'No, this is it. Can you tell me where the army has set up?' he asked, then took a bite of his sandwich.
The question made Julie hesitate a moment as she wondered why this man didn't know where the army had their camp since he was from the government. But she decided it was probably innocent. 'All I know is they're everywhere. But you may want to look for a Lieutenant Ryan. He seems to be in charge in town.' Julie looked up into the man's eyes. 'Do me a favor. If you see a little boy hanging out with him on a four-wheeler, tell him his mother needs him back home, would ya?' she asked, batting her lovely eyes.
'My pleasure, ma'am, and the name of the guy is Ryan, gotcha. By the way, how will I recognize the boy?'
'Easy, he's the only child in this madhouse.'
The Talkhan watched as her young started their separate journeys to the surface. They had eagerly devoured all the nourishment she had stored for them, and still their added abilities demanded more for their burning metabolisms. They were again starving.
The activity felt and sensed from above was enough to set them on their instinctual path to the outside world.
The only offspring to lag behind the others was the male. It sat far away from the females and watched. The mother had approached it earlier in an attempt to wrest one of the smaller females from its clawed grasp, but it would have none of it. Already as large as her, it puffed out his purple neck armor and backed away a few steps, its horrible eyes never leaving her. The mother, sensing danger, moved off to tend to the females. The brooding male dove into the earth, its instincts taking over and driving it away from the others for survival. The females, their food exhausted, went separate ways, diving into the soil in all directions.
The mother watched as they went, then she too dove upward from the birthplace and into the soil. She would hunt separately.
The extinction of mankind was now beginning in earnest, and a new king was about to sit alone at the top of the food chain.
Ryan was trying to hold his rising temper in check with the state trooper as best he could. He felt for the man, but missing brother or not, he couldn't let him go back out into the desert. The other twenty state troopers that were also surrounding him all shouted their curses at the same time.
The forty members of the 101st Airborne who had been assigned to Ryan were spread throughout the town, but some were starting to make their way to the assembled crowd of policemen, as their shouts of protest were becoming a little more threatening.
'Look, we have men out there right now. We didn't try and hand you a bullshit cover story like the rest, and you saw yourself what this animal is capable of from the cattle you found. Do you want to run up against that with just a sidearm and riot guns?'
'We can take care of ourselves and don't need the fucking army to hold our hands, goddamm it!' Dills shouted back, and the other officers nodded in agreement and shouted epithets like
At that moment, Ryan felt someone tugging at his sleeve. He ignored the shouted curses of the state troopers and turned. At his side were a man and a woman. They were disheveled to say the least, as the older woman's hair was loose and going in every direction of the compass and still had a few curlers hanging on for dear life. The older man was pale and had small cuts on his face and neck and was sunburned.
'Yes?' Ryan said, looking at the two people as if they had fallen from the sky.
The state troopers settled for a moment and they too looked at the couple, who seemed to have just stepped off the elevator from hell.
The man cleared his throat and looked from Ryan to the staring state troopers. Dills and his partner had a vague memory of helping these people change a tire last night.
'I would like to report an... an... an accident,' the man said haltingly.
The woman rolled her eyes. 'Accident my ass, Harold,' Grace Tracy declared a little too calmly. She looked from her husband to Ryan, staring at him, and without blinking said, 'Our camper was hit by a monster in the desert and tipped over, and I want to know what you are going to do about it, young man?' Her eyes were wide, moving from Ryan to the state troopers.
Ryan and most of the troopers blinked under the woman's maniacal glare.
'Well, are you going to do something about it, huh... huh?'
Ryan was just going to ask her to give a report to one of the state cops when he heard yelling and screaming coming from the center of town. As he watched, people broke out running from the Broken Cactus in a steady stream. Someone even threw a chair out the big plate-glass window in the front, followed quickly by people jumping through the empty frame, some knocking others down in their frenzy to get out of the Broken Cactus. Ryan stared for just a moment at the strange spectacle before him. Then he shook himself and started running toward the center of town, quickly followed by his men, and then, drawing sidearms and yanking shotguns from their patrol cars, the state troopers came.
Harold and Grace Tracy decided they had dropped back into Chato's Crawl at a bad time. Only one thing ran through Harold's mind as they turned away from the horrible scene once again unfolding around them in the very place they had had lunch the previous day. He really regretted not having gone to Colorado to visit his sister-in- law.
Julie didn't realize the attacks had started until the floor exploded under her. The music had been playing loudly, but not loud enough to cover the ear-shattering crack of the flooring as it exploded upward into the milling crowd of reporters. Screams sent chills down Julie's spine as the crowd parted and she saw people being pulled down into the now missing floor of the diner.
Tomlinson reached over the bar and shoved Julie to the left as the part of planking she was standing on cracked and splintered. She screamed and moved quickly around the bar.
Suddenly, a dark, nightmarish form jumped from the hole behind the bar and roared, sending the featherlike armor plates lining its neck and head outward from its body. The crowd around the bar stared in shock and added their screams to that of the creature. The beast was about eight feet in height with shimmering thick, black hair that caught the light streaming in through the window. The claws were huge, and they came down and sank into the mahogany bar and snapped the three-inch-thick hardened wood as if it were made of balsa. The green eyes fixed on them, its mouth opened, and claw-tipped mandibles parted to show three rows of sharklike teeth. The ears were sharply pointed over a snout that was huge and curved off into the jawline with bunched muscles. The thick brow was covered in sharp points of protruding plate that highlighted its terrible eyes. The tail, its barbed stinger dripping venom, shot forward and missed Tomlinson by an inch as he fell back into Julie and they both tumbled to the floor.
'Run!' he shouted at Julie, who was busy pushing herself out from under his weight and scooting backward on her ass. She didn't need to be told by any stranger to get the hell out of there.
With lightning speed he pulled a hidden pistol from somewhere on his body and started firing at the beast, which had deftly jumped to the bar and was ready to spring. The huge head swayed left and right, surveying the area for threats; the armor plates around the neck were now relaxed and swayed with the movement like a large headdress. Out of ten bullets fired, one missed and five hit the thickest chest armor of the animal and ricocheted off. But then the next four of the Frenchman's shots found a weak spot in both its eyes. The nightmare roared again and swiped at its assailant, missing him by mere inches. Its momentum carried it over and off the bar and crashing to the floor. As it hit, two huge claws of another yet unseen animal burst through the wood and tile and grasped the dying beast and pulled it under with a sickening crunch.
Tomlinson quickly turned over and gained his feet, picking Julie up on the way out of the slaughterhouse.
'What in the hell was it?' Julie screamed.
He turned and pulled Julie close and yelled, 'Just get the hell out of here. I have to find my men.'
As he was shouting at the woman, the crowd started pouring out of the Broken Cactus, pushing the two apart and carrying Julie away outside.
In the kitchen another of the creatures burst through the flooring and black and white tile
