“Terry,” Naomi said, straining against the door. “We've got to go.”
The blows from the other side were growing more frenzied.
Terry stood and turned slowly.
His jaw was set. Any tears had been put on hold.
“She was a bit of a loon,” he said. “But who the hell else would be with me?”
Terry pushed Jonah and Naomi aside, setting his feet and putting his shoulder against the vibrating door.
He was a big guy – he shoved the door shut.
Jonah hadn't actually thought much of him – or his woman, really – their lives hadn't even been dramatically altered by the apocalypse – they were already living in a van down by the river.
But from his end, at least, Terry had never even considered living without her. He apparently still didn't.
“You guys go,” Terry said. He nodded to Jonah. “You've got your own loon to take care of. Good luck with that.”
Several heavy blows clanged against the metal door.
Naomi pulled at Jonah's arm. “Let's go,” she said.
He turned to follow her down the spiraling stairs.
She was three steps ahead of him, and had just touched the metal floor below, when there was a loud, trilling screech.
Naomi instantly dropped and fired at something Jonah couldn't see. He heard another squawk, followed by two more shots. When he made it down beside her, there were three dead Ottos laying in the hall.
“Watch the corners,” she said, “they're going for your eyes.”
Behind them, the birdlike screech had dropped an octave, into a hooting bellow, as ever-heavier weight continued to pound against the radio-room's metal door. They could hear Terry cussing as he held the line.
Jonah paused, looking back. Were they really going to leave him behind – even if he chose it?
Naomi grabbed his shoulder, shaking her head.
They turned and ran down the corridor.
The Ottos were going for their eyes – one of them nearly caught Jonah on the third deck, leaping out of hiding almost directly into his face. If it had got hold of him, it probably could have slashed his throat. Instead, he used a trick that worked on yellow-jackets – just center their weight and smack them right out of the air. He caught the little lizard dead center with an open-handed blow, knocking it to the floor. Not wasting a bullet, he stomped it flat, feeling the thin-bones breaking like a bird's.
Naomi stomped it once for good measure.
Behind them, there was the sound of shotgun blasts.
Terry's cursing gave way to screams.
The creatures were out.
Above them, they could see daylight.
They could also hear the snarling beasts behind, and the echoing clatter of large, clawed feet on metal floor.
Naomi pushed open the hatch as they climbed out into the open air.
Jonah turned and slapped the hatch shut behind them. With a grunt, he twisted the latch.
A second later, something struck the door from behind.
The latch twitched.
Jonah took his own rifle and wedged it between the door-jam and the latch.
He shrugged at Naomi. “I guess you're going to have to do the shooting. You're better than I am, anyway.”
More screeching sounded from over their heads, and they turned to see the Ottos lining the rooftops over the control tower – dozens of them, all blinking down.
The gaggle of lizards were poised to leap, ready to start flocking forward in a mob – but then, as a group, they paused.
Their oddly-birdlike heads cocked as if scenting the air.
Then the entire ship was shaken by massive impact.
The destroyer itself was picked up out of the water and the very air reverberated with a foghorn, gale-storm ROAR.
Jonah and Naomi grabbed the railing as the ship smashed back down into the water. The Ottos scattered from the rooftops.
Clamped onto the front hull, Jonah saw massive jaws shaking the entire craft like a gargantuan crocodile latched onto a buffalo.
A giant rex.
THE rex, Jonah wondered? The same from before?
Was it following them?
The beast reared up in the water, as if to clamber onboard, even as it began to tear the ship apart.
Naomi hiked her hips over the railing and simply jumped overboard, splashing down into the ocean, not ten feet from where they had tied-off their purloined outboard below.
Jonah looked back briefly over his shoulder before he turned and leaped over the side after her.
There was that weird dip in his stomach as he dropped nearly fifty-feet to the water – the stinging impact was immediately drowned by shocking cold.
He sputtered to the surface, looking tor Naomi.
But the weight of the massive ship dropping back down sent a rush of water, carrying them out into open ocean – in fact, probably saving their lives as nine-thousand tons of steel crashed into the surf.
Their little outboard was torn loose of its moorings and partly swamped. Jonah grabbed hold of its rail, while Naomi grabbed his other hand, and together, they managed to pull themselves on board, collapsing into the foot-deep water filling the craft's bottom.
Still sitting in his cage, Ariel's pet Otto screeched into their ears.
Naomi sat up, regarding the little lizard.
“You know what?” she said, “Fuck you.”
She picked up the cage and dropped it overboard into the ocean.
The little lizard made one more small squawk, this time in Naomi's voice – “Fuck you!” – before it sunk into the depths, out of sight.
Behind them, the rex rocked the destroyer the way Jonah had seen bears roll a log.
On board, he could also see squads of Ottos flocking overboard like fleeing rats.
The rex actually seemed to take the time to go after them – smashing them like ants as they made a break for the water.
Is that what it was about, Jonah wondered? That big rex just didn't like those scaly little vermin?
Well, by all means, let it have them – Jonah didn't particularly like them either.
The ship was lifted up once again, pushing up another huge swell. Their tiny outboard was tossed.
Clinging to the rail, Naomi wiped water from her eyes. “Get us out of here, Jonah!”
Jonah turned to start the engine and had given it one good crank when suddenly the ocean simply up and exploded from below.
Now the rex itself, was knocked completely clear of the water, with the destroyer capsizing and rolling into the brine.
The eruption of water carried the rex right along with it, and through the deluge, Jonah could see the Tyrant King – King of the Dinosaurs – most terrible land-predator that ever lived – locked in the jaws of a giant shark.
The rex screamed.
The impact of the attack carried both beasts several hundred feet straight up, before finally cresting in mid-air.
Then they began to fall back towards the water.
The destroyer had already rolled – and that alone might have already been enough to send waves big enough to swamp the shore – but then the battling beasts tumbled down on top of it.
“Oh shit,” Jonah said, forgetting the engine and grabbing the railing. “Hang on!”
Naomi cursed, shutting her eyes, latching onto the rail
The wave of impact hit a moment later, capsizing the outboard, and washed them both over the side.
Chapter 34
Jonah had fallen into rapids before, and he knew better than to fight the water. But this was something he'd never experienced – he was tossed bodily, like a leaf in the surf – he had no idea which way was the surface, or if he was ten feet or forty feet down.
The sheer torque of the water battered the wind from his lungs – it was like trying to hold your breath while falling out of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down.
He was quickly nearing exhaustion, and felt the stirrings of pani
c, when his head miraculously popped to the surface.
The destroyer had up-ended, buoyed by trapped air, but sinking fast, and Jonah could already feel the pull of the suction as it went down.
And behind the sinking ship, the rex churned the surface as it battled something unseen.
The massive jaws snapped into the foaming brine, and evidently found a target, as a pair of gargantuan fins and a slapping tail suddenly flapped and rolled in the water.
Floating debris from the destroyer's top decks were scattered – including several doughnut-ring life-preservers. Jonah grabbed one up, latching his arm around it, and took a moment to finally catch his wind. He looked around for Naomi, but the chop was too rough to see.
But then he spotted her – she was clinging to the wreckage of the outboard, latched like a barnacle onto the overturned hull. She hung limp, barely conscious.
Jonah started fighting his way towards her through the current.
Behind him, however, the furor of battle had momentarily abated, as the shark had apparently released its grip on the rex.
But the ocean was flooded in red. The rex kicked in a circle, clearly struggling.
If a shark could follow a drop of blood in a body of water the size of an Olympic swimming pool, what might an ocean full of pumping arterial fluid attract?
Taking advantage of what was likely only a momentary calm, Jonah caught up to Naomi, who groaned, dazed, as she felt his hands on her.
She'd taken a pretty good shot in the temple, and blood was running down her face. She reflexively resisted as Jonah pried her fingers loose from the upturned hull.
As he pulled her over to the life-preserver, she seemed to blink back to awareness, looking from him to the shore.
Jonah gauged the distance. A mile and a half.
Beneath their dangling feet, they felt the swell of something large passing below.
“Did you feel that?” Naomi said.
“No,” Jonah responded. “Start swimming.”
Just keep swimming, Jonah thought.
Behind them, for lack of a better target, the rex had actually started back after the sinking destroyer, ignoring the ghastly bite-wounds that continued to cloud the ocean in its blood, even as parts of the ship now started exploding in its face.
It was nothing if not a stubborn beast.
“Jonah...” Naomi whispered, stiffening suddenly in the water beside him.
Passing just to their right, not twenty yards away, was a giant fin – ever eighty feet high.
A swell lifted them on their tiny doughnut.
The fin passed leisurely by, and as Jonah looked around, he realized it was not alone – it had been joined by at least half-a-dozen others.
They began to circle.
The rex seemed to sense it, breaking off its assault on the crippled destroyer, letting the poor mangled hulk finally slip beneath the surface.
Jonah saw the first of the circling fins veer in its direction, and then drop out of sight.
A moment later, the rex was grabbed from below and pulled under.
Chapter 35
The rex felt itself being dragged down deep. Likewise, it was aware of the other circling shadows that prowled just beyond the range of visibility.
It responded in the way nature provided.
Megalodon had likely never before encountered jaws as formidable as its own – pound-for-pound, an even more damaging bite – two alpha-predators, both designed for the 'massively-destructive first strike' attack-strategy.
At this point in their battle, both combatants had landed more than one of those.
And while the shark had a demonstrable advantage in size, it nevertheless relented when the rex locked its own jaws just above its gills.
A little lower and it might have been a crippling bite. As it was, the Meg released its own grip and shook itself loose.
The rex started kicking for the surface, still pumping blood from its hip and leg.
None of the other encroaching shadows had quite yet dared get involved, although that was only a matter of time.
Just like modern Great Whites, the Megs circled – the big females hovered close, ready to take first dibs once the prey was safely incapacitated – with smaller individuals lurking at the perimeter.
In the simple manner that it understood things, the rex realized his peril – yet, its rudimentary emotional response was limited. All it knew was that it was being attacked – and that it was being challenged.
The rex also felt the rudimentary stirrings of anger – a goading pulse beyond simple instinctive response.
Then there was that growing buzzing in its head. The rex could not have isolated the catalyst that drove it on – it was not quite a scent, not quite a sensation – it was almost like a pheromone, or a chemical thing. Or perhaps even some form of mental dominance.
And that was really the key-word – 'dominance'.
As a side-effect, due to the extremity of its biological weaponry – where true inter-specific conflict was too-easily fatal – T. rex had also evolved an over-developed sense of hierarchy.
In ecological terms, the 'Tyrant King' didn't have a 'submission' mode.
A socio-biological perfect-storm, T. rex was the purest expression of a rogue.
The rex itself, of course, consciously knew none of this, and cared even less.
There was only the primal understanding that a blood-enemy was near – and whatever else it was that buzzed its senses, egging it onward – this attempt to dominate instead activated a single-minded resistance and an automatic attack instinct.
The Megalodon was just the current recipient of that instinct.
The Meg, itself, was an even simpler mind – responding to a few basic stimuli. Free will had not evolved sufficiently to be a factor.
It simply circled its prey like a smart missile, locking on its target.
For the rex's part, it recognized the larger predator – as well as its own inability to safely retreat.
But if the Meg got him, he would be going out with a piece of its ass in his teeth.
The Meg dropped below the surface.
The rex dropped below to meet it, face-to-face, its jaws open and ready.
Barely visible in the periphery, the other giant shapes circled patiently, waiting in the wings.
With a snap of its tail, the Meg attacked.
Chapter 36
The battle itself was probably what saved their lives, Jonah thought.
Besides providing distraction for whatever other nasty critters lurked below, the clashing beasts created an artificial high-tide, bustling them along towards shore.
But the water was still rough. Naomi was bleeding and probably concussed. Jonah did as much kicking for the both of them as he could, while making sure her hands stayed locked on the preserver.
She was conscious, but the battering had taken her stamina – she clung to the doughnut by sheer force of will.
They were still out over the coastal drop-off – the darkness below was endless and absolute.
Even as a kid, Jonah had never liked deep water, where you couldn't see the bottom.
Anything could come up at you out of that darkness.
As if to prove it, the ocean seemed to swell up, yet again – an unseen clash that still raged on beneath the surface – the rex was evidently making a fight of it.
But now, several other circling fins turned in all at once, ignoring the two tiny, struggling humans in favor of bigger prey.
Another of the towering dorsals sailed past – part of the body actually passed underneath them – first threatening to pull them along in its wake, and then nearly slapping them with a hundred-foot tail.
While he was no Navy pilot, Jonah was in good-shape for a man his age, and nature had also provided him with sufficient instinctive motivation of his own – 'fight or flight' pumped adrenaline like an overdose of amphetamines. He kicked until his legs burned, fighting against the dragging backwash of a six-hundred-f
oot living submarine with a mouthful of butcher's knives.
If he gave in to exhaustion, they were going to die.
It was going to be close.
He even felt part of his mind trying to give up.
It was the antelope that sat down after being run too hard by the cheetah – that just sits and waits for the claws.
After all, what was really waiting for him even if they made it to shore? The world was over, wasn't it?
Seriously, what kind of life was left to live? Why not just let it end?
It was actually scary how much sense that made.
Of course, it wasn't just his life.
Right now, Naomi was depending on him too – whether she liked it or not – and she had given every indication that she had something she wanted to live for.
He had to hand it to her – she had dragged them across air, land, and sea – and Jonah knew she still had not given up hope.
Jonah wondered what it was like to have someone love you that much.
Who was he to snuff that out, just by giving up?
Who the hell was he to let them both die?
And as long as he was giving fuel to the fire, he might as well admit she had been perfectly right, about him, all along – right from the moment she caught him checking her out at the store. He was smitten the first second he saw her. Of course he had been – just LOOK at her.
And so, just like pretty much everything else he'd done since the moment they met, he would do it for her – whether she liked it or not.
See, that was a survival mechanism too – a real basic one – and the simplest ones always worked best.
As his own strength began to fade, he needed to tap into all he could get.
Maybe he was no Navy pilot, but he'd gotten handed the assignment anyway.
He also knew now why she expected him to be a hero.
It was because she deserved one – that was why she had married one.
But the flip side of a hero is that he's out doing hero stuff – leaving her all alone.
So she made do with a surrogate – a dog to lay curled around at her feet – but if need be, it was there with its teeth.
If she didn't have a hero handy, she brought it out in you.
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