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

a rex – with the carnosaur usually holding a clear size-advantage.  But faced with a rival predator, the carcharodonts unerringly made the tactical error of locking jaws with the smaller tyrannosaur.

In most cases, the big carnosaur simply had its face bitten away, sometimes with a simultaneous jerk that left its neck broken.

The JV squad were teenage T. rex – thin-boned for their size, but that still put them at twenty-feet tall and just under forty feet long.  And while they maintained a svelte average bodyweight barely in excess of five tons, not yet filled out into full, stout adulthood, they were pretty damn fast at that size.  More than that, they accelerated quickly – built for explosive movement, they could get that five tons coming at you like a white shark hitting a surfboard.

Jonah also saw that their hides were adorned with freshly-healed burns.  The napalm-induced wildfire had left its mark.  He wondered what happened to Trix and the others.  Or the rogue.  The fire had obviously separated the JV squad off into the valley.

The painful wounds could not have improved the mood of the already intolerant T. rex.

Nor would the presence of sickle-claws.

But as Jonah realized a moment later, that was undoubtedly what saved their lives.

Up the road, the caravan had now come into open view.

Like a rabbit in a greyhound race, the two Ottos darted in their direction.

The sickle-claws broke as a flock, immediately on their heels.

Like five-ton greyhounds, the T. rex bolted after them.

Without a sideways glance, the rex pack thundered past, leaving the three huddling humans in the clearing miraculously untouched.

And as much as the tyrannosaurs hated sickle-claws, Jonah knew it was Otto they were after.

That was another thing Jonah had seen demonstrated – repeatedly – if T. rex hated sickle-claws, it LOATHED those little bastards.  Jonah had seen tyrannosaurs walk through fire and munitions just to stomp a single Otto flat.

And God forbid an infected rex get a whiff – entire skyscrapers might fall for even one of the scaly little rats hiding in the basement.

T. rex understood the concept of a flyswatter, but it carried a sledge.

On the other hand, if they had an odd instinctive compulsion to smash those parrot-talking little bastards into paste, Jonah was fine with it – he didn't particularly like them either.

In any case, it had certainly proved reliable behavior.

Reliability that, Jonah now realized, was being exploited.

A rex would chase those scaly rats wherever they went, and right now they were running straight at the convoy.

Recognizing the danger, Meyers tried to sit up, struggling to reach for his radio, but his wounds immediately began to bleed.

Jonah looked grimly after the juvie-gang of T. rex chasing the hooligan pack of sickle-claws, and then to the unsuspecting troops, only now coming around the bend.

“Sorry, pal,” Jonah said, as he hiked Meyers' weight up enough to pull the radio from his belt, eliciting a painful curse from the wounded soldier.  Jonah fiddled with the switches, trying to make it work.

“Oh for God's sake,” Naomi said “Give me that!”  She grabbed it up and flipped the transmit switch.  “Hello?  Anyone there?”

“This is Sergeant Robert Jameson,” the voice barked back.  “Who the hell is this?”

Meyers grimaced as reached for the radio, his voice a painful grunt as he hit the switch.

“Listen up, Bob,” he said, “this is Meyers.  You've got incoming!”

“What are you talking about...?” came the response, but now the convoy pulled into view and the situation spoke for itself.

The sickle-claw pack was leopard-sized, but when they were attacking, they didn't come at you like mammalian pack hunters – they mobbed.

Sergeant Bob's voice sounded over the radio.  “Oh shit!”

Machine gun fire erupted.  The half-dozen vehicles skidded to a halt as the sickle-claws swept over them in a wave.

Barely two-hundred yards away, the outpost clearing provided a clear view.

It was a one-two assault – the sickle-claw mob drew the troops' initial attention for those first vital moments.

A convoy like this would carry munitions that could take down a T. rex, but it took a big gun – you were talking about a creature the size of an elephant, but much more densely constructed, and far more muscular and thicker-boned.  Putting one down required bazooka-level munitions.

But the troops' initial reaction was to engage the smaller sickle-claws already upon them – a man-sized animal, more easily dealt with using rifles.

When the JV squad battened down, bare moments later, they simply never had a chance.

Jonah estimated two-dozen men over the six vehicles.  Gunshots quickly mixed with screams after the few seconds of the sickle-claw assault.

Then the T. rex hit.

“Oh Jesus,” Meyers said, covering his eyes.

Jonah had seen rex packs do this to convoys before – they simply bulldozed anything in their path.  RVs crumpled like paper under stomping feet, chomping jaws bit cleanly through metal chassis, or were simply grabbed and physically thrown.

And a machine gun just pissed-off a T. rex – probably the worst move under the circumstances because it attracted their attention.  If the troops had simply run, the JV squad would have probably ignored them.  As it was, the retaliatory gunfire was promptly snuffed.  In less than a minute, the convoy was smashed into wreckage, and the troops along with it.

The rex pack took a few hits, but ignored the angry rash of peppered bullet wounds, as they now turned to the renegade sickle-claws, and in particular, to Otto.

Normally, a sickle-claw raiding party would sensibly retreat once a rex pack appeared on the scene, but today, in Otto's presence, they instead turned to fight – a strategy that proved helpful for the T. rex.

As the dromaeosaurs attempted to mob the outnumbered rex, the tyrannosaurs met them face-first, snapping wildly in every direction, like swordfish in a tight grouping of tuna.

Jonah once read you could hear a crocodile's 'jaw-snap' over a greater distance than a shotgun.  T. rex jaws coming together echoed like a cannon blast.

In another minute, this secondary skirmish was over and quickly followed by several judiciously-placed stomps as the big rex rooted