Kingdom of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  “Easy, girl,” Shanna whispered.

  Trix stepped away from Caesar, who rolled back warily. The other pussycats murmured.

  “Oookay,” Mark whistled through his teeth.

  And at the edge of the trees, not five yards from his feet, the bushes suddenly burst like a flushed pheasant.

  Mark caught the flash of miniature tyrannosaur teeth as Junior darted right past his leg over to Shanna's side, hopping up and down like an excited puppy.

  Shanna reached to touch his snout and the little rex preened.

  Mark glanced back at the bushes behind him. The little sonofabitch had been five feet from his ass this time – he'd never seen a rex turn away from a target before.

  Eyeing the gathered rex pack warily, Mark edged away, only to be met with a growl from Caesar, who stared down at him threateningly.

  Mark jumped back, looking at Shanna.

  “What's his problem?”

  Caesar signed briefly, and then held up two fingers.

  “He says, 'the little bastard shot me',” Shanna interpreted. “'Twice'.”

  There was a crack of thunder, breaking the brief interlude.

  Down in the canyon, the rogue rumbled a brief response.

  As if sparked by the crack of lightning, Garner's radio suddenly barked static.

  “... this is Captain Johnson. Come in. If anyone can read me, come in.”

  “Oh hell yeah,” Garner said, grabbing up his radio. He clicked transmit. “Johnson,” he said, “boy am I glad to hear from you.”

  “Garner! Hang tight. We're coming to get you.”

  But now Shanna turned to the canyons, as if listening.

  The pause in the storm ended with a renewed blast of staccato lightning and thunder.

  This time it was answered from beyond the canyon.

  Brutus and the rogue turned their green glowing eyes to the surrounding mountains, where echoing bellows now sounded over the thunder.

  “What,” Rosa whispered, “is that?”

  Shanna shut her eyes.

  “Escalation,” she said. “Exponential escalation.”

  The earth beneath their feet trembled.

  Over the peaks, the first of the titans appeared.

  Sauropods – infected giants – some of them carrying their heads over a thousand feet high. Armored and horned ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, dreadnoughts designed to fight tyrannosaurs. And flesh-eaters – carnosaurs, megalosaurs, giant carcharodonts.

  The first of them were still indistinct, misted by the billowing clouds.

  But their glowing green eyes shined through.

  Up on the edge of the cliff, Junior suddenly hissed, turning to the forest, back arched like a dog pointing out a hidden bird.

  As they all turned, the trees at the edge of the clearing were suddenly filled with sickle-claws.

  And skittering among their feet, warbling like loons, was a troop of Ottos.

  In a squawking mob, the sickle-claws attacked.

  Chapter 51

  “What's happening out there, Hicks? Where are you?”

  Rhodes was standing, facing east, honing in on the battle like a divining rod.

  Hicks' voice scratched back over speakers.

  “We're about fifty-miles out of Maelstrom, sir. We've picked up a survivor. We're bringing her in with us.”

  “Bring in whoever you want, Lieutenant,” Rhodes responded. “But all other considerations are secondary to recovering our asset. Understood?”

  “Johnson's already in the area, sir.”

  “Time counts, Lieutenant. You've got incoming, both on the ground and in the air, both enemy and friendly fire. You've got the biggest bloom ever recorded. Best-case scenario, the whole area is a nuclear dust-cloud in thirty-minutes or less. You've got until yesterday to get in and out, with less margin for error than that. Understood?”

  “Understood, sir,” Hicks responded.

  Sally took quiet note of that word asset again.

  “Who's Shanna?” she asked.

  Rhodes turned to her slowly.

  “How do you know that name?” he asked.

  Sally blinked.

  “I don't know.”

  Rhodes glanced to Shriver.

  “Shanna Hinkle,” Shriver said, “is perhaps our single most important asset, and our biggest hope for the future lies within her mind.

  “And,” Shriver added, “perhaps within her DNA, as well.”

  Shriver's brows furrowed as he spoke, like a far-sighted man trying to spot something on a detailed chart.

  Perhaps with a touch of obsession.

  “The human race,” Shriver said, “is now an endangered species. Within her lies the potential to eliminate genetic defects. She would be an invaluable asset to the Arc Project.”

  “At the moment,” Rhodes interjected, “that is still secondary to eliminating the threat that damn near wiped us out in the first place.” He eyed Shriver seriously. “And if we get her here, you're working for her. That clearly understood?'

  Shriver nodded. “Absolutely, sir.”

  Rhodes turned to Sally.

  “What's the word on our jet-pilot?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Rhodes shut his eyes.

  Major Tom's follow-up estimate was also not encouraging.

  “I've got a convergence, sir,” Tom radioed in. “I've got satellite-imagery onsite. It's... it's an army, sir. Biggest I've ever seen.”

  “Where did they all come from?” Sally asked.

  “From everywhere,” Tom replied. “At a steady walking pace an infected giant can cross most states in less than a day.”

  “The rate of infection,” Shriver said, “indicates direct injection.” He shook his head. “The missing pneumatic needles.”

  “That jibes with data, sir,” Major Tom confirmed. “I've got no normals visible at all.”

  “How soon before they overtake our rescue site?” Rhodes asked.

  “They're already there, sir,” Tom replied.

  Chapter 52

  Mega-beasts – that's what the press called them in the first days after KT-day.

  Of course, the first few days were all the press had, so the phrase never really went viral.

  But Rosa was reminded of it now, as monolithic monsters seemed to materialize out of the storm, like Lovecraftian Elder Gods manifesting across some dimensional plane, marching to an entourage of lightning and an accompaniment of thunder.

  There was no way to guess their numbers, but they were legion.

  The already-unstable earth rumbled as the first of them hit the valley floor.

  Titanosaurs – largest of sauropods – infected beast-gods.

  At their heels, were the shields and horns of ceratopsians.

  It certainly looked like coordinated behavior.

  Otto's beasts had the madness, but they didn't attack each other.

  The united front of apes and T. rex, however, proved a tougher nut to crack than the sheer overwhelming numbers and pure physical mass might have indicated.

  Ceratopsians were designed to kill T. rex, but they had no particular adaption to the giant apes who ran among them, grabbing their horns like over-muscled cowboys wrestling steers, twisting their necks until they cracked.

  And sauropods, while indomitably powerful, had receded from the fossil record as tyrannosaurs came on the scene – big meant slow, and an easier target for those jaws. The rogue and his pussycat entourage savaged their giant legs and calves like wolverines hamstringing elk.

  Most importantly, the canyon was narrow.

  There were only so-many thousand-foot sauropods that could shoulder through at a time, and once the first of them went down, they started tripping over each other.

  Brutus and the apes twisted the heads off the fallen ceratopsians, creating impromptu spiked shields.

  The rogue and the pussycats simply bit anything that moved.

  It was on the cliff above, however, where the more crucial battle was fought
.

  Otto had clearly learned not to send carnosaurs on commando missions. Besides being a good degree or two dumber, even the big carcharodonts simply couldn't match a tyrannosaur tooth-to-claw.

  Sickle-claws, on the other hand, operated like a band of ninjas – especially effective if your target was just past a rex' giant ankles.

  This was where the human contingent finally earned its keep, as Garner and Wilkes picked them off like shooting ducks.

  Allison also acquitted herself quite well, handing Lucas off to Bud as she dropped one attacking dromaeosaur after another in single shots.

  Cameron and Maverick contributed a lot of fired bullets – some of which probably landed.

  Maverick paused to reload, for a moment inattentive. When he turned, he found a sickle-claw already in mid-leap.

  Huddling just behind him, hovering over Shanna, Rosa abruptly bolted forward in a running shoulder-charge and physically knocked the beast off its pins.

  The sickle-claw righted itself quickly, only to be blown permanently off its feet by Maverick, in three successive shots.

  Maverick cast Rosa an approving eye.

  “Owe ya dinner for that one, honey.”

  In the midst of it all, he actually had the sheer gall to wink. Rosa took her own moment to shudder.

  Caesar had purloined the trunk of a large tree, and was swatting the mobbing dromaeosaurs aside in wide, sweeping back-and-forth strikes.

  From the T. rex, it was actually Junior who did the most significant damage.

  In true rex-fashion, he darted past the sickle-claws, going unerringly for the Ottos scurrying among them.

  That in itself served to break the ranks of the dromaeosaurs.

  Rosa had seen it before. She was not sure if it was precisely mind-control, but you put a couple of them on a big carnosaur's back, it went the way they wanted. There were always gaggles of the little lizards scattered across the backs of infected giants, scurrying like lice.

  And normal sickle-claws just seemed to become like trained attack dogs.

  Rosa had noticed a spike in her sinuses whenever the scaly little rats were about, like a mote of virulent pollen, sometimes even painful, watering her eyes. Allison had remarked the same thing. Bud had shrugged, oblivious.

  Every indication was that the rex felt it too – except it just made them mad.

  Junior had taken out two of the little bastards before being chased aside by the larger dromaeosaurs, who sent the little rex tumbling.

  The sickle-claws' target, however, clearly was Shanna.

  In utter careless disregard, they braved the stamping feet and jaws of the rex pack, as they tried to slip even one of them past.

  Bullets were no deterrent, nor were the kicking corpses of their fellows – Mr. Wilson clobbered one skulking individual with a stick – but the clawed-devils had arrived in numbers, and they just kept coming.

  Over the din of gunshots, warbling shrieks and reverberating bellows, Rosa almost didn't notice the additional blast of wind from overhead.

  Even the roar of the rotors was almost muted by the crash of battle and the rumble of the storm, as the military chopper suddenly appeared, circling above.

  Chapter 53

  The temperature in the ISS was dropping.

  Tom knew he had to abandon ship – he just had to make sure the ship went down.

  Load the neighboring compartments with hydrogen gas, set a fire. That ought to do it.

  There were two lifeboats set to a default re-entry trajectory. All he had to do was push a button.

  If he could make it to one of the boats alive.

  Otto had gotten into the life-support – or at least one of them had – he still didn't know how many there were.

  It was getting cold. He didn't have much time.

  Rhodes had asked him to hold out as long as he could, but he was about there. Bottom line, he had to be alive enough to destroy the station.

  He took one last look at his screens. There was nothing more he could do. The silos had been shut down. The sub-launch had been put on hold.

  Tom glanced at the sub-screen again – the one piece of equipment in the modern US navy arsenal that could interact with the ISS on its own tech-level – while Tom talked to a General on radio, he had a video screen for Captain Mason.

  The sub's launch was active and appeared to be counting down.

  Rhodes likely had no way of knowing.

  Tom punched up Mason's line.

  “Captain? Why are you counting down? You were confirmed on stand-down.”

  The image of Mason blurred.

  When the screen returned, it was still an image of Captain Mason – except now he was a half-eaten corpse lying across his desk, probably weeks old.

  Gibbering and dancing onscreen beside him was Otto.

  Tom took a slow breath of cold air.

  Nuclear sub-launches were actually both harder and easier than people thought.

  The codes both for firing and targeting were already on-board – you just had to get into the safe.

  It also required the participation of almost every member of the crew to achieve launch depth, activate all the appropriate keys – and any change in targeting would require PhD-level understanding.

  Check on all counts.

  Otto had just become a nuclear power.

  And one about to announce its presence with authority.

  Otto left the feed open as he counted down.

  Lack of concern? Or perhaps perverse sadism – wanting him to see?

  Tom looked at the screens – all the highlighted targets.

  Remaining human enclaves. Rex populations, in particular.

  What would be the first target?

  Or would they just fire all of them, hail-Mary, all at once?

  And why the hell not? This was pure nihilism.

  Tom punched up Rhodes' line, even though he knew it was already too late.

  Chapter 54

  It turned out there was a reason the USS Anchorage survived the Megalodons. And it wasn't by hovering at the bottom.

  Sharks are extremely primitive animals with no trainable behavior to speak of, but they could be counted on to respond reliably to certain basic stimulus.

  Megs, like pretty much any fish, would hit anything they perceived as prey, and ignore anything that wasn't and didn't pose a threat.

  Neither of those were particularly difficult buttons to push.

  Otherwise, a submarine simply assuming launch depth would practically be waving a red flag.

  Within the sub itself, the little lizards skittered about, flitting like birds from perch to perch, station to station, as the Anchorage counted down its launch.

  There were a dozen warheads aboard, and every one of them was ticking down.

  Clawed hands began to turn the launch keys.

  Large shapes circled the sub as it approached the surface, but the Anchorage moved with impunity.

  Blooms sprouted underwater as well as on land, and once the Megalodons were infected, they effectively became an impenetrable barrier – there were extremely few other sea-monsters that would brave Meg territory. One of the largest shapes turned in the direction of the Anchorage.

  A normal Meg could reach seventy-feet – the Food of the Gods magnified that tenfold.

  This creature, however, was no Meg.

  It was, in fact, perhaps the one sea-beast that could swim among them unconcerned.

  Pliosaurs were technically short-necked plesiosaurs. In practical fact, they were like seals with the jaws of a crocodile.

  And for whatever reason, they shared with tyrannosaurs a particular resistance to dominance – a resentment – and they did not at ALL like that psychic stench on the brain.

  Jaws bigger than the Anchorage itself split, as the pliosaur bore down, clamping onto the sub like a gator snapping up a trout.

  The sub exploded in the pliosaur's jaws, seconds from the first launch.

  Two-hundred and twenty miles ab
ove, Major Tom, who had just raised General Rhodes, shrugged.

  “Well,” he said. “Never mind. I guess we don't have to worry about that one.”

  Chapter 55

  The canyon was bloody slaughter – rabid titans killing each other.

  In the narrow valley, giant corpses piled between the cliff walls like a dead-fall, damming the flow of the invading army.

  Brutus and the rogue stood atop the mountain of carrion, facing off the relentless march of beasts.

  The storm yet masked their numbers beyond the canyon, but they went on for miles.

  Brutus and the rogue were the last of the defenders.

  Big Joe had gotten between two carnosaurs and a bull Triceratops. He managed to break one of the big meateater's necks – a large Allosaurus – before the trike gored him. He might even still have gotten away except for the second carnosaur, this one a much larger carcharodont, got a free strike with its saw-blade jaws from the back.

  The teeth cut deep across his shoulder into Big Joe's neck, and might have caught his jugular, but it quickly became irrelevant as the trike bored in again, spearing the big ape deep in the chest, and finally bearing him to the ground.

  Konga had tried to trip up a titanosaur with his horned-ceratopsian shield and gotten himself trampled.

  Josie and the pussycats had the most difficulty with the trikes – T. rex simply hadn't evolved to fight a ceratopsian face-to-face – it would have been stupid. A hunting tyrannosaur bit Triceratops from behind.

  Circumstances, however, put them nose-to-nose. Worse, there was the sheer fact of numbers.

  To their credit, the pussycats got their bites in.

  Josie accounted for two-dead trikes, with the horns and shield bitten away from two others, before they surrounded her, gouging her legs in the manner of modern boars, before taking her down.

  Not one of the pussycats fell without at least a piece of someone's ass in their teeth.

  But now it was almost over.

  Having gained the high-ground, through the sheer accumulation of piled corpses, Brutus and the rouge had so far held off the horde. But the relentless march hadn't slowed, and the invading beasts continued to funnel into the valley.