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

It was rather like herding mackerel.

Of course, the tactic didn't work if those little ones were around – the ones she sometimes saw riding the bigger beasts like birds.

Kristie wasn't sure what the little lizards were.  They looked like a small sickle-claw, but she knew they weren't infants – adult dromaeosaurs ran with the hatchlings.  These creatures were clearly different.

She'd encountered a lot of them on her path just lately.  And Kristie, who would doctor a bird with a broken wing, had taken to pot-shotting the little vermin on sight – always with an unconscious shudder of revulsion.

There had been a troop of them not twenty-miles back.

Kristie had been keeping to the high-grounds – you tended to get the smaller animals there – and she stumbled onto what looked like a military unit, setting up munitions – a single vehicle and equipment scattered in a makeshift day-camp.

The soldiers were missing.

There were, however, nearly a dozen of the little scaled lizard-rats skittering all over the site.  Kristie was reminded of cockroaches.  With her scope, she was able to take out six of them in succession, like shooting gallery ducks before the others vanished into the rocks.

Kristie had salvaged what she could from the site.  The Jeep's keys were missing, and there was no food, nor did she have much use for seismic munitions equipment.

As she searched the area, she found no human remains, not even bones.

She wondered what the military had been doing up there.  Seismic testing seemed rather risky after what she'd heard over the airwaves about the San Andreas fault.

Over the last year, she'd felt more rumbles and quakes than in her entire life put together.

The dormant volcanic chain seemed to have been awakened.

Even the beasts succumbed to the rage of the Dragon under the Mountain.

She had left the abandoned munitions unit two days ago.  And it seemed that whatever happened there had also happened at Maelstrom.

Kristie held her position on the hillside while she waited for more sickle-claws to reveal themselves, attracted by the scent of the beasts she'd already killed.

She pulled out her radio, dialing up military channels.

“Hello?” she said.  “Anyone there?”

There was nothing but static.

Keeping a wary eye to the surrounding brush, Kristie began picking her way down the hill.

This had been a nuclear site.  Now she found herself simply walking up to the main gate, which was standing wide-open.

It looked like it had not been abandoned all that long.  There were still tire tracks leading out onto the main road.

Unlike the field unit, however, this time there were bodies.

Or more accurately, there were remains – piles of bones, some with scraps of clothing, but otherwise gnawed clean.

Kristie shivered as a gust of wind whistled through the empty ghost-town.

The base was organized in a typical military grid, which meant the communications building would be near the center.  Kristie had seen little actual damage to the facility itself – it seemed a good chance the radio-equipment was intact.

As she made her way cautiously along, the rows of barracks opened up into the administration sector.  A satellite-disc and radio tower identified the building she was after.  And with the same, seemingly lax post-apocalypse security, she found the front entrance left standing open.

Kristie frowned.  What did they do?  Just go around and unlock every gate and doorway in the place?  Then get slaughtered by sickle-claws?

She had no more finished the thought when a screeching cry suddenly pierced the silence, echoing down the empty sage-brush street.

Kristie turned and saw nearly a dozen dromaeosaurs trotting up in a pack.

They moved in formation, like flocking birds, scenting the air as they followed her path.

Then they spotted her.

Kristie slid her rifle from her shoulder.

She'd become quite an adept skeet-shooter in the last year – she didn't wait for the attack, but simply opened fire.

Three of them dropped in quick succession, but the rest launched themselves at her in a mob.

What did they call it?  A murder of crows?

She took out three more, before stepping back behind the open door and pulling it shut behind her, locking the bolt.

There was impact half-a-second later, and the door vibrated on its frame.

That, Kristie thought, did not look to last.

She took the stairs – the upper floors were the likely location of any broadcast office.  As she reached the top, she realized the lights were on.

At that moment, the radio on her hip blared static.

She heard her own voice say, “Hello?  Anyone there?”

Kristie looked up at an answering echo coming from the broadcast-office – a windowed-off cubicle.

As she peered inside, mounted by the microphone was one of those little lizards.

The thing hissed as it saw her, flaring small but very formidable claws.

“Hello?” it said again in her voice, and leaped, its small sickle-claws outstretched, reaching for her eyes.

Kristie dropped it out of the air with a single shot – it hit the floor, twitching at her feet.

From the floor below, there was a loud creak as the main door started to give.  Kristie stepped to the top of the stairs, holding her rifle ready.

Her radio blared once more.  This time it called her by name.

“Kristie?” it said.  “Kristie Morgan.  If you're reading me, please pick up now.”

Kristie blinked, hesitating, before grabbing up her radio.

“Who the hell is this?” she demanded.  “This better not be a goddamn lizard!”

“My name's Tom,” came the reply.  “And I'm not a goddamn lizard.”

There was another buzz of static.

“I'm in space,” Tom said.

Chapter 25

Tom knew Otto.

Trapped in space for over a year, linked with every working satellite in space, and with little else to do, Tom had hacked a lot of files.  Before the world had gone dark, or at least before the EITS had, he had broken down a lot of firewalls that were no longer being guarded, or even monitored anymore.

Tom knew Professor Nolan Hinkle.  He knew the top-secret history of Monster Island.  He knew Shanna.

And he knew Otto.

An unimpressive beast, considered a failure, albeit a minor-experiment.

Catastrophically underestimated on both counts.

The sheer scope would be hard to accept if