsing the burning city. Emma smiled. She’d done it. Given Godzilla enough time to recover.
Time to restore the balance.
“Long… live… the king,” she gasped out.
Godzilla, his body steaming, his dorsal fin pulsing red, burning like a dying sun, charging toward Ghidorah.
She couldn’t breathe anymore. That was okay. That was fine. She closed her eyes, saw Mark, Madison, and Andrew. It was enough.
* * *
As the Osprey rose above the battlefield, Mark’s gaze tracked the Humvee, vanishing behind debris or drifting smoke, but reappearing.
“Jesus, God,” Stanton said. “Look.”
“Fucking A,” Barnes said.
He followed their gazes, to the crater where Godzilla’s body lay.
Only he wasn’t in it anymore. Massively wounded, he had pulled himself up and was staggering after Ghidorah. First uncertainly, then with stronger and greater strides. He was glowing red, now, pulsing with an inner radiance that shone through seams in his scales, leaked from his eyes, as if his heart was the core of a red giant star about to go supernova.
Mark tore his gaze away, looking for Emma. She could still make it!
He didn’t see the Humvee, but he saw Ghidorah. And then, just ahead of him, racing out from behind a crushed building, the tiny vehicle.
Ghidorah came down on her like a hammer, blasting the Humvee with his lightning breath. Energy arced all around it, and the car went flying.
Then Ghidorah blotted out his view, heads swinging down toward where he’d seen the Humvee stop.
The Osprey’s rotors flipped over, and they were an airplane now, plowing as hard and fast as the craft was able. Mark felt his ears pop as they gained elevation.
Below, Ghidorah whipped around toward Godzilla, blasting him with lightning, but the big lizard just took it – absorbed it – and kept coming, pulsing brighter and faster. Again and again, the three-headed dragon struck, but Godzilla, despite his wounds, didn’t even slow down. He collided with Ghidorah like a walking mountain, wrapping him up in his forelimbs, grappling him close, as his dorsal fin pulsed faster and faster, ignoring the dragon’s attacks as he thrashed in his grasp.
The pulses were now so fast they were almost continuous. They sheeted through Ghidorah like a hard wind, ripping his wings and burning them away is if they were made of tissue paper. Ghidorah screamed and blasted Godzilla with all three heads, but then another wave of radiation pulsed out and disintegrated two of the dragon’s heads. Ghidorah slumped to the ground, writhing, as Godzilla stepped on his chest, and as another pulse built within the great lizard, Ghidorah’s remaining head shrieked.
Mark shielded Madison with his body and tried not to look, desperately hoping they were out of range.
He saw through his closed eyelids the flash that engulfed what remained of Boston. He held Maddie tighter, as the Osprey suddenly jumped through the air. The blood drained from his head, and then they were in free fall.
But only for a moment; the Osprey slapped onto a thermal; her wings caught, and they were flying again. A little shakily, maybe, but well enough.
When Mark opened his eyes, he saw a mushroom cloud lifting from Boston. The Osprey started a wide turn around the city as the cloud continued to lift, and it gradually began clearing below.
Through the smoke, downtown Boston was a wasteland of blackened ruins, burning streets, twisted steel beams. He was reminded of the ruins of the city beneath the sea. In a few thousand years, would there be anyone left to wonder what had happened to the civilization he had been born into?
The Osprey buzzed a little closer, and he began to discern the crater where he’d last seen the two Titans. But there was no sign of Godzilla and Ghidorah. Had they been completely atomized? If so, what would that mean? Without a king – or a queen – what would the other Titans do?
Something began to shift beneath the wreckage, something big. As it emerged, Mark waited for Godzilla’s familiar dorsal spines. Instead, golden horns appeared, then the scaly head and snout.
Ghidorah.
Oh, for God’s sake, Mark thought. Is it really impossible to kill this thing?
But then the head rose up farther, although its neck looked weird, not the slender snake neck of Ghidorah, but a really thick, green neck.
Then he understood, as Godzilla rose up from the ruins – with Ghidorah’s head in his mouth.
Ghidorah’s eyes snapped open; he was wriggling in Godzilla’s jaws, lightning flashing, trying desperately to escape. Godzilla shook it like an alligator would, as if trying to eat it.
But then a blast of blue energy erupted from the saurian’s maw, and Ghidorah’s final head disintegrated in the withering atomic radiance.
The blast ceased; a little bolt of lightning crackled around Godzilla’s mouth.
Godzilla had won. They had won.
But the world was changed forever. So many cities destroyed, so many people dead. Things weren’t just going to bounce back to the way they were.
And maybe that was as it should be. If Emma was right, with Ghidorah gone, the global ecosystem would rebound; the ravaged places would become green; forest would cover where Boston had been. The dying ocean reefs would thrive as they hadn’t in a hundred years.
He hadn’t wanted it to happen this way. But the eggs were broken. They needed to decide what kind of omelet to make.
It was the dawn of a new world. Or the return of a very old one.
Soon he would go and find his wife’s body. He had no doubt that she was dead. And he would grieve with his daughter, and together they would find out how they fit into this new era.
He remembered what Chen said about dragons being creatures who might bring redemption. And they had. For him.
For Emma.
“Jesus,” Stanton said. “Good thing he’s on our side.”
“For now,” Chen said.
“Dad,” Madison said. “Look.”
As more of the smoke cleared, they saw Godzilla was not alone after all.
Rodan was back, along with a horror on eight long, spidery legs, a monster that looked like a bull with a mountain on his back, a knuckle-walking mammoth with tusks hundreds of feet long, and a six-legged, hunchbacked MUTO like the one that had broken containment in Japan five years ago. Behind them flitted a flock of smaller forms that resembled pterodactyls – leafwings, from Skull Island.
Ghidorah’s cavalry was a little late to save him, but they were here. It looked like this wasn’t over after all.
Godzilla glared at the newcomers and drew himself up for battle, head up, arms ready to grapple. Battered and bruised he might be, but he was still ready to fight.
The other monsters stopped their advance; they seemed to shrink from him, then – bowed, each in their own way.
They were standing down. Acknowledging their Alpha.
Serizawa’s natural order was restored.
Godzilla threw back his head and roared until the heavens shook.
EPILOGUE
I will not spe
ak of Leviathan’s limbs.
its strength and its graceful form.
Who can strip off its outer coat?
Who can penetrate its double coat of armor?
Who dares open the doors of its mouth,
ringed about with fearsome teeth?
Its back has rows of shields
tightly sealed together;
each is so close to the next
that no air can pass between
They are joined fast to one another;
they cling together and cannot be parted.
Its snorting throws out flashes of light;
its eyes are like the rays of the dawn.
Flames stream from its mouth;
sparks of fire shoot out.
Smoke pours from its nostrils
as from a boiling pot over burning reeds.
Its breath sets coals ablaze
and flames dart from its mouth.
Strength resides in its neck;
dismay goes before it.
The folds of its flesh are tightly joined:
they are firm and immovable.
Its chest is hard as rock,
hard as a lower millstone.
When it rises up, the mighty are terrified;
they retreat before its thrashing.
The sword that reaches it has no effect,
nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.
Iron it treats like straw
and bronze like rotten wood.
Arrows do not make it flee;
slingshots are like chaff to it.
A club seems to it but a piece of straw;
it laughs at the rattling of the lance.
Its undersides are broken potsherds,
leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge.
It makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron
and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.
It leaves a glistening wake behind it;
one would think the deep had white hair.
Nothing on earth is its equal –
a creature without fear.
It looks down on all that are haughty;
it is king over all that are proud.
Santiago led the men through the corridor. They made him nervous, with their heavy boots and iron gazes. In particular, he did not like their leader. He had known men like this before. But these were not times for caution. The world was changed forever, as had been foretold. Many of his relations and old friends were dead, others were scattered to the four corners of the earth. He had been at sea when Rodan burst from his nest; he had weathered Ghidorah’s storm and made safe harbor. Thus he still had his boat, and his fishing gear. But to what purpose? The waters were poisoned. And where would he take his catch?
But again luck had been with him. He’d made a good catch. Now these men had come to pay him for it. Or maybe they would kill him and his men and take it. They were dressed like soldiers, which in his experience often did not bode well. But what choice did he have?
“It is a brave new world, my friend,” he told the leader. “Such things as this have become much more valuable since the rise of the king.”
The leader said nothing.
“It took nine fishing boats to raise it,” Santiago went on. “My men don’t ask for much, just enough to relocate their families. They cannot fish here anymore. Everything is dead.”
They had reached the warehouse space, where his men waited. Nervous, like him. The stench of death was worse than before.
He flipped on the lights so they could see it, and prayed for the best.
His men did the same, stepping away from it, crossing themselves.
Even in death, covered in seaweed and barnacles, his once golden scales dulled by putrefaction, Ghidorah’s head was terrifying. He had seen it happen, seen Godzilla tear it off and drop it in the sea. And he knew those seas better than the faces of his children.
The leader, Jonah, stepped into the light. He stared at the severed head with a most unsettling expression, and then he smiled. But there was no mirth there. It was the sort of smile his grandfather used to call la sonrisa del diablo, “The Devil’s Grin.”
“We’ll take it,” Jonah said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Greg Keyes is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels The Waterborn, The Blackgod, plus the Age of Unreason tetralogy. He has also written the Star Wars: New Jedi Order novels Edge of Victory I: Conquest, Edge of Victory II: Rebirth, and The Final Prophecy, as well as tie-ins to the popular Elder Scrolls video game franchise. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to everyone at Toho and Legendary for giving me the privilege of writing this book. At Toho, special thanks to Keiji Ota, who has the amazing title of “Chief Godzilla Officer”, and Rui Machida. At Legendary, George Tew (who also has a great title: “Mythology Manager”) Alex Garcia, Jay Ashenfelter, Zak Kline, Lisa Lilly, Barnaby Legg – and of course Michael Dougherty and Zach Shields, who not only wrote the script but gave me guidance on how to approach their work in book form. Thanks to Ella Chappell for bringing me in on this project and Davi Lancett for editing. And of course, to Nick Landau and Vivian Cheung, who make everything at Titan happen.