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

Shriver replied.  “No pun intended.  Beyond the blast wave, a nuke is less physical impact and more heat and radiation.  Besides being one-and-done.  This would be more like being attacked by a living earthquake that would dig this structure out like bears splitting logs after termites.”

Rhodes stood silent.

“Sir?” Sally asked. “Should we... start to evacuate the Mount?  As a precaution?”

Rhodes let out a slow breath.

“We are pretty limited on alternatives to the Mount, I'm afraid.”

Rhodes looked down at the blinking lights, both Major Tom and Major Travis waiting on hold.

Then his eyes settled on Otto, staring back soundlessly behind the glass cover.

“If this is the enemy,” Rhodes asked, “can we get intelligence from it?”

“They aren't like that,” Shriver said, shaking his head.  “It would be like trying to shake down a remote drone.”

The little creature's head cocked as it blinked back at them through the glass.

What would it do, Sally wondered, when humans were all gone?  Would it move on to something else?

Rhodes nodded to Sally.

“Route all my calls to my office,” he said, turning abruptly for the elevator.  Sally jumped into immediate heel beside him.

Shrinker's lab was giving her the creeps.

She glanced back at Shriver, already bent over his screens, as the elevator door closed behind them.

The good doctor was no doubt brainstorming on advisable protocol.

Nuke a bloom, burn a bud, had been his.  So was most of the Arc Project.

Sally couldn't wait to hear what he came up with this time.  It was certain he would be asked.

For once grateful for the claustrophobic well of the elevator, Sally still shuddered as the sudden pull of gravity mimicked the sensation of being dragged back below.

And speaking of the creeps, when they reached the command-level, they found a guest waiting for them.

Standing with Corporal Stevens as an escort, was Michelle – who Sally personally found the scariest member of the Coven.

Rather scarier, in fact, after her interrogation, and the deliberately obedient 'good-girl' act she'd affected since.

Michelle had been in Rhodes' office more than once in the past two weeks.

She eyed Sally challengingly, but had her obedient face on when she turned to Rhodes.

“Got something for me, Miss?” Rhodes asked.

Michelle nodded.

“Lizards,” she said.

Chapter 27

Caesar was the philosopher among anthropoids.

Brutus embraced the ape.

As he led his troop through mountains, the rite of their passage shook the Earth.

In some way, looking strictly through the short-term parameter of the alpha male, the Food of the Gods was almost a blessing.

It was power. The very ground trembled at his steps; his roar was the gale wind of a god-beast.

Beating his chest never felt so good – a war-drum to silence every creature on the mountain.

Brutus was a smart ape, but still an ape first.  He knew what value Caesar placed on being civilized.  Brutus used his brains to be a better ape.  He was already the biggest and the strongest, and he understood you didn't have to be the smartest, as long as you were smart enough to be in charge.

His own troop hadn't exactly drawn the intellectual elite, as apes go.  His first lieutenant was a pigment-challenged moose of a beast with the shaggy hair of a burgundy-tinted orangutan, whose big trick was when the humans had taught him to say his own name, croaking out of his not-yet-evolved vocal-cords, “Grape Ape.  Grape Ape.”

It was enough to make him second-smartest in the troop.  Konga and Big Joe were both jealous, capable of only gagging chokes of staggered consonants.

Brutus knew what Caesar thought.  And Brutus could mostly care less what high-and-mighty Caesar thought.

In light of current circumstances, however, it irritated the hell out of him to know Caesar would think him a fool.

Brutus understood very well what had happened to him and his troop.

He could see the glowing green in their eyes – Konga, Joe, and Grape Ape – all of them.

It had happened under his watch.

Despite Caesar's not-quite voiced opinion, Brutus was not stupid – they hadn't eaten any funny bushes or infected rodents.

Whatever they had ingested had been saturated in the leaves.

Brutus had known something was wrong almost right away, although he was not immediately alarmed.  It was, in fact, euphoric, like munching on coca leaves, a euphoria that had lasted up until the moment when Grape Ape had first shuffled up, belching with overfed decadence, to where Brutus himself had fallen into a light doze with a mouthful, still chewed into a cud.

And when he spotted Grape Ape's lazy, sated, glowing green eyes, he had spat the mouthful out into the dirt.

It had actually been succulent – he was full, and actually wanted more.

Over the course of the next day, the natural indigenous foliage they had been consuming seemed to have withered and died – although a new patch of growth seemed to be making progress on the ridge – something different, but modified to fit the climate, and thus, blending right in.

Brutus knew what was to follow.

His initial plan had actually been rather selfless – sort of a walk-into-the-woods-and-commune-with-the-Great-Spirit approach to what he knew would be a terminal end.

Brutus had seen the effects of the Food of the Gods unleashed.  He knew his troop's simple presence would soon be dangerous – to Caesar's tribe, to the ecosystem of the mountain itself – and so he spent the next three weeks leading his troops on walk-about.

In the manner of an animal, it didn't occur to him to end his own life – the basic instinct of survival – but Brutus did intend to put a mountain range between them before the madness took hold.

It had been three weeks, and the infection was far-advanced when he felt her for the first time.

And while he did not know it, like Caesar himself, his first impression was that she was a presence that must have been there in his subconscious all along.

His troop felt it too.  He had led them on a mostly meandering path north, simply following the mountain peaks as they drifted north and east.

And then one day they had felt