Age of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  And then, just beyond the ridge, partially blocked by the hillside, the payload hit.

  The rex was aware of a blinding blast of light.

  Then it was picked up and carried – thrown, as if by a category-10 tornado.

  The battlefield behind was obliterated.

  Debris and burning wreckage were blown past.

  The rex felt itself burn.

  And when it finally rolled and tumbled to a stop, part of its primitive mind remained conscious and aware.

  Its body was shattered – although, as a rex, it simply wasn't conditioned to stop.

  Its hip and back were broken – as well as both legs – yet, it struggled vainly to rise.

  Then it felt the Earth itself begin to shake. Whatever balance its broken body retained, whatever coordination was left in its dying nervous system, finally fizzled out like a burnt fuse.

  The rex collapsed.

  The struggling chain-stokes breath choked to a stop. The green glow in its eyes faded.

  It again felt the ground shaking beneath him – perhaps as homage to the passing of a king.

  The rex stiffened and lay still.

  Long live the king.

  Chapter 48

  World-wide, the battle would eventually wind down over a period of weeks.

  Major Tom had programmed the satellites to focus in on the blooms wherever they sprouted.

  He was also able to isolate where most of the nuke strikes had landed.

  Besides the blast in Eureka – finally obliterating that damned tower once and for all – two other fighter-pilots had successfully dropped their payloads. None of the pilots, Tom was able to ascertain, had survived.

  Not that he'd received communication of any kind from the ground. Whatever remained of global networking, had been fried in the EMP that followed multiple detonations all over the planet.

  But continental North America, at least west of the Rockies, had been cleaned out – the blooms had been burned.

  The rest of the world was not so lucky. The battle would run its course, as would the cycle of the Food of the Gods.

  But eventually, even that began to burn itself out – the giants inevitably died – where the chemical didn't kill them, they killed each other.

  Enough scorched Earth, and there was nothing left to grow.

  Then there were those 'scrambled signals' – missiles fired from silos to 'random' locations.

  Random like the San Andreas fFault?

  As well as what was left of London, and Hong Kong – or pretty much any epicenter where humanity might cling to a foothold?

  Practical extermination.

  That had been the first thing the analyst in him had eliminated – the possibility of random event.

  The world below had gone dark. His own eyes in the sky were partially blind. The EMP had knocked out a couple of satellites too, and his networking across the board was growing steadily more blinky.

  Mostly, he had been looking for any remaining signal coming in from the planet below.

  But there was nothing.

  Tom sat there, floating weightless – almost like a ghost himself.

  He felt like he should want to cry – yet, somehow he couldn't – perhaps it was a defense mechanism – as if that part of his mind had simply shut down.

  It was possible that in that moment, his hair went a little bit gray.

  Tom looked around at the one-hundred square yards where he would spend the rest of his life.

  Two days before, he had found Kristi's cabin in Alaska.

  It had actually been as simple as finding her last name in the database and mapping her associated address.

  The property was boarded-up and looked abandoned.

  She had evidently gone looking for help, braving the wilds, looking for some other sign of human habitation.

  Which, near as Tom could tell, did not exist for several thousand miles in any direction.

  Even if surviving military had regrouped, Tom didn't know where.

  He wondered how long Kristi had waited before abandoning her home. Had she been desperate? Or perhaps she had gone out well-fortified, well-planned and ready?

  Tom could not imagine a scenario where it could possibly matter.

  He tried not to feel sorry for himself, for the fact that he would never know.

  And then, just because he couldn't stand the silence any longer, he flicked his screens back on – bringing back repeating images of the recent past. Computer-simulations blinked to life, and began to shuffle and analyze, looking for new patterns in old re-runs.

  As he floated up here forever.

  Burning out his fuse up there alone.

  What did he miss?

  He had said 'nothing'.

  Funny how words came back to bite you.

  Tom buried his face in his hands.

  Chapter 49

  None of the pilots ever returned. The fleet and the base were gone. If the military had regrouped, it was nowhere near

  Rosa sat out on the beach, looking out at the ocean. Beside her sat Allison and Bud. Behind them, was the wreck of the coastline, where the cliffside had crumbled away.

  The jeep had tumbled with the rocks. It had been a crazy, rolling sensation – it was LOUD – with a sense of weight so immense – so CRUSHING – that it took your breath away before it even touched you.

  If they had been buried, it would have been over, but they had tumbled with the rest of the rolling avalanche. The jeep itself was actually uniquely well-reinforced for this specific kind of trauma – the solid roll-bars keeping the crushing boulders at bay.

  Rosa wasn't really aware of it at the time – it happened so fast – but what had really saved her was her seat-belt – a reflexive habit, she didn't even remember strapping across her waist. Bud had done likewise – his overprotective self – for both him and Allison.

  The others had died.

  Julie had been thrown out the window almost at once. Rosa heard one brief scream, and then she was gone. They never saw even a trace of her again.

  Private Jones had clung to the overhead bar and his seat – bracing himself, his tendons stretching like wire – but he was, nevertheless, also pitched into the stampeding boulders.

  Not that Rosa expected it to matter.

  How many times, now, she thought? How many times had she gotten herself ready to die?

  At this point, she almost wanted to just get it over with. She was simply too tired to fight it anymore.

  The avalanche had continued down the beach into the ocean, even as the falling rubble filled the foam-splitting fissures.

  Rosa remembered feeling the spray of the ocean, and then impact.

  She lay in darkness. She didn't know how long.

  But the next thing she remembered was being carried, and then sat down with care on a bed of hard rocks.

  That had been three days ago. Since then, the tide had come and gone three times as well.

  It was amazing, Rosa thought, how quickly it all washed away.

  The collapsed coastal wall was a jagged quarry of smashed rock, but the passage of the surf had already begun to fill in the cracks with sand.

  Their jeep still lay where it had landed, just at the surf-line, near the top of a dead-fall of boulders.

  And now they waited to see if anyone was coming back.

  Correction: Rosa was waiting to see if Lucas was coming back.

  As a kindness, Bud and Allison had allowed her to wait.

  But now, on the eve of the third day, as the tide washed the sand back into the cracks, Bud sat down next to her, in front of the little campfire they'd built among the rocks.

  He said nothing right away, but Rosa knew what was on his mind.

  Allison had wandered a ways up the beach, looking for driftwood. They had already salvaged what they could from the jeep – mostly a few matches, some kerosene, a first-aid kit.

  Allison also found a little ammo for her 9 mm.

  Rosa found herself
again wondering about the woman's past. Based on what she knew, those circles under the eyes had been hard-won.

  No doubt they were mirrored in her own eyes, just now.

  No one gets tough on purpose.

  Rosa glanced sideways at Bud.

  “You're thinking it's time to move on,” she said.

  Bud nodded slowly, letting out a long sigh.

  “We've been running for a long time,” he said. “I think it's time we stopped.”

  Rosa looked off to where Allison walked alone on the beach, safely out of earshot.

  'Fallen Woman', Rosa thought, her Catholic upbringing rearing its ugly head once again.

  But Allison was also a survivor.

  If God existed, if His Will had played any hand, that also meant she had been spared. Carrying a child, with her own Joseph to look after her.

  “She saved my life, too,” Bud said quietly. “She had a little love left to give, at a time when I needed it.”

  Now he smiled a little. “Just like now,” he said. “Just like always.”

  They both fell silent, watching the incoming waves.

  Allison ambled up with her load of kindling and dropped it on the fire, before sitting down next to Bud.

  At the warmth of the fire, she felt her belly – just barely showing.

  “When are you due?” Rosa asked.

  “Six-and-a-half months,” Allison said.

  Rosa found herself wondering again – an unforgivable question that she would never ask – if Bud was the father.

  Instead, she regarded the two of them together.

  “So, what are your plans?”

  Allison and Bud exchanged glances.

  “Well,” Bud began, “we were actually thinking of heading out pretty soon. Like maybe tomorrow.” He nodded at the wrecked coastline. “Not much here to salvage.”

  “And go where?”

  “North. Just follow the coast until we see landscape again. Find a place to try and live.”

  Rosa nodded silently.

  “You're welcome to join us,” Bud said and he patted Allison's belly. “We could use a doctor.”

  Rosa felt the sting of tears. How many times had these people saved her life?

  “Have you got a name?” she asked.

  Bud smiled. “How about 'Rosa', if it's a girl?”

  Another sting. “And if it's a boy?”

  This time it was Allison who answered, and as she spoke, her hard face became something almost gentle.

  “If it's a boy,” she said, “I'm going to call him 'Lucas'.”

  And with that, Rosa had given up the battle with her tears.

  She cried for quite a long time. Bud and Allison had quietly stepped aside until she was done.

  Now she sat alone on the beach looking out at the setting sun.

  She knew the process well – she had seen it a hundred, a thousand times – and so, formally, professionally, she allowed herself to grieve.

  Tomorrow, they would leave it all behind in search of a new life.

  But she would allow herself tonight.

  Chapter 50

  It took the better part of two days for Jonah and Naomi to dig their way out.

  The drainage pipe had been completely buried early on. Trapped there in the dark, it seemed like the violent upheaval would never end. The air was almost too clouded to breathe, and they had no recourse but to simply cover their faces, shut their eyes and wait.

  Jonah had no idea how long it was before the tremors finally ended. It was even longer before they dared to even move.

  The pipe had held, but now they were trapped in pure pitch dark, with the entrance buried underneath tons of rubble. That left no other option than to follow the pipe to its other end – which had once been the cliff-side above. Jonah wasn't sure – he hadn't exactly picked his landing strip – but he believed the road above was Highway 101.

  It was actually the size of the boulders that made the difference – it had been the bedrock of the cliff itself that had collapsed and huge chunks of rock were braced against each other – it had, in point of fact, broken the pipe in half, as the cliff and the road above had fallen away. But larger chunks had also prevented the cracks from being filled in with smaller debris.

  Jonah had a box of matches – habitually kept in a plastic bag in his jacket pocket – and with these alone, they had rationed enough light to dig steadily for two days, working their way up until they finally found daylight.

  Neither of them had spoken – neither of them had tried to sleep. Jonah had resigned to dig until he dropped – it seemed ridiculous to die now – he was determined to at least make it to the surface.

  He was beginning to think they wouldn't, when he felt the first gust of air breezing in.

  It had still taken two more hours to see daylight.

  But in the end, the two little mice finally crawled out from between the broken rocks.

  Jonah felt the first hint of coastal mist as he pushed his way to the surface. After a moment, he pulled Naomi up beside him.

  Where the highway had once been, there was now broken rubble.

  Below, however, the tide was filling in the cracks with a brand-new beach – a brand-new coastline.

  Bloodied, caked in dirt and granite, dehydrated and spent, they made their way down the shattered cliff to the sand.

  Naomi walked to where the surf broke and sat down on a piece of driftwood.

  Jonah sat down next to her, and for several minutes they simply sat there looking out at the Pacific Ocean as it crashed and bashed like it always had – utterly uncaring.

  The sun had reached late afternoon and was beginning to set.

  They looked up and down the coast and there was destruction as far as they could see.

  For a long time, the only sound was the crash of the surf, and the squawk of seagulls.

  It was finally Naomi who broke the silence.

  “You know,” she said, “you were safe in your cabin. If you'd just stayed where you were, you could have avoided ALL this.”

  Jonah sighed. “Well,” he agreed, “I never have been very smart.”

  Naomi didn't smile. She glanced up at him briefly, uncharacteristically furtive, not quite willing to meet his eyes.

  All of her tears had been cried out. But her pain was still quite fresh.

  “You know why I couldn't stay, right?” she said. “Why I had to come?”

  “Yes.”

  Now she turned and looked at him steadily.

  “Why did you?”

  Jonah honestly considered.

  “I guess,” he said finally, “because I was supposed to.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. She even smiled a little.

  “So,” she said, “what now?”

  And with that, Jonah stood.

  “Well,” he said, “Now, it's about two-hundred miles northeast back to my cabin.”

  He made as if to check his watch. “Think we can make it?”

  She looked up at him quizzically.

  “We?” she said.

  Jonah sighed.

  Never giving an inch, he thought. He tried to imagine what it must be like to play in her league. It took a higher-grade model.

  “Well,” he said, “I'm going home.”

  Jonah turned, as if ready to start walking up the beach that very moment, pausing only to look back over his shoulder.

  “You are under no obligation to follow,” he said.

  He started to walk, turning his back, leaving her still sitting there on her log.

  He wondered what he would do if she didn't follow.

  But he knew well enough. He stopped and waited.

  And then she was standing beside him.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let's go.”

  Jonah found himself smiling – and it must have been a bit too smug, because she reached out and slugged him in the arm – right in that spot where the shoulder meets the bone.

  Naomi tilted her head.

&nb
sp; “That didn't hurt, did it?”

  Jonah tossed a tear off his cheek. “Nah.”

  And now she smiled back.

  The tide was coming in and the beach up ahead was growing narrow. Jonah wondered how far before they could find a path up into the hills – and then he wondered what the terrain might look like on the far side.

  Two-hundred miles – and that was assuming his cabin was still there. No telling how far the seismic upheaval had traveled – or for that matter, if it was even all done.

  Only one way to find out, he decided.

  Naomi fell into step beside him.

  Ahead of them, a new world waited. Jonah didn't know if that world had a place for them in it.

  Time would tell.

  Chapter 51

  The rex lay where it had fallen.

  After the blast, much of the surrounding forest had burned, spreading the damage far beyond the ten-mile blast-radius.

  It had actually been the quake that had gone a long way towards smothering that fire – burying it. The air had gone black with smoke and floating bits of ash, from both volcanic and nuclear eruption.

  But now the dust settled. The body of the rex was covered as if with a light layer of snow.

  And finally, after three days, the first of the scavengers appeared at the edges.

  Otto hopped out of the surrounding brush.

  There were several of them, in fact. They scampered to the edge of the stream, chirping excitedly at the body of the fallen tyrant.

  Things had gone badly in this region. The majority of their war-beasts had been taken out in the blast – and Otto himself – themselves – had been nearly wiped-out.

  Not that it mattered, in the larger picture – there wasn't really ONE of them, anymore – they had been cloned so many times that none of them would have known the difference anyway.

  Otto had been one of the first products of the 'Monster Island' project – judged an amusing failure, he/it/they had been around for a long time.

  And they had been all over. They had been a mascot, after all.

  And wherever a rat could be, so could Otto.

  The military word for it was 'infiltration'.

  And whatever communal, hive-mind that the little lizards shared, their organic memory banks had absorbed every command, every clearance code, mimicked every voice – as well as a working knowledge of every base, communication tower – every missile silo – as well as access to almost all the world's munitions.