Brutus knew they were fighting to the end. Perhaps it was even a blessing, as the cycle of madness need not run its course.
And he knew he had given Shanna her window – a chance to get away.
That's what he was good for.
The rogue knew none of this. It had followed a light. Now it was being attacked. All its actions were cause/effect.
It would fight to the end, because that was all it knew to do.
And so it stood beside Brutus, the two of them framed in the storming electric light-show, staring down from the mountain of their slaughtered foes, daring ever more.
Brutus glanced at his impromptu ally – only a short while before, the rogue had been at his own throat.
Now he prepared to die fighting beside him.
They turned together to face the horde...
… even as somewhere in the sky above, there came the roaring sound of twin jet engines approaching fast.
Chapter 56
“There's our ride,” Garner shouted, as he waved at the chopper.
His radio barked alive. Captain Johnson's voice.
“Anyone left alive down there, Garner?”
“Not if you don't get us the hell out of here,” Garner shouted back.
From the chopper above, gunfire erupted.
Trix roared in outrage as bullets dotted her hide. Caesar growled, covering up.
“Hold your fire, goddamn it,” Garner yelled into his radio.
Johnson's voice coming back was incredulous.
“Are you kidding?”
“Shoot the sickle-claws,” Garner shouted back. “Leave the big ape and the tyrannosaurs alone.”
With more directed fire, the chopper was able to clear a path to land.
Garner and Wilkes both waved. “Let's go!”
Ducking under the still-spinning rotors, Allison climbed on board, clutching Lucas, followed by Bud and Mr. Wilson.
Still exchanging gunshots, Mark glanced at Maverick.
“Maybe this is a bad time to mention this, but I'd really rather not end up in military custody.”
Maverick glanced up at the chopper, eyeing the pilot and the soldiers helping the others on-board.
“Don't worry about it,” he said, pulling another shot.
Rosa climbed aboard, reaching for Shanna as Cameron carried her on one shoulder. But Shanna stopped, turning to Caesar, even as the big ape cleared the way, waving his broken tree trunk at any encroaching sickle-claws that remained.
Caesar glanced over his shoulder.
In that same growly voice, he said, “Go-ohhh. Ru-uhh-nnn.”
Shanna turned to the canyons, where Brutus and the rogue faced-off Otto's advancing army.
It didn't matter for them. They were already under a death-sentence.
Shanna turned, climbing on-board. Cameron hopped up behind her. Then Maverick and Mark, as the craft lifted into the air, buffeting in the heavy crosswind.
Caesar stared up after the departing chopper as it was carried away in the storm.
Beside him, Trix and Velma and the other two pussycats stared up as well.
And somewhere over the buzz of rotor blades, the crash and bash of the storm, and the battle yet raging in the canyons below, Caesar's sensitive ear picked up the sound of a jet engine.
Turning to the west, he saw approaching twin flares.
Shanna was safe and away. It was time to get the hell off this mountain.
And as if it was an option, he somehow felt he couldn't leave Trix behind.
As the rex pack's attention focused on their fading star, Caesar turned and bounced his broken tree trunk off Trix' broad nose.
Then he turned and ran for the hills, with the furious rex pack hot on his heels.
Chapter 57
The two F-16s spun together as they charged into the billowing black clouds.
Jonah didn't know where that goddamned lizard learned to fly, but he was a sight better at it than he was.
He could see them in the cockpit as the twin jet made sweeping passes like a hawk. Jonah wasn't even sure which one of them was flying – maybe they all were – they danced in the pilot's seat like monkeys.
“He's coming in again!” Naomi shouted as the F-16 dogged their tail like a thing alive, alternating between trying to shoot them down, and driving them into the flocks of pursuing pterosaurs – some of the infected giants with wingspans reaching four-hundred feet or better.
An F-16 could handily beat even an infected giant's top air-speed, but they were swarming out of the trees, all along their path, threatening to cut in front of them. To avoid the seemingly suicidal mobbing pterosaurs, Jonah was discovering the fighter's full-range of capabilities.
He had met a few fighter pilots while gaining his own license, and had watched them run their exercises. Never once had he the slightest urge to try it – it was terrifying to watch from the ground.
Jonah wondered if Naomi was as scared as he was. She had shrieked at their initial take-off, but had manned the rear cockpit mostly with open eyes.
“Watch it!” Naomi shouted into his headset.
Otto's plane twisted acrobatically, this time bee-lining physically right at them, apparently happy to crash them both.
Which caused Jonah to wonder about the nuke on Otto's own wing. He knew they weren't supposed to go off in a crash, or even an explosion, but it didn't seem prudent to test it.
Otto sure didn't seem concerned.
And as they flew into the heart of the storm, and visibility quickly dropped, it was harder to see them coming – not to mention the giant pterosaurs.
That was another thing – you never saw pterosaurs, or birds for that matter, out in harsh weather – yet the flocks of flying dragons hung doggedly on their tail, no matter how many of them were battered down by the winds, or electrocuted by lightning strikes, or simply drowned in mid-air – and they had to be flying blind.
Jonah sure was. The artificial horizon blinked on the screen like an arcade-game.
Their target was twenty-miles ahead – he was firing by virtual line-of-sight at a target he wouldn't even be able to see.
Although, he supposed close counted in nukes and horseshoes.
They had the coordinates entered into the artificial horizon.
For all Jonah knew, he might as well shut it off and use the Force.
Above and to the rear, Otto's jet broke through the clouds, like a hawk.
“He's getting behind us,” Naomi shouted into his ear.
The warning came just as bullets riddled their right wing. Jonah spun them off before the engine was hit.
But the pursuing jet was on their tail in seconds. Jonah was waiting for the shots when the radio suddenly blared in his ear.
“Rhodes wants an update,” Naomi said, grabbing up the radio. “We're a little busy, General,” she said into the mic.
Rhodes wasn't feeling patient.
“Where the hell are you? What the hell is going on?”
“Coming up on our target, sir,” Naomi replied, with even less patience. “And right now we're being attacked by lizards in an F-16, and giant flying dragons, so can we call you back?”
As terrified as he was, Jonah almost snickered over that one.
Rhodes was silent a moment, and Jonah could almost hear him steaming.
Nevertheless, his voice was steady.
“We're counting on you.”
Naomi clicked off, turning to look as Otto moved in again.
Jonah glanced over his shoulder – they were in gun-range.
“Well,” Jonah said, “saw this in a movie once. Hit the brakes and they'll fly right by.”
Jonah turned the flaps, jerking them upright as if they'd hit a wall, at the very moment Otto opened fire.
Bullets riddled the wing again, but the pursuing jet overshot, and went sailing past.
“Son of a bitch,” Jonah said, with Otto now in his sights. “It worked.”
As he opened up his guns, he wondered again
about the nuclear payload.
Oh well – it shouldn't go off.
Jonah's bullets caught Otto's engines and the plane exploded.
The wreckage went spinning earthward, disappearing quickly in the storming clouds.
Now, that just left every bat-winged monster out of hell.
At this point, only the infected giants were successfully battling the storm.
“We've got a big one on our tail,” Naomi said.
Jonah glanced over his shoulder as the massive shadow descended down like a winged-dreadnought. He could see the glowing green eyes through the storm.
They were nearing firing range – their target, the expanse of valley beyond the highest peak.
On their starboard, the bullet-riddled engine flamed out.
“Jonah...” Naomi began.
“I know," he said, already feeling the F-16 slipping out of his control
Jonah fired.
This missile streaked away, leaving a tracer-trail through the clouds.
Jonah veered off.
That's when the giant pterosaur caught them, on the curve – just barely catching their wing with its snapping beak.
The engine was ripped loose.
They were soaring in free-fall as the nuclear cloud mushroomed on the horizon, for a single moment more powerful than the storm.
And then the blast wave came, blowing the clouds along with it.
Jonah felt the wave hit them and the jet was sent spinning.
Then Naomi screamed in his ear.
“Jonah!”
The pterosaur was coming in again, riding the wave, its jaws outstretched, and Jonah saw that it was going to reach them.
He hit eject.
The hatch blew and both their seats fired into the air just as the giant beak smashed into the fuselage. The F-16 exploded.
Naomi's automatic chute opened, immediately catching in the buffeting wind.
Above her, she saw the pterosaur arcing away, spitting out smoking pieces of jet.
Below, she saw Jonah's chute open, spinning in the gale like a seed-leaf.
He hung limp in his harness, his face covered in blood.
Naomi called his name as they were carried into the storm.
Chapter 58
Brutus saw the missile sailing past overhead. He was probably the only one left alive on this side of the mountain who knew what it meant.
Oblivious, Otto's inexorable marching army had begun to pile upon itself as they crowded into the wall of corpses, until they were starting to flood their way over the top like gigantic swarming insects.
The rogue stubbornly held its ground. It perceived the missile as clearly as Brutus, even registered it as a potential threat like one of the sky beasts, but dismissed it quickly once it passed on, arcing past the edge of the canyons where the invading army's true numbers lay.
The rex also sensed Shanna's fading aura, and perhaps some part of it perceived that this battle was on her behalf.
When the blast came, the rogue was still at the top of the hill, still swinging, still king under the mountain – for a rex, that was enough.
Brutus paused right at the last, watching the dark, storming horizon in the moments after the missile passed out of sight.
Then there was the flash of light – a sense of warmth and wind.
He felt no pain.
Chapter 59
Major Tom saw the nuke from space.
Then the lights in the ISS went out.
It was not a complete power-cut – computer screens still blinked, but the heat was dropping fast. He had minutes.
He had already gathered several hydrogen tanks and had gone module by module, setting them on slow release, propping the sealing doors open with pieces of machinery. The last one he planned to set near the orbit-stabilizer engine at the far end of the station, one module over from the nearest lifeboat.
Then start a fire – that should do it. He had a butane torch ready.
He'd already covered the Japanese and American sections of the station.
The hard part was going to be getting to the rear engine at the far end of the Russian modules.
The two Ottos who'd escaped were skulking somewhere on the other side of that sealed door, somewhere along the tunneled path to both those modules.
He didn't even know how many of them there really were. They were small enough to hide in the walls or inside pipes, and they had gotten into the electrical, for sure.
Tom had been doing a last minute search of each module on the security monitor when the lights shut off.
His monitor blinked and the screen was suddenly filled with the faces of toothy gremlins – definitely more than two – small, but with big claws.
And now he was going to have to get past them in the dark.
The compartments behind him should be full-up with gas. Catching a quick breath, he opened the rear of the module, while slipping out and sealing the front hatch behind him.
Tapping the wall console, he programmed a five-minute reset on the air-lock.
Then he turned, shining his light down the dark corridor as he tapped his way cautiously along the walls, the last gas tank held out weightlessly in front of him, like a cameraman underwater.
He passed over the first of the lifeboats on the way to the engine, and was sorely tempted to just drop below and abandon ship. But if the remaining components simply broke away as the gas lit, the independent modules could quite possibly survive.
As Tom shined his light down the dark corridor, he saw the connecting airlocks between each section were all open.
The little bastards were waiting for him somewhere.
On the walls, all the little blinking lights looked like eyes reflecting in his flashlight.
He pushed through the first module, over the second lifeboat hatch, and into the rear component connected to the engine.
That was when they came at him in the dark.
His light-beam caught the flash of claws as they went for his eyes, slashing at his face. Tom spun, swatting with the flashlight, and then he turned on the torch.
A burst of flame shot out, illuminating the compartment, and barbecuing one of the little bastards like a crow on a power-line. He fired a torch-blast after the others, who scattered. He kept the flame on until they retreated the module.
He waited another moment before moving on. He couldn't let the torch run empty, and he couldn't use it once he set the gas – unless Otto forced this into a suicide mission, and that hadn't been decided, yet.
Tom turned on the gas, letting the canister spin slowly, as he reset the door behind him.
Now right above the first of the lifeboats, he turned the torch on the walls, lighting the insulation, before spreading it to the counters and equipment – anything that would burn.
They were waiting for him as he started down the hatch to the first lifeboat.
In the dark, it was hard to tell how many – he felt their claws digging his chest and arms as he covered his face.
The tight-quarters, however, gave Tom the advantage, provided he was willing to bleed. He braced against the walls and started kicking and thrashing, crushing the seagull-sized lizards with sheer physical strength. Then he fired another blast from the torch, this time down the hatch as the Ottos fled into the escape pod.
Leaving the flame on, Tom wedged the torch in the lifeboat's air-lock as it automatically tried to close, preventing it from sealing, and flooding the compartment in fire. The trapped Ottos screamed.
Pushing back up into the main module, Tom pulled himself over the second lifeboat.
The door to the Destiny module would be resetting soon, opening and flooding the rest of the station in gas – a touch of flame would be all that was needed.
There were more of the lizards waiting for him in the cargo-block as he made his way to the second lifeboat. They pushed off the walls, coming at him, claws outstretched. Tom batted them away with the flashlight, grabbing hold of one that latched onto
his leg and simply breaking its neck like a chicken's.
As he slid down the hatch into the second remaining lifeboat, he again felt their claws in the dark.
Taking the cuts, he crushed them against the walls, seeing droplets of his own blood floating in the air like soap bubbles, reflected in the flashlight's beam, even as he bludgeoned the scaly little rats back and forth.
Tom heard the seal to the Destiny module reset and slide open. In another moment, the rest of the air-locks throughout the station would follow.
There was a poof of wind as the gas caught, igniting an explosion of fire from above. There was the squealing warble from the lizards.
Tom pushed back into the lifeboat, still choking one of the little bastards in one hand, as he sealed the hatch behind him and pressed the emergency launch.
The lifeboat fell away from the station as each compartment first exploded into flame, rupturing, and then imploding.
As the module above him lit up, Tom thought he might have been a bit too late.
The hatchway behind the sealed pod-door burst at the very moment the pod broke away, and the lifeboat went spinning, its control board going haywire with the abruptly broken contact.
Tom looked out the window as the ISS finished destroying itself.
In his hand, that last little Otto twitched.
Slow and deliberate, Tom twisted its neck until it snapped.
“Bastard,” he muttered.
He shut his eyes, waiting for the life-pod to right itself.
After an excruciatingly long several minutes, the computer reset and the craft straightened out.
The life-pod was now poised over the planet below.
Tom wondered what might yet be waiting.
How many apocalypse-events did one world need?
The lifeboat began its slow tumble to Earth.
Chapter 60
Rosa didn't think they were going to make it – the winds were too strong.
The pilot strained at the joystick, keeping them on a steady climb, but Rosa could feel the crosswinds trying to flip them completely over.
The soldiers clung to their seats alongside the passengers, their part of the mission accomplished, now just praying with the rest of them that the pilot could pull off his.
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