Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

skipped the waves like a tossed stone, threatening to tip, roll, and break apart.

Even Cameron held his breath as Maverick lurched them back up in the air, wings wobbling wildly, before finally stabilizing and dropping down onto the water.

“Just like water-skis,” Maverick said, as they plowed the surface, and now he circled towards the dock.

He coasted the Cessna to a stop and cut the engines.  The plane bumped against the pier.

Maverick turned to the cabin.

“Well,” he said, “we're here.”

When they pushed open the cabin door, the scent of heavy vegetation was cloying, and the heat hit them like a sauna.

The tropical lagoon sat sultry-still, greeting the four trespassers as they filed out of the plane.  The dock led to a small clearing.  A path, paved with gravel, was cut into the trees.

But so far, the road beyond was empty.

Maverick tied the plane to the dock.  Kate snapped her fingers at Cameron, who was filming the beach and surrounding jungle.

“Camera on me,” Kate said, posing in front of the clearing, as Cameron zoomed in on her.

“We have arrived,” Kate said, in her best narrator's voice.  “We are standing on what modern folklore has called Monster Island.”

Cameron panned back to reveal the island behind her.

“Rumors have persisted for years,” Kate continued, “dismissed as urban legend, dreamed-up in popular culture, stories of mutations and genetically-bred monstrosities.  Scientific mythology.

“Yet today,” Kate intoned, “before even landing on this island, we have already encountered irrevocable evidence that the impossible is true.”

As she spoke, there was the sound of crunching movement from the gravel road.  The heavy vegetation had grown together over-top, hedged together, like a gateway to the rest of the island, and now the bushes lining the path began to shake.

Cameron frowned as something dark filled his viewfinder.  He pulled back from the camera, looking up.

“Uhhhh, Boss...?”

Kate saw his expression and started to ask, when Betty suddenly screamed aloud, full throated and shrill.

Beside her, Maverick let out a blue curse.

Kate turned.

Her gaze turned up.

Standing in the road, reared on its haunches, pushing the overgrown brush aside, was a silverback gorilla.

It stared down at the four paralyzed humans from better than twenty-feet high.

Kate sucked in breath and joined Betty's scream with her own.

The giant ape cocked its head, appearing somewhat displeased at the piercing shriek.

“Shit!” Maverick blurted, making a dash for the plane cabin.  He emerged a moment later with a rifle.  In a single movement, he shouldered it and fired.

In the same moment, Cameron reached up and pushed the barrel aside.

The ape looked startled as the shot zinged past its head.  Then its lips pulled back into a growl.

Maverick rounded on Cameron.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“Wait!” a voice cried out.

They heard the revving engine of a four-wheel Jeep as it appeared on the path, kicking up gravel and skidding to a stop protectively in front of the giant ape.

There was a young woman at the wheel, waving frantically.

“Don't shoot him!” she shouted.

The woman, presumably the same voice from the radio, stepped out of the Jeep, offering their first look at her.

Maverick whistled respectfully through his teeth.

Kate frowned at Maverick, although to be fair, the young woman did cut a figure that could distract from a twenty-foot gorilla.

The best description was that she seemed like a walking mirror of the surrounding tropics, radiating a lush, healthy bloom – in the tone of her muscle and the flush of her skin, she almost seemed to glow.

Kate was also struck by her direct, penetrating eyes, as she scanned each of them – narrowing particularly sternly at Maverick, who dutifully shouldered his rifle, holding up both hands apologetically.

She also spared a grateful eye to Cameron, who had diverted Maverick's errant gunshot.

Then she turned to where the giant ape was now shuffling cautiously towards them.  The puny humans from the plane shrank back.

The young woman held out her hand.  The big gorilla touched it gently.

“Are you okay, Congo?”

Congo grunted.  He sat back and began making movements with his hands.

Kate realized the big ape was signing, just like Coco the chimp.

She nudged Cameron in the ribs.  “Are you getting this?”

Cameron, filming more or less on auto-pilot, nodded numbly.

“Excuse me, Miss,” Kate said.  “But who exactly are you?”

The young woman turned, her hand still resting comfortingly on the four-foot palm of an eight-ton gorilla.

“My name is Shanna,” she said.  “Professor Nolan Hinkle is my father.”

Chapter 6

“You people are in a lot of trouble,” Shanna said.

The Jeep bumped along the gravel road as they traveled briskly through the jungle.  As Shanna had loaded them aboard, Betty muttered unhappily to Kate, “You lied about getting clearance, didn't you?”

Kate shrugged.

Betty started to sigh, but instead let out another scream, as she climbed into the back and was greeted by a shrill, birdlike squawk.

From under the seat hopped what looked like a little plucked emu – no more than two-feet tall, with a whiplash tail, and a scaly head and neck like a lizard.

The creature hissed, and while its body was small, its gangly forelimbs ended in large claws, with a wicked-looking sickle on each big toe.

Betty froze as the little lizard-thing hopped into her lap, staring into her eyes like a hypnotizing cobra.  Betty chittered like a trapped squirrel, trying to speak.

“Leave her alone, Otto,” Shanna said.  “Get in back.”

In a flash, the obedient lizard hopped over the seat into the open trunk.  Its lizard-head bobbed like an ostrich as it peered over the headrest.

Kate gave Betty a little push, sliding into the seat next to her.  Betty looked uncomfortably behind her as Otto perched just at her shoulder like a parrot.

Maverick crowded in last, filling the back, and Cameron took the passenger seat in front.

Shanna glanced sideways at the camera on his shoulder.

“You shouldn't be filming,” she said.  “I'm serious.  I already reported in when I first detected your plane.  I'm pretty sure they're going to wake a few generals over this.”

Kate nodded confidentially to Betty.  “That'll piss my father off.”

She leaned forward.  “Where exactly are you taking us?”

“Up to