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

bubbles, reflected in the flashlight's beam, even as he bludgeoned the scaly little rats back and forth.

Tom heard the seal to the Destiny module reset and slide open.  In another moment, the rest of the air-locks throughout the station would follow.

There was a poof of wind as the gas caught, igniting an explosion of fire from above.  There was the squealing warble from the lizards.

Tom pushed back into the lifeboat, still choking one of the little bastards in one hand, as he sealed the hatch behind him and pressed the emergency launch.

The lifeboat fell away from the station as each compartment first exploded into flame, rupturing, and then imploding.

As the module above him lit up, Tom thought he might have been a bit too late.

The hatchway behind the sealed pod-door burst at the very moment the pod broke away, and the lifeboat went spinning, its control board going haywire with the abruptly broken contact.

Tom looked out the window as the ISS finished destroying itself.

In his hand, that last little Otto twitched.

Slow and deliberate, Tom twisted its neck until it snapped.

“Bastard,” he muttered.

He shut his eyes, waiting for the life-pod to right itself.

After an excruciatingly long several minutes, the computer reset and the craft straightened out.

The life-pod was now poised over the planet below.

Tom wondered what might yet be waiting.

How many apocalypse-events did one world need?

The lifeboat began its slow tumble to Earth.

Chapter 60

Rosa didn't think they were going to make it – the winds were too strong.

The pilot strained at the joystick, keeping them on a steady climb, but Rosa could feel the crosswinds trying to flip them completely over.

The soldiers clung to their seats alongside the passengers, their part of the mission accomplished, now just praying with the rest of them that the pilot could pull off his.

Maverick glanced over at Mark and the two of them suddenly both rose, moving for the cockpit.

Rosa saw the look of purpose in Maverick's eyes and the small smirk that she was already learning to worry about.

“Hey...” she started, before Maverick stepped into the cockpit, turning the pilot in his seat and slugging him dead in the chin.

“Ow,” Maverick said, shaking his hand, and tossing the pilot aside.  “Hard jaw.”

The pilot groaned, starting to sit up.  As Maverick took the controls, Mark shrugged, turning and knocking the dazed pilot the rest of the way out.

Rosa hadn't even finished her inhale as one of the soldiers started to his feet.

“What the hell...”

But he stopped as Allison's pistol was suddenly pressed against his ear, Lucas, wrapped in a bundle, still hanging nonchalantly off of one arm.

The second soldier turned to find Cameron holding a rifle, comfortably straddled across his lap, aimed dead at his chest across the cabin.

Bud and Mr. Wilson nonchalantly relieved the two soldiers of their weapons.

The first soldier, whose badge identified as Johnson, turned to Garner.

“Are you just going to let them do this?”

Garner glanced back at Shanna.

Then he shrugged, nodding to Maverick.

“Well,” he said, “we're already in the air, and right now, he's our only pilot.”

At that, the chopper suddenly skewed sharply with the crosswind.  Maverick cursed under his breath as he wrestled the joystick.

Mark looked at him sideways, and then back at the pilot he'd just knocked-out.

“Say,” he said, belatedly, “you can fly this thing, can't you?”

“Crashed the last one,” Maverick admitted.  “But I think I've got the hang of it now.”

Mark promptly buckled himself in.

The console radio barked General Rhodes' voice.

“Johnson?  Are you there?  For Christ's sake, we've got confirmed incoming, are you away?”

“Well, well,” Mark said.  “General Rhodes.”

He picked up the radio.

“Johnson here, sir.”

“What's your status, son?  Incoming is imminent.  Are you in the clear?  Have you got our asset?”

Mark glanced back at their asset.  Shanna smiled back, holding her fingers in an okay-sign.

“We've got her, sir,” Mark said.  “We are in the clear and we are on our way.  Keep a candle burning for us.”

Maverick took them up in altitude, and finally seemed to be outracing the storm.

The weather, however, suddenly wasn't the problem anymore, as the darkened sky abruptly lit up like a torch.

Now the heavy winds were all of a sudden at their back, as the blast wave hit, forcing the storm right along with it, evaporating the very water in the air, igniting bursts of lightning like charging electrodes.

Maverick rode the chopper like a surfer on a suicide wave, his voice a long, howling yodel.

“Ohhhhh shhheeeiiiiittt!”

Rosa squeezed her eyes shut, not certain if this maniac was her new hero, or if he was going to kill them all yet.

The chopper spun crazily, the passengers clinging to their seats.

Around them, the world had gone white, the water-vapor burned into a soup of fog.

The chopper leveled out and they hovered somewhere in the middle of the smoky mist, hanging in a ghostly twilight, utterly blind in the solid white.

Maverick let the chopper ride along the buffeting wind-currents generated by the blast wave.

Finally, the fog began to dissipate.

The high-energy still sparked balls of lightning and cracks of thunder, but the storm itself had been literally blown-out.

“I think we're clear,” Maverick said, eliciting a collective sigh from the cabin.

Shanna, however, still had her eyes shut.

Rosa caught the sudden frown.

“Shanna?” Cameron said, alarmed.  “Something wrong?”

But before she could speak, there came another rumble, this one louder than the thunder.

An explosion, coming from below, followed immediately by another.

Then there came a whole series of blasts, ever louder, like a run of firecrackers, all lighting up each other.

“Those aren't munitions,” Garner said.  “Those are demo-blasts.”

Now there was a whole cacophony of explosions.

Rosa looked out the window as the chopper held steady, looking down at the mountain below.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

As far as the eye could see, the surrounding peaks began to explode – staccato blasts that kept on growing, echoing for miles.

There was a geothermic belch as the mountains responded.

“What's happening?” Rosa breathed.

“Escalation,” Shanna said, without opening her eyes.  “Exponential escalation.  Beyond all possible reason.”

She shook her head.

“What's worse?” she whispered.

Below them, the earth visibly rocked, as