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

had been silent, but now he was shaking his head.

“Major,” he said, “your convoy wasn't hit by a random attack.  The T. rex were lured.”

Travis' eyes narrowed.  “Lured by what?”

Jonah glanced at Naomi, who shrugged.

“Tell him,” she said.

“Intelligent lizards,” Jonah said.  “They ride sickle-claws.  You've probably seen them eating human corpses.  They talk like myna birds.”

Travis absorbed this quietly.

“The T. rex hate them,” Jonah continued.  “They'll pretty much charge through fire – or a military convoy – just to get at one of them.”

Jonah eyed the major's reaction, which was so-far totally non-committal.

“And,” Naomi added, “it was your Corporal Meyers that let the things loose.”

Travis regarded them a moment longer before leaning forward and touching his intercom switch.

“Security?  I think we're done here.”

“You don't believe us?” Jonah said.

The Major sighed.

“Oh, I believe you.”

Sergeant Meyers appeared at the door with two guards.  Travis nodded to Jonah and Naomi.

“Would you please take these two to holding,” Travis instructed.

“Are we prisoners?” Naomi asked.

Travis shrugged.  “I'm not sure yet.”  He nodded to Meyers.  “I need to talk to the General ASAP.”

“Sir,” Meyers said, “the General's already been in contact.  I came to tell you.  We're on alert.”

Travis frowned.  He nodded to Jonah and Naomi.

“Take these two to holding,” he said, “then get me a wire.”

Jonah exchanged a nervous glance with Naomi as they were ushered out of Travis' office, down the caged hallways of the former prison.

And not a hundred yards away, out where Jonah had not-quite crashed, the runway crews were clearing away the chopper.

As they loaded the damaged bird to be towed, there was a rustling as the cargo in back was disturbed – none of the work crew paid any mind.

Only one of them looked up briefly when he thought he heard the sound of skittering rats.

Half-a-dozen little lizards scurried discreetly out of the cargo hold, out onto the runway, and immediately bolted for the surrounding foliage that bordered the site, slipping quickly through the barred gate into the forest beyond.

Chapter 17

To look at Otto, you would not have guessed intelligence – and perhaps that wasn't quite the right word.

While they clearly operated under studied actions, they seemed to act, both individually and in groups, as if programmed – living drones.

It was also difficult to say if their actions were precisely planned so much as studied impulse.

In truth, Otto's pre-avian/post-reptilian mind was not capable of advanced thought.

But if you got enough of them together...?

Well, they destroyed the world.

The destruction had even been a bit more total than anticipated, because Otto, himself – themselves – were unexpectedly stamped out with it.

Tyrannosaurs had done that – wherever they had them – not all T. rex – Tarbosaurus in Russia and Asia, Albertosaurus and Gorgosaurus in Canada – all consistent with their historical geography as the Mesozoic world was imposed on what had briefly been a land of humans.

Otto's presence could influence most of the other beasts, to greater or lesser degree of usefulness.

Carnosaurs were willing enough soldiers, including the big carcharodonts that populated Africa and South America, but damned if they hadn't nuked large sections of both continents.

Then there were the herd beasts, but they were mostly limited to trampling and goring, depending on the clade, and didn't have many buttons beyond go, stop, and eat.

Humans, of course, continued to be a problem, but without their technology, they were highly dysfunctional, and at the numbers the species had dropped to, should already guarantee extinction.

The biggest problem, by far, were the T. rex.

Otto could never even have made it across the tyrannosaur-dominated territory by land – the rex would have rooted them out.

Tyrannosaurs, and T. rex in particular, instinctively resisted domination – which should not have been so terrible as a single clade of only a few species versus the rest of the implanted ecosystem.  But the rex were an especially DOMINENT element of that ecosystem, and tended to kick the shit out of Otto's own foot soldiers – to the tune of four-to-one versus a large carnosaur.

Big herd animals could be weapons against them, but were much more mentally primitive.  They could be angered and set into motion, but with no particular nuance.

It was the presence of the T. rex that had caused the Food of the Gods to backfire so badly.

A rex was hostile towards Otto by nature, but once they became infected, suddenly any Otto within perception-range became the subject of a search-and-destroy mission.

And unique to the other infected giants, an infected rex became focused.

So while humanity had been largely stomped out, Otto had been stomped out with it – and not just stomped, but hunted, rooted out, and eaten.

It followed that the next logical step, then, was to eliminate the rex.

Again, it was not a conscious decision exactly, so much as an instinctive response – acting on the simple goals of any computer chess game.

The rex, unfortunately, guarded their strongholds.  The West Coast, and the northwest states were particularly dense population centers.

Sprouting blooms in the area was dicey, as the last thing they wanted was an infected rex.

On the other hand, they applied opportunism when it presented itself.

At first, they had started burning forests themselves, skulking into the territory, in small raids, minimizing their presence, and of course, always accompanied by a pack of sickle-claws.  But the combination of the smell of smoke, and their own psychic-stench, alerted the rex to their presence, and invariably got them rooted out and stomped.  Neither did the damp forests of the northwest readily burn out of season.

Just as it was easier to hitch a ride cross-country on their choppers, it was easier to get the humans to do it – they could be reliably counted on to dump napalm on the slightest presence of the Food of the Gods.  And the largest bloom initiated in the region in the aftermath of KT-day, the humans had taken out with a nuke.

The rex packs were also quite predictable.  In Otto's presence they would attack unrelentingly.

In this regard, T. rex was even more reliable