Godzilla terrorizes Greater St. Louis
A monster resembling Hollywood’s Godzilla attacked motorists in Illinois, damaging roads and structures, before disappearing into the Mississippi River just short of St. Louis. Experts at Cahokia Mounds State Park are evaluating the damage Godzilla caused at this World Heritage Site.
Do you realize that there’s a novelization of almost every blockbuster movie to come out of Hollywood recently? As it turns out, a few people in the area have abilities similar to those from InkHeart (a fabulous story, but please, don’t read it out loud unless you’re sure that’s not your Gift), and some of them were inclined to read out loud. They’re less likely to do so now. People are also more cautious in using the phrase, “I wish…,” since for some people, that triggers their ability… even if they’re not the ones saying it!
But before we realized this, Edwardsville and its surrounding area had already seen Godzilla, Kat Kong (yes, really! that guy who wrote all the Captain Underpants books wrote this one), and Puff the Magic Dragon. That last one was pretty sweet, but even a friendly dragon is not suited for city living. I gave him directions to Hanalei Bay; I hope he’s happy there.
Godzilla was anything but friendly.
It was the last week of school, so nobody was really paying attention in class anyways when the ground started shaking. Thinking it was an earthquake – weird, but not unheard of here – our teachers rushed us outside. The ground kept shaking, but it was an on and off thing, kind of what you’d expect if a two hundred foot reptile (of sorts) is walking your way.
Everybody was looking around, trying to figure out what was going on, when somebody from another class shouted out, “Is that a dinosaur?”
It was still pretty far off at that point, but one of the teachers pulled out his camera with a zoom lens and got a better look just as we all heard a distant skreeeonk sound. Everybody’s eyes opened wide at that sound, and the teacher with the camera said, in a fairly calm voice, “I think that’s Godzilla.” What he really meant was, “Oh hell, that’s Godzilla!“, but he did try not to let that come through in his voice.
My teacher, Mrs. Parson, had her cell phone out as soon as he said it and called 911. The local dispatch had the teachers take us back into the classroom to hide. We heard police sirens in the distance as we rushed back into the building, and then the tornado siren sounded, covering most noises other than the occasional skreeeeonk. We stayed there, listening anxiously to a collection of sirens, explosions, and eventually a furious roar before the earth finally stopped shaking.
I learned later that the police had cobbled together a hasty barricade and buzzed Godzilla with crop dusters to distract him until military planes arrived. The barricade only worked through a combination of Gifts – several telekinetics helped lift trucks and construction material to make it taller, and some people, including Moira Anderson, extended their shields around it as a group until help arrived. Even the Air Force fighters didn’t hurt him much, but they did turn him away from Edwardsville. He lumbered over towards St. Louis, causing quite the panic there before disappearing into the river instead.
Kat Kong showed up a few days later, but wasn’t nearly as scary when you compared the two. For starters, he’s way smaller than Godzilla. And by then, Papa knew which local people had Gifts and he called up a conjurer as soon as he heard about Kat Kong. A conjurer is someone who can summon something, either by reading it from a book, or wishing for it, or even by pulling it out of a computer. (We didn’t know about that last one at the time.) Jimmy Mitchell could read items out of books and he brought his World Records book with him when Papa called. They went out together with a couple other squad cars to find Kat Kong, and Jimmy pulled the world’s largest ball of yarn out of his record book. One of the telekinetics moved it around to keep the giant cat entertained until the army guys got out here to capture it.
Yeah, I said capture. Not only were there animal rights groups protesting when creatures of any type were killed, but the government had started running tests on any abnormal life forms that were generated with Gifts. I sure hope Puff made it to Hawaii without getting captured.
At dinner the night that Kat Kong was captured, Aunt Mary looked at Papa for quite a while, and then finally said, “Goodness, Henry, I’m surprised you haven’t shown a Gift yet, what with all the crises you’re dealing with.”
“Nonsense, Mary, there are plenty of Gifted who are helping,” he said, “and Evie has always been my Gift.”
My heart melted, just a little, and I rushed over to hug him.