Age of Monsters by John Schneider (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

didn't mention you had this,” she said.

“It didn't come up,” Allison said.  She eyed Rosa seriously.  “I want it back.”

“Here,” Julie said.  “I'll take it.”

She tossed her nurse's ponytail, cocking the pistol.  “My dad made me take lessons.”  She glanced at Jeremy meaningfully.  “I've also got a brown-belt in Kenpo.”

Rosa looked up to the empty sky, summoning courage.

“Okay,” she said.  “Let's go.”

The stairway was narrow, with the weight of rubble held in check by crossed girders – but Rosa knew any slight shift in weight could quite easily shake the rubble loose and they would be crushed.

She wondered if they were being foolish, and again felt that impulse to just sit tight.

But their little hidey-hole was only the illusion of safety and she knew it.

Even so, stepping out onto the street-level, out from the shelter of their stairway, she felt incredibly vulnerable and exposed – the morning sun was like a prison spotlight.

Julie climbed up beside her.  Perched on the pile of rubble that had been the parking garage and the thruway, the two of them looked out upon the ruined city.

That was when Rosa realized how truly fortunate they had been.

The shattered skyline no longer even resembled San Francisco – no structure over five stories remained standing.

They stood there, just absorbing the TOTALITY of it – a city of eight-hundred thousand people – utterly wiped away.

You couldn't get rid of cockroaches so completely.

And as they made their way to a vantage point atop their little mountain of rubble, Rosa saw the monsters actually had not gone.

They lay scattered among the ruins – massive bodies, torn and cannibalized.

Nothing seemed to be living in the entire city.

Rosa wondered what it was that had killed these beasts.  She could see damage from munitions fire – bombs and missiles.

But the majority of the wounds seemed to be caused by tooth and claw.

And while, certainly, these giant corpses had been fed upon like carrion, Rosa could see that many of these wounds had bled.

They HAD been killing each other.

It didn't even make sense – no animals behaved this way – this was rabid.

Whatever made them, made them mad.

Looking out on the city-scape of scattered carcasses, Rosa wondered if it was all of them, or if these were just the ones left behind.

And for the first time, she wondered what might be happening beyond the city.  Until now, that had been a psychological investment she simply couldn't afford.

Just like wondering what the cause of it all might have been.

There had been nothing in the leaked 'Monster Island' footage to account for all this.  Even a T. rex would have been biting at the ankles of the creatures that had descended upon her city.

Of course, Aunt Rita had her own ideas – in her world, it was just a simple, old-fashioned, religious-style Apocalypse.

For Rosa's part, the Catholic schoolgirl in her was perfectly willing to accept that the descriptions matched.  Monsters and abominations?  What else would you call them?

Despite her injuries, and despite the loss of her husband, the old lady actually seemed the most composed of the lot of them.

If they were facing Last Times, she said, that just meant it was time to rise up.

She seemed quite at peace when she had finally passed, six days in.  In the minutes before she had gone, the old-lady had held Rosa's hand, as if to comfort her.

“A doctor sees too much pain,” she had told her, giving Rosa's hand a squeeze.  “And you hate it so much.   A girl as young and pretty as you should smile more.”

They had laid her to rest next to her husband near the top of the stairs.

“They're gone,” Julie said.

Rosa turned.  “What are?”

“The old-lady,” Julie said.  “And her husband.  They're gone.”

Rosa looked where they had lain and saw nothing but a torn plastic seat-cover.

She looked around cautiously.

Among the rubble, something skittered just out of sight.

After a moment, that skittering-something hopped up on top of the piled concrete.

It was about two-feet tall – gangly like a plucked emu.

The slender limbs were adorned with vicious-looking claws – almost like fishhooks – and its sharp, beak-like snout was lined in lizard-like teeth.

On its foot, toe-tapping like a drummer, was a lethal-looking sickle.

The thing bobbed in jerky, bird-like motions.

Its jaws were slathered in blood, and in its claws, it held what looked like a rib-bone.

After a moment, several others hopped up beside it, all of them staring with goggly eyes.

One of them had a piece of Rita's black shawl.

In sudden anger, Rosa picked up a piece of concrete and threw it.

The little lizards scattered but bounced back promptly.  And now a few more appeared, bobbing their heads like prairie dogs.

Julie raised the pistol and picked the closet one off its perch with a single shot, sending it spinning like a tin-can off a fence.

Now the others retreated for real, vanishing into the cracks like scurrying rats.

Rosa and Julie examined the twitching corpse left behind.

It was covered in a thin, pale plume – not feathered so much as quills, giving the creature the appearance of scales rather than a pelt.

“Is this a dinosaur?” Julie asked, still pointing the pistol, warily.

Rosa nodded slowly.  The pediatric wing had recently redone the playroom with wall-paintings of dinosaurs, and she clearly recognized the hooked sickle-claw – albeit a smaller version – the domestic cat versus a cougar.  But that murderous hook was intimidating on the miniature model as well.

Behind them, there was the sound of tumbling rock.

The pack of little lizards had regrouped several yards away, still eyeing them interestedly.  Julie took another couple of shots at them and they scattered once again.

The shots echoed in the streets.

Rosa had never