Trapped in the immobility of a dream, he thought he could hear sounds – the screech of flying dragons – maybe even the roar of approaching beasts.
These sounds were mildly worrisome, and he had been idly thinking he should get up soon and do something about it – maybe even open his eyes a little – just not quite yet.
He must have faded back out again, because now he started awake.
Something had tickled his nose, and he heard a voice say, “Yeah. This guy's comin' around. He's alive.”
Jonah opened his eyes to find a shotgun tapping him gently on the face.
He snapped fully awake, but froze stone-still as the barrel now pressed against his cheek.
“You just keep still,” the man holding the gun said.
Jonah looked around, blinking the crusted blood out of his eyes.
The first thing he was aware of was the Manson-style, hippie-van pulled up to the crash site – evidently, the property of the three men holding guns on them. The one who had spoken had his shotgun aimed through the chopper's broken window.
The other two had their guns on Naomi. She had apparently already crawled free – or perhaps been thrown clear of the crashed chopper. And apparently right into a hold-up.
Jonah remembered the chopper catching on one of the big trees as they had crashed – that was his last recollection – but as he looked around, he realized the tree itself had been taken down, along with two others, stretched out across an old mountain road.
The van had just happened along – opportunistic scavengers.
The shotgun tapped his nose again. “Step out slowly, mister.”
One of the other men kicked at the wreck of the helicopter, laughing to the man with the gun on Jonah.
“Hey, Terry, these two tried to fly a chopper out.”
'Terry' was shaking his head.
“Damned fools, aren't ya?” he said. “Don't you know it's damned dangerous to fly around these parts? I must have seen a dozen choppers go down. Those bloody-damn flying lizards'll swarm all over ya.”
He nodded at the downed aircraft. “Planes are harder to catch,” he said. “But, boy they go after choppers.”
Naomi shot Jonah a look – he had personally sold her on taking the chopper.
The third man prodded her with his rifle.
“Hands up lady.”
Slowly, looking at him like a maggot she'd just discovered on a garbage can lid, Naomi raised her hands.
As she did so, the gun-holster on her hip became visible.
The man nodded. “I'm gonna be needing that gun.”
Naomi's head tilted mildly. “You aren't going to get it,” she said.
Jonah had managed to extricate himself from the mangled chopper, and was running his hands over every bone, looking for potential breaks. He actually couldn't believe he wasn't hurt worse. The windshield glass had shattered, but tree-limbs had caught the scattered shrapnel of the propellers – and the collapsing evergreens had broken their fall. It was near-miraculous that they were alive.
And now these three assholes...
Naomi wasn't helping.
The man with the gun blustered. “I ain't kidding, lady.”
Naomi smiled sweetly. Her reply involved his mother, farm animals, and a whorehouse.
At that point, Jonah started to interject – not sure yet what he might say after that – but then a sudden bellow echoed through the canyon.
Along with it, came an answering tremor in the ground.
Of course, a rumble in the ground was nothing new – it was a volcanic region, after all – Jonah was always hearing reports about how the Cascades could blow at any time – just like L.A. and the long-promised 'Big One' they kept saying was practically guaranteed, courtesy of the San Andres Fault.
But of course, this was no earthquake. Jonah could tell perfectly well what they were.
They were footsteps.
They'd heard about the giants. But they hadn't seen one alive yet – not in the sticks. Just those carcasses along the trail.
But now, something was coming – something BIG – just over the other side of the hilltop.
The three robbers exchanged nervous looks. Terry put his gun in Jonah's face.
“Enough,” he said, looking at Naomi. “Tell your old lady to give up the gun, or I'll shoot you.”
Jonah and Naomi both blurted at once, “We're not together!”
Terry took note of the worried look on Jonah's face, but decided to play the card anyway.
He pulled the hammer back. “I'm not kidding, lady.”
Naomi made no move.
Another tremor struck – heavier than before, accompanied by another echoing bellow that shook the remaining glass loose from the broken chopper.
From over the ridge, towering over the tallest trees, the first of the giants appeared, silhouetted against the stars.
Its shadow blotted out the rising moon.
A sauropod – they had not seen many plant eaters – this was the first they'd encountered alive.
It was a monolith, taking up the whole horizon, its giraffe-like neck reaching more than a thousand feet high.
Jonah craned his neck up, looking for the tell-tale glowing green eyes, but found them absent.
After a moment, he realized why.
The beast had no head.
The tip of the two-hundred meter neck was tattered – the comparatively tiny skull had been torn completely away.
Jonah had seen chickens running around after decapitation – he'd heard of a hen that had survived seventeen days without its head, expiring only when its windpipe healed over and it suffocated.
The monster on the hill was far and away from that – and in the meantime, a truly mindless, utterly unstoppable juggernaut.
“You know,” Jonah said tiredly, “I had supplies at the cabin that would have lasted us for months.”
Naomi glared. “And if I'd come alone, I wouldn't have just crashed in a goddamn helicopter.”
The three robbers exchanged glances, with Terry actually sparing Jonah a sympathetic man-nod.
Naomi promptly took advantage of the distraction to step forward and jam two fingers into the eyes of the man holding her at gunpoint. This was followed by a palm strike on the nose.
Everyone else blinked, startled, Jonah included.
For someone who didn't seem to see much of a hero in him, she sure seemed to expect it – apparently, just trusting him to up and take-out the other two armed men on his own.
Given no choice, Jonah did his level best.
As the two of them reflexively turned towards where Naomi was beating-up their friend, Jonah simply charged, shoving them both into each other, and then throwing a haymaker – maybe Terry would have a glass jaw.
Nope, he thought, as pain racked his knuckles – solid granite. But the blow staggered him, so Jonah slugged him again, and he went down.
Naomi was wrestling her man for his rifle – he was blinded and bleeding, but he still had the presence of mind to cling to his gun. He was also big, and starting to overpower her, so Naomi simply let go, stepping back and kicking him hard in the groin – a good, athletic soccer-style kick.
Caught completely off-guard, the man sucked a gasping breath, and dropped to one knee. Naomi wrenched the rifle from his hands, and then turned it butt-first into his forehead. The man dropped bonelessly to the ground.
Jonah tackled the second guy just as he was regaining his feet and bringing his own gun around again. But Jonah caught the barrel, and then, taking Naomi's example, turned the stock hard into his opponent's chin – this time knocking his man down and out.
Reaching for the loose rifle, Jonah was actually thinking he'd done alright, when behind him, the side-panel door of the van slid open and a woman popped out, pumping a shotgun, and pressing both barrels against the back of his head.
Terry was just picking himself up, reaching for his own shotgun, when Naomi stepped forward, and pressed her purloined rifle aga
inst his head.
The two women regarded each other.
“Put your gun down or I'll shoot him,” Naomi said.
The hippie-chick in the van snorted derisive laughter.
“I don't give a shit, I can get another one of him.” She poked the barrel into the back of Jonah's head. “You like this guy?”
Naomi returned the favor, with a poke to Terry's head.
Jonah and Terry exchanged nervous glances.
“Listen, Ariel,” Terry began.
“You just shut your trap,” Ariel responded curtly. “Gutless wonder.”
On the ridge, the headless sauropod had started moving down the slope.
Its trajectory seemed to more or less be in their general direction.
Jonah cleared his voice. “Um. Ladies, do we really want to do this right now?”
Naomi and Ariel eyed each other warily, but then Ariel pulled her gun back.
“Okay,” she said. “Get in.”
Naomi likewise lowered her rifle. Terry looked at her warily, and then turned, knuckles up, and started to swing on Jonah one more time.
Ariel interrupted with a wide-open palm-slap, smacking Terry dead in the face. Terry staggered, grabbing his nose. “OWWW! Bitch!”
“Are you KIDDING?” Ariel shouted. “Get in the van!”
The sauropod had now been joined on the hillside.
A massive rex with bloody jaws towered high above the hundred-foot evergreens.
Jonah guessed they could stop wondering what had happened to the sauropod's missing head.
It wasn't alone, either. The rex was followed by nearly a dozen others, and together they began tearing massive chunks out of the shuffling, mindless beast – amputated of its ability to even react, as it was eaten alive on its feet.
The gang of them thundered down the hillside.
Like scampering mice, the tiny little humans piled into the van.
But as Jonah slid into the back, he was greeted by a parrot-like screech directly in his face.
There was a flash of lizard-like teeth and he realized they had one of those little sickle-clawed scavengers in a bird cage. The thing hissed at him like a snake.
“What the hell is that?”
“Oh, that's Otto,” Terry said.
“You keep it as a pet?”
Terry twirled a finger around his temple. “The old lady's a bit loony.”
The little lizard stared back at Jonah balefully. Then, with a squawk to clear its throat, repeated back in an eerie duplicate of his own voice: “What the hell is that?”
Great, Jonah thought. A myna-lizard.
Ariel gunned the van to life.
But then Jonah remembered the other two men, still lying unconscious in the clearing – he slapped Terry on the shoulder and pointed. Naomi shot him a disapproving look, but Terry rattled the back of Ariel's seat.
“Wait! We gotta get Brett and Rudy!” He started out the side-door.
Ariel, however, had taken a look at the avalanche of monsters cascading down on top of them, and decided to hell with Brett and Rudy. She floored the gas, nearly tumbling Terry out the door, if not for Jonah grabbing and pulling him back.
They tore out of the clearing not twenty seconds before the first of the giants touched down.
One of the men left behind – Jonah didn't know if it was Brett or Rudy – seemed to be recovering. He sat up, shaking his head, confused, and looking after the retreating van.
A moment later, a massive sauropod foot came crashing down, obliterating the clearing, the chopper – pulping whatever was left of Brett and Rudy into nothing.
It was joined a moment later by the lead rex.
Jonah crooked his head, trying to see.
Beside him, the little lizard in the cage let loose another shrill, warbling shriek.
The rex's head cocked, and then poised as if scenting the air.
Then it turned and stared down at them with those glowing green eyes.
Jonah had read that T. rex had a highly sensitive nose – comparable to a turkey vulture – like a shark that could follow a trail of blood for miles.
Had it spotted them? Or more properly, had it smelled them?
They were so small – it seemed ridiculous that they would represent prey.
Beside him, 'Otto' squawked again – in Terry's voice this time, learned through obvious repetition. “Ohhhh shit.”
And even as the rest of the tyrannosaur-pack descended down from the mountain, tearing the dying sauropod apart in giant, glutenous mouthfuls, the lead rex turned away from the feast.
“Is that thing following us?” Naomi said, looking out the rear window.
Without waiting for confirmation, Ariel stomped the gas.
Behind them, in that false, avalanche-slow-motion, the rex was indeed coming after them.
It's stride covered forty meters in a step, crushing its way through hundred-foot trees in a headlong straight line.
A quarter mile ahead, was a tunnel where the highway led right through the base of the mountain. Jonah knew the route – it emptied you out west of the coastal range on the far side.
But behind them, the rex was gaining.
And for whatever reason, perhaps just following the leader, the rest of the pack seemed to have joined in.
The rumble of the earth threatened to simply shake them right off the road.
A T. rex charged teeth-first – the view coming up from behind was a dozen or more open, gaping jaws – yawning, STRAINING after them.
Ahead, the tunnel was dark – no power to the lights – pitch black beyond the entrance.
Ariel sailed them Hail-Mary over the threshold even as the rex's jaws crashed into the rocks behind them.
The impact shook the entrance loose and the tunnel began to collapse.
“Oh, Ariel,” Terry began, but she cut him off, swearing.
“I said shut-up, asshole!”
“Asshole!” Otto repeated.
Terry glared at the little lizard.
There was another tremendous impact from behind and above.
Rocks were beginning to fall from the ceiling.
“The roof is collapsing,” Naomi said. “How long is this tunnel?”
“Oh,” Terry said, looking out the window unhappily, “almost half-a-mile.”
There was utter blackness beyond the reach of the van's high-beams – in the dark of night, they couldn't even see the exit.
Another blow shook the rocks above, as if the rex was actually attacking the mountain itself. And now it felt as if the rest of the pack had joined the assault.
The rubble started falling faster, striking their roof, cracking the windshield.
Ariel simply gunned the accelerator, on blind faith that the road ahead was clear.
The tunnel seemed to groan.
A second later, it began to fall in upon itself.
Ariel shot the van out the other side, just as the collapsing rock filled the tunnel behind them.
The road almost immediately veered into a tight turn and the van squirreled the corner. Ariel wrestled for control.
Dust belched from the ruined mouth of the tunnel.
And echoing from over the peak, the bellows of the angry beasts raged like thunder – a living tsunami checked and stymied by the mountain.
And lest even the mountain not be enough to stop it, Ariel didn't slow, following the winding road as it led back up into the highlands.
Chapter 19
It was nineteen days in, when Major Tom finally received communication from below – as if some back-up system somewhere, had finally come on-line.
A shrill, piercing whine had sounded in his ear as a hundred frequencies suddenly battled all at once. Wincing, Tom had grabbed for the volume.
Oddly, he couldn't pinpoint the location of the active station – at first, he'd thought it was Eureka, but his instruments showed that still dark.
He had actually given up trying – either communications were down for good, o
r no one living remembered or cared if he was up there.
The digital age, he thought – there was so much there to be lost – technology – history – all it took was turning out the lights and it just no longer existed. There would be no ancient scrolls for future explorers to ponder – it would all just be deleted.
And down planet-side, the Food of the Gods was 'blooming' again.
Tom had picked up the expression from one of the last surviving broadcasts – the kids in Japan, who had managed to establish a brief network of their own – connecting with other scattered survivors, sending in messages and video – a lot of it in English, now, as they started making contacts – all broadcast right from one of their dorm rooms.
Smart kids – in a bizarre way, they actually seemed to be enjoying the opportunity to exploit their talents in a crisis.
They had also been the first to report the incoming second wave.
Tom hadn't heard from them since. That had been a week.
Likewise, Kristi-in-Alaska's broadcasts had become more intermittent.
She had also stopped talking to the camera – most of her new clips were nighttime, using the bright camera beam to scan her yard – always with darting shadows just at the edge of sight – growing ever-more bold.
Most new data he had been receiving came from remote sources – security cameras and stoplights – pieces of automation that somehow survived and simply droned on, mindlessly recording what was in front of them.
Tom had at least managed a little progress on his own front – accessing a number of satellites, and for the first time, he was able to collate images from the entire globe, recorded during the entire event – he was even able to focus telescopes on specific areas of the planet's surface.
He ran all the images together – chronologically documenting the Apocalypse.
Even from space, Tom could see that it was not over.
The beasts were on the move – particularly the giants, which seemed to be traveling in large packs.
Tom also noted that the warring-factions held.
Along the North American west coast, for example, tyrannosaurs had consolidated in the north – the carnosaurs in the south.
And from what Tom could gather, that was a contested situation that was likely going to be decided soon.
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