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

batting it clear across the room, where it twitched like a broken toy.

The other two were on her in a flash, one going high, slashing for her eyes, the other bringing its foot-claw in low for a disembowelment.

Shanna side-stepped the belly-strike while bringing up her monitor screen to block her face, knocking the offending Otto aside.  With a follow-up strike, she brought the flat-screen down on top of the other one, pinning it to the floor.  She stomped her weight on the monitor and heard the lizard's bones crack.

Shanna turned to the last of them.

The little lizard hissed and Shanna felt pressure in her head.

Whatever it had done to her before on the island, it was trying to do again.

This time Shanna pushed back.

The sensation was like holding your breath underwater too deep.  She felt Otto resist.

Then the little lizard staggered back with a squawk.

“Not this time, you little bastard,” Shanna whispered.

The little lizard eyed her, claws spread.

But then it turned and made a dash for the elevator.  Shanna chased after, armed with her keyboard, but it turned, hissing, claws spread, holding her at bay until the elevator doors closed.

Shanna, however, had now gotten a better look at the guard's body lying in the elevator car behind him.  The man's throat was gone – large wounds, more in line with a tiger-sized beast.

Otto had not killed that man.

The little lizard hissed as the doors blinked shut.

Shanna glanced back at her desk.  Her intercom was still beeping, with no answer – not from the desk downstairs.

This was a big facility – a lot of people worked here – even some civilians, mostly scientists and researchers, all oblivious, working from the museum just up the street.

Shanna pulled up the security monitor on one of the surviving PCs, bringing up the overhead view of the lobby levels.

It was a slaughter.

And as she tapped to the screen in the main hallway, over to the security desk in front of the elevator that took you to this very floor, she saw a pack of sickle-claws waiting patiently for the light.

Behind her, the elevator light beeped.

She was trapped.

The windows didn't open, and even if they did, it was a thirty-story-tower – minor among the Manhattan skyline, but a two-hundred-foot drop to the street from her own perch on the twentieth floor.

She pulled the control box on the wall, yanking the circuit that controlled the door so it would not automatically open.

Which meant all they had to do was push the doors apart.

She looked around desperately for a weapon.  A keyboard wasn't going to help her versus a full-size dromaeosaur.

The elevator dinged.  There came a snarling from inside and banging on the metal door.

As distracting as all that was, Shanna could perhaps be forgiven for failing to sense the approach of another, even though his very footsteps shook the ground.

But then the entire building shook, and he now commanded her full attention.

Shanna turned to the window as Big Rex nudged the building, like a dog pawing at a cabinet.

Twenty-stories high, the rex stared her nose-to-nose through her window.  His eyes blinked, glowing green.

“Hey, big guy,” Shanna whispered – pointlessly, the glass was as soundproof as it was bulletproof.  Nor could the Big Rex smell her.  But he knew she was there.

He bumped the building again, and now there was a crack in the unbreakable glass.

The elevator door slid partly open.  Pushing between the six-inch crack, Shanna could see snapping jaws and reaching claws.

Apparently, Big Rex did too.

He hated sickle-claws.

The window rattled with his very roar, before the massive spike-toothed jaws smashed in, this time stepping with his weight, rocking the very building.

It was hard to know the mind of a rex, or if he perceived the danger to Shanna herself – most likely, he thought he was moving to her aid.

But the building shifted on its very foundation.

The elevator door was pushed all the way open – a moment before the cable snapped.

One sickle-claw made it halfway through before the descending car chopped it in half against the floor, leaving its top half to quiver and squirm at Shanna's feet.

She could hear the elevator sing along its rails as it sailed twenty-stories down, before landing with an impact that reverberated all the way back up to the roof.

The rex bumped the building again – not an attack, not yet, or else it would have already tumbled down – but it wouldn't matter soon.

“Rex!” Shanna called through the now broken window.  “Stop!”

And for a moment, Big Rex did, his glowing green eyes blinking, his roars settling to a low rumble.

The chemical, Shanna knew, was just beginning to addle his brain.  The madness hadn't settled in yet – and a rex would always follow his nose.

With the window broken, he no doubt smelled her.  Big Rex cocked his head, looking crazily like a giant Labrador as he peered in the window.

Then he bumped the building again.

Shanna felt an alarming tremor ripple up through the foundation.

“Rex,” Shanna whispered.  “Please.”

But then there came another, challenging roar.

With the impact of his steps shaking the streets, his head rising above the surrounding towers, Congo stepped into the square.

Rearing to his full height, staring the twenty-story rex in the eye, the giant gorilla beat his chest, and then dropped to all fours, smashing his fists like pistons into the city streets.

Shanna could see the green glow in Congo's own eyes.

Big Rex almost seemed to smile.

After all this time, this was the fight they both wanted.

Shanna knew she had to get out of this building before they brought it down.

With the doorway pried open and the elevator car itself now gone, Shanna had access to the empty shaft.  She stared down twenty-stories.

Climbing into the narrow corridor, she latched onto the service ladder and began to climb.

She had barely gone two stories when she looked down and saw sickle-claws working their way up from below.

The clawed devils scaled the walls the way Shanna had seen bats climb trees.  There were too many to count.

There was no