Age of Monsters John Schneider (digital book reader TXT) 📖

of the destruction – and especially considering the pointedly out-of-the-way locations a tower was likely to be built – sheer odds should have left at least a few standing – but that few was very few.

Had this been an invading army of aliens, it would have seemed like a strategic hit.

In the immediacy of it, the impossibility of ALL of it, made it easy to overlook the impossibility of the randomness of it.

The beasts were just suddenly there.

Even granting the accidental release of the Food of the Gods, that meant they had to have been there – and been there for a while.  How could they possibly have not revealed themselves?

But as he thought about it, the only possible answer presented itself.

They WERE there.

Rumors, after all, had persisted for years.

And to dismiss the possibility of random-event, by definition, that meant on-purpose.

Tom thought of all the marijuana grow-operations busted over the years – industrial sized fields, safely set-up in the protected areas of federal lands – they could operate indefinitely, undisturbed.  They were also guarded zealously, which made them damn dangerous to stumble into on a hike.

On impulse, Tom brought up a search of 'protected government lands'.

Statistic: over eighty percent of United States landmass was uninhabited.

And many of the largest protected areas were not just bordering, but actually surrounding almost every populated area in the country.

Well, Tom thought, there's your breeding ground.  Private – off-limits.

And Tom was willing to bet they were damn dangerous to stumble into on a hike.

He was further willing to bet anyone that wandered onto that grow-operation would be a story that would never get told.  It wasn't like such wanderers would ever be found.

Having a pretty good idea what he was going to find, Tom correlated the protected land graphics with the first wave of the Food of the Gods, city by city.

It was the same graph.

There it was.  They'd been out there all along.  For years, at least – perhaps decades.

Waiting all this time, for some secret, silent alarm, to trigger them off.

Tom looked over at the blank screen he kept tuned to Kristi's frequency.

She hadn't posted since last night when she had turned the camera on, tracking a skulking shadow, before firing a single shot into the darkness.

Tom noticed she was becoming more sparing with her ammunition.

He had pin-pointed her general location, and had actually spent time trying to find her with a satellite-scope – so far unsuccessfully.

He also played back some of her earlier images.  She had grown progressively more gaunt – the circles growing under her eyes.

Soon it would again be dark in her part of the world.  And perhaps another one of her broadcasts would flicker to life – but eventually one of them would be the last.

'Nothing', he had told the pretty young reporterette, when she'd asked him what he missed about the Earth.

That seemed so arrogant now – even shameful.

It was almost as if he deserved this specific, unique punishment.

Tom shut his eyes.

He nearly shouted out-loud when the first shrill whine of static nearly blasted out his eardrum, sending him spinning in the constant floating free-fall.

Recovering quickly, he pulled himself back to his station.

On his console, a light was blinking – top-level communication from down below.

The BIG phone.

Tom hit the switch and suddenly a voice spoke over the speakers, loud and commanding.

“Goddamnit! Are we up and running?  This is General Nathan Rhodes, acting Commander of the United States Armed Forces.  Anyone reading this signal, report back immediately.”

Tom blinked, hardly daring to believe.

“Sir,” he said, speaking aloud for the first time in days, his voice cracking, “This is Major Tom Corbett.  You've got the Eye in the Sky, sir.”

Chapter 20

The Fort Hunter Base lay just ahead.

It had taken them four days and two vehicles, and they had left the last one almost ten miles back.

Four days, Rosa thought – not so long ago, that was a two-hour drive.

But Lucas had got them there.  Never once had he broken stride, and never once had he allowed any one of them to break stride either.

She knew that single-minded focus well – long-hours, surgery, even disaster-aid sites – where there were no 'hours' – you just went on auto-pilot, acting out your function.

Lucas operated under two simple goals – keep the morale up, and keep them moving. Rosa's analytical mind couldn't help but see it, even as it worked on her all the same.  He made sure you were empowered – then he propped you up to act like it.

During times they traveled on foot, he scavenged the demolished urban landscape like a woodsman living off the land.  By the end of the first day, he'd had everyone armed – shotguns, pistols, rifles – it was amazing what people kept right in their cars.

For the moment, however, the fates seemed to smile on them – the exodus of beasts served to work in their favor.  They had few encounters once they escaped the city.

Lucas, of course, played it discreet.  The one band of roving sickle-claws they'd spotted, he'd steered them well-clear of.  It had only been four of them, but Rosa noted the Lieutenant held back – even though she had now grown confident he could have dropped the group of them in short order.

But there was no sense drawing the attention of others.

That had, however, been the last contact outside the city.  They had seen none of the larger carnosaurs.

And while Rosa was happy enough for the respite, she was also learning not to trust such inexplicable good fortune.

And even if their contact with the beasts was minimal, that still left a hundred miles of hard travel.  On the first day's long march, Jamie had started lagging, her