Godzilla Page 8

  Barnes caught Hendricks’s gaze.

  “Hey,” he said. “I know you lost your dad in Honolulu. I’m sorry about that. But don’t get out ahead of us, understand? You do the job as the Colonel calls it. By the numbers. Or you stay here.”

  “You know me,” Hendricks replied. “I’m no loose cannon. I just want to be clear about our options if things go wrong.”

  “The Colonel will break all that down before we get there. It’s a long way to Antarctica, even in this thing.”

  When Barnes got back to the command cabin, Griffin was settling behind the controls.

  “You ready to fly this bad boy?” he asked her.

  “The week before you were born,” she said. “Are we all ready to go?”

  “As soon as the PhDs are on board,” he said. He nodded at a monitor.

  “Looks like that’s them now.”

  “Chief?” Griffin said.

  “Yeah?”

  She pointed out of the cockpit, toward the sky.

  “I’m gonna knock a hole in that.”

  Ten minutes later, she did, and the Argo was on its way, accompanied by a squadron of F-35s.

  “Damn, we’re impressive,” he told Griffin.

  * * *

  Gathered around a set of digital displays, they got a further briefing.

  “The specimen at this site has been kept entirely off-book,” Vivienne said. “And since it’s a more recent discovery our data is limited, but it seems to be another apex predator.”

  “Emma called it ‘Monster Zero’,” Serizawa said.

  An X-ray of the thing was on screen. It was all horns, claws and teeth, with a good bit of snake thrown in. He tried to imagine what it looked like with skin on. It was not a pretty image.

  It also explained the collective gasp when Godzilla’s path converged on this place. Even as Titans went, this looked like a bad one.

  “It may have been a rival Alpha to Godzilla,” Vivienne said, “battling for dominance over the other Titans.”

  Mark nodded; that made sense. It was also terrifying. A monster that could rival Godzilla? No thanks.

  “Dr. Chen?” Serizawa asked.

  “I’ve been scouring through thousands of years of myths and legends,” Chen said, “but it’s almost as if people were scared to even write about it.”

  “As if it was meant to be forgotten,” Serizawa mused.

  Mark looked over as Stanton entered.

  “So, I hate to crash the party,” Stanton said, “but I got some bad news.”

  “You can just say ‘news’,” Barnes said. “It’s always bad.”

  “We lost Godzilla,” Stanton continued. “Dropped off the scan near Venezuela.”

  “Dropped off?” Mark asked.

  But Stanton seemed excited.

  “I’m telling you,” Stanton said. “Dr. Brooks was right – it’s the Hollow Earth. That’s how he moves so fast using these underwater tunnels like wormholes – just, like, zipping around—” He jerked his hand inventively through the air.

  Mark remembered Brooks. He’d been with Monarch since the seventies, had been involved in the Skull Island situation. And yeah, he’d had this crackpot theory that the Earth was like Swiss cheese, full of gigantic subterranean chambers, where monsters hid.

  Mark hadn’t believed it. Godzilla was big, but so was the ocean. Humans had only explored the tiniest fraction of the deep sea. In the crushing black deeps that marked the boundaries between continental plates, you could hide any number of Godzilla-sized beasts. They were big, but not that big.

  But it sounded like Stanton was a believer. Maybe he knew something Mark didn’t.

  “Everyone look sharp,” Colonel Foster cut in. “We’re approaching the base.”

  * * *

  Madison watched Jonah’s men work with mounting anxiety.

  The drilling continued, but now the mercenaries were placing explosives in the holes.

  They were going to blast Monster Zero free. But then what? What would it do when it woke up with explosions going off everywhere? Mothra had freaked out over a few guys with guns. And Mothra had been a baby compared to this thing. Its standing height was estimated at five hundred and twenty-one feet. Godzilla only stood three hundred and fifty-five feet. If it really was an apex predator, like Mom thought, it would probably react like one. Of course, she imagined Jonah planned to set off the charges remotely, but still…

  “They’re here,” Asher said, looking up from the radar screen.

  Monarch must have figured out what had happened and sent more troops. But Jonah didn’t seem worried.

  “Keep them busy,” he told Asher.

  Asher signaled some of the others, and they quickly left the cave.

  Another fight coming up, Madison thought. Please let it stop.

  But she knew it wasn’t likely to stop anytime soon.

  EIGHT

  From Dr. Chen’s notes:

  Lord of the dwelling, he subdued the demon who roared aloud, six-eyed and triple-headed.

  —Rigveda 10.99.6

  Sanskrit hymns, 1500–1200 BCE

  Suddenly the clouds arose; the sea surged, and from it arose a three-headed dragon.

  —Two Ivans, A Russian folk tale

  As they neared the frozen continent, Mark, Serizawa, Vivienne, Coleman, Chen, Stanford, and Foster and her G-Team filed into the hangar and onto an Osprey. Once they were aboard, settled, and through the checklist, the hangar door opened below them. The Osprey was suspended by clamps above the void below.

  “Hang on,” Griffin said.

  Mark heard a clang as the clamps detached.

  Then they were falling. Griffin nosed the craft sharply down.

  For an awful moment, Mark thought she intended to nose-dive all the way to the surface, but then she pulled up; their airfoil caught the wind with a sharp bump, and the engines kicked in.

  The Argo rumbled by above, with its escort of fighters.

  She had just been trying to get clear of the bigger ship. If she hadn’t nosed down – if the Osprey had lifted up – they would have slammed into the underside of the Argo or jumped up into the blue-white flame of her jet engines.

  Or both.

  He turned his attention to what he could see of the Antarctic. It was night, so that wasn’t much. Looking upward he had a glimpse of the bright southern stars, but then they descended through a thin layer of clouds. Snow whirled past the windows in flurries.

  He’d always wanted to see Antarctica. He’d even applied for a grant to study the hunting behavior of orcas along the continental shelf, but that had fallen through. Now he was finally here, for all the wrong reasons. It was a nightmare… What was down here? What was Monster Zero? Vivienne had said it might be worse than Godzilla. Mark struggled to imagine anything that could possibly fit that description.

  Antarctica hadn’t always been covered in ice. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, in the Permian period, it had been part of Pangea, the supercontinent, cozied up against what would one day be Australia, South America, and Africa.

  The working theory about Godzilla was that he’d been around back then – or at least his species had – stomping through the late Permian until the massive extinction at the end of the period. Ninety percent of everything had died, most likely due to an asteroid similar to the one that had wiped out the dinosaurs. It also left the radiation levels on the Earth’s surface too meager to provide the massive reptile with enough sustenance. So he retreated to the depths, where he could subsist on radiation leaking up from the Earth’s core. Other Titans of the period had also gone into hibernation, or what have you.

  A few crackpots subscribed to a different theory – that the Titans evolved underground, in huge hollows in the Earth, and return there in times of need.

  Either way, when the first A-bombs were unleashed, and nuclear subs started nosing around, Godzilla and the other Titans began to take notice. There was “food” up there again. And so now here we were.


  * * *

  Eventually continental drift pulled Pangea apart, and what would become Antarctica ended up at the South Pole; but the world was still warm, much warmer than in the present. For millions of years, dinosaurs continued to prowl the forests and swamps of a green Antarctic, adapting to the months-long night and cooler conditions.

  The world continued to cool, and Antarctica with it. The forests and the dinosaurs died, and the ice came, blanketing the continent in glaciers.

  What else had that ice covered over?

  G-Team was gearing up, checking their weapons. They must be getting close.

  Hendricks brought up a ground scan for them.

  “Shows signs of heavy contact,” Hendricks said. “Appear to be casualties.”

  He switched to a map depicting the network of tunnels beneath the ice – and the one huge cavern they all led to.

  Vivienne indicated a bit of the central chamber. “If Jonah is looking to extract genetic samples they’ll be here – in the biolabs.”

  Right, he thought. But it still nagged him. Why did they need Emma and the ORCA to extract DNA samples from a frozen monster?

  Maybe they didn’t need the ORCA for Monster Zero. Maybe it was for the next few monsters on the list, the ones that were more likely to wake up. In which case, would Emma even be with them? Or would they have her and Maddie secure someplace else?

  The warren of tunnels was dauntingly vast. It might take days to search the whole thing.

  “All right, two minutes,” Chief Warrant Officer Barnes said. “Check your equipment and stand by the door!”

  It seemed like much longer than two minutes to Mark, but eventually the Osprey did touch down and G-Team pounded out onto the ice. He had been instructed to stay in the vehicle with the other scientists until they got the all-clear, but he found it hard to stay still. He kept casting about for something – anything – he could do to help. He got it. They were trained for combat and he wasn’t. If there was a fight, he might get in the way more than he could help. But it didn’t feel right, sitting in the Osprey when Maddie and Emma might be out there.

  And at least he could watch their movements on-screen. G-Team was equipped with helmet cams and the feed was on display in the Osprey.

  Feeling helpless, he watched the jittery images as G-Team moved into the base.

  * * *

  “Come on Ash,” Jonah said. “Make it snappy.”

  The charges were all set; Asher was rigging a remote detonator, but now suddenly the alarms were going off and lights were flashing. Someone else must have arrived, another team from Monarch.

  Her mom grabbed Maddie as Jonah pulled them into the tunnels.

  * * *

  Barnes didn’t like anything about this place. Begin with the coldest, nastiest continent on the planet. Add a mess of tight tunnels – carved through the ice – sprinkle all of that with corpses, drop in a monster that time forgot and a bunch of anarchist terrorists that could be around any one of these curves or bends, and what it added up to was not his idea of a party.

  On the other hand, he’d known two of the people they lost in Yunnan, and he didn’t mind the idea of popping open a cold bottle of payback.

  “Remember,” Foster cautioned, “eyes wide. We’ve got friendlies in here.”

  A few minutes later, the Colonel signaled for them to halt. They had reached a major branch in the tunnels. Foster indicated for him to take Green team down the left one. That was Martinez, Dukes, Kim, Johnson, Li, D’Aguilar, Rahn, and him. Foster took Gold team to the right.

  Splitting up made him a little nervous, but it was Foster’s call.

  Martinez took point as they entered the tunnel.

  * * *

  Mark watched anxiously as Foster divided the team. He followed each on their head-cam feeds.

  Both teams were soon picking their way through corpses. All of those Mark could make out were in Monarch staff clothing. Jonah and his men must have taken the base completely by surprise. He was having trouble breathing, terrified that at any moment he might see Emma and Maddie among the dead.

  “It’s a massacre…” Hendricks said.

  “Hendricks, keep your shit together,” Foster snapped. “We’ve got a lot of tunnels to get through.”

  Hendricks flinched at a noise. Foster signaled a halt.

  Mark heard a muffled explosion, and then all the helmet cams were a blur of confusion, swinging every which way. Foster stabilized first. Her camera showed that the tunnel had collapsed behind them.

  Foster swung back, and now they were shooting as mercenaries came swarming from everywhere. But through Foster’s cam – through all of the fighting and confusion – he saw two very familiar faces in the distance.

  Emma and Maddie. They were being hustled along by the guy from the video, Jonah, down another tunnel.

  Foster and her team were unable to pursue; they were pinned down. By the looks of things, some of them were already dead.

  The hell with this, he thought.

  In the next heartbeat he was out of the Osprey, sprinting across the ice toward the base.

  “Mark!” Serizawa yelled after him.

  Inside, Mark stopped long enough to pick up a pistol dropped by one of the dead Monarch guards. He didn’t have a lot of experience with guns, but he knew the basics and was willing to train on the run. He only hoped some of G-Team had survived the ambush, and that there was a fight left to join.

  * * *

  I should have known better, Serizawa thought. If he had been in Mark’s position – if his own son Ren were the one in there – he would probably have done the same thing. Mark had lost a lot, too much, and he shouldn’t have been put in this position. If Serizawa had had any other choice, he wouldn’t have. But it had been the right decision to bring the zoologist in. It was Mark’s insights that had brought them this far. But if Mark or his family didn’t survive this…

  Serizawa found he was playing with his father’s watch again.

  Mark had made his decision. There wasn’t anything Serizawa could do about it now. He had to concentrate on the problem at hand.

  Monster Zero.

  Serizawa turned his attention back to the camera feeds, trying to get some sense of what was going on, but the sheer chaos of combat aside, the signal was starting to break up. Did Jonah and his anarchists have a jamming device? Maybe. But he knew there was a likelier explanation.

  “Guys,” Chen said. “I’m getting an EKG reading.”

  So. Not a jamming device.

  * * *

  Mark sprinted through the tunnels, hoping he was going the right way. Gunfire rang out now and then, hollow echoes bouncing around the tunnel.

  He came to a branch; the light looked a little different to the left. He went that way.

  He emerged into what could only be the big central chamber, but the thing he focused on – what he saw first – was Emma and Maddie. They were above him, moving along a catwalk right up against a wall of ice. Jonah and some other guy were with them.

  He scrambled up a ladder and onto the catwalk in front of them, pointing the pistol at the guy in front.

  “Let them go!” he said.

  Jonah, Emma, and Maddie stared at him with shocked expressions. The other man with Jonah didn’t hesitate; he jerked his own gun up. The moment seemed to hang like a drop of water on the lip of a faucet, but at the same time Mark’s heart felt like it was about to beat itself from his chest—

  A shot exploded above him. The man pitched back and crumpled to the floor. Something fell from his left hand onto the catwalk between them.

  “Ash!” Jonah yelled, dropping into a crouch.

  Mark swung around and saw Colonel Foster on a catwalk above, trying to cover Jonah. But from her position the terrorist was probably now under cover of the catwalk, so Mark pointed his pistol at Jonah, too.

  Mark glanced down at the thing on the catwalk. It looked like a remote detonator.

  They hadn’t been taking DNA samples. Th
ey had been planting charges. But why?

  For the first time, his angle widened, and he saw the thing in the ice, towering behind them. Monster Zero – a pure nightmare.

  Oh, shit. Were they planning to blast it free? Was it still alive, under all that ice? Why? Did Jonah think he could control it?

  “Mark!” Emma yelled.

  He had Jonah covered. It was time to get this done, before more terrorists showed up and they were outnumbered again.

  “Madison,” Mark shouted. “Let’s go!”

  “Dad?” Maddie said. Panic nearly overwhelmed him. His little girl, in the middle of all of this – the gunfire, the murder. He had to get her out. But she was confused; of course she was. She was used to not having him around, and yet here he was in freaking Antarctica. But he had to break through that, make her understand. Quickly.

  “Let’s go!” Mark repeated. “Emma, Maddie, come on!”

  To his relief, Maddie took a couple of steps toward him. They were getting out of this, the three of them.

  “Madison, walk to me! Walk to me now. Come on, honey.”

  He glanced past her at Jonah, who was still down, out of reach of Foster’s rifle.

  Emma was still back there, too. She hadn’t moved.

  “Emma,” he said. “What are you doing? Let’s go. Come on!”

  “Maddie,” Emma said.

  “Dad,” Maddie said.

  Emma looked Mark in the eye, then back to their daughter.

  “Madison,” she said, firmly.

  Maddie stopped. Something in her expression changed. Her gaze wandered; she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Then she stepped back, behind her mother. What did they know that he didn’t? What card was Jonah still holding that he couldn’t see?

  He glanced at Foster. She looked as confused as he was.

  Emma walked forward and picked up the detonator the anarchist had dropped. Then her gaze fastened on his, and he saw that familiar, diamond-hard resolve in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Emma told him. “Run!”

  She pressed the detonator.

  A chain of explosions ran through the massive ice wall. Cracks spread with lightning speed. The bright metallic scent of ozone filled his nasal cavity and he watched with disbelief as Emma grabbed Madison and pulled her toward a cargo elevator. Jonah stepped in, too.