Godzilla Returns Part 6

"Damage report!" the captain screamed into the radio. "I want a damage report!"

"Captain!" an excited voice cried over the intercom. "The hull has been breached. We are taking on water."

"d.a.m.n," the captain cursed. He immediately reached for the long-range radio.

The captain keyed the mike. "This is the Pusan ferry," he said urgently. "Mayday... mayday. We have collided with an object and are taking on water... Mayday! Mayday!"

Will Adams managed to push Soonji and the little Korean boy back inside the pa.s.senger compartment right before the collision. Like everyone else, they were knocked off their feet. Now all of the ferry pa.s.sengers were in a panic. Most of them were screaming in fear.

When the ship finally seemed to settle, the pa.s.sengers calmed down a bit.

Will held Soonji down as he rose unsteadily to his feet. "Stay there," he said. Pale with fright, Soonji could only nod.

As Will cautiously approached the windows, people inside the ferry were still talking excitedly. One woman's panic-filled voice cut through the noise. "Kim! Kim!" she cried frantically.

Kim turned when he heard his mother calling him. He rushed across the heaving deck to her side.

"Mom!" he cried. "We hit some rocks. Floating rocks! I saw them moving!"

Kim's mother ignored his words. She pulled her son close and held him. The whole ship vibrated as the engine strained to move the ferry. The ship seemed to be stuck, as if it had run aground.

Just then, several crewmen ran into the cabin. They began taking down inflatable life rafts that were stored in the cabin's ceiling. One of them produced a bullhorn.

"We must abandon ship," the sailor said through the loudspeaker. "The hull has been ruptured and we are taking on water. Please remain calm. Emergency calls have already been sent. Help is on the way. As a precaution, we will now board the lifeboats in an orderly fashion. Please remain calm."

Of course, his words had the opposite effect. The pa.s.sengers were thrown into a panic once again. Women sobbed. Men cried out. Some of the crowd tried to take the inflatable rafts away from the sailors. Fights broke out.

Though Will Adams knew almost no Korean, he understood the pandemonium all around him. This ship is sinking! He glanced down at Soonji. Her face was white with panic. She clung to the deck as if it were a lifeline.

A sinking lifeline, Will thought glumly.

Nearby, Kim's mother clutched her son close. She could imagine no more horrible fate than drowning. It had been her lifelong fear. But she did not worry for herself - she prayed only for her young son's life.

Meanwhile, the young American stood up and looked out of the cabin window, toward the bow of the ship.

Suddenly, he gasped and took several steps back.

Kim, his mother, and a few others turned when they heard Will cry out. They, too gasped as a dark shadow rose up and fell across the bow of the Pusan ferry.

As the frightened, unbelieving pa.s.sengers and crew watched in awe and horror, a giant monster rose up out of the Sea of j.a.pan with an ear-shattering roar!

CHAPTER 7.

GOJIRA!.

May 29, 1998, 7:18 A.M.

The Pusan ferry

Sea of j.a.pan

"It's Gojira!" one of the sailors screamed. All eyes turned to the large windows.

The sailor let go of the uninflated raft he held and it dropped to the deck. The sailor hit the deck, too, and curled up in a quivering ma.s.s of fear. A nearby pa.s.senger - a burly man - quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed up the raft and pushed for the exit. Another man grabbed the raft out of his hands, and a fight broke out.

In seconds, the Pusan ferry erupted in pandemonium. One woman screamed and fainted. She hit the deck hard because everyone else was too startled by the appearance of the now-legendary monster to catch her. Other women, and many men, too, began to scream. Children sobbed in fear.

Will Adams looked up as the shadow fell over him.

G.o.dzilla! he thought, taking two steps backward. He stared awestruck at the apparition standing before him. Gojira - the j.a.panese name for the prehistoric monster known worldwide as G.o.dzilla - was supposed to be dead.

h.e.l.l, Will thought, G.o.dzilla never should have existed in the first place!

As Will stared at the creature, panic swept through the rest of the pa.s.sengers. All semblance of order was gone. People rushed for the exits, thinking they could escape the creature by jumping into the Sea of j.a.pan. Will stifled his own panic and observed this incredible freak of nature with a critical, objective eye that would do his reporter father proud.

G.o.dzilla looked like a Tyrannosaurus rex, but on closer examination the resemblance was slight. The creature had a tiny, wedge-shaped, almost feline head, a bull neck, and a wide, barrel-like chest. The three rows of spikes - which Will had at first thought were gigantic rocks - clattered as the creature towered over them.

G.o.dzilla was almost completely motionless now - only his eyelids fluttered, and his lips curled back, to reveal six-foot-long bone-yellow teeth.

The monster stood on his hind legs, chest-deep in the churning waters of the Sea of j.a.pan. Though Will could not judge the depth of the water here, he figured it must be close to two hundred feet deep.

That would make G.o.dzilla over three hundred feet tall! he realized with amazed terror. Streams of seawater ran off of G.o.dzilla's hide, giving the monster a slick shine.

Then Will heard a huge, sustained rush of air. The creature must have just exhaled, he realized. Carefully, Will sniffed the air. An odor of fish and ozone permeated the atmosphere around the ferry. I can smell it, he said to himself.

Will was surprised to notice that G.o.dzilla's body was not covered with scales - nor was it green. Instead, the creature was a dull charcoal black color, and his skin seemed gouged and pitted with deep vertical grooves. More than anything else, G.o.dzilla's hide resembled the bark on an ancient oak tree. Will could swear that some of the grooves had barnacles, seaweed, and other sea life growing in the deepest furrows.

As Will watched, G.o.dzilla slowly turned his mammoth body to the side. The huge spiked plates on his back slammed together, ringing like bronze church bells. This slow movement caused the water around G.o.dzilla to churn even more.

Waves crashed against the damaged ferryboat with tremendous force. This action brought new screams of panic from the pa.s.sengers, who still crowded the exits in a desperate attempt to flee from the monster.

Suddenly, there was another rush of air as G.o.dzilla inhaled. Then a terrible, echoing roar smashed against Will's eardrums. As he covered his ears with his hands, Will's eyes rose until he was looking up at G.o.dzilla's ma.s.sive, feral head. To his shock and surprise, the great prehistoric monster seemed to be staring right back at him with a cold, reptilian gaze.

For a moment, the human and the monster locked eyes.

Then Will felt a tugging on his pant leg. He looked down. Soonji was clinging to his leg, her eyes wide, her tiny face pale with fear.

"Get down, Will," she whimpered, averting her eyes from the beast. "He sees you!"

The Maritime Self-Defense Force station near Hakata harbor in j.a.pan was the first to receive the distress call from the Pusan ferry. Instantly, the duty officer sent out an emergency alert to the rescue choppers that were always on call.

Within minutes, three large, American-designed, single-rotor Sikorsky SH-60 "Seahawk" helicopters, built under license in j.a.pan by Mitsubishi, were being powered up.

Also on the tarmac was a modified MH-53J "Sea Dragon" helicopter, bristling with antennas, with "Pave Low Enhanced" technology to enable it to lead a rescue or an attack in fog or in darkness. Like the rescue choppers, this highly advanced helicopter was always ready to launch at a moment's notice.

While the ground crews readied the aircraft, an officer burst from a nearby building, waving a clipboard in his hand. He ran to the MH-53J "Pave Low" helicopter's side door.

"Here are the exact coordinates of the ferry!" the officer cried over the sound of the spinning rotors. He handed the pilot the clipboard.

"Be advised -" the officer said, getting the pilot's attention by yanking on his flight suit.

"Yes!" the pilot barked impatiently, still studying his flight plan. "What is it?"

"The captain of the ship reports that he was attacked," the officer replied.

"Attacked!" the pilot said, both puzzled and excited. "Attacked by whom? The Communist Chinese? The North Koreans?"

"Worse than that." the officer replied.

G.o.dzilla's roar echoed throughout the interior of the Pusan ferry, drowning out the screams of fear and panic.

"Come on... hurry!" Kim cried, tugging his mother's arm urgently. "We've got to get to the lifeboats!"

Kim's eyes, wide with dread, kept shifting from his fear-paralyzed mother to the panic-stricken crowds clogging the exits.

It was no use. Kim knew his mother was in the grip of her deepest fear - there was no way she would get on a lifeboat of her own free will.

It's up to me to save her, he decided.

On the other side of the pa.s.senger deck, Will Adams continued to peer out the window, straight into the eyes of the monster called G.o.dzilla. And Soonji continued to tug on his leg.

Abruptly, G.o.dzilla turned his mighty head, and the spell that seemed to paralyze the young American was broken. Will looked down at the young woman clinging to his leg.

"Come on, Soonji," he said, "let's get out of here."

Outside, G.o.dzilla was slowly walking away from the disabled ferry. But the crew and pa.s.sengers weren't out of danger yet. As the creature departed, G.o.dzilla's tail swished back and forth, churning up the water. Some of the overcrowded rubber rafts that dotted the Sea of j.a.pan were overturned in the turbulence. There were screams of terror as people fell into the sea and sank below the surface. Some would never rise again.

Another angry swish, and G.o.dzilla sideswiped the ferry with his long, powerful tail. The whole ship vibrated like a drum. The tail struck again, and the side of the hull caved in. In the enclosed pa.s.senger deck, windows shattered, raining gla.s.s down on the people still trapped inside.

The Pusan ferry was looking less like a ship - and more like a soda can that had been crushed in the middle. And it was sinking fast.

Will struggled up from the deck and shook off pieces of broken gla.s.s. Everyone who was still aboard the ferry had been knocked off their feet when the ship was swatted by the monster's tail for the third time. Now the ferry was listing precariously to one side. Footing was difficult on the steeply pitched deck, but Will managed to remain standing.

He spotted Soonji, who was struggling to get up off the heaving deck. This ship is going to capsize, Will realized with horror.

He knew he had to get out and take Soonji with him. But people were still choking the exits. In their panic, the pa.s.sengers were actually making escape through the doors all but impossible.

Then Will turned and saw the shattered windows. He grabbed Soonji by the hand and yanked her to her feet. She yelped in surprise as he dragged her toward the broken window. There was still some gla.s.s blocking their exit. Will pushed his shoulder hard against it, and the cracked window collapsed into shards. Most of the gla.s.s pitched into the sea, but some of it rained down on him. Blood began to flow from a cut on his forehead.

"Through here!" he cried, pushing the young woman.

Soonji was about to climb through the window when she saw a Korean boy tugging on an older woman's arm. The woman was curled up in a ball and utterly refused to let go of the heaving deck. Soonji pushed Will's hand away and pointed. He saw them, too.

Will rushed to Kim's side and grabbed the boy. As he lifted Kim over his shoulder, the boy started kicking and shouting. "Mother! What about my mother?" he cried.

Of course, Will didn't understand Korean, but he got the message. Before he could act, Soonji grabbed the woman's arm.

"Up, old mother," Soonji said in Korean.

"No!" the woman screamed. "I can't swim!"

But Soonji would hear none of it. She grabbed the woman by her hair and yanked upward. The woman hollered and jumped to her feet. Soonji dragged her to the window.

The ferry continued to sink. The ocean lapped against the hull only a few feet below the broken window. Will's eyes opened wide with hope when he saw an empty rubber raft bobbing in the water about thirty feet away. Will pulled the Korean boy off his shoulder and pointed to the raft.

"Can you swim?" he asked the boy. Will made swimming motions because the boy obviously didn't understand English. Kim got the message and nodded enthusiastically. At that moment, Soonji appeared at Will's side, dragging the Korean woman behind her.

"I can't swim!" the woman screamed again and again in shrill Korean. "I don't want to go into the water!"

Soonji and Will ignored her. While Kim watched open-mouthed, the couple lifted his mother up and placed her on the broken window sill - careful to avoid the spikes of gla.s.s that were still embedded in the frame. She resisted them with all of her strength.

Finally, Soonji had had enough! "Shut up, old mother," she cried. "Shut up... or I'll let you drown!"

When the woman heard the word drown, she began to scream and fight with new determination. Soonji turned and faced Will. He couldn't believe it when she actually smiled at him. "Watch this," she said in English.

Then Soonji put her foot on the struggling woman's rump and booted her over the side!

Before the screaming woman even hit the water. Soonji, Will, and Kim had dived over the side, too. In seconds, they were all splashing into the cold waters of the Sea of j.a.pan.