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

watched apathetically, as the nurse detached his IV from the wall.

Then she popped the wheels on his bed, rolling him out into the hall.

Jonah blinked.

Dr. Shriver was lying on the floor, his leg twitching.  Corporal Stevens lay next to him.

The nurse held up the taser she had in her hand, zapping up a couple sparks, and Jonah realized it was Naomi.

Jonah started to speak, but Naomi pinched his lips.

“You just keep your mouth shut,” she said.  “I got this one.”

In the hall, she transferred him to a wheelchair and rolled him down the hall at a quick jog.

A couple more taser-zaps got them into the upper decks and the vehicle warehouse where she had an RV waiting.

The power was still out over large parts of the compound, and the upper grounds were dark.  Naomi kept the lights off until they reached the front gates.

Then she revved the engine and the unsuspecting guards jumped to attention.

“Hang on,” Naomi said, flaring the brights, flooring the gas, and blasted through the gate.

Jonah heard shouts from the guards as they dived aside, but Naomi was already squirreling past, down the road.

It occurred to Jonah he'd never actually driven passenger-side with Naomi before.

He never knew how lucky he'd been.

She skidded back and forth, down the narrow mountain road, until the bare-moment the terrain flattened enough for her to turn the rig directly into the trees, where she angled downhill and just kept going.

The bumping Jeep kept Jonah's full attention on his every damaged bone.

They were miles down the mountain before Jonah thought to disobey Naomi's edict to keep quiet.

“What,” he managed, “are we doing?”

“The General was right,” Naomi replied, bumping them along.  “Lucas was a hero.  Turns out I've been lucky that way.”

She glanced at him.

“That's the thing about the military,” she said.  “You sign-up, your ass belongs to them.”

Naomi shook her head.

“You're mine,” she said.

Jonah considered.

He decided he was fine with it.

“Any idea where we're going?” he asked.

Naomi pointed ahead into the blind dark.

“That way,” she said.

Jonah nodded, settling into his seat.

If I died tonight, he thought.

But he hadn't.

Not yet.

He glanced at her sideways as Naomi carried them away into the night.

The forest was dark and deep.

Jonah had no idea what beasts and monsters might yet wait, hidden in that darkness.  Or what other dangers might lie ahead.

But the future could bother him tomorrow.

For now, he was content.

Chapter 67

Mark stayed a week in the valley before continuing on to the coast.

When Trix came traipsing over the hill, that was the last straw.  He didn't care how well-behaved tyrannosaurs were around Shanna, Mark was like a postman around dogs – they just didn't seem to like him much.

Besides, it was the coast that had been his home, the last place he'd seen his family, before that cruise-trip job, forever and not so very-damn long ago.

Who knew what he might find?

No doubt devastation and not much closure, except perhaps for seeing the final stake driven into his last associations of the old world.

But it seemed like it was something he had to do.

Besides, these damn T. rex scared him.

The little lake community was remarkably well-preserved and Mark had been able to find a stored four-by-four, and a stock of canned goods to load it with.  He even found an old-style Walkman radio and headphones, and CDs to go with it.

Shanna had asked him to stay.

When she had touched his hand, he felt that odd internal glow.

It reminded him a little of Sally – still so recently lost.

And of course, Lily, who'd turned that glow into the lure of a Venus fly-trap.

A glow was something you fixated on – for you, it seemed a personal experience, but it was actually a light shining down on everything and everybody.

In his heart, Mark couldn't help believe Lilly was a punishment for letting Sally down.  And whether it was or it wasn't, he would continue to punish himself accordingly.

Mark had thanked Shanna, and even though he knew he already loved her, just like everybody else did, he turned and left the valley behind.

He followed the road for an hour until he came to a gas station, a last-stop-on-the-mountain shop.  Mark already had several full containers in the back, but there was no telling how long before the next one.

Pumping gas was more of a production than it used to be, and Mark fussed about with sealed tanks and siphoning hoses, his new Walkman headphones on, whistling along as he worked.

A birdlike warbling in the brush thus escaped him.

The tall grass parted, as the little lizards hopped out onto the road.

It was a small troop – they always seemed to move in threes – perhaps base nuclear organization.

Twenty miles outside the valley, they were beyond Shanna's immediate perception.

Besides, they were learning how to hide from her – all she should feel would be a mild sense of unease.

That's what Otto was.

He did not have higher cerebral functions.

Memory storage, on the other hand...?

With reptilian motivations and mind.

What's-Worse?  That was the game Nolan Hinkle played, with his exponential genius of a daughter.

Invariably, it led him to lecturing about all the possible ways the world could come to an end – and of course, what humanity might attempt to stop it – along with comparable world-destroying events from the past, from the KT extinction, to the Black Plague.

Nolan Hinkle destroyed the world in his imagination a dozen times every night of his life.

And perhaps this is what Otto absorbed.  If Shanna was the soul of the empath, what Otto had taken was the id.

In each of the little lizard's hands were pneumatic needles, all glowing bright emerald green.

The lizards eyed Mark with his headphones on, and his back to them, their avid eyes turning speculatively to his truck – easier travel through tyrannosaur territory, and a car-jacking was the last thing Mark would expect.

The bushes rustled as they skittered closer, their wicked foot-claws tapping, their hand-talons spread.

Mark opened the door, fiddling with the keys.

There was a flash of movement from the brush.

Behind