The Hammer Down Protocol (Cloverfield fanfic)

The Hammer Down Protocol

On an early Summer’s evening, during an unusually quiet Sunday, New York City was attacked. The largest city in the United States, in many ways the capital of the world (at least the western half), was the scene of a rampage by an alien creature. It certainly wasn’t one from earth. It would be later determined that the creature arrived just over two weeks beforehand with an undetected water landing conducted in the New York Bay area. That was a daylight arrival within sight of the tourist resort of Coney Island. Contained within its transport vessel, the creature either moved itself or was moved along the seafloor westwards and closer to the city too. On the night when it made its appearance, it was in the very lower reaches of the Hudson River where that waterway met with Upper New York Bay. Many names would be given to the creature following its appearance and all of the destruction it wrought. Godzilla was an early moniker while It was another. There was the assumption that the creature was male leading to another name being used: He. Two official US Government terms were employed by the authorities in the aftermath. Large Scale Aggressor was the public name while in secret, the creature was called the Clover… and the area it destroyed later codenamed Cloverfield too.

A secret project to track such creatures after they had been encountered beyond earth – and then the highly classified ‘incident’ in the near anonymous Chinese city of Wuhan seven weeks before New York – allowed the US Government to be aware of a very real threat on the horizon. The Clover which struck deep inside the expanses of China was something hidden from the world. It was determined after its attack and subsequent death that the Clover was young, asexual and had an inbuilt desire to seek shelter with in warm urban areas. Cities were certain to attract any Clover which made the journey from the stars. Only at the very top of the US Government was anyone aware of any of this. The American public certainly didn’t know. The Chinese had done a stellar job of covering up their incident and in Washington, the president at his top people made the decision that the people didn’t need to know. They made various excuses to themselves yet unsaid was the realisation that short of massive military action targeted directly against it, a Clover on the loose in an American city was unkillable. It would destroy and devastate until blown to pieces, and to do that would mean immense collateral damage being done. They didn’t want to think about doing that and tried to ignore the issue. That was the height of stupidity and utterly tragic for so many Americans in the long run. What had also been witnessed in Wuhan, what the US Government knew only a little about, was that the Clover seen there hadn’t come alone. Post eruption from its transport pod and once seeking shelter from the harsh (to it) elements, the Clover would shed Parasites which had attached to its body. Those fed off the Cover first before moving to attack any living thing. Thousands of Chinese civilians had been killed by them – though less in number than the ultimate number of casualties when Wuhan was wiped from the face of the earth – when they suffered gruesome deaths: animals had too been attacked. The Americans had believed that the Clover ejected them via an orifice or that they were a part of it somehow controlled by the creature. The numbers of them and their ability to hunt humans, and spread so fast so quick away from the Clover, had been something uncovered before New York was devastated like it was.

When it erupted from its pod on the seafloor, the transporting vessel itself was eliminated in a subsequent explosion from which the Clover itself was unharmed. In China, it had been next to a power station where that occurred: in New York it was near to the Statue of Liberty out there on its own island to the southwest of Manhattan. In an unfortunate coincidence, or not an accident at all as some crazed conspiracy theorists would say, a natural gas tanker was nearby. That ship was drifting without power after an onboard incident and a significant distance away from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River where it was meant to be. Port Authority boats were nearby at the time. The underwater blast was similar to an earthquake. The whole city shook, beyond Manhattan, and so did parts of New Jersey too. The Clover came upwards out of the water and towards land. Liberty Island was sought though the tanker was in the way. The ship was knocked out of the way of the frightened, disorientated Clover. It capsized due to the force of the Clover smashing into it and even grabbing at it too. In the meantime, the first video footage of the Clover was captured by a crewmember aboard one of those small Port Authority boats. He was shook up like everyone else by the ‘earthquake’ yet quickly had his wits about him when there was a thing seemingly trying to scramble up the side of the Statue of Liberty. It was something from a nightmare. The Clover was no wonder of nature to behold: not even its mother could love it! That footage would find its way to the highest reaches of the US Government and be classified. When on Liberty Island, part of the iconic monument, its head, was grabbed by the Clover for no discernable reason. Back into the water the Clover went after that and it made its way to the nearest land where there was the sense of that warmth and promised shelter detected. It could have gone westwards, into New Jersey, yet opted to go east instead.

The Clover then stepped foot on the island of Manhattan.


Smashing its way past anything in its way, the Clover began that rampage which would only end the next morning. The Battery Party City area of Lower Manhattan saw the Clover smash through it with reckless abandon. Everything in its way was walked into or bashed with many legs. The giant creature stood taller than many buildings. Those were full of people. Other New Yorkers were out on the streets at the time following the earthquake as they tried to work out what was happening. The Clover let out an enormous roar as it wound its way unsteadily up the West Side Highway at first in the direction of the World Trade Centre. Mass destruction and significant loss of life was left it is wake. Behind it there was that explosion of the capsized tanker when the supposedly sealed gas tanks ruptured. A huge explosion, yet not as large as the underwater one, went off. That frightened the Clover and it turned to the right going further away from the water: it avoided the WTC. Parasites began to start falling off at that stage where they would begin their own reign of terror in New York.

Loose in the Big Apple, the Clover would spend the night and the early hours of the Monday morning roaming across Manhattan and even swimming along the water’s edge around the island at times too. First travelling through Lower Manhattan, the Clover travelled across the Financial District and towards the Civil Centre area. It caused mayhem everywhere. The headquarters of the NYPD came within inches of being crushed by the wandering Clover. If it had been, coordination efforts made early on by the NYPD, at the urgent instruction of the mayor, to evacuate people would have been severely hampered. Every step it took, the death toll and number of injuries rose. Seemingly hugging buildings, especially the big ones, to seek out some sort of warmth, the Clover destroyed them in the process… though others just got in its way. The Woolworth Building, an impressive skyscraper, was utterly demolished by one of those incidents. Near to there, the Clover threw away that head from the Statue of Liberty too. Chinatown was left in ruin when the Clover swung southwards following well-directed gunfire from NYPD officers firing in unison with pistols and shotguns. They harmed it not one bit yet caused it to flee in terror. In a mass attack within Chinatown, many of those police officers were massacred by a torrent of those Parasites, sort of crablike sort of spiderlike, who went for them. The Clover went across the FDR Drive in the Two Bridges neighbourhood and into the East Rover. It was huge yet still managed to disappear from view. Thousands of New Yorkers were streaming out of Manhattan across the Brooklyn & Manhattan Bridges which spanned the East River. Panicked yet effective evacuation efforts to get people to flee Manhattan for Brooklyn was going on at that time with most people having no idea what they were fleeing from. Away from it they went though as the city behind them was being torn apart for no apparent reason.

The Brooklyn Bridge attracted the attention of the Clover. It grappled with it, pulling at the structure first from below the water and then when climbing upwards. That sturdy structure partially collapsed, taking hundreds of people into the water below where they would lose their lives. Rather than into Brooklyn, the Clover made an about-turn and went back into Manhattan. It came ashore at the South Street Seaport and crossed the Financial District once more as it went northwards. Its course wasn’t steady and it was at one point only a block away from the Lower Manhattan Hospital. That facility was overrun with the injured and there was a panicked flight of people, leading to a fatal stampede, when the Clover roared as it passed so very nearby. News crews, police officers and even citizens armed with weapons chased it as the Clover walked through City Hall Park and turned up Broadway. On the way, much of the Javits Federal Building, where the FBI had their New York field office, was demolished. The eastern side of the Tribeca region was smashed to pieces when the Clover wouldn’t maintain a steady march up Broadway and smashed its way through buildings and neighbouring streets. When it approached the junction with the cross-island Canal Street, with SoHo up ahead, the Clover was met with sustained gunfire. Soldiers from the New York Army National Guard attacked it just before midnight. There weren’t many of them and they had rushed from their armoury with light weapons without knowing fully what they faced. An improvised position was selected there. Rather than run away, the Clover tore through them. Parasites rushing about did damage to the position of those national guardsmen ahead of that too. Faced with the Clover coming right at them, its huge size and the roar it made, caused many soldiers to freeze in terrified awe. Others, combat veterans of fight abroad, did no such thing. They opened fire. None of that did any good as the position was trampled underfoot.

Eastwards across the Bowery the Clover went afterwards – sparing SoHo in the end – and towards Little Italy. That neighbourhood was a far different place from what it had once been, where the name had come from. The Clover had no sense of New York history and just smashed the place apart. It did a circle at one point and then turned for the East River once more. The Clover was lost and assailed by ineffective gunfire wherever it went. Massive losses of life were incurred during its time there in Lower Manhattan before it finally moved onwards. Many people had fled but others either hadn’t managed to in time or didn’t want to follow the urgent mandatory evacuation announcements. A bit of East Village was smashed up along with a chunk of Greenwich Village before the Clover turned to the left, crossed Broadway after avoiding SoHo and entered the Union Square area. The famous Washington Square Park had it trample through there while depositing more of those Parasites all over that area. Then it was the Flatiron District and subsequently Chelsea who the Clover tore through. Helicopters circled above. There were news choppers as well as New York Army National Guard ones. They shone lights down on it and there was even some sniping done. Such things enraged the Clover. It roared at them and also stood up on its hind legs to try to use its front legs / arms to swat at them. One helicopter with a media crew just avoided that unexpected attack but went out of control and slammed into a building near Eighth Avenue & West 22nd Street.

Penn Station and Madison Square Garden avoided the attentions of the Clover yet it ran riot through much of Chelsea where, like down in Little Italy, it rampaged in circles and even a figure of eight shape. NYPD officers and more national guardsmen engaged it repeatedly, all to no avail. The Parasites continued to fall down from the creature throughout and spread their own reign of terror upon New Yorkers. In the Garment District, the Clover went back into the river near the Hudson Yards. The Lincoln tunnel was below the river, within the rock under the water. The Clover tried to tear at the riverbed to reach it yet without any luck. There were thousands of people there, all who heard something that they never would again without knowing what that was. Whatever they heard, it scared the living daylights out of them. Back up to the surface and once more into Manhattan the Clover went with landfall being made at Pier 86. Directed east it went leading to it avoiding the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Times Square – at first – as it marched towards the Rockefeller Centre. 30 Rock joined a whole host of New York iconic buildings demolished before the Clover turned to right and travelled southwards fleeing from more military attention directed against it from the brave yet overwhelmed national guardsmen sent charging towards it. Finally reaching Times Square, there was damage done there by the Clover yet the level of destruction wasn’t as spectacular as seen elsewhere. Back on Broadway, across Midtown’s Theatre District the Clover did bring more destruction when it made another about-turn to go back north.

At Columbus Circle, the Clover made a turn to the left rather than go right into Central Park. The Time Warner Centre – used for residential, retail and office functions – was smashed into and so was Mount Sinai West. The latter was a hospital not spared the attentions of the Clover like Lower Manhattan Hospital had been. The Lincoln Square neighbourhood was ripped to pieces when, once more, the Clover went in circles all around it before finally going into Central Park, across the southern end of that green space and coming back into Midtown near the Ritz-Carlton hotel. The Clover smashed its way all the way over to Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. That building was brought down despite its reported structural strength. Madison Avenue at first then Park Avenue were followed southwards as the Clover ripped through so much more of Midtown again. The Helmsley Building was ‘hugged’ and then the Clover reached Grand Central Terminal. An encounter with New York Army National Guard soldiers took place there while a helicopter laden with casualties fled from the Clover. The railroad station, plus the New York Public Library too, were smashed to pieces as the Clover fled attacks against it. Retracing its steps almost, the Clover went north once first up Park Avenue then across to Madison Avenue before coming out on Fifth Avenue a block from where the Trump Tower had been eliminated as an obstacle. Dawn was breaking at that point. There were aircraft in the sky, lots of them. They rained down bombs upon the Clover as it fled first west then north.

In an area bounded by West 57th Street to the north, Broadway to the west, West 51st Street to the south and Madison Avenue to the east more damage was done to that area than the Clover could do itself. There were a lot of civilians about though not as many as there were elsewhere in more residential areas of Manhattan. The Clover was assailed from above relentlessly. It lashed out, even at helicopters above, getting another one of them (with evacuees from Grand Central), yet couldn’t find any escape. Injuries were caused to the Clover during that massive aerial attack. It fled with great speed – more than previously witnessed – in a northwards direction into Central Park. When it did so, that coincided with the full unleashing of the Hammer Down Protocol.


There were military planners at the Pentagon who had a contingency plan for seemingly everything. Alien invasion with flying saucers shooting laser beams? They had a plan for that. The undead marching forward killing all before them? That was covered. Such things were good for staff exercises and spotting innovative thinkers. Real-world operations were sometimes based on such outlandish concepts where some elements of the planning was put to use in unusual situations. A rampaging monster from out of space tearing up the nation’s biggest city hadn’t been covered though, not before that Chinese city was left in ruin first by a Clover and then the full might of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force. In the White House, dealing with a Clover wasn’t up for discussion ahead of its attack upon New York yet a small team of Pentagon planners had been allowed to draw up a concept at the personal request of the Chairwoman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They saw footage which got past the Great Internet Firewall of China and plotted out a course of action if the unthinkable happened and one of those creatures ran riot in an American city. When it happened, and the president was left aghast at what he was seeing via media reports first and then later official military footage, he turned to his Secretary of Defence and the Joint Chiefs. They told him the only way to put an end to the Clover was to do as the Chinese had done to Wuhan: level a good chunk of the city with massive amounts of ordnance. What had been done in China had been necessary not just because of the Clover itself but those Parasites. The footage of them attacking people – men, women and children – had been more alarming for the president to see than just the Clover. For those at the Pentagon, they understood when seeing that all that the Chinese had done. A wide area, not just where the Clover itself was, had to be utterly destroyed to kill most of them. Soldiers would go in afterwards to mop up the remains but a big attack needed to be done from above, where the mass of parasites were located in number, to allow for that second move to succeed. The planners had drawn up their concept to try to cut down on civilian casualties as much as possible. The Clover was to be targeted for attack when in low-population areas. But… more of the targeted area had to still be hit hard and repeatedly as well.

The president had the choice of destroying an American city, killing countless of his own people, or allowing the Clover to move on with the knowledge that the Parasites would follow and the possibility that they could breed in number. New York could be be first before it was Philadelphia, DC… and the whole East Coast. Time was exceedingly short. The decision was made. A plan of action, codenamed Hammer Down Protocol, went into action.

Bombing New York City was something that the US Armed Forces weren’t prepared for apart from a single planning document covering an attack on an unnamed American city. The operation to do so was thrown together overnight in a hurry. There were refusals to do it from some aircrews and officers in their command chains. No matter what they were being told about a huge creature levelling the city and parasitic offspring slaughtering people, bombing New York just wasn’t something they could morally do. They knew that the city would still be full of people. They would rather face the consequences of a court martial than do that. However, the majority of those involved followed their orders. Those came from the president and were issued in a legal manner. Aircraft from the US Air Force, the US Navy and the US Marine Corps were sent towards the Big Apple. Their flights were staggered due to delays being incurred and there being no pre-attack warning of any significant time. Fighting on the fly with no warning wasn’t usually done by American air power. Yet, at the same time, normal preparations made before and during military action weren’t needed. There was no need to fly overseas and then through enemy air defences. Navigation to the target wasn’t complicated and there was no active opposition. Smaller aircraft showed up first where they made bomb runs over a certain portion of the city, the northern part of Midtown, before dawn. Those were tactical aircraft which dropped bombs, launched rockets and even fired their cannons. They devastated a good chunk of New York yet the Clover survived. Friendly fire incidents occurred when bombs fell though. Many Parasites were caught in the air attacks yet not many of them. To finish most of them off, and destroy the huge creature, was the job of the big bombers.

The main aspect of the Hammer Down Protocol saw the strategic bombers of the US Air Force smash apart New York City. B-1B Lancers, B-2A Spirits and even B-52H Stratofortress’ filled the skies over the Big Apple. They dropped tons of high explosive bombs. The well-targeted area of Midtown where the Clover was before he departed for Central Park got plenty of attention yet so did other areas such as the Financial District, Little Italy, Union Square and the Garment District. Reports from those on the ground said that those areas were full of Parasites. Explosions above ground and then below ground ripped through a huge chunk of Manhattan. Civilian casualties, there were Americans down there, were enormous. The massacre delivered from above would be called a war crime afterwards because it killed so many innocents. Those flying above dropping the bombs had been told that most New Yorkers had been evacuated. That was only partially true. The authorities could only assume that that was the case yet it wasn’t. Never would the president himself have given the go ahead – he would have wanted to wait longer – if he had been aware just how many American civilians were still in the way of all of those bombs.

The bombers got the Clover in Central Park. A kill was made there out in the open. B-52s were almost lined up wingtip-to-wingtip (so it appeared to those below) when they delivered the coup de grâce to the already-wounded creature. With a final roar, the life was then snuffed out of it when a 500lb bomb detonated atop its head. From afar, orders came for the bombs to keep falling there in Central Park just in case. The Clover had previously been erroneously reported dead when demolishing the CBS Building on Sixth Avenue yet had emerged unscathed from an attack by Maryland Air National Guard A-10C Thunderbolts firing huge shells from their mounted cannons into it. Bombs rained down for sometime upon the Clover long after it was dead. Moreover, air attacks elsewhere in the city would continue where reports said that Parasites were located in strength. New York City was bombed through most of that Monday with the B-52s coming back doing Arc Light strikes in Little Italy, and also Chinatown, by that evening. Finally, when darkness fell, the Hammer Down Protocol came to a conclusion.

Then came the consequences. Political ones and economic ones. The death toll went up and up with revision after revision made. The Clover had struck on a Sunday night and commuters hadn’t flooded into the city the next morning: New York had thus had a lower population in the firing line than on a typical workday. Regardless, the casualty count from all causes associated with the Clover’s appearance would top half a million. A good proportion of them were inflicted by the full might of the United States’ air power as it bombed its own biggest city. As to the Parasites, not all of them died during the bombing nor the mop up when Manhattan was flooded with a mass of soldiers on a search-&-destroy mission. Some of them got free and breed too… it turned out that China had the same problem as well yet had been suppressing knowledge of that like they had the Clover which had attacked Wuhan. Of course, everyone knew about the creature in New York. Its attack, and the aftermath when the casualty count came along with the understanding that American bombs took so many of those lives, would cost the president his office: he’d resign ahead of impeachment.

And, in addition, before the year was out, more Clovers would appear. Paris then Karachi would see their arrival too along with the terrors inflicted by the Parasites.

Yep. Them getting on the chopper near Grand Central Terminal, Clover's attack there, B-2s over Midtown dropping bombs and Clover getting a chopper with evacuees are all in the story.

What date in the past does Cloverfield take place in? 2008 or 2009?

No one in this story has heard of Wuhan, so its in the past. I didn't date it though. Let's say 2008.

Where is it mentioned that it attacked Whuan.

Do not think events in Manhattan will stop ore butterfly away events in Georgia, the president of that country is not going to say, lets not fight in South Ossetia and provoke a massive Russian responds just because there is a giant creature rampaging across New York. 

How does the CCP try to cover up the leveling of Wuhan? Some foreign national could film it on their 2008 flip phone or early iPhone 3Gs. Even the U.S. consulate in Wuhan would be evacuated and the staff would report back to Foggy Bottom on what is going on. Not to mention the DoD has satellites that are spying on potential enemies like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran as we speak. The Chinese wouldn't be able to cover this up for long.