The two of them exchanged a wide-eyed glance.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asked.
Naomi nodded, holding up her still-smoking pistol.
There were more of the things on the street now – attracted by the sound of their engine, they came bounding in from between the burning buildings.
“Jesus, that's the Sheriff's office,” Naomi realized. “It's trashed – it's gone.”
The import struck them together. There was no help to be found here – they were on their own.
They had to run.
“Get us out of here,” Naomi said.
The problem now, however, was that they were trapped.
As they reached the end of Main Street, Jonah skidded to a stop.
The sickle-claws were blocking the road.
A lot of them.
Jonah nodded at the pistol in Naomi's lap.
“How many bullets have you got left?”
She frowned. “This is my last clip,” she said.
And with that, she leaned out the window and began firing away.
Once again, her aim was remarkable – she dropped two of them in quick succession, causing the others to scatter.
Naomi pulled back into the cab, cranking up her window.
“Go!” she said.
Jonah hit the gas, lurching through the intersection.
The reprieve, however, was too short. Within seconds, the sickle-claws were back upon them.
As a kid, Jonah's parents had taken him upstate to the drive-thru 'Wild Life Safari' – they had stopped on the tour, and a lion had briefly climbed up on the hood of their family Sedan, hopping over the roof in two quick bounds – Jonah remembered the animal's thudding weight as it padded above their heads. He remembered thinking how easily it could get in if it really wanted to.
There was a heavy blow as one of the foot-claws struck the Bronco's windshield, starting a long spidery crack.
A second set of claws hit the passenger window. Naomi simply shot through it, even as a third creature joined the first on the hood, banging away at the windshield.
Another couple of blows and the protective glass would cave in.
Jonah hit the brakes, sending both creatures tumbling out into the road.
Revving the engine, he leaped the Bronco forward, over the top of the both of them – two speed bumps this time.
The rest of the pack, however, had regrouped and surrounded them.
There was a momentary pause as both sides waited on the other.
And then, apparently satisfied with their advantage, the sickle-claws began to advance.
Jonah had heard they were supposed to be smart – and it did seem they actually savored the moment – as a group, they seemed to pause, spreading their claws, hanging on the instant before the strike.
But the strike never came.
Abruptly, the sickle-claws simply vanished.
In a heartbeat, they disappeared into the surrounding dark like a school of fish.
Jonah struggled to see – the flame played tricks with the shadows.
The things had scattered – sort of like how small predators will abandon a kill when something larger came along.
From around the burning buildings, came something larger.
A LOT larger – even bigger than the T. rex.
Another sickle-claw – only this one was pushing thirty-feet tall.
And where the eyes of the others reflected back the yellow firelight like a pack of wolves, this creature's irises glowed emerald green.
Jonah glanced at Naomi, who looked glumly down at her diminutive pistol with its few remaining shots.
Not to be outdone, the T. rex chose that moment to finally appear behind them on the main road.
The big rex had settled into a walk, but now that it saw them, it stepped back up into a charge.
Instantly territorial, the giant sickle-claw snarled, letting out a hooting bellow – a base rendition of the birdlike screech – stamping its feet and brandishing four-foot claws.
The rex never slowed.
Shifting targets, it charged teeth-first into its challenger.
The sickle-claw leaped forward to meet it, the vicious foot-claw digging for the belly.
The two beasts crashed together right over the roof of the cab.
Naomi smacked Jonah smartly across his shoulder – right at that spot where the tendons meet the bone.
“Go!” she said, fiercely. “Go now!”
Nearly dead-armed, and momentarily blinded by the involuntary sting of tears, Jonah punched the gas again, shooting the Bronco out from under the two battling brutes, turning off Main Street onto the ridge that overlooked the entire town.
But as he pulled up to the edge, Jonah was forced to stop.
The fire was worse down below.
The residential district was basically gone.
And in the streets, they could see more of those things. They were everywhere.
Naomi was shaking her head, as if physically rejecting the image.
“My God, I live down there.”
Behind them, however, their escape window was fading fast – the rex had the sickle-claw by the neck, and it seemed as if that had already settled the matter.
Jonah would have actually expected the clawed beast to make more of a fight, but the rex had simply bulldogged it – he'd once seen a coyote do the same thing to a large bobcat – the thick canine neck shaking the more-slender feline like a rag-doll.
Then there were those rex jaws – what it bit, it bit out.
The sickle-claw was down, and clearly done, but the rex's jaws remained locked around its throat.
Jonah backed the Bronco up from the ridge, looking over his shoulder into the woods.
The town below was impassible.
But his cabin was high up in the mountains.
If they could just get past this little road-block.
Without another word, Jonah turned the Bronco back around. He clicked on his brights and revved the engine, leaning on the horn and charging back the way they had come – face-first into the snarling rex.
Naomi's nails dug into his already-wounded shoulder. “What are you doing?”
Ignoring her, he simply swerved up onto the sidewalk. The Bronco scraped the side of the burning building as they passed.
The rex reared up, a chunk of meat in its jaws, and stared balefully after the retreating taillights.
Jonah could see it in his mirror, looking after them – he waited to see if it would follow.
Instead, it swallowed its mouthful, bent down and took another bite of its fallen rival.
Jonah let out a breath – but stepped on the gas anyway.
The road led up into the mountains – his cabin several miles beyond.
As they put distance behind them, he slowed enough to rub his throbbing arm.
Beside him, Naomi's eyes narrowed. “That didn't hurt, did it?”
Jonah glanced at her sideways. “I'm fine,” he said.
Naomi pocketed her pistol.
“So,” she said, “what's your name?”
Chapter 4
That was how it started out in the sticks.
In the cities, it was much worse.
Per-capita, there were a lot fewer survivors.
New York was first – a preamble – late night on the East Coast – pre-dawn in Europe – a declaration of war before hostilities erupted almost simultaneously across the entire world.
In context, what went on in the sticks, was rather like screaming at a mouse, right before being trampled by a herd of elephants.
But in both cases, it was all of a sudden – no warning – and no one saw it coming.
In San Francisco, Doctor Rosa Holland, MD, had, of course, heard recent rumors, and she knew all the most popular urban legends had been resurfacing – the Bermuda Triangle, Area 51.
In this case, 'Monster Island' – supposed leaked footage, purporting to show living dinosaurs.
On
the news, various 'experts' had widely discredited its authenticity. Inundated at work, Rosa had only caught it in passing, but personally suspected some Hollywood promotion, and found it rather ridiculous that the item had made the news at all – it was ironic that, in a day of such increased possibility, you could no longer even be sure of reality. Coverage like this on TV didn't help.
'Genetic engineering' had been added to the lexicon of the tin-foil-hat crowd – 'Monster Island' dated back to the era of the first cloned sheep.
Rosa remembered 'Daisy' – pictured standing next to its genetic parent/twin – ostensibly, just a regular-old sheep. But it had ignited excited conversation at the time – at least one well-known pundit had suggested that this could mean the end of extinction – or at least put it within the reach of human hands.
For herself, Rosa had considered more practical applications. She had volunteered in a lot of third-world countries, and she had seen a lot of war, disease, and atrocities of all kinds. But it was starvation that was always the worst – the most inexorable, the most insidious – the most awful to witness. There were places on Earth that were like nothing less than never-ending death camps.
Of all the atrocities, it was also the most unnecessary.
Ironies abounded. One of the primary motivators in early genetic research was to create better, more plentiful food – larger crops and livestock. Certainly a sensible enough goal – something that might actually go a long way towards solving some of the horrors she had witnessed.
But in her own home town, the entire concept had become paranoiac fodder. And drip-fed through the press, activist-style – salaciously, with buzz-words like 'growth hormones' and 'Frankenfish' – it had become its own conspiracy theory.
Rosa found it amazing how scientific efforts that had extended human lifespan well into the seventies – higher in the healthiest Western countries – were now being blamed for the ill-health of those seventy-year-olds – everything from cancer to heart-disease.
Or Rosa's favorite – 'obesity'.
As a Doctor, she recognized that you had to die of something. She would take obesity in old-age over starvation as a child.
It was easy to get angry over pretentious Western sensibilities and priorities.
Rosa had been questioning a lot about her life lately.
Her job hurt her.
She was in the business of helping people. But when you did that for a living, all you ever saw were people who needed it – people who were injured, sick, or dying.
Rosa had, of course, known about all the divorce, alcoholism, and suicide rates associated with her chosen profession. But she hadn't appreciated it. You never do when you're not living it.
She was still a young woman – and a pretty one – but the frown on her face rarely faded anymore. Whether angry or sad, or just exhausted, her life was a litany of second-hand suffering every single day – even for people she could help.
And then she would come home alone.
No time for anything else.
Was she really ready to spend her life this way?
All this had been on her mind while she was walking home that day – taking the walkway from her hospital to the public parking garage across the street. She crossed with a couple coming from the hospital – a man who was not quite old enough to be the father of the rather rough-looking woman who walked beside him – who might have been showing early signs of being pregnant.
A new welfare-mother-in-waiting.
Rosa sighed. Boy, was that cynical.
Still, she knew the type – her dress once would have been called 'Earthy', but in modern days, it had morphed into something darker – some weird Wiccan-offshoot, counter-culture of the sort most heavily predominant in L.A. – but was clearly migrating north.
Los Angeles was Charles Manson town, after all. Weird, acid-induced cults had always lurked in the background. And judging by this particular woman's Manson-family style-statement, it was a fashion that was coming 'round again.
Rosa tried not to look over her shoulder as they walked just behind her in the parking garage.
As they reached the elevator, the girl that worked the coffee stand looked up from her I-pod.
That was another daily depressant – the sight of that poor mousy girl, locked-up all day in that tiny little booth right next to the elevator on the ground floor.
She always looked up at you like a puppy in a kennel – desperate for any kind of attention – practically daring to be robbed – surrounded all day by car-exhaust and concrete.
Okay, Rosa thought, stepping into the elevator, there were always worse jobs.
It was almost dark – nearly nine o'clock. She had put in almost fourteen hours. And she had also had to blow off a date – a set-up from one of those Internet sites, pushed on her by a friend.
When she realized she would be working late, she sent the guy a text.
Before she even finished, she got a message from her friend – a college roomie named Suzy, who she hadn't seen in six-months – one of those life-support relationships kept in stasis by a series of e-mails and text-messages.
Suzy's message was accompanied by a frowny-face: “You blew him off, didn't you?”
Rosa sent a frowny-face back, to which Suzy replied, “You're a workaholic control-freak.”
“Yeah, but I'm hot,” Rosa responded.
Suzy: “You're also over thirty. Sell-by-date.”
Rosa hadn't answered. Suzy wasn't exactly psychic – this would be the third time she'd broken dates with this guy. They'd been exchanging messages for three weeks, and she still hadn't even met the man.
But now she saw she had gotten a text back from him.
“Have a nice life.”
The elevator reached the roof-top floor of the parking lot and Rosa stepped out with her head down, looking at her phone, debating whether to respond.
Thus preoccupied, she didn't immediately notice what loomed right over the horizon.
She saw it first out of her peripherals, not yet grabbing her full attention – she simply had the impression of a really dark cloud, indicative of an oncoming storm. And in a way, that's exactly what it was.
She even ignored the reverberation in her feet at first. Living in San Francisco, she had adapted a blasé attitude towards even fairly rough tremors – anything below 3.5 didn't warrant anything other than a louder speaking-voice until the rumbling passed – to even mention it was to label yourself a tourist.
Human compartmentalization, Rosa thought, as she steadied her footing. More irony. The entire West Coast was a volcanic runway – one that scientists insisted would inevitably erupt – maybe in ten-thousand years, or maybe tomorrow – but there really WAS a dragon under the mountain.
But people that lived there – herself included – put it blithely out of their heads. Her grandparents had lived their whole lives in the shadow of Washington State's Mt. Rainier – rated the most dangerous volcano on the continent.
And everybody always looked shocked when the volcano finally blew.
In her hand, her phone seemed to have lost its signal.
She was standing there, tapping at her screen when she felt another heavy tremor vibrating up through the street.
Rosa paused.
This felt... different.
Another rumble.
It wasn't like a 'quake', really – it was more like an impact tremor – heavy – staccato – repeating. There in the parking lot, a number of car alarms started going off.
Rosa actually stumbled off balance. Reflexively, she grabbed the railing that overlooked the thruway below.
People in the street had started to run.
For the first time, Rosa looked up – directly to the black cloud that blocked out the sky.
That was when she realized that this storm was alive.
It stared down at her from better than twenty-stories high – with bright, glowing green eyes.
And damned if it didn’t look like a dinosaur �
� just like out of all that discredited leaked footage.
But Rosa shook her head defiantly – rationally – it simply couldn't be – it was too BIG.
Way, WAY too big – there was nothing like that – no dinosaur – no animal – that ever lived.
Therefore, that meant 'nothing' was walking west on California Avenue towards her right now.
She felt the very real impact of its steps, shaking the ground.
The impossible skull suddenly split – opening into a yawning, ragged fissure, ridged in blades, like razor-sharp lava-rock.
From the volcanic maw came a ROAR.
Stumbling back from the railing, Rosa held her ears against the deafening bellow.
Through the ringing in her ears, another sound echoed, small and helpless beneath the false thunder – the sound of screams.
The crowds had panicked – people were running blindly in the streets.
In the roads, traffic was paralyzed, and Rosa could actually hear the metallic crumpling of cars, crunching like peanut shells beneath the creature's tread – their unfortunate occupants pulped like grapes.
And towering above it all was...
… what...?
The Dragon under the Mountain?
A monster.
Absurdly, Rosa almost laughed – because the image she summoned up from her childhood was 'The Beast' – The Beast from The Pit.
She'd been raised traditional Catholic, but she'd thought college and medical training had erased most of that. Yet standing there, struggling for less than a minute with the impossible apparition that confronted her, she was already going Biblical.
Then, Rosa turned and looked across the rest of the horizon.
It was the view she walked by every day – high from the hillside, looking down into the city – she was used to the low hum and the lights – city sounds she tuned out like crickets.
Tonight, the glow of city lights was not neon – tonight, San Francisco burned.
And the burning skyline had been joined by a range of living mountains.
Some were long-necked giants, with heads careening a thousand feet into the sky – others were horned and armored dreadnoughts.
Age of Monsters Page 2