Chapter 7

UTAH - LAKE APOPKA

Aaron hung on for dear life. The Jeep jounced and rattled and took bone-jarring impacts on its chassis, as it navigated what appeared to be a well thought out and laid down natural obstacle course.

“So, what do you reckon is happening, then?” Fleer asked calmly.

Aaron thought the man could just as easily have been driving down the interstate. He yelled over the crunching tires and the laboring engine. “The lights in the sky may have been an incoming meteorite. Dropping through the atmosphere it builds up tremendous friction--trading off velocity for heat. The surface temperature can rise to over a thousand degrees centigrade. If it hits water, the water flashes instantly to steam, creating a massive updraft, sucking in cold air which forms a waterspout.” He pantomimed an impact and the resulting waterspout. “Ten miles away, it rains fish and frogs.”

At that moment, the Jeep crested a rise and laid out below them was Lake Apopka and its environs. The only sign of anything out of the ordinary was a narrow swath of dried plant matter ringing the shore and a few toppled trees close to the waterline. Other than that, it could have been any other small lake in the wilderness.

Fleer surveyed the scene. “Big explosion, you say?”

Aaron shook his head. “If the impactor was small enough, most of the explosive force would have been dissipated by the flash off.” He indicated the ring of dried matter laying on the shore. “That could be the result of a bottom surge, ripping up the plant life as it went. Can we go in there?” He pointed to the middle of the lake.

“Sure, we can. But why?”

“If the meteorite made it to the surface, it survived. Most of it anyway. What I’m looking for must be down there.”

Fleer gazed at the lake speculatively, then put the Jeep in gear and rattled and jounced down the hillside to the edge of the water. He got out and hauled a silver tank with red chevrons out of the back, then one with yellow barber-pole banding. “There’s a jump in price from wilderness guide to dive leader, you know,” he said, grinning broadly. “Big jump.”

FORT TUSCARORA - MASSACHUSETTS - BASE HOSPITAL

Jill knew that time was short. She leaned in close to the creature, shook its shoulder to reawaken it, then whispered close to its right: “Marty--this ... creature you are becoming. Where did it come from?”

Marty made a gesture reminiscent of swallowing; another rumble emanated from deep in its chest, and he struggled out the words: “Ancient civilization. Even older than the invaders. Were here when the Earth had three moons ... gone now.” Suddenly, the creature was speaking again in its harsh rasp: “We needed words ... needed to warn you ... did not know what life-form would take ... left interface agent behind to communicate with you.”

Behind Jill, the surgeon said in an awed, hushed voice, “They created a virus that would reprogram DNA ... and transfer mitochondrial RNA out of the cell structure and use it to power the transformation.”

“Making one of theirs out of one of ours,” Benedek finished for him.

“Amazing,” the surgeon agreed.

Benedek only grunted.

Marty’s body spasmed violently and Jill threw a desperate glance at the surgeon who, after consulting the cardiograph, shook his head discouragingly. “We’re losing him,” he said. “You better hurry.”

Before Jill could speak, the creature flexed its neck in exactly the way a man would trying to work out a kink, and from the alarming series of violent cracking/popping sounds, Jill realized that’s exactly what it had just done. “Marty?” she said, controlling a shudder. “Can you tell us--what is Godzilla?”

The creature’s voice trembled with effort. “We left it in stasis ... created from dinosaur genetic material. Alien probe would awaken it when it came. Only something ... something awakened it early. Don’t know exactly what ... a rupture of some kind. Now it’s free.”

The creature’s body underwent another violent spasm, its hands clawing at the air above its chest, then at its chest itself as air sucked into the hole of its mouth exhaled again in a plume of rose-tinted, foul-smelling mist; droplets of red-black blood splattered Jill’s chin and her neck and the front of her clean white smock.

Controlling her desire to run away screaming, she asked urgently, “How do we kill it, Marty?”

The thing that was no longer Marty answered: “Gojira will kill it. Before it reproduces.”

“Not the beast,” she said. “How do we kill Godzilla?”

The creature paused in its death-throws and even through its alien visage Jill and the others could make out its look of disbelief. “Kill ... Gojira?” It shook its head violently back and forth, splattering more blood on itself, the bedclothes and on Jill. “Mustn’t kill Gojira,” it said weakly. “Only chance ... set free ... save selves.” Then it lost consciousness and, as Jill grabbed the clawed right hand and clutched it to her chest, the EKG monitoring the creature’s heart stopped issuing its series of staccato beeps and settled into an uninterrupted, flatline tone.

“Crash cart! Code blue!” the surgeon hollered. He pushed Jill roughly aside and began applying chest compressions at the base of the creature’s ribcage. She turned away in sudden nausea as the first compression brought the unmistakable sound of cracking bones. She staggered into Benedek, turned away and rushed out the door into the corridor where she leaned against the wall and listened to the futile attempts to administer life-saving techniques to a thoroughly alien and unresponsive life form. Finally, once the non-alien residents of the room realized how futile this idea was, she wandered numbly out of the ICU and down the corridor toward her own building and--according to the alien being Marty Kenoshita had become, at least--mankind’s only chance of survival.

UTAH - LAKE APOPKA

Aaron and Fleer stood at the edge of the water.

“So, done much diving?” Fleer asked laconically, inspecting first his own, then Aaron’s regulator.

Aaron tested his mouthpiece. “At Club Med once,” he admitted cautiously. “Off the Madagascar coast, wreck-diving in a hundred feet of water.”

Fleer chuckled. “Well, this will be a little different than wreck-diving. In cave diving, you’re going into absolute pitch dark. Only light will be what we bring with us. There are weird currents, sharp rocks--”

“Cave diving?” Aaron interrupted. “There’s a cave down there?”

“I didn’t tell you that?” Fleer pulled on his hood, clipped a safety line, flashlight, slate, and marker pen to his belt. “Just try not to panic. You don’t want to be like the kid who sucked his mouthpiece into his throat trying to get the last cubic centimeter of air.”

Aaron finished securing his tank-harness and putting flippers onto his feet. In the midday sun, the heavy black neoprene wetsuit was like a personal bake oven. He said: “You seem to know more about what I’m thinking than you let on, Fleer.”

Fleer chuckled again. He set his dive watch and donned his mask. “Just keep your head,” he advised in a nasal drawl, “and everything will be fine.” He backed into the water to waist-depth, kicked off the bottom and propelled himself backward with his flippers. Aaron joined him, and together they dived.

Through flickering shafts of sunlight and ever-murkier water, they descended, reaching the bottom at sixty feet of depth. Fleer pulled up, indicated a dark opening just off to their right. It was the cave entrance, Aaron saw. He nodded, and together, flashlights leading the way, they made their way towards it.

At the entrance, Fleer stopped and scrawled something onto his slate-board. “Don’t be a hero,” it read. “Stay close and be ready to back out at the first sign of trouble.”

Aaron nodded his understanding. He already had gooseflesh on his forearms, biceps, and chest; the last thing he intended was to play John Wayne.

Inside, the cave narrowed steadily until all that was left after fifty feet was a slit-opening four feet wide and maybe a foot tall. It had the distinct look to Aaron of having been widened to its present size. Debris littered the cave floor and there were gouges in the rock where the sides tapered, almost to points. He exchanged looks with Fleer.

Removing a die packet from a mesh pouch attached to his belt, Fleer tore the bag open across the top and held it before the opening. Bright red die moved steadily away from the hole, indicating a current. He gave the ‘thumbs-up’ to Aaron, then began to struggle out of his tank-harness. Doing so in the tight confines of the cave proved no easy matter and finally, Aaron offered his assistance. Once the other man was free of the tank, he made inquiring gestures with his hands.

Fleer grinned around the regulator. He demonstrated pushing his tank through the opening before him, then helped Aaron out of his own harness. He then tied his safely line to a rock outcropping above their heads, pushed on through the opening into the darkness beyond, leaving Aaron to follow.

This is crazy, Aaron thought, watching Fleer’s flippers disappear. He pushed the tank through the opening as Fleer had done, then shimmied through the tight hole with a sense of mounting claustrophobia and fear. He loathed tight spaces and this space was not just tight, but potentially lethal.

What if they couldn’t back out? What if they were attacked? Just as fear began to give way to outright panic, he realized the passage was flaring out again, and then he was into open water and saw Fleer just ahead, shining the beam of his flashlight back in his direction. He pointed upward and Aaron saw reflections from the unseen surface throwing flashes of light on the limestone walls around him. He kicked upward, wanting only to be out of the water. But just as he reached the surface the beam of his flashlight revealed the snarling face of a mountain lion coming directly at him, head cocked, and fangs bared. He screamed into the mouthpiece and backed away, thrashing madly with his flippers, until finally he realized the beast was not attacking him at all, only floating serenely by on the current. He erupted from the water, coughing, and choking, unaware that he had banged his head on an outcropping of stone.

“You okay?” Fleer asked from right beside him.

Aaron jumped spasmodically, again banging his head on the outcropping. “Ow, goddamit!” he swore. “What are you doing, sneaking up on me?”

Fleer laughed. He shone the beam of his flashlight, still underwater, onto the hindquarters of the beast. It was evident to both men that something meaner than another mountain lion had laid waste to the creature. Its right hind claw and most of its belly were missing.

“You think a Grizzly bear did that?” Aaron wanted to know.

“No Grizzlies in this part of Utah,” Fleer said. “Besides, Grizzlies and mountain lion don’t mix.” He looked at Aaron, the corners of his mouth turning up. “Whatever it was done it, though, my rate just doubled.”

They were inside another, larger cave. Fleer hoisted his bulk onto a flat stone a foot above the waterline, then assisted Aaron up beside him. After laying his tank aside, he removed his mask and hood, then both of his flippers; he made no secret of his dislike for the smell of the cavern. “What is that damned stink?” he muttered, crinkling his nose.

Aaron examined the sloping, limestone walls. The roof of the cavern, if there was one, was obscured by the darkness. He removed his own face mask and hood, set them aside on the rocks, then took off flippers. He was surprised by the presence of a small waterfall, cascading down the rocks twenty feet to their left. He examined it briefly with his light, then zeroed in on a dark form laying a few feet from base of the waterfall.

“What the hell?” Fleer said in a disgusted tone. “Is that a cow?”

Aaron walked carefully over the rocky floor to the remains of the cow. It, like the unlucky mountain lion in the water, had been thoroughly gutted. “Odd,” he said, crouching to get a closer look. “The damage looks just as much chemical, as physical.”

“What do you mean?” Fleer scowled at the disemboweled animal.

“See the corrosion around the periphery of the hole?” Aaron pointed out spots where acid seemed to have eaten holes through the hair and the underlying hide. “That’s atypical of injury like this. Something other than teeth and claws have been working on this cow.”

Just then, a dark shape swept out of the darkness and flashed by just above their heads. Aaron cried out and swept the darkness with his flashlight beam, picking out the darting black shape amongst the jutting rocks.

“Bats!” spat Fleer disgustedly. “Should have fuckin’ guessed.”

Aaron, trying to calm his ragged breathing, examined the walls of the cavern for further signs of life. He saw none, and if there were others up higher on the walls or dangling from the ceiling, they were out of the range of his flashlight. He returned to examination of the cow’s remains. “What I want to know,” he said. “Is how it got down here?”

But Fleer wasn’t listening. His attention was directed at a phosphorescent shape just visible beyond the glow cast by their flashlights. He stood up, cocked his head to get a better view of the object, peripherally. Aaron stood up as well.

“Is that...” he began, then stopped as Fleer set off in the direction of the phantom shape. Aaron hurried to catch up, urging caution. “We don’t know what that thing is, Nelson. It could be...” He broke off again as the shape, quickly resolving itself into a giant, upside down claw, big as a house. Both men halted.

“That is not a bat,” Fleer said unnecessarily.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Aaron climbed a boulder to get a better view. The claw was attached to the end of a hugely muscled forearm, which in turn was attached to the torso of a massively large beast, reptilian in shape--no, not reptilian, he realized, but like that of a mythical creature, the Gryphon, with the torso and leathery, blood-red wings of a bat, the hindquarters of a mountain lion, and the head of a serpent. The creature lay curled up on its back, claws extended, almost filling the cavern. It was huge, magnificent ... and horrible.

“This thing is alive,” Fleer advised. The claw was slowly twisting back and forth, and from the interior depths of the creature emanated a low, rumbling growl-- the sound of an idling diesel engine amplified a thousand times. “How could it be alive?” he demanded.

Aaron shook his head, more concerned that the thing before them might be aware of their presence. He whispered, “I think now might be a good time to get back to civilization and tell them what we’ve found.”

“I’m with that,” Fleer agreed. “Let’s scat.”

But even before they had reached the water’s edge, the Gryphon raised its ugly head, sniffing suspiciously at the air, then suddenly it let loose a bone-jarring, deafening shriek, twisted over onto its belly and raised up against the cavern roof. Dislodged chunks of rocks rained down around the two men, cracking and splitting on the cavern floor, splashing down into the water.

“We have to get out of here!” Fleer yelled. He grabbed the momentarily frozen-in-place Aaron and propelled him toward the water’s edge. “Go! Now! Move!” he yelled, barely audible over the ear-splitting cry echoing off the cavern’s walls. Both men jumped into the water, grabbed their equipment off the rocks, and struggled to get masks and mouthpieces into place.

Before he submerged, Aaron saw that instead of a tongue, the creature possessed a myriad of squirming, twisting snakes where the tongue should be, each spitting venom from its fangs, each possessed of evilly glowing yellow eyes. It truly was, he realized, something from a nightmare. Then Fleer was hauling him below the water, and none too soon, either. A moment after he had kicked off and made for the bottom, an immense snakehead plunged into the water where he had been, snapping madly at his flippers. He twisted away as the head thrust forward again, barely missed by a pair of three inch long, curving yellow teeth.

Below him, Fleer had grabbed the yellow safety line and was awaiting him at the mouth of the cave opening. Aaron propelled himself downward as hard as he could, aware that only one foot was encased in a flipper. The snakehead had claimed the other. As he drew abreast Fleer, the water between them was rent by a huge, clawed hand, and both were slammed backward against the cavern walls. When the claw withdrew, Aaron was amazed to find both still alive.

Go! Fleer motioned frantically with his hand.

Aaron needed no second invitation. He dove into the small opening, scrambling forward with one hand while holding the heavy tank out before him with the other. He kicked frantically with his flippered foot, using the second as a fulcrum to keep himself from flipping over onto his back. When he reached the bottleneck, he didn’t bother threading the air tank through the hole but discarded it entirely and continued into the cave opening on his single breath of air, out into open water beyond the cave’s mouth and toward the surface sixty feet above. Halfway there, his lungs right on the verge of bursting, he looked down to see the struggling, dark shape of another swimmer ... Fleer had made it too. He made the last twenty feet on will power alone, breaking the surface with a mighty, gasping intake of air. Moments later, Fleer joined him, gasping lustily.

“You made it!” Aaron shouted.

Fleer nodded, laughing, gulping air through his open mouth. “No thanks to our friend down there,” he said, pointing downward through the water. He stopped when a tremendous concussion ashore made the water heave. “What the hell was that?”

Aaron looked around. “I don’t know, and I sure as hell don’t want to stick around to find out.” He set off for the shore and the perceived safety of the Jeep, Fleer quickly catching up and overtaking him. He had just stumbled out of knee-deep water when the earth trembled again, then shook violently as, beyond a rise, some concussive force blasted boulders, sand, cactus, and scrub pines high into the air. The mighty Gryphon rose to its full height, every bit of a hundred and fifty feet, wings unfurling and throwing off debris. It flexed its wings to their maximum wingspread, flapped them experimentally, then let out another, only slightly less-deafening roar.