Kingdom of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  And now she found herself missing him.

  Shanna wondered what Rhodes had in mind for him and Maverick.

  She could only guess, because from Rhodes, she felt nothing.

  Some people were closed off that way – like a dead circuit – a hardness that blocked them off. It wasn't necessarily a lack of empathy, so much as deliberately unemotional – doctors could be like that, people who couldn't let themselves feel.

  It was different from bad people. Shanna had encountered a smattering enough of those to know the difference. Among the ships that had periodically come to her island, she'd met the odd soldier in it for the wrong reasons – but a man who liked to kill was no less emotional or empathic than the next, sometimes more so. Sadism was simply a matter of taste.

  Which turned Shanna's mind to Otto.

  Otto was not like Rhodes – she always felt the little lizard's presence. But in terms of higher emotion, he emitted only the most basic reptilian stimulus. If not for the fact of his direct creation from her DNA, Otto likely would have been like the big plant-eaters or the more primitive carnosaurs, where she only felt the barest glow.

  With Otto, it was general awareness and not much else.

  But clearly, there was more there.

  What happened on the island – what it implied?

  Shanna had not seen it coming.

  General Rhodes had several long discussions with her on that point.

  Rhodes also informed her that they had in their possession a lot more footage than just Kate's thumb-drive. They were, in fact, keeping a number of incidents under wraps.

  As he put it, “We seem to be having a bit of a crypto-zoological crisis.”

  Incidents had been reported all over the world. Not in remote areas, either, but just outside some of the biggest cities.

  It didn't seem likely until you looked on a map.

  In North America alone, seventy-five percent of forest-lands were protected and off-limits, and the largest concentration of these protected forests surrounded the big cities, where local lawmakers were more inclined to pass laws locking them off.

  Which meant there was a blind spot there, and close to major population centers.

  And 'crypto-incidents', as Rhodes called them, were on the rise, with a spike starting six months ago, after a cruise ship went down along its Central Pacific tour – an incident that had no casualties until the shipwrecked passengers made it to shore.

  “A hundred castaways,” Rhodes said, “according to two survivors, were eaten by monsters.”

  Then there was the matter of Kate's e-mail video from Monster Island. They never did quite figure out where that leak came from. Kate herself swore she didn't know.

  “She's my daughter,” Rhodes had sighed. “And she's been a handful all her life.”

  Shanna felt a blip from him then, when he talked about Kate – a single note of regret.

  Then it had dried-up like a tear-drop and he had turned his direct eyes, focusing cybernetically on Shanna.

  “What about you?” he said. “Do you have any idea where that leak might have come from?”

  Shanna, who had suspicions, told him no. She had not told many lies in her life, so she wasn't sure if he believed her.

  Not that it mattered. Rhodes had other plans for her.

  It had been her first day in the states, still sitting on board the ship, docked at the Brooklyn shore opposite the river from Manhattan, looking up at the skyline of New York City – a dream all her life, and now near enough to touch – staring through port-windows not much different than a prison wall.

  But she wasn't a prisoner. She was an asset. Rhodes had told her so.

  And then he had showed her what they wanted.

  He had taken her to the nondescript warehouse on a quiet corner of the Brooklyn docks – a three-mile stretch of storage lots bordering the East River.

  These buildings, however, were a lot bigger on the inside, dug many levels deep.

  Rhodes had taken her to see Congo.

  The makeshift cage was a re-purposed weapons-bunker, well-fortified and big.

  Congo lay slumped against the far wall, drugged near-comatose. His eyes were half-closed and glazed. Shanna could see the green glow between his slitted lids.

  It had been a week since the island. The big gorilla had been infected via direct injection – clearly not a large dose, as the infection seemed to be progressing slowly – perhaps Otto had been using his stores sparingly in order to contaminate the whole island on short notice – but the chemical's effect was still obvious.

  Measured at full maturity, Congo had stretched nearly twenty-three feet tall, and just over eight tons. Now he was at least twice that.

  “He's growing,” Rhodes said.

  “He's dying,” Shanna said.

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said, “you can do something about it.”

  Shanna sighed. Without having to hear it, she knew what they wanted.

  “Dr. Shriver,” Rhodes continued, “says that your father was working on an antidote.”

  “Not an antidote,” Shanna corrected. “There's no way to reverse the growth effect. The intent was to alleviate the rabies-like madness that killed the subjects.”

  Shanna shook her head. “But it doesn't matter. We lost everything on the island.”

  “Dr. Shriver,” Rhodes said, “believes you can extract the chemical from your ape friend's blood. And he has back-up files.”

  Shanna knew what Shriver had. She had been the one who sent in reports. Her father's efforts had been theoretical – nothing put into physical practice.

  Although, she supposed, the idea was simple enough, an approach intended to work not much different chemically than an analgesic.

  But the idea that she could develop something workable, when her father hadn't even attempted it, within time enough to save Congo?

  Shanna knew psychology well enough, and understood the big gorilla's life was being dangled in front of her as incentive.

  She also knew she was going to try.

  And so, she had settled down in Rhodes' mid-town lab/bunker – likely an intended act of kindness on the General's part – after all, she had always wanted to see the city.

  She could still feel Congo, just across the river, his aura ever stronger as the chemical reaction within him continued to build.

  And now, three weeks since his exposure on the island, his growth-phase was peaking. Soon madness would start setting in.

  Shanna knew she would feel his pain along with him.

  And as she sat before her computer, trapped in simulations, no further along than her father in anything that might manifest, even experimentally, in the real world, Shanna knew that Congo was going to die, and that she wouldn't be able to stop it. It was just a fundamental fact.

  The hell of it was, she actually believed she had a viable idea. Given time, she really thought a cure was possible – or at least she could stop the cycle of madness and death, and with it, the key to the chemical's transmissibility.

  She believed it was possible.

  But she knew it was in the early territory of someday. The chances of saving Congo's life were non-existent.

  Part of her had already started to grieve, on top of still mourning her father.

  It was such a general sense of malaise, that it made sense she would be progressively on edge.

  Except...

  This was the sort of feeling of unease she'd felt on the island, right up to those last days.

  But this was different. It was bigger.

  It was... everywhere. From every direction.

  There was nothing she could focus on – the pressure in her head was like an allergic reaction.

  Except Shanna didn't have allergies. She was genetically perfect.

  She was picking up on something.

  It actually felt more like a dampening sensation – like an antiseptic numbs a sting.

  And Congo's presence, growing brighter by the moment, as t
he Food of the Gods continued to build within his blood, was also a blinding influence on what else might be more subtly lurking around her.

  In fact, the big ape's aura had grown so strong, it almost caused Shanna to overlook the growing presence of another.

  Congo had been the third creation that had been taken directly from her genetic footnote. Otto had been the second.

  The rex had been the first.

  Shanna turned from her computer to the window.

  Her vantage was high. Rhodes had given her a view of the city, along with the southwest coast of Manhattan. She could see the Statue of Liberty and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.

  “Oh no,” she breathed.

  Shanna tapped her intercom, her heart beating as realization dawned.

  There was no answer.

  “Hello?” she said, pushing the button again. “Is anyone there? I need to get hold of General Rhodes right away! It's urgent!”

  Then there was the ding of the elevator. She turned, expecting to see her morning-shift guard.

  But the elevator was empty.

  Except as she looked, she saw that it wasn't.

  The guard was crumpled on the floor, slathered in blood, his throat slashed.

  Even as Shanna stood, she felt the sulfur-sting in her sinus.

  Otto hopped off the soldier's body out of the elevator.

  He was followed by two others.

  They hissed, baring their claws, and without formality, they came at her.

  Chapter 32

  It all started in New York when a two-hundred-foot T. rex walked out of the East River, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge, into the lower East Side.

  Night had fallen on the city, and New York’s nightlife was coming alive. Crowds in the streets were filling up all the usual hot-spots.

  Manhattan Island was about to receive a most unexpected visitor from out of town.

  A low fog covered the water, and for all practical purposes, the creature was invisible.

  Big Rex swam with surprising efficiency, its massive legs churning the water. His craggy brow broke the surface like a giant crocodile.

  And like a croc's eyes under a night-light, his eyes shined in the dark, glowing like an emerald jack o'lantern.

  The rex' nostrils flared. The water in the river was fetid – slimy and horrible – nothing like the sea's cool embrace.

  But despite this particularly foul gateway, Big Rex knew he had reached his destination. The beacon he had pursued unerringly, like a psychic north star, was bare miles ahead. A light he followed like a flower follows the sun.

  Her. Shanna.

  Just as clearly, he sensed the presence of the other – his rival.

  Congo was here as well. Someplace close.

  And somewhere behind it all, that familiar sting in the sinus – that foul psychic stench...

  Otto.

  Big Rex would swim across an ocean for Shanna, but he would walk through fire to smash that little bastard.

  But now he could sense them converging around her.

  Just as he could sense it when she screamed.

  And Big Rex' glowing green eyes saw red.

  The energy within him was already building to a head as the growth-cycle peaked and the chemical started to eat at his primitive brain.

  Now his pace quickened, bearing down on the very city itself, his body tensed in the water like a shark poised to attack.

  The rex rose from the East River like a tidal wave.

  Chapter 33

  Across the river, Congo's reaction wasn't much better.

  His keepers had been forced to administer progressively higher doses of sedatives in an attempt to compensate for both his steadily increasing mass, combined with the sheer energy pumping through his system.

  At Shanna's scream, Congo's glowing green eyes snapped open.

  His roar echoed through the facility and he immediately began banging away at the bunker walls. The impact of his blows shook the entire complex.

  Alarms sounded, and there were shouts in the hall, just outside Cameron and Maverick's cell.

  Maverick leaned against the door, peering out.

  “What the hell is wrong with that big ape?”

  He turned to find Cameron holding one hand to his head as if responding to a shout in his ear. When he turned, his eyes were wide.

  “It's Shanna,” he said. “She's in trouble.”

  Maverick eyed him dubiously.

  “Getting a psychic flash or something?”

  Cameron nodded.

  “I think so. And I think that big ape feels it too.”

  “Okay,” Maverick said, agreeably enough, turning to hit the cell's alarm, banging on the bars, and shouting down the hall for the guards.

  It was an effort that went completely ignored as, several levels down, a freshly-roused Congo smashed down the wall of the bunker that contained him.

  The vast majority of the complex was underground. Congo's makeshift cell had been basement-level, and now the raging ape crashed through the ceiling into the floors above, as he dug his way back up to the surface.

  Cameron and Maverick heard gunfire.

  Even more alarming, the ground-level of the warehouse-shell seemed to rattle on its foundation, an underground skyscraper about to collapse in upon itself.

  The floor beneath their feet shook like an earthquake.

  Maverick stepped back warily from the center of the cell, glancing nervously at Cameron.

  Then the rumble escalated and the walls around them broke apart, as Congo burst out onto the main floor, smashing his way up through the false warehouse into the open air.

  His roar echoed across the starlit sky, out over the water.

  And from somewhere within the towers of Manhattan, just the other side of the river, came the answering roar of Big Rex.

  His eyes glowing, Congo beat at his chest, bellowing his response.

  With his roar building to a crescendo, his pounding fists tearing up the remaining facade of a warehouse like a silverback tearing up the brush, and ignoring the mosquito-taps of hand-held weapons, Congo charged off the dock and leaped into the river.

  Displaced water crashed over the Brooklyn docks like a Tsunami, washing over the razed warehouse, taking a number of hapless troops over the edge into the tunneled-out crevice Congo had left behind.

  The surging river poured down into the tunnels in a flood. Cameron and Maverick's entire level was demolished, with three of their four walls simply collapsed. Only the bedrock of the wall behind them kept them from being crushed along with the majority of the personnel on their floor.

  They could still hear gunshots up above, and something that might have been a bazooka, but Congo's roars were already echoing with increasing distance.

  Their floor had been completely knocked away. What remained of Cameron and Maverick's cell amounted to a circular ledge against the back wall, and the two of them were forced to climb along broken rafters up to the surface.

  Once up top, the grounds were abuzz. No longer a simple warehouse, troops materialized out of nowhere.

  Cameron and Maverick found themselves momentarily ignored as the mad scramble was torn between rescuing survivors and mobilizing against the threat.

  But then an MP in a Jeep squirreled up beside them.

  “Hey! What the hell are you two doing here? This is a restricted area.”

  “That's okay,” Maverick said. “We were just leaving.”

  He leaned through the window and knocked the MP cold, pulling the door open with the other hand to let him tumble limply out. Maverick slid into the driver's seat, hollering over his shoulder.

  “Let's go!”

  Cameron jumped in beside him, looking back at the stone-unconscious figure crumpled behind them as Maverick sped away.

  That was a thing with both him and his dad. Besides the odd, unsuspecting MP, Cameron had seen them knock-out cows, horses – any livestock that might get uppity. Maverick had once climbed into the pen
with his father's bull – when Maverick said bull-fight, he meant fist-fight.

  And God forbid the neighbor's cat get in front of one of his farm rigs.

  There was a brief moment at the security gate, where the guard attempted to block the road with his body – actually drawing his gun before diving aside, as Maverick piled through, knocking the gate loose as he skidded out onto the road.

  They could see the skyline of the city.

  Already there were news-helicopters circling over midtown, holding a cautious perimeter, as police choppers hovered over the long stretch along Broadway, where the city now burned.

  Framed in the spotlights, looming among the towers like a monolith, was the rex.

  Maverick turned a sideways eye to Cameron.

  “Do I even have to ask where we're going?”

  Cameron just pointed to the city.

  “I'll know when we get closer.”

  “What is it with you and this broad?”

  Cameron shook his head.

  “Honest to God, I don't know.”

  Maverick sighed, squealing tires as he turned north, up the seaport to where the Brooklyn Bridge led into the city.

  Chapter 34

  One thing Shanna had noticed about Otto was a total lack of impulse control.

  Her father had gotten her a puppy once and the little lizard had slaughtered it. Then he had hopped on Shanna's horrified shoulder, with blood slathered on his claws, and said, “Mine?” the way Shanna had when she was a little girl.

  Perhaps that should have been a bit of a tell. But Shanna had felt no malice.

  In truth, she still didn't – even now, as they came for her out of the elevator.

  What she did feel was implacable – a total lack of empathy – in fact, seeming to zero-in on empathy – perhaps because of their very inability to perceive it. An instinctive counter-force.

  For Shanna, these were the creatures who killed her father.

  But Shanna was not an old man, nor was she a mousy tech-nerd. She was, for all practical purposes, a farm-girl used to dealing with livestock that weighed fifty-tons or more.

  She also happened to be a physically perfect human female, with athletic reflexes to match.