Kingdom of Monsters

by John Lee Schneider

  “General,” Tom said, “if you can't nuke it, you're going to have to evacuate.”

  “We've got personnel in the area,” Rhodes said. He turned to Sally. “Get Hicks on. Tell Johnson's search crews I know where our chopper went down.”

  “Sir?” Tom interrupted. “I'm sorry, but I have to tell you, I don't have much time. They've turned off my life-support.”

  Rhodes paused his pacing.

  “Son,” he said, “we've got a human race to save. I need you to hold out as long as you can.”

  “That won't be long, sir. And I have to make sure the ISS goes down before that, or it gets left in their hands.”

  Rhodes resumed his march.

  “Understood,” he said. “Do what you have to do, son. But remember, there's not a lot of the world left to spare.”

  Rhodes turned to Sally. “Where's Travis?”

  “He hasn't reported in yet, sir.”

  “Oh, for Christ's...”

  Rhodes stopped himself. It wasn't the first bit of temper Sally had seen from him, but it was one of very few. He reigned it in immediately.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don't know, sir. His line's active, and he checked in earlier, but now there's no response.”

  Rhodes was silent.

  Too much of a coincidence.

  “There isn't time,” Dr. Shriver volunteered, “to evacuate the Mount. Should we perhaps start securing essential personnel?”

  Rhodes smiled thinly. “I think essential personnel will remain essential for the mission at hand,” he said.

  “Still no response from Major Travis, sir,” Sally said.

  “Alright then,” he said. “We'll have to send in what we've got. Napalm and conventional missiles.”

  “None of that ever worked before,” Shriver said.

  Rhodes frowned, but didn't answer.

  Sally knew why. Rhodes would go down fighting.

  In its way, it was the ultimate optimism – he would keep trying to win.

  Sally had seen a cartoon once – a frog reaching its hands out of a pelican's mouth, choking the bird's throat, with the caption, 'It ain't over, 'till it's over'.

  But Sally also understood futility.

  If this bloom spread, if it really threatened to overtake the Mount, would he run?

  Would he let his people run? Sally found herself wondering if she was 'essential personnel' who would be sticking it out to the last.

  Now Rhodes stopped his endless pacing, and finally sat down at his desk.

  He smacked the speaker phone, as if that would make it answer, hitting Major Travis' line.

  “This is General Rhodes,” he said, in a tone that sounded to Sally frighteningly close to despair. “Come in. For God's sake, is anyone there?”

  And then, almost like the voice of an angel, someone answered.

  “Hey there, General,” a woman's voice said, “my name's Naomi. How can I help you today?”

  Chapter 45

  Tyrannosaurus rex – Tyrant Lizard King – named sixty-five million years after its extinction.

  Resurrected and monstrously distorted, the rogue stood perched at the edge of the canyon, framed in the strobing flashes of electric light, the thunder announcing his arrival in a drumroll.

  Josie and the pussycats galloped up beside him, shaking the ground beneath their feet.

  Their eyes glowed green, reflecting back the lightning with an energy all its own.

  The rogue peered through the storm, its eagle-like acuity picking out the surrounding peaks.

  Shanna was up there somewhere, just ahead, perhaps looking down, even now.

  The rogue could feel her, a light he couldn't even see.

  His flock sensed it too, along with all the other heightened sensory input that seemed to accompany this strange energy pulsing through their veins.

  But now the rogue growled.

  Because he could sense the others as well – and even if he hadn't, their scent would have come to him on the wind.

  The apes. In his own primitive way, the rogue understood they were following the same star.

  T. rex didn't think. If the rex had a goal, he would advance on it – if he had a rival, he would attack it. More than anything, a rex followed its nose, and acted instinctively to the sensory input. It was all very cause/effect.

  The rex had never heard of Congo – or any of the ape-clan, yet something beyond his eyes and ears sensed their presence, and seemed to share in Shanna's light.

  And with the dog-like jealousy of a T. rex, those same instinctual reactions perceived a competitor and a rival.

  Simple cause/effect – a chain-reaction – the path they followed was like a fuse leading up to the moment when they would finally come face-to-face – two marching clans of twenty-thousand-ton bombs.

  And somewhere in the background, the rex still felt that little sting in the sinus – that psychic stench.

  A T. rex would walk through fire to step on an Otto.

  Perhaps it was a testament of sorts that the rogue instead decided to follow the light.

  Josie and the pussycats filed into step beside him.

  The earth trembled in homage.

  Their star was just ahead somewhere, hidden by the clouds and the storm.

  Chapter 46

  Caesar could not be in a bigger hurry to leave these mountains.

  Besides the blow stirring up, the freezing, torrential rain, and the lightning strikes, he could hear the bellows of giant rage-infected T. rex echoing through the canyons.

  And if he couldn't hear them, he knew they were there anyway.

  Whatever empathic link that tied them to Shanna also made them aware of each other.

  He also knew the infected giants were not the only T. rex in the area.

  But Caesar could evade the giants. More problematic was the presence of at least a small pack of normals prowling about somewhere right up here on the mountain.

  Even a normal-sized average adult Tyrannosaurus outweighed him. Then to have three or four of them?

  Naturally, he had to come alone, the stoic leader, delivering strict orders that his tribe stay as far away as possible.

  In retrospect, Caesar might have felt a little better to have Cornelius or Zaius at his side just about now.

  The little rex chasing that human had snapped at his finger like an angry turtle. A pack of adults would attack him on sight.

  Caesar would have been happy to keep his distance. Unfortunately, he knew he couldn't expect the same from a rex – they just hadn't evolved that far. Tolerance wasn't a necessary quality in a super-predator.

  But more than that, it wasn't even really about conscious decision. T. rex simply followed an impulse – a very basic shine. Tyrannosaurs were very advanced for their era, having evolved pair-bonding, and the rudimentary emotional ties that go with it.

  But they didn't think. Most often, they simply followed their nose.

  Or in this case, they followed their shine, no different than a moth to light.

  Caesar supposed he was no different, other than perhaps the self-awareness of it.

  He knew perfectly well why he was on the mountain, enduring the storm, braving the thunder and lightning.

  Shanna was up there somewhere – she was hurt, and he could feel her pain.

  Knowing that, Caesar presumed the rex did too.

  At the very least, that would make them protective and edgy.

  And for better or worse, bringing up the rear, not much further distant, Caesar knew Brutus was bumbling his big, stupid way, right behind.

  A testosterone-bloated moron to begin with, Caesar shuddered at the thought of Brutus in the later stage-infection of the Food of the Gods.

  He could already hear the echoing bellows trading back and forth, like marching war-horns, leading an incursion.

  Brutus was clearly intending to meet the rogue rex and his pack head-on.

  Caesar would very much like to be off this mountain before tha
t happened.

  Shanna was not far ahead. Caesar had nearly reached the peak, and he could see a trundle of smoke billowing not half-a-mile away. If he moved quickly, there should be no need for confrontation of any kind.

  The big ape stepped out of the trees into the open and was greeted by a lashing of lightning and thunder.

  And standing in the path, directly in front of him, was the human who had shot him.

  Mark turned, greeted by the sight of the giant ape framed in the electric backdrop of the storm.

  In a flash, he brought his rifle to his shoulder.

  Caesar had to hand it to the hapless hominid – he had fast reflexes.

  At this close range, Caesar found himself looking at a likely head-shot. Unless he could squash him first.

  Mark, for his part, didn't seem all that confident in the stopping power of his weapon, holding off on the trigger until there was no choice.

  Caesar raised his arms. Mark tensed on the trigger.

  The big ape's vocal-cords struggled, as he held open his hands.

  “Shaahh-Naahh,” Caesar growled.

  Mark lowered his gun, staring up disbelievingly.

  “Shaahh-Naahh? Who the hell is Shaahh-Naahh?”

  “Actually,” a voice said from behind them, “she's over here.”

  Caesar turned to see four more humans – two of them soldiers, all with guns – separating from the brush.

  The two soldiers raised their own weapons, but the human who had spoken waved his hand.

  “Hold it,” he said, stepping in front of their line of fire. He also nodded to Mark, who had already lowered his rifle, before walking up to Caesar as if to shake the big ape's hand.

  “You understand what I'm saying, right?”

  Caesar made the international sign-language gesture for 'yes', but the group of humans looked at him blankly. With a grunting sigh, he simply held two fingers together in the okay-sign, while nodding his head.

  “I don't believe I'm seeing this,” one of the soldiers muttered.

  Caesar rose to his full height.

  “Shaahh-Naahh!” he insisted.

  “That's right,” Cameron said. “Shanna.”

  He pointed back the direction they had come.

  “Can you help us?” he said.

  Caesar again held up the okay.

  Without waiting, Caesar began loping up the path towards the peak, leaving the humans to hurry along behind.

  There was more than a storm on the horizon, and they didn't have much time.

  Chapter 47

  “A bunch of T. rex destroyed your base, General,” Naomi said.

  There was a long pause from the radio.

  “And who might you be, Naomi?” Rhodes asked.

  “Civilians onsite, sir,” Naomi said. She glanced at Jonah. “Two of us.”

  “Where's Major Travis?”

  “He's dead, sir,” Naomi replied. “Everybody's dead.”

  There was a longer pause.

  When Rhodes responded, his voice reflected a cut-your-losses calm.

  “Okay,” he said. “Naomi. Here's the situation. The largest bloom ever recorded has just sprouted, and if we can't stop it with a nuke, it is positioned to wipe-out the single largest surviving population of human beings left on the planet, along with the bulk of our remaining military assets.”

  Rhodes gave this a moment to settle.

  “You,” he continued, “are sitting at the site of the only non-corrupted nuclear asset left at our disposal. And you're telling me there's not one living pilot left on that base?”

  Naomi turned and looked at Jonah.

  “Oh God,” she said. “Maybe.”

  Jonah's eyes widened.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I can't fly a fighter jet.”

  “Maybe?” Rhodes prodded. “Ma'am, I'm gonna need a little better than maybe.”

  Naomi handed Jonah the radio.

  “You tell him,” she said.

  Frowning, Jonah grabbed up the speaker.

  “My name's Jonah Kirkland, General. I'm a goddamn river-guide pilot. I've never flown anything like this in my life.”

  “Fair enough,” Rhodes said. “Just letting you know what the stakes are, son. In case you missed it, the world already ended. Maybe you can keep our whole species from going out forever. Or maybe you can't. Maybe you'd just be giving your life up trying.

  “It might even be,” he said, “that you'll be safe out there. At least for a while. But I can assure you from the highest level, the apocalypse will finally come for you. This is an enemy that does not take prisoners.”

  Jonah shut his eyes. At this point, they all knew that enemy.

  A parrot-talking little ghoul – a scaly little rat that called itself Otto.

  God, he hated those little bastards.

  “What are you made of, son?” Rhodes asked. “What do you want your life to mean?”

  Jonah could feel Naomi's eyes on him.

  The General was right on both counts. They would be safe here.

  But sooner or later, the final purge would come.

  Without opening his eyes, he clicked the radio.

  “I'll do it.”

  Without missing a beat, Rhodes read off the mission perimeters – payload, coordinates, airspeed, firing mechanisms – all of which Naomi jotted down while Jonah sat rubbing his temple.

  “God bless, son,” Rhodes said.

  Naomi took the mic.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, clicking off. She popped a new clip in her pistol.

  “We've still got to get to the runway,” she said.

  “Assuming the planes are still there,” Jonah muttered unhappily, following her back out onto the street.

  The runway was perched over the cliff at the very back of the compound, and actually hadn't been touched.

  On the other hand, that meant crossing the main grounds, right past what were still at least two live T. rex.

  It seemed Jughead might have died – as if in sudden exhaustion, the teen rex had abruptly lain down his head, and there was a thick bubbling as labored breathing through bullet-holes rasped to a stop.

  Archie still sat in a near trance, panting like a winded dog, lost in the pain of his injuries, the last sickle-claw's' legs still dangling from his jaws.

  Rudy just sat silent, perhaps dozing... or perhaps eyeing them through that catlike slit in his eye.

  If he decided to move, the big rex could be on them in a few steps.

  That was assuming there were no more sickle-claws waiting in ambush.

  And they knew there was still a troop of Ottos skulking about. That was undoubtedly why the tyrannosaurs still remained, waiting them out like cats outside their hole.

  After a moment, Naomi stepped out into the open, her eye on Rudy, and began skirting her way past.

  Mouthing silent curses, Jonah followed.

  Rudy's slitted eyes were like a portrait's that just seemed to follow you.

  Naomi glanced back impatiently, motioning Jonah to hurry.

  Jonah found himself shaking his head, not for the first, but perhaps for the last time.

  He just wasn't built for her speed. There was a fearlessness there he just couldn't relate to.

  Jonah doubted Lieutenant Lucas Walker would have been trailing along behind her.

  No – he actually knew exactly what Lucas Walker would have done – he would have gotten in that plane and saved the day, even at the cost of his life. He would have been a hero.

  Would? Had. Did.

  But he'd already given his life last time. Someone else had to step up.

  The base had been on alert – the jets had been prepped for this very mission.

  Two F-16s were parked on the runway, missiles already loaded.

  The hatch was open and waiting, as if inviting him into his own coffin.

  As he climbed into the cockpit, Naomi crawled into the seat behind him.

  “What do you think you're doing?”

  Na
omi strapped herself in.

  “You think I'm getting left behind here? I'm going with you.”

  “Of course you are,” Jonah said. “We're going to crash, you know.”

  Naomi sat back.

  “Who knows?” she said. “You might pull it off. You haven't killed us yet.”

  Jonah supposed that was faith of sorts.

  “Not yet,” he agreed.

  “Besides,” she finished, “you're going to need all the help you can get.”

  Jonah strapped himself in. It took him another minute to figure out how to close the hatch.

  His hand literally trembled as he ran his hand over the controls.

  As he did so, he caught skittering movement just outside.

  “Jonah,” Naomi said. “Look.”

  Scampering like three scaly gremlins along the wing of the second jet, also waiting prepped beside them, was that last little troop of Ottos.

  They bounced into the cockpit. A second later, the hatch started to come down.

  “That plane,” Naomi said, “is loaded with a nuke.”

  Jonah shook his head.

  “You can't possibly believe those little lizards can start that thing...”

  The jets fired.

  Jonah jumped at the sudden roar.

  A roar that was answered a second later as Rudy was suddenly on his feet and moving towards them, jaws agape.

  Archie started awake as well, clambering upright, his wounds suddenly forgotten.

  “Oh shit, Jonah...!” Naomi blurted.

  Jonah lit up his own jets. The roar and sudden burst of power was right up there with the most terrifying moments of his life.

  Beside them, Otto's jet launched off the runway, arching into the sky.

  With Rudy bearing down upon them, Jonah launched.

  Naomi screamed aloud as the big teen T. rex' jaws smashed shut not a yard from their tail, while Jonah skidded them off the edge of the runway like a stunt-car leaping off a bridge, before arcing upwards in a struggling, wobbling climb, leaving the frustrated tyrannosaur roaring and stamping his feet on the tarmac behind them.

  Jonah was nearly screaming himself, cussing a blue streak, as he wrestled the joystick, fighting to pull them out of the sheer climb.

  Battling centrifugal force, Jonah strained until they bent into a gradual arc, and finally leveled out.