Age of Monsters Read online

  AGE OF MONSTERS

  John Lee Schneider

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright2019 by John Lee Schneider

  “Thou mighty city, in one hour has thy mighty judgment come. And the light of a single lamp shall shine no more.”

  Revelations 18

  Chapter 1

  Everybody remembered where they were when the world ended.

  When you met them, that was always the first thing people told you – where they were – what they were doing. What it was like.

  Jonah certainly remembered where he had been – out fishing.

  He'd almost missed it.

  He had just come in from a day on the river, smelly and wet, stopping by the old general store, with nothing more on his mind than frying up his catch, and maybe stocking up a few supplies for the rustic mountain cabin he kept just north of town. He lived nestled high up in Oregon's Siskiyou Forest, and the market was the last post before open wilderness.

  The end of the world had been on TV.

  Jonah had been idly checking out the woman standing in-line in front of him – noticeably attractive, despite the deliberately frumpy flannel, heavy jacket, and worker's boots. Her hands were in her pockets, hiding her ring-finger, but the obvious effort to cover it all up suggested a married woman. Jonah was guessing a soldier's wife – a military bride accustomed to being on her own while her husband was deployed. You could tell she was used to fending off approving stares – although the one sideways glance she had spared to Jonah, with a brief, up-and-down appraisal, had also added the unconditional qualifier 'and out of your league'.

  The clerk was absent. They had been standing in line for a couple of minutes, and the man waiting at the counter, a big burly guy in a hunting jacket and a beard, was becoming impatient. He rapped his knuckles loudly on the counter.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Anybody here?”

  The door to the back suddenly opened, and the elderly gentleman who ran the place on weekends looked out at them wide-eyed. Behind him, a small portable TV was blaring the news.

  “Oh Lord, I'm sorry folks,” the clerk said, making no move towards the register. He looked at the three of them blankly.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “You don't know what's happening?”

  Jonah exchanged glances with the other two standing in line, answering for the three of them with a bewildered shrug.

  The clerk pulled the TV cord from the wall, and brought the little set out onto the counter, plugging it in underneath the cash-register. He turned the tube to face them.

  The screen blinked to life.

  Images of a war-zone.

  Jonah's brows furrowed. “What is this?”

  The old clerk eyed him grimly.

  “This is live,” he said. “This is New York.”

  Jonah blinked, uncertain whether to believe the images coming through on the tiny little screen.

  On the day of the 911 attacks, Jonah had been a college kid working at a local department store. He'd shown up early, before dawn, driving an old clunker with no radio, and his supervisor – a rather stern, normally-composed older lady – had met him at the door, her eyes wide, vulnerable and frightened.

  Jonah still remembered the moment vividly – he had followed her over to the TV & Electronics department – and there it was – on fifty different screens, from sixty-inch to table-top.

  He felt a strange doubling back as he stared at the tiny little bulb-tube antique.

  911 had been one thing – graphic – horrifying.

  But it had been a couple of buildings.

  This was...

  Well..., the New York City skyline was burning.

  Beside him, the woman in flannel was checking her phone, shaking her head, muttering under her breath.

  “It can't be,” she said. “My husband's in the Navy. He would have called.”

  She tapped at a couple of buttons on her phone, apparently getting no response. She looked around. The burly hunter pulled out his own phone, and tapped the screen.

  “I've got nothing,” he said, “It's fully charged. There's just no signal.”

  The clerk shrugged. “Service is spotty out here,” he said. He nodded at Jonah, who pulled out his own antique, bordering-on-obsolete, flip-phone – which he'd actually got almost twelve years ago because it was done up in the old-style Star Trek 'communicator' design – and he still felt very futuristic with it in his pocket.

  A technological caveman, Jonah had sent one text in his life – it had taken him ten minutes.

  “Don't look at me,” he said.

  The woman was frowning at the TV. “Is this a cable station?”

  “Broadcast,” the clerk said. He tapped at the monitor behind his counter. “The Internet's down too.”

  For the moment, their only window to the outside world seemed to be the little black and white screen – with its thirty-pound chunk of glass stretching out bizarrely behind it, the thing had probably been in the back break-room for over thirty years – even Jonah had a flat screen.

  The images were dark and indistinct. But it was clear that whole buildings were coming down – 911 a hundred times over. The Manhattan skyline was crumbling before their eyes.

  “What's happening?” Jonah said, shaking his head. “Is it terrorists?”

  The clerk glanced at him. “No. Not terrorists.”

  Jonah frowned. A hermit by nature, he had actually been holed-up just recently. He worked most of the season as a guide-pilot, but the recent rains had grounded any prospective charters – his trip out on the river today was his first time out of the cabin in two weeks. He hadn't even been on-line.

  The audio feed on the little TV abruptly cut out, leaving only the strobing black and white images.

  It was late dusk where they were – with three hours difference, New York was in darkness – a complete black-out.

  Except where the city burned.

  The view onscreen was from a chopper – a rough and broken POV – blinded by plumes of smoke and buffeted by strong winds.

  And then suddenly the picture was staggered and spinning.

  There was one brief shattered image – indecipherable – as if the chopper had somehow been physically struck in mid-air.

  The video-feed went dark.

  There was nothing else after that. The little screen went blank.

  For several moments, the small group of them stood, staring at each other.

  “Okay,” the big burly fellow asked aloud, “what the hell was that?”

  The clerk was shaking his head. “All I know is that it all went down literally within the last hour – and it was the whole damn city. And before the audio cut out, they said it was starting to happen everywhere.”

  “What do you mean everywhere?”

  “Everywhere,” the clerk said. “New York. L.A., Chicago... London, Paris – fuckin' Beijing.”

  But the big guy was shaking his head stubbornly.

  “Oh come on. This doesn't even make any sense. What? Did every country in the world just go psycho overnight and suddenly decide to blow each other up?”

  He turned to Jonah, as if for confirmation. Jonah stared back doubtfully.

  “Wait a minute,” the woman-in-flannel said. “What's 'happening everywhere'? What exactly did you see?”

  The clerk blinked back at her, hesitant to put it into words.

  “I... don't know what I saw,” he stammered helplessly. “There were... things.”

  The big guy snorted derisive laughter.

  “'Things',” he repeated. “Great.”

  He tossed twenty bucks for gas and groceries on the counter,

  “My sister lives in L.A.,” he said, “I've got a land-line at home. I'll give he
r a call.”

  Now he actually chuckled. “That's one of the benefits of living in the Northwest – no one ever wants to bomb Oregon.”

  He hiked his grocery bag over one shoulder and walked out, still tapping his phone, trying to raise a signal.

  Jonah flipped back his own Star Trek screen to see if he could at least access voice-mail. Walking with his head down, he nearly tripped over the woman-in-flannel standing at the door, who was likewise trying to activate her own dead phone.

  She looked up with a neutral shrug. “Nothing.”

  Jonah held the door for her and followed her outside.

  He almost bumped into her again as she suddenly stopped cold, her breath catching in an abbreviated gasp.

  Nearly stumbling, he reflexively caught her shoulders in his hands, before he looked up to see what was the matter.

  Standing in the parking lot, just between the store and gas-pump, was a dinosaur.

  In fact, it looked like a T. rex.

  It was eating the burly gentleman who had walked out before them.

  The five-foot head tossed back the still-kicking mouthful the way Jonah had seen a pelican toss down a flopping fish.

  There was a wet, gulping swallow, and then the beast turned its attention to them.

  Its head cocked, fixating like a hawk.

  Jonah froze, unsure whether to move.

  Beside him, however, the woman-in-flannel pulled a pistol from her deceptively frumpy jacket. Feet spread, demonstrating obvious training, she began to shoot – firing off an entire clip.

  The first sting startled the beast – it snapped at empty air after each successive shot.

  Then with a low growl, it turned to them again, apparently making the association – and appearing displeased.

  Jaws gaping, it charged.

  Chapter 2

  That was another thing different from 911 – the impression that it was all very far away.

  This was right here and right now.

  Jonah was flashing instant recalls of recent headlines – the latest batch of UFO/Bigfoot stuff that had been making the rounds – the sort of stuff that always popped up during slow news-weeks, whenever no one particularly important was shooting at each other.

  Not that he had been paying attention, anyway. Sequestered up in his cabin, Jonah had mostly hidden himself away from all that – as he liked it, world events tended to pass him by.

  That is, until one day they came right up to your door.

  The teeth moved towards them at startling speed.

  Jonah had read that Tyrannosaurus possessed a particularly destructive bite – several tons of bite-force, an almost mechanically-reinforced, shock-absorbing skull and neck, with a jaw lined by armor-piercing teeth that bit out huge holes.

  Three steps and it would be upon them.

  The woman-in-frumpy-flannel, her smoking pistol still in hand, turned and ducked back inside the store.

  Half a heartbeat later, Jonah followed.

  The clerk turned wide-eyed as they burst back inside – he'd heard the gunshots – and Jonah started to shout a warning. But the point was almost instantly moot as the beast struck the doorway behind them.

  Jonah had seen footage of elephants rampaging through towns in Africa – drunk off of fermented fallen mangos – four and five-ton animals that bulldozed human-constructs like paper.

  T. rex weighed what? Eight tons? More?

  The entire store-front collapsed as the beast crashed through. The clerk was crushed right along with the architecture, even as the store alarm blared its warning.

  Pinned under a collapsed cross-beam, the old man struggled briefly.

  Then the massive jaws came down, rooting him out, yanking him free of the debris like a crow grabbing after the early-morning worm.

  The jaws snapped the clerk in half. Another pelican toss, and both pieces disappeared down the cavernous gullet.

  Then the beast's eyes turned to where Jonah and the woman-in-flannel had been knocked to the floor. The crocodile-jaws seemed to smile.

  “Out back,” Jonah said, his voice a terse whisper. “My truck.”

  The woman gave him another quick appraisal, but nodded, and the two of them scrambled out through the stockroom, stumbling in the dark for the rear exit.

  Behind them, there was a loud crash – the rex moving to follow.

  And above them, the timber began to creak. The primary support post had been taken out with the front wall, and now the roof was starting to pull apart.

  That was actually what gave them the break they needed. They burst out the rear exit into the parking lot, just as the store collapsed.

  The tumbling lumber piled on top of the hapless rex itself.

  For the first time, it ROARED – a foghorn blast of pain and outrage, as it was abruptly buried in wood and sheet-rock.

  Jonah had a good-sized four-wheel – a Bronco – built for the rough terrain where he lived – but it was not exactly known for speed, and he still had his boat hitched to the back.

  But there was no time to unhook it now. Jonah slid into the driver's seat and cranked-up the engine.

  The woman-in-flannel stared at the trailer dubiously. “My car's out front...”

  But she was cut off by another foghorn bellow as the rex was rising to its feet behind them.

  Muttering and cursing, she climbed into the passenger seat.

  Looking over her shoulder, she slapped a fresh clip into her pistol.

  Jonah eyed her as he shifted into gear. “How many of those do you carry?”

  She locked the clip into place. “Just drive.”

  The rex was irritably shaking free of the collapsed rubble and there was a decided impatience in its posture as its eyes found them once again.

  Jonah squealed tires as the truck dragged the trailer out of the parking lot.

  Beside him, the woman leaned out her window and opened fire.

  She apparently had pretty good aim – based on the rex's reaction, every bullet hit.

  And it clearly didn't like getting shot.

  With another ear-splitting roar, it launched after them, jaws agape.

  “Hey, lady...?” Jonah ventured.

  “Naomi,” the woman answered, slapping still another clip into her pistol.

  “Okay, 'Naomi'? Maybe you wanna stop shooting at it? I think you're pissing it off.”

  She glared. “I was trying to hit its goddamn eyes.”

  But she nevertheless pocketed her pistol.

  Which might have been too little, too late.

  As Jonah looked in his side mirror, all he saw was a jagged, widening maw.

  And with the drag of the boat, it was gaining.

  With a sudden lurch, the teeth latched onto the trailer, biting through the stern of Jonah's fishing boat like a shark hitting a surfboard – the wood shattered into kindling.

  The jaws clamped down, and the sudden tug-and-jerk felt like their trailer had been hit by a freight train.

  For a moment, Jonah thought they were simply going to be tossed off the road.

  But like the tail of a lizard, the trailer-hitch snapped, and the truck broke free.

  The rex shook its catch side-to-side like a bulldog, before realizing its real quarry had escaped.

  Stamping its feet, it came after them again.

  Heart pounding, Jonah floored the accelerator – without the weight of the trailer, they picked up speed.

  Naomi was looking over her shoulder. “Step on it,” she said. “It's following.”

  Jonah stomped the gas, taking the road into town.

  Chapter 3

  For a massive tank of a beast, the rex kept pace with the Bronco quite nicely, thank you – especially as Jonah was obligated to slow down around the tight mountain curves, sliding precariously over sheer-drops in the dark.

  Siskiyou Pass, Oregon, was a small township hidden in the forest along the Rogue River – but it had a Sheriff's Department – presumably with weapons. Beyond that, Jonah r
eally had no plan.

  Coming out of the woods, you hit a couple of miles of flat road before you reached the small ridge that overlooked the residential areas – and also where you found most of the official city offices.

  When they touched-down on level ground, Jonah stomped the accelerator, at last gaining distance.

  Naomi was leaning out the window, looking back.

  “This guy's stubborn, isn't he?”

  Although losing ground, the rex showed no signs of stopping. Jonah would have figured such a big animal would have gassed out by now, but it charged after them single-mindedly, like a galloping rhino, even as they finally began to pull away.

  They had left the beast almost a mile behind when the glow of streetlights signaled the town of Siskiyou Pass just ahead.

  Except, as they turned off the mountain road onto the ridge that comprised Main Street, they realized that it wasn't the streetlights at all.

  The town was on fire.

  Just like New York – just like on television.

  “What the hell?” Jonah eased up on the gas, glancing nervously over his shoulder for their pursuer.

  Naomi suddenly screamed aloud, “Watch out!”

  Jonah turned back just as the dark shape suddenly jumped out in front of them.

  Adrenaline shot through him and his foot jerked to stomp the brakes – it was the size of a man – but then he saw the teeth – and the claws.

  Instead, he floored the gas again.

  They hit the thing dead center and drove over, the Bronco's heavy wheels absorbing the shock like a speed bump.

  Naomi had her pistol out again. “What the hell was THAT?”

  But Jonah knew – he'd recognized it readily enough – the sickle-claw on the foot was a dead giveaway – a dromaeosaur – like Deinonychus, or Velociraptor – a dinosaur.

  Another dinosaur.

  A moment later, two more came leaping in from either side.

  Jonah swerved, knocking one of them aside, but the other latched on to the passenger side of the cab.

  A fanged muzzle peered inside and a clawed talon reached in through the window.

  Naomi shot the thing twice in the face. With a stuttered, bird-like screech, it fell away, and Jonah swerved again, catching the falling body with the wheel. There was another squawk and a wholly satisfying crunch as they left the thing flopping in the road behind them like a run-over cat.