Godzilla 2000 Read online

  Then the overcast sky seemed to open up directly over the Sausalito cliffs. Thick clouds parted over Lori's head, and a column of radiant energy streaked down from the heavens and bathed her in its mystical glow.

  Lori slowly raised her eyes and squinted into the radiance. In the center of the sky, where the clouds had parted, Lori saw the most beautiful creature in the universe.

  "Mothra..." she whispered, awestruck.

  On multicolored wings of gossamer, the gigantic butterfly-like creature Mothra floated in the sky.

  Tell them, daughter, Mothra's voice spoke inside Lori's head. Tell them that Mothra is not their enemy. Tell them that the great creature who strides ashore below is not their enemy, either...

  "But... but Godzilla will kill hundreds," Lori blurted.

  In order to save billions... Mothra whispered into her mind.

  "I don't understand," Lori said.

  You are my herald, Mothra sang. You have heard my song as no other; understood it as none before you. Tell the world that the Destroyer of All Life is coming down from the stars. Tell humanity that their true enemy is the Three-Headed Monster with Wings of Gold.

  Then the colors faded, and the column of light disappeared. The clouds high in the sky closed around the gigantic winged creature, and Lori suddenly felt abandoned and alone.

  Mothra was gone as abruptly as she had come.

  Lori dropped to her knees at the edge of the cliff and began to sob. How can I convince them? she raged, pounding the earth.

  Who will believe me now?

  * * *

  At this early hour on a Sunday morning, only sanitation crews and a few shopkeepers were in Jack London Square, a section of Oakland's docks named to honor the city's most famous citizen and the author of The Call of the Wild.

  London Square ran along the bay and was Oakland's version of San Francisco's more renowned Fisherman's Wharf.

  The restaurants and T-shirt shops in the square and in Jack London Village nearby weren't due to open for hours yet. The only vehicle neat the water was a sanitation truck.

  The garbage men were lazily loading overflowing bins of garbage into the truck's noisy compactor. Suddenly, one of them looked toward the bay. What he saw nearly turned his hair white.

  He slapped his comrade on the shoulder, cried out, and pointed. Then the three men bolted, leaving their truck behind. They ran into the middle of Jack London Village, where a group of pickup trucks and vans filled with fresh produce were unloading and setting up for the Sunday morning farmers' market.

  When the vendors spotted Godzilla looming over them, his terrible roar vibrating every object around them, they fled in panic.

  Slowly, ponderously, Godzilla's foot rose out of San Francisco Bay and crashed down next to the sanitation truck. The force of the creature's tread was so powerful that the truck bounced on its wheels and tipped over.

  Godzilla's gigantic leg looked like the bole of a huge redwood tree. The monster's hide was charcoal black, with brown and gray streaks, and grooved with deep lines. Seawater washed down the deep, pitted grooves in rivulets. The water soaked the pavement, which cracked under the monster's tremendous weight.

  As Godzilla thundered past the sanitation truck, his long tail slammed against the vehicle, sending it flying through the air like a toy. Garbage spilled everywhere as the tail pounded against the facade of a pricey restaurant.

  Again, Godzilla's tail lashed out, and utterly demolished the brick building that housed a famous Oakland landmark, the First and Last Chance Saloon. The century-old structure collapsed in a cloud of dust and smoke.

  Meanwhile, flames leaped from the shattered restaurant. The smell of natural gas filled the air. Suddenly, the gas flowing out of a broken main ignited. An orange fireball rolled into the sky, and flames spread along the seaside district. Sirens began wailing, and two Oakland Fire Department trucks sped around the corner. Godzilla suddenly shifted on his feet, and his tail swiped the first emergency vehicle as it tried to rush by.

  The fire truck flipped over, spilling men onto the pavement. Before the emergency crews could flee, Godzilla brushed past another building, raining tons of debris down on the helpless firefighters. Oblivious to his victims, Godzilla moved inland, toward the expensive homes that crowded the Oakland hills.

  * * *

  Thinking it was just another Sunday morning, Northern Californians awakened and tuned in their radios and televisions, hoping to hear the weather report.

  Instead, they found that the local channels were off the air and that the Emergency Broadcast Network had taken over.

  Less than five minutes after Godzilla appeared, news of his return was being spread by the wire services. First Reuters, then AP, then the rest. The cable news networks followed quickly.

  On INN, Nick Gordon, the host of Science Sunday, went on the air with constant updates. An Independent News Network chopper broadcast the first live pictures to a stunned and frightened nation.

  Panic spread as the grim reality sunk in. Godzilla had come to America.

  20

  AMERICA

  INVADED

  Sunday, June 13, 1999, 11:46 A.M.

  Project Valkyrie headquarters

  Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada

  Dr. Markham answered the phone on the first ring.

  "Dr. Markham?" a tearful yet defiant voice pleaded from the receiver.

  "Lori?" the doctor replied, surprised.

  "I want to come home..."

  The psychiatrist sighed. "That's not my decision, Lori. Or yours," Dr. Markham said after a pause. "It's up to the general."

  "I know."

  "Where are you now?" Markham asked.

  "In San Francisco," Lori said.

  Dr. Markham gasped. How did she know? she wondered. Yet the psychiatrist should not have been surprised. Not after what she learned in the past few hours.

  "I saw it all!" Lori cried. "I knew when and where to be when Godzilla showed up -"

  Dr. Markham interrupted her. She wanted to hear what Lori had to say, but not over the phone. She wanted Lori back here, in the base hospital.

  "Is the aircraft you took still intact?" Markham demanded.

  "Of course! Not a scratch," Lori said defensively. "All I need is some fuel and I can come home."

  "All right, Lori," Markham said. "I'll see what I can do. Now, I want you to follow my instructions to the letter..."

  Five minutes later, Dr. Markham hung up. Then she gathered up the handwritten notes spread across her desk and headed down the hall to General Taggart's office.

  I'm convinced that Lori's not insane, and I've convinced her of that, the doctor reflected. Now all I have to do is convince the general.

  Somehow, Dr. Markham thought, fighting kaiju would be easier.

  * * *

  Helicopters hovered in the air around the Texas Star. Some were Coast Guard, some United States Navy, some belonged to the press. The latter were being turned away by the military authorities.

  The supertanker still listed to one side, and the creature called Varan still lay across her deck, unmoving except for an occasional twitch of its reptilian tail.

  Throughout the night, Navy warships had cautiously approached the tanker - quietly and without running lights. The Navy wanted to get their ships close to Varan without frightening the creature back into the sky. Two frigates and a destroyer warily circled the stricken tanker, waiting.

  * * *

  General Taggart now had two monsters within the continental United States to contend with - and a third in territorial waters.

  He'd also lost a member of the G-Force team, and a multimillion-dollar aircraft. Worst of all, the president was still keeping G-Force out of the fight. The last thing General Taggart needed was a visit from the project's headshrinker.

  "General," Dr. Markham said as she pushed open his office door, "we need to talk."

  "Don't you doctors believe in knocking?" the general barked. Then he dropped his pen on the des
k and stared at the woman. "Come in..." he said, relenting.

  Dr. Markham sat down across the desk from him.

  "I just heard from Lori," she announced. The general raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  "She's in San Francisco," the doctor continued. "She watched Godzilla arrive this morning. Now she wants to come back."

  The general shook his head. "Out of the question," he stated flatly.

  "Listen to me before you make up your mind, General Taggart," Markham insisted. "I think you should hear this..." As she spoke, she spread out handwritten notes on Taggart's desk.

  "I was puzzled by Lori's apparent delusion - that some entity was trying to communicate with her through dreams," the woman said. "I conferred with a colleague at Brown University this morning. He told me that he had two cases in the last few weeks... cases very similar to Lori's."

  The general's face remained stony, but he was listening.

  "Two cases of normal, healthy young women with no prior history of mental distress suddenly having dreams about a winged angel or a giant butterfly," the doctor stated, almost tripping over her words in her haste to get them out.

  "Each of these women was convinced that the being in her dream was trying to communicate with her."

  The general sat up in his chair, still attentive.

  "Then I called other psychiatrists that I know," Markham continued. "In Pittsburgh, Denver, Detroit... Every single one of my colleagues reported at least one patient who had developed a similar delusion. All of these patients are young women, and all showed their first symptoms in the past month!"

  The general looked impressed. But Dr. Markham knew she had to hit him with something that he could understand, something concrete.

  "Do you know what the statistical probabilities of such similar conditions existing within the same time span are? It's out of the ballpark, General... a billion to one, at the least!"

  The doctor looked hard at Taggart. "I'm not always impressed with statistics or probabilities, General," she declared. "In this case, it was the brain scan that convinced me."

  Dr. Markham pulled a copy of the brainwave pattern from the pile of papers spread out on the desk.

  "Not even multiple personalities can have two distinct brainwave patterns. Yet that is exactly what Lori exhibited.

  "Something else is going on here," she concluded.

  "Just what are you suggesting, Dr. Markham?" Taggart asked.

  The psychiatrist took a deep breath. Here goes my reputation.

  "I'm suggesting that Lori wasn't suffering from a delusion," Dr. Markham said finally. "I'm suggesting that an entity of some kind was communicating with her... and that this entity has something to tell every man, woman, and child on this planet. But so far, at least, it can only speak effectively through Lori Angelo."

  * * *

  Despite the fact that the U.S. Navy was warning away unauthorized aircraft, an INN helicopter out of Mexico sneaked under the radar cordon and flew toward the Texas Star, so low that it literally skimmed the waves.

  The other media helicopters had been chased out of the combat area an hour before, but the crew of this particular INN chopper was determined to broadcast pictures of Varan on live television. The team, which consisted of news director Mike Timko, Robin Halliday, the young on-camera intern, and their cameraperson, Linda Carlisle, were hot on the trail of a story they'd been chasing for weeks.

  At the controls of the chopper was the young Mexican liaison officer Tony Batista. He'd stayed with the team since Jamiltepec, and Mike had learned to appreciate the man's talents.

  They were so hot to get the story that Mike ordered the pilot to turn off the radio. That way, they didn't have to acknowledge the Navy's commands to clear the area.

  But without the radio, the INN crew didn't hear the Coast Guard and Navy broadcasts warning that any unauthorized aircraft would be fired upon. As the chopper streaked past the bow of a Navy destroyer, the captain of the warship ordered warning shots to be fired at the intruder.

  A Vulcan anti-aircraft gun opened fire, and bullets streaked toward the helicopter. As tracers whizzed past the cockpit, Tony Batista panicked and pushed the throttle forward. The helicopter raced past another warship, which also opened fire.

  Soon, a Coast Guard patrol boat opened up, too. But this time, they weren't warning shots. Several rounds ripped through the helicopter's engine, shattering an oil pump. Black smoke began to pour out of the fuselage, and the helicopter stalled.

  As the INN chopper plunged into the Gulf of Mexico, the noise of the gunfire startled Varan.

  Awakened, the creature began to move...

  * * *

  As Godzilla's shadow loomed over the shattered ruins of Piedmont, the monsters booming roar of triumph echoed through the hills of Northern California. Even miles away, fleeing citizens on the Warren Freeway could hear the creature's ear-shattering howl over the sound of the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

  Godzilla's devastating march through Oakland, and now Piedmont, went unopposed by the military. The Pentagon had decided that using weapons in populated areas would do more harm than good. Instead, they tried to predict Godzilla's path and evacuate the population ahead of it.

  Three National Guard units were on the scene in Piedmont, carrying out the high commands decision to evacuate. They had their hands full dealing with the panicked, fleeing population.

  Local emergency services had their resources taxed to the limit, too. They were busy evacuating the wounded and freeing those who were trapped in collapsed buildings left by Godzilla's passing. Fortunately, they had extensive training and experience in earthquake relief, and that knowledge served them well.

  In Godzilla's wake, hospitals and clinics were jammed - except for those few that were in ruins. The fire departments and ambulance crews could not keep up with the spread of fire and destruction. Shattered gas mains fed the blazes, and emergency trucks could not get past the traffic that jammed every thoroughfare out of the cities. Humanity had been all but routed.

  As the dreadful day progressed, Godzilla smashed his way across Skyline Boulevard and crossed the upper tip of Redwood Regional Park. Finally, he took to the high ground, climbing toward the tiny town of Canyon in the Berkeley Hills.

  In the early afternoon, over a strip mall outside Moraga, a fleet of AH-64A Apache helicopters appeared on the horizon. Slowly, cautiously, they approached Godzilla. Each attack copter was equipped with two "quads" of Hellfire missiles - one on each tiny wing - and twin rocket pods with nineteen rockets each.

  Sensing the oncoming threat, Godzilla swung his head toward the sound of the engines. The reptile's eyes narrowed and his lip curled, baring long, irregular teeth in a savage snarl.

  Throwing its forearms into the air and bellowing a challenge, Godzilla faced his attackers.

  * * *

  As Varan began thrashing about, the Texas Star rocked like a rowboat filled with wrestlers. The crew huddled in the stern were dashed to the steel deck as the ship tossed on the waves.

  On the bridge, emergency lights went on. Captain Dingle read the control screens, and the news was not good. The Texas Star was taking on water.

  Because of the unique construction of ULCC tankers, it was very difficult to sink one. But Varan was doing its best to try. Captain Dingle ordered his first mate and wheelman off the bridge. When they were gone, he peered through the shattered window at the creature that was tearing his ship apart.

  As he did, a sudden wind kicked up. Its violent gusts seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. It became more and more intense, and it felt much different than a normal wind.

  The air felt cool... and it smelled sweet.

  Then Captain Dingle realized what was happening. He'd been briefed over the radio on what to expect from the creature. Varan was about to take to the sky again. The effort caused the creature to produce great winds - gusts of pure oxygen.

  As Dingle watched, Varan raised itself up on its hind legs, tilting the s
hip even more. While the gyrostabilizer fought to keep the Star level and afloat, Varan launched itself into the sky.

  * * *

  As the team of Apache attack helicopters approached Godzilla, they spread out in an irregular offensive line. The fighting machines closed in on the monster, and as they drew near, the sound of their propellers thrummed and beat against the creature's ears.

  Godzilla grunted and blinked in an almost human gesture of surprise, as if he understood the massive amount of firepower that was arrayed against him. Acting as a team, the helicopters simultaneously opened fire.

  The Apaches led the attack with their rocket pods. In a blast of smoke, the rockets left the pods in a sustained rapid spin to ensure stability. The accuracy of individual rockets was poor, but due to their sheer numbers, the attack was devastating.

  The projectiles slammed into Godzilla's body, stunning and confounding the gigantic creature. It took almost a minute of sustained fire to empty the pods of their rockets, and when the four hundred projectiles were finally spent, the Apaches launched their ninety-six Hellfire missiles.

  * * *

  As Varan lifted off, the U.S. Navy warships aimed their anti-aircraft guns at the flying creature.

  The military experts assumed that the creature would ascend slowly into the sky, and move equally slowly once there. The experts also assumed that Varan traveled on the winds of the upper atmosphere, and was not truly in control of its flight.

  So everyone was taken by surprise when Varan shot into the sky as quickly as a helicopter. They were even more surprised when it stretched out its arms and legs and - with a sound not unlike a supersonic jet aircraft - streaked away.

  Even as the ships opened fire, the monster was moving out of range. The Navy guns failed to inflict any damage.

  The captain of the lead warship radioed a warning to his high command. He reported that Varan was heading due north, toward the nearest land. If it continued its present course and speed, it would be over the Texas coast in an hour...