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

“are the rats in the walls you were telling us about.  And that shredded pile on my desk is all the launch codes for every self-delivered missile we have available to us.”

Sally, however, noticed one scrap on the floor, right next to the grating where the last Otto had tried to escape.

“This one isn't torn,” she said.  “What is it?”

Rhodes frowned.  “It's the combination to Captain Mason's safe on the Anchorage.”

Submarine firing-codes were always kept on-board because of the potential for lost contact.  The combination would be wired to the Captain of the vessel in case of a launch order, including instructions of which firing package to activate.

“Get Mason on the horn,” he said.  “Right away.”

“Already got him on stand-by, sir,” Sally said.

“Put him on speaker.”

“Mason here, sir.”

“Captain,” Rhodes said, starting his relentless march around his desk, “have you received further contact with me since your stand-by order?”

“Negative, sir.”

“Captain,” Rhodes said, “this is not a reprimand, but we must consider your option compromised.  Under no circumstances initiate any launch mission within the next forty-eight hours.  Even on orders from me.  Understood?”

There was a pause.

“Yes, sir.”

“Withdraw to safe ground until further notice,” Rhodes said.  He turned to Sally.  “Get Major Travis online.  Tell him he's up.”

“Sir?” Sally said, “I've got incoming from Major Tom, sir,”

Rhodes tapped his speaker.

“General,” Tom blurted, out-of-breath, “you've got a big bloom coming, sir!”

“You said that already, Major.  We're dealing with it.”

“No sir,” he said.  “I've got it on satellite.  It's bigger.  I mean a lot bigger.”

Rhodes turned a dark eye in Shriver's direction.

“It's already sprouted, sir,” Tom continued.  “And on simple biomass alone it will easily engulf the Mount.”

“We're not ground-zero?”

Tom paused.

“No, sir.  It tracks about two-hundred miles west.”

Rhodes shut his eyes.  “Of course it does.  And I think I know why.”

“General,” Tom said, “if you can't nuke it, you're going to have to evacuate.”

“We've got personnel in the area,” Rhodes said.  He turned to Sally.  “Get Hicks on.  Tell Johnson's search crews I know where our chopper went down.”

“Sir?” Tom interrupted. “I'm sorry, but I have to tell you, I don't have much time.  They've turned off my life-support.”

Rhodes paused his pacing.

“Son,” he said, “we've got a human race to save. I need you to hold out as long as you can.”

“That won't be long, sir.  And I have to make sure the ISS goes down before that, or it gets left in their hands.”

Rhodes resumed his march.

“Understood,” he said.  “Do what you have to do, son.  But remember, there's not a lot of the world left to spare.”

Rhodes turned to Sally.  “Where's Travis?”

“He hasn't reported in yet, sir.”

“Oh, for Christ's...”

Rhodes stopped himself.  It wasn't the first bit of temper Sally had seen from him, but it was one of very few.  He reigned it in immediately.

“Where is he?”

“I don't know, sir. His line's active, and he checked in earlier, but now there's no response.”

Rhodes was silent.

Too much of a coincidence.

“There isn't time,” Dr. Shriver volunteered, “to evacuate the Mount.  Should we perhaps start securing essential personnel?”

Rhodes smiled thinly.  “I think essential personnel will remain essential for the mission at hand,” he said.

“Still no response from Major Travis, sir,” Sally said.

“Alright then,” he said.  “We'll have to send in what we've got.  Napalm and conventional missiles.”

“None of that ever worked before,” Shriver said.

Rhodes frowned, but didn't answer.

Sally knew why.  Rhodes would go down fighting.

In its way, it was the ultimate optimism – he would keep trying to win.

Sally had seen a cartoon once – a frog reaching its hands out of a pelican's mouth, choking the bird's throat, with the caption, 'It ain't over, 'till it's over'.

But Sally also understood futility.

If this bloom spread, if it really threatened to overtake the Mount, would he run?

Would he let his people run?  Sally found herself wondering if she was 'essential personnel' who would be sticking it out to the last.

Now Rhodes stopped his endless pacing, and finally sat down at his desk.

He smacked the speaker phone, as if that would make it answer, hitting Major Travis' line.

“This is General Rhodes,” he said, in a tone that sounded to Sally frighteningly close to despair. “Come in.  For God's sake, is anyone there?”

And then, almost like the voice of an angel, someone answered.

“Hey there, General,” a woman's voice said, “my name's Naomi.  How can I help you today?”

Chapter 45

Tyrannosaurus rex – Tyrant Lizard King – named sixty-five million years after its extinction.

Resurrected and monstrously distorted, the rogue stood perched at the edge of the canyon, framed in the strobing flashes of electric light, the thunder announcing his arrival in a drumroll.

Josie and the pussycats galloped up beside him, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

Their eyes glowed green, reflecting back the lightning with an energy all its own.

The rogue peered through the storm, its eagle-like acuity picking out the surrounding peaks.

Shanna was up there somewhere, just ahead, perhaps looking down, even now.

The rogue could feel her, a light he couldn't even see.

His flock sensed it too, along with all the other heightened sensory input that seemed to accompany this strange energy pulsing through their veins.

But now the rogue growled.

Because he could sense the others as well – and even if he hadn't, their scent would have come to him on the wind.

The apes.  In his own primitive way, the rogue understood they were following the same star.

T. rex didn't think.  If the rex had a goal, he would advance on it – if he had a rival, he would attack it.  More than anything, a rex followed its nose, and acted instinctively to the sensory input.  It was all very cause/effect.

The rex had never heard of Congo – or any of the ape-clan, yet something beyond his eyes and ears sensed their presence, and seemed to share in Shanna's light.

And with the dog-like jealousy of a T. rex, those same instinctual reactions perceived a competitor and a rival.

Simple cause/effect – a chain-reaction – the path they followed was like a fuse leading up to the moment when they