The female MUTO’s trail of destruction was visible from the air. Acres of American farmland had been devastated by the creature’s passage, the gentle geometry of patterned fields left brutalized in the monster’s wake. Crushed barns and silos were ground into the clawed earth. Anxious farm animals roamed among the ruins of scattered family farms. Nor were the ensuing small towns and suburbs spared. Highways were flattened. Entire neighborhoods and housing developments were razed to their foundations, their former residents fleeing in panic just ahead of the destruction. The wreckage of abandoned malls and shopping centers, schools and churches, joined a seemingly endless disaster zone that stretched west for as far as the eye could see.

Ford was shaken by what he’d seen from the transport plane. Even with everything he’d witnessed overseas, this struck far too close to home. It felt as though the nightmare that had begun for him in Janjira fifteen years ago was still stalking his family—and the country he’d pledged to defend. And now there were three monsters?

“Okay, everybody off!” the loadmaster ordered. “This is as far as we can fly.”

The C-17 had touched down on an evacuated airstrip somewhere east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The rear doors of the plane opened and the troops disembarked into the harsh sunlight. After being cooped up in the hold of the Globemaster for hours, Ford’s eyes needed a moment to adjust.

He spied a small town less than a mile away—and crashed aircraft further in the distance. The loadmaster saw him staring at the smoking wreckage.

“We’re well within range of its EMP,” Staff Sergeant Hultquist explained. “From here on out, it’s by land or not at all.”

Ford understood. Dr. Serizawa had explained to him about the MUTO’s electromagnetic pulse, the effects of which Ford had personally witnessed in Japan and Honolulu. He deduced that the crashed planes marked the current borders of the second MUTO’s field of influence.

He felt glad to be on solid ground.

Along with Morales and the other soldiers, he was crammed into a waiting troop carrier that was part of a larger convoy heading toward the front lines of the conflict. More planes were landing, disgorging yet more personnel, to be transferred into additional carriers. Ford was impressed by the scale of the mobilization. He’d never seen anything like it, not even in Iraq or Afghanistan. The military was pulling out all the stops to deal with the rampaging monsters.

He hoped that would be enough.