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

grate in the wall, and introduced them to a talking dragon.

Within this small circle, it might as well have been a burning bush or a crying portrait of the Virgin Mary.

What better way to start a new religion than with Scripture right out of the horse's mouth?

Lily had failed the Coven once.  Now she found herself back in favor.

More than that, they were looking to Lily as if she were the prophet's chosen voice – even Ginger and Luna.

The only off-note was Michelle, who had been morose in the couple of weeks since nurse Rosa had disappeared.  Lily didn't know the details, but Michelle had been brought in for questioning by General Rhodes himself.

Michelle had not talked about it.  And in point of fact, seemed rather cowed.

That by itself, left Lily more frightened of Rhodes than anything since she had been on the Mount.

Ginger had broached Michelle, tentatively, in the time since, but was forcefully rebuked.

When push came to shove, Ginger was older sister.  In a knuckle-up, Michelle was BIG sister, and so, for the moment, she was allowed her space.

The rest of the Coven, however, were assigned duties – it was not too hard to charm a soldier into doing favors – certainly not anything as harmless as setting a helpless lab-animal free.

Lily had already been one of the first to embrace the young soldiers on the base, Arc Project or no Arc Project – and in fact, she was wondering if she might not already be pregnant.  Although, it was just possible she might have been a little knocked-up before she actually got to the Mount.

No need to throw that on the record, though – certainly not to Corporal Stevens.

The elevator slowed as it approached the upper-levels, before stopping at the maintenance floor.

Corporal Stevens smiled as Lily rolled her cart out.

“See you later?” he asked.

But she shook her head sadly.

“Not tonight,” she said, without explanation – just as Ginger taught her.  Let him wonder.  Stevens looked appropriately crestfallen as the elevator door shut in front of him.

Lily checked her bag.  She had gone ahead and made her grab.  The small container had been waiting next to the trash.  With Rhodes there, she had almost chickened out, and had only grabbed it up because she was more afraid they might find it.

She opened the little box.  Inside, were several glowing green vials – along with a pack of pneumatic injector needles.

Something for the next shipment out – and there had been a lot of flights lately.

Still, Rhodes had been in the lab.

Ginger, she decided, would have to be told.

Tomorrow, the Coven would honor KT-day – and Lily wanted nothing to go wrong.

Chapter 11

The young woman's name was Kristie Morgan, and she had made her way down from Alaska over the last several months, working her way through Canada until she had just now reached the border of Montana, into the United States.

For whatever reason, the northern territories tended to have fewer of the really large beasts – the odd bloom notwithstanding – possibly because of the largely higher elevations.  But they were well-stocked with sickle-claws.

Kristie had been trapped in her cabin for weeks.

As the Alaskan nights had started to grow long, packs of sickle-claws became ever bolder, even as she picked them off one at a time with an old-fashioned bolt-action rifle she had bought for protection during the polar bear migration.  But the polar bears hadn't shown this year.

Perhaps they had already been eaten.

When her supplies low, Kristie had fled across the tundra.

And although she had no idea, Major Tom had watched her every step of the way.

Of all those who had witnessed the apocalypse, Major Tom had the best view.

Major Tom Corbett had been in space for eighteen months – a recently launched single-man station, purportedly designed for communications, but actually a surveillance vessel – dubbed the Eye in the Sky.  Tom was hooked into every satellite in space, and he had seen the world end from every linked viewscreen on Earth.  In high-definition.

At the beginning, he had received a lot of broadcasts from below – even after the digital platforms were fried there was still ham radio, CBs and walkie-talkies.  Some people even broadcast video.  Kristie had been one of those.  She was also all over the radio waves – at first calling for help and then, over the following weeks, just talking over the air, narrating her life.

That was how Tom got to know her, even as all the other broadcasts faded – and frighteningly quickly.

Once he'd known her name, he'd actually pinpointed her location, and had managed to zoom a satellite camera down to where she lived.

Tom had watched her trek down through the Yukon – all her skirmishes with the hordes of sickle-claws – unable to even speak to her.

At least, he couldn't until just today.

Tom had been effectively trapped on the EITS station once ground support failed.  He didn't even have an escape pod – or at least not one that would survive re-entry.  The operator of the EITS was not allowed to come and go of his own authority – that's how non-espionage it was.  There was themodule-entry-pod attached to the airlock, which was the means by which you entered the station, but that was ferried from a shuttle.

On the other hand, there was the International Space Station.  The ISS had been on automatic for the last several months before KT-day, after sustaining damage with debris from a junked Chinese satellite, and was absent any crew.  Tom had actually picked up the bulk of the ISS' normal duties, networking satellites and such, until repairs were completed.

Tom's module pod could theoretically connect with the ISS and get him on board.  They had entry-proof lifeboats.

Of course, that still left the problem of what happened when he landed in the middle of the ocean.  It wasn't like there was a boat coming to get him anymore.

In any case, staying on the EITS wasn't an option.  For whatever reason, the on-board computer was