Godzilla at World's End (32 page)

In many ways, the United States was in better shape
after
the Babel Event than it was before. With the government out of the people's way, the task of keeping the country functioning and safe for the common man was accomplished
by
the common man.

***

On Tuesday, March 6, 2001, the long-delayed presidential election was held in the United States. The sitting president and his administration were defeated in a landslide. People who had lived without government for a few weeks discovered that they liked it. As bloated, inefficient government programs fell out of favor, so did the administration and its political party.

On Friday, March 30, 2001, the newly elected president was sworn in. Hours later the new commander in chief awarded the four soldiers who survived the assault inside the Ancient Ones' city with medals of valor in a White House ceremony.

Corporal
Patrick
Brennan was not with them. He had confessed to enlisting under false pretenses at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was recovering from the serious wound he received during the assault. But as he would soon reach the age of eighteen - old enough to enlist in the military - Patrick Brennan was permitted to remain in the armed services.

In fact, he was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant and given a command of his own.

With Shelly Townsend at his side, Brennan watched his friends get their medals on television from his hospital bed. He laughed out loud when he saw their shocked faces as they shook hands with the president himself.

Patrick Brennan was awarded a Purple Heart in a bedside ceremony hours later - and then he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in a White House ceremony after he was finally deemed fit enough to return to active duty.

In April 2001, Patrick Brennan was reunited with his mother and his wayward older brother, Sean - who had been rescued by a South Korean ship two days after the
Dingo's Luck
was destroyed.

Sean Brennan gave an account of the plutonium smuggling incident to a panel of United Nations inspectors, and sanctions were immediately imposed on the Communist government of North Korea.

The Russian Federation, stunned by the destruction wrought by Gigan and the knowledge that they had their own homegrown
kaiju
- Anguirus - began a massive program to create a weapon to battle giant monsters.

Though the Russian program was top-secret, the intelligence agencies in America and Western Europe soon heard rumors of a new biological agent or toxin - as well as a new weapons system to deliver that agent.

Secretly, Japan and the United States began a joint venture of their own to create a similar weapon. Despite the fact that most experts felt that Godzilla was no longer a threat, enough monsters
had
shown their ugly faces to make people wary.

Both expensive defense programs went forward.

***

Peter Blackwater returned to Alaska a local hero, but he didn't stay long. Instead, he attended an undisclosed university under an assumed name, far from the public eye.

Ned Landson gave up science completely and went on to star in a series of action-adventure films, the most successful of which was a big-screen version of the old television classic
Sea Hunt.

Shelly Townsend quit the airship business altogether and attended Brown University.

Nick Gordon returned to the
Science Sunday
show, and Robin Halliday moved on to INN's prime-time news program
Independent Focus.
Craig Weedie, the Fellow Traveler, got a show of his own.

Leena Sims patented her microchip manufacturing process, but did not accept any of the lucrative offers to join a computer manufacturing firm. Instead, she, like Peter Blackwater, retreated from public life.

And she still had dreams of Mothra.

Michael Sullivan joined the crew of the
Destiny Explorer
, assuming Shelly Townsend's place on the bridge. It was Michael who contacted Leena Sims in early September, inviting her on a second voyage to Antarctica.

Leena accepted the invitation.

In a somber, private ceremony that took place on Tuesday, November 13, 2001, Michael Sullivan, Leena Sims, Simon Townsend, and Captain Jack D. Dolan dedicated a tombstone honoring Zoe Kemmering in Wilkes Land. The white marble stone was placed over the approximate location of the buried city of the Ancient Ones.

Etched into the stone was a quotation by the poet John Milton from
Paradise Lost
, which read:

"And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

AN ANCIENT RACE AWAKENS TO WAGE A TITANIC WAR

In the year 2001, amid the frigid ice fields of the South Pole, a group of teenage science students and a team of U.S. Army Rangers make an eerie discovery.

Miles below the surface of Antarctica, a race of ancient crystalline beings has awakened after a million years of frozen slumber. Horrified at finding their world "infected" with a human plague, these Ancient Ones create an army of virulent monsters. The evil, insectlike Megalon is let loose on Russia. Gigan, a cyborg, lays waste to South America. Manda, a gargantuan snake, invades China. And Hedorah, the Smog Monster, descends on Japan.

As Earth becomes a battleground of titanic monsters, the young scientists and soldiers at the bottom of the world must join forces with Godzilla, King of the Monsters, to become the last line of defense against a race older than humanity itself.