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

Shanna turned to Kate.

“Miss Rhodes,” she said, “this is my father.  Professor Nolan Hinkle.”

Chapter 7

There was only one pair of human eyes on the mountain who saw the pterosaurs take out the transport chopper.

Mark had learned to be wary of his fellow survivors, and he already had a bad history with the military, so when he saw the helicopter in trouble, he really hoped he wouldn't be put in a position of having to render aid.

Sticking one's nose where it didn't belong was a lesson Mark had punched into him long before KT-day.

Despite rampaging monsters, dragons, or abominations, or whatever you chose to call them, if you were human, you always had to be watchful of your own species first.

Mark had been making his way through the Rockies for the last few weeks, and was just getting his first look at the downward slope of the current mountain.  The Rockies took a brief topographical break right at the triple border between Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, dipping down into a series of river-cut valleys and lowlands, before rising back up to their full stature as they bled into all three states.

Normally, Mark would avoid the lowlands, but he was already anxious to get out of the general area.  Earlier today, he was about to pick a ripe-looking berry, growing just off the path, before he spotted what looked like an exploded squirrel.  With its insides-out, Mark could clearly see it had been feeding on the same bush.

As he took a second look, he realized that the foliage seemed odd.  He was no botanist, but he'd grown up in the northwest and he knew trees.

The indigenous fauna was being strangled and invaded.  He hadn't noticed at first, because the new growth was likewise suited for the surroundings, but with different species of leaves adapted for the same niche.

Mark kicked at the dead squirrel.  He'd seen this effect before, whenever a normal animal – didn't matter if it was crow, coyote, fish or insect – tried to scavenge off a carcass of one of the giants.

Normal animals didn't get infected – it was fatal – catastrophically fatal – on the spot.

Whatever caused this new invasive wildlife to grow into giants utterly destroyed normal organisms, right from the cellular level, like a power-pill that simply overloaded the DNA.  Visually, it was rather like every single cell erupting into a zit, and then popping all at once.

Surviving indigenous species quickly learned to avoid the giant carcasses, no matter how tempting the mountain of meat might be.  In point of fact, it was advisable to leave the entire area, because, while the carrion might be off-limits to modern scavengers, resurrected prehistoric relics came running.  That was how the infection spread.

But Mark had never seen it transmitted through plants before.

It was as if this new growth that seemed to have taken over this side of the mountain, winding in among the giant trees like ivy, had absorbed the fatal element/chemical in its very pores.

Was this whole mountain about to bloom?

As he looked around, Mark wondered if a wise man might set a torch to the entire area.

On the other hand, he was still several hard days' travel out of the mountains, let alone with a forest fire on his heels.

Thus, in the pursuit of self-interest, this ecological time-bomb, whatever it was or however it had been set, would continue to tick away.

Mark wondered how many other such ticking mines were hidden out there in this new wilderness.

The thought was enough to get him moving, and he had been hoofing it hard, hoping to vacate the area by sundown, when he first saw the chopper pass above.

He watched as the pterosaurs swarmed, and despite gunshots, and an apparently imaginative pilot, the transport craft piled it in just over the next peak.  He could hear the crash.

Once-upon-a-time, his first instinct would have been to run and help.  That impulse had been systematically beaten out of him.

The last time he had extended his good Samaritan hand, he'd nearly gotten his ass bit off by a T. rex.

Ironic – in a world where he had become a prey animal, his biggest hang-ups were still trust issues.

“Damn,” he muttered, as he began a reluctant march in the direction the chopper had gone down.

Then, in the bushes, he heard a low hiss.

Mark froze.  It was a sound he knew all too well.  He scanned the surrounding brush – nothing more than four-feet high, but thick.

Just right for an ambush.

The thing exploded from the leaves like a flushed pheasant, less than two-feet tall, but with chomping jaws like a thirty-pound reptilian pitbull.

T. rex were mean as hell, right from the egg, and Mark had seen this little SOB before.

He had his pistol out in a flash.

“Hey there, Junior,” Mark said, pulling the trigger, “you little sonofabitch.”

The little creature's jaws were the size of German Shepard's, but the teeth could sever his hand like a shark's, coming at him at a sprint.

It knew gunfire, though.  After the first shot scraped its hide, the little monster broke its attack, darting back for the bushes, as Mark emptied the clip after it.

One of these nights, that thing would come creeping up while he was sleeping.  If a five-ton rex could stalk as soundless as a cat, a four-foot hatchling was as light as a spider.

It would keep coming too.  T. rex were like that.

Mark knew why well enough – just like he knew where it had learned its respect for gunfire.

It was because Mark had killed its mother – a five-ton female he had shot in the head, right in front of her lone surviving brood.

He hadn't wanted to, but the thing had chased him for six-hundred miles.

All things considered, Mark knew he was ridiculously lucky to be alive.

Although, anybody alive was lucky these days.

Mark had not been ground-zero anywhere on KT-day, but he had been one of the first to encounter what the rest of the world had waiting in the wings.

Ironically, as