Once it had been the World Trade Center, but it had been destroyed, ushering in a new era of violence and hate.
The twin towers had given way to a single monument – a steeple that once again dominated the city.
Perhaps in keeping with the dangerous new era, the original name 'Freedom Tower' was replaced with the rather more ominous 'One World' Tower.
But whatever the name, it was the highest spot in the city, and Congo was still, at his heart, a mountain gorilla. As his wound bled him dry and the chemical continued to eat at his brain, he went where he felt safe – as high up as he could get.
With the rex in hot-pursuit, Congo leaped from the neighboring spires, catching the tower at its lower floors and began to climb.
In the square below, Big Rex crashed into the building's base.
Shanna felt the impact, even as Congo scaled the tower, cresting quickly to the top, clinging with his one good paw. Shanna clung to his fur, her head spinning with vertigo from the sheer dizzying height.
It had been less than thirty minutes since the rex had first walked out of the East River, and already it was the worst disaster in the city's history. From her vantage, Shanna could see the path of the destruction leading straight through midtown.
There had not even been a military response yet. The choppers that circled the air-space were all either police or local news.
Another tremendous impact shook the tower.
Shanna remembered 9/11 – the way the buildings had suddenly seemed to simply dissolve and crumble apart.
The circling helicopters seemed to remember as well. They held a respectful distance.
Except for one – a news-chopper that abruptly separated, rapidly zeroing in on the tower's steeple.
The buzzing bird drew close, and even as she felt the building below her begin to totter, Shanna realized who was on-board.
Chapter 37
Cameron was quite surprised to learn Maverick had never once flown a chopper before. Turned out it was completely different to flying a plane – a balancing act with wind-gusts, always in a constant state of near-crashing.
Maverick had offered up this little tidbit as he was starting the bird up.
When they had first skidded their purloined Jeep up to the Brooklyn Bridge, they found it jammed with emergency barricades blocking the route back into the city. Police were escorting people from their cars, ushering them out on foot.
Reporters milled at the east end of the bridge, peppering the directing officers with questions, including a local reporter, whose traffic-chopper had been flagged away from the bridge, and landed on the nearby docks.
Surveying the blocked-off bridge-access, Maverick parked the Jeep, hopped out and started jogging over to where the pilot waited in the chopper for his team.
“Hey!” he shouted, waving.
The pilot looked over just as Maverick pulled open the cabin door, stepped up and pumped a fist precisely on the helmet-strap of his unsuspecting chin. The pilot emitted a brief grunt before Maverick tossed him semi-conscious out onto the dock.
Cameron stepped discreetly past the dazed, blinking pilot, and climbed into the co-pilot's seat. Maverick fired the rotors and jerked them into the air before Cameron even got his door shut.
“Sorry,” Maverick said, mulling over the controls. “Let's see. Lift versus rotation. Can't be that hard.”
Neither was it hard to determine their destination.
Congo stood atop the highest tower in the land.
Two-thousand feet below, bellowing like a hound who had treed a cougar, the rex smashed into its base again and again.
Cameron had seen this before. He had been in Midtown when the original towers had gone down.
Already the steeple Congo clung to seemed to tilt.
“That's where we're going,” Cameron said. “Right there.”
Maverick nodded. “Of course it is.”
With an abrupt, skating-rink, mid-air spin, Maverick turned them towards the tower.
Congo hung from the steeple by a single hand. Even from the distance, they could see the grievous wound that had nearly severed his arm at the collar.
And as the rex pounded away, it was also obvious the building would not last much longer.
It wasn't until they circled in close, however, that they saw Shanna, looking no bigger than a pocket-pen, tucked in the crook of Congo's injured arm.
As they drew near, the big gorilla snarled, but they could see Shanna patting him down.
His glowing green eyes blinked, with shifting awareness.
“Take us down,” Cameron said.
Maverick eyed the giant ape dubiously, but dropped their altitude, riding the wind-drafts in steps. Cameron pushed open the hatch. With one hand latched grimly on his seat, he stepped down onto the landing gear.
The whirling rotor blades buzzed dangerously close as Maverick hovered just above the giant ape's head.
“I get any closer,” he said, “I'm gonna clip his ears.”
Congo, struggling with one good arm, latched onto his perch with his feet, and plucked Shanna from the crook of his shoulder, holding her cupped gently in his palm as he held her up to the chopper hovering above.
Maverick dropped them lower as Shanna reached up for Cameron's hand.
Two-hundred stories below, the rex crashed into the base of the tower one final time.
Almost from the moment the original twin towers had collapsed, there had been talk of a monument – but with such constant, and ever-more politicized legal wrangling, it had taken so long, it seemed as if it would never be built,
Now the monument was coming down too – just as its predecessors had, the fates simply denying the towers' right-to-be.
Cameron would daresay it would stay down this time.
As the building started to crumble, Congo began to fall.
For a breath of a moment, Shanna fell with him – and Congo reached his hand up, even as Maverick dropped the chopper abruptly.
The rotors chopped one of Congo's extended fingers, prompting a snarling yelp, and an involuntary jerk.
Even as the chopper spun from the impact, Shanna leaped for Cameron's outstretched hand. He caught her grip in mid-air, hauling her up next to him onto the landing gear.
Below them, the building collapsed on itself, crumbling into rubble.
Congo disappeared into a billowing cloud, as hundreds of thousands of tons of steel and concrete went crashing to the streets.
By happenstance, right on top of the hapless rex itself.
The mighty beast's own roar was drowned out as the collapsing tower tumbled down, burying him in an avalanche of rubble.
Circling above, the chopper spun crazily, its rear-rotor knocked askew.
Cameron pulled Shanna into the seat beside him, yanking the door shut, as Maverick struggled to level them out.
He took them up over the rooftops, arrowing out of the city.
They were out over the river when the main-rotor started to chop.
“Awww, shit,” Maverick muttered. He glanced sideways to Cameron and Shanna.
“Hang on,” he said.
Maverick cranked the throttle, prompting backfires from the motor, but a surge of speed as he launched them towards the west docks, opposite the East River.
They just made the beach, when the chopper engine quit and they crashed, right where the ocean met the sand.
Chapter 38
As the tower collapsed, Congo felt himself falling. Then he was blind and couldn't breathe as he was enveloped in a cloud of debris, crashing two-thousand feet down to the street.
Countless tons that landed hard.
Big Rex realized his own peril too late. The collapse seemed to come in slow motion, but the rex barely had time for a startled roar before the cascading avalanche of the man-made mountain caught him square and he was buried beneath all of it.
Eventually, the last piece of rubble settled to a stop, and the cloud of powdered concrete filled the square like a fog.
Then something stirred.
From near the top, heavy chunks of concrete and steel were tossed aside, starting a fresh avalanche as displaced debris tumbled to the street.
Congo emerged, slowly and painfully, from the wreckage.
The big ape's breath was ragged as his life's blood leaked away.
As he reared on his haunches, Congo felt his head go light. His vision blurred.
He was about to die.
But it was not done yet.
Congo began digging through the mountain of rubble until he found the rex.
The big tyrannosaur lay stunned and bleeding. Its breathing was rapid and shallow, likely with internal injuries.
He was pinned beneath countless tons.
Congo stood above his long-time rival, and the rex' eyes rolled in their sockets, defiant to the end – and the green glow shined bright as ever.
The emerald gleam in Congo's own eyes were full of grim resolve, as the big ape bent to do what had to be done.
He picked up a piece of rubble, as massive as his fading strength could manage, raised it above his head, and brought the bludgeon down.
Again. And again. As many times as it took.
When it was done, he lay down in the dust and debris next to his lifetime enemy.
His eyes turned to the sky as a single chopper circled above, turning to make its way out of the city.
For the moment, at least, Shanna was safe.
As he died, Congo's simian lips turned up in a very human smile.
Chapter 39
In the lull after the battle, the city of New York stopped to catch its breath, believing it was over.
It was not.
The two fallen titans and the destruction they left in their path was but a preamble.
From the surrounding buildings and sewers, scores of Ottos suddenly swarmed like rats.
Their hand, as it were, had been conclusively shown.
As a troop, they threw their heads back in a hooting caterwauling that echoed in the abandoned streets.
Ten miles away, a young allosaur, that had been living within a strict territorial range for years at the edge of federal land, suddenly turned and walked into town.
It was the first, but it was not alone.
Worldwide-coverage of the 'New York incident', as it was being called, was barely forty-five minutes old, but now new broadcasts began breaking in.
From everywhere.
Chicago. LA. London. Paris. Moscow. Friggin' Beijing.
All simultaneous.
First the beasts had come out of the forests.
And then behind them, with glowing green eyes, the marching giants.
New York was ground-zero as blooms began to sprout worldwide.
KT-day had begun.
When it was over, the world of humankind would be gone.
Chapter 40
As the storm darkened the sky, the Rocky Mountains were lit by strobe-flashes of lightning. The wind picked up as the storm clouds rolled in.
Along with whatever else loomed on the horizon.
Not all the thunder echoing through the canyons came from lightning.
Rosa looked around their wide-eyed circle, clinging to their little ledge on the edge of this freezing cliff.
They had all heard these deep, echoing bellows before, as had every surviving human on Earth.
There were the beasts that populated the forests – and then there were the blooms of giants.
Shanna's ordeal in New York ended just as it began for the rest of the world.
“We actually crashed within half-a-mile of the east-coast shop,” Shanna said. “Which was lucky, because that was the only stretch of beach that wasn't jammed. That way we were able to get out of the city.”
Rosa nodded. She herself had been in San Francisco on KT-day, and had not been so lucky. Her refuge had been a half-collapsed underground parking garage with a vending machine for almost two-weeks.
Although, the edge of a freezing cliff was definitely worse.
“We were lucky,” Shanna said, “Mr. Wilson had Maverick's plane in his shop.”
“Lucky, my ass,” Mr. Wilson said. “Lucky he crashed it, or it wouldn't have been there. That damn kid of mine has actually turned dumb-ass into a survival skill.”
Mr. Wilson had filched a pair of binoculars from the salvaged cargo and scanned the surrounding peaks and the canyons.
The trading bellows were echoing ever-closer.
But Mr. Wilson lowered the binoculars, shaking his head.
“I can't see anything,” he said. “But this is a pretty clustered range.”
“They sound close,” Rosa said.
“Maybe they'll pass,” Allison volunteered, hopefully.
But Shanna sighed.
“No. They won't.”
She looked back at them apologetically.
“I'm sorry. But it's me. They're coming for me.”
“Who is?” Rosa asked, hoping she didn't already know.
Shanna smiled, sadly.
“With Congo and Rex, it was personal,” she said. “But they were both the first of their genetic lines. I guess the animosity just seemed to bleed through.”
Her brow furrowed.
“Somehow, it's still over me.”
Shanna shut her eyes.
“I can feel them,” she said. “And just lately, it's like...”
But she was interrupted by another Gatling-gun blast of thunder.
The storm was upon them, and the rain came down in a sudden torrent, threatening to extinguish their fire. Mr. Wilson and Bud jumped up, throwing a tarp over the opening, even as the chopper rocked in the wind, tugging at the restraining vines that held it in place. Allison hugged her little bundle close, as Lucas began to sniffle and cry with the cold.
And amid the clouds breaching the mountains, and the trailing curtains of sheeted rain, the first towering shadows separated from the storm.
Chapter 41
“What the hell do you mean you're in space?” Kristie shouted into her radio. “And how the hell do you know my name?”
She could hear the sickle-claws one story below banging furiously at the door.
“My name is Major Tom Corbett,” the radio said. “I'm on the International Space Station, I've been picking up on your broadcasts for a year. And I've got a satellite camera on your location right now.”
“Ohhhh-kay, 'Major Tom',” Kristie said, looking uncomfortably out the window up at the sky, “I've actually got kind of a situation here.”
“I know, I'm zeroing in on your building. Wait just a second.”
There was a beep, as if he'd switched lines, and dead-air for thirty seconds until he came back on.
“You've got help coming,” he said.
Downstairs, the pounding on the door grew louder, and was now accompanied by a widening creak.
Kristie picked up her rifle, standing ready at the top of the stairs.
Then she heard the air-blast of a chopper passing low overhead, the sound of its engine seeming to trail a half-second later,
The chopper landed just outside the building. Within moments, there was the sound of gunfire and the squalling of sickle-claws.
Kristie looked out the window as troops fanned from the chopper, laying out a barrage of bullets, dropping the surrounding packs of clawed dromaeosaurs like ducks in a shooting gallery.
These were all big ones. The little talking lizards seemed to have vanished.
After thirty seconds and a lot of shooting, the path to her building was clear and Kristie heard the downstairs door being battered down.
Troops flooded the hall, guns up and drawn.
The leader turned his rifle sights up the stairs and found Kristie, who held up her hands, wide-eyed.
“You must be Kristie Morgan,” the soldier said. “I'm Lieutenant Dwayne Hicks, and you're going to need to come with us.”<
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But as he spoke, a large sickle-claw appeared at the door behind him, unerringly catching its prey in its one unguarded moment. Hicks brought his rifle up, even as his team turned towards the door.
The sickle-claw, however, never reached its target before Kristie shot a hole in its chest, blowing it back, just as the foot-claw slashed within six-inches of Hick's throat.
Hicks glanced up at Kristie as the creature twitched in death-spasms at his feet.
“You are definitely coming with us,” he said.
Hicks' radio scratched static, followed by Major Tom's voice.
“Did you get her?”
“Got her, sir,” Hicks replied. “We're moving onto the silos now.”
“Due north,” Tom said. “Satellite image shows empty grounds.”
Almost the moment he said it, another entire pack of sickle-claws materialized from the surrounding buildings.
“Oh for...” Hicks blurted as he dropped his radio, grabbing up his rifle.
There was another eruption of machine-gun fire, and Kristie could tell these troops understood the mobbing tactics employed by dromaeosaurs – they gave no quarter, spraying the clawed devils in a solid blanket of gunshots.
Hicks grabbed up his radio. “Does it still look clear?”
“Uh, no,” Major Tom responded. “Actually, now it looks like they're crawling out of cracks all over the base.”
Kristie was reminded of one of those old karate movies, after Bruce Lee single-handedly kills a hundred ninjas, but they just kept coming anyway, right down to the last man.
Sickle-claws were evil bastards on a good day, but Kristie had never seen them this aggressive.
And where were they all coming from? It was as if every last dromaeosaur in the territory was converging on the site.
Hicks and his team maintained a steady fire until the second attacking wave was chopped into carrion.
But even as the troops began to move across the grounds towards the silos, more of them began to appear at the perimeter.
A few came running in, only to be shot down, but most of the others held back, waiting for greater numbers to launch another mob attack.
As they reached the first of the silos, the squadron formed a perimeter, continuing to pick off individual sickle-claws as Hicks bent to access the entrance-key. After a moment, he cracked the lock and kicked open the door, filing in with his troops behind him.
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