by Greg Cox
Ford, who looked more than a little shell-shocked, approached the desk warily. His eyes widened as he spotted the photos spread out across the desk, which Serizawa made no effort to conceal. Ford was visibly taken aback by the startling images. Serizawa sympathized; what these pictures displayed would be shocking to the young man, who had just lost his father as well. His entire world had changed overnight.
“Mr. Brody, my condolences,” Serizawa said.
Ford stared at them. Pain, anger, and confusion all seemed to simmer inside the unfortunate young man, who was understandably overwhelmed by recent events. Powerful emotions played across Ford’s face, while his body language was tense. Serizawa began to fear that the grieving lieutenant would be of little use to their investigation. Judging from his reaction to the photos, Ford was apparently not fully conversant with his father’s theories.
Graham tried to secure Ford’s cooperation anyway. “We’re deeply sorry for your loss, Lieutenant. But I’m afraid we need your help. Your father’s data—”
“No, you first,” he snapped. His nerves and temper were obviously at the breaking point. “Who are you people?”
* * *
Graham shot a questioning look at Serizawa, letting him make the call. He nodded, regarding Ford with sympathy. This man had been through so much already. He deserved to know what his father had given his life for.
“Come in please, Mr. Brody. Come in and we will show you.”
Ford stepped deeper into the cabin. Graham shut the door behind him.
* * *
Flickering images played upon the wall of the cabin. Hooked into Graham’s laptop, a portable digital projector provided relevant visuals as Serizawa attempted to explain.
“In 1954,” he began, “the first time a nuclear submarine ever reached the lowest depths, it awakened something.”
“The Americans first thought it was the Russians,” Graham added. “The Russians thought that it was the Americans. All those nuclear tests in the Pacific? Not tests…”
“They were trying to kill it.” Serizawa indicated the ancient film footage from the 1950s. “Him.”
Ford’s jaw dropped. Breaking eye contact with Serizawa, he looked more closely at the projected images of the 1954 A-bomb detonation, the bomb with the cartoon lizard inscribed on its cone, a mushroom cloud rising over the once-tranquil Pacific Ocean, and, finally, impossibly, the grainy silhouette of a titanic beast rising up from the sea, a row of jagged fins dimly visible along its spine.
“An ancient alpha predator,” Serizawa explained.
“Millions of years older than mankind,” Graham said, “from a time when the Earth was ten times more radioactive than it is today. The animal—and others like it—consumed that radiation as a food source. But as radiation levels on the surface naturally subsided, these creatures adapted to live deeper in the oceans, farther underground, absorbing radiation from the planet’s core. The organization we work for, Monarch, was established in the wake of this discovery. A multinational organization, formed in secrecy, to search for him, study him, learn everything we could.”
Ford stared at the footage. The images were blurry, but the creature’s gargantuan proportions and general outline were clear.
“We call him Godzilla,” Serizawa said.
The name was derived from a legend of the islands: a mythical king of monsters known as Gojira. The name had been Americanized by the U.S. Military during their initial attempts to bomb the newly discovered behemoth out of existence.
“The top of a primordial ecosystem,” Graham elaborated. “A god for all intents and purposes.”
Ford gaped at the images, struggling to process what he was hearing and seeing. “Monsters…”
“That is one word for them,” Serizawa agreed. He used a handheld remote to call up images of the “cavern” in the Philippines. “Fifteen years ago, we found the fossil of another giant animal in the Philippines. Like Godzilla, but this creature died long ago, killed by these…” Close-ups of the MUTO spores appeared on the wall.
“Parasitic organisms,” Graham said. “One dormant, but the other hatched. Catalyzed when a mining company unknowingly drilled into its tomb. The hatchling burrowed straight for the nearest source of radiation, your father’s power plant in Janjira, and cocooned there. Absorbing the radioactive fuel to gestate, grow.”
“Until it hatched like a butterfly into the creature you saw,” Serizawa. “We call it a MUTO.”
The biology, in fact, was fairly basic, albeit on a monstrous scale. The larval form of various insects and arthropods were basically eating machines, consuming massive amounts of nutrients before creating a cocoon in which to undergo the metamorphosis into their adult stage. Serizawa called up an image of the massive cocoon, which had been discovered fifteen years ago atop the ruins of the Janjira plant, not long after the earlier disaster in the Philippines.
“You’re saying you knew about this… thing… the whole time?” Ford shook his head, trying to take it all in. “And kept it a secret? Lied to everyone?”
Serizawa remembered a family photo he had found among Ford’s effects.
“You have a son, Mr. Brody. Would you tell him there are monsters in the world? Beyond our control? We believed that horror was better kept buried.”
“But you let it feed?” Ford said. “Why not kill it when you had the chance?”
“It was absorbing radiation from the reactors,” Graham said. “Vast doses, like a sponge. We worried killing it might have released that radiation, endangering millions.”
Serizawa nodded. “The MUTO caused the catastrophe, but also prevented it from spreading.” Without the cocoon, and the immense pupa developing inside it, the quarantine zone would have indeed been the radioactive wasteland they had let the world believe it was. “That’s why Monarch’s mission was to contain it, to study its biology. To understand it.”
But, yes,” he thought regretfully, we waited too long.
“We knew the creature was having an electrical effect on everything within a close proximity,” Graham said. “What we didn’t know was that it could harness that same power in an EMP attack.”
Footage from Janjira showed the winged creature unleashing its electromagnetic pulse—a heartbeat before the pulse shorted out the monitors.
“Your father did,” Graham said. “He predicted it.”
“What else did he say?” Serizawa asked. “Anything at all?”
“I—I don’t know,” Ford confessed, his voice cracking. “I always thought he was crazy, obsessed. I didn’t listen.” He ran a hand through his hair, overwrought, while he visibly struggled to recall his father’s theories. “He said it was some kind of animal call. Like something… talking.”
“Talking?” Serizawa sat up straight. Was Ford implying there was more than one signal?
Ford nodded. “Yeah, he was studying something. Echolocation.”
Serizawa and Graham stared at each other in shock. Ford clearly had no idea what a bombshell he’d just dropped, but the two scientists immediately grasped the implications. They glanced down at an indistinct snapshot of the majestic creature from the ocean’s floor, last seen sixty years ago.
Could they truly be dealing with… him?
“If the MUTO was talking that day,” Serizawa reasoned, “your father must have discovered something talking back.”
Gripped by a sense of extraordinary urgency, he turned to Graham. “Go back through the data, search for a response call.”
She sat down at her laptop, while the projector continued to cycle through the relevant images. Serizawa slumped down into a chair. Ford stared at the wall, trying to make sense of it all. It was a lot to absorb.
“This parasite… it’s still out there,” he said. “Where’s it headed?”
“The MUTO is still young, still growing,” Serizawa said. “It will be looking for food.”
“Sources of radiation,” Graham added, glancing up from her laptop. “We’re monitoring all kn
own sites, but if we don’t find it soon…”
Her voice trailed off, not needing to say more.
“It killed both my parents,” Ford said. “There must be something we can do.”
Serizawa had his doubts, at least as far as humanity’s ability to cope with the threat.
“Nature has an order, Mr. Brody. A power to rebalance.”
He stared up at the wall, where Godzilla could be glimpsed once more. The U.S. Army had attempted to destroy the beast with an atomic bomb, but no remains had been found afterwards. Some believed (or hoped) that Godzilla had been completely vaporized by the blast, but that may have been wishful thinking.
“I believe he is that power.”
TWELVE
A bugler played taps, but only a small honor guard was in attendance. Standing on the wide rear deck of the Saratoga, as the sun slowly sank into the horizon, Ford saluted stoically as his father’s body was put to the rest. He had shed the battered radiation suit, but was still wearing rumpled civvies he’d left Joe’s apartment in. Serizawa was also present as Joe Brody’s flag-draped body slid off the deck into the sea. It disappeared quickly beneath the churning waves.
Goodbye, Dad, Ford thought. I wish you could go home with me.
It occurred to him that neither his father nor his mother had a proper grave, but that was not something he wanted to dwell on at the moment. Petty Officer Thatch was waiting off to one side, maintaining a respectful distance while Ford bid farewell to his father, but Ford knew he had to get going if he wanted to make it back to Elle and Sam. He stared for a few more minutes at the endless expanse of ocean that was now Joe Brody’s final resting-place before walking over to Thatch.
It was time to go.
Thatch escorted him across the carrier’s expansive flight deck, which was noisy and abuzz with activity. Aside from “the island,” a multi-level command center topped by a towering array of radar and communications antenna, the top deck of the Saratoga was a flat expanse used as a runway to land and launch a wide variety of aircraft. There was also room to park a few dozen planes, although the majority of the carrier’s eighty-plus aircraft were stored below decks in the hangar bay. A transport chopper was loading off to one side of the runway. Busy seamen worked quickly and efficiently to stow their gear aboard the helicopter as it prepped for take off. Ford quickened his pace, not wanting to be left behind. Thatch shouted to be heard above the clamor.
“Right now we’re fifty miles off Hawaii,” Thatch explained. “This transport will take you there. You’re on a commercial flight back to San Francisco.”
Ford was grateful for the arrangements made on his behalf, especially given everything else that was going on. He saluted Thatch as he boarded the chopper and quickly found a seat. He spotted Serizawa watching from the deck a short distance away.
The chopper’s rotors were already spinning up. Within moments, the helicopter lifted off from the flight deck, carrying Ford away from the Saratoga. In the fading twilight, he made out a faint smudge of land in the distance, which he knew to be the islands of Hawaii. His next stop on his way back to his family. In all the chaos and tragedy of the last forty-eight hours, there’d been no chance to even try to get in touch with Elle back in San Francisco. He wished he was bringing back better news.
Peering down from the chopper, he spied the tiny figure of Dr. Serizawa. The Japanese scientist watched the helicopter depart before turning back to reenter the ship. Ford had left his father’s research aboard the ship. With any luck, it would prove useful to the people in charge of figuring out what to do about the giant winged monster on the loose.
If not, the whole world could be in serious trouble.
* * *
The TV news was on in the background as Elle and Sam fixed dinner in the kitchen. Although the sound had been muted, a crawl played across the bottom of the screen:
“EARTHQUAKE ROCKS NORTHERN JAPAN – NUCLEAR Q-ZONE SHAKES.”
The headline went unnoticed by Elle, who was trying to put up a brave front for Sam despite her growing anxiety. Days had passed since Ford had left for Japan and yet there was still no word from him. Something had obviously gone wrong; otherwise he would have surely checked in by now. All she knew for certain was that his flight to Tokyo had touched down on time and that, according to the local police, he had bailed his dad out of jail at least two days ago.
After that… nothing.
Where are you, Ford? What’s happened to you?
Distracted, she dumped some loose scraps and peelings into the sink and ran the garbage disposal. The loud grinding noise drew a frown from Sam, who clapped his hands over his ears.
Neither of them heard her LG mobile phone buzzing on the coffee table, one room away.
* * *
“This is Mommy’s phone. Leave a message.”
Ford swore inwardly as Elle’s phone went to voice mail. The sound of his son’s voice hit him harder than he had anticipated, but he needed to talk to Elle more than anything. He clutched a borrowed satellite phone as the transport chopper carried him over the Pacific. He raised his voice to be heard over the whirring rotors. It was getting dark outside; barely an hour had passed since he’d buried his father at sea.
“Elle…”
His voice faltered. The conversation he’d been rehearsing instantly flew out of his head, rendering him flustered and at a loss for words.
“I don’t know that they’re saying on the news. There was an… accident… in Japan. Dad’s… gone.” His eyes welled up. His throat tightened so he could hardly speak. “Listen. I’m almost to Hawaii. I’ve got a flight home. I love you both. Tell Sam Daddy’s coming home, okay? I’m coming home.”
The voice mail beeped, cutting him off. Ford put down the phone. Wiping his eyes, he peered out across the crystal-blue waters below to the Hawaiian Islands directly ahead.
He prayed that Elle would get the message.
* * *
Serizawa and Graham huddled before a glowing monitor in the Saratoga’s war room as a helpful petty officer uploaded Joe Brody’s data onto a display screen. Adapting the antiquated zip disks to the ship’s state-of-the-art computer systems had posed a challenge, but, thankfully, not an insurmountable one. The two scientists studied the telltale waveform as it plotted out across the screen. Serizawa tapped his foot impatiently against the floor. This was taking too long.
“Keep scrolling,” Graham instructed the technician. “Near the end, before the final pulse—”
Serizawa’s eyes widened. “There!” he blurted, pointing at the screen, where, just before the end of the graph, one peak was followed directly by another—as if in reply. Graham gasped out loud. The evidence was undeniable, the conclusion inescapable.
“Something responded,” Serizawa said gravely. “He was right.”
Graham lowered her voice. “You don’t think it could be…?”
He knew she was thinking of the unknown leviathan from sixty years ago, but he was reluctant to jump to conclusions. Perhaps there was another explanation.
“Search for this pattern,” he instructed.
Graham regarded him quizzically. “Where?”
“Everywhere,” he said.
Another petty officer came up behind them. Serizawa did not know his name, but could tell that he approached with urgent business.
“Doctors,” the man said. “You need to see this.”
* * *
“Terminal A, domestic gates.”
Ford rushed through the busy commercial terminal at the Honolulu International Airport. Tourists in floral leis, toting their carry-on luggage, paraded past him as he headed across the crowded concourse to where people were lining up to catch the elevated monorail connecting the various terminals. He needed to hurry if he wanted to catch his flight to San Francisco.
He found a seat on the train and slumped into it, completely worn out. He had barely slept for days now, ever since getting that phone call from Japan about his father, and he was both emoti
onally and physically exhausted. At this point, he just wanted to get on a plane back to Elle and Sam.
Shifting his weight on the seat, and checking to make sure he still had his boarding pass, he felt something hard and lumpy in his pants pocket. Momentarily puzzled, he reached into his pocket and extracted the object. It was the old toy soldier he’d rescued from his childhood bedroom in Japan. The toy triggered a surge of confused emotions and regrets. He turned it over in his hands. He was glad he had managed to hold onto it—for Sam’s sake.
That’s one promise I can keep, he thought.
A dense crowd milled about on the platform outside, waiting for another train. Looking up from the toy, Ford contemplated the other weary travelers, who had no idea that they were sharing this world with giant monsters capable of widespread destruction. He envied their blissful ignorance. He found himself pining for the days when his biggest problems were a crazy father, a wife he wasn’t always there for, and a strained relationship with his son. He glanced at his watch. It was after nine in San Francisco now. Sam was probably already in bed.
Missing his son more than ever, Ford noticed another little boy, about Sam’s age, on the platform outside. The boy peeked out from behind his mother’s legs, while his distracted parents coped with their luggage and a map of the airport. Wide eyes stared in fascination at the toy soldier. Ford smiled back at him, amused. His dark mood lifted for a moment.
A chime sounded, warning that Ford’s train was about to depart. “Aloha,” the recorded voice said cheerily. “Please stay clear of the automatic doors—”
Distracted by the announcement, Ford forgot about the boy, until a woman’s frantic voice called out abruptly.