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

the railing and simply jumped overboard, splashing down into the ocean, not ten feet from where they had tied-off their purloined outboard below.

Jonah looked back briefly over his shoulder before he turned and leaped over the side after her.

There was that weird dip in his stomach as he dropped nearly fifty-feet to the water – the stinging impact was immediately drowned by shocking cold.

He sputtered to the surface, looking tor Naomi.

But the weight of the massive ship dropping back down sent a rush of water, carrying them out into open ocean – in fact, probably saving their lives as nine-thousand tons of steel crashed into the surf.

Their little outboard was torn loose of its moorings and partly swamped.  Jonah grabbed hold of its rail, while Naomi grabbed his other hand, and together, they managed to pull themselves on board, collapsing into the foot-deep water filling the craft's bottom.

Still sitting in his cage, Ariel's pet Otto screeched into their ears.

Naomi sat up, regarding the little lizard.

“You know what?” she said, “Fuck you.”

She picked up the cage and dropped it overboard into the ocean.

The little lizard made one more small squawk, this time in Naomi's voice – “Fuck you!” – before it sunk into the depths, out of sight.

Behind them, the rex rocked the destroyer the way Jonah had seen bears roll a log.

On board, he could also see squads of Ottos flocking overboard like fleeing rats.

The rex actually seemed to take the time to go after them – smashing them like ants as they made a break for the water.

Is that what it was about, Jonah wondered?  That big rex just didn't like those scaly little vermin?

Well, by all means, let it have them – Jonah didn't particularly like them either.

The ship was lifted up once again, pushing up another huge swell.  Their tiny outboard was tossed.

Clinging to the rail, Naomi wiped water from her eyes.  “Get us out of here, Jonah!”

Jonah turned to start the engine and had given it one good crank when suddenly the ocean simply up and exploded from below.

Now the rex itself, was knocked completely clear of the water, with the destroyer capsizing and rolling into the brine.

The eruption of water carried the rex right along with it, and through the deluge, Jonah could see the Tyrant King – King of the Dinosaurs – most terrible land-predator that ever lived – locked in the jaws of a giant shark.

The rex screamed.

The impact of the attack carried both beasts several hundred feet straight up, before finally cresting in mid-air.

Then they began to fall back towards the water.

The destroyer had already rolled – and that alone might have already been enough to send waves big enough to swamp the shore – but then the battling beasts tumbled down on top of it.

“Oh shit,” Jonah said, forgetting the engine and grabbing the railing.  “Hang on!”

Naomi cursed, shutting her eyes, latching onto the rail

The wave of impact hit a moment later, capsizing the outboard, and washed them both over the side.

Chapter 34

Jonah had fallen into rapids before, and he knew better than to fight the water.  But this was something he'd never experienced – he was tossed bodily, like a leaf in the surf – he had no idea which way was the surface, or if he was ten feet or forty feet down.

The sheer torque of the water battered the wind from his lungs – it was like trying to hold your breath while falling out of a tree and hitting every branch on the way down.

He was quickly nearing exhaustion, and felt the stirrings of panic, when his head miraculously popped to the surface.

The destroyer had up-ended, buoyed by trapped air, but sinking fast, and Jonah could already feel the pull of the suction as it went down.

And behind the sinking ship, the rex churned the surface as it battled something unseen.

The massive jaws snapped into the foaming brine, and evidently found a target, as a pair of gargantuan fins and a slapping tail suddenly flapped and rolled in the water.

Floating debris from the destroyer's top decks were scattered – including several doughnut-ring life-preservers.  Jonah grabbed one up, latching his arm around it, and took a moment to finally catch his wind.  He looked around for Naomi, but the chop was too rough to see.

But then he spotted her – she was clinging to the wreckage of the outboard, latched like a barnacle onto the overturned hull.  She hung limp, barely conscious.

Jonah started fighting his way towards her through the current.

Behind him, however, the furor of battle had momentarily abated, as the shark had apparently released its grip on the rex.

But the ocean was flooded in red.  The rex kicked in a circle, clearly struggling.

If a shark could follow a drop of blood in a body of water the size of an Olympic swimming pool, what might an ocean full of pumping arterial fluid attract?

Taking advantage of what was likely only a momentary calm, Jonah caught up to Naomi, who groaned, dazed, as she felt his hands on her.

She'd taken a pretty good shot in the temple, and blood was running down her face.  She reflexively resisted as Jonah pried her fingers loose from the upturned hull.

As he pulled her over to the life-preserver, she seemed to blink back to awareness, looking from him to the shore.

Jonah gauged the distance.  A mile and a half.

Beneath their dangling feet, they felt the swell of something large passing below.

“Did you feel that?” Naomi said.

“No,” Jonah responded.  “Start swimming.”

Just keep swimming, Jonah thought.

Behind them, for lack of a better target, the rex had actually started back after the sinking destroyer, ignoring the ghastly bite-wounds that continued to cloud the