Godzilla vs. Kong by Greg Keyes (e books free to read TXT) 📗

given what she knew of the other Titan. Either way, she did not want to find out. Kong was the last of his kind. She could not tolerate having the extinction of his species—or the death of him as an individual—resting on her shoulders. Her job was to keep him from harm, not to mention shield the world from the kind of collateral damage a Titan battle could produce. She would do her level best to do both of those things.

“There has to be another way,” she said. But even to herself, she did not sound convincing.

FOUR

So listen up, class. Way back in the day there was this guy named Odysseus. He got caught up in the Ancient Greece version of the military-industrial complex, went all the way overseas to fight in a war that did not make one lick of sense. And when it was over, all he wanted to do was get home to his wife. But the gods, you know, were pullin’ the strings behind the scenes, so it took him ten years to get home. And that’s on top of the ten years he was fighting in this nonsense war. So—trying to get back home—he comes across this island where everybody eats this lotus plant, this drug that keeps them mostly asleep and feelin’ good. They don’t know what’s going on, and they don’t care. They’re happy that way, even if some lion or something comes and eats one of them once in a while. So all you listening to this—that’s you. Most of you. Lotus Eaters. Your lotus is video games, television, social media, videos on the internet. For some of you it’s actual drugs. Most of you are asleep, and you like it that way. I am not here to talk to the sleepers. I’m here for the ones half-awake. Who want to know. Who want their eyes wide open.

I had this teacher in sixth grade. If you said you were mad, she would say, “You aren’t mad, you’re angry. I’ve seen real mad people. They eat pillows and such.”

She was a good teacher. One of the few I liked. But she was wrong.

This is Mad Truth, Mad as in all-in, Mad as in crazy, Mad as in for real—but also Mad as in angry, because I was asleep myself, and I slept right through the end of my world. And this shit is gonna get crazy, and it’s gonna be angry, it’s gonna be out of your comfort zone, and it’s gonna be real. This is the first, but it ain’t gonna be the last. I’m here to stay, ya’ll. Buckle in for the ride or get off now.

Mad Truth, Titan Truth Podcast #1

Pensacola, Present Day

Mark Russell woke from an uneasy sleep and lay in his bed for a few moments, trying to remember exactly where he was. It was dark, the only light in the room the digital clock that told him it was five-thirty. So he still had thirty minutes of sleep before he had to wake Madison…

That made everything click into place. This was Pensacola, Florida. He and Madison had been here for almost a year. After he had returned to Monarch—after the battle in Boston—they had been shifted around the globe, sometimes moving four or five times a year. When the position in Pensacola had come open, he had insisted upon it. It was stable, long term. Madison could attend the same school for the remainder of her secondary years, settle in, make some friends, have something like a normal life. And he had family here, his older sister Cassidy. Her kids were grown and gone, and she didn’t mind pitching in to help him with Madison from time to time.

As he sat up, he realized he smelled bacon. He followed the scent into the kitchen, where he found Madison cooking.

“That smells good,” he said. “What are we having?”

“Morning, Dad,” she said. “I’m working on my omelet skills today.” He watched as she tilted a little non-stick skillet full of egg and then flipped it to form a half-moon shape. For an instant, he saw her as the little girl she had been not long ago, with the short haircut that flipped up at the ends. It was his default image of her, the one that came to mind when he was away from home. He wondered if it was like this with all parents, to have a younger picture of their child stuck in their heads. The image was no longer a good fit; she was fifteen now, and she’d grown her brown hair out long in the last year, not to mention sprouting up six inches.

“You know, you don’t have to do this,” Mark said. “I’m capable of making breakfast for us.”

“Sure,” Madison said. “I’m a big fan of your fabulous cereal and milk. And you make a mean … toast.”

“Hey,” he said. “I can cook.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I like doing it. It reminds me of…”

She didn’t finish, but he knew where she was going with it. When Madison had lived with her mother, he gathered that they had become more like roommates than mother and daughter. Not in a bad way; Madison had always liked to pull her weight and Emma had encouraged a certain amount of independence in their children.

And, boy, had she succeeded. Madison had shown that back in Boston, three years ago. He was still surprised to this day that he hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack during that whole business. He still woke with the cold sweats sometimes, from nightmares of finding her in the wreckage of their old house, not breathing, pale as death.

He felt like he was still playing catch-up in a race where he had only one leg, trying to find a balance with his daughter. He wanted to give her what was left of her childhood, if he could, but it was also achingly apparent that she was mostly beyond that now, or