Godzilla

by Stephen Molstad

  O’Neal turned around and looked right at me. “I sure hope this plan of yours works.”

  “I’m kind of hoping the same thing,” I told him.

  Elsie, a hard-core smart aleck, couldn’t resist toying with him. “Sergeant, are you questioning the fact that this lizard is ichthyophagous?”

  O’Neal stared at her blankly. “Uh, no. No, I guess I’m not,” he said before turning back to the action in the square. I don’t think he knew that ichthyophagous means “eating or subsisting on fish.”

  When everything was ready, O’Neal waved his arm—the signal that the fish dumping should begin. All sixteen tailgates were thrown open simultaneously, and copious amounts of fish began to spill onto the street. Ton after slippery ton of fish—cod, shad, mackerel, salmon, red snapper, fish of every size and shape—poured from the trucks. As the pile spread out sideways, hundreds of soldiers rushed forward and tossed the escapees back onto the center of the pile. Right below the nose of the Flatiron Building, they built an enormous pyramid of sea creatures, twelve feet tall at its peak. It was an amazing, surreal sight. Some onlookers shook their heads in disbelief, and others laughed nervously. I held my nose. If you hadn’t known we were trying to lure a two-hundred-foot-tall ichthyophagous lizard into the intersection, you would have thought we were crazy.

  The moment the last fish skittered onto the pavement, the trucks were ordered to evacuate the area—an order the drivers were only too happy to obey. As the sound of their motors disappeared down the skyscraper canyons of midtown, the square fell quiet once again. Thousands of soldiers hunkered down behind their barricades and trained their weapons on the enormous stinking pile, which was illuminated by intensely bright spotlights. O’Neal reminded us to stay out of the way before he stepped into the building behind us. He was going to observe the killing from its rooftop.

  Except for the constant patter of the rain on the tarp of the communications post, all was silent as we waited for the dragon’s arrival. The technicians under the tent sat at their instrument consoles, whispering to their counterparts back at the New Jersey command center. I moved forward to the sandbag barricade and peered out into the square. Almost immediately I noticed a problem. Steam was escaping from the air vents and manhole covers. It wisped a couple of feet into the air before breaking apart in the rain. I asked one of the soldiers next to me if I could borrow his radio.

  “Come in, Sergeant O’Neal. This is Nick Tatopoulos. Do you read me? Over.”

  “What?” he asked, exasperated.

  “Sergeant, if you look down, you’ll notice steam coming out of the air shafts. The subway’s ventilation system must still be operating, and if the air is being forced upward, he’ll never be able to smell the bait. Over.”

  “Damn it, I knew we’d forget something.” Then the radio went dead as he switched to another frequency and ordered a squad of his soldiers down into the Twenty-third Street station. As they ran down into the subway, I hoped I was right about the smell not being able to waft down. If I was wrong, they might meet an unexpected visitor below-ground. A couple of minutes after they disappeared, we heard the sound of the big air turbines shutting down.

  I figured we had a few minutes before the odor of the fish could penetrate the underground maze of passageways, so I called out to the soldiers around me. “We’ve got to remove the manhole covers so the scent can waft down!” Before anyone could raise an objection, I ran out into the square.

  Opening the vents was a good idea. I only wish I’d thought of it before there were thirty-two tons of fish lying in the street. Accompanied by a handful of soldiers in full combat gear, I raced from cover to cover, pausing long enough for the heavy disks to be pried loose and rolled aside. The whole process was taking too long, and as I waited impatiently for one of the lids to be removed, I looked down a side street and noticed it was chock full of manhole covers. “Give me a hook,” I demanded. Once I had it, I ran past the edge of the army’s defensive perimeter and into one of the dimly lit, unguarded streets. I was fairly certain there was a subway tunnel running directly underfoot, so removing a few of the covers would greatly improve our waft factor.

  The cast-iron disks were heavy, but I was pumped with adrenaline and was able to remove them rather easily. I quickly got the hang of it and hurried down the street prying up one after another. I was three quarters of the way to the next cross street and had just unsealed another manhole when I heard something go thump. I stood very still, afraid to move, and glanced around.

  Half a block ahead of me I saw a pair of parked cars hop into the air like a couple of overweight bullfrogs. Then a delivery van, thirty feet closer, bounced upward for no apparent reason. Something was moving below the surface of the street, something huge, and it was coming toward me. As I watched this curious phenomenon the entire street in front of me began to swell and bulge. The center lifted until it was several feet higher than the sidewalks. A foot-wide crack shot down the street, traveled right between my feet, and continued on toward the square. The bulge in the asphalt moved toward me like a slow wave traveling across the surface of the sea. I knew the beast had caught the scent of the bait and was stealthily forcing its way closer through a too-narrow passageway. I thought of running, but the bulky shape under the ground was still half a block from where I was standing. As I stood over the manhole I’d opened, I heard something move beneath me. I looked down into the pitch darkness of the hole. I couldn’t see anything but heard the sound of breathing. It took me a moment to realize what was happening. It was the animal’s belly and haunches that were breaking the street apart. Its head and neck were already below me. Just then the creature breathed out through its nose, expelling the dirt and debris that had accumulated in its nostrils. A warm gust of air blew upward out of the hole, bringing with it great scoops of dirty mucus that covered the front of my jacket as though I’d been hit by a cream pie.

  It was time to run.

  I backpedaled, then turned and raced down the darkened street as fast as my legs would carry me. Up ahead I could see the bright lights of the square and a group of soldiers who still had no idea how close the danger had come. Then the entire street behind me erupted from below. In an explosion of dirt, pipes, and pavement, the creature broke through to street level. Chunks of roadway started hitting me in the back and flying past me. I increased my speed and was nearly back to the well-lit square when my path was suddenly blocked by a huge piece of falling asphalt. A fifteen-foot-tall boulder of debris smashed down out of the air right in front of me. If I’d been a faster runner, it would have crushed me to death. It landed with a heavy thud just outside the square. I was about to swerve around it and keep running when I heard a blood-chilling primordial howl rip through the rainy night. The creature’s scream had a raw, ragged, throaty quality that spoke to me in a way no one had been spoken to for the past sixty-five million years. I dashed behind the boulder to hide.

  When I peered around the corner, I got my first good look at the creature. My knees went weak and threatened to buckle completely when I saw how staggeringly large it was. Its dark outline towered over me. It was only half a block away, a seemingly endless mass of writhing reptilian flesh. Some of the street lamps were still working, but they only reached as high as the lizard’s ankles. It climbed up to street level and stood hunched over in a menacing, prowling posture as the huge feet came plodding softly down the street in my direction. High above, in the murky light that cut through the rainstorm, I could see the head swinging back and forth near the tops of the buildings. Tall armored plates ran down the creature’s back, similar to the protective spikes on the back of an ancient stegosaurus, only larger, much larger.

  Of course I was terrified. But I was sure this fabulous creature was only moments away from being sliced up beyond recognition by the army’s weapons, so I did my best to clear my head and tried to make some useful observations, something I could share with other scientists. I estimated the creature to be ninety feet wide at the haunch
es and just over a hundred and eighty feet tall—even in his forward-crouching posture. Stretched head to tail, it would have been longer than a football field! Among land animals, it appeared most closely related to a crocodile: It had an elongated, thickly muscled neck that led to a rather flat skull with an extremely powerful jaw. Its rounded shoulders and long arms were abnormally well developed compared to other living reptile species—indeed, for any species that walks upright. He kept these arms folded, tucked tight against his chest, allowing his long clawed fingers, which never stopped moving, to dangle in front of him. Their constant twitching movements gave him a grasping, greedy appearance and generally contributed to his overall frightfulness. Perhaps the most surprising thing I noted was his physical grace. When I’d watched Animal’s videotape earlier that afternoon, there had been a lumbering indecisiveness about him. This may have been due to the fact that he’d been surrounded by a great deal of noise and movement. Now, instead of stomping down the street, he came stealing up closer to the square with silent, graceful steps. The ground was not shaking this time, but his tremendous weight compacted the asphalt and left a visible trail behind him. I don’t want to anthropomorphize, but I believe he sensed that there is no such thing as a free lunch and that the unexpected cache of fish lying just around the corner was a trap. He crept up to the end of the block and peered carefully into the square. He was almost directly above me now, his great meaty belly sixty feet off the ground and blotting out the sky. One of his clawed, birdlike feet was settled about twenty yards—less than a single one of his strides—from where I was hiding. If he was startled or decided to turn around and retreat, I was in danger of being stepped on. He paused at the threshold of the square, hesitant, evaluating the danger.

  My mind was racing with questions about this strangely deformed and mutated creature, which I felt must have been the result of exposure to gene-warpingly high levels of atomic fallout. Its body seemed to be a hodgepodge of parts from other animals: the head and neck of a crocodile, the brawny rear limbs of a Komodo dragon, the dorsal armor and spindly fingers of an iguana. He also had certain avian or birdlike characteristics. The three-toed feet resembled the heavy, slashing claws of an ostrich; also, the armored plates extending from the shoulder blades looked like a stunted set of wings, which, after failing to grow, had turned to bony stumps. He had muscular control over the two main armored plates but most of the time let them flop loosely back and forth as he walked. His arms were held close to his chest, like a boxers.

  Overall, it was as if some intelligent force had selected all the most frightening adaptations from the reptile world and blended them seamlessly together to create this towering, dread-inspiring leviathan. I desperately wanted more opportunity to study it before it was killed. But as it sniffed loudly at the bait I realized my time was short. This awesome new species was about to be blown away into extinction. In my frustration I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Fun Saver, determined to record the moment in some small way. I pointed and clicked. To my surprise, the camera’s built-in flash lit up the entire block and immediately attracted the creature’s attention. Like an enormous whip, the broad neck rolled down to street level, carrying the flattened, horn-scaled head with it. The creature had a pronounced, almost noble chin, which swept by just over my head like a floating semitrailer until it spotted me.

  I found myself being scrutinized by a three-foot-tall sparkling eyeball the color of liquid honey. It stared down at me, only a few feet above, and blinked in two directions at once. In addition to the main eyelid’s thick sheet of rough flesh, there was a gristly white nictitating membrane, which closed from the sides. The loose, spiky skin on the underside of the throat scraped against the ground, and a soft guttural purring came from deep within the throat. In order to sniff me, the animal repositioned its head and turned one of its slitlike nostrils toward me. The glistening nostril was approximately four feet across and lined by pillows of callused flesh. The warm air pouring out of his lungs swept across my face. I almost lost my self-control when I saw the mouth begin to open. Lizards, I knew, use their tongues to help them smell, but I was afraid a long forked tongue was about to shoot out and wrap me up as a before-dinner snack. He was close enough that I could have reached out and stroked the leathery brown flesh of his snout—something I had no intention of doing. I was careful to keep as much of the asphalt boulder as possible between me and the jagged yellow teeth poking out from the enormous reptilian mouth. As we stood there, it occurred to me that this was the reversal of an age-old scenario: A man notices a lizard and bends down for a closer look, whereupon the lizard darts for shelter under the nearest rock. Only now the lizard was inspecting the man.

  I glanced behind me, thinking—foolishly—that I might try to make a run for it (at that point I didn’t realize how fast he could move), and saw a handful of soldiers pointing bazookas in my direction. If they fired at the creature, I was going to be caught in the middle. For some reason this idea scared me more that the prospect of being devoured by the megalithic lizard looming over my shoulder. Gently, very gently, I raised my hands and signaled to the men to hold their fire, that everything was fine, nothing to be alarmed about. I eased away from the safety of my boulder and moved closer to the giant snout. My head was only a few inches from one of his teeth, some of which were the size of a rhino’s horn.

  “Good boy, that’s a good lizard,” I said. “Now go eat the fish.”

  I don’t know who thought I was crazier, the soldiers or the lizard. In a soothing voice I tried to communicate the idea that I wasn’t a threat. And it worked. With a slight grunting noise, the head lifted away toward the building tops and one of his feet sailed almost directly over me. Still moving carefully, he stepped into the open square and began making his way toward the brightly illuminated pile of fish.

  I ran as fast as I could back to the communications post, jumped over the barricade of sandbags, and collapsed breathlessly into a chair. “Oh, my God, did you see that?” I asked.

  Elsie nodded casually. She’d seen the whole thing but was much more interested in watching the beast prowl up the intersection. Shaking her head in disbelief, she said, “Tell me this creature isn’t related to Theropoda.” she said. I looked around for Mendel and spotted him huddled at the rear of the tent, dumbstruck by the sight of an animal many times larger than a Tyrannosaurus rex. He had a legal pad and a pen in his hands, ready to take notes, but all he could do was stare.

  It was out in the open now, its underside brushing the treetops of Madison Square Park and moving away from us toward the Flatiron Building. He kept his hind end high off the ground, tail held straight back for balance, and took small, deliberate steps. Over the radio I heard Sergeant O’Neal muttering something like, “I think we’re going to need bigger guns.”

  Just before it reached the food, the animal stopped one final time to make an inspection of the area. Its broad neck was just flexible enough to allow for a 360-degree scan of the surrounding buildings. There is no doubt that it recognized our presence in the square and the potential threat we represented. But the smell of the fish proved too tempting, and with a last sudden step the beast stabbed his mouth forward and began to dig in. The enormous jaws unhinged and plunged into the pyramid of fish like a steam shovel, scooping up thousands of them in a single bite.

  Colonel Hicks, following the action on his video display across the river, immediately sounded the order. His voice boomed over all the hundreds of radios at once: “Fire at will!”

  “Fire at will,” O’Neal repeated. And a split second later Madison Square erupted like a powder keg. From every angle machine guns and rocket launchers roared. Rapid bursts of flame spit from a thousand gun muzzles, lighting up the sky, and the quiet of the deserted city was ripped apart by the staccato hailstorm of projectiles, all flashing through the air toward the colossal reptilian body in the center. Hundreds of thousands of rounds were fired in the space of a few seconds, and presumably all of them found thei
r target.

  Welling up out of the roar of gunfire came an even louder noise, a thunderous, earsplitting animal wail. It sounded like the war cry of some incredibly large, prehistoric bird. At first I thought it must be the animal’s shriek of pain, a reaction to its multitudinous wounds. But as the gunfire continued we realized that it was only a screech of annoyance. The long tail and forearms began to flash through the air, swatting at the flying ammunition as if it were a bothersome swarm of mosquitoes. Then this amazing creature did yet another amazing thing: It turned away from the barrage, bent down, and quickly scooped up another huge mouthful of fish!

  “Fire the Sidewinders!” Hicks ordered.

  “Fire the Sidewinders!” O’Neal said, relaying the orders.

  A large truck hidden among the trees of the park raised its multicannon firing mechanism and sent a trio of missiles screaming toward the creature. They whipped across the night sky, leaving a brilliant trail of spark and smoke in their wake. They were headed straight for the creature’s chest. He ducked out of their path with a lightning-fast reflex action and they sailed past him, smashing into the venerable old Flatiron Building and demolishing it instantly. The structure blew apart and collapsed in a triangular, fiery mass. Over the radio we could hear Colonel Hicks screaming for more firepower and, behind him, Mayor Ebert roaring in pain over the loss of the historic building.

  The lizard was highly agitated now, and its tail began to thrash ever more violently from side to side. First it flew through the park, snapping trees off at the midpoint of their trunks, then swung the other way and ripped apart the façades of the buildings facing the square. It whizzed back and forth like an armor-plated wrecking ball. After another deafening roar the creature spun around and began to walk straight toward us. The great head lowered until it was just above street level and turned to one side so it could stare at us with one of those enormous honey-colored eyes. There was no doubt he was coming toward the communications post, and he was angry.