Kingdom of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  Megalodons, the formerly-extinct giant Great White, were just like modern sharks, targeting surface prey. A typical Meg could reach sixty-feet or more, and could already take out all but the largest watercraft. An infected giant could bite an aircraft-carrier in half like a surfboard.

  There were also a host of other nasty denizens that had invaded the seas.

  Competing with the Megs for the honor of top ocean-predator were pliosaurs – short-necked plesiosaurs. At a similar-size, a big pliosaur could give a Megalodon a nasty fight. Megs probably scored higher on the biggest single strike, mimicking those Polaris-style attacks of modern white sharks, but a pliosaur was like an agile seal, given the jaws of a crocodile.

  According to Captain Mason, the Anchorage had survived by hovering near the bottom, running on silent, and never surfacing off-shore.

  Currently, their most viable nuclear-option was seven F-16 fighters in Oregon, with a total of two working missiles. The rest of the roughly ten thousand nukes nationwide, were currently inoperable. For better or worse.

  The Puget Sound depot was utterly destroyed, along with sites in California and Nevada. Their best intelligence suggested that European, Chinese, and Russian assets had likewise already been destroyed or detonated.

  The Maelstrom facility in Montana had physically survived, and was currently the most promising of the land-based silos to potentially be brought on-line.

  But for the time being, it was a couple of planes and a sub – assets they would have to use sparingly.

  Hopefully, they would be looking at more buds than blooms.

  Unfortunately, Hicks' last report suggested a potential outbreak, uncomfortably close to the Mount.

  They were still a ways out. The general search area probably spanned fifty-miles. But a big bloom could engulf that quite quickly.

  The passengers on that crashed transport must be VIP indeed.

  There was a ding from the elevator as the sheer-drop descent began to slow, and Sally felt her weight settle back into her feet. Rhodes tapped the intercom as they settled to a stop.

  “Doc. It's Rhodes.”

  There were a few more R2-D2-beeps and the elevator opened.

  The mad lab.

  Blinking blue-light from computer screens reflected off bubbling glass vials, lined-up in rows, in multi-colored solutions. Simulations ran on every screen – seemingly a dozen experiments all conducted simultaneously.

  In the middle of it, huddled over a microscope, was Dr. Shriver.

  Sally could picture him wringing his hands over some chained lovely in a dungeon, with a Frankenstein monster strapped to a cot in the background.

  Sitting beside him on the table was a small cage. Inside was a two-legged lizard, about two-feet tall.

  Sally had seen a lot of these little vermin in the aftermath – it was one of the little reptilian ghouls you always found scavenging human corpses.

  Immediately behind the cage, sealed in a transparent vault – some alloy no-doubt much stronger than steel – was a cabinet filled with vials of glowing liquid.

  Glowing green.

  Every survivor alive in the modern world knew that green glow.

  Repopulation strategies and nukes aside, Sally knew this was Shrinker's real value.

  There weren't many survivors available who could refit a warhead, but it was conventional knowledge, with text that could theoretically be learned.

  Such was not the case with the Food of the Gods. Nor the work of Professor Nolan Hinkle.

  Sally had never before even heard of Professor Hinkle, and only passing reference to Monster Island, which she had tossed-off in similar categories as Big Foot and Area 51.

  Area 51, however, was where Dr. Shriver came from.

  Shriver, according to Rhodes, was one of two people alive with any practical knowledge of Hinkle's research.

  “Unfortunately,” Rhodes had confided to Sally, “he's our second-best. And I think the homework has left him a little damaged.”

  Sally could see evidence of that in Shriver's eyes. It was in the hunch of his back as he crouched over his microscope, the impression of desperation, becoming frustration – perhaps only enough comprehension to make him a little crazy.

  Looking too deeply into the workings of creation might be a bit like staring into the eye of God – or even Lovecraftian Elder Gods – enough to drive a man insane at a glance, and turn his hair white.

  His hair white, his eyes slightly askew, Shriver sat up, turning to acknowledge his visitors.

  “General,” he said, “I'm glad you could make it.”

  “We've just got reports of a potential bud,” Rhodes said. “We're seeing outbreaks again. We had a chopper go down, and we think the pterosaur that hit it was infected.”

  Shrinker was nodding before Rhodes even finished.

  “Too many of these blooms can't be explained simply by chance,” he said. “We're seeing infection in herbivores. The chemical does not transmit as readily through foraging. It can be absorbed, but tends to kill the local plant life. It would require genetically-engineered foliage. Then there's the speed of the effect. With ingestion, it can take a period of weeks to attain full growth. With direct injection on the other hand, depending on the dosage, it can be much faster. With a sufficient dose by weight, it can be as little as a few hours.”

  Shriver tipped his hand – therefore.

  “Madness maximized,” he said. “Worldwide rampage.”

  He turned to indicate the sealed vault behind him, and its rows of glowing green vials.

  “And as far as subverting any of that?” Shriver shook his head. “I can't do it alone.”

  He nodded to Rhodes meaningfully.

  “I need her to go forward.”

  Rhodes sighed. “Well, Doc, we're doing our best. But it just so happens a pack of flying monsters took out our transport chopper. Right now, we're hoping someone's alive to be rescued. And we aren't even sure where they are yet.”

  He returned Shriver's meaningful eye.

  “You may have to go forward on your own. Like it or not.”

  “Unfortunately,” Shriver replied, “the blooms themselves are only the symptom, not the problem.”

  “A weapon,” he said, “be it chemical or explosive, is just the tool, not the enemy.”

  Now he turned to the small cage sitting on his desk.

  “Which brings us to this,” he said.

  The little lizard inside perked at the sudden attention.

  “This is our problem,” Shriver said. “Meet Otto.”

  Sally eyed the little creature uncomfortably. Besides their ghoulish taste for human carrion, they were known for their myna-birdlike imitations – often human voices, sometimes even screams.

  “Why do you call it Otto?” Sally asked.

  “It's what he calls himself.” Shriver tapped on the cage. Inside, the little lizard perked to attention.

  Then in a clear, human voice said, “My name is Otto.”

  “Whose voice is that?” Rhodes asked.

  “I believe,” Shriver said, “that is the voice of Professor Nolan Hinkle.”

  “And they all do this? In the same voice?”

  Shriver nodded.

  “This creature is not like the other beasts out there,” he said. “In more ways than are readily apparent. First and foremost, they are non-viable. This animal here is a clone. Created right here in this lab. And they're all clones. Duplicates of the same parent.

  “More significantly,” Shriver added, “they are not an extinct species. They were genetically designed.”

  “For what?” Rhodes asked.

  “For intelligence. Modifications have been made, expanding areas of the brain nature had not yet evolved. The experiment was actually deemed more or less a failure. One problem was how neighboring areas of the brain responded to modification. Who knew what perceptions might be expanded, absent a mammalian-style cerebellum? All translated through the simple alligator instinct of the medulla obl
ongata? It was rather like trying to program modern coding into an eighties-era program. The basic unit was simply not equipped to process the data.”

  Rhodes leaned in, studying the little creature, which blinked back, absorbing what it saw, without apparent inflection.

  “So how smart are they?” Rhodes asked. “It just sits there, like a lizard or a bird.”

  “Individually,” Shriver said, “I don't think they're much more than that.”

  Now Shriver frowned, uncomfortable speaking outside the area of numbers into realm of speculation.

  “You see, I don't believe they're actually smart. They're more like a blank memory chip. And the more of them there are, the larger the memory bank. And when a lot of them get together...” Shriver shrugged. “Who knows?

  “One thing we do know,” he said, “what one imitates, they all do.”

  Rhodes frowned. The implications were not encouraging.

  “Think about it for a moment,” Shriver said. “What if you could infiltrate your enemy like a rat in the walls? How many mice are in this compound right now? What if every one of them was a bug, recording voices, phrases, codes? What could you even do about it?”

  “I've been receiving direct briefings from Area 51 for years,” Rhodes said. “Why was this Otto never mentioned?”

  “For the same reason we never consulted you about changing a beaker. They were an early experiment. In the Monster Island project, these were like hamsters – even kept as mascots. And once KT-day hit, there was no reason to focus on this one little lizard when two-thousand-foot sauropods were tearing down skyscrapers.

  “That is,” he said, “until you looked at the flocks of them riding the giants' backs. Just like birds on the backs of elephants on the Savannah.”

  The little lizard cocked its head, blinking back at them over the seemingly empty mirrors of its eyes.

  Sally was beginning to get the creeps.

  She jumped as a loud beep sounded – more droid-language from the security-box, and then there was a voice over the speakers, young and female.

  “Doctor? I have your lunch.”

  Shriver tapped the intercom. “Thank you, Lily.”

  The security door slid open. Lily stood there with her food-cart and attached janitorial supplies. At her shoulder was an armed escort, a young soldier, whose badge identified as Corporal Stevens.

  Lily's eyes widened as she saw Sally and the General in the lab.

  “I'm sorry,” she said doubtfully. “Should I come back?”

  “It's fine,” Shriver said. “Just leave the trays. No clean-up today.”

  In the cage, Otto perked up at Lily's presence. Its mouth opened, speaking in a clear imitation of Lily's voice.

  “Aren't you a cutie?”

  And then a moment later.

  “Polly want a cracker?”

  Setting out her trays, Lily blushed furiously.

  The girl seemed nervous. Her eyes were oddly shy as they flitted sideways in Sally's direction – even as they batted, just perfectly over her shoulder at Corporal Stevens, who was obviously smitten.

  “I'm sorry, Doctor,” Lily said. “It was just a couple of soda crackers.”

  “It's alright, Lily,” Shriver said, nodding to Rhodes. “But I think that illustrates my point.”

  Dishes rattled as Lily pushed her cart to the door and Shriver buzzed her out.

  Otto, denied his cracker, hissed in his cage, watching her go.

  Chapter 10

  As the elevator shut behind them, locking them in the compressed space together, Lily glanced over her shoulder, with just the right touch of shyness, at young Corporal Stevens. As a girl who had been going on forty since she was fourteen, she knew how to smile at men. Stevens smiled right back.

  In a way, it was too easy – the Coven wielded many forms of witchery.

  The last group of menfolk they'd run with had learned that hard lesson. This one would too.

  Still, Lily was nervous. She had not expected to see Rhodes in Shrinker's lab – or Sally. Lily wondered if she should tell Ginger.

  She was reluctant. She desperately did not want there to be any problems. Her big sister/mother-figures would frown darkly upon her if anything should go wrong this time.

  As much as anything, she coveted their approval – belief in their teachings was almost presumption.

  Lily sometimes didn't quite remember who she had been before the world ended.

  She had been seventeen on KT-day – already rebellious enough to have been kicked out of her mother and step-father's house, and had been looking forward to being old enough not to need the fake ID at Susie's Bar, where she danced five nights a week.

  Lily still didn't know where her mother had been on KT-day, or what happened to her – they hadn't spoken in months. Lily had just been showing up for work.

  Where were you when the world ended? Swinging her legs around a pole.

  It was also, doubtless, what saved her life, because her friends were there. Susie's Bar was a place where Lily found more visible concern and guidance than she ever had at home.

  And she had been an eager enough ear that she hadn't overly questioned the motives of this sage council.

  On the other hand, she really didn't have to. There were witches and then there were DARK witches – those that made no bones about embracing the wild power of destruction.

  It was actually an easy sell to the young and angry. It wasn't hard to convince a kicked-around LA-kid the world was a bad place. And if the world was bad, it would only stand to reason any move against it would be a virtue. It was practically built-in scripture, justifying almost any anti-social acting-out you cared to imagine.

  The perspective was really quite freeing – throw in a little yin-yang, moral-relativity rationalizing, among a willful community-base, with a few issues of their own – and presto – you had yourself a completely self-enabling ideology.

  Lily had never really thought of herself as a 'bad girl' – but it was funny how you got drawn in. One day, you were just in it.

  And she had indeed been in it.

  She couldn't say she hadn't done things before the end of the world that weren't... questionable.

  But she'd never done human sacrifice before.

  Although, she was pretty sure the Coven had.

  Again, surprisingly not as hard a sell as one might think – they-had-it-coming was usually enough. Gang initiations were often worse – and ALL the girls at Susie's Bar belonged. Most were not much more than Lily's age.

  Ginger and Luna, however, were older – they were the generals.

  And when necessary, Michelle and Christine were muscle.

  Michelle was a leggy dancer who could sail her seven-inch clear-heels a quarter inch over a customer's drink, and could just as easily sail that heel into your knee, or your gut, or your face.

  Of all of them, Michelle seemed to thrive on the apocalypse. She had been their warrior, cutting quite a vision, with her hair tied back, carrying a spear. And lots of knives.

  Christine was more practical. She packed a gun.

  As elders, however, Luna and Ginger called the shots. And Lily knew she had fallen out of their favor.

  Mark, the young man in the woods, the one chased by the dragon – he was to have been her first.

  Lily had liked Mark. But she'd led him to the slaughter anyway.

  One thing had nothing to do with the other. No different than a female spider – something else the girls at Susie's Bar had taught her.

  Both Ginger and Luna had greatly approved of her selection. Mark was perfect – young and strapping, and already targeted by a rex.

  But in the end, he had brought them to this debasement at the Mount – the Arc Project – breeding stock.

  Granted, it wasn't because of anything Lily had done, but in matters of witchcraft, the actions of the fates were incriminating.

  But now the fates had delivered something else entirely.

  Shrinker called it 'Otto'
.

  Lily had been entranced right away by the little lizard in the cage – perhaps as the chipmunk is charmed by the snake. She had taken to feeding him crackers and was delighted the first time it spoke back her name – in her own voice! – only to be quickly scolded by Shrinker.

  It wasn't until later she began to perceive what this little creature really was.

  Before they had been taken into the Mount, Lily had adopted a wounded rex hatchling, who she named Junior – and Otto in his cage reminded her of how helpless the little rex had looked, his cracked shin splinted with a makeshift cast.

  Never mind that Ginger had been the one who broke the leg, getting him to scream for his five-ton mother to come eat the live sacrifice they'd laid out for her.

  Details.

  Lilly still felt bad about the leg.

  Otto, she assumed, was some sort of test animal, like a hamster – probably eventually to be euthanized – certainly experimented on.

  One night when she was cleaning up, Lily had let the latch loose on the little lizard's cage, just to give the little guy a fighting chance.

  Then the next day, when she found Otto still in his cage with the door once again latched, she had taken a bolder step.

  Shrinker often kept the cage covered – apparently, to keep it from constantly mimicking every sound – and Lily had opened the cage and slipped the little lizard into her cleaning bag.

  Once back on the maintenance floor, she had pushed a ventilation grating open in the wall and let him loose.

  The next day, however, Otto was in his cage, as usual.

  Shrinker had noted her thunderstruck face.

  “Something wrong, Lily?”

  On the desk, Otto had repeated, “Something wrong, Lily?”

  Lily had shaken her head, numbly, quickly gathering up her trays, and following her armed escort to the elevator.

  The next day, she had tried again.

  And again, the next morning the little lizard was back in his cage.

  When she had returned to the maintenance level that day, she had pulled the ventilation screen open and held out a box of crackers.

  “Polly want a cracker?” she called softly into the echoing corridors.

  She was rewarded by the sound of skittering feet.