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Robertson National Airport

Fairland, Virania

February 12, 1984 RE

I was sitting in one of the newest airports on the planet. Most people would not even look at me twice. I was about as average as humans get appearance wise. My brown hair and eyes helped me blend in with the crowd while my unspectacular five feet ten inches of height let me go unnoticed in that same crowd. Many people would be surprised to find out that I am one of the people responsible for making places like this airport possible. One of the anthro security guards walked past me and it was at times like that which made me feel really small. It must be an unofficial rule that security guards in an airport must be able to toss a person like me at least 50 feet, with one hand. The bull that had just walked past me was no exception to that rule.

In reality I am one of the most widely recognized archeologists in this part of the world. Everybody new the name Larry Sanders. Well, they new my name if they were interested in science and engineering. Normal people did not recognize me at all and when I mentioned my name they thought I was a cable guy or something like that. That did not get to me though. The glory days of the archeologist had been a few centuries ago and it would take some huge disaster that only we could solve before we would get back into the news on a regular basis again. Honestly, I would be happy if something like that never happened. I do not want to be responsible for the fate of the trillions of people that must populate the world by now nor do I want to be recognized by that many people.

At this moment I am waiting for a colleague of mine, Grace Johnson, to arrive. The government was hosting some big meeting about some pretty unbelievable stuff and they had called in some of the greatest minds from across the nation. At first Grace had refused to come. To make it on time she was going to have to fly here. The ability to create flying machines had only come around about 40 years ago. Commercial flight still was not that pleasant either and it would not get better anytime soon. I am pretty certain there has been a failure in some of the ancient technologies that control the atmosphere. There is some weird error that limits the tonnage of any flying device. And that is just what has happened to the atmosphere below 10,000 feet in height. There has been a complete failure of control over wind speeds above that height. Anyone flying that high in the air runs a serious risk of getting blown right out of the sky. The end result is that the current generation of jet planes are what many people would call matchbox planes that have a very limited range. They can only seat 20 to 30 individuals, but there are a lot of them. Despite the discomfort, flying has become a very popular means of travel.

That popularity has made it very easy to construct airports all over the nation. Most were nothing special, but Robertson serviced a very economically important city. No expense had been spared in its construction. Personally, I thought it was a bit grandiose. That could also be my jealousy speaking. I would kill to get a fraction of the funding this airport had received for its construction. At least they had managed to include the proper number of runways and the equipment to handle the traffic this airport was going to get in the budget along with all the other things funding was getting wasted on to make this place look good.

Soon, I saw Grace's plane pulling up to the terminal in the airport. It only took a few more minutes for her to emerge from the plane along with her two children. Grace had been so wrapped up in her career that she had forgotten to get married and have children like she had planned. Eventually she decided to skip the marriage part of her plans and just adopt a couple of children. I do not think she is capable of letting her kids be more than two miles from her at any given time. Grace did not adopt within the species either. She is human, her oldest child is a 12 year old anthro wolf boy named Mark, and the younger child is an 11 year old anthro bobcat named Kim. They were actually a cute little family and I have no idea how those kids managed to stay so thin since Grace loved to bake. If I spent more than a week with her I ended up gaining at least five pounds. Grace herself was a slightly plump woman with a pleasant face and brown hair like my own. If she had started up her own baking company instead of getting into chemistry she would have been a hit. I could just imagine her smiling at me from the wrapper of a pack of cookies. Chemistry and baking are not as far apart as many people would think and it is easy to see why chemistry ended up becoming her passion. She was no slouch in the field either or else she would not be here.

"Good evening Grace. How was the flight?" I asked.

"I don't know how you managed to get me on these flying deathtraps, but remind me to put something special in the next cake I bake you so I can show my appreciation. I swear every one of those things I had to get on in order to fly here felt like it was ready to fall out of the sky at any minute. But, besides that, I'm happy to see you again Larry," Grace said as she walked up to me and gave me a friendly hug.

I returned the hug and then smiled at her children before turning my attention back to Grace. "Can you believe what they're calling this meeting for? I've heard of some failures before, but I've never heard of such isolated failures before. Individual people, animals, plants, and other bit of inorganic matter suddenly becoming gigantic in size seem almost impossible."

"Oh come now Larry. It's not that farfetched. We don't even have theories about how they did most of the things that made it possible for them to do the things they did all those millennia ago when they shrunk the entire planet's population," Grace said contemplatively. "According to everything we know right now it should have been impossible for them to do and most people actually think we're making the whole thing up in order to get more funding. We would be hard pressed to get them any proof too. You should know very well that just about everything truly useful is no longer within our grasp." She was right about that. The 'not in my neighborhood' argument had never disappeared among humans. It had always been an extremely inconvenient argument for developers until they gained the ability to build most of the facilities they wanted in space. Some had argued that back up facilities needed to be built on the Earth as a safety precaution, but as far as I could tell they could never get permission to build any of the potentially dangerous eyesores they wanted to build on the planet. And now we were the ones that had to deal with the problem.

Grace and I continued our conversation on the way to the baggage terminal as her children tailed behind us. On the way I heard something that sounded like thunder. I looked out one of the windows because I had thought it was a sunny day. The sun was indeed shinning and I wondered if there was a storm brewing on the other side of the airport. There was another thunder crack that sounded like it was coming from directly overhead. The previous burst of thunder sounded like it had been much further away. Something about how fast that storm was moving did not seem right. A sound like an explosion echoed through the air and the ground shook violently enough to knock over drinks and some people. There had not been an earthquake in a very long time and I thought there had been some type of an explosion. Then there was another tremor in the ground, and another, and another. It felt as if some massive creature was walking toward the airport. I saw some people gawking at something through the window and I started to walk closer to it in order to see what was happening.

What I saw in the distance left me speechless. It was a bronze battle dragon. The battle dragons were the non-sentient versions of dragons created during the Enders War. Everybody wished they had been wiped out during the war, but they were too tough to go extinct. They were mindlessly aggressive, especially without anybody to control them anymore, and they were hideously difficult to kill. They were made to be that way after all. What made this battle dragon a true terror was its size. They were only supposed to be between eight to nine feet in height. If the monster walking toward this airport was any shorter than 1500 feet in height I would eat my own shoe. I would guess it was closer to 2000 feet in height. It was clear that the thunder I heard had been the dragon's wing beats. A plane that was attempting to land flew past the battle dragon and it grabbed the vehicle in one hand. He looked the plane over for a couple of seconds and then he crushed it as if it were a bug. Planes and airport personnel on the ground were not fairing much better. It was clear the battle dragon was purposefully trying to crush anything it could beneath its massive feet. People and vehicles did not stand a chance when even concrete gave way to the enormous weight of the dragon. Pure destruction was being left in the wake of the battle dragon.

I backed away from the window and walked quickly back to where Grace was comforting her nervous children. Grace noticed me walking toward them and I must have looked frightened because she asked, "Larry, what's wrong? What did you see out there?"

"We need to get out of here now. Forget about your luggage. I'm getting us out of here," I said in a voice I barely recognized as my own. Then I saw the blood drain from Grace's face. That was when I noticed that the tremors caused by the battle dragon had stopped. I turned around to see what Grace was staring at and was greeted with the sight of a large crocodilian eye peering at everyone in the terminal. The battle dragons had been designed to inspire terror in people and that eye was burning with such malice that I was left stunned with fear. It took a few precious seconds for my sense of self preservation to kick in. I grabbed Grace and her children and we started to make our way out of the airport as fast as we could.

Something crashes through the glass windows and steel frames behind us but I did not stop to find out what it was. I did not need to either. A large pair of clawed fingers reached right past us and slammed down on the floor around us. Grace and I barely had enough time to cover the children's eyes before they could see dozens of people get crushed. Each of those fingers had to be larger than the planes outside. It was like watching someone swat insects from the insects' point of view. People that had only been partially crushed were screaming in pain and a few brave souls were actually trying to help the injured instead of just fleeing in terror. Then the battle dragon started to drag its hand out of the building. A red streak was left behind as the hand withdrew and the fresh screams of pain from those only partially trapped under those scaly digits were nearly enough to make vomit all over the place. But, I did not have time for that now.

Some people were trying to get out in the opposite direction I was going. That seemed strange since that direction would take them right toward the battle dragon. Maybe they were trying to flee past the battle dragon and hoped he would be distracted with the airport itself. If that was what they were thinking then they were wrong. I looked back in time to see a slender purplish gray tongue fall over the first group of people that made it out of the opening that the battle dragon had created. They stuck to the sticky saliva coating the battle dragon's tongue. When it was withdrawn from view those people went with it. I actually thought that might be a good sign. If the battle dragon was feeding it would take even a creature of its size a while to go through the entire airport. It would be able to just destroy the airport in much less time.

People had been shocked by the sudden appearance of the dragon and every one had been left at least a little stunned to begin with. Now that shock had worn off and people were fleeing in earnest. It was hard for me and Grace to stick together. I actually had to pick up Kim and carry her to prevent the crowd from carrying her away. The poor child clung to me as tightly as she could. Even her claws were extended and they were drawing a little blood from me. The sound of the battle dragon making forced entries into other parts of the airport echo throughout the building. "I guess those reports really weren't that impossible afterwards Grace," I said jokingly, at least I hoped it came out jokingly.

"Really Larry, this isn't the time to be joking around," Grace responded breathlessly. "But honestly, did it have to happen to a battle dragon? Why not a tree, or a regular dragon? They're friendly enough. None of them would participate in this whole crushing and eating people nonsense." A battle dragon really was a worst case scenario. They were pretty much immune to any handheld weaponry since the type of weapon fire they were designed to take was considerably much more powerful than anything a chemically propelled gun could manage. At that monster's size I doubt anything but a nuclear weapon would be able to take it out. There are a few other things that might hurt him, but I would not want that thing wandering around injured and mad if I were the military.

This was also one of the worst places to get caught by a giant battle dragon, or any other hostile giant monster for that matter. Airports were big structures with nothing directly around them. When people tried to get out of this place they were all going to be in plain sight of that monster. I was trying to head to my car and I was going to have to depend on the battle dragon being busy with other things while I fled. Other things, I was going to have to be honest with myself. I was going to have to hope the battle dragon was too busy killing other people to notice me. It was a grisly thought, but it was the only way I was going to survive this encounter.

We were making our way steadily toward the parking lot where my car was. I was happy enough to be away from any window. The materials this building were made out of might as well have been paper to the battle dragon and it would not offer any protection against it, but I could pretend they could as long as I could not see it. That is what I thought until I started to run past a room with a glass wall facing me. There was a violent tremor that knocked me and just about everyone around me to our knees. Then that purplish gray tongue of the battle dragon's crashed through the roof of the room and continued through the floor of the as well. It started wriggling around in the room, picking up anyone it came in contact with. One man was pressed against a window very close to me. The window was cracking due to the pressure against it but it managed to hold. I will never forget the look of terror on the man's face as that tongue withdrew from the hole in the roof and dragged him along with it.

When the tongue was gone I was ready to start flee again. Grace had a different idea though. She was actually heading into the room that horrific scene had just occurred in. "What do you think you're doing Grace?" I asked in stunned disbelief.

"If we make it out of this someone might like a few samples to try and figure out how that creature got like that," Grace responded as she gathered a small saliva sample off a window inside the room. Then she came back out and we were fleeing once again. I wish I could say she was crazy, but she was right. Nobody had a clue how those ancient people had managed to shrink the world like they had. It might have been a virus for all we knew, even though that would not explain how that had shrunk mountains and rivers. Still, researches would be desperate for any information they could get.

Fortunately that was the only other close encounter that we had while still inside of the airport. That did not mean it made the screams of terror that echoed throughout the building any easier to deal with. I could just imagine what it was like as countless people were crushed like ants and others found themselves descending the throat of the great reptile. What I saw in the parking lot was not a very comforting sight. Even while I had still been pretty far away I could see that many of the cars had been crushed. Many more were flipped over or pilled up on top of each other. It was as if some child had carelessly kicked a bunch of his toy cars. When I was close enough to see even more of the parking lot there was even more bad news. The battle dragon was standing in the parking lot at the moment. Its clawed toes were pointing toward the building and I assumed it was busy killing the people inside at the moment. A few crashing noises that sounded like walls collapsing confirmed that. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and prayed my car was still alright out there. Then I tightened up my grip on Kim, grabbed Grace's wrist while she grabbed Mark's, and I dragged us in the direction of my car.

The battle dragon towered above us, but he was not looking for the relatively small number of people exiting the building. His attention was still focused on tearing the roof of the building apart and getting to the people inside. "Everyone stick close to me. I'm taking you to my car," I say. I do not mention the chance that my car might no longer be there. Saying that would only scare the children even more than they were right now. I also neglected to mention that my car was parked pretty close to where one of the battle dragon's feet was currently located.

It was incredibly difficult making our way through the parking lot. The dragon had obviously been walking around and it was now like an obstacle course out here. When cars and other debris were not in the way there was another problem. Many people think that when something walks around a neat little footprint is left behind. What those people do not realize is that most creatures tend to drag their feet a little on the ground when they take a step. That meant that not only did I have to maneuver around crater sized footprints, I also had to avoid the trenches that had been dug by his claws. Fortunately, the battle dragon was kind enough to stand still while I scampered beneath it.

I nearly cried with relief when I spotted my car in an island of untouched vehicles. Grace and I dump the kids in the back seat of my car and then we jump into the front. My hand was shaking while I started up the car. For some reason I could picture the battle dragon hearing the engine starting up and crushing me inside of my own car. I am happy to hear my own car start up and see the battle dragon's feet stay right where they are. It is still difficult driving around the parking lot, but I felt a lot less exposed inside of a vehicle. Then there was a weird noise. I looked for the source of the noise and saw one of the battle dragon's feet lifting into the air. That sound had been the crushed cars beneath its feet sighing with relief as the immense weight on them was finally lifted. Then that very same foot started moving my direction. A shadow surrounded my car and the children in back started crying while I held my breath in anticipation of the end. Then the foot came down so close to my car that it bounced a couple inches off the ground. It was possible for me to roll down my window and reach out to touch a scaly toe. I looked up to see if the dragon had noticed us but we were directly beneath it. His own body was blocking his view of us.

Then the dragon headed in the opposite direction you were going, crushing cars, lamp posts, and people hiding in the parking lot as he went. I can see a couple other cars driving around in the parking lot as I make my getaway. There are not many though. Everybody else is either stuck in the airport or trying to flee on foot. I wish those people good luck as I make my way out of the airport and onto the highway leading away from the airport. When I am on the open road I speed up as fast as the car can go and took one last look at the dragon as it turned one of the most expensive public projects in recent history into a feeding trough. That monster was the military's problem now. I did have to slow down eventually as I started shaking uncontrollably. That is when I realized I had not expected to live through that. I look at Grace to see how she is doing. Her face was buried in her hands and I could see a few tears. She was crying silently to herself to keep from further upsetting her children. I let everybody deal with this in whichever manner they chose as we continued in silence down the road.

About half an hour later there was a blinding flash behind my car. I looked in the rear view mirror to see a small mushroom cloud blossoming in the distance. The military had taken care of the problem. I just hoped they had tried to lead it away from a heavily populated area first and that they had used one of the newer nukes. The fallout from one of those would only be deadly for the next five or so minutes. I had to admit I was relieved I would not have to deal with the possibility of that thing following me to the city. Then I looked at a road sign. It would normally take me another hour to reach the city from here. But, the highway was deserted at the moment with the exception of no more than three or four cars. With traffic like this we were only half an hour away from the city.