Age of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  In the time since, he had simply followed orders. He had isolated blooms, set up coordinates, extrapolated damage.

  And he began counting down the launch – the biggest nuclear exchange in history.

  He was well aware, as he made his preparations, of the potential ramifications of an engagement of this magnitude – he might get to test that EMP scenario after all.

  The silos would be activated simultaneously with the launch of the fighters and their direct payloads – all set up within forty-eight hours of re-establishing contact with the EITS station.

  Tom realized he was enabling an awful lot by just following orders.

  And while he well-recognized the necessity to cut away the cancer, he wondered whether the cure might kill the patient anyway.

  He also realized it was within his power to stop it – at least the remote launch.

  Tom was not the bombardier, but he was its eyes.

  The countdown had begun and, faced with the reality on the ground, Tom still wasn't sure what he would do when those final seconds came.

  The codes for launch would be sent through the station out to the satellites – on General Rhodes' clearance. But it was still Tom sitting there holding the switch.

  Or so he thought.

  In the descending minutes before final launch, even as below, the jet-engines thundered to life on the carrier's runways, communication from below abruptly blinked out.

  For several seconds, every screen on his console went black.

  Tom sat there in the dark.

  “Ummmm...”

  He ran his fingers over the unresponsive keyboard.

  Then the screens blinked back to life again, this time accompanied by the whine of static, as well as General Rhodes' voice struggling to filter through.

  The words came in choppy bits: “...dammit... this is General Nathan Rhodes...” – followed by a burst of heavy interference – “.... repeating... clearance codes as follows...”

  “Sir?” Tom said, tapping his speaker. “I'm barely reading you, sir.”

  “Send... while... still can,” Rhodes’ voice said into his ear.

  Tom looked at the screen. Rhodes was trying to verify coordinates.

  But even as Tom brought them up, the data simply scrambled.

  It was as if that unknown tower that had come on-line was now blinking back off again.

  The signal was still there, but only incrementally – and now he realized it seemed to be coming from the Eureka site after all.

  Had that been it all along? Rhodes had told him the area had been hit – satellite imagery confirmed it – but the tower was built off-shore – had it somehow been missed? Or perhaps only partially damaged?

  But then it was gone again.

  Across the board, the coordinates for the launch had effectively been erased.

  The launch countdown, however, continued.

  General Rhodes’ clearance codes had passed through. The order had been given.

  Tom looked blankly at the screens even as they continued to blink like strobe lights.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed, as the full import struck.

  The silos were firing blind – two dozen tactical nukes.

  And at the moment, he couldn't even watch.

  The countdown ticked off at ten minutes and counting.

  Chapter 26

  The Pacific Fleet stretched out for miles – every surviving carrier on the west coast. In between the fortress-sized ships, the destroyers patrolled.

  There was a rumble in the air as squadrons of fighter jets roared to life – readying for war – a battle for ownership of the planet.

  The creature that circled below had once ruled these waters – absolutely, and in number.

  Hidden at the twilight where visibility faded into the dark depths, it could see the usurpers – massive shadows gathered on the surface.

  For the moment, it waited.

  Megalodon – code-name: 'Big Tooth' – was at once an extremely complex and extremely primitive creature. Intelligent like a smart-missile, it responded to programming – rather than conscious will, it acted on instinct.

  But when those instincts were activated, there was no arguing.

  It didn't know why it and others of its kind had congregated here – other than the basic impulse to follow a scent.

  Beyond that, it was a simple matter of targeting surface prey.

  And now a shadow crossed directly above – much like whales that had once cruised these waters – stalked from below the way modern white sharks targeted seals.

  The Meg did not know the circumstances of its own existence – it was unaware its kind had been absent from these oceans for upwards of four-million years – just as it was unaware of the green glow that now highlighted the once-ebony blackness of its unblinking eyes.

  It was a simple creature. And just like white sharks sometimes mistook kayaks for seals – activating a simple sight-and-strike mechanism – so did similar stimuli, a comparable shadow on the surface, activate the Meg.

  It did not know, as it turned towards the surface, that it was no longer a 'normal' version of its own species – it had no idea of the scale as it locked on its target.

  Over six-hundred feet from nose to tail – and unguessable weight – it rose to the surface like a force of nature.

  Chapter 27

  Sitting in the cockpit of his F-16, waiting on the launch order, Lucas knew things were already going to hell.

  Well-begun is half-done, as his father used to say.

  By that standard, they were already screwed.

  But battle was an extremely fluid environment – Lucas waited on his orders – because either way, this was crunch time.

  The first thing that happened, with ten-minutes and counting, was General Rhodes breaking in on all channels and informing them they had lost contact with the EITS.

  “Communications are completely down,” Rhodes told them all at once. “That means the silos are forfeit.”

  Rhodes had left them perhaps ten seconds to absorb that information.

  It was skillful, Lucas noted – he waited until just the moment where you'd waited too long and then he said, “Gentlemen. This means it's up to you.”

  Amazing, Lucas thought, how the psychology worked, even when you were trained in it.

  He understood as much as he needed to – their prospects had gone from dim to ebon.

  But he could feel Rhodes' words activating his own grim resolve – a psychological response – almost instinctual.

  It was not so different from the beasts themselves. Maybe it was even what was necessary to fight them on their own level.

  The countdown to launch continued.

  He turned his eye to the coast, where he'd left Rosa behind. He never even knew where on the base she and the others had been stationed – probably sequestered together.

  He wondered if Rosa had volunteered at the infirmary yet.

  Lucas smiled a little. There, he thought, something else to fight for.

  Today, for the first time in his life, 'up there' and 'down here' were the same thing. The balm of separation was gone.

  'Lieutenant Walker' was now 'Lucas'. And he was emotionally involved.

  To serve and protect. Death from above.

  Kick a little ass.

  “Command order,” Rhodes said in his ear, “Fighters wave one. Launch.”

  Lucas felt his anchor-cable fall away and he fired his engines.

  The explosion of power was beyond what God ever intended in the hands of any one human being – that's why He made so few pilots.

  That was not to mention the nuclear death he carried on its wings.

  Lucas roared down the runway.

  And even as he did, he felt the impact from below.

  As if hit by a giant rocket, the entire carrier lifted in the water.

  Lucas felt his wheels twist, and for a moment his nose dipped – if he touched on the tarmac, he would roll and explode. />
  Instead, he jerked the flaps down and launched the fighter into the air.

  He arced into a near-vertical climb. As he did so, he looked back over his shoulder.

  The entire carrier had been knocked bodily from the water.

  Cresting in mid-air – an impossible weight pausing almost in flight – the carrier's stern was locked in the jaws of a gigantic shark.

  The carrier itself ignited into flame, as nearly a hundred thousand tons of steel crashed back down into the water.

  In the next moment, the entire ocean seemed to explode.

  The carriers were hit from below – ALL of them – across the entire chain of artificial iron islands.

  Megalodon, Lucas thought – Big Tooth. It had been on his list.

  He had seen footage of Great Whites hitting seals – carrying them their full body-length into the air – the impact utterly destroying its target. He'd even seen speculative reconstructions of Megalodons hitting whales.

  This was an entirely new dimension.

  It had taken the Titanic three-hours to sink after hitting that iceberg.

  The biggest aircraft-carriers went almost half-again the size of Titanic, and were taken out in a single strike.

  Some of them exploded on contact, others broke and took water. But every one was hit and every one destroyed.

  There was a buzz of flying wasps as a handful of fighters managed to escape the sudden conflagration.

  Static blasted in Lucas' ear as General Rhodes shouted into the radio.

  “Report! Anyone! Goddamnit, is anyone alive out there?”

  Lucas veered back towards the other circling jets, who were falling into formation together.

  Below him, the sea boiled.

  And then, Lucas thought, 'the skies fell'.

  As he looked towards the coast, he realized the sky had darkened.

  Dark clouds, coming from the east, over the mountains. A dark, living cloud.

  Pterosaurs. Flying dragons. Winged dreadnoughts that blotted out the sky.

  Lucas looked down at the demolished fleet.

  There was no way not to see it – this was coordination.

  Where the hell was THAT coming from?

  He veered in to join the formation of surviving fighters, shouting out his call-sign.

  “Skywalker, here, sir,” he said. “And I've got a bad feeling about this.”

  Chapter 28

  Rosa could see it all from shore. In the space of minutes, the entire Pacific Fleet had been obliterated.

  The eruption from below was like a fleet of submarines breaking surface – fired with the impact of a torpedo – giant torpedoes with teeth.

  Rosa heard Julie gasp, holding up her hands to hide the sight. Privates Barnes and Jones stared slack-jawed.

  All at once, the Pacific was simultaneously on fire, even as the ocean itself seemed to rise up in a deluge.

  In the air above, Rosa could see the fighters that escaped, circling.

  And soaring in from overhead, she also saw the cloud of flying dragons.

  They moved after the fighters like bats after insects – feeding on the wing.

  Humanity's counter-offensive was bare-minutes old and it had already been decimated.

  Rosa, however, realized that there was a more immediate danger.

  “Everybody get out here!” she shouted suddenly into the tent. “Everybody! Now!”

  Her tone was convincing. Jeremy was already on his feet with his gun, pulling Jamie along with him, nearly tripping over Bud and Allison. Bob and Daryl were likewise armed and ready, as they crowded through the tent-flaps.

  For a split second, they all stood transfixed at the sight of the burning ocean.

  But Rosa was shouting in their ears. “We've got to get out of here. Now!”

  She was already moving towards the two parked jeeps, pulling Private Jones by the arm.

  “We're at sea-level,” she said, pointing at the beach.

  The surf was pulling back.

  How many million tons had just been detonated right off the coast?

  The equal and opposite displacement of water was on its way.

  Private Jones' eyes widened in realization. “Oh shit!”

  As a group, they bolted for the jeeps.

  “Hurry!” Rosa said, smacking Jones on the head, in good Lieutenant Walker style, even as the soldier fumbled for his keys.

  Jones gunned the jeep's engine – behind him, Barnes revved the second – and both vehicles peeled out onto the dirt road.

  Had they not been sequestered near the rear of the base, already up on the hill, it might have been different – they might have been caught in the confused uproar – people were still reacting to the erupting inferno out on the water – not to mention the incoming aerial assault of flying-dragons – and they hadn't yet realized the more imminent peril.

  Rosa tried to shout out a warning.

  “Tsunami!!” she screamed out the side, “Get to high-ground!”

  Private Jones took her lead and started broadcasting over his speakers – his siren blaring. “Retreat to high-ground. Tsunami warning. Get to high-ground.”

  But as they passed overhead, Rosa saw the alarm was already too late – too many on foot, already crowding the make-shift roads.

  She remembered the young tsunami-survivor she had treated – he'd said the wave had been on him in seconds.

  Rosa shut her eyes, unable to watch.

  The two jeeps were just cresting the hill when the incoming wave hit the beach.

  It washed over the entire base in a matter of moments.

  Rosa saw no other vehicles that made it out.

  And the wave was closing on them fast – the wall of water came at them as if they weren't even moving, bearing down like a freight train.

  The ramp up to the highway was just ahead.

  Jones at the wheel sent them skidding around the final curves up the hillside – Rosa could feel the jeep leaning tantalizingly into the turn, ready to send them tumbling like dice. Private Barnes, hot on their tail, likewise tipped for one precarious moment, leaning over the drop-off.

  Both rigs shot out onto the highway just as the wave broke on the cliff just below.

  The surf crashed against rocks, tossing spray and foam over their windows, and both vehicles skidded to a stop, drenched and blinded.

  For a moment, Rosa thought they were going to be pulled back anyway – just washed right back into the ocean.

  But the wave broke against the rocks.

  As quickly as it came, the water receded, pulling the wreckage of the base back with it, washing it all out to sea.

  Her legs shaking, drenched and battered, Rosa pulled the door latch, nearly tripping out onto the street.

  She looked down where the base had stood. She squinted her eyes, looking for any survivors.

  Above them, there was the sound of guns and missile-fire as the aerial battle – one-sided as it was – was engaged.

  Rosa had a strange doubling back as the small group of them stood, their eyes turning between the burning ocean below and the exploding skies above – another childhood memory – her family watching fireworks, camped high up on the hill.

  Everywhere was fire. It was hypnotic. For long moments, nobody moved, nobody spoke.

  The silence was finally broken by Jeremy, his shoulders squared in an unconscious parody of Lieutenant Walker.

  “Well,” he said, “that fucked us. What the hell do we do now?”

  Rosa turned to Privates Jones and Barnes, who both shrugged. Jones pulled out his radio.

  “Private Jones to anybody. Anybody out there at all?”

  The answer back was static.

  “Well,” Jones said mildly, “this is getting close to as bad as it can get.”

  And as if in response, just over their shoulders, from the heavily-forested ridge above the highway, there came the sound of a creaking, collapsing tree – followed by a loud and belligerent, bellowing roar.

&nbs
p; They all turned to the hillside behind them.

  Pushing through the trees was an Allosaurus.

  Rosa was getting better at naming her dinosaurs.

  It was a 'normal' – probably three or four tons – absent the green glowing eyes.

  And it was not alone.

  Emerging from the forest, darting at its feet, were packs of sickle-claws.

  And looming behind, were the ten-ton carcharodonts.

  A whole LOT of them.

  Rosa wondered what as yet, may still be waiting beyond the ridge.

  As if answering some silent call-to-arms, the creatures' bellows suddenly rose together in an all-encompassing, ear-shattering thunder.

  And as the tiny humans below watched helplessly, the beasts began to advance down the hill.

  Chapter 29

  The countdown had completed.

  Powerless, Major Tom had watched the seconds tick down to zero.

  His screens were still up – his power was on, but he was completely cut off from below – yet somehow enough of a signal had made it through to activate the launch.

  It shouldn't have been possible.

  And that was the frustrating thing – as a man of science, he knew there was no such thing as 'impossible' if it actually happened – it just meant you didn't understand how.

  Again, Tom harkened back to the only thing he'd ruled out as truly impossible – the utter impossibility of random-event.

  But for humanity, the 'why?' of it might be an academic matter.

  It was done. The nukes were off.

  And Tom had absolutely no idea where they were headed.

  Chapter 30

  The Eureka Base had been long-since destroyed when Jonah and Naomi finally arrived.

  It wasn't really a 'base', actually, so much as a depot and the small town that surrounded it.

  Regardless, it had been smashed into rubble.

  They surveyed the ruins from the opposite shore. Ariel had had been following the highway down the coast, and now she pulled them over. Terry had let out a long slow whistle – mirrored a moment later by Otto.

  Naomi had been increasingly anxious all morning – she'd fallen silent in the van, fidgeting with her dead cell-phone.