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

Flood-beasts no few with fierce-biting tusks did

Break through his burnie, the brave one pursued they.

The earl then discovered he was down in some cavern

Where no water whatever anywise harmed him,

And the clutch of the current could come not anear him,

Since the roofed-hall prevented; brightness a-gleaming

Fire-light he saw, flashing resplendent.

From the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, date disputed,

circa 700–1000 AD

Apex Facility, Pensacola

Bernie Hayes stared at his laptop screen for a few more heartbeats, at the button for uploading to the SoundCloud. Then he clicked it.

No turning back now, he thought.

But of course, there was. No one knew who Mad Truth was. He hadn’t yet blown his cover at Apex. Maybe he wasn’t ready for this yet.

He turned on the car light, pushing night out of the cramped vehicle.

An itch in his sinuses suddenly turned into a sneeze.

Yeah, he thought, fishing out his sinus spray. I’m a real international super agent. He opened the glove box, spilling out empty chip bags and food wrappers, crammed his laptop into it and closed it up. It wouldn’t help if someone was really on to him; they would search the car from end-to-end, probably take it apart. But it was an expensive piece of equipment, and he didn’t want to tempt anyone to smash his window in to take it. If that happened, it would probably end up being sold to a hacker who would wipe it so they could re-sell it—and in the process find more than they bargained for. That might create a trail, leading back to his car, to him…

Good thing I’m not paranoid, he thought. Maybe he should just take the damn thing with him.

No. That was even riskier. His car was a blight. No one was going to break into it unless they saw something valuable on one of the seats. He was pretty sure a bunch of empty chips bags wouldn’t attract anyone’s avarice.

As he reached for his fanny pack, he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror and thought how different he looked—from back then. Just a few years ago. Would she even recognize him now?

Of course she would. Sara. In some way or other, he felt like she was looking down on him right now. And if she was, what she would see—better than anyone else ever could—was how freaking scared he was.

“You got this,” he whispered to himself. “You got this. You got this.”

Eventually you had to either give up or take a stand. And he was not giving up. The stakes were too high. Maybe he wasn’t some kind of superhero. But he could do this. For Sara. For everyone.

He got out of the car and paused for just a moment to look at his destination, the Apex facility, and industrial blight blocking his view of Pensacola Bay. Years he had been working there, trying to make it look like he had his head down, that he wasn’t paying attention any more than the other worker bees in the building. They ground out their product, they didn’t ask questions, they took their paychecks home and pretended everything was fine. They never asked what they were making or why. They didn’t care. He hadn’t cared until his eyes were opened. When Sara died. Working for Apex.

They had been married about a month when Godzilla and the MUTOs duked it out in San Francisco, but while terrifying and fascinating, it hadn’t seemed connected to them in their tiny flat in Port Huron. And then Godzilla … went away. And like a lot of people, they’d tried to pretend that was the end of it—the age of monsters had ended as quickly as it had begun.

But over the next year, he began to see Sara wasn’t over it, exactly. She would drop odd comments about the Titans during mealtimes, or when they were watching TV. Eventually, he came to believe she was a little obsessed with the subject. That hadn’t worried him so much. He had his own obsessions. He even joked with her about it, and she joked back.

But at a certain point, her laughter stopped. The jokes weren’t funny to her anymore.

And then she had quit her job at Apex. At the time, it seemed to come out of the blue. It was only later that he began to remember the little things she’d said about work, about how she wasn’t sure she could take it anymore. She worked a lot, too much, and he had assumed it was about that, and her dislike for her coworkers.

When she quit, they had had a fight. His income wasn’t enough for them to live on, and he’d felt ambushed by her decision. She told him she needed a break, that she needed to think about some things. He’d been terrified she would leave him, but after a difficult few days he’d come home to find a present wrapped for him on the kitchen table, and a note saying she was sorry, that she had her head straight and wanted to talk about some things, but that she loved him and it would be all right. That she would bring takeout for supper.

He had got the call two hours later. She had been involved in a three-car collision. She was still alive when he got to the hospital, but she never regained consciousness. He was holding her hand when she died.

The next two weeks were a blur, largely spent in a drunken stupor. The third week he had finally worked himself into going through her things. In the desk drawer in her home office he had found a single note.

Godzilla > Apex > Monarch Contract > shipping manifest > component for bomb.

The next day he had brushed up his resume, quit his job, and applied for a position at Apex.

I go in there almost every day, he thought, still staring at the building. This is not a problem. No one will even notice you.

Feeling a little more confident, he started walking.

*   *   *

One of the perks