Age of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  The stairway was narrow, with the weight of rubble held in check by crossed girders – but Rosa knew any slight shift in weight could quite easily shake the rubble loose and they would be crushed.

  She wondered if they were being foolish, and again felt that impulse to just sit tight.

  But their little hidey-hole was only the illusion of safety and she knew it.

  Even so, stepping out onto the street-level, out from the shelter of their stairway, she felt incredibly vulnerable and exposed – the morning sun was like a prison spotlight.

  Julie climbed up beside her. Perched on the pile of rubble that had been the parking garage and the thruway, the two of them looked out upon the ruined city.

  That was when Rosa realized how truly fortunate they had been.

  The shattered skyline no longer even resembled San Francisco – no structure over five stories remained standing.

  They stood there, just absorbing the TOTALITY of it – a city of eight-hundred thousand people – utterly wiped away.

  You couldn't get rid of cockroaches so completely.

  And as they made their way to a vantage point atop their little mountain of rubble, Rosa saw the monsters actually had not gone.

  They lay scattered among the ruins – massive bodies, torn and cannibalized.

  Nothing seemed to be living in the entire city.

  Rosa wondered what it was that had killed these beasts. She could see damage from munitions fire – bombs and missiles.

  But the majority of the wounds seemed to be caused by tooth and claw.

  And while, certainly, these giant corpses had been fed upon like carrion, Rosa could see that many of these wounds had bled.

  They HAD been killing each other.

  It didn't even make sense – no animals behaved this way – this was rabid.

  Whatever made them, made them mad.

  Looking out on the city-scape of scattered carcasses, Rosa wondered if it was all of them, or if these were just the ones left behind.

  And for the first time, she wondered what might be happening beyond the city. Until now, that had been a psychological investment she simply couldn't afford.

  Just like wondering what the cause of it all might have been.

  There had been nothing in the leaked 'Monster Island' footage to account for all this. Even a T. rex would have been biting at the ankles of the creatures that had descended upon her city.

  Of course, Aunt Rita had her own ideas – in her world, it was just a simple, old-fashioned, religious-style Apocalypse.

  For Rosa's part, the Catholic schoolgirl in her was perfectly willing to accept that the descriptions matched. Monsters and abominations? What else would you call them?

  Despite her injuries, and despite the loss of her husband, the old lady actually seemed the most composed of the lot of them.

  If they were facing Last Times, she said, that just meant it was time to rise up.

  She seemed quite at peace when she had finally passed, six days in. In the minutes before she had gone, the old-lady had held Rosa's hand, as if to comfort her.

  “A doctor sees too much pain,” she had told her, giving Rosa's hand a squeeze. “And you hate it so much. A girl as young and pretty as you should smile more.”

  They had laid her to rest next to her husband near the top of the stairs.

  “They're gone,” Julie said.

  Rosa turned. “What are?”

  “The old-lady,” Julie said. “And her husband. They're gone.”

  Rosa looked where they had lain and saw nothing but a torn plastic seat-cover.

  She looked around cautiously.

  Among the rubble, something skittered just out of sight.

  After a moment, that skittering-something hopped up on top of the piled concrete.

  It was about two-feet tall – gangly like a plucked emu.

  The slender limbs were adorned with vicious-looking claws – almost like fishhooks – and its sharp, beak-like snout was lined in lizard-like teeth.

  On its foot, toe-tapping like a drummer, was a lethal-looking sickle.

  The thing bobbed in jerky, bird-like motions.

  Its jaws were slathered in blood, and in its claws, it held what looked like a rib-bone.

  After a moment, several others hopped up beside it, all of them staring with goggly eyes.

  One of them had a piece of Rita's black shawl.

  In sudden anger, Rosa picked up a piece of concrete and threw it.

  The little lizards scattered but bounced back promptly. And now a few more appeared, bobbing their heads like prairie dogs.

  Julie raised the pistol and picked the closet one off its perch with a single shot, sending it spinning like a tin-can off a fence.

  Now the others retreated for real, vanishing into the cracks like scurrying rats.

  Rosa and Julie examined the twitching corpse left behind.

  It was covered in a thin, pale plume – not feathered so much as quills, giving the creature the appearance of scales rather than a pelt.

  “Is this a dinosaur?” Julie asked, still pointing the pistol, warily.

  Rosa nodded slowly. The pediatric wing had recently redone the playroom with wall-paintings of dinosaurs, and she clearly recognized the hooked sickle-claw – albeit a smaller version – the domestic cat versus a cougar. But that murderous hook was intimidating on the miniature model as well.

  Behind them, there was the sound of tumbling rock.

  The pack of little lizards had regrouped several yards away, still eyeing them interestedly. Julie took another couple of shots at them and they scattered once again.

  The shots echoed in the streets.

  Rosa had never heard an echo in the city before.

  Or more correctly, a single echo, because the sounds were constant.

  This was all by itself.

  Rosa had heard it said that if you turned off the sprinklers, every city on the California coast would be a desert in two weeks.

  It actually rather looked like that. The ruined buildings were covered in dust – almost appearing fossilized, like some ancient ruins.

  Looking around, it was amazing how fast a despoiled city returned to the land.

  The footprints of humanity were not so deep as imagined, after all.

  In the eerie silence, Rosa and Julie made their way up to the crest of rubble and looked down upon the city.

  One of the cars in the parking lot had yielded a pair of binoculars, and Rosa took a quick scan of the skyline.

  There was literally nothing standing – not even the beasts themselves.

  But as she focused in on one of the carcasses, she now realized its flesh seemed to be moving – rather like dead animals on the Savannah sometimes roiled with scavengers. But the things that had come out of the nooks and crannies were not your local coyotes or raccoons.

  This was more like watching an elephant corpse swarmed by Nile monitors, digging into the stomach, climbing on its back, rooting around inside the cavernous chest-cavity.

  Rosa did not particularly know her dinosaurs, but she knew one when she saw it.

  While diminutive next to the giant carrion, they were quite impressive in their own right – Rosa estimated many of them scaled upwards of ten tons.

  Darting in among them – wolf-sized – were packs of sickle-claws – skittish of their larger cousins, but emboldened sufficiently by the mountain of free carrion to risk proximity.

  Oddly, as she focused in with the binoculars, she didn't see any of those little scavengers on any of the giant carcasses – perhaps chased off by the larger carnivores.

  But then as she panned down onto the streets, she found them.

  Those little guys seemed to be focusing on the leftover human wreckage.

  Scavengers were, by nature, opportunistic. Why risk confrontation with the big predators, when all these travel-size meals were just as plentiful? Some of the decadent little lizards actually lounged and snoozed luxuriously on half-devoure
d corpses.

  Rosa was already beginning to hate those little bastards.

  Worse, as she adjusted the binoculars on the far horizon, she realized the giants weren't all gone either.

  It was difficult to see in the distance – dust from demolished concrete drifted like fog – but gathered along the far-side of the city, apparently, in repose for the moment, at least three of the mega-beasts had gathered around one of the giant carcasses.

  And as she adjusted focus, Rosa could see what at first looked like birds lined up along the giant beasts' backs.

  Then she realized it was more of the little sickle-clawed scavengers – apparently discovering yet another niche for themselves – like birds picking parasites off the hide of a buffalo – they scurried over the giant scales like lice.

  The giant beasts were standing, but seemed almost dormant – like a horse sleeping on its feet.

  Their eyes were slitted like a dozing cat's. Rosa could see just a sliver of that strange green glow spliced under the lids.

  Then Julie was patting her urgently on the shoulder. When Rosa turned, she pointed over past the ruined hospital.

  The plume of smoke reaching over the make-shift ridge of rubble was not a random fire.

  Turning her binoculars, Rosa saw the fighter jet that had crashed two-days before. The engine was still smoking.

  “You think that guy's alive?” Julie asked over her shoulder.

  Rosa lowered the scopes.

  “Only one way to know,” she said. “It's not far.”

  She nodded to the pistol in Julie's hands. “You've still got bullets, right?”

  Julie nodded. “Six. I think.”

  Rosa hefted her ax, setting her feet like any good cavewoman who had never swung an ax in her life.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let's go take a look.”

  Chapter 7

  The jet had not exploded, but had left a trail of fuel that continued to smolder. The plane was perched at the end of an impromptu runway that had taken it over nearly three city blocks.

  Fortunately, the architecture in its path had been mostly single buildings and strip malls, catering to the hospital and commuter area that bordered on the nearby park – not exactly a runway, but better than the side of a skyscraper.

  Rosa could see the pilot, still in the cockpit.

  He wasn't moving – either dead or unconscious.

  “The hatch is open,” Julie said. “That means he tried to get out.”

  “And couldn't,” Rosa finished. That didn't bode well. Nevertheless, they began to climb the slope of broken concrete.

  Their first efforts sent loose debris rolling and bouncing noisily into the street, sending more echoes ricocheting into the eerie, dead silence.

  This time, the ruckus attracted gawkers.

  A quartet of sickle-claws appeared on the ridge behind them.

  No little scavengers here – these were the big wolf-sized beasties – and neither did they waste time once they spotted them – all four came bounding like sprinting greyhounds.

  Struggling for balance on the chancy slope, Julie fired her remaining shots.

  And perhaps she was a little rattled, because they all missed.

  The claws would be on them in seconds.

  Feeling almost ridiculous, Rosa brandished the fire-ax.

  Then four shots rang out in quick succession, ringing in their ears.

  All four beasts pitched over forward into the gravel, blood and brain-matter spurting out the backs of their lizard-like heads.

  The largest of them flopped spasmodically at Rosa's feet.

  She turned, and above them, the pilot was sitting up in his seat, his pistol muzzle still smoking.

  “Evil sons-a-bitches, ain't they?” he hollered down.

  Rosa and Julie exchanged glances. All four bullets had hit targets less than four inches across – fired within seconds.

  The pilot smiled winningly.

  “Lieutenant Lucas Walker, US Navy, at your service.”

  He pulled the clip from his handgun and tossed it over the side.

  “I hope you ladies are friendly. Those were my last bullets.”

  He tapped the raised hatch. “I don't suppose you could help me out here? My foot's stuck.”

  Climbing underneath the fuselage, Rosa and Julie began pushing where the nose of the jet had been pinched, trapping the man's leg.

  Rosa wedged her ax handle between the plane and the broken concrete, and both women – who together didn't weigh more than two-hundred and fifty pounds – jumped up and down, trying to rock the weight of the jet just enough.

  The mangled metal groaned, matched immediately by Lucas inside the cockpit.

  “Just so you ladies know, that really fuckin' hurts.”

  Rosa had patched a lot of field injuries – ignoring Lucas, as soon as she felt the first give, she leaned harder. She and Julie were now matching Lucas' strained curses as the fuselage finally moved.

  'Ohhhhh you BASTARD!” Lucas blurted as the metal groaned again.

  But then his foot pulled free.

  And like an animal released from a snare, he hiked himself out of the cockpit, his easy air belying the hollows in his eyes after two days spent trapped. With a nearly imperceptible shudder, Lucas planted both his feet out onto the semi-solid pile of broken concrete.

  His left foot was swollen and purple – as if to spite it, he stomped hard on the rubble.

  Rosa saw the bolt of pain flash through his eyes, and the squirt of a tear dotted his cheek.

  He flicked the tear away, with an affirmative nod. “Yep. That's gonna smart for a while.”

  With that, he turned to the two of them with a formal salute.

  “My thanks to you, ladies. I'm in your debt.”

  And with that, he began to root around his crashed plane, pulling open a compartment below the cockpit – walking on his wounded leg in utter deliberate defiance.

  “Here,” Rosa said, moving forward, “let me take a look at that foot.”

  Lucas smiled reassuringly, as he tossed bags from the compartment – supplies and weapons – and extra bullets. He popped a fresh clip into his pistol.

  “I'm fine, Ma'am,” he said.

  “It's 'Doctor',” Rosa said, irritated. “Now sit down and let me look at it.”

  With an indulgent sigh, tossing his last bag out on the crushed concrete, Lucas acquiesced, taking a seat on the wing of his downed plane.

  “So,” Rosa said, in by-rote bed-side manner, “you're a pilot. I suppose you have one of those 'call-signs'. Like Maverick?”

  Lucas nodded mildly. “I do.”

  “What is it?”

  He smiled innocently. “It's the name I go by when I fly.”

  Rosa took a patent breath, as she poked at his swelling, purple ankle – making sure to highlight the spots she knew would hurt.

  Her prodding produced the barest twitch in Lucas' brow, and an even broader, more deliberate smile.

  “Well,” she said, somewhat begrudgingly, “it's not broken – just kind of crushed. You've probably got some pressure fractures – especially in the smaller bones.” She looked up. “It's good and purple, too. That means you're hurt.”

  Lucas nodded. “I knew that much.”

  And with that, he pulled his boot back on, and hopped back to his feet.

  “That must hurt,” Rosa said, deliberately unimpressed.

  'Oh yeah, it does,” he said, but loaded up his heavy packs on both shoulders anyway, apparently determined to experience as much discomfort as possible. “Back in high-school, my wrestling coach used to call it an 'owie'.”

  “That's a bit more than an 'owie',” Rosa said.

  “Well,” Lucas said, again stomping his foot experimentally, grimacing at each bolt of pain, “you may be right. But we gotta suck it up anyway, don't we?”

  With that, he turned and began climbing up over the ridge of rubble where the sickle claws had appeared.

  Glancing at each other, R
osa and Julie followed.

  Once he reached the top, he pulled out his own binoculars and scanned the broken skyline.

  He settled quickly on the stuporous giants poised on the horizon.

  “They've just been standing there like that,” Rosa said. “It's like they're asleep.”

  “It's mental deterioration,” Lucas replied. “Whatever makes them giants, it also eats their brains.”

  Rosa shook her head. “It's... a dinosaur, isn't it? Like a T. rex?”

  “Actually,” Lucas said, “that one's a Carcharodont – probably Giganotosaurus – a carnosaur – kind of a big allosaur.”

  He tipped a sage, informed eye over his binoculars.

  “They gave us a list of what we were shooting at,” he said. “Apparently, these guys don't get along with T. rex at all – in fact, they seem to have driven the tyrannosaurs out of this area.

  “In fact,” he said, “that's what was mostly going on here – the city was gone in two-days – they were just fighting over it.” Lucas shrugged. “We were shootin' at 'em, but I don't know how much they cared.”

  “But they're... so big,” Rosa said. “I mean there's never been anything like that – not ever.”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, “about that.”

  He handed his binoculars over – military-issue with zoom capabilities.

  “This might shine a light,” he said.

  He directed her towards one of the carcasses, where packs of the smaller creatures – carnosaurs and sickle-claws alike – were devouring the fallen giant.

  “They're really going to town, aren't they?” Lucas said. “Take a closer look.”

  Rosa zoomed in, focusing in on a single sickle-claw as it perched upon the massive carcass.

  In the high resolution, she could see the blood on its lips.

  She could also see its eyes.

  They glowed emerald green.

  Chapter 8

  There was one man who saw it all.

  From a vantage point two-hundred and twenty miles above the Earth, staring down from orbit, Major Tom Corbett had heard all the nicknames – 'Buck Rogers' 'Rocket Man – burning out his fuse up there alone' – but plain old 'Major Tom' was the one he liked best – he used it as his call-sign.

  Sometimes in the pure deadpan of the military, people would call him Major 'Major Tom' – he didn't know what he'd do if he got promoted.