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

frothed with countless tons of collapsing earth and rock.

Rosa could hear the screams of the beasts.

Today, nothing would be spared.

“Get us out of here,” Rosa whispered, hitting Jones on the shoulder.

But even then, the very road, the highway itself, began to fall away beneath them.

Rosa shut her eyes as she felt the jeep begin to roll.

Then the avalanche caught them, as the cliffside broke away.

Chapter 41

It was quite a sight from his altitude, Tom thought, as the southwest coast of California dropped off into the ocean.  He could see it with the naked eye from space.

The fault-line split away from the main landmass, just like they always said it would.

Tom focused as many satellite-scopes as were in range.

Numbly, he absorbed the devastation – no longer just the cities and towns, but even the land itself.

LA was gone.  That had been the biggest chunk of it, right at first – the closest to ground zero.  But even as Tom watched, the fault-line continued to grow, stretching north.

Watching a geological event in real-time was humbling.

When mountains crumbled, even the beasts were crushed into nonexistence – less than nothing before the tectonic forces of the Earth itself.

By that scale, it was really just the continent shifting its shoulders, shedding a layer.

For a thousand miles, by the humble measure of man, the destruction was absolute.

Tom had no idea how far north the collapse would eventually reach – at the very least, volcanic and seismic activity were likely to be activated up the entire west coast – they would probably be feeling tremors in Canada.

Or even Alaska, Tom thought, glancing at the empty screen where he'd last seen Kristi's face.

Tom shut his eyes – the watchman could stand to see no more.

The numbness threatened to break.

By sheer act of will, he forced his eyes open.  Cold reality was his only friend.

'Courage' was not the word – he simply had no other option.

For whatever reason, this was the fate that had befallen him.

And so he would fill his role – he would correlate and collate – he would chronicle and compose.

When the aliens he had always wanted to meet finally arrived, at least there would be some record – a legacy.

Otherwise, the only remaining evidence of the human race would be a four-foot flag on the moon.

Tom sat before his screens, and waited for it to all end.

Chapter 42

The tyrannosaurs were out-numbered, but in close quarters, the advantage was theirs.  They were the pit-bull model of theropod.  While a big Carcharodont was longer, and might outweigh the average adult rex, it was a much more lightly-boned animal.

It was the nature of its prey – even a big Carcharodont didn't want to grapple with a giant sauropod – especially the gigantic titanosaurs.  Employing a low-impact strategy similar to modern Komodo dragons, it would instead attack and retreat, falling back to let the slashing wounds fester, leaving the prey to weaken and die – providing a mountain of meat with little risk and little contact.

T. rex, on the other hand, was a Triceratops killer – a fast, dangerous prey, of equal size and reaction time – attack and retreat was not an option for an animal that could turn on a dime, with horns and shield.  T. rex needed to kill at a stroke.

The first of the Carcharodonts felt the difference the moment the front-lines came together.

Down in L.A. and San Francisco, the tyrannosaurs had been driven out by sheer numbers.  Here, that advantage was not as stark.

And in the close-quarters of the basin, a 'low-impact' attack strategy was not an advantage.

The big rex locked jaws with the first of the big Carcharodonts – a massive beast, even larger than the rex itself.  At first, the greater weight of the carnosaur began to push the rex back.

But once the narrow saw-blades were pitted against the railroad spikes – a construct intended to carry a lot of weight lightly versus bio-mechanics designed to send a lot of weight against a target at high-velocity – the result was no contest.

Once the giant carnosaur's jaws had locked with the rex, it was trapped – and once the rex began to torque and bulldog its head back-and-forth, the Carcharodont's jaws were simply torn right off.

Spurting blood, the Carcharodont toppled, lifelessly, even as the rex turned to meet the next attacker.

The rex-gang joined, fangs-first, beside him, and the front line of carnosaurs were pushed back.

There were, however, also a number of two-thousand-foot sauropods – and of course a platoon of ceratopsians, specifically evolved to take on a rex.

The big dominant female was the first casualty on the rex's side – at the horns of a bull Triceratops.

Under almost no other circumstances would an adult rex approach one of the three-horned dreadnoughts face-to-face – the deadly horns were aimed unerringly at a rex's belly – just as the blade of its shield would chop at the face of any tyrannosaur foolish enough to go for a neck bite.  Any T. rex that lived long enough to try it more than once, quickly learned that the way to attack a trike was from the rear – a one-shot, incapacitating bite to the hips and spine.

But circumstances were not normal, and on this day, with the hot-blood of battle, the big female charged the horns head-on.

The initial clash took the female's eye as one of the horns slid deep into its socket.

Pulling back with an outraged scream, the rex reared up – exposing her belly.

Its target wide-open, the trike charged forward, catching the tyrant-queen in the ribs with all three horns, piercing her heart.

The giant sauropods also did some damage – one big titanosaur nearly broke the rex front line – two adolescent