A giant sinkhole, much like the one in Japan, had swallowed Chinatown. A wide path of destruction, like the one in Hawaii, had torn across The Embarcadero to Telegraph Hill, where Godzilla and the male MUTO could be glimpsed fighting amidst crumbling high-rises and residential buildings. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed up from the war zone. Fires blazed within the demolished buildings. As in Honolulu, Godzilla had the advantage of size over the other monster, but the male appeared in no hurry to retreat this time. The winged creature was standing its ground, with the surrounding neighborhoods paying the price. Angry snarls and screeches were punctuated by crashing buildings. Thunderclaps, reverberating overhead, provided a percussive soundtrack to the cataclysmic tussle, whose outcome seemed far from certain. It was survival of the fittest—on a grandiose scale.

Ford dropped between rows of buildings that blocked his view of the battling monsters. He tugged on his ripcord and was yanked upward as his main canopy deployed. A square, “ram-air” parafoil inflated above him and he used the steering toggles to come in for a landing on a rubble-strewn street somewhere in the ruins of the Financial District. He touched down with an awkward stutter-step onto the cracked and broken pavement, without actually falling or breaking anything, and stumbled to a halt.

Whew, he thought. Made it.

He was relieved to be back on solid ground again. Tugging off his oxygen mask, he took a deep breath of real air, which smelled of smoke and ash. He glanced around warily, but did not spy any monsters in his immediate vicinity. Smashed skyscrapers jutting up from the ravaged streets suggested that the monsters had already passed through this district, leaving little intact. Night had fallen so that only the glow from scattered fires illuminated the darkened city. From the sound of things, however, the beasts were still raging several blocks away. It dawned on him that he’d had yet to see the female MUTO, the one that had attacked the missile train. He had to assume that it was abroad as well.

Better keep my eyes out for that bitch, he thought.

Shedding his ‘chute, which was draped over the rubble, he hastily rescued a rifle and flashlight from his gear bag and fitted the light to the barrel of his gun. A gust of wind blew aside the voluminous nylon canopy, exposing charred human bodies lying amidst the debris, half-buried beneath fallen chunks of masonry. A blackened arm stretched lifelessly from beneath a mass of crumbling concrete and rebar.

More collateral damage, Ford realized, of the timeless feud between Godzilla and the MUTOs. He winced at the sight, wondering briefly whom the burned bodies had belonged to and what families would mourn them, but he also knew that the death rate would skyrocket unless he and his comrades completed their mission and disarmed the stolen warhead. He had to keep moving.