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

combining with its own deteriorating mental faculties induced momentary vertigo.

It blinked, refocusing on its target.

It pursued.

The Carcharodont's retreat was headlong.  The rex made no connection with the F-16 flying over – nor did it give more than cursory notice when the fighter itself exploded in the jaws of one of the flying dragons, high above its head.

It paid no attention to the payload that had been released, that was even at that moment zeroing in on the battlefield behind.

All the rex knew, as it ran down the retreating Carcharodont, was that here, finally, it had caught that psychic-stench – that foulness – and would now stamp it out forever.

The big carnosaur turned to face the rex as it closed – the razor-toothed jaws spread wide.

And while a Carcharodont wasn't a bulldog like a rex, the big carnosaur's jaws were evolved to take out the largest prey animals that ever existed – a giant saw-blade that would cleave entire slabs of flesh off the sides of giant sauropods.

These bladed jaws slipped past the rex's charging strike, catching the tyrannosaur off-guard, slashing a long, deep wound across its torso and neck.

The rex bellowed in outrage and pain, snapping in retaliation, even as the carnosaur quickly withdrew.  The Carcharodont circled, jaws agape, waiting for another opening.

For a moment, the rex staggered.

At this point, the sum total of its wounds was probably already fatal – even as its eyes glowed ever-brighter with the chemical that was already killing it.

But it was a rex, and so it stood in defiance.

And something in its posture activated a similar impulse in the Carcharodont.

The big carnosaur had fought tyrannosaurs before – T. rex was as vulnerable as a sauropod to a long, hemorrhaging bite – even more so, as the rex was much smaller.  The Carcharodont had learned to treat the pugnacious tyrannosaurs no different than prey – to simply bite and retreat.

But the rex wanted to fight.

And for just a moment, in the face of the belligerent display, the Carcharodont did too.  As an animal of instincts, instead of waiting for inattentive prey, it moved forward as if to attack a rival.

The big carnosaur likely never realized its mistake.

But Otto obviously did – as the monster’s jaws locked, a flood of scaly little beasts began to scatter off the big Carcharodont's back – rats deserting the ship.

The rex, however, wasn't having it.

It had the Carcharodont in its grip now, but the big carnosaur didn't quite yet realize it, feeling only its own superior weight.

But after another moment, it realized its own jaws were simply being bitten into – just a moment before the rex began to thrash back and forth, torqueing the bigger carnosaur's slender neck, twisting and snapping the vertebra, even as it bore the larger beast to the ground.

The retreating Ottos made for the brush as the still-kicking carcass collapsed.

It wasn't even close.  The rex stamped them out like ants.

With single-minded precision, guided by its unfailing nose, the big tyrannosaur stomped the foliage flat, until every last one of the scaly little rats was bloody-paste, smashed into the dirt beneath its feet.

And then, just beyond the ridge, partially blocked by the hillside, the payload hit.

The rex was aware of a blinding blast of light.

Then it was picked up and carried – thrown, as if by a category-10 tornado.

The battlefield behind was obliterated.

Debris and burning wreckage were blown past.

The rex felt itself burn.

And when it finally rolled and tumbled to a stop, part of its primitive mind remained conscious and aware.

Its body was shattered – although, as a rex, it simply wasn't conditioned to stop.

Its hip and back were broken – as well as both legs – yet, it struggled vainly to rise.

Then it felt the Earth itself begin to shake.  Whatever balance its broken body retained, whatever coordination was left in its dying nervous system, finally fizzled out like a burnt fuse.

The rex collapsed.

The struggling chain-stokes breath choked to a stop.  The green glow in its eyes faded.

It again felt the ground shaking beneath him – perhaps as homage to the passing of a king.

The rex stiffened and lay still.

Long live the king.

Chapter 48

World-wide, the battle would eventually wind down over a period of weeks.

Major Tom had programmed the satellites to focus in on the blooms wherever they sprouted.

He was also able to isolate where most of the nuke strikes had landed.

Besides the blast in Eureka – finally obliterating that damned tower once and for all – two other fighter-pilots had successfully dropped their payloads.  None of the pilots, Tom was able to ascertain, had survived.

Not that he'd received communication of any kind from the ground.  Whatever remained of global networking, had been fried in the EMP that followed multiple detonations all over the planet.

But continental North America, at least west of the Rockies, had been cleaned out – the blooms had been burned.

The rest of the world was not so lucky.  The battle would run its course, as would the cycle of the Food of the Gods.

But eventually, even that began to burn itself out – the giants inevitably died – where the chemical didn't kill them, they killed each other.

Enough scorched Earth, and there was nothing left to grow.

Then there were those 'scrambled signals' – missiles fired from silos to 'random' locations.

Random like the San Andreas fFault?

As well as what was left of London, and Hong Kong – or pretty much any epicenter where humanity might cling to a foothold?

Practical extermination.

That had been the first thing the analyst in him had eliminated – the possibility of random event.

The world below had gone dark.  His own eyes in the sky were partially blind.  The EMP had