Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

And if it could be depended upon, it could be factored and used.

The troop of Ottos began hooting softly, mimicking the bird-calls in the surrounding forests, not drawing undue attention yet.

But it was not long before the calls were answered by a rustling in the brush.

Sickle-claws from all the surrounding areas had been drawn in, just for the occasion.

Just as Congo and the rex responded to the lady, the sickle-claws and the meaner, more primitive beasts, responded to the lizard.

The dromaeosaur-packs remained just out of sight.

Over the last hour, they had systematically eliminated all the guards and sentries along the road leading to the prison, as well as the border fence.

Acting in the trained-dog fashion they always did in Otto's presence, they also took out the security cameras that lined the perimeter.

Thus there was not the early warning there might have been when Rudy and the JV squad separated from the forest and began making their way up the now-unguarded road.

Otto and the sickle-claws began flocking as a group through the perimeter fence, ducking between, over and under the gates, flooding all at once into the humans' compound.

Reliably enough, Rudy and the JV squad would be following along behind.

They could be trusted to charge through machine-gun fire for the chance to stomp a single Otto flat.

Had the fire separated them to the other side of the mountain, the JV pack might have been part of the exodus with Trix and the others, following Shanna's empathic light, but on this side of the mountains, the most poisonous, acrid smell was them – that foul sting in the sinus.

The rex pack knew the humans were up there too, and were quite aware the troublesome hominids were capable of inflicting a lot of pain.

Not that it mattered.  A Triceratops could dish out a lot of pain – a T. rex, like Rudy, was used to tolerating pain.

The only thing he wasn't prepared to tolerate was that scaly little rat-bastard breathing his air, and too bad for anything standing in his way.

Chapter 18

Rosa could hardly believe they were alive.  She also had to hand it to Maverick, who had utterly no shame in taking credit for what she judged to be almost blind luck.

Two things had saved them, the first being their mangled landing gear tangling with the vegetation, which served to check their fall into half-a-dozen broken lurches.

More significantly, the cliff had broken off in layers, and stair-stepped onto a narrow ledge approximately a hundred feet below.  The chopper had landed nose-first, and still remained dangling, tail-up, from the mass of roots torn away from the cliff wall.  The fuel tank had been punctured, and some of it had burned.

Miraculously, no one had been killed, although Wilkes and Garner were both the worse for wear.  Wilkes had been in the cockpit, and was dotted with broken glass and shrapnel.  Garner had been thrown forward, hitting his face on the back of the pilot's seat.  Maverick had reflexively belted himself in when he'd taken the controls, and didn't have a scratch on him.

Most of the others had been tossed roughly.  Allison had belted in, with Bud wrapped over her, the both of them a protective ball over baby Lucas.   Mr. Wilson had tumbled and was nearly thrown out of the open side door.

Rosa's seat had torn completely loose, narrowly missing Garner, nearly landing in the inverted cockpit.  The seat landed bottom first, otherwise she would have been crushed.

But the only one that was really injured was Shanna.  When the chopper hit the ledge, she was thrown on top of Cameron, and the two of them tumbled awkwardly.  Cameron ended up on the bottom, taking the brunt of the fall, as well as Shanna landing on top of him, and gained a pretty good assortment of cuts and bruises of his own.  But it was Shanna who earned herself a broken leg.

Rosa had set the leg as best she could – a break just above the knee that should heal just fine – but Shanna would not be walking anywhere soon.

She wouldn't be climbing, either, Rosa thought, as she looked up at a hundred-feet of cliff.

To the other side was a dizzying drop of a thousand feet or better.

None of them were quite sure yet what to do.

For the moment, they had a fire going, and were using the shelter of the crashed chopper against the chill mountain wind.  Allison had Lucas practically bubble-wrapped in blankets.  Cameron set up a similar cocoon for Shanna in front of the fire, her injured leg propped up.

Maverick pulled the dead co-pilot from the cockpit and tried to cover him up, but the scent quickly attracted pterosaurs, that began to buzz the ledge.  While Wilkes and Garner pot-shot the circling dragons, Maverick simply tossed the body over the cliff.

“Sorry, pal,” he muttered.

Wilkes and Garner had both already tried their radios but had gotten nothing.

“We're on the opposite side of the range, and tucked into a little pocket of volcanic rock,” Garner said.  “No telling what natural properties might be interfering with the radio.  We need to get up top, over to the other side of the mountain, before we can call for help.  Maybe even a different peak.”

For starters, that meant a sheer climb of nearly a hundred feet.

There was a tangle of brush, but a good portion of that had been torn away by the chopper itself, leaving a lot of flat, bare rock.

“So who gets to make the climb?” Wilkes asked, looking up at the daunting ascent.

The group of them looked at each other.

Allison had shot Bud a look – you're not going anywhere.

Rosa was no rock-climber.  Shanna had a broken leg.

“Well,” Mr. Wilson said, “I'm sure not climbing that damn thing.”  He nodded at Maverick.  “That's why I had you.”

Maverick shrugged, putting his hands against the rock wall, testing for handholds.

“Hold on,” Garner objected.  “You people are still in custody.”

“You keep not saying 'prisoners',” Maverick remarked, ignoring him as he tested his weight