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

clicked transmit.  “Johnson,” he said, “boy am I glad to hear from you.”

“Garner!  Hang tight.  We're coming to get you.”

But now Shanna turned to the canyons, as if listening.

The pause in the storm ended with a renewed blast of staccato lightning and thunder.

This time it was answered from beyond the canyon.

Brutus and the rogue turned their green glowing eyes to the surrounding mountains, where echoing bellows now sounded over the thunder.

“What,” Rosa whispered, “is that?”

Shanna shut her eyes.

“Escalation,” she said.  “Exponential escalation.”

The earth beneath their feet trembled.

Over the peaks, the first of the titans appeared.

Sauropods – infected giants – some of them carrying their heads over a thousand feet high.  Armored and horned ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, dreadnoughts designed to fight tyrannosaurs.  And flesh-eaters – carnosaurs, megalosaurs, giant carcharodonts.

The first of them were still indistinct, misted by the billowing clouds.

But their glowing green eyes shined through.

Up on the edge of the cliff, Junior suddenly hissed, turning to the forest, back arched like a dog pointing out a hidden bird.

As they all turned, the trees at the edge of the clearing were suddenly filled with sickle-claws.

And skittering among their feet, warbling like loons, was a troop of Ottos.

In a squawking mob, the sickle-claws attacked.

Chapter 51

“What's happening out there, Hicks?  Where are you?”

Rhodes was standing, facing east, honing in on the battle like a divining rod.

Hicks' voice scratched back over speakers.

“We're about fifty-miles out of Maelstrom, sir.  We've picked up a survivor.  We're bringing her in with us.”

“Bring in whoever you want, Lieutenant,” Rhodes responded.  “But all other considerations are secondary to recovering our asset.  Understood?”

“Johnson's already in the area, sir.”

“Time counts, Lieutenant.  You've got incoming, both on the ground and in the air, both enemy and friendly fire.  You've got the biggest bloom ever recorded.  Best-case scenario, the whole area is a nuclear dust-cloud in thirty-minutes or less.  You've got until yesterday to get in and out, with less margin for error than that.  Understood?”

“Understood, sir,” Hicks responded.

Sally took quiet note of that word asset again.

“Who's Shanna?” she asked.

Rhodes turned to her slowly.

“How do you know that name?” he asked.

Sally blinked.

“I don't know.”

Rhodes glanced to Shriver.

“Shanna Hinkle,” Shriver said, “is perhaps our single most important asset, and our biggest hope for the future lies within her mind.

“And,” Shriver added, “perhaps within her DNA, as well.”

Shriver's brows furrowed as he spoke, like a far-sighted man trying to spot something on a detailed chart.

Perhaps with a touch of obsession.

“The human race,” Shriver said, “is now an endangered species.  Within her lies the potential to eliminate genetic defects.  She would be an invaluable asset to the Arc Project.”

“At the moment,” Rhodes interjected, “that is still secondary to eliminating the threat that damn near wiped us out in the first place.”  He eyed Shriver seriously.  “And if we get her here, you're working for her.  That clearly understood?'

Shriver nodded.  “Absolutely, sir.”

Rhodes turned to Sally.

“What's the word on our jet-pilot?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Rhodes shut his eyes.

Major Tom's follow-up estimate was also not encouraging.

“I've got a convergence, sir,” Tom radioed in.  “I've got satellite-imagery onsite.  It's... it's an army, sir.  Biggest I've ever seen.”

“Where did they all come from?” Sally asked.

“From everywhere,” Tom replied.  “At a steady walking pace an infected giant can cross most states in less than a day.”

“The rate of infection,” Shriver said, “indicates direct injection.”  He shook his head.  “The missing pneumatic needles.”

“That jibes with data, sir,” Major Tom confirmed.  “I've got no normals visible at all.”

“How soon before they overtake our rescue site?” Rhodes asked.

“They're already there, sir,” Tom replied.

Chapter 52

Mega-beasts – that's what the press called them in the first days after KT-day.

Of course, the first few days were all the press had, so the phrase never really went viral.

But Rosa was reminded of it now, as monolithic monsters seemed to materialize out of the storm, like Lovecraftian Elder Gods manifesting across some dimensional plane, marching to an entourage of lightning and an accompaniment of thunder.

There was no way to guess their numbers, but they were legion.

The already-unstable earth rumbled as the first of them hit the valley floor.

Titanosaurs – largest of sauropods – infected beast-gods.

At their heels, were the shields and horns of ceratopsians.

It certainly looked like coordinated behavior.

Otto's beasts had the madness, but they didn't attack each other.

The united front of apes and T. rex, however, proved a tougher nut to crack than the sheer overwhelming numbers and pure physical mass might have indicated.

Ceratopsians were designed to kill T. rex, but they had no particular adaption to the giant apes who ran among them, grabbing their horns like over-muscled cowboys wrestling steers, twisting their necks until they cracked.

And sauropods, while indomitably powerful, had receded from the fossil record as tyrannosaurs came on the scene – big meant slow, and an easier target for those jaws.  The rogue and his pussycat entourage savaged their giant legs and calves like wolverines hamstringing elk.

Most importantly, the canyon was narrow.

There were only so-many thousand-foot sauropods that could shoulder through at a time, and once the first of them went down, they started tripping over each other.

Brutus and the apes twisted the heads off the fallen ceratopsians, creating impromptu spiked shields.

The rogue and the pussycats simply bit anything that moved.

It was on the cliff above, however, where the more crucial battle was fought.

Otto had clearly learned not to send carnosaurs on commando missions.  Besides being a good degree or two dumber, even the big carcharodonts simply couldn't match a tyrannosaur tooth-to-claw.

Sickle-claws, on the other hand, operated like a band of ninjas – especially effective if your target was just past a rex' giant ankles.

This was where the human contingent finally earned its keep, as Garner and Wilkes picked them off like shooting ducks.

Allison also acquitted herself quite well, handing Lucas off to Bud as she dropped one attacking dromaeosaur after another in single shots.

Cameron and Maverick contributed a lot of fired bullets – some of which probably landed.

Maverick paused to reload, for a moment inattentive.  When he turned, he found a sickle-claw already