Age of Monsters by John Schneider (a book to read txt) 📕

had created the lush environment of the Cretaceous, and the resulting giants lived off the increased biomass.

Which was also why an environment where the most plentiful giants were predators was an ecological anomaly.

While the Earth had produced animals over a hundred tons before, these had generally been herbivores.  Giant carnivores like T. rex had topped out around ten tons – it was a simple matter of ratios – a predator population couldn't outgrow the food source that sustained it – and where herbivores lacked size, they existed in large numbers.

Meat-eaters were not, however, limited by biomechanics – there was no reason a theropod couldn't attain such titanic sizes – provided the necessary energy to sustain it.

The Food of the Gods solved that.

And if saving the world had been its stated goal, it was safe to say it had been radically re-purposed.

Because as near as Tom could tell, it had destroyed it.

And it was not over.

The Apocalypse came in waves.

Over the ten days since detonation, the initial violence had abruptly calmed, as the chemical ran its inevitable cycle and the infected animals simply died – and at the onset, the Food of the Gods seemed to have manifested almost exclusively in the cities.  Computer simulations clearly showed the bloom of infection – in time-lapse, it rather resembled the explosion of tactical nukes – spreading outward, playing out, in real-world time, for days and weeks instead of seconds.

What happened in the cities, however, was only the final manifestation of a much larger infestation – because there were also the uninfected animals – what the literature referred to as 'normals' – and, out in the sticks, they seemed to be everywhere.

And there were a hell of a lot more monsters out there than just T. rex.

While Tom's role was intended as a gatherer rather than an analyzer of information, that still gave him clearance to high-level chatter – including the initial breakdown provided for the troops – simple procedure to prepare them for what they were facing.

Once he'd accessed those files, Tom had found himself simply astounded.

He remembered the 'myths' of 'Monster Island' – always one of the more unlikely of urban legends.

But even for a conspiracy-theorist, this was delusional madness.

The write-ups were very detailed – very concise – and all in plain-text, military dead-pan.

The creatures had been given code-names – and 'Big Rex' was just one entry out of several pages – there were a dozen species of carnosaur, alone, including the big Carcharodonts – code named 'Shark Tooth'.

But there were also sauropods, ceratopsians – as well as listings for sharks, plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, mosasaurs – a whole bestiary.

In its own way, the groupings were very orderly – rather like putting together a zoo – or more accurately, a preserve, filling in artificial niches – even down to those skittering little sickle-clawed scavengers – top-predator down to cockroach.

And very much like dead elephants on the Savannah, the carcasses of giants didn't last long – and just like on the Nile, what was left always made it into the river, where scavenging lions gave way to crocs.

San Francisco harbor was crowded with massive floating bodies, branching out into the ocean.

God only knew what critters might be lurking off shore.  The breadth of monsters undersea dwarfed those on land.

He'd already seen one boat taken by a giant shark – likely a Megalodon.  That meant they were out there – just waiting to chow down all that infected carrion – just like a pack of Great Whites after a dead whale.

The pattern had already begun to repeat, world-wide.

Once the giants died, they were devoured – and a new infection bloomed.

It explained why the infected organisms tended to be predatory species.

The chemical was introduced through ingestion – it was simply too potent for direct injection.

As it played out on the ground, observation confirmed the literature – it only seemed to affect genetically-engineered animals, as if some key ingredient in their creation was somehow absent in natural life forms – and the higher the dosage, the more rapid the effect.

The balance point where it killed the organism varied from individual to individual – a rex that gorged itself on a whole carcass would obviously be affected faster.

As it was presented in the official intelligence report, “In cases of ingestion, the growth effect takes a period of weeks, with the rate of the effect directly influenced by the amount consumed.  One could speculate on what effect direct injection might have.”

Tom looked down at the screen, re-reading the paragraph – all printed in that same deliberate deadpan.

'Speculate'.

He glanced at his other screens – all playing and replaying devastation and smoking ruin.

Yes, he thought, one could indeed speculate.

Sitting up there, quietly in space, floating before his computer screen like a feather – there was not a hell of a lot else he could do.

And better to speculate on what was happening on Earth rather than on his own possible alternate futures – not a one that Tom could think of where the carnage below left any possible way for him to get back home.

Assuming, of course, home still existed.

So he read his files, he ran his simulations, and he searched for patterns.

On the third day, he found one.

During the heart of the initial blitz – in all the cities – something had abruptly changed.

Three days in, and suddenly there were factions.  The beasts had turned on each other.

Nor was this random – the battle-lines seemed to have broken down into pack-warfare.

Which was strange, Tom thought, if the mental deterioration was like rabies.

A closer look, however, suggested there was something more at work than just the Food of the Gods – something more basic.

Carnosaurs and tyrannosaurs would naturally be at odds – placed into the same geography,