Godzilla: The Official Movie Novelization

SIX

“What is the duration of your stay?” the customs official asked, inspecting Ford’s passport.

An endless flight, one connection, and fifteen time zones later, Ford trudged wearily through Narita Airport, toting his carry-on luggage. He’d managed to catch a little sleep on the planes, but the prospect of returning to Japan had stirred up unwanted memories. Bad dreams had followed him all the way across the Pacific.

“One day,” he said curtly.

He fully intended to deal with his dad’s latest mess and get back on a plane to Frisco as soon as humanly possible. He’d promised Sam two weeks and he’d be damned if he’d let his crazy father cut into that precious time with Sam. More than he already had, that is.

“And the nature of your visit?” the customs official asked.

Ford paused briefly before answering. “Family.”

That was good enough for the official, who briskly stamped Ford’s passport. Ford bypassed baggage claim and headed straight for the taxi station outside the airport. The bright sunlight came as shock after leaving Frisco in the middle of the night. He wanted to catch a cab to Tokyo and crash in a cheap hotel, but instead he asked the cabbie to drive him to the police station where his father was still being held.

The drive was both longer and faster than Ford would have preferred. It was late afternoon by the time he found himself sitting in the austere waiting area of a Tokyo police station. Stark institutional walls and sparse furniture rendered the room inhospitable, not that anyone was ever likely to drop by for the amenities. Wanted posters and security alerts were pinned to a bulletin board. Ford tried flipping through some old magazines, only to discover that his Japanese wasn’t what it used to be, despite the long-ago efforts of Miss Okada. He glumly watched a parade of cops and perpetrators pass in and out of the station. He would’ve killed for a cup of black coffee, but that didn’t seem to be an option.

A middle-aged couple, their faces drawn, sat stiffly in the seats beside him. They looked about as happy to be here as he was, although he guessed that they hadn’t traveled nearly so far. Ford didn’t have the energy to try to make conversation with the couple, who appeared caught up in their own troubles anyway. They gripped each other’s hands as they waited. He wondered how long they’d been married.

A buzzer sounded and an inner door unlocked. Ford and the couple looked up to see a bedraggled teenager, decked out in Goth regalia, escorted into the waiting room by a duty cop. The boy’s Mohawked head was hung in shame and he stared at the floor, unable to meet his parent’s gaze. The black mascara around his eyes was smeared, as though he’d been crying. The teen’s mother placed a hand over her mouth, stifling a sob.

The father, a sober-looking gentleman in a conservative suit and tie, rose to face his errant son. The older man regarded the teen in silence for a moment, his stony face unreadable, then came forward to hug his son. The boy collapsed against his father, weeping and apologizing for whatever offense had landed him in the hoosegow. His mother, also forgiving, joined her husband in assuring the teen that, no matter what, he was still their son.

Maybe it was just the jet lag and lack of sleep, but Ford was moved by what he witnessed. He watched enviously as the trio departed the station together. That was what a family was supposed to look like. Not like…

“Been a while,” Joe Brody said.

Ford looked up to see his father standing before him, unkempt and disheveled from a night behind bars. He was rake-thin, having lost weight since the last time Ford had seen him, and there was more grey at his temples than Ford remembered. Stubble carpeted his face. If anything, he looked like he’d been sleeping worse than Ford. Heavy pouches shadowed his puffy, bloodshot eyes.

Caught up in someone else’s family drama, Ford hadn’t even noticed his dad being led in. Father and son stared at each other awkwardly, both of them searching for a place to begin. It had been a long time since they had known how to talk to each other, or been entirely comfortable in each other’s presence. Ford suddenly envied that Goth kid.

Unable to find the right words, Ford just held out his hand to shake.

It was the best he could do.

A partial view of downtown Tokyo from one small window was the only selling point of the cramped and cluttered garret Joe Brody currently called home. It was dusk and neon lights filtered in from outside as Ford and his father entered the apartment. Ford glanced around dubiously. This dump was a far cry from the cozy suburban home he had once shared with his parents — in what was now a radioactive ghost town.

“I’m sorry you had to come all this way, Ford,” his dad said. Joe stepped over tottering stacks of books, magazines, and newspapers piled high on the floor. A single beat-up futon was littered with dirty laundry. Crusty plates and dishes were heaped in the sink of an adjacent kitchenette. An open doorway revealed an unmade bed. The stuffy atmosphere was badly in need of air freshener. Joe avoided Ford’s eyes. “Couldn’t you have just given them a credit card?”

I wish, Ford thought. Bailing his dad out wasn’t the issue here. It was the fact that Ford had needed to do so in the first place.

He refrained from saying so. The awkwardness between them had not gone away during the short drive here. Joe flipped on a light, igniting a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and Ford got a better look at what his father’s life had become.

It was a lot to take in. The apartment was more than just a mess. It was a lunatic’s hoard of papers, maps, books, notes, photos, Post-its, and graphs occupying every available surface, including the walls. Tangled cables, snaking across the floor, connected a bewildering array of antique computer monitors, old TV sets, battered printers, and used mainframes that looked as though they should have been consigned to a junk heap years ago. There was even a VCR and VHS tapes for Pete’s sake. To Ford’s eyes, it was a chaotic flurry of random data, accumulated by someone driven round the bend by an obsessive search for answers. Ford dimly remembered how neat and well-ordered his father’s home office had once been, before the meltdown, and winced at the disorderly rat’s nest before him. Joe Brody had been a respected engineer, a professional, many years ago.

Ford wasn’t sure what his father was now.

Joe caught Ford staring silently at the clutter and disarray. He feebly attempted to tidy up, relocating some discarded clothing from the futon to a closet and clearing a path through the heaps of books and magazines. A knee-high stack of newspapers toppled over, spilling onto the floor.

“PhDs don’t make much teaching English as a second language,” Joe offered by way of explanation for his low-rent accommodation. He waited in vain for Ford to say something, then continued. “How’s the bomb business? That must be a growth area these days.”

Ford was irked by his dad’s remark. “It’s called explosive ordinance disposal. And my job isn’t dropping bombs. It’s stopping them.”

His gaze was still riveted by the insane accumulation of information pinned and taped to the walls. Looking closer, he spied decades-old news clippings about the meltdown, maps of the quarantine zone, and what appeared to be clandestine spy-photos of tall razor-wire fences and armed sentries on patrol. Ford frowned. He had a pretty good idea who had taken those amateur photos.

“How’s Elle doing?” Joe asked, in a transparent attempt to divert Ford’s attention from the walls. “Sam must be, what, two already?”

“Almost four.” Ford didn’t feel like talking about Sam. He made his way across the clutter to a second-hand desk that was practically buried beneath a surplus of scientific tomes. Bookmarks flagged key sections. Notes had been scribbled in the margins. “I thought you were over this stuff.” He sorted through the books, looking over the titles and chapter headings. He picked one after another up, trying to make sense of it all. “Echolocation. Parasitic Communication Patterns.”

Joe took the book from Ford. “Homework,” he said with forced casualness. “I’m studying Bioaccoustics. My new thing.”

As though that explains everything, Ford thought, losing patience. He was too tired and fed up to beat around the bush any longer. He turned away from the desk to confront his father.

“Dad, what the hell were you doing?”

“Ah, that trespassing stuffis nonsense, Ford.” Joe waved it away with a dismissive gesture. “I was just trying to get to the old house—”

“It’s a quarantine zone!”

“Exactly!” Joe’s casual pose fell away, revealing what was really driving him. “That’s exactly it — there’s something happening in there, Ford. I’ve seen pictures. They didn’t quarantine that place because it’s dangerous. They’ve got something going on in there. The new readings are exactly like they were on that day, and if I can just get back in before it’s too late—”

“DAD!”

Ford cut him off, unable to hear anymore. His dad had been spewing this same wild conspiracy stuff for longer than Ford wanted to remember. His outburst stopped Joe short and the two men stared at each other across the physical residue of Joe’s obsessions. A crestfallen look came over Joe’s face as he realized, that his own son thought that he was bat-shit crazy.

His manic energy seeped away. Deflated, he sank into one of the few chairs not covered by scientific journals and reports. He slumped forward, looking defeated.

“You know your mom’s still out there,” he said weakly, his voice barely above a whisper. “For me, she’ll always be there. They evacuated us so quickly I don’t even have a picture of her.”

Sympathy tugged at Ford’s heart, but he had to stay firm.

“This has to stop, Dad. You need to let go.”

“I sent her down there, Ford,” Joe said plaintively. Fifteen years of anguish poured out of him, as though the disaster had happened only yesterday. “I would do anything, anything to bring her back. That haunts me, and I know it haunts you too”

Ford’s resolve melted in the face of his father’s inescapable guilt and grief. He couldn’t help imagining what would be left of him if something happened to Elle… or Sam. He remembered those disappointed but loving parents back at the police station, embracing their son despite everything, and that customs official asking him what his business in Japan was.

Family, he thought. Damn it.

“It’s time to come home, Dad,” he said, his voice softening. “Come home with me.”

The grateful look on his father’s face was enough to break Ford’s heart. He swallowed hard and wiped at his eyes, obviously touched by his son’s offer. Ford prayed that he had finally gotten through to him.

“We’ll leave tomorrow,” Ford said.

Joe hesitated, just for a moment, but then he nodded. Emotionally exhausted, he could only murmur a quiet, “Yes.”

Ford signed in relief. Maybe this could be the start of a whole new beginning for them. He reached out and squeezed his dad’s shoulder.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he said.

At his own insistence, Ford crashed on the futon, letting his father keep his own bed. The flickering screen of a thrift-store TV set cast a phosphor glow over the room as Ford tried to zone out to an old monster movie playing on the late show; sometimes watching vintage movies with the sound down helped him unwind at the end of a long day. His eyelids began to droop as giant prehistoric creatures battled each other amidst balsa-wood sets. He surrendered to sheer exhaustion, and let his eyes close. The brawling monsters could work out their differences without him. He’d done enough for today.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow we’ll head back home.

Sleep overcame him, but rest did not. Dreams of Elle and Sam mixed surreally with memories of Afghanistan and that terrible morning, over a decade ago, when the nuclear power plant collapsed before his eyes. If only he could disarm the reactor this time, the same way he could an improvised explosive device, maybe he could somehow save everyone: Mom, Dad, Elle, Sam… Drifting in and out of sleep, he thought he heard a voice whispering urgently in Japanese. The sound of radio distortion intruded on his slumber.

Ford blinked and opened his eyes. The apartment was still dark; the sun had yet to rise, but somebody had switched off the TV at some point. He rested upon the futon, getting his bearings. At first he thought he had just dreamed the voice, but then he heard his father speaking softly in his bedroom. Ford strained his ears to listen in.

“Yes, yes,” Joe whispered, switching into English. “The northeast section, that’s good. There’s never a patrol.”

Ford came fully awake. He rose quietly from the futon and crept toward the bedroom. The light of a single lamp spilled into the living room. Ford checked his wristwatch. It would be dawn soon. He peered into the bedroom to see what his father was doing.

The older man was already up and dressed, his dark clothes more suitable for a burglary than a trip to the airport. He whispered into his phone as he furtively packed a selection of files and electronic equipment into a duffle bag. Ford’s heart sank. Joe didn’t look like he was packing for a trip home.

“Ten minutes,” Joe whispered. “Arigato.”

He ended the call and put away the phone, only to see Ford staring at him from the doorway. Anger and disappointment warred upon the younger man’s features.

I should’ve known, Ford thought bitterly. “What the hell are you doing?”

Caught red-handed, Joe didn’t bother trying to deny anything. “I’m heading out there, Ford — one hour, in and out.”

Ford shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“You want closure?” Joe challenged him, not backing down. “You want to go home? That’s where I’m going. Now you can come with me or not, your choice, but I don’t have much time left to work this out and I’ll be damned if I let it happen again!” He kept on packing, defiantly. “I came back here and I wasted six years staring through that barbed wire thinking it was a military mistake or some horrible design flaw they were trying to cover up. I kept looking at the hard science. What I knew. One day I’m tutoring a kid whose studying whale songs. I’m looking at his textbook—‘Soundscape Interpretation,’ ‘Echolocation.’ I’m looking at these graphs and diagrams and I realized that all the data I had been going crazy over before the plant blew wasn’t something structural, it wasn’t a leaking turbine or a submarine. It was language. It was talk. Hard science wasn’t the answer — this was biology.”

Ford had no idea what his dad was talking about. He watched in dismay as Joe fished a ratty old radiation suit from a pile of crap beside the bed. The suit resembled the ones the workers had used at the plant fifteen years ago, the type his mother had supposedly been wearing when she died. He wondered how the hell Joe had managed to get his hands on it.

“I met a guy runs a cargo boat off-shore,” Joe continued, trying to get it all out before Ford could interrupt him. “Every day he goes right past the reactor site. He dropped off a couple monitors on buoys for me.” He shook his head at the memory. “Nothing. A year of nothing. More than a year.” Years of frustration could be heard in Joe’s voice. “Two weeks ago—‘cause I check this thing like every other day just for the kick in the teeth — two weeks ago, I tune in and, ohmigod, there it is. Whatever it is that’s in there, whatever it is they’re guarding so carefully, it started talking again. And I mean talking. I need to get back to the house. I need my old disks if they’re still there. The answer’s in that data. I need to know that what caused this wasn’t just me, Ford. That I’m not who you think I am. I am not crazy. That wasn’t just a reactor meltdown. Something’s going on there. I need to find the truth and end this. Whatever it takes.”

Ford tried to make sense of his father’s impassioned outpouring. Was it possible that Joe actually knew what he was talking about? Could you be crazy and still sound that coherent, that lucid, that sensible? Probably, Ford suspected, but one thing at least was clear: this was never going to be over for Joe Brody until he got the answers he was looking for.

Ford shook his head. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering what he was considering.

“You got another one of those suits?” he asked.