Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

“It’s okay,” she said, corralling Sam and taking his hand. “C’mon, Sammy.”

Laura led the boy up into the bus, where the driver was getting visibly impatient behind the wheel. She paused at the top of the steps to look back at Elle, who doing her best not to fall apart until the bus left. She didn’t want Sam to see how scared she was.

“I’ll keep him safe, Elle,” Laura said.

Elle knew she could count on Laura to keep her promise. Even so, as the door slid shut and the bus began to drive off, carrying Sam away, it took all of Elle’s strength and resolve not to change her mind and chase after the bus, screaming and shouting for it turn around and bring her boy back to her. He was only four years old. He needed his mother.

But he needed to get away, too. Before the monsters came.

Rain began to drizzle from the sky as she watched the bus join the procession heading for the Bridge. She waited, frozen in place, until she couldn’t see Sam’s bus anymore.

Then she turned and headed back to work.

At least Sam will be safe , she thought. If any of us are.

The tac-ops command center occupied a large state-of-the-art mobile trailer that had been tricked out with sophisticated communications and monitoring equipment. Networked screens lined the interior of the trailer to provide Admiral Stenz and his staff with real-time data, video, and satellite feeds. Large windows at the rear of the trailer offered a direct view of the bay and San Francisco. Analysts and technicians were already at their stations as Stenz strode into the trailer.

“Sit rep!” he demanded. “Where are our targets?”

“The male was spotted thirty miles west,” a civilian analyst reported, “off the Farallon Islands.”

“We’re showing seismic activity to the east, near Liver-more,” Martinez added. “Should be the female, closing in.”

Stenz nodded. “And the big one?”

The analysts shook their heads. The admiral glanced at the sonar screens from the ships offshore. They remained blank.

“Last contact was five hours ago,” Martinez said, “maintaining a bearing of zero-five-three degrees and descending past ten thousand feet. Nothing since.”

Five hours , Stenz thought. That was more than enough time for the submerged leviathan to reach the strait leading into the bay. Frowning, he turned his attention to another bank of monitors, where live satellite and CCTV feeds showed the Golden Gate Bridge. The outbound lanes, leading away from the city, were jammed bumper-to-bumper with school buses packed with kids. Damn it. Why aren’t those children to safety yet?

“There are still buses on that bridge,” he said. “Deploy everything we have. If they come at the bay, at least we’ll slow them down.”

But for how long?

“Everyone stay in your seats!” the bus driver hollered from behind the wheel. He honked his horn and shouted impatiently at the long line of buses in front of them on the bridge. “Come on, what’s the holdup?”

Sam’s bus, the last in the procession, was barely moving. Restless kids, most of them older than him, were getting loud and rowdy. Younger children were crying or refusing to stay in their seats, while the teenagers, who were working way too hard to hide how scared they were, joked and roughhoused with each other. Sam sat huddled in the back, wanting his mother, but trying to be brave. He peered out of the rain-streaked windows at the huge steel cables of the bridge and the foggy waters of the bay. Mommy’s friend Laura was up near the front of the bus, struggling to maintain order. Sam wasn’t entirely sure where the bus was taking them, but he hoped they got there soon — and that Mommy would come get him as soon as she could.

Horns blasted loudly across the bridge, but the caravan of buses remained snarled in traffic. The vehicles crept forward, their drivers jostling for inches. Inside Sam’s bus, somebody started throwing spit wads at the other kids. A paper airplane flew by Sam’s head. A teenager complained that he was starving. Sam tried to ignore the ruckus. He wished everybody would just calm down.

The TV had said a monster was coming. A monster named Godzilla.

The roadway started to rumble beneath them and everyone got very quiet very fast. It felt a little like an earthquake, but then Sam spotted a convoy of army tanks and Stryker vehicles rolling onto the bridge’s vacant inbound lanes. The intimidating armored vehicles took up defensive positions on the bridge. Their big guns swiveled to face the ocean, which was hidden from view by a thick bank of fog. Sam remembered the toy soldiers and tanks he’d played with on the floor at home.

The dinosaur always wins , he remembered.

Sam gazed out the window, both scared and excited to see what the guns were aiming for. Drizzle streaked the windows, making them harder to see through. He wished there was some way he could wipe them clean from the inside. He pressed his nose up against the window.

THWACK!

Without warning, a seagull smacked headfirst into the window, startling Sam, who shrieked in alarm as more and more birds slammed into the bus, leaving bloody smears on the glass. The entire bus started freaking out as a whole flock of panicked gulls came flying inland out of the fog. Squawking loudly, they flapped frantically toward the city, as though desperately trying to escape… what?

He’s coming , Sam realized. The monster from TV.

Eyes wide, he glimpsed a huge shadowy form approaching through the fog and rain.

A rear guard of Navy LCS vessels ringed the entrance to the Golden Gate strait leading to the bay beyond. Sailors manned the ship’s powerful Mark-100 57mm naval guns. The approaching creature had simply dived beneath the earlier blockade further out at sea, but no one knew if he would resort to the same tactic again. This time a confrontation was all but inevitable.

Along with his fellow sailors, Ensign Mark Pierce waited tensely. They understood too well that this was the Navy’s last chance to keep the sea monster from making landfall — and that so far the beast had proved unstoppable.

Here he comes , Pierce thought. God help us all.

Computer-controlled, the fifteen-ton guns pivoted to take aim at the emerging shape as it began to rise high above the water. Peering through the mist, Pierce made out a tall, upright form ridged with jagged spikes or fins. The shape kept rising higher and higher until it towered above the surface of the sea like a newborn volcano. Pierce estimated that it had to be at least two hundred feet tall.

Jesus, I knew this thing was supposed to be big, but…

The shape grew higher and closer with every moment. The guns waited for the creature to fully reveal itself so they could target its head and chest. Great torrents of water cascaded off the sides of the creature until Pierce realized that what he’d assumed must be the head was just the pointed top of a large scaly appendage that swayed ominously back and forth above the water. The horrifying truth hit him like a thunderbolt.

That’s not the monster! That’s just the tip of his tail!

Two nearby ships suddenly keeled up from below, capsizing as the rest of Godzilla’s colossal body rose up from the strait behind them. Violent waves slammed against Pierce’s ship, causing it to pitch sharply. The startled seaman was thrown across the deck. Landing on his back, he stared up in shock at the titanic beast.

Walking upright on two prodigious legs, the giant reptile was nearly four hundred feet tall. His ponderous footsteps echoed through the fog as he waded toward the Golden Gate Bridge.