13
MONSTERS FROM THE SEA

Tuesday, December 12, 2000, 9:03 A.M.
Somewhere along the shores of the Caspian Sea

Craig Weedie, INN's famed Backpack Adventurer and spokesperson for Fellow Traveler Publishing Company - the publishers of the popular series of international travel guides - found himself stranded.

It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last. Sometimes things got intense on the road, but the life of a Backpack Adventurer was always intense.

It was also one of the greatest jobs in the world.

Craig Weedie got to travel all over the world, he was on television every week, and he made a lot of money. He had no bosses, no one to report to - up to a point, that is. As long as he taped his weekly appearances for Teen Beat and wrote a few introductions for the Fellow Traveler Travel Guides, everything was fine.

Craig Weedie was totally free. He didn't even bother to drag a film crew around with him. He merely traveled to the nearest large city with an INN affiliate and taped his weekly report. Then he moved on to the next destination. He was free to go where he wanted, when he wanted - and the Fellow Traveler Publishing Company paid for everything!

It was the best life possible for a nineteen-year-old from Athens, Ohio, and he was lucky to have it.

In the last two years, Craig had done it all. He ran with the bulls in Spain, hiked through Tibet with Richard Gere, and explored the wreckage of the Titanic with science reporter Nick Gordon. It had been fun and rewarding.

But it all came to an end on Sunday, when civilization collapsed. Suddenly Craig Weedie, international citizen-at-large, became a foreigner in a strange land where he didn't speak the language.

Worse still, he was nearly penniless.

And all because of a stupid monster that probably doesn't exist in the first place.

Craig bitterly regretted his futile search for the monster called Anguirus - named after some local legend or something - in the beginning of the cruel Russian winter.

It started out innocently enough. He'd done a tongue-in-cheek story about monster sightings on the Caspian Sea a couple of weeks before, and a lot of viewers liked the segment. Craig was having a good-enough time in the towns around the Caspian Sea, so he stayed for a few weeks. The whole region was in the middle of an economic boom because of the vast, previously untapped oil reserves that were only now being exploited.

During his time on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he even went out on a fishing boat to film a report at the last place the creature had been spotted. Weedie also interviewed people who claimed to have seen the sea monster.

Someone at INN's art department in New York had drawn a sketch of the monster, based on eyewitness reports that described the creature as a huge reptile with a head like a crocodile's and a spiked, turtlelike shell.

Craig, of course, had never seen the creature - and doubted that it ever existed. He wondered cynically how much the people near Loch Ness made cashing in on their monster - in tourist dollars alone!

Just as Craig was getting bored with the story and with Russia, a real monster arrived - the thing called Gigan. Before the communications meltdown, Craig had seen the reports about the creature's rampage through the Baikonur and Kapustin Yar cosmodromes on Russian television.

Craig sensed it was time to go. He filed his last story of the Caspian monster - a clever piece in which he contrasted the charming local folklore about Anguirus with the horror that was Gigan - and then scheduled a chartered airplane to leave the region. The dreary village in which he'd been staying had finally gotten to him.

Then things fell apart. The blackout began, and Craig's chartered seaplane never arrived. Now he was down to his last traveler's check.

Before the blackout, all he had to do was call INN's financial department in New York, and they would wire him funds - usually within minutes. And if that didn't work, Craig had a wallet full of credit cards, along with his U.S. passport.

But without communications, credit cards were just useless plastic. And he hadn't been able to contact the next town - let alone New York City - in days. Money became a big problem. Since he'd gotten a visa to enter the Russian Republic, Craig was used to bribing people to get what he wanted. Now he didn't have enough money to buy a meal, and he was stuck in a town filled with people as hostile toward the Russian government as they were toward strangers - especially strangers who couldn't speak the language.

So Craig Weedie finally left the village he'd been stranded in yesterday morning, without checking out of the hotel. He couldn't afford to pay the bill, anyway. When and if civilization returned, he'd get INN to pay the bill. If not, it didn't matter anyway.

Wearing his down parka and a backpack crammed full of gear for the harsh winter, Craig set off on foot. He took the road that led to the Russian military base at Peliograd, about fifteen kilometers away. He was lucky enough to get a ride with a local laborer for part of the way, and that saved him some time. But he didn't cover the full distance on the first day of the trek, as he had hoped.

After spending a cold night in a remote area on the shores of the Caspian Sea, Craig rose, folded up his insulated thermal tent, rolled up his sleeping bag, oriented himself, and proceeded to walk the remaining five kilometers or so to the entrance of the base at Peliograd.

The day was bright, sunny, and crisp - a little mild for this time of the year, but he didn't mind. Temperatures could easily have fallen to minus fifty. As he walked, Craig recalled the first time he'd made this trip along the shore of the Caspian Sea. He had gone to Peliograd a few weeks before to interview General Kolgan, the commander of the base, as part of his sea monster story. Some of Kolgan's soldiers had been loading a patrol boat when they spotted the creature - they claimed.

Craig and the general had gotten along well, and Craig presented the man with his own Sony video-cassette recorder - Craig knew he could always wheedle another one out of the folks at Fellow Traveler. Craig liked and trusted the general, and hoped that the Russian would have a cot for him to sleep on until the blackout passed or until he could arrange transportation to Moscow.

But as the American trudged up a steep, rocky hill that overlooked the sea and the shore ahead of him, he noticed plumes of smoke rising in the distance. Craig hurried up to the top of the hill. Breathing heavily from the exertion, he dropped his backpack and drew out his binoculars.

Squinting through the lenses, he focused on the Russian military base in the distance. Then the American gasped.

An unbelievable sight greeted him ... two of them, in fact!

Pudong New Area
Shanghai, People's Republic of China

The first civil authority to respond to Manda's invasion of Pudong New Area was the Chinese Navy, which dispatched ships and helicopters. Despite a total lack of radio communications, the navy managed to mount a well-organized and effective counterattack.

A Chinese naval officer who was enjoying leave brought the Chinese Navy its first warning. The sailor had been on his way to meet his girlfriend, who worked in Pudong New Area, when he saw Manda emerge from the construction site. The officer immediately appropriated a motorcycle from a messenger and sped to the Chinese naval yard at Jiangnan, on the coast of the old town of Shanghai.

Admiral Lu'un, an experienced blue-water naval officer, immediately took control of the defense of the city.

The admiral quickly formulated a clever plan using the resources he had at his fingertips. He scrambled a flight of six brand-new Mil Mi-28 Havoc attack helicopters belonging to the Chinese marines. The attack helicopters were recently purchased from the Russians, and the pilots were still in training.

Armed with a thirty-millimeter 2A42 high-velocity chin machine gun and over 5,000 pounds of wing-mounted rockets in four pods, the Havocs deployed to drive Manda out of the city and back into the East China Sea. There, two Jianghu-class missile frigates and an ES5G missile submarine would launch an attack on the dragon.

When the Havocs arrived over Pudong New Area, they found Manda many stories above the streets, coiled around the center section of the Pearl TV Tower. Inside the building, hundreds of office workers were trapped. The power had been lost, and the elevators were not working. Already stairwells were clogged with frightened people.

As Manda climbed the glass-and-steel structure, the Havocs approached. The vibrations from their blades beat against the windows of the skyscrapers of Pudong New Area. Circling the tower with the dragon coiled around it, the Havocs soon unleashed their fury.

Hundreds of bullets and dozens of rockets were launched in seconds. The munitions struck Manda repeatedly, but they also tore through the tower, killing many workers who were trying to flee. Cover was impossible - the shells fired from the chin gun ripped through the glass windows and the thin partitions between the offices.

Shards of glass were blasted inside dozens of offices, even as the glass rained down on people below, who were trying to get out of the building's lobby.

The rockets struck the center of the skyscraper, too. Multiple explosions weakened the structural integrity of the building. Fires broke out on a half-dozen floors. Soon smoke began pouring out of the shattered windows.

The dragon Manda was unaffected. Bullets bounced off its armorlike scales, and the rockets detonated on its thick skin but did not penetrate to damage anything vital.

The noise and confusion disoriented the creature. In its frenzied throes of rage and bewilderment, Manda tightened its grip, crushing the center of the Pearl TV Tower. The tip of the pointed skyscraper began to sway. Then it plunged into the streets below, spilling hapless workers through broken plate-glass windows and into the concrete canyons.

Manda plunged, too. The creature dropped to the Earth and landed with a world-shaking sound. Concrete sidewalks caved in under the creature's weight. But Manda struggled to its feet and began to crawl away.

As the Havocs kept up their merciless pounding, the gigantic dragon was driven to the East China Sea.

When the monster was near the shore, Chinese Navy observers spotted it. Admiral Lu'un pointed the frigates' missile launchers at the creature and ordered the attack to commence.

Dozens of missiles leaped into the air in a haze of smoke and exhaust. The frigates were obscured by a white mist from which bright streaks issued intermittently. The missiles arched over the city and landed all around the dragon, leveling buildings, overturning cars and buses, and killing hundreds.

The missile submarine, which had to remain on the surface to fire, launched its cruise missiles as well.

It was the sound made by the launch of these larger rockets that was heard by the crew of the Japanese submarine Takashio on its sonar.

More and more missiles rained down on Manda, driving the creature into a frenzy. It crawled toward the bay on its stubby legs as explosions detonated all around it. It hissed and growled the whole way.

Admiral Lu'un was satisfied with his attack.

Soon Manda would be driven from the city limits and into the sea. Despite the terrible destruction and death in Shanghai, the attack was going well and his tactics had succeeded.

That is, until the monster called Godzilla emerged from the East China Sea and approached the warships. His arrival changed everything ...

On the shores of the Caspian Sea
Near the Russian military base at Peliograd

Craig Weedie looked in awe and amazement at the tableau spread out below him. He could clearly see the dock from which military patrol vessels were launched. There were no ships moored there now, however - it looked as if the entire base had been abandoned.

And it was evident why.

Standing in the middle of the rubble and smoke of the shattered remains of Peliograd, the monster Gigan roared a defiant challenge at the equally amazing creature that lumbered out of the Caspian Sea.

That must be Anguirus, the backpacker decided as a huge, four-legged creature crawled across the shore toward the blue-and-gold-scaled monster that swiped at it with huge, curved metallic claws. Anguirus roared with a barking honk that echoed for miles.

Weedie dropped his binoculars and drew his camera and telephoto lens from his backpack; he wished he still had his Sony videocassette recorder.

Anguirus was an impressive creature. Just as described by eyewitnesses, the creature's back was covered by a hard, bony shell. The shell had hundreds of sharp, irregular spikes, like those on a porcupine. The monster had a long snout, topped by a short horn like a rhino's.

Anguirus, Craig estimated, was about 100 meters long and more than fifty meters high. His mouth was lined with yellow teeth, and his eyes gleamed with malevolent fury at the unearthly beast he faced.

Craig Weedie quickly peered through the telephoto lens and began to snap pictures of the battle that ensued. His stomach suddenly growled, and the backpacker realized he hadn't eaten that morning. While he continued to snap photos, he snatched a granola bar out of his pocket and began to eat.

It was going to be an exciting morning, and he wanted to keep up his strength.

For several minutes, the monsters barked roars at each other, as if sizing up the enemy. The unearthly sound Gigan made was a shrill electronic wail that shook Craig Weedie's teeth. Anguirus's roar was more beastlike and predatory, but no less ear-shattering. From his vantage point half a kilometer away, Craig could feel the rocky ridge he sat upon vibrate. Anguirus pawed the ground with his foreleg as he prepared to charge the strange creature that had invaded his territory.

Then, with a sudden burst of speed that surprised the American youth, Anguirus lunged at Gigan's throat. His slavering jaws were wide as he rose up on his hind legs and reached out for the other creature's neck.

The four-legged brute clambered up a low embankment on his powerful legs and sank his ivory teeth into Gigan's neck.

Anguirus shook his mighty head like a bulldog clutching a rag doll. Gigan, stunned by the attack, flailed its curved claws in futile defense. As Anguirus closed his jaws around the blue-scaled monster's throat, strange silvery ichor gushed out of Gigan's wounds.

But the cyborg monster was not finished off yet.

Craig watched in disbelief as the buzz saw on Gigan's chest burst into motion. He could hear the sound of the chest-mounted weapon as it was engaged.

The teeth of the saw caught Anguirus on the creature's relatively soft underbelly. Anguirus howled in rage and pain and let loose of Gigan's throat. The cyborg stumbled backward, finally toppling onto a burning building in the heart of the ruined military base.

When the cyborg monster struck the ground, the land under Craig Weedie shook. He fumbled with his camera and realized he was out of film. As he quickly reloaded, Anguirus, black blood streaming from his wounded belly, continued the attack. He lunged at Gigan again, while the cyborg was down in the rubble.

The two creatures locked into a clinch, tearing and ripping at each other with fang and claw.

Suddenly, the thunderous sound of the battle of the titans was interrupted by a more familiar noise - the sound of jet fighters approaching from the east.

Shanghai ...

Godzilla lumbered past the two Chinese warships, moving them aside with the backwash of his passing. As the frigates maneuvered to get out of the monster's path, sailors on deck opened up on Godzilla with machine-gun and small-cannon fire. The shells detonated harmlessly against Godzilla's thick hide.

With a quick maneuver, the frigates moved out of the path of Godzilla. The missile submarine, floating on the surface of the sea between the shores of Shanghai and Changxing Island, was not so quick - or so fortunate.

Godzilla slammed into the vessel with all of his massive, unimaginable power and bulk. Though the Romeo-class submarine was built to withstand the incredible pressure of the ocean depths, it could not endure the force of Godzilla's attack. With an ear-shattering crash, the submarine split in two even as it capsized. Godzilla reached his forearms down and thrust the wreckage aside.

Curiously, there was no explosion. The two halves of the submarine simply sank, spilling some sailors into the violently churning waters while dragging the others down with it.

With the naval attack broken, Manda raised its serpentine head once again, hissing curiously. Then its elongated eyes focused on Godzilla, and the dragon hissed again. This time the sound was clearly a warning.

Godzilla bellowed a challenge, and the sound of his mighty roar echoed over the decimated city of Shanghai.

Blue flashes rippled across Godzilla's dorsal spines, and a blast of blue radioactive fire washed over Manda. The dragon pulled back its wedge-shaped head and squinted its eyes against the assault, but took no more notice of the energy blast than it would off a stream of water fired by a squirt gun.

Manda hissed angrily and slipped off the docks and into the sea. Its head raised above the waves, Manda swam quickly toward Godzilla.

The creatures soon met. Godzilla lashed out at Manda with his foreclaws. He quickly seized the dragon's coiled body and lifted the monster out of the tossing waves. But grabbing a dragon and holding it were two different things, as Godzilla soon learned.

With a speed and agility that belied its bulk, Manda circled its body around Godzilla's bull neck. The dragon dug its sharp claws into the thick, ridged hide and hung on.

In an attempt to dislodge the creature, Godzilla thrashed about in the sea, sending torrents of water washing over the barges and commercial ships docked at the wharves, flooding the warehouses full of raw materials and manufactured goods. Godzilla reached up and tugged futilely at Manda's serpentine body. The dragon's wedge-shaped head bobbed in front of Godzilla's own.

But as the King of the Monsters opened his mouth, and blue lights danced along his spines once again, Manda began to constrict its coils tighter, choking the King of the Monsters ...

On the shores of the Caspian Sea ...

It took only a few minutes for the airplanes to appear in the blue morning sky above him. To his surprise, Craig Weedie recognized the aircraft from countless visits to Russian military installations during his trip through the former Soviet Union - they were MiG-27 ground-attack aircraft.

The twin titans still wrestled in the ruins of Peliograd, oblivious to the attack to come. Anguirus lashed out with his spiked tail, slamming it against Gigan's body again and again.

As he watched, Craig slipped behind a tumble of rocks. Half a kilometer suddenly did not feel like a safe distance from an impending air attack.

With graceful precision, the MiGs banked and, with their variable wings swept forward and wide, pointed their duck noses at the monsters on the ground. In a blasting stream of exhaust and fire, tactical air-to-ground missiles leaped from each wing. Craig lowered the camera and covered his ears as the first missiles struck home.

Explosions rippled across the distance, shaking the ground and loosening pebbles and dust from the ledges around him. The first two blasts, from missiles fired by the lead plane, blossomed on the ground. They were quickly followed by others.

Many others.

As explosion after explosion sundered the Earth, the two monsters continued to do battle. Soon their gigantic forms were all but obscured by smoke and fire.

In the chaos, Craig would see a flash of Anguirus's tail, or a silvery reflection off one of Gigan's metallic claws - but nothing more. The attack seemed to last forever, and by the time it ended, the Backpack Adventurer was hugging the ground and covering his head with his hands as dust and small rocks rained down on him almost constantly.

Soon the entire area was filled with smoke and dust. The wind, which was blowing toward the observer, smelled of cordite and burning wood. Craig coughed and choked. Through it all, he could still hear the roars and bellows of the struggling monsters.

Finally, the explosions died away. The sounds of the jet engines receded. Cautiously, Craig lifted his head. Gigan's shrill cries pierced the air, but it was Anguirus who was in control of the battle now.

As Craig snapped photo after photo, Anguirus dragged the thrashing Gigan down onto the shore. Gigan struggled and kicked, its red eye glowing evilly. But Anguirus continued to drag the creature into the lapping waves of the Caspian Sea, even as black blood poured out of a dozen wounds.

The four-legged beast had Gigan by the throat and would not let go. One of Gigan's metal claws slammed repeatedly against Anguirus's hard shell. A noise like a clanging bell echoed across the waters, but it looked as if Anguirus hardly felt the blows.

Gigan's other claw was missing its tip. The monster waved its useless stunted arm as a silver stream of internal fluids poured out of the soft center of the shattered claw. Gigan's roars seemed to weaken with each passing minute, as Anguirus inexorably dragged the wounded cyborg into the sea.

Finally, after many long moments, the struggle ended. Anguirus backed into the waves, until the green waters completely covered the creature. Gigan, its arms waving weakly, its beaklike mouth opening and closing silently, was dragged beneath the water headfirst as if it were a dying mouse in the mouth of a tomcat.

The Caspian Sea churned for a few more minutes, then stilled. Of the monsters' passing there was no sign.

Craig Weedie stood up, peering across the water. He found himself powerfully affected by the primeval contest he had just witnessed. He wondered if Anguirus had survived the struggle. He was almost certain Gigan had not.

As he stared out over the sea, the sound of approaching helicopters beat against his ears. Vaguely, Craig Weedie realized he would soon be rescued ...

In the East China Sea ...

Godzilla struggled against the coils that threatened to strangle him. Manda's head bobbed in front of his eyes, which seemed to dim and cloud over with each passing second. Godzilla tried to summon his fiery breath, but it somehow stuck in his throat.

Red foam flecked the edges of his massive jaws, staining the double row of teeth crimson. Godzilla's jaws opened and closed spasmodically as he gasped for air.

Finally, Godzilla managed to hook one of his huge, tearing claws around Manda's own neck. Godzilla's massive hand dug into the woolly hair around the dragon's head.

Godzilla began to squeeze. Manda stubbornly clung to Godzilla's throat and would not budge. But Godzilla reached up with his other claw and grabbed one of Manda's stubby legs.

Now, with both of Godzilla's mighty forearms dragging at Manda's coiled body, the dragon began to weaken. Suddenly, Manda's grip was broken. The creature tried to slip into the sea and escape, but Godzilla would not let it go.

Instead, the King of the Monsters lifted the dragon out of the water and held it at arm's length. Godzilla opened his eyes and stared into Manda's own.

Manda hissed and spat as Godzilla unleashed the full fury of his radioactive breath. The hot, burning rays washed over the dragon. Manda seemed to shrink back from the force of the blast, but Godzilla still gripped its neck tightly.

Manda's tail flailed wildly as it began to burn, and suddenly Godzilla released the creature from his grip. Manda struck the water with a huge splash and a boiling hiss. A wave of superheated seawater flooded sections of the docks once more. Godzilla, his arms spread wide, his tail churning up the waters behind him, turned his eyes to the sky above.

Godzilla's feral head tilted upward. Then the King of the Monsters opened his mouth and let loose a ringing, ear-shattering bellow of victory.

Manda, limp and perhaps dead, disappeared beneath the waves of the East China Sea ...

Thursday, December 14, 2000, 12:25 A.M.
Aboard the Destiny Explorer
Off the coast of Chile

Leena Sims closed the battered handwritten journal and lay back in her bunk. Her mind was whirling with a hundred ideas. She'd been reading the journals of Alexander Kemmering for days now.

She decided that Kemmering was probably a scientific genius. But Leena was certain that he was also an egotistical megalomaniac determined to prove to the world that it was wrong and he was right.

Though Leena was still suffering from her fear of flying, some of the sheer panic had fled. It was worst when she tried to go to sleep. As she nodded off, she would experience a sudden surge of panic - like a fear of falling, only a hundred times worse. She found that if she worked hard enough, the fears vanished. And if she worked to the point of exhaustion, she could sometimes fall asleep without those disturbing incidents.

Leena was surprised to learn that she found some peace in knowing that the world was falling apart. It made her feel strangely free. Suddenly it didn't matter if her microchip process worked or not - or if Intel, Apple, or IBM made the bigger bid on the copyright to her process. The knowledge that she was helpless, trapped aboard an airship that was probably heading for certain doom was, in the end, comforting.

Free of the ghosts of her past and the memories of her father - a computer genius who died two years ago, before Leena achieved her success - Leena joined in with the others to try to solve the mystery of Alexander Kemmering's journals.

But as she waded through the obscure references to everything from the Bible to Hindu scriptures with unpronounceable names, Leena couldn't help thinking of Zoe Kemmering. The daughter of the vanished genius was hardly mentioned in these journals - and only as someone who found some obscure fact, or cleaned up a lab, or set up a camp. The dead archaeologist seemed to have used his own daughter as an unpaid assistant, surrounding her with all of his theories and scientific pursuits.

Once, in the third journal, Kemmering referred to his daughter as a genius. Leena suspected this was only because she believed in the theories he was putting forth.

For some reason Leena Sims felt a bond with the vanished girl, who was surely dead. Alexander Kemmering had dragged his daughter all over the world, making her live through his own obsessions. Perhaps, Leena realized in a moment of self-awareness, her situation was the same as Zoe Kemmering's. Leena's father had pushed her mercilessly, teaching her the basics of the inner workings of computers when she was just a child.

Leena idolized her father. She often acknowledged his help when she made her breakthrough. Sometimes, in early negotiations with the chip manufacturers, Leena referred to her new chip as "our invention" and something "we came up with," referring to her dead father's help in the research.

Finally, one of Leena's lawyers pulled her aside and asked her to stop using the plural. "These corporate types will think you can't do the work, Leena. They'll think it was your father's idea, not yours."

Leena understood the man's argument, but she had to fight not to use the plural when talking about "her" new process.

As her eyes closed and she lay back on her pillow, Leena wondered if Zoe had felt the same way about her father ...