The roar of an animal made Jack freeze as he tried to free himself from the fallen roof. He heard one of the men open fire and then the other started screaming. Collins moved from side to side, trying to push away the accumulated wall that encased him on all sides. Finally he felt his right arm free up, and he pulled himself up and out, spitting dirt and sand as he did.
Silence greeted his return to the air. He silently rolled down the hill that had been his own cage a moment before and found himself lying against plastic bags of fertilizer. Jack raised his goggles and reached into his vest and pulled out a flare and struck it. He tossed it over a jumble of wheelbarrows and immediately saw one of the creatures strike out at the light with its tail. Jack rose and fired a ten-round burst at the beast, which roared and turned on him. Collins fell backward over the fertilizer and landed with a thump into sacks of something whitish gray that plumed into the air around him. He fought to quickly right himself and came to his knees. Still off-balance, he saw the animal charge in the glowing red light of the flare. As he fired, the first three rounds hit the fifty-pound sacks of the whitish material in front of him, sending a cloud up as his other rounds passed through. He heard a roar and then the scrambling noises of the animal as it suddenly changed direction. He then heard the screams of the beast as it momentarily went crazy, slamming into the fallen racks and fixtures of the sunken hardware store.
Collins heard shouts coming from behind him as the rest of the tunnel team on the other side of the cave-in fought and dug to get to him. He saw the animal as it swiped at the white dust that clung to its sickening armor. Jack quickly fired ten rounds at the beast, and to his surprise he saw no ricochets as the armor-piercing ammo found weak spots all over. They seemed to stitch right up the animal's side armor as it screamed and fell forward, unmoving. Jack couldn't believe the easiness of this creature's death as compared to the others they had met up with. As he limped forward, he saw that the fifty-pound bags were full of potash. He figured some of the bitter- tasting stuff that he thought was used in planting may have blinded the creature, making it an easy target. He came forward and looked the animal over in the flare's light and could see where the armor had cracked as the bullets pierced it. Parts of its exoskeleton were lying beside it like fallen eggshell, and its blood was soaking into the ground.
Everett finally pushed the last of the dirt aside, and he and two others slid into the remains of the hardware store.
'Jack!' he called. 'Where are the other two?'
Collins lowered his weapon and just nodded toward the far side of the tunnel. He reached out and rubbed a finger across the creature's armor, and his glove picked up a heavy coating of potash. He rubbed it together with his fingers and some soaked into his gloves; he felt a tingling but nothing any more significant than that.
'They're dead, Jack,' Everett said as he returned.
Collins looked up from his fingers and into Everett's face. 'We're all going to be if we don't get out of here,' he said as he studied the unsteady and crumbling foundation of the hardware store, then finally turned and went back to the main tunnel.
It took thirty minutes for Collins's team to retrace their tracks through the tunnel to a large branch that he hoped led to another opening in the surface. The VDF machine had picked up nothing on their return but a far-off target that seemed too large to be one of the animals. Besides, the ghost target appeared to be at the far end of the valley where there had been no animal activity. The absence of any closer targets meant the offspring were heading out of the valley or were congregating somewhere else and keeping still, waiting around the next turn of the tunnel in ambush.
They moved closer to where they thought the town lay. Suddenly the small column stopped and Jack leaned against the wall and waited for Everett to report. It didn't take long.
'Major, you better come up here and look at this.'
Jack took a deep breath and made his way past the others, winking at the small boy as he did. He found Everett looking to the right. Jack's eyes widened as he took in the massive tunnel. It had been excavated close to one of the offspring's burrowing and had partially caved it in, the one Collins and his team were currently inside. The large tunnel was three times the diameter of the tunnels they had been traveling through, and its odor was different from the stink they still couldn't get used to. But far more worrisome was the twenty-five-foot width of the hole.
'The mother?' Everett asked, shining his flashlight around the circumference of the shaft.
'Has to be, we haven't seen anything this size out of her offspring. But if it is, she's grown since she dug the tunnel at Site One.'
'Can't tell which direction it's heading off in.'
Jack lightly slapped Carl on the back. 'Come on, we don't need to run into her right now, we're beat and low on ammo.'
Carl turned away and started forward again.
Jack took one more look at the size of the tunnel and shook his head. The mother would have to be close to twenty-five feet tall to have made this. He turned his back on it and found the others.
Twenty minutes later Everett again held a hand into the air. They stopped and waited.
'We have a light up ahead, Major,' Everett said into his microphone.
Collins eased his way past the others until he reached the front. Then he clicked his light off and waited for Everett, who turned and looked at Jack. Their faces told a story of hardship and terror he never wanted to see again. He had been through some bad situations before, but none that were this oppressive to the mind. He had started to think of the creatures as being much more than mere animals. They had to be sentient beings, with the intelligence to know when their lives were threatened. As he looked at his small group, he knew there could be no other conclusion.
'It looks like it leads up into some kind of bar or cafe or something, Major. No sign of the animals.'
Ryan, who had left Julie, Billy, and Tony only after promising he would be right back, joined them. He had taken his nine millimeter and chambered a round, removed the safety, and started to hand it to Tony, then caught a whiff of whiskey from the man and handed it to Julie. 'It's ready to fire, so be careful,' he had told her.
'Hey, guys, what's up?' Ryan whispered when he found Jack and Carl.
'We have an entrance hole up ahead,' Everett said.
'I smell cheeseburgers,' Ryan said, sniffing. 'Must be the Broken Cactus, Julie's place.'
'As good a place as any to get the hell out of here.' Collins adjusted his mike to his mouth and spoke softly to his remaining nine men. 'Alright, listen up, we found a way out. Let's move quickly and try and make as little noise as possible.'
Ryan returned to Julie and the others and let them know they were home.
'After you, swab,' Collins said, smiling at Everett.
'Yeah, SEAL would probably taste better to it than some old leathery army type.'
Everett slowly approached the hole and noticed ropes hanging down. This must have been some other team's point of entry, but he couldn't remember ever seeing it on the chart. Then he thought about Miss Dawes and her kid; this must have been the point where they had been taken into the tunnel. Everett tugged on the first rope and was satisfied it was secured well at the top, then he tested the second. Slowly Carl pulled himself up. When he was a foot from the top, he freed his automatic from its holster and peered over the top. He was looking into a kitchen. There were stainless steel counters, pots, pans, and dishes lying smashed and bent everywhere. He listened for any sign of movement, then sniffed. The odors of old grease and coffee assailed his nostrils. Then suddenly he heard it, a soft crunching sound he couldn't place. As his eyes roamed over the remains of the kitchen, he froze. One of the animals was hunched in a corner near the stove, and it had a man and was slowly eating him. Everett let his eyes adjust for a moment, then made out a Channel 7 Minicam lying next to the former owner. Carl grimaced and carefully eased his nine millimeter back into his shoulder holster and removed a grenade from his web belt. He placed pressure on his boots and held himself in place as he quietly pulled the pin. He quickly rolled the round grenade over the broken floor, where it bounced twice and landed at the creature's feet. As it tilted its head in curiosity, the grenade exploded. Everett had ducked down into the hole and was holding on tightly when the flash and loud boom shook dirt down on him and the others waiting in the tunnel.
He didn't bother to explain to the major and the rest of the team as he scrambled up the rope again and peered over the flooring and into the smoke-filled kitchen. He looked through the swirling, acrid smoke caused by the grenade and at first only saw the damage it had caused to Miss Dawes's kitchen. Then he saw movement. The creature was down but still alive. Shrapnel had found a weak spot somewhere on its armored body, but Carl didn't know how seriously it was wounded. He reholstered his weapon to free his hands again and climbed the rest of the
