Age of Monsters by John Schneider (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

She always looked up at you like a puppy in a kennel – desperate for any kind of attention – practically daring to be robbed – surrounded all day by car-exhaust and concrete.

Okay, Rosa thought, stepping into the elevator, there were always worse jobs.

It was almost dark – nearly nine o'clock. She had put in almost fourteen hours.  And she had also had to blow off a date – a set-up from one of those Internet sites, pushed on her by a friend.

When she realized she would be working late, she sent the guy a text.

Before she even finished, she got a message from her friend – a college roomie named Suzy, who she hadn't seen in six-months – one of those life-support relationships kept in stasis by a series of e-mails and text-messages.

Suzy's message was accompanied by a frowny-face: “You blew him off, didn't you?”

Rosa sent a frowny-face back, to which Suzy replied, “You're a workaholic control-freak.”

“Yeah, but I'm hot,” Rosa responded.

Suzy: “You're also over thirty.  Sell-by-date.”

Rosa hadn't answered.  Suzy wasn't exactly psychic – this would be the third time she'd broken dates with this guy.  They'd been exchanging messages for three weeks, and she still hadn't even met the man.

But now she saw she had gotten a text back from him.

“Have a nice life.”

The elevator reached the roof-top floor of the parking lot and Rosa stepped out with her head down, looking at her phone, debating whether to respond.

Thus preoccupied, she didn't immediately notice what loomed right over the horizon.

She saw it first out of her peripherals, not yet grabbing her full attention – she simply had the impression of a really dark cloud, indicative of an oncoming storm.  And in a way, that's exactly what it was.

She even ignored the reverberation in her feet at first.  Living in San Francisco, she had adapted a blasé attitude towards even fairly rough tremors – anything below 3.5 didn't warrant anything other than a louder speaking-voice until the rumbling passed – to even mention it was to label yourself a tourist.

Human compartmentalization, Rosa thought, as she steadied her footing.  More irony.  The entire West Coast was a volcanic runway – one that scientists insisted would inevitably erupt – maybe in ten-thousand years, or maybe tomorrow – but there really WAS a dragon under the mountain.

But people that lived there – herself included – put it blithely out of their heads.  Her grandparents had lived their whole lives in the shadow of Washington State's Mt. Rainier – rated the most dangerous volcano on the continent.

And everybody always looked shocked when the volcano finally blew.

In her hand, her phone seemed to have lost its signal.

She was standing there, tapping at her screen when she felt another heavy tremor vibrating up through the street.

Rosa paused.

This felt... different.

Another rumble.

It wasn't like a 'quake', really – it was more like an impact tremor – heavy – staccato – repeating.  There in the parking lot, a number of car alarms started going off.

Rosa actually stumbled off balance.  Reflexively, she grabbed the railing that overlooked the thruway below.

People in the street had started to run.

For the first time, Rosa looked up – directly to the black cloud that blocked out the sky.

That was when she realized that this storm was alive.

It stared down at her from better than twenty-stories high – with bright, glowing green eyes.

And damned if it didn’t look like a dinosaur – just like out of all that discredited leaked footage.

But Rosa shook her head defiantly – rationally – it simply couldn't be – it was too BIG.

Way, WAY too big – there was nothing like that – no dinosaur – no animal – that ever lived.

Therefore, that meant 'nothing' was walking west on California Avenue towards her right now.

She felt the very real impact of its steps, shaking the ground.

The impossible skull suddenly split – opening into a yawning, ragged fissure, ridged in blades, like razor-sharp lava-rock.

From the volcanic maw came a ROAR.

Stumbling back from the railing, Rosa held her ears against the deafening bellow.

Through the ringing in her ears, another sound echoed, small and helpless beneath the false thunder – the sound of screams.

The crowds had panicked – people were running blindly in the streets.

In the roads, traffic was paralyzed, and Rosa could actually hear the metallic crumpling of cars, crunching like peanut shells beneath the creature's tread – their unfortunate occupants pulped like grapes.

And towering above it all was...

… what...?

The Dragon under the Mountain?

A monster.

Absurdly, Rosa almost laughed – because the image she summoned up from her childhood was 'The Beast' – The Beast from The Pit.

She'd been raised traditional Catholic, but she'd thought college and medical training had erased most of that.   Yet standing there, struggling for less than a minute with the impossible apparition that confronted her, she was already going Biblical.

Then, Rosa turned and looked across the rest of the horizon.

It was the view she walked by every day – high from the hillside, looking down into the city – she was used to the low hum and the lights – city sounds she tuned out like crickets.

Tonight, the glow of city lights was not neon – tonight, San Francisco burned.

And the burning skyline had been joined by a range of living mountains.

Some were long-necked giants, with heads careening a thousand feet into the sky – others were horned and armored dreadnoughts.

But most of them were like the dragon-beast that loomed before her now.

She couldn't guess how many – they were spread across the entire city.

To her credit, Rosa remained calm – detached, even – just as she would when slicing into a human abdomen – delivering an otherwise ghastly mortal