by Ryder Stacy
Everything suddenly seemed to move in slow motion. Rock could see them all flailing around atop their ’brids, which slid in terror along the crystal ground. It was like a dream in which you can see every minute detail but can do nothing to stop it. The earth shook more and more powerfully, taking their minds, their thoughts. There was nothing but violent motion everywhere. It was as if they were in the hands of a race of giants, being squeezed and shaken until their very brains would surely explode through their skulls.
Rock felt the palomino falling to the side as the roar grew completely deafening. He rolled free and tried to rise, but there was no way, no solidity beneath his feet. Suddenly the ground began ripping, cracking apart, tearing its very guts open. The ’brids screamed in terror as clouds of dust shot up through the cracks like geysers of solid sand. A network of fractures opened up, instantly stretching off in all directions like a spiderweb. The earth moaned with a deep, wrenching sound, as the crystalline surface came apart at the seams. The hairline cracks widened and grew within seconds to black rivulets, then chasms, creaking, opening into bottomless darkness.
Rock heard an animal scream, for a moment even louder than the roar. Dean Keppel’s ’brid was disappearing into a six-foot-wide fissure. It fell backwards, its flailing hooves useless in the air. Rock stopped trying to rise and fell flat onto his stomach. He spread his arms and legs out as wide as possible and held on to the very flesh of the earth as she raged uncontrollably. Rock could feel his bones being jarred inside his body, as if he were riding the biggest bucking bronco that had ever lived. He held on for dear life. He tried to crane his neck around to see the others, but in the mist created by the streams of sand being shot up from the fissures at high speed it was like looking through a thick fog. An immense fissure ripped open just yards away from Rock, tearing the earth like a piece of paper. On the other side it looked as if another ’brid with someone on top went down into the earth. Damn, he couldn’t even make out who it was. Another crack started opening just beneath him. Rockson felt it coming and rolled to the side, making contact with solid ground as the chasm sucked down the earth where he had been sprawled. For a second he could see down into the dusty black hole. It seemed to go down forever. Rock prepared himself for death. He felt no fear, but great sadness. Sadness that they wouldn’t get to the convention to help form the new America, and a deeper and more wounding ache, that he would never see Kim again. He calmed his mind and heart and waited, as the cracks opened everywhere, to die.
Twelve
As suddenly as it had begun, the quake was over. The tremors died down with a cough or two of delayed aftershock and then all was still. Rock rose slowly to his feet to survey the damage. His legs felt unsteady after being in the grip of such a powerful force. Around him the hybrids lay on their sides, trying to right themselves—two left. With a flurry of motion they jumped to their feet. About fifty feet away lay Ms. Shriver, motionless on the now jagged and torn ground. At least she was alive. He turned quickly around, searching for the others. Chen and Dean Keppel were nowhere in sight.
“Rock, Rock,” he heard a voice yell. “Over here.” He turned a full hundred eighty degrees. It was Chen, alive. Rockson said a quick silent prayer inside. If he had ever felt that a man was his brother, Chen was that man. The Chinese freefighter was about a hundred fifty feet away, on an island of the crystal rock, surrounded on all sides by immense chasms.
“Ended up in a bit of a pickle, I guess,” Chen yelled to Rock with a shrug.
“I’ll get you off in a second,” the Doomsday Warrior shouted back. He ran over to Ms. Shriver, who groaned as he lifted her.
“What? What?” she said in a daze.
“Easy,” Rock said gently, getting her in a sitting position. “We were in a quake. You’re going to be all right, though.”
“Oh, God,” she exploded out, suddenly remembering the terror she had felt. She burst into tears. Rock patted her shoulder and then quickly rose to help Chen. Rock, Ms. Shriver, and the two remaining ’brids were on a large shelf, about two hundred feet square, with only hairline fractures. He rushed to Snorter, who was shakily standing, his knees half buckling as he tried to regain his equilibrium.
“Easy boy, we’re okay now,” Rock said, stroking the steed’s side. The palomino seemed to relax at his touch, trusting the master that things were in fact all right. Rock called the other ’brid over. It came quickly and stood next to Snorter. He took the rope from the side of the ’brid and tied it around the saddle-horn, then led the palomino across the relatively flat terrain to the chasm that separated Chen.
“I’ve got my own little island here, Rock,” the oriental freefighter laughed. “Maybe I should stay. Peaceful, quiet.”
“Here, catch the end of the rope,” Rock yelled, throwing the loose end the forty feet over to Chen. The fissure below disappeared into utter darkness; God only knew what was down there. Chen caught the rope and looked around for something to tie it to—but there was nothing.
“I’ll have to swing over, Rock,” he said. “Pull the ’brid back about ten feet.” Rock did so and then commanded the palomino to stay absolutely still. As skittish as he still was, the hybrid instantly obeyed Rock, locking its legs into a frozen position.
Chen took a tight hold of the inch-thick nylon, stepped to the very edge of the crevice, and jumped. He swung down in a long arc, kicking out at the last second before he would have crashed into the opposite fissure wall. As soon as he had stopped swinging, he quickly pulled himself up hand over hand and appeared at the edge at Rock’s feet. The Doomsday Warrior reached down and grabbed hold of Chen’s hand, pulling him up with one strong motion.
“Ah, that’s a little better,” Chen said, dusting himself off and starting to coil up the rope. “What’s the damage report?”
“Two ’brids gone and—I’m afraid Keppel’s bought it.” Chen’s smile at his rescue vanished at the words.
“Shit, we didn’t need this. Didn’t need it at all.” The two freefighters walked back to Ms. Shriver, who was now standing and drying her eyes.
“I’m sorry I broke down, Mr. Rockson, I’m all right now, I assure you. Where is Dean Keppel?” Rock looked down, not wanting to tell her. Suddenly they all heard a loud bellow of pain from the other end of their shelf. The two freefighters ran over and peered down into the darkness. Dust was still settling, but it looked as if one of the ’brids was lying on its side some two hundred feet down. Rock grabbed his field glasses from his pack on Snorter and focused down into the fissure. Yes—Keppel’s ’brid, with its large brown circle on the side. He moved slowly along the rocky cavern far below and found a shape. He focused. It was hard to tell for sure, but it looked like Keppel.
“We’re going to have to go down,” the Doomsday Warrior said, taking out his medical supplies from the pack on Snorter’s back. “I think he’s dead—the fall was too great. But we’ve got to find out.” He leaned out over the edge and yelled down, but there was no answer. “I think we should both go,” Rock said to Chen. “No telling just what we’ll find down there.” They threw some supplies over their shoulders and tied the two ropes together, putting one end around Snorter’s saddlehorn again.
Rockson went first, moving slowly as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. He had to move carefully to avoid the sharp, cutting fragments of rock poking out everywhere from the walls. Within minutes both men had rappelled down to a ledge about thirty feet above the ’brid and Keppel.
“Damn, the rope’s run out,” Rock said, as Chen joined him on the outcropping. “We’ll have to climb down from here.” He snapped on a small lantern he had taken from his field pack and clamped it to his utility belt, stuffed to the brim with cartridges and other military hardware. They looked around, on the alert for the unknown. They were in a large cavern, on a ten-foot ledge. Below them the space widened greatly, with what appeared to be small circular tunnels leading off in all directions.
“What the hell are those?” Chen asked, pointing to the almost
perfectly round tunnellike openings.
“I think I know,” Rock said mysteriously. “And I hope we don’t find out.” They climbed down, using the outcroppings of sharp rock on the fissure walls, and dropped down to the cavern floor. There was blood everywhere. The ’brid was a mess, its legs all broken and bones poking through at odd angles. It lifted its big golden brown head as they approached and let out a low, plaintive moan. Rock took out his .12 gauge shotgun pistol and held it at the creature’s skull.
“Goodbye boy, I’m sorry this had to happen.” He pulled the trigger and the hybrid flopped back, jerked several times, and then was still. They quickly made their way across the cavern, able to see only dimly with Rock’s small lantern.
There—a human form covered in blood. Rock leaned down and turned Dean Keppel over. The face was a pulpy mess, the nose smashed all the way to one side, one of the man’s eyes sliced in half, dripping a sticky liquid. His arms were both broken, hanging at the side like snapped twigs, and his chest seemed to have been half crushed on one side, staining his fatigue jacket a dark scarlet. Chen reached over and put his fingertips against the scholar’s throat.
“Believe it or not Rock, he’s still alive. Pulse faint, but there.”
“Can you do anything for him?” Rock asked. Chen’s fighting abilities were his primary focus, but he had also studied widely in the oriental healing arts—shiatsu, acupuncture, Chi alignment, and herbal healing.
“Rock, this sounds terrible, but I think he would have been better off dying. I have no supplies at all with me for this kind of injury. If we even move him we may sever his spinal cord or push a bone through his heart. He’s obviously suffered massive internal damage. I don’t know where to begin.” Chen looked hopelessly at the mortally wounded Keppel. Rockson could see that he felt terrible for not being able to do more.
“Don’t worry about the fine points,” the Doomsday Warrior said. “It happened, and now we have to deal with it. One—we’ve got to move him. Down here, the cold, Christ knows what else will do him in in hours, anyway. We’ll have to rig up some kind of lift, get him up top, and see what we can do. There’s no choice.” Rockson told Chen to stay with Keppel while he went to the surface to rig up some kind of lift from a blanket find some of the tent poles and get more rope.
The climb up was a lot harder then the descent had been. Rock had to pull himself up hand over hand for two hundred feet. His muscles bulged with oxygenated blood as they lifted his two hundred thirty pounds to the surface. Ms. Shriver half screamed when she suddenly saw his hand appear over the edge of the crevice.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve come to get more supplies.”
“You mean the dean is alive?” Her eyes brightened instantly.
“Barely,” Rock replied softly. “I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
He gathered the materials he needed and a second lamp from Chen’s pack and headed down again. This time the descent was quick and easy, as he knew the footholds and outcroppings; He reached bottom and went over to Chen who sat next to and behind the wounded man, touching the base of his neck with his hands.
“I’m trying to increase the Chi Kung flow. Not that it will help, but—” Rockson set about putting the makeshift rig together and within ten minutes had made something that looked like it would work.
“Let’s roll him over, real careful, onto it,” Chen said. Better to roll than lift—don’t want to put any strain on the spinal cord.” They got the profusely bleeding Keppel onto the cot—a blanket with a tent pole along each side—and tied him securely down.
“Now all we have to do is get him up,” Chen said, looking over at the high fissure that led to the top. They got on each end of the contraption and began walking slowly across the rock floor. Suddenly they both heard sounds at the same instant. Scuttling, crawling noises coming from all sides of the cavern. Rock turned his hip with the lantern on it at one of the walls. From out of the circular tunnels were pouring megapedes, hundreds of them—nearly three feet long, with slimy brown bodies and thousands of tiny undulating legs moving them forward at a high speed. Four long hooked mandibles opened and closed like threshing scythes in each jaw, snapping, anticipating dinner.
“Holy shit,” Chen said, as the two freefighters stood frozen for a moment, holding Keppel. Then, moving in a blur, with clockwork precision, they placed the wounded man on the cavern floor and drew their weapons. Rockson’s .12 gauge shotgun pistol was in his hands and firing at the closest of the horrendous squealing creatures. The shot spread quickly and turned five of them into minced meat, which for several seconds stopped the next wave, which ripped away at the flesh of their dead comrades.
Taking Rock’s back, Chen whipped out six exploding star-knives, three in each hand, and threw them like rockets toward the advancing wave of writhing brown skin. The six death stars went off three feet apart, blowing about twenty of the megapedes into brown dripping slime on the cave wall behind them. But there were more everywhere, every second. They kept emerging from the small tunnels that covered the cavern walls, jumping out and forward in a violent frenzy.
“They’re in a feeding frenzy,” Rock said. “This is their way of eating, just charge and whatever’s there—eat. Problem is I don’t think they’re smart enough to know they’re being killed, so they’re going to keep coming.”
“Rock if I’d known this trip was going to be this much fun I’d have booked an extra week. You’re a great guy to go out and have a good time with—anyone ever tell you that?”
“Plenty of times,” Rock said, reloading his pistol with widespread shells. “We at least need a more defensive position. Out here in the middle of this damn place . . .”
“If we could just get back to the ledge we could hold them off.” They both turned and looked to see a carpet of the giant carnivorous insects coming straight at them.
“Maybe I can clear a path,” Chen said. He pulled out six more of the wafer-thin five-pointed knives. “Let me throw them, then we’ll pick up Keppel and make a run for it. What do you think?”
“Ain’t nothing else happening,” Rock said, reaching down for his end of the rig. He kept his pistol in one hand aimed straight ahead. Chen breathed out, relaxed himself for a second, and then released the spinning blades, one after another. They whizzed through the dank air like little missiles. Then they exploded one after another in fifteen-foot intervals all the way to the ledge side of the cavern.
The freefighters tore through the broken bodies that littered the way. Those that weren’t mangled, lay on their sides, not moving so fast. They reached out with snapping jaws, trying to get a piece of the running humans, but got only air. Halfway there—most of the megapedes were dead where Chen had spun the knives, but already more waves were coming in from both sides. Ten feet ahead four of them blocked his path. Rock pulled the trigger of his huge pistol and blasted the way clear. Bits of hard brown skin floated down around them. Suddenly the Doomsday Warrior felt something slam into his leg—a megapede, the bottom half of its body blasted away, was still alive enough to close its huge jaws on Rock’s calf. He slowed only slightly, dragging the thing along, and managed to angle the gun down at it. He blasted just inches from his leg, and the top half of the giant insect, along with its swordlike jaws, disintegrated into red slop. Rock could feel a biting pain in his leg, but no nerves or tendons had been severed. He’d have to worry about it later.
They were almost at the ledge, stepping over bits and pieces of killer bug that covered the cavern floor. The new waves of the things had once again been slowed by their insatiable hunger—as they devoured the bloody flesh that was everywhere. They made loud sucking sounds as they grabbed everything they could find and slammed it into their crunching jaws.
“Now what?” Chen said, as they stopped at the base of the fissure that led up. They had only seconds at most.
“I’ll drop the rope—tie it to the top of the litter and then get your ass up here,” Rock said as he put down his end of the litt
er and scaled the side. He reached the ledge in seconds and dropped down the end of the extra rope he had brought. Chen quickly tied it to the end of Keppel’s rig and then lifted it so Rockson could get a good start on pulling it up. As soon as it was upright, he too shot up the cave wall, grabbing handholds and pulling himself up. He joined Rock on the ledge and helped him pull. The angle was bad and the litter kept catching on out croppings. Slowly, slowly, the mangled Keppel rose.
Suddenly one of the megapedes darted out of nowhere and up the wall toward the rising rig, now about half up to the ledge.
“Jesus, Rock, look,” Chen gasped. Everything happened in a millisecond—Rockson held on to the rope with his left hand and pulled his pistol with the right. The megapede seemed to understand that the rope was holding its meal up and rushed past the bleeding body. It snapped its four razor-sharp jaws closed on the rope just above the rig. Rock pulled the trigger, and the brown thousand-legged slime thing flew off the wall, its guts pouring out. But the damage had been done. The rope snapped, and Keppel fell back to the cavern floor. Within seconds a swarm of the things was on top of him, ripping at the white flesh, sucking the blood from the gaping chest wound.
“Oh God,” Rock said, his mouth hanging open for a second. Chen pulled out two of the exploding star-knives and without hesitating threw them into the writhing mass of megapedes atop the dean. The explosions turned the feast into a bloodbath—ripping the slurping insects into pieces along with Keppel. Rock and Chen stared down at the unrecognizable pool of blood and countless severed brown legs.
“I had to, Rock. Even though he was out cold, I couldn’t stand by and let them—eat him—like that.”
