Chapter 2

“What’s going on?” someone shouted. Bent over a microscope, visor touching the eyepiece, Jill snapped upright as the microscope suddenly rattled in her hands. The table rattled ... everything in the building rattled. She looked around, alarmed.

“Was that an earthquake?”

The door slammed open and a soldier wearing a terrified expression bolted across the room to the radio set. He shoved the attending soldier aside and flipped levers and switches. “Mayday! Mayday! This is Arctic Station One--”

He was cut off by a monstrously violent lurch of the glacier. Cabinets toppled and tables were upended; the overhead fluorescent light fixtures tore loose and crashed to the floor. Jill made a desperate grab at the microscope and missed--it crashed to the floor also, spilling out the glass slide.

“What is going on!” a technician screamed. Jill dodged a wall clock catapulted off a bucking wall and took shelter behind one of the overturned tables, clutching a violently shaking leg. The earthquake continued. Only it wasn’t an earthquake, she realized. The ground jumped beneath her in a series of rhythmic, explosive concussions. She was bounced painfully off the fractured wooden flooring against the adjacent wall. The wall had fractures as well, venting heat into the frigid outside air. Through the largest rupture she witnessed something that made her doubt both her sight and her sanity: Twin rows of immense white teeth, gleaming wetly in the fragile Arctic sunlight.

“Oh, my God!” she screamed.

And then, with terrific force, something struck the side of the building, collapsing the wall, and Jill Llewellyn saw nothing more.

TAKI ISLANDS - NORTHEAST OF JAPAN

Typhoon Kumiko, the fifth and largest storm of the season, bore down on the remote Pacific island with heavy wind and driving, sheeting rain. Waves lashed Taki’s fragile docks; anything not battened down was fair game for the enormous wind. A villager, a fisherman name Junji, stood clutching one of his porch posts and watched the palm trees bend nearly horizontal. Shingles from his neighbor’s huts flew by. It was not the worst storm he had ever endured, but it was a doozy. He feared for his boat, if not his life.

“Junji!” his agitated wife cried from the doorway. “Come inside.”

He impatiently waved her off. He had seen something in the surging water of the harbor, something huge, something he couldn’t quite make out. Had it been a boat? So big? Maybe a capsized cruise liner? My God if that were the case ... all those helpless passengers.

He cupped his left hand over his eyes and stared hard into the rain. Something moved out there all right, something enormous--but it wasn’t a capsized boat. He took a step down.

“Junji, no!”

“I have to go look!” he yelled. “Something is moving toward the docks. My boat is down there!”

“No!” his wife cried again. “You’ll be blown away!”

Again, he waved her away. “I have to go, old woman. Get inside and close the door. Do it now!”

The woman retreated into the house but did not close the door. Instead, she stood at the jamb, watching apprehensively after her retreating husband because she too, had seen something in the water. Something unnerving.

The old fisherman made his way slowly down the path to the docks, grasping at fence posts, mailboxes, trees ... anything offering purchase against the driving rain. Wind whipped his clothing so hard it hurt. He was hard-pressed to remember a storm this intense, certainly not since his childhood. He was all too aware that islanders--fishermen included--disappeared in storms like this. Sometimes forever.

A terrible cracking, splintering noise sounded ahead. The old man jumped in his tracks and grabbed a nearby signpost for support. He stared past the stacked lobster pots and drums of oil beside the wharf. He saw-or thought he saw--a movement like the whip of a long tail above the one-story building. That had to be his imagination. A sailing tree, maybe, uprooted by the monstrous wind? He set off again, scanning the air for threats, glancing back at the fragile, soon to be extinct village, knowing on some subconscious level that the world was about to end.

“ROOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRR!”

Junji clapped his hands over his ears. It was the loudest sound the old man had ever heard. It reverberated throughout the harbor, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The flash of an exploding transformer backlit something huge and dark with jagged dorsal fins in the water. The creature was impossibly tall, even bent forward to maul a fishing boat--his boat! -with huge claws that demolished it to splinters. The old man screamed, as much in rage as in terror as a huge taloned foot lifted and then crashed down on the dock. A dozen more boats were turned into scrap wood. Despite his terror, Junji got to his feet and charged down the path, running onto the wharf.

“Junji! Junji, no!”

The old man ignored his wife’s agonized screams, heard even over the rage of the storm. The huge creature stood shin-deep in the remnants of the dock and the pulverized fishing boats; it had to be two-hundred and fifty feet tall, he thought--easily the tallest object on the island. Junji crossed himself in the Sign of the Cross.

“ROOOOOAAAAAAAARRRRRR!” the creature bellowed again.

The creature took an earth-shaking step toward the wharf. The stacked lobsterpots and the oil drums all leapt a foot off the ground--as did Junji--and crashed down in disarray. The lobsterpots broke apart and tumbled in all directions; two of the oil drums lost their lids and deposited 40-gallon loads of thick diesel fuel into the water.

Too terrified now to move, Junji clung to the road like a spider, fingers attempting to penetrate the asphalt. He watched the creature’s huge, taloned right foot crash down onto the end of the wharf, destroying it completely, and then rip upward through the inboard decking and tear the corner off the long building. The whole two-story structure shuddered wildly, then came apart like a collapsing deck of cards as the foot plunged down in its middle. Plywood roofing remains, shattered two by fours from the walls rained down all around the old man. The huge right foot raised again, twenty-feet high into the air, thirty feet, until it hovered directly over the prostrate fisherman... “Noooooooo!” he screamed.

The foot came down with a mind-shattering concussion and then raised again as the creature moved on. Junji cowered on the shattered ground, hands over his head, still screaming. He didn’t understand that he was still alive until two more footfalls bounced him into the deep furrow alongside imprinted by the creature’s titanic weight. He gazed over the rim in shocked disbelief, ducked again as the long, thick tail sailed overhead. He had been inexplicably spared, he realized, but his torment wasn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.

“Noooooo!” he screamed again. Struggling erect, he scrambled from the deep indentation and took off in pursuit of the monster, which had reached the village outskirts and stood looking about. The ferociously toothed jaw slowly opened and closed; its snout seemed to test the air for scent. It stood upright like a man in a monster suit, with its upper body supported atop hugely muscled thighs, the immense tail swinging in long, slow arcs. The creature rumbled as it breathed, saliva dripping from the immense jaws. To the old man it seemed to be the immense cousin of the T-rex he had seen in a recent Hollywood movie, only ten times larger. One hundred times. And it had a name.

“Gojira,” the old man muttered. “It cannot be.” He took off running through the storm.

The creature had fixed on Junji’s wife, cowering in the doorway of their home. It inspected her as a gardener might inspect an unexpected flower erupting in his garden. The huge jaws continued to open and close, but it made no attempt to pluck her up for a more thorough inspection. Instead, it seemed to consider her a curiosity rather than a possible bit of snack food. It lost interest in her entirely when pandemonium erupted in the village.

“Get back in the house!” Junji screamed. His cry was one of many, however, as neighbors and people farther back in the village discovered their newest resident and began to panic. Surprised by the sudden appearance of dozens of running, screaming islanders, Gojira stepped back in momentary confusion, and then roared an answering bellow. It turned away and trundled off toward a nearby stand of trees, a small outcrop of the much thicker, wider forest that covered the island. Its swinging tail shattered the closest dozen huts and houses.

Junji fell to his knees in agonized disbelief. Nothing remained of his hut but four splintered pilings and one corner of the bamboo flooring. Everything else was gone, his wife included. He watched in growing rage as the creature approached the tree line, bending to uproot trees in one savage sweep of its jaws. It stood upright, gulping down dinner, two of Junji’s hapless neighbors, having sought shelter in the trees, going down the creature’s gullet along with it. He began to scream blasphemies at the creature and wave his fists.

Suddenly, as though finally aware of the destruction he’d wrought, Gojira turned to observe the remainder of the village and the old man screaming at him from a distance. It gave a glance at the still-fleeing villagers, and then suddenly looked skyward. It seemed almost to consider the scudding clouds over its head, and then, unexpectedly, turned from the tree line and headed back toward the nearly destroyed harbor.

“May God damn you to hell with all your brethren!” Junji screamed.

Gojira shot the old man a curious glance. Then it threw a more focused glance back over its shoulder, toward the spot in the sky that had gotten its attention moments before. Looking away again, the creature shook its massive head, as though telling itself to get a grip, and then continued toward the wind-savaged water below.

Junji halted his screaming. Immense in size and power the creature might be, but it was also unexpectedly cautious, aware the overcast might conceal a possible enemy. As though any creature on God’s green Earth could challenge a monster from Hell, Junji thought dismally. He shuffled half-a-dozen more uncertain steps toward the harbor, and then spun about and began a headlong flight toward the village as the Gojira’s immense tail swept sideways through the water, raising a tsunami twenty feet high. The wave pounded up the beach and broke with violent force just as Junji reached the remains of his hut and dove for one of the shattered pilings. He hung on for dear life as water swept by, and then slowly retreated again, carrying away flotsam.

Out in the harbor, bellowing one final roar, the creature which had just left a calling card for an unprepared world, sank beneath the waves, and was gone.

MORI OGAI INSTITUTE OF CARE - ONE YEAR LATER

On a bluff high above the sea, a tall man with watchful eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses exited a black Toyota Corolla and inspected the distant horizon. Behind him stood an ornate, wrought iron gate set into a tall, ivy-overgrown stone wall. The barrier bordered the road either side of where he stood. A younger man who had been doing the driving, exited the car and joined him. Aaron Vaught held a briefcase in his hand, while his younger companion carried a folded map.

“Looks like this is it,” Marty Kenoshita said. Though of Japanese descent, he spoke perfect American English.

Vaught spotted an unobtrusive sign mounted beside the gate. Below the Japanese lettering it read: Mori Ogai Institute of Care. Visitation by Appointment Only. “I guess so,” he agreed, inspecting the high wall. It paralleled the road for fifty yards, before bearing off to surround the large property.

“Shall we knock?” Marty asked.

Vaught laughed. Laying his briefcase atop the car’s hood, he went to the passengers-side rear door and from the floorboard inside withdrew a heavy black sheet of rubber matting. “We’re going over the top,” he said.

Blinking, Marty looked around. “They don’t have guards here?”

“Probably,” Vaught allowed. “But we’re still going in.”

“Oh, great. Human flies.”

Vaught mounted the Toyota’s fender and hefted the rubber mat over the wall. As he’d expected, the wall was topped by broken glass. Beyond lay a manicured teagarden, a village of small cottages, and a koi pond beneath a lovely, if artificial waterfall. What betrayed the illusion of a large secluded Japanese health spa was the utilitarian-looking central building that Aaron knew to be the treatment center--and the barred windows and doors on the otherwise lovely cottages.

“Give me a hand, Marty,” he said.

Kenoshita moved forward, stood between the Toyota’s fender and the wall. He cupped his hands, interlacing his fingers. “Do I get hazard pay for this, boss?”

“You get to stay my assistant,” Aaron replied, putting his left shoe into Marty’s hands.

Marty grunted under the weight. “Fringe benefits. Just gotta love ‘em.”

“Stop your complaining and lift.”

Marty hefted his boss high enough for Aaron to get a leg over the wall and into a sitting position. Then Marty climbed onto the Toyota’s fender, handed up the briefcase, took Aaron’s proffered hand, and pulled himself up beside him. “They’re gonna lock us up,” he said.

“Couldn’t ask for a better place, could you, though. Anyway, look.” He pointed to where the stone wall ended at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea. A solitary figure sat cross-legged there, rocking slowly back and forth; he appeared to be chanting.

“That’s not him,” Marty said.

“I think it is,” Aaron countered.

Carefully, he, then Marty, dropped to the ground. Setting off, side by side toward the distant figure, Marty observed: “Maybe he is crazy, like they say.”

Aaron shook his head. “If you wanted to hide someone, keep them away from the press, what better place than this?”

“And you call me paranoid?”

Arriving at the seated figure, the two men hung back a respectful distance and waited for their presence to be acknowledged. Marty had cautioned Aaron on this in the car. “If he wants to talk to us, he’ll let us know. Otherwise, he’ll just ignore us. Either way, we’re guests, so speaking first would be considered rude.”

“What if he ignores us?” Aaron had asked.

“Then we go away.”

The men waited. Finally, the old man stopped his soft chanting and raised his head. Aaron took this as a signal and moved forward.

“Mr. Tange? My name is Aaron Vaught, and this is Marty Kenoshita. We’re from the United States, sir. We’ve come a long way to see you, Mr. Tange.”

Marty translated his words. Junji nodded and signed. He had aged a dozen years in the twelve months since the killer typhoon, going completely white. The flesh of his face looked stretched across bone; his eyes were sunken. The only color left in his face was the startling blue of his eyes. He was unique among Japanese for that; what his blue eyes had beheld a year before had elevated him to lofty and unrivaled prominence ... and to forced non-existence.

“Mr. Tange, we understand you saw something the authorities insist couldn’t exist,” Aaron said. “Taki Island villagers who survived the storm have been relocated to an island far north of the main island of Honshu. We’ve tried to talk to them, but the authorities refuse to allow anyone access to the survivors. They are completely secluded. Your village was bulldozed to the ground. The island is quarantined. They won’t say why. We came to you because people say you are the only one who really knows what happened on Taki Island. I don’t believe it was storm-surge from the typhoon. Can you help us, Mr. Tange?”

Junji sat looking out to sea. He appeared not to have heard a word.

More softly, Aaron said in fractured Japanese: “They say Junji saw a giant dragon that night. They say the dragon threw a tidal wave with his tail that destroyed the harbor and your village. Junji saw all this, and they locked him up for telling his tale.”

Marty, obviously surprised, gave him a quizzical look.

“I studied before we came. I thought we might need it.”

Marty nodded. He repeated what Aaron had tried to get across. Finally, the old man spoke.

“They say Junji crazy old man. They say storm killed my wife, destroyed the village, wiped out the whole harbor. Junji knows better. Junji not crazy, just old man.” He whispered a word too low for Aaron or Marty to make out. He’d spoken in slightly accented English.

Aaron said, “I don’t think Junji is crazy,” He withdrew from his briefcase a thick, hardbound edition of a book with his picture on the back cover. He handed it to the old man. “I write about things that people see,” he said. “People like you, Junji.”

With a look of bemusement, the old man examined Aaron’s dust jacket likeness, then flipped open the cover. He skimmed the first few pages, and then became intensely interested. Depicted on the page was a winged serpent that dwarfed a medieval castle. Arrows and bolts bounced off its hide. The dragon’s countenance had a look of gleeful anticipation. In script at the bottom of the picture was the legend: Quetzalcoatl: The dragon that sleeps at the heart of the world.

The old man flipped the page and regarded a similar species of winged serpent called the The Midgard Serpent. “Every culture has its myths,” read a caption beneath the picture. “Myths have their basis in fact. The records of every ancient culture record some variation of the winged serpent legend.”

Aaron said, “I wrote The Waking Dragon because I believe in these myths, Junji. I believe that creatures once existed to inspire them.”

Junji eyes locked on an old wood cut of a dragon. The likeness was vaguely similar to that of an Aztec god, both feared and revered by bowing Aztecs at the creature’s feet. They’d piled a huge offering of food atop a four-sided temple. The offering consisted not only of fruit and vegetables, slaughtered cattle, sheep, fish, and poultry, but of human sacrifice--in the person of a naked young maiden, bound to a slab of obsidian. On the adjoining page an Assyrian carving depicted a dragon-like creature locked in mortal combat with a gryphon.

Aaron started to speak, but the old man suddenly leapt to his feet, clutched the book to his chest and hurried off toward the cottages. Aaron and Marty exchanged a startled glance, then hurried off after him.

“Think this means something?” Marty asked.

“We’ll soon find out.”

“Think anyone has found our car?”

“We’ll soon find that out, too.”

In fact, someone had discovered their car.

“They went over.”

A uniformed policeman stood on the fender of the black Toyota. He spoke in heavily accented but serviceable English. Inspecting the vehicle inside and out were two other uniformed policemen, while two Westerners in sharply cut gray suits stood off and watched. One, a heavily built six-footer with a military bearing, with grey, crew cut hair, and a once-too often broken nose, grunted, “Let me see, Okada.”

The officer held up the rubber mat.

“Terrific,” Crew Cut said. He rolled his head, cracking vertebrae in his neck, emphasizing his prize-fighter’s personae. He indicated the wrought iron gate. “Let’s go. Unless you want to go in the same way they did.”

The uniformed officer jumped down and issued an order in Japanese. Then, leaving one officer to guard the car, the small group headed toward the gate.

“We will handle this ourselves,” Okada said harshly.

“Of course,” agreed the American. “We’re strictly here for observation. It’s entirely your show. Right, Harris?”

The second American, a slight man who nonetheless carried himself with an officious bearing, nodded assent. “Entirely your show,” he confirmed. “The U.S. Consulate is indebted to your cooperation, Lieutenant. If American’s weren’t involved, we wouldn’t be here at all. Since they are, just consider us your ambassadorial arm. Peacekeepers, if you will,” he added smoothly, making his partner grin.

Okada, unsure if he had just been insulted or not, frowned at them deeply. Crew Cut covered his mouth with his hand in a fake cough, and then looked over the bluff at the ocean view. If his partner had trouble hiding his own mirth, it didn’t show.

The officer pushed a button inset into an ornate brass panel beside the gate and demanded to be let in.

Junji’s cottage was a one-room lodging, sparsely furnished, in classical Japanese style. A futon rested against one wall; a low table of highly polished redwood sat before a screened off bath. Delicate Japanese prints graced the four walls. A rolled-up reed mat showed this was also Junji’s sleeping quarters.

Junji dropped to his knees in the corner nearest the screened off bath and looked back over his shoulder. “The doctors would take these if they knew,” he said.

From a loosened floorboard he withdrew a sheaf of papers and handed them over to Aaron. All were pencil drawings, dozens of them, all depicting Gojira.

Aaron sucked in breath. “Is this what you saw?” he asked excitedly. “On the island?”

The old man nodded fiercely. “When I was a child, elders of the island told of a monster in stories. From the time before our grandfather’s time, even before that. They spoke of the great monster, ten tree-lengths tall, that came from the sea with great thunder in its walk and with fiery breath. It demanded fish for food and humans if we had no fish. My ancestors fought the great monster, but never won. Always the monster triumphed. Only when the anti-monster came, was Gojira vanquished.”