Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

The order had been given to deploy nuclear arms.

“The president, sir?” Hampton asked finally, compelled to confirm the awful truth.

Stenz nodded. His taciturn face had gone pale. Visibly distressed, he seemed unable to speak for the moment.

Serizawa could not keep silent. “Please don’t do this, Admiral.”

Stenz regarded the troubled scientist thoughtfully. A pained expression hinted at the admiral’s inner conflict.

“Do you have children, doctor?” the admiral said quietly, in a reflective tone. “My father was an ensign on the USS Indianapolis , the cruiser that helped transport the Bomb in ’45.”

Serizawa stiffened, but said nothing.

“He was always very proud of his contribution,” the admiral continued, “but all my life he could never talk about the War.” Anguished eyes met Serizawa’s. “Doctor, I’m a father, too. And I’m sacrificing lives every minute just trying to steer one of these things clear of population centers. There are two more on the way—”

On the map table, dotted lines predicted the three monsters’ probable collision courses. As the lines redrew themselves yet again, Serizawa saw that they were still converging on the coast of North America.

San Francisco Bay, to be exact.

“That’s seven million lives,” Stenz said hoarsely. He pleaded with Serizawa. “So please, just tell me. Will it work? Can they be killed?”

Serizawa did not envy the admiral his dilemma or the awful responsibility that had fallen upon him. He weighed Stenz’s questions carefully and tried to answer as honestly as he could.

“A direct hit?”

“We’re talking dialable yield,” Hampton stressed, joining the discussion. “Megatons, not kilotons. Nothing can survive that blast. Makes the bomb from ’54 look like a firecracker.”

Ah, yes , Serizawa thought ruefully. Progress.

“Will it work, Doctor?” Stenz asked again.

“It could,” the scientist conceded. “But what then?” He indicated the monitors tracking Godzilla. “What if he’s been down there all this time? With no interest in our world, but a part of it, a part of the balance. If we kill him, there’s no telling what may come.”

Stenz listened intently. “Yes? Go on.”

“The MUTOs are stronger in a pair, but maybe not enough. He could defeat them.”

“You’re suggesting we let them meet and duke it out?” the admiral asked, sounding dubious. “Then what? Just hope the big one wins and swims back where he came from? And if he loses, are you willing to bet more lives on that?”

Serizawa wasn’t certain. He was fully aware of how reckless his proposal must sound, as well as the awesome gravity of the decision before them. He considered all the human lives hanging in the balance. At least seven million, as Stenz had observed, and perhaps billions more. Was he truly prepared to trust humanity’s future to a legendary monster?

And ask Stenz to do the same?

He shook his head sadly. “I can only bet my own.”

Stenz nodded, appreciating the scientist’s candor.

“Me, too, Doctor,” he said regretfully. No doubt he had been hoping for a viable alternative to the hellish course of action before him. “That’s why I have no choice.” He turned away from Serizawa to address Martinez. “Execute our evacuation contingencies for San Francisco Bay. And find me a detonation site at least twenty miles from shore. If these things are attracted to our bombs, let’s draw them out and finish this.”

Serizawa wondered if that was truly possible.

Night had fallen on the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains as the train skirted along high wooded ridges. Darkness cloaked the wilderness through which the tracks ran, but evidence of the female MUTO’s destructive migration could still be seen around every curve. Ford and his fellow soldiers spied broken bridges, flattened trees, and suspiciously recent rockslides. The roar of the locomotive drowned out the usual nocturnal sounds you might expect to hear from the woods at this time of night, but Ford suspected that any local wildlife had long since fled from the monstrous invader. As he understood it, the train’s route took it straight through “the heart of darkness”— right past the new MUTO. This was a calculated risk, to say the least, but there had been no quicker overland route.

No wonder he hadn’t seen a single deer or owl yet.

Tre and the other heavily armed soldiers were on high alert. As the train rolled toward a lonely mountain pass, the nerve-jangling din of battle could be heard up ahead, just beyond the next ridge. Tracer fire lit up the night sky. Ford glimpsed brilliant laser dazzlers and felt the thrum of high-tech sonic weapons. Judging from the distant lights and racket, the train was approaching the “front line” of the conflict, which was still going strong. Even with everything the armed forces were dishing out, the MUTO was obviously not down for the count.

What was it going to take to stop these things?

A loud whoosh startled Ford as a fiery red explosion flared above the pass. Air brakes squealed and the train came to a halt right before the entrance to a narrow railway tunnel bored into the granite face of the mountain. The sudden stop threw Ford and other soldiers off-balance, and even the multi-ton missiles shifted unnervingly, if only for a moment.

A little warning would have been nice , Ford thought, although he couldn’t blame the locomotive engineer for hitting the brakes. That explosion had looked way too big, too close. Who knew what was waiting for the train on the other side of that tunnel? Were there even any tracks left?

Master Sergeant Waltz hopped down from the locomotive onto the gravel beside the train. He called out to Tre, who was stationed on the missile car directly behind the locomotive.

“Sergeant, I need you down here… now.”

Tre gulped and looked to Ford for sympathy. Aw, shit was written all over his face.

The soldier did his duty, however, and quickly joined Waltz down on the ground. A light fog blanketed the earth. Thick groves of pines and sequoias hemmed in the tracks on both sides, while the tunnel entrance ahead was as black as outer space. Ford looked on as Tre donned a large backpack-mounted radio, which Waltz attempted to employ.

“Snake Eyes, this is Bravo,” the master sergeant said into the radio. He fiddled impatiently with the knobs. “What’s the status at phase line red? Are the tracks clear, over?”

Static growled from the other end of the transmission, along with background noise from a heated battle. Nonstop explosions and shouting crackled from the radio.

“Say again?” a voice answered, barely audible through the interference. “You’re breaking up.”

More soldiers disembarked from the train. They gathered around the radio, frowning. This was not sounding good, for themselves or their mission. Had they reached the end of the line?

Ford was feeling an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Hopping down from the missile car, he found himself drawn to the pitch-black tunnel entrance ahead. A flashlight was attached to the barrel of his M4 automatic rifle. For a second, he felt as though he was back on that monorail train in Honolulu, with the original MUTO waiting just around the bend.

The voice from the radio grew louder and more agitated, punctuated by bursts of static:

“… not… time… peat… now! Go, GO NOW!”

An agonized scream came over the radio, followed by a brutal crunching noise. The voice went silent; only static issued from the radio. Waltz and the others stiffened, fearing that they had just heard a comrade die in battle. Tre crossed himself.