Age of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  The wave, however, had saturated both vehicles – the engines choked and sputtered.

  Several of the advancing sickle-claws went down before the barrage of gunfire, but the shots attracted the attention of the others.

  There were packs of them. And the big carnosaurs were not far behind.

  Private Jones finally gunned the engine to life.

  “Come on!” Rosa shouted to the others.

  But the sickle-claws were coming in too fast.

  One of them closed on Jamie, dodging the coffee-girl's nervous, erratic shots, and leaped upon her. Jamie fell backward with a scream, even as the seven-inch foot-claw arced towards her throat.

  Jeremy, helpless to shoot without hitting her, simply bodily tackled the thing, and the two of them went tumbling.

  The creature's claws, however, turned dexterously inward, and Jeremy's voice rose in a strangled shriek as it gutted him.

  Jamie, her arms clawed and bloody, let loose a scream of her own – an anguished howl of rage that Rosa could have never imagined from her.

  And as Jeremy was disemboweled before her eyes, Jamie – cut-sleeves, bandanna and all – actually charged the thing, firing her rifle, screaming hysterically.

  Gone were the tentative, careful shots – she blew the crouched sickle-claw off Jeremy's twitching corpse and continued to blast away, as it kicked and struggled on the ground.

  Two more of them landed on her a moment later.

  Jamie never had a chance to scream – one of the sickles found her throat, cutting off her voice, even as the other bore her to the ground.

  Daryl and Bob both opened fire, dropping both creatures in their tracks – clearly too late. Daryl took half a step towards Jamie's torn and bloody body but stopped as the first of the big carnosaurs finally burst through the trees out onto the highway.

  It was a big Allosaurus – probably close to forty feet long – at least five-tons.

  Daryl and Bob exchanged glances, thn turned and ran for the jeeps.

  Private Barns was still grinding his dead engine.

  “Forget it,” Rosa shouted again from the other jeep. “Come on!”

  Barnes cursed, lurching out of the driver's seat. Bud pulled Allison out of the back and they all began to run.

  The allosaur had caught Daryl – stamping him down with one clawed foot, trapping him, while the hand-claws shredded him from the abdomen out.

  Rosa could actually see the creature's throat expanding like a snake as it swallowed Daryl in two pieces. Then it turned after them again.

  Jones gunned the jeep, starting to pull away, even as Barnes and the others ran up alongside.

  Rosa and Julie both reached out the rear-window for Private Barnes' hand as he pulled himself up and onto the back.

  Two sickle-claws had caught Bob – he shrieked as they tore him into bloody rags.

  Bud was cursing aloud, pacing the moving jeep, catching the door and practically flinging Allison inside. But then he tripped as he tried to pull himself in after her – his hand clinging to the door, he found himself being dragged.

  The allosaur was back on their tail.

  And not too far behind, more of the big carnosaurs had made the highway, pushing some of the smaller trees out into the road – the first of the big Carcharodonts.

  One of the sickle-claws, hot on their tail, made a grab for Bud's dragging feet – he yanked them back precariously close to the spinning wheels. Both Julie and Rosa grabbed him by the arm, but the beast's reaching claws now latched onto his leg.

  Allison pulled back.

  Rosa had time to wonder – was this it? Was this where Allison – that type – at last threw the poor guy under the bus? But a moment later, she reappeared with her pistol and shot the thing in both eyes, sending it tumbling behind them on the road.

  Then she grabbed Bud's other hand and the three women together hauled Bud on board like a grain sack.

  The big allosaur, however, was coming up fast.

  Private Barnes, hanging from the back by one hand, shouldered his rifle with the other, turned and started firing.

  The allosaur didn't like it. It closed briefly with the jeep, snatching Barnes by the arm, yanking him off the back.

  There was an explosion of gunfire as Barnes reflexively fired down the creature's gullet.

  That turned out to be a vulnerable spot – the big carnosaur's throat was blasted open, and it staggered, Barnes still clamped in its mouth, before toppling over.

  A final gesture for Barnes, as part of him fell away from the bladed jaws, bitten in half across the chest.

  But just now, along the ridge above the northern highway, the tree line was parted yet again.

  More carnosaurs – megalosaurs and ceratosaurs too – sauropods and ceratopsians.

  They were going to cut them off before they could make the pass.

  Private Jones stepped on it anyway.

  Behind them, sprinting sickle-claws darted between the Carcharodonts' ankles as the army of marching monsters spilled out onto the highway.

  They were trapped.

  The bigger beasts were moving on them now. There was no way out this time. They would simply stomp their little truck into scrap.

  Private Jones slowed to a stop.

  They all looked at each other, drawing their guns – ready to fight – knowing it was already over.

  Behind them, the first of the big Carcharodonts stopped, sniffing at the dead and still-twitching allosaur.

  But in a manner very unlike predators, they turned away from the free meat, eyeing the retreating jeep instead.

  War-dogs, Rosa thought again.

  She could hear a rising roar...

  … which she realized wasn't coming from the beasts at all.

  The roar came from above.

  War-dog meet war-bird.

  They had seen a single fighter-jet pass above. Now it had apparently circled back, almost level with the tree line, unloading its guns on the advancing horde.

  The machine gunfire tore into even the big Carcharodonts and the beasts screamed.

  There was a blast of wind and a sonic-boom as the jet rocketed past overhead.

  “Is that Lieutenant Walker?” Julie breathed, hardly daring to believe.

  Rosa said nothing – of course there was no way to be sure.

  But she knew. It was Lucas alright.

  It was in the cock of the wing, as the pilot turned the craft back again for a second pass – this time targeting the beasts blocking the highway to the north – he had seen their escape route.

  Now the jet let loose with missiles. The northern ridge erupted in fire and bestial screams.

  The highway was broken in the blast, but the way through was clear.

  Private Jones gunned the engine, jerking them forward, taking them up and over the pass. Once they reached the north highway, Jones floored it.

  Above them, the jet circled back once more, as if seeing them off.

  Then it turned and left them behind.

  Rosa saw the jet bank abruptly, due north, and in moments, it was out of sight.

  He'd given them a window – a fighting chance. But behind them, still more of the beasts perked up and over the hillside.

  Jones wasn't taking any chances, he didn't slow. In fact, it felt almost as if he was losing control.

  But then Rosa realized it wasn't just the rough, broken road – the ground beneath them was shaking.

  It was not like that first day in the city – it wasn't the impact tremors of advancing giant footsteps.

  This was the earth itself.

  The tremors began to build.

  Rosa had been barely two-years old when a 6.9 quake had hit San Francisco back in 1989 – she had actually been at the televised baseball game – and she remembered how the ground had just kept rumbling, kept getting worse – and as a toddler, it seemed it would never end.

  Rosa had ridden out a lot of quakes since then. This was different.

  Rocks be
gan to tumble where the road had been cut into the cliff-side. Private Jones steered wildly to avoid them.

  Then the ground REALLY began to shake.

  The jeep skidded to one side, and Private Jones braked hard, even as a near-avalanche of beach-ball-sized boulders came tumbling down around them.

  Then right next to her, Rosa heard Julie's voice – a small, hushed whisper.

  “Oh my God.”

  They all turned to look back the way they had come.

  The coast highway – the cliffside itself – was crumbling away.

  The coastline was breaking off into the ocean.

  Rosa, of course, knew what it was – the good Catholic schoolgirl in her recognized it immediately, just as on that first day, she had recognized the Beast from the Pit.

  She heard the verse in her head, rehearsed just like a nursery rhyme.

  'There was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth... and the whole moon became like blood.'

  Also known, in California-folklore, as 'The Big One'.

  The breaking fissure seemed to chase after them like a giant serpent – splitting open the ground, and then sending it crumbling off into the sea. The ocean frothed with countless tons of collapsing earth and rock.

  Rosa could hear the screams of the beasts.

  Today, nothing would be spared.

  “Get us out of here,” Rosa whispered, hitting Jones on the shoulder.

  But even then, the very road, the highway itself, began to fall away beneath them.

  Rosa shut her eyes as she felt the jeep begin to roll.

  Then the avalanche caught them, as the cliffside broke away.

  Chapter 41

  It was quite a sight from his altitude, Tom thought, as the southwest coast of California dropped off into the ocean. He could see it with the naked eye from space.

  The fault-line split away from the main landmass, just like they always said it would.

  Tom focused as many satellite-scopes as were in range.

  Numbly, he absorbed the devastation – no longer just the cities and towns, but even the land itself.

  LA was gone. That had been the biggest chunk of it, right at first – the closest to ground zero. But even as Tom watched, the fault-line continued to grow, stretching north.

  Watching a geological event in real-time was humbling.

  When mountains crumbled, even the beasts were crushed into nonexistence – less than nothing before the tectonic forces of the Earth itself.

  By that scale, it was really just the continent shifting its shoulders, shedding a layer.

  For a thousand miles, by the humble measure of man, the destruction was absolute.

  Tom had no idea how far north the collapse would eventually reach – at the very least, volcanic and seismic activity were likely to be activated up the entire west coast – they would probably be feeling tremors in Canada.

  Or even Alaska, Tom thought, glancing at the empty screen where he'd last seen Kristi's face.

  Tom shut his eyes – the watchman could stand to see no more.

  The numbness threatened to break.

  By sheer act of will, he forced his eyes open. Cold reality was his only friend.

  'Courage' was not the word – he simply had no other option.

  For whatever reason, this was the fate that had befallen him.

  And so he would fill his role – he would correlate and collate – he would chronicle and compose.

  When the aliens he had always wanted to meet finally arrived, at least there would be some record – a legacy.

  Otherwise, the only remaining evidence of the human race would be a four-foot flag on the moon.

  Tom sat before his screens, and waited for it to all end.

  Chapter 42

  The tyrannosaurs were out-numbered, but in close quarters, the advantage was theirs. They were the pit-bull model of theropod. While a big Carcharodont was longer, and might outweigh the average adult rex, it was a much more lightly-boned animal.

  It was the nature of its prey – even a big Carcharodont didn't want to grapple with a giant sauropod – especially the gigantic titanosaurs. Employing a low-impact strategy similar to modern Komodo dragons, it would instead attack and retreat, falling back to let the slashing wounds fester, leaving the prey to weaken and die – providing a mountain of meat with little risk and little contact.

  T. rex, on the other hand, was a Triceratops killer – a fast, dangerous prey, of equal size and reaction time – attack and retreat was not an option for an animal that could turn on a dime, with horns and shield. T. rex needed to kill at a stroke.

  The first of the Carcharodonts felt the difference the moment the front-lines came together.

  Down in L.A. and San Francisco, the tyrannosaurs had been driven out by sheer numbers. Here, that advantage was not as stark.

  And in the close-quarters of the basin, a 'low-impact' attack strategy was not an advantage.

  The big rex locked jaws with the first of the big Carcharodonts – a massive beast, even larger than the rex itself. At first, the greater weight of the carnosaur began to push the rex back.

  But once the narrow saw-blades were pitted against the railroad spikes – a construct intended to carry a lot of weight lightly versus bio-mechanics designed to send a lot of weight against a target at high-velocity – the result was no contest.

  Once the giant carnosaur's jaws had locked with the rex, it was trapped – and once the rex began to torque and bulldog its head back-and-forth, the Carcharodont's jaws were simply torn right off.

  Spurting blood, the Carcharodont toppled, lifelessly, even as the rex turned to meet the next attacker.

  The rex-gang joined, fangs-first, beside him, and the front line of carnosaurs were pushed back.

  There were, however, also a number of two-thousand-foot sauropods – and of course a platoon of ceratopsians, specifically evolved to take on a rex.

  The big dominant female was the first casualty on the rex's side – at the horns of a bull Triceratops.

  Under almost no other circumstances would an adult rex approach one of the three-horned dreadnoughts face-to-face – the deadly horns were aimed unerringly at a rex's belly – just as the blade of its shield would chop at the face of any tyrannosaur foolish enough to go for a neck bite. Any T. rex that lived long enough to try it more than once, quickly learned that the way to attack a trike was from the rear – a one-shot, incapacitating bite to the hips and spine.

  But circumstances were not normal, and on this day, with the hot-blood of battle, the big female charged the horns head-on.

  The initial clash took the female's eye as one of the horns slid deep into its socket.

  Pulling back with an outraged scream, the rex reared up – exposing her belly.

  Its target wide-open, the trike charged forward, catching the tyrant-queen in the ribs with all three horns, piercing her heart.

  The giant sauropods also did some damage – one big titanosaur nearly broke the rex front line – two adolescent males were crushed and trampled before the pack took the giant beast down at the legs, gigantic bites cleaving huge chunks out of both bone and muscle, as well as severing tendons.

  All else being equal, the sheer number of the invaders, would seemingly, eventually have to finally prevail.

  The narrow beach, however, congested the advancing horde – its own numbers kept the weight of its forces from being a factor.

  At the forefront of the battle, the big rex – once a rogue, but now clearly acknowledged as pride-leader – scoured the ridge for the lead Carcharodont – the big one that had first appeared upon the hill – the one with all the Ottos crawling all over it.

  He spotted the big carnosaur still hovering at the periphery on the ridge.

  The beast itself seemed to have gone into a stupor – as if a button had just clicked dormant in it head.

  But the rex could see the skittering little beasts on its back.

  T. rex did not kn
ow strategic terms like 'command station', or 'home-base', but he instinctively recognized this particular target among all the others.

  He found he really did not care about all these other beasts he found himself contending with this day. THOSE little bastards were what he wanted.

  That psychic-stench. The rex was determined to stamp it out.

  The scaly little rats had tried to dominate him. That was reason enough.

  The rex began to fight his way up the slope.

  On the hill above, the Carcharodont seemed to suddenly blink awake. Its head cocked, eyeing the rex's approach.

  The Ottos on its back were hissing and screeching – a near-embolism pulse on the rex's tiny brain.

  Focused on its goal, the rex paid no attention to another sound, coming from the south, as an F-16 appeared on the horizon.

  Chapter 43

  Jonah and Naomi ran down the beach – both ridges north and south were cut off, and straight ahead was sheer rock wall.

  That left the narrow strip of coast that led down to the north bay, opposite the remains of Eureka.

  The small grouping of buildings that surrounded the docks remained undisturbed – although likely would not much longer.

  There were also the air and boat parks.

  The war, however, was erupting literally right over their heads.

  So far, the beasts were focused on each other. But they were all infected giants.

  There was a mixed blessing there – two humans on foot were not enough to attract their attention. But the wall of walking mountains would crush them like ants – absence of malice or not.

  They reached the dock even as the impact of first clash seemed to shake the entire coast.

  The pier's main office was locked, and Jonah kicked the door open – a dock foreman usually kept spare keys to the crafts and vessels in his charge.

  Jonah glanced down over the water at the handful of boats that remained.

  Getting back out on the ocean wasn't exactly an attractive alternative either – not with six-hundred foot Megalodons patrolling the coast.

  Options, however, were running extremely thin.