Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

Or at least it had been.

A brigade of firefighters stomped through the suite, searching for survivors. The hotel’s entire façade had been ripped away, so that the far wall facing Las Vegas Boulevard no longer existed. Smoke and wind blew in from outside. Emergency helicopters buzzed loudly through the sky. The exhausted firefighters paused before the gaping hole where the wall and picture windows had been. They gazed out in shock and awe at the apocalyptic vista below.

A deep chasm cut across the famed Vegas Strip, where the claws of an enormous beast had gouged the street and sidewalks all the way down to the bedrock. Thousands of displaced and traumatized tourists and casino employees staggered amidst the shattered pavement, while an army of first responders was overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. Water gushed from ruptured pipes. Flames erupted from the ruins of the Strip’s gaudy casinos, hotels, and attractions. New York-New York had been reduced to splinters, its faux Statue of Liberty defaced, its replica Empire State Building obliterated. Across the way, on the other side of Tropicana, the mock medieval turrets and battlements of Excalibur had been torn down by a genuine monster, who had wreaked havoc all along the ravaged boulevard. A half-scale copy of the Eiffel Tower had been snapped in two. Mountains of rubble filled the Venetian’s canals. The Luxor’s great pyramid and matching sphinx were history. It was as though the MUTO was symbolically laying waste to the entire world.

It felt like a prophecy.

The Saratoga was speeding across the Pacific, making thirty knots, but the crisis had obviously reached America before the carrier and its attached strike group could. In the briefing room, video feeds captured shocking views of the Las Vegas strip being torn apart by the second MUTO, the one that had just broken loose from the Yucca Mountain facility. Soldiers and scientists crowded before the monitors, gaping at this latest threat. Smoke and static obscured the video feeds, making it difficult at first to compare the new MUTO to the immense winged arthropod that had hatched from the cocoon in Japan, but Serizawa managed to make out its appearance.

Instead of six legs plus a pair of wings, the new MUTO had eight limbs in total: two sturdy hind legs, similar to those on the first creature, two sets of elongated middle limbs, and two smaller forearms on its upper thorax. Like the earlier organism, the creature was a chimera that defied ready classification, but, if pressed, Serizawa would have labeled it some manner of gigantic semi-arthropod. Its dark, iridescent exoskeleton, composed of a thick, chitinous material, displayed shades of blue and red. Its backwards-jointed hind legs rested on two squat claws, but its upper limbs ended in hooked talons. A flat, anvil-shaped head boasted glittering red eyes and beak-like jaws.

“You’re telling me this is a female?” Admiral Stenz asked. “Which means these things can procreate?”

“I’m afraid so,” Serizawa said. Sexual dimorphism would explain why two radically different creatures had hatched from identical egg sacs. Such gender-based variation within a single species was not uncommon in nature. “They’ve been communicating.”

Just as Joe Brody tried to warn us , he thought.

“The female remained completely dormant until the male matured,” Graham explained.

“And if they mate?” Stenz asked worriedly. “After that, then what?”

Serizawa did not mince words. “There won’t be an after.”

Stenz didn’t need it spelled out for him. The admiral was no biologist, but he could grasp the dire implications of the creatures reproducing. Two MUTOs, plus Godzilla, were bad enough, but if they started breeding…

“Let’s put all options on the table,” Stenz said.

Hampton nodded. “Our analysts have drawn up a nuclear option, sir.”

“Nuclear?” Graham reacted in shock. “You can’t be serious. They’re attracted to radiation.”

“Exactly,” Hampton said. “We get them close and kill them with a blast.” He called their attention to the map table, where the two MUTOs were converging toward the western seaboard, with Godzilla in pursuit. Current projections suggested that their ultimate rendezvous was San Francisco. “Their EMPs make remote targeting impossible. But if we rig a warhead with a shielded timer, put it on a boat, and send it twenty miles out… the radiation lures the MUTOs, the MUTOs lure Godzilla, and we detonate with little risk to the city.”

Serizawa said nothing, but his expression darkened. He took out his pocket watch and twisted the stem, an old habit that utterly failed to reassure him. To the contrary, it only increased his apprehension and dismay.

“That’s assuming everything goes perfectly,” Graham said, still skeptical of Hampton’s alarming nuclear scenario. “But if it doesn’t?”

“If you have another answer, Doctor,” Stenz said, “I’m all ears. But conventional arms are only slowing these things down… at best.” He weighed his options before reaching a decision. “We’ll need presidential approval.” He turned to Hampton. “In the meantime, get the warheads prepped and moving to the coast.”

Graham looked on speechlessly, visibly aghast, as Hampton hurried to carry out his assignment. With the decision made, the other scientists and soldiers filed out of the briefing room to get back to their respective stations. Graham departed as well, but Serizawa lingered behind, still toying with the antique watch. Within minutes, only Serizawa and the admiral were left in the cabin.

“You look like you have an opinion on this,” Stenz said.

Serizawa placed the watch on the meeting table and slid it over to Stenz, who picked it up. The admiral’s puzzled expression made it clear that he wasn’t sure where this was going. He examined the watch.

“It’s stopped,” he noted.

“Yes,” Serizawa said. “At 8:15 A.M.”

A look of understanding came over Stenz’s face. “8:15 A.M. August 6, 1945?”

“Just outside Hiroshima,” Serizawa said.

Stenz handed the watch back. He seemed uncertain how to respond. “Quite the collector’s piece.”

“It was my father’s.”

And with that, Serizawa exited the room.

The female MUTO’s trail of destruction was visible from the air. Acres of American farmland had been devastated by the creature’s passage, the gentle geometry of patterned fields left brutalized in the monster’s wake. Crushed barns and silos were ground into the clawed earth. Anxious farm animals roamed among the ruins of scattered family farms. Nor were the ensuing small towns and suburbs spared. Highways were flattened. Entire neighborhoods and housing developments were razed to their foundations, their former residents fleeing in panic just ahead of the destruction. The wreckage of abandoned malls and shopping centers, schools and churches, joined a seemingly endless disaster zone that stretched west for as far as the eye could see.

Ford was shaken by what he’d seen from the transport plane. Even with everything he’d witnessed overseas, this struck far too close to home. It felt as though the nightmare that had begun for him in Janjira fifteen years ago was still stalking his family — and the country he’d pledged to defend. And now there were three monsters?

“Okay, everybody off!” the loadmaster ordered. “This is as far as we can fly.”

The C-17 had touched down on an evacuated airstrip somewhere east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The rear doors of the plane opened and the troops disembarked into the harsh sunlight. After being cooped up in the hold of the Globemaster for hours, Ford’s eyes needed a moment to adjust.