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

From her vantage atop the parking garage, her observations were professionally cool and collected.

Rosa was strictly an indoor-girl, but she loved animals – as a kid, that meant a lot of trips to the zoo, and she remembered the first time she saw a live elephant.

As a tiny person then, herself, she specifically recalled the way it moved – sort of an odd slow-motion – but that was actually an illusion created by greater mass moving at a living speed.

She had noticed the same thing years later, driving in the mountains, when a herd of elk had crossed the road in front of her – in contrast to the sprightly deer that darted between cars along the outskirts of the urban areas, these animals were the size of horses, carrying their weight in that same illusory slow-motion – yet moved with the same bouncing spring, tossing eight-hundred pounds in the air in a fawn-like bound.

But the closest analogue to what she saw now, was the slow rumble of an avalanche she had once seen skiing – fortunately from the opposite ridge – it was as if the mountain had suddenly shaken itself like a wet-dog, and a layer of snow had simply dumped off its back.  You could see it coming for a mile, racing at breakneck speed.

Or perhaps the eruption of Mount Saint Helens – another active volcano in the Cascade chain – in a single blast, a quarter of the mountain had simply collapsed off to one side, rolling down into the valley.

What Rosa saw today was like that.

Only it was in something alive.

And it could SEE you.

It was AFTER you.

That was the second thing, Rosa realized.

This was no rambling amble through town.

Make no mistake, THIS was a rampage.

These living mountains were smashing the buildings in front of them to dust.  They were destroying everything in their path.

Rosa was reminded of rhinos on the Savannah, which were known to stamp out fires – there was more than one evening campsite that had their dinner rudely interrupted – rhinos could exceed two or three tons – and they were known to do the same thing to nests of stinging ants.

This was the same sort of deliberate effort.

Anyone inside any of the crumbling skyscrapers would be crushed into nothing.  On 911, when the World Trade Center had come crashing down, it had not even left bodies.

The Twin Towers had fallen in that same false-slow-motion.  Rosa remembered reporters on the street starting to run as they realized the concrete avalanche was cascading down on top of them.

Like a Tsunami – charging across miles in moments – and then suddenly it was upon you.

Rosa had met a young man who had survived the Thailand Tsunami of 2004 – he had been laying on the beach and then suddenly he was being crushed by something like the weight of a house.  He had somehow popped to the surface, and been pulled out of the rushing wave by a woman perched on a third-story roof – together they had fielded other survivors out of the backwash.  Rosa had treated the young man for part of a finger he had lost in the incident.

He said the wave had been upon him in seconds.

Rosa looked around in sudden realization at the concrete tomb she stood on top of – even as the colossus was now towering directly overhead, staring down with its glowing green eyes.

The tsunami was upon her.

She turned, staggering, as the worsening tremors threatened to knock her from her feet.

Ignoring the elevator, she ran for the stairs.

She had just made the second story when the parking structure was hit from above.

Around her, the concrete and steel began to crumble.

She made one more story before the floor beneath her simply gave way.

For one crazy moment, she clung, dangling from the railing, before that tore away as well, dropping her into the basement-level below, along with the collapsing stairwell.

Something struck her head and the world went dim.

Her last thought before successive blows knocked her unconscious was that she was going to die.

She actually took a second to get ready – that Catholic upbringing again.

Then for an indeterminate time, the world was simply dark.

The next thing she was aware of was hands upon her, and the sound of grating rubble.

She felt herself carried, and remembered being gingerly sat down between two parked cars.

When she finally blinked awake, she recognized a nurse from her own ward – a young, painfully-dedicated woman named Julie – 'Nurse Price' – whose heart bled for every skinned knee – who Rosa herself had predicted would never last.

Julie was tending to her cuts, apparently with a first-aid kit stashed next to the fire-extinguisher, dabbing alcohol and applying gauze.

“Doctor Holland?  Are you okay?”

Rosa sat up painfully, looking around the small circle, sitting among the assorted rubble.

The entire garage had collapsed.  The basement level was underground, and now a cratered opening nearly forty-feet above their heads was their only window – that and the remaining stairwell, filled with rubble from the four stories above.

Rosa turned to the group of eyes that blinked back at her in the dark – she recognized the girl from the coffee shop, as well as the young security guard that worked nights at the garage.  There was an older couple – likewise battered in the collapse, and who Julie was tending to beside her.

Also among them, was the couple Rosa had seen crossing the street – the guy with the future welfare-mom.

“Bud and Allison pulled you out of the rubble,” Julie said.  “They saved your life.”

Rosa blinked, still a bit groggy, and hoped her own finished thought didn't show on her face.

She regarded the two of them sincerely. “Thank you,” she