Kindle Edition
Amazon
Amazon Kindle
amazon Kindle
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Amazon Kindle
ISBN-10: B00JBLKWHU
Type: Fiction
Pages: 248
Copyright: March 27, 2014
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Prehistoric creatures have again invaded Crater Lake National Park
…and this time there’s more than one.
Henry Shore has been Chief Park Ranger at Crater Lake National Park for thirteen years now and thought the days when he’d had to fight a rogue dinosaur that lived in the caves below the lake were long over.
Until one of his park rangers, to save a visitor’s life, is in a deadly struggle out in the woods with a new breed of dinosaur worse than the last one. It’s as big as a man, but this one is a young one. And growing.
Then more of the creatures begin to show up everywhere, threatening people and destroying the tranquility and safety of his beloved park.
A tourist trolley filled with fifteen people is snatched up off the crater’s rim by another version of the younger one…but this one has grown into a giant with fangs, claws and a deadly tail.
And this one has wings.
Ugly Gargoyles, Henry calls them.
For this one isn’t alone.
They’re flying beyond the park’s boundaries into the neighboring towns.
So Henry, with the help of his son-in-law, a paleontologist named Justin, and a band of brave park rangers, and a few good soldiers, must not only protect his park and his people from monsters once more but find their lair and destroy it and them before the creatures kill again.
Excerpt
The trolley was getting closer. It was barely half full of visitors and Henry could see their jovial faces through the windows. Almost hear their laughing gaiety on the wind. They were enjoying the sunset, too.
Justin was yakking on about something or other and Henry put his hand out and touched his shoulder. “Listen!” he whispered. “Listen.”
High in the sky and far away unfamiliar cries, guttural and unearthly, vibrated in the air. They were weak at first and then grew louder. Louder.
“What is that?” Henry was still whispering.
“I don’t know,” Justin whispered back. “But–”
And then they heard the frightening sounds coming from the mist beyond the rim and somewhere behind the trolley. Something was crying out to the coming night. Something…was coming.
Henry saw it first. A blurry, fast moving flying object like nothing he’d even seen before high up among the clouds, weaving in and out of them. A blob against the fading skies. It was coming straight for them. And getting larger.
The green trolley was passing them, glinting in the dissolving rays of the sun. It would brake shortly for the final tour stop and ranger lecture at Dutton Cliff. Clyde waved at Henry through the window.
Henry didn’t wave back. His eyes were on the skies.
The flying thing had developed wings–immense ones fully extended that lifted, furled and carried the gigantic body easily on the currents.
“Oh my God!” Justin cried, flinging himself from the jeep and staring up at the flying giant cruising above them.
Henry was suddenly beside him looking at something that shouldn’t exist in the real world. But then, he thought, the dinosaur they’d watched die in the caves below Crater Lake shouldn’t have existed in the real world, either, but it had. Hugo shouldn’t have existed. As this one existed.
“Look at the size of it, Henry! It must be thirty feet in length, at least; with a wingspan double that. Just look at it! Remarkable! I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere! This must be what Hugo looks like as a full grown adult. The small front arms with the strangely elongated claws have grown into wings. How does it stand with just back legs? Unless…it stands upright and balances on its tail or uses its wings for stabilization. God, it’s so ugly…so beautiful!” Justin was spinning around in slow circles, his eyes glued to the creature crisscrossing above them in the air.
It had an over-sized head and a freaky long tail that whipped about its stunted body as it lowered itself closer to the earth. A shrieking bellow split the air space above them and the creature showed the largest fangs any dinosaur had ever been known to have. Henry couldn’t stop looking at them…and the leathery wings, which were webbed between the talons. The monster was a greenish-brown color like Hugo had been and was streaked with ebony. Its eyes small and piercing. Its voice booming. Another ear-hurting bellow.
The winged thing in the sky was rotating on the wind. Eyes intent on something below it. It dipped its wings and floated lower to the moving bus. Closer to the trolley that was so near to the rim of the crater. A trolley full of people. It dropped a wing and so lightly brushed the top of the bus Henry wasn’t sure it had or not. It swung back up into the sky and dived down again, making a bizarre trilling noise.
It was going after the trolley! Perhaps the bus’s bright color had lured it, or the people now sticking their heads out of the windows and screaming, their flailing hands jabbing wildly at the sky. They’d seen the large flying creature above them. The driver Clyde was gawking out the window, too. The bus was slowing down, lurching to a stop…but not quick enough. The creature was coming in, its rear leg talons reaching for the moving trolley.
Human beings were on that trolley. Clyde. Ranger Stanton was on that trolley.
Henry snapped out of his trance and ran to the jeep to grab his rifle. He grabbed one for Justin and tossed it into the other man’s arms as he darted past. “It’s after the trolley, Justin. Distract it. Shoot at it! ” he screamed and kept running.
Henry had his weapon up and shot at the creature’s head, its body; anywhere he could aim for. But it was a sky comet, moving too fast to hit. He could hear Justin’s bullets coming out of the barrel, missing, and going way off target. Henry prayed the stray bullets wouldn’t end up somewhere they shouldn’t when they fell to earth, like in a person. But, if any of them had hit dinosaur flesh, their bullets didn’t seem to faze it. It didn’t leave and didn’t react, other than to screech louder, flap its wings harder. It got angrier. Its cries strident.
It all happened so quickly, but later Henry would still see the event over and over in his head in slow motion, frozen in his memory by the sheer horror of it and his inability, in any way, to stop it.
The winged monster’s talons dug into the roof of the trolley, clamped on, and dragged it towards the crater’s edge with the loud sounds of screeching tires and metal, the screams of the people inside the bus, over the small rock wall encircling the road…and released its grip. The creature whirled around in the air and with one of its wings reached out and smacked the bus towards the brink. For a horrifying heartbeat of time two of the bus’s wheels teetered on the edge of Crater Lake’s rim and then the trolley plummeted over into the lake a thousand feet below. ***
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