Z-Volution (7 page)

12.

National Harbor, just south of Washington, D.C.

The Jefferson family strolled along a boardwalk constructed on the bank of the Potomac River. Peter Jefferson and his wife, Pamela, had a tough time convincing their two teenagers, Sandi and Aimee, to forgo their usual Caribbean trip to visit the nation’s capital. Even now, walking past a row of touristy shops along the water’s edge, it was clear the girls weren’t thrilled with the decision.

“I sure wish I were lying on a nice hot beach right about now,” Sandi said.

Peter raised his hands in a come-on-now gesture. “We’ve gone to the Caribbean every year for the last five. It’s time to mix it up a little! And you know, with our last name, we must be related to one of the founding fathers. It’s time to pay homage, am I right?”

“No.” This from Aimee, the younger of the two by a year, who somehow managed to hear what was going on, even with her ever-present ear buds.

Sandi took over. “If we’re direct descendants of Thomas Jefferson, then how come they won’t put us up in the White House instead of staying at the Holiday Inn?”

“Well, I wanted to keep our vacay low-key, without all the paparazzi and media attention we’d have if everyone knew our true family heritage.”

Pamela Jefferson looked out across the water, laughing softly to herself while Sandi went on.

“Yeah right, Dad. And that might not be so bad, anyway. Nothing ever happens around this boring old place, unless some nut job tries to jump the White House fence. I mean, look at this place, it’s so tedious, there’s—”

The water in the middle of the river began to roil.

Mom pointed. “Hey, there’s something!”

“What?” Dad asked. The whole family looked out over the river at the disturbance.

“I don’t know, it looks like something’s coming up.”

Around them, other people were stopping along the river to stare at the commotion. The leading edge of a ripple created by whatever was rising from the river reached the concrete seawall, gently splashing against it before reflecting back out into the river again. More fingers pointed toward the watery upheaval.

Suddenly, a wall of water surged forward from a central point, much larger and more forceful than the initial ripple. This was a wave, several feet high, barreling toward the river bank.

“I see a fin!” Aimee had actually removed her ear buds. Mr. Jefferson’s eyes narrowed as he looked to where his daughter pointed. Indeed, a sail-like fin sliced through the water’s surface, coming straight at them on the concrete river bank. His wife looked around, as if to see if she could find an indication that this was some kind of tourist attraction or publicity stunt for…for what she didn’t know, but something, right?

Instead, as the first water was pushed up and over the seawall to rush up against their feet, she looked back to the river and watched as what was now clearly a gigantic animal of some sort rose higher from the water. Instinctively, Peter Jefferson began herding his family to one side, not knowing what they were facing but sensing it was best to stay clear.

“Look out!” a nearby tourist shouted to a kayaker on the river. The man in the tiny boat had been taking pictures of the boardwalk area and turned around too late to stop his kayak from being overturned by the approaching beast. Shouts of terror erupted from the onlookers as a giant mouth opened on the aquatic sportsman.

Even from this distance, the Jeffersons could see the teeth in that mouth. But that was not the worst of it.

“Something’s coming out of the mouth, Dad!” Sandi observed the behemoth even while backing away. It bothered Peter to take his eyes off the overall scene and instead focus on such details as what was in the mouth of the thing based on what one of his kids said, but he did in fact see movement in there and…
holy crap!

He watched in rapt disbelief as a couple of objects fell from the creature’s oral cavity and spilled out onto the kayak. But as he continued to watch, mouth agape, he could see that they were no mere objects that had been disgorged from the animal’s mouth—no! They were…
people
? He didn’t know how it could be possible, wondered for a fleeting moment if the water supply in the hotel had been spiked with some experimental drug by the government using its guests as lab rats, but after rubbing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he was all but certain. Human figures were dropping from the mouth of the…
dinosaur—is that what that is
?
Impossible
…

The kayak capsized as two of the humans toppled onto it and began grappling with the paddler, who began shouting for help. Cell-phones were produced by passerbys who dialed 911—or took videos. The Jeffersons began backpedaling for higher ground, unable to rip their gazes from the ungodly manifestation playing out before them. The beast kept coming toward shore after plowing over the hapless paddler. As it neared the seawall, it picked up speed, rising higher in the water. They could see its broad back now, topped with a membranous sail supported by rigid spines. It looked large enough to propel a good-sized sailboat were it to be placed on a mast.

Although, as Mr. Jefferson dared himself to look more closely at it, there was evidence of what he supposed might be damage: irregular holes in the sail; some were just thinning spots while others were completely missing the skin or membrane or whatever the heck it was. Greenish, sort of moldy-looking splotches covered most of it, but he supposed that might be from living in the water? Then he realized with a start that it was drawing very near to his family now and they had better move.

“Kids, Pamela—run!”

#

A massive, webbed foot emerged from the water and landed firmly on the concrete walkway with an audible
slap
. As it emerged onto dry land, a few more of the bipedal forms slipped off of it and began to stagger pell-mell around the boardwalk. One more dropped from the gaping maw of the prehistoric-looking beast before it, too, stumbled off as if in search of something.

People all over screamed in panic as the monstrous thing with its disgorged army of rotting humanoids took over the boardwalk. One young man stopped moving in order to take a cell-phone selfie with the beast in the background, and he was promptly knocked yards away with a vicious tail-slap from the dinosaur, which executed that movement surprisingly fast.

Over by a cotton candy stand, two of the zombies had surrounded a young girl and snarled and gnashed the rotten stumps of what remained of their teeth. She was alone, her parents inside a T-shirt shop just behind the candy stand.

At that moment, the first squad of National Guard soldiers who had already been dispatched from nearby on standby burst out onto the waterfront walkway
.

“Freeze or we shoot!” One of the soldiers yelled at the two humanoids near the girl, but this of course had no effect. The rest of the soldiers, meanwhile, were awestruck by the dinosaur. One of them yelled the word “Spinosaurus,” sure that he’d read that in the briefing. Something about a dinosaur larger even than the
T. rex
, but none of them cared what the hell it was. It was a monster and it needed to be stopped, and that was all they needed to know.

At least they thought it was. In reality, this particular Spinosaurus was no ordinary therapod, even aside from the fact that it lived eons after its proper era had succumbed to the ravages of time. It had been…zombified…for lack of a better term. Ripped full of festering wounds and reeking to high heaven of the foulest imaginable rot, it lunged toward the nearest contingent of machine-gun toting soldiers. Its lopsided, wobbly gait propelled it forward faster than anyone would have guessed, and even as the first slugs of lead pounded into it, the dinosaur was upon the soldiers, lashing out, screeching, spitting, flinging its tail.

The war had begun.

#

Pier Six Pavilion, Baltimore, Maryland

At first, no one heard the sound of the cargo ship’s horn blasting over the strains of the pop music act careening on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans. They were an interesting act, the concert promoter noted—a Japanese export who played an infectious pop-metal blend that people could both dance and rock out to.

But right now their music was not his concern. Situated on a finger of artificial land that jutted into the busy Inner Harbor, most of the people faced toward the stage. Not the promoter, Jaime Perez, however, who stood just backstage with a commanding view of the act, his line of security guards in front of them to keep away the occasional overzealous fan, as well as the entire audience. Beyond that didn’t usually require his attention, but right now he saw something that troubled him.

Jaime brought a walkie-talkie to his lips and held down the push-to-talk button. “Attention Harbormaster, attention Harbormaster, this is Jaime Perez, promoter for the act in progress at Pier Six.”

He waited for a reply while he watched the industrial ship steam ever closer to the end of the finger of land on which the concert venue sat. He’d put on dozens of shows here and had never once seen so large a ship get so close to the venue. What’s more, it appeared to be actually gaining speed as it neared land. No one except for Jaime seemed to notice, though, as on stage, the scantily-clad female pop star was engaged in a simulated sex act with one of her male dancers, the crowd reacting wildly with raucous shouting.

Jaime tapped his headset earpiece more snugly into his ear. “I say again, Harbormaster, this is—“

“Copy that, Jaime, we are attempting communications with the ship, thank you, over.”

“Copy that,” Jaime said, but thought,
Attempting communications
? He didn’t see how they could have much more time to attempt anything. He could see a substantial bow wave pushing ahead of the ship as it continued nearer to the end of the concert venue.

Then, just as he was about to alert staff to get all people away from the area nearest the water, Jaime watched as a pair of U.S. Coast Guard cutters, painted in the distinctive orange-and-white motif, sped in front of the tanker. Still, the seagoing behemoth did not slow down. Jaime picked up his radio again and this time yelled for his staff to evacuate the waterfront. He couldn’t believe how quickly the tanker had gained on the shore. Did no one see what was happening?

Jaime grabbed an assistant and told her to take charge of the stage. He left the backstage area and ran toward the far end of the venue, past the cheap seats all the way to the water.

He heard the screeching, wrenching, and tearing of metal before he got there. The rumbling of concrete being knocked into smaller pieces. The first shouts of confusion and fright, which would shortly turn to terror.

Jaime skidded to a stop once he saw that the ship was riding up onto the land, having impacted the seawall at an unsafe speed. From this distance, he could hear the Coast Guard cutters blaring warning messages through PA systems, to no avail.

And then the unthinkable.

A cargo door opened in the bow of the ship and…
no, it can’t be
…Jaime had to consider for a moment if his water bottle had been drugged by some kid who would think that kind of thing was funny, or possibly even by a temp worker who wanted to get even with him for assigning him a crappy shift or some other perceived slight. This was a rock concert, after all. But no, he told himself after shaking his head. This was as real as it gets.

A dinosaur stood at the entrance to the ship’s cargo hold. A
Tyrannosaurus rex
, Jaime was pretty sure. Impossible, though. Regardless, it was a fantastically large lizard, just standing there, stock still but for its nearly car-sized head which moved in small but quick, hyper jerks. Jaime wondered for a split second if it could somehow be a high-tech stage prop that hadn’t been cleared with him. He didn’t see that dinosaurs had squat to do with that little tart’s act up there, though.

Then the prehistoric reptile set into motion. In one terrifyingly athletic leap, it left the ship and landed on the manicured lawn at the edge of the harbor’s music venue. It raised its head up and down in rapid succession a few times, sniffing air redolent with the sweat and hormones of thousands of warm mammals.

Those fans in the back rows were pointing and shouting, many of them actually smiling, under the dangerously false impression that this creature was some sort of showpiece. That would be their mentality, Jaime thought fleetingly. And he couldn’t blame them. They were here to be entertained, after all, not slaughtered by some weird animal. What in the hell was going on here? Because as he watched it, it dawned on him. This thing was real. It wasn’t some animatronics model or holographic illusion as he had first suspected. It was alive!

But there was no time to ruminate on it, for at that very moment, a horde of costumed freaks, that Jaime at first thought were grunge rock fans who somehow ended up at the wrong show, but the shredded flesh and potent stench told him that this was something else altogether—ambled from the cargo hold, some spilling into the water and sinking from sight, but most dropping onto the lawn where they proceeded to spread out toward the crowd.

The people at the back of the open air venue didn’t know at first what to make of it. A few turned and saw the newcomers, then promptly turned back around to the show, ignoring them. But most were curious, some actually approaching the horde, while others started to run. Alarm bells sang out in Jaime’s brain, the potential for a panic situation that could lead to a human stampede at the forefront of his mind. He’d been in such a situation once before, many years ago, but it was something that as a concert promoter he was always afraid of. It was his responsibility to keep these people safe.