Greg Cox - Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization

With a nuclear warhead added to the mix.

Godzilla clashed with the female in the blazing ruins of the Financial District. Sky-high smoke and flames provided an apocalyptic backdrop to their savage combat, which was being fought furiously amidst the demolished skyscrapers. Godzilla snapped and slashed at the female, who locked her jaws onto his scaly shoulder. The mighty saurian towered at least fifty feet above the vicious, multi-legged parasite and was significantly heavier and stronger as well, but female did not back off. Grimacing in pain, Godzilla tore himself free from the MUTO’s fangs and spun away from her. His spiked tail whipped around to lash the female, who was sent tumbling down Broadway, carving out another swath of destruction. Her flailing arms and legs smashed through buildings large and small. Flames and explosions erupted in her wake.

Sensing victory, Godzilla closed in for the kill. The desperate female hurriedly righted herself and swung one of her clawed middle arms at Godzilla, but he dodged the attack and charged forward to pin her against a high-rise office building. The MUTO thrashed and screeched as Godzilla pummeled her with his fists and snapped at her twisting head and thorax. His jaws were going for her skull when the entire building suddenly collapsed under the force of the struggle. A mountain of sundered steel and concrete caved in on thefemale, burying her beneath the debris.

Snarling, Godzilla loomed above his fallen foe. He raised his right foot over the female, preparing to squash her into the ground, when the male came swooping down from the sky to defend his mate. The winged MUTO barreled into Godzilla, knocking him off his feet. Locked in combat, the monsters rolled across the district, grinding landmark buildings into dust. Their growls and screeches were matched by the rumble of disintegrating hotels, banks, and museums.

The earth shook all the way up to Chinatown.

The seismic shocks were coming fast and furious, causing the entire cavern to tremble and heaps of debris to shift in an unsettling manner, but Ford and the other soldiers redoubled their efforts to liberate the ticking warhead from the hard, resin-like substance it was encased in. They had already managed to break the weapon loose from the ceiling and lower it to the floor of the cavern; now they were chipping away at the sticky secretion with the butts of their rifles. Concentrating on the tip of the re-entry vehicle, they managed to expose enough of the casing that, grunting with effort, they could begin to pry off the nose cone.

Here it comes , Ford thought. Almost there…

To his surprise, the remaining secretion began to pulse with light. Did we trigger that with our hammering , Ford wondered, or was it the tremors ? The cool effulgence grew in intensity and began to spread throughout the cavern. The soldiers backed away momentarily, caught off-guard by the unexpected bioluminescence. The glow rippled upward to light up the entire cavern. Ford glanced at the ceiling, where the wavering light now appeared to be concentrated, and gasped in shock.

No longer hidden in darkness, thousands of bulging egg sacs hung from the ceiling, which was positively encrusted with the pulsing organisms. Ford recalled the photos Serizawa had shown him upon the Saratoga as well as the egg he had briefly glimpsed on the underside of the female MUTO in the mountains. As nearly as he could tell, these new sacs were identical to the ones found in the Philippines fifteen years ago. The ones that had eventually spawned the two MUTOs.

They’ve already mated , he realized, and this is their nest.

The fertilized eggs continued to flash, as though reacting to their food source being disturbed. Something had to be done about the eggs, Ford knew, but first they needed to deal with the warhead or nothing else mattered.

The nose cone came loose, clattering onto the floor of the nest. The soldiers huddled around the exposed warhead and detonator. Flashlight beams penetrated the small window above the timing mechanism. The intricate gears continued to turn and engage, ticking down to Armageddon. Moving carefully, despite the urgency of the situation, the men took hold of the warhead by a set of metal handholds and eased it out of the cone-shaped reentry vehicle.

Easy does it , Ford thought.

Godzilla was outnumbered two to one. Acting in tandem, the MUTOs circled their relentless foe, who was undaunted by the odds against him. His eyes narrowed in anticipation of the parasites’ attack. His nostrils flared and he bared his fangs. He roared defiantly, challenging the MUTOs. He had not come all this way to shrink from the battle.

The MUTOs were prey. Dangerous prey, but prey regardless. They had to be destroyed.

Howling in unison, the MUTOs pounced on him from above and below.

A tremor shook the subway platform, causing dust and debris to rain down from the ceiling. Trapped underground, while giant monsters overran the city above, Elle and throng of other frightened people backed away fearfully from the thunderous impact. A baby cried in the arms of a young couple who huddled together fearfully, protecting the child with their own bodies.

Alone and scared, Elle didn’t know whether to envy them for being together or to be thankful that Sam was hopefully far from the embattled city by now. Probably a little bit of both.

She squinted at her phone. There were no new messages from Ford, not that she was likely to get a signal down here. She hoped to God that he was safe and on his way to find her. But would there still be a city left by the time he got here? It sounded like armies were clashing up above.

The lights flickered overhead and her phone died. People gasped and looked up in alarm as the lights sputtered and died, throwing them all into the dark. Panicked people screamed. Blackness swallowed them, so that all that was left was fear — and the earth-shaking sound of monsters destroying the city.

Be careful, Ford , she thought. Wherever you are.

The soldiers lowered the heavy warhead onto the floor of the nest. Divorced from its massive rocket boosters, the warhead was still at least ten feet long and five across. On closer inspection, it was obvious that the casing had been badly damaged during its travails. Bennett tried to pry open the access panel to the timer, but the metal was warped and refused to budge. Quinn and a few of the others added their strength to his, but it was no use. The latch was jammed.

“It’s sealed shut,” Bennett said. “We need time to get this open!”

“We don’t have time,” another soldier objected. “Let’s haul it out of here!”

Ford shoved his way to the front of the huddle and knelt down beside the warhead. He extracted a kit from a Velcro pocket on his flight suit. He unsealed the kit to expose a set of intricate tools, including screw drivers, crimpers, surgical scissors, forceps, tweezers, and a dental mirror. They were similar to the tools he had used to disarm any number of explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had never used them on a nuclear bomb before, but…

“I can do it!” he insisted. “Just give me some light!”

Flashlight beams converged on the latch, providing a steady white light that Ford vastly preferred to the rippling glow of the agitated egg sacs. He tried to tune out the pulsing bioluminescence, and the rumble of the warring monsters, to concentrate on the task at hand. The warhead was the primary threat now. Everything else, even Godzilla, was secondary.

I can do this , he thought. I have to do this.