Godzilla: The Official Movie Novelization

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 emotionally 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.

“Akio?! Akio!”

On the platform, the boy’s parents were looking around anxiously, having obviously misplaced their child. They cried out as they saw that the little boy, whose name was obviously Akio, had darted onto the train when they weren’t looking. Drawn by the toy soldier, Akio approached Ford. He pointed a pudgy finger at the miniature Navy man.

“Ban-ban,” he chirped.

Oh, shit, Ford thought, realizing what was happening. He leapt up to return the boy to his parents, but he was too late. The doors slid shut with a whoosh and the train began to pull away from the platform. Through the windows, Ford saw Akio’s parents reacting in consternation. They dashed frantically to the edge of the platform, shouting and throwing out their arms. The father grabbed onto his wife, as though half-afraid that she would rush onto the tracks. She sobbed hysterically.

“Stay there!” he shouted. “I’ll bring him back!”

The platform dropped from view as the train glided away on the elevated track. Exiting the terminal, the train cruised above the tarmac, where parked and taxiing jets could be seen through the train’s windows. A departing plane took off from a runway as Ford inspected a posted map of the monorail system. According to the map, the train would make a complete circuit of the airport before returning to the station they had just left. He hoped that Akio’s parents had heard him and would stay put long enough for him to get the boy back to them. They’d looked Japanese. Did they even speak English? Had they understood what he’d shouted?

Ford looked down at Akio, who had suddenly become his responsibility. He gave the boy a playfully stern expression.

“You’re under arrest, bud.” He glanced again at his watch, while keeping one eye on his new charge. “I better not miss my flight.”

It was going to be close.

The young petty officer led Serizawa and Graham across the CDC to another work station, where Admiral Stenz awaited them, a grim expression on his weathered features. He wasted no time bringing the two scientists up to speed on the latest development.

“We’ve lost all comms with a Russian Borei in the North Pacific,” he said, referring to a class of nuclear submarine. He turned toward the young analyst manning the console. “Martinez?”

An impressive array of data and video screens faced Martinez, an alert young officer in her early twenties. She was focused on various screens displaying what appeared to be night-vision helicopter feeds of a platoon of U.S. Special Forces soldiers trekking through a dense jungle. A spectral green glow tinted a view of dense bamboo groves and underbrush.

“Aye, sir,” Martinez reported. “Sparta One is picking up a distress signal northwest of Diamond Head.” Disbelief registered on her face as she confirmed the location. “In the midst of Oahu.”

Serizawa inhaled sharply. Oahu was no ghost town or remote mining camp. It was the most populous island in Hawaii.

The MUTO and humanity were on a collision course.

The Green Berets advanced through the nocturnal jungle, kitted out with hazard gas masks and night-vision goggles. The dense bamboo forest was lush and fragrant, abloom with wild orchids, hibiscus, and plumeria. Hidden waterfalls cascaded in the background, but any wildlife was unusually silent, as though the local fauna had made themselves scarce. They were only miles away from lively beaches and night life of Waikiki, but, from the looks of things, they might as well as have been deep in the Amazon rain forest. The dense underbrush made for hard slogging, but the soldiers maintained a brisk pace. They hacked their way through the jungle with machetes.

The leader of the team, Captain Bill Cozzone, was a combat veteran who had taken part in a wide variety of missions over the years, ranging from counter-terrorism to humanitarian assistance, but this assignment was a new one. Nothing in his extensive training and experience had involved tracking down a “Massive Unknown Terrestrial Organism,” let alone a missing nuclear submarine. He used a Geiger counter to guide them through the jungle. It clicked faster and faster as they zeroed in on their objective. Spotting something ahead, through the green-tinted view of his goggles, he raised his hand to signal a halt.

Whoa, he thought. There’s something you don’t see every day.

The Alexander Nevsky, a fourth-generation nuclear submarine, was standing upright among the trees, as though dropped from above. Nearly six hundred feet tall and more than forty feet across, the sub was encrusted with a hardening resinous secretion that dripped slowly down its side. It nose was buried deeply in the earth, amidst smashed and pulverized greenery. In theory, the submarine housed a crew of 130 officers and men. Cozzone found it hard to imagine that any of them could have survived the drop. They were almost certainly crushed to a pulp inside the towering metal shell.

The twelve-man team spread out around the base of the misplaced sub, gazing up at the surreal sight. Cozzone didn’t like the look of this. Submarines belonged in the ocean depths, not perched upside-down in the Hawaiian jungle, only a short hop from Diamond Head. This was wrong with a capital W.

“Guardian 3, this is Sparta 1,” he reported via radio. “We’ve located the Russian sub. Break—”

Something stirred above the jungle canopy high overhead. Craning his head back, Cozzone spied the MUTO itself, crouched above the upright sub. Despite his earlier briefing, the soldier was taken aback by the sheer size and freakishness of the winged monstrosity, which looked like a cross between a giant bug and a dinosaur. Its shiny black wings were folded in behind it like an ominous dark cloak. A thick orange secretion oozed from the creature’s segmented underside. The photos he’d been shown before had failed to capture how truly monstrous this “organism” was.

Holy mother of—

“Guardian 3, we also have eyes on your bogey.”

The command center aboard the Saratoga immediately responded. “Sparta 1, Guardian 3. Six Actual requests a sit-rep, over.”

To Cozzone’s relief, the MUTO ignored the stunned Green Berets down on the forest floor. Instead it had torn open the hull of the Alexander Nevsky and was gorging on the glowing plutonium core of the nuclear reactor, gobbling down the red-hot fuel rods like a pelican downing a fish. Cozzone was suddenly very thankful that the MUTO supposedly consumed nuclear radiation. Otherwise he and his men would be fried for sure, gas masks or no gas masks.

He tried to convey to Command what he was seeing.

“Guardian 3, tell the Six it’s… uh… well, it appears to be eating the reactor.”

Of course, Serizawa thought. Just as it fed on the nuclear fuel at Janjira before.

A momentary hush fell over the CDC. Admiral Stenz looked at Serizawa, who nodded grimly in confirmation of the Green Berets’ on-site assessment of the situation. Stenz absorbed this new intel with admirable calm and efficiency. He stepped briskly to the center of the war room and raised his voice to be heard above the general hubbub.

“Cat’s out of the bag, people,” he declared. “New protocol is safety, not secrecy. Get me eyes in the air. Notify Coast Guard District Fourteen and Hawaii Civil Defense. There are a million people on that island.”

Serizawa recalled the devastation at the M.U.T.O. base and in the Philippines years ago. He could only imagine the consequences of the creature invading a major population center. They were looking at a catastrophe in the making.

“General quarters, please, skipper,” the admiral instructed Captain Hampton. “Set condition one.”

The order spurred the entire naval strike group into action. Crews reported to battle stations as the carrier’s various support ships rotated their huge artillery guns toward the shore. Seeking fresh air, Serizawa stepped out onto the busy flight deck in time to observe the commotion. Flight crews scrambled as several F-35 jet fighters screamed off the runway amidst loud blasts of blistering exhaust. The Lightnings were one-seat, supersonic aircraft capable of reaching the island in seconds. Catapults hurled them into the air at a breathtaking pace.

Covering his ears, Serizawa turned his attention away from the runway to the nearby island. The strike group was positioned off the shore of Oahu in response to the distress signal from the Russian sub. He could see the sparkling lights of Honolulu and Waikiki, as well as the lush green mountains rising up beyond the beaches and resorts. The landmark volcanic cone of Diamond Head dominated the southeastern tip of the island, overlooking the most popular tourist spots. Only a few miles of ocean separated the fleet from the island. Serizawa gazed out over the moonlit waves and the white caps churned up by the coursing battleships. The slumbering Pacific struck him as deceptively placid, hiding an entire undersea ecology with its own unplumbed secrets, such as…

His eyes widened as he spied a large, dark object slicing through the ocean toward the islands. At first he thought that maybe his eyes were deceiving him, that it was just an illusion born of darkness and the restless motion of the waves, but the huge shape began to rise from the water, growing higher and higher with each passing moment, like the fin of some enormous beast.

Serizawa swallowed hard. He remembered the colossal skeleton they’d discovered in the Philippines fifteen years ago, as well as the decades-old photos on his desk below, the ones he’d been studying his entire career. The ominous silhouette of that long-unseen leviathan remained burned into his memory, even though they were taken before he was born.

Could it truly be him?