Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

The intensity of his tone cut through the chatter. Competing voices tapered off as all present gave Serizawa their full attention.

“Nevada?” Captain Hampton asked. “What makes you think—?”

Graham got there first. The blood drained from her face. “You don’t think it could be…?”

“Fill me in here,” Stenz said impatiently. “Why Nevada?”

“There was another spore,” Graham informed him. “Intact. Found in the Philippine mine.” She looked at Serizawa, shaking her head in disbelief. “But we examined it, ran every test for years. You confirmed it for yourself. It was dormant .”

Serizawa understood her skepticism. He had indeed spent years studying the apparently inert egg sac they had recovered from inside the giant skeleton in the Philippines. Unlike the larva that had burst from the other egg sac and made its way to Japan, the organism in the captured spore had displayed no trace of vitality or growth. It had not been absorbing spilled radiation from a nuclear meltdown. By all indications, it had been an unbroken state of stasis or hibernation. And yet…

“Maybe not anymore,” he said.

The horror of this possibility, that they might be dealing with two MUTOs, caused a momentary hush to fall over the CDC. Martinez gulped and even Hampton’s stoic reserve cracked for a moment.

“The spore,” Stenz asked urgently. “Where is it now?”

“It was highly radioactive,” Graham said. “It was disposed of… by the Americans.”

“ Where? ” Stenz repeated, even more forcefully.

“Where you put your nuclear waste,” Serizawa said flatly. He called their attention back to the map table, where two converging dotted lines extended past the west coast of the North America.

Nevada lay directly in their path.

A stone marker, alongside a dusty desert road, pointed to the nearby Nevada National Security Site, about sixty-five miles northeast of Las Vegas. For over forty years, the desolate and cratered terrain beyond had been the site of nearly a thousand nuclear bomb tests. Cacti sprouted amidst the sunbaked dunes and gullies. A military convoy sped past the marker, stirring up a cloud of dust. Air Force helicopters flew overhead, keeping pace with the rumbling troop carriers below. Inside the trucks, tense soldiers geared up in anticipation. An assault force donned radiation suits and gas masks. Heavy weaponry was prepped for battle: assault rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, grenades, and whatever else might make a dent in a monster. The mood among the soldiers was grim. Everyone on the mission had heard about what had struck Hawaii and had seen some of the on-line footage of the gigantic creatures tearing up Honolulu. They knew they had to be ready for anything.

The convoy quickly reached its destination. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository was the final resting place for more than 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and reprocessing operations all over the country. Dug deep into a barren ridge of volcanic rock, surrounded by acres of restricted federal land, the vast repository was designed to contain the highly toxic materials for at least ten thousand years and possibly longer. In theory, it could withstand earthquakes, the elements, even time itself.

Giant prehistoric monsters, on the other hand, had not been taken into account.

The main entrance to the facility consisted of an enormous tunnel that had been bored into the north side of the mountain. Armed guards stationed at the entrance admitted the troops, who deployed with both speed and purpose. The commander of the assault force, Captain Roger Pyle, led his men through a sprawling underground maze of tunnels, branching off into numerous long galleries lined with large sealed compartments. Steel doors, each nearly thirty feet tall, guarded the vaults and their lethal contents, which were routinely sealed inside solid steel canisters. View ports were installed in each door to allow for direct visual inspections.

Moving swiftly but methodically, the soldiers worked their way through the dimly lit tunnels, checking each vault on the go. The precise location of the captured Philippine egg sac was buried amidst layers of official secrecy, misdirection, redactions, and plausible deniability, defying ready access, but Pyle had reason to believe that it was somewhere in this particular gallery, nearly a thousand feet under the mountain. Given the possibility that a second MUTO might be stirring, it had been decided to conduct an immediate search and inspection of the vaults, pronto.

“Move it!” Pyle urged his men. “On the double!”

One after another, view ports were slid open. Flashlights probed the interiors of the vaults, finding only the expected stores of nuclear waste in their airtight casks. So far everything appeared secure, although they had yet to locate the MUTO egg, hatched or otherwise. Pyle had to wonder what the brass was thinking, storing something like that. He would have blown it to pieces years ago.

Then maybe they might not be in the fix they were in.

Pyle hung back, observing the operation, as yet another view port was opened. Instead of the usual darkness, a blinding white light shone in his face. Blinking, he shielded his eyes from the glare and recoiled along with his men. Instantly on guard, soldiers raised their weapons as their comrades warily unsealed the massive hatch. More light flooded the tunnel as the heavy door swung open, revealing a disturbing sight.

Goddamnit , Pyle thought.

The entire vault had been torn open from the inside. An enormous hole, at least three hundred feet in diameter, gaped at the far end of the cavernous chamber, where what appeared to be a newly dug tunnel climbed all the way up to the surface. The blinding light pouring down from above? That was sunshine , Pyle realized, coming from outside the buried repository.

Yucca Mountain had been breached — from within.

Already dreading what he’d find, Pyle and his soldiers scrambled up the crude tunnel, which was big enough to accommodate a tank or more. It was a steep climb and he was breathing hard by the time he reached the top, where the passage opened onto a panoramic view of the sprawling desert to the south. Heaps of shattered stone were strewn beneath the tunnel exit, where something had obviously burst up through the base of the mountain. Enormous tracks, at least fifty feet across, scarred the arid landscape, leading off to the horizon.

Pyle called sharply for binoculars, which were immediately smacked into his grip by a junior officer. Raising the high-tech lenses to his eyes, he increased the magnification to maximum and scoured the sunlit badlands to the south. Through a haze of uprooted sand and dirt, he glimpsed the distant outline of another enormous creature making its way across the desert.

They were too late, he realized. A second MUTO had hatched.

And it was headed straight for Las Vegas.

What happened in Vegas now tended to end up on the internet, but Sin City was still going strong. Unconcerned or unaware of the disaster in Hawaii, eager gamblers packed the floor of one of the Strip’s many lavish casinos. Rows of men and women sat at slot machines, feeding their salaries to the one-armed bandits. Dice rolled across green felt tabletops to the accompaniment of fervent groans, cheers, and prayers. People gathered around the blackjack and poker tables, spilling their drinks onto the garish carpet. Crystal chandeliers and plenty of neon added to the sensory overload. A color TV, mounted on a wall by the bar, displayed handheld camera footage of the winged MUTO, but was going largely ignored. A skeptical retiree, scowling up at the screen, muttered that the whole thing was a hoax “like global warming,” but nobody paid any attention to her. Honolulu was very far away and, anyway, the monsters were somebody else’s problem.