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

walls.  The impact of his blows shook the entire complex.

Alarms sounded, and there were shouts in the hall, just outside Cameron and Maverick's cell.

Maverick leaned against the door, peering out.

“What the hell is wrong with that big ape?”

He turned to find Cameron holding one hand to his head as if responding to a shout in his ear.  When he turned, his eyes were wide.

“It's Shanna,” he said.  “She's in trouble.”

Maverick eyed him dubiously.

“Getting a psychic flash or something?”

Cameron nodded.

“I think so.  And I think that big ape feels it too.”

“Okay,” Maverick said, agreeably enough, turning to hit the cell's alarm, banging on the bars, and shouting down the hall for the guards.

It was an effort that went completely ignored as, several levels down, a freshly-roused Congo smashed down the wall of the bunker that contained him.

The vast majority of the complex was underground.  Congo's makeshift cell had been basement-level, and now the raging ape crashed through the ceiling into the floors above, as he dug his way back up to the surface.

Cameron and Maverick heard gunfire.

Even more alarming, the ground-level of the warehouse-shell seemed to rattle on its foundation, an underground skyscraper about to collapse in upon itself.

The floor beneath their feet shook like an earthquake.

Maverick stepped back warily from the center of the cell, glancing nervously at Cameron.

Then the rumble escalated and the walls around them broke apart, as Congo burst out onto the main floor, smashing his way up through the false warehouse into the open air.

His roar echoed across the starlit sky, out over the water.

And from somewhere within the towers of Manhattan, just the other side of the river, came the answering roar of Big Rex.

His eyes glowing, Congo beat at his chest, bellowing his response.

With his roar building to a crescendo, his pounding fists tearing up the remaining facade of a warehouse like a silverback tearing up the brush, and ignoring the mosquito-taps of hand-held weapons, Congo charged off the dock and leaped into the river.

Displaced water crashed over the Brooklyn docks like a Tsunami, washing over the razed warehouse, taking a number of hapless troops over the edge into the tunneled-out crevice Congo had left behind.

The surging river poured down into the tunnels in a flood.  Cameron and Maverick's entire level was demolished, with three of their four walls simply collapsed.  Only the bedrock of the wall behind them kept them from being crushed along with the majority of the personnel on their floor.

They could still hear gunshots up above, and something that might have been a bazooka, but Congo's roars were already echoing with increasing distance.

Their floor had been completely knocked away.  What remained of Cameron and Maverick's cell amounted to a circular ledge against the back wall, and the two of them were forced to climb along broken rafters up to the surface.

Once up top, the grounds were abuzz.  No longer a simple warehouse, troops materialized out of nowhere.

Cameron and Maverick found themselves momentarily ignored as the mad scramble was torn between rescuing survivors and mobilizing against the threat.

But then an MP in a Jeep squirreled up beside them.

“Hey!  What the hell are you two doing here?  This is a restricted area.”

“That's okay,” Maverick said.  “We were just leaving.”

He leaned through the window and knocked the MP cold, pulling the door open with the other hand to let him tumble limply out.  Maverick slid into the driver's seat, hollering over his shoulder.

“Let's go!”

Cameron jumped in beside him, looking back at the stone-unconscious figure crumpled behind them as Maverick sped away.

That was a thing with both him and his dad.  Besides the odd, unsuspecting MP, Cameron had seen them knock-out cows, horses – any livestock that might get uppity.  Maverick had once climbed into the pen with his father's bull – when Maverick said bull-fight, he meant fist-fight.

And God forbid the neighbor's cat get in front of one of his farm rigs.

There was a brief moment at the security gate, where the guard attempted to block the road with his body – actually drawing his gun before diving aside, as Maverick piled through, knocking the gate loose as he skidded out onto the road.

They could see the skyline of the city.

Already there were news-helicopters circling over midtown, holding a cautious perimeter, as police choppers hovered over the long stretch along Broadway, where the city now burned.

Framed in the spotlights, looming among the towers like a monolith, was the rex.

Maverick turned a sideways eye to Cameron.

“Do I even have to ask where we're going?”

Cameron just pointed to the city.

“I'll know when we get closer.”

“What is it with you and this broad?”

Cameron shook his head.

“Honest to God, I don't know.”

Maverick sighed, squealing tires as he turned north, up the seaport to where the Brooklyn Bridge led into the city.

Chapter 34

One thing Shanna had noticed about Otto was a total lack of impulse control.

Her father had gotten her a puppy once and the little lizard had slaughtered it.  Then he had hopped on Shanna's horrified shoulder, with blood slathered on his claws, and said, “Mine?” the way Shanna had when she was a little girl.

Perhaps that should have been a bit of a tell.  But Shanna had felt no malice.

In truth, she still didn't – even now, as they came for her out of the elevator.

What she did feel was implacable – a total lack of empathy – in fact, seeming to zero-in on empathy – perhaps because of their very inability to perceive it.  An instinctive counter-force.

For Shanna, these were the creatures who killed her father.

But Shanna was not an old man, nor was she a mousy tech-nerd.  She was, for all practical purposes, a farm-girl used to dealing with livestock that weighed fifty-tons or more.

She also happened to be a physically perfect human female, with athletic reflexes to match.

As the little bastards came for her, foot-claws outstretched, reaching for her throat, Shanna snatched the folding lamp off of her desk and caught it in a wide-open swat, catching the two-foot lizard flush,