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

There was a flash of lizard-like teeth and he realized they had one of those little sickle-clawed scavengers in a bird cage.  The thing hissed at him like a snake.

“What the hell is that?”

“Oh, that's Otto,” Terry said.

“You keep it as a pet?”

Terry twirled a finger around his temple.  “The old lady's a bit loony.”

The little lizard stared back at Jonah balefully.  Then, with a squawk to clear its throat, repeated back in an eerie duplicate of his own voice: “What the hell is that?”

Great, Jonah thought.  A myna-lizard.

Ariel gunned the van to life.

But then Jonah remembered the other two men, still lying unconscious in the clearing – he slapped Terry on the shoulder and pointed.  Naomi shot him a disapproving look, but Terry rattled the back of Ariel's seat.

“Wait!  We gotta get Brett and Rudy!”  He started out the side-door.

Ariel, however, had taken a look at the avalanche of monsters cascading down on top of them, and decided to hell with Brett and Rudy.  She floored the gas, nearly tumbling Terry out the door, if not for Jonah grabbing and pulling him back.

They tore out of the clearing not twenty seconds before the first of the giants touched down.

One of the men left behind – Jonah didn't know if it was Brett or Rudy – seemed to be recovering.  He sat up, shaking his head, confused, and looking after the retreating van.

A moment later, a massive sauropod foot came crashing down, obliterating the clearing, the chopper – pulping whatever was left of Brett and Rudy into nothing.

It was joined a moment later by the lead rex.

Jonah crooked his head, trying to see.

Beside him, the little lizard in the cage let loose another shrill, warbling shriek.

The rex's head cocked, and then poised as if scenting the air.

Then it turned and stared down at them with those glowing green eyes.

Jonah had read that T. rex had a highly sensitive nose – comparable to a turkey vulture – like a shark that could follow a trail of blood for miles.

Had it spotted them?  Or more properly, had it smelled them?

They were so small – it seemed ridiculous that they would represent prey.

Beside him, 'Otto' squawked again – in Terry's voice this time, learned through obvious repetition.  “Ohhhh shit.”

And even as the rest of the tyrannosaur-pack descended down from the mountain, tearing the dying sauropod apart in giant, glutenous mouthfuls, the lead rex turned away from the feast.

“Is that thing following us?” Naomi said, looking out the rear window.

Without waiting for confirmation, Ariel stomped the gas.

Behind them, in that false, avalanche-slow-motion, the rex was indeed coming after them.

It's stride covered forty meters in a step, crushing its way through hundred-foot trees in a headlong straight line.

A quarter mile ahead, was a tunnel where the highway led right through the base of the mountain.  Jonah knew the route – it emptied you out west of the coastal range on the far side.

But behind them, the rex was gaining.

And for whatever reason, perhaps just following the leader, the rest of the pack seemed to have joined in.

The rumble of the earth threatened to simply shake them right off the road.

A T. rex charged teeth-first – the view coming up from behind was a dozen or more open, gaping jaws – yawning, STRAINING after them.

Ahead, the tunnel was dark – no power to the lights – pitch black beyond the entrance.

Ariel sailed them Hail-Mary over the threshold even as the rex's jaws crashed into the rocks behind them.

The impact shook the entrance loose and the tunnel began to collapse.

“Oh, Ariel,” Terry began, but she cut him off, swearing.

“I said shut-up, asshole!”

“Asshole!” Otto repeated.

Terry glared at the little lizard.

There was another tremendous impact from behind and above.

Rocks were beginning to fall from the ceiling.

“The roof is collapsing,” Naomi said.  “How long is this tunnel?”

“Oh,” Terry said, looking out the window unhappily, “almost half-a-mile.”

There was utter blackness beyond the reach of the van's high-beams – in the dark of night, they couldn't even see the exit.

Another blow shook the rocks above, as if the rex was actually attacking the mountain itself.  And now it felt as if the rest of the pack had joined the assault.

The rubble started falling faster, striking their roof, cracking the windshield.

Ariel simply gunned the accelerator, on blind faith that the road ahead was clear.

The tunnel seemed to groan.

A second later, it began to fall in upon itself.

Ariel shot the van out the other side, just as the collapsing rock filled the tunnel behind them.

The road almost immediately veered into a tight turn and the van squirreled the corner.  Ariel wrestled for control.

Dust belched from the ruined mouth of the tunnel.

And echoing from over the peak, the bellows of the angry beasts raged like thunder – a living tsunami checked and stymied by the mountain.

And lest even the mountain not be enough to stop it, Ariel didn't slow, following the winding road as it led back up into the highlands.

Chapter 19

It was nineteen days in, when Major Tom finally received communication from below – as if some back-up system somewhere, had finally come on-line.

A shrill, piercing whine had sounded in his ear as a hundred frequencies suddenly battled all at once.  Wincing, Tom had grabbed for the volume.

Oddly, he couldn't pinpoint the location of the active station – at first, he'd thought it was Eureka, but his instruments showed that still dark.

He had actually given up trying – either communications were down for good, or no one living remembered or cared if he was up there.

The digital age, he thought – there was so much there to be lost – technology