Crawlers came in all sizes. When born they were no bigger than an earthworm but quickly grew to become as huge as a diesel truck with a trailer attached. This one was somewhere in the middle, essentially a long, thick body with a mouth attached. And what a mouth. Ringed by thick tendrils that writhed and coiled like so many snakes, its maw constantly opened and closed, as if the creature were biting and swallowing the air itself.
Blade slammed on the SEAL’s brake, narrowly avoiding a collision. For a few moments he was face-to-mouth with the horror. Then the Crawler heaved up out of the hole it had created and whipped its enormous body around.
“It’s coming at us from the side!” Tesla shouted.
Blade was already reacting. He tromped on the pedal and the SEAL lurched forward, spewing dust from under all four tires. The Crawler hurtled past the SEAL’s rear and immediately looped in a half-circle to come at them again.
“Let me out,” Hickok said, his hands on his Pythons. “I’ll try to slow the critter.”
“Be serious,” Blade said. His friend’s prized revolvers would have no more effect than slingshots. Their only hope lay in the SEAL’s armaments. He gained speed, hoping to put distance between them and the monstrosity.
The Crawler gave chase, whipping over the ground much as a snake would, its maw opening, closing, opening, closing.
Blade grimly kept the pedal to the floor. The Crawler was large enough and heavy enough that if it rammed them, it might flip the SEAL over. While nearly impregnable to small-arms fire, the vehicle’s structural integrity wouldn’t survive the impact of the five-ton behemoth. It would crack like an egg, and they were the yolks the Crawler would greedily devour.
The Tower loomed larger ahead. Blade saw that he might be able to use the edifice to his advantage, and made straight for it at over seventy miles an hour. Incredibly, the Crawler was gaining. At the last instant he spun the steering wheel, sending the SEAL into a slide and missing the Tower by a whisker. Hugging the structure, he pushed the SEAL to its limit.
“Go! Go! Go!” Geronimo hollered.
Socrates hadn’t said a word. The Family’s new Leader was staring out the back, as unflappably calm as ever.
Blade didn’t know how the man did it. Elder or not, there was something uncanny about Socrates’s sense of self-possession. He put it from his mind and concentrated on finding just the right spot, a clear space empty of boulders and other obstructions. It came on them in a flash and he frantically worked the steering wheel while trying to drive the brake pedal through the floor.
The SEAL spun completely around, and stopped. The front end was pointed at the oncoming Crawler.
The monster didn’t slacken its speed one iota.
Blade flipped another toggle.
“What are you waitin’ for?” Hickok said.
“Christmas,” Blade said, and cut loose with the .50-caliber machine guns mounted behind the SEAL’s grill. The vehicle shook to the recoil of the twin devastators as a hailstorm of heavy slugs struck the creature head-on, and slowed it.
Hickok let out a whoop. “Shoot that varmint to bits!”
Blade doubted even the machine guns could kill it, as immense as the thing was. But they had another weapon in their arsenal that might, and when the Crawler arced its huge body and spread its maw wider than ever, he opened up with the flame-thrower.
A funnel of fire engulfed the Crawler. Blade swore he heard a scream but that was impossible. Crawlers, like the worms they were mutated from, never made a sound.
Defying belief, the Crawler advanced into the flames, its maw shut tight, its entire bulk shuddering.
Just when Blade thought the flame-thrower wouldn’t be enough and the abomination would reach them, it whipped away from the SEAL and the liquid fire and off across the plain. It didn’t go far. Partially aflame, it vaulted its front half high into the air and slammed head-down into the earth. In seconds it was gone, the hole it had made letting out tendrils of smoke in its wake.
“My word!” Tesla exclaimed. “Did you see that thing?”
“What thing?” Hickok said.
Geronimo snorted.
“What if it comes up below us?” Socrates asked, no worry in his tone at all at the prospect.
Blade was worried it just might if it wanted to feast on them bad enough. But the seconds turned into a minute and the minute into two and nothing happened.
Hickok laughed. “I reckon we kicked its wormy butt, pard.”
“Don’t crow yet,” Blade cautioned. He tilted his head to stare at the top of the Tower, so high it seemed to scrape the bottom of the clouds. “The worst might be yet to come.”
CHAPTER 3
One of the great wrought metal doors that served as the Tower’s only entrance hung aslant by its top hinge, the other lay on the cracked marble slab that supported them, all three covered with the accumulated dust of years.
Blade took the lead, his Commando Arms Carbine pressed to his shoulder. “Be ready for anything.”
Behind him, Socrates and Tesla stood with their heads craned back, studying the edifice.
“Magnificent,” Tesla said in admiration. “Truly magnificent. The architecture is extraordinary.”
“This spires befits a being with its maker’s ego,” Socrates remarked. “Thanatos saw himself as supreme ruler over all.”
“He may have had his personality quirks….,” Tesla began.
“Quirks?” Geronimo cut in. “Thanatos was insane.”
“There’s a fine line between madness and genius,” Tesla said. “And you have to admit his accomplishments in the field of genetics, to say nothing of his ability to manipulate the chronol continuum, were light years ahead of anything that anyone else has ever done. He deserves our highest respect.”
“My pard is right,” Hickok said. “All we’ll admit is that Thanatos was loco. And the only thing he deserved was to be put down.”
“Enough,” Blade commanded. He was
