by S. S. Segran
Wow, what a honker, she thought as she took a closer look at the guard’s nose, then shook herself. Don’t have time to waste!
The mouse scampered over the table and grabbed the key ring in its small jaws. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too heavy for the little creature. Tegan gazed at the scanner by the storage room door.
How do I get it there without making any noise?
Tegan glanced at Potato Nose. Hoping that his snoring was noisy enough to cover any other sound, she pushed the keys toward the end of the table. They jangled against each other—louder than she had expected.
Potato Nose grunted and shifted in his chair. Tegan looked over, heart pounding. The man was still fast asleep. Not risking another moment, she grabbed the keycard between her teeth, braced herself, then launched off the table. She flew for a good two seconds, soaring high above the ground toward the scanner, though with the mouse’s size it felt more like an eternity.
Then her flight ended abruptly as she smacked against the wall. As she plummeted to the floor, she was panic-stricken. I missed the scanner!
But no, the door quietly buzzed as she landed on her rump. So great was her excitement that the mouse let out a squeak. Potato Nose grunted again but didn’t awaken. Tegan severed her connection with Devastator in the next heartbeat.
When she opened her eyes, she was startled by Mariah standing nearby, staring intently at her. “The door’s unlocked, but I don’t know for how long!” she whispered.
Mariah looked horrified. “What?”
“Shh! Just do what I do!” Tegan stood up and leaned forward so her tied hands were past her bottom. She put one leg back through her arms, then the other. She straightened, her bound hands now in front of her.
Mariah followed her example. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Movies. You can actually pick up a thing or two. Get the box cutter.”
Mariah retrieved the tool and cut Tegan loose before being freed herself. Tegan hurried to the door and, hoping that they weren’t too late, pushed on it. It opened. The girls silently stepped out, sharing amazed glances as they tiptoed past Potato Nose.
They paused at the main entrance to gather themselves and took a few breaths to get rid of their jitters. Then, with a firm nod, Tegan tugged on the door and stepped out into the cavern.
33
The girls headed out, Mariah making sure to close the door behind them. Tegan paused to take Devastator out of her pocket and set him on the ground. The mouse twitched his nose up at her as if wondering what was going on. She gave him a small pat between his ears. “Thank you for your assistance,” she whispered. “Stay safe, little buddy.”
Devastator watched as Tegan took the lead and the girls ran from mound to mound. Breaths quick and short, they hurried around the steel building they’d seen earlier, giving it as wide a berth as possible. But even at this distance they could still hear a low, guttural growl.
“Teegs,” Mariah whimpered, “why does that sound so familiar?”
Tegan didn’t respond.
The growl sounded again, and Mariah reached out to grab Tegan’s shoulder. “Oh, my God . . . is that—”
Tegan shushed her. “Don’t even think about it! Stay focused on getting out of here.”
Mariah swallowed and followed her friend as she led the way to the first of three dirt roads they had to cross. They passed it without a problem but as soon as they reached the second, they heard a vehicle approaching from the main tunnel. They avoided detection by circling back around a large dune of dirt and rocks until the truck was out of sight. Leaning against the mound, they took a moment to catch their breaths.
The last road was about a hundred feet away from them, but fifty feet to their right several workers in orange coveralls were clustered around some kind of drilling machine. Two large work lights illuminated the area and their glow spilled in the girls’ direction.
Tegan puffed her cheeks as they took stock of their situation. “Oh, boy.”
“It doesn’t look like the light reaches all the way here,” Mariah said. “I think we may be in the clear.”
“You wanna chance it?”
“Elvis will be back any minute. I’d like to be as far away from here as possible.”
Tegan darted out, bent double with Mariah on her heels. It took less than ten seconds to reach a stack of wooden pallets, but it may as well have been an eternity. The girls knelt behind the pallets to catch their breaths again.
Tegan peeked across the dirt road. “There’s an excavator on the other side,” she informed Mariah, “but no one’s in it.”
Mariah gave Tegan a small but urgent push. The girls tore over the last dirt road and slid in front of the green excavator. “So far so good,” Tegan whispered.
“Uh, might want to rethink that,” Mariah gasped, peeping around the machine. “Dude headed this way, looks like the driver of this thing!”
“Shoot Follow me!”
The girls sidestepped around the excavator so they were on its right side when the worker was on its left. As soon as the driver was seated in the cab, they made a break for a stack of bricks a few feet away and dodged behind it. They peered around quickly, making sure they hadn’t been spotted. No one else was around, and the man in the excavator was driving away.
Tegan wheezed. “Nearly there, ’Riah.”
Mariah barely heard her. She pointed at a long, glassy teal building ahead of them. “What’s that?”
Tegan took a look at the partially-constructed edifice. “I saw a sign there earlier. It’s an aquaponic facility or something.”
To the girls’ left was a small gray building with a sign on the door that read ‘Water Treatment & Storage’. Tegan grinned. “The power plant must be nearby, which means our escape tunnel isn’t far either,” she said.
“Um . . . ” Mariah was looking over the bricks, toward the main tunnel. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, Teegs, but I think Elvis is back in the building.”
“What?!”
“I just saw an orange Hummer come out of the tunnel.”
“For crying out loud—let’s go, then!”
They sprang up and sprinted around the concrete building. “There,” Tegan called out pointing ahead. “The hydro turbine!”
Just then, two young men emerged from the turbine building and paused to take a break. One of the workers removed his hardhat to reveal a head full of bright silver hair. The girls swept down, out of view.
“Move already!” Tegan growled. “We’re wasting time!”
They waited impatiently until the workers moved away from the structure. Tegan took hold of Mariah’s wrist. “Come on.”
Just as she spoke, an amplified voice boomed through the cavern over the construction noise, raucous and angry. “You’re in trouble now, you are!”
The girls stopped short and looked behind them. They saw no one, but they knew who the voice belonged to.
“Elvis,” Mariah mouthed, panic shooting up her sides.
A terrible roar suddenly reverberated through the site. Goose bumps appeared all over Mariah’s skin. Beside her, Tegan had lost all the color in her face.
“It is them,” Mariah croaked. “Teegs, we need to go! We need to go! Now!”
Tegan would have remained rooted to the spot if her friend hadn’t given her a forceful shove. They turned around and came face-to-face with the silver-haired worker they’d seen earlier. He appeared to be of Asian descent, maybe a year or two older than them. The girls were deadlocked, trapped between two enemies.
The worker met both their gazes. Then, with the tiniest and earnest of smiles, he put a finger to his lips and stepped aside to let them pass. Mariah bolted ahead, hauling Tegan with her. Tegan looked behind her and watched the worker continue on his way as if nothing had happened.
The girls ran around the building that housed the hydroelectric power plant and followed the steel pipe that led into the small tunnel. Behind them, the sound of nasty snarling grew closer. There was def
initely more than one of the creatures following the girls.
“You can’t escape them!” Elvis boomed. “The Marauders will tear you limb from limb! Stop now and I’ll pull them back!”
As terrified as the girls were, they weren’t about to negotiate with him. Tegan ushered Mariah into the tunnel. “Right here! Go, go, go!”
The dark tunnel was barely five feet high and four feet wide, with the large pipe taking up most of the space. It was cooler and damper inside as well.
“You gotta move faster, ’Riah!” Tegan yelled as the sound of the beasts grew closer.
“I’m trying!” Mariah yelled back. “It’s getting steeper! And muddier!”
They climbed the incline in a frenzy but kept slipping and falling in the mud. Now covered in filth, they dug their fingers into the ground and clawed upward. Another roar sounded. This time it filled up the entire tunnel.
“They’re inside!” Tegan shrieked. “Move!”
They made it to the ladder mounted on the wall of the vertical shaft overhead. Mariah, glad that the ground had leveled off, leapt to catch bottom rung of the ladder and scuttled up, Tegan following close behind. The heavy breathing of the beasts echoed toward them.
They were at the top of the twenty-foot shaft, with Mariah trying to push open the manhole cover, when a chilling growl came from below them. Slowly looking down, she found a sight that made her heart jump to her throat. She tried to scream but horror stifled her voice.
Glaring up at her from the bottom of the ladder were two massive black-furred creatures with muscular frames—the Marauders. A third beast joined them, coming from behind. Their demonic, sulfur-colored eyes reflected a manic thirst for murder from under heavy brows, and their elongated jaws gnashed, revealing curved, gleaming fangs over three inches long.
Mariah had seen these creatures before—all five of the friends had, at the battle atop the Ayen’et with the people of Dema-Ki, and more recently, in their nightmares. Below her, Tegan whimpered. “Mariah, get that cover open . . . ”
“I’m trying, but the stupid thing’s stuck!” she cried.
Tegan pushed past her, taking up half of the ladder while Mariah held onto the other half. Together, they pushed at the heavy steel cover with all their might, doing their best to ignore the monsters that leapt at them but kept sliding down the rungs.
“I—felt—it—move,” Tegan puffed. Sure enough, when the girls pushed a little more, the heavy cover popped open, showering them with dirt and dust. They ignored it and shoved the cover away. Mariah scrambled out first into the open air. She reached down to pull Tegan up but at that moment, one of the Marauders managed to get a grip halfway up the ladder. It leapt and grazed one of its paws along the back of Tegan’s calf, its blade-like claws tearing through her jeans. Tegan cried and twisted away before being helped up by Mariah.
Together, the girls dragged the cover back to close the manhole just as the beast’s jaws came snapping through. A loud clang resonated around them as the cover fell into place. Tegan stepped back, then winced and looked down at her leg through the torn jeans. Blood seeped from a single slash.
Mariah wiped the back of her dirty hands against her face. “Are you okay, Teegs?”
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry. It’s not too deep.”
“I’m shaking,” Mariah confessed. “I’m shaking and I can’t stop.”
Tegan reached out and hugged her. Mariah wrapped her arms tightly around her friend in return, realizing the other girl was shaking too, and they drew on each other’s remaining strength and courage.
“Why do you think that worker let us go?” Mariah whispered.
“I don’t know,” Tegan murmured. “But thank God he did. Come on.”
The two of them took in their surroundings. They were facing a long, oval-shaped lake that seemed manmade. Above them, the sky was filled with stars except for a few scattered clouds. Neither girl bothered about it as they ran around the body of water, but slowed when they reached a chain-link fence that stretched from the edge of the lake to a gigantic waste-rock dump, blocking their path.
All at once, there was a chaotic outburst. Deep roars and barks erupted, but from where they couldn’t tell. There was frantic honking of vehicles and shouts, and someone yelled, “Get out of the way! The Marauders—they’re loose!”
34
Without even glancing at each other, Tegan and Mariah ran toward the fence and scaled it just as the beasts came charging around the large waste-rock dump, hackles raised. They caught sight of the fleeing girls and gave chase, their dreadful braying splitting the night.
The girls clambered up the fence and jumped down onto the other side. “This way!” Tegan shouted. She ran toward a group of monolithic machines parked to the side of the waste dump.
“Teegs, what are you doing?” Mariah cried.
“Getting us a ride out of here!”
“On that?”
“Go big or go home! There’s nothing else here anyway!”
It wasn’t until they’d come to a halt in front of the machine that Tegan realized just how truly colossal it was. The yellow Caterpillar mining truck was the height of a two-story building and had ladders attached to the front and side. She jumped onto one of the ladders and led the way up, leaving Mariah with no choice but to follow. Once they’d climbed onto the machine’s railed platform, Tegan ran toward the crew cab to test the door.
“It’s open!” she yelled as she slid into the driver’s seat. “Get in!”
“The keys?” Mariah yelled back, taking shotgun.
“Right here in the ignition, thank goodness!”
“They just leave it in the cab?”
“This must be a secure site. Buckle up!”
Mariah clicked in, nearly hyperventilating. “What are you doing? You can drive a car, not one of these! Oh, jeez, we’re toast! We’re like twenty feet off the ground!”
“Look, look! It’s all automatic! I can do this!” Tegan turned the key and a deep rumble came from the bowels of the giant vehicle, vibrating through the crew cab.
The beasts that were closing in on their position balked, taken aback by the roar of this new entity. With the precious few extra seconds, Tegan said a quick prayer, put the machine into drive, and stepped on the gas pedal.
A radio crackled, making both of them jump. Then Elvis’ voice came on: “Elias, the two girls are driving one of the bloody monsters!”
Another man’s voice came over the radio. “What are you talking about? I don’t see a thing on any of my monit—WHAT THE HELL?”
“Stop them, Elias!”
Tegan and Mariah listened to them, wide-eyed, as the machine plowed onward. Tegan was surprised at how responsive the massive truck was. She had fantastic visibility of everything around her as she skirted a gigantic open pit in the middle of the mining site. A huge sign dug into the ground read: ‘QMI—Restricted Area’.
They heard metallic thunks at the back of the truck. Mariah glanced at her side mirror as more reports sounded. “They’re shooting at us!”
Tegan checked her side mirror as well. “Ohmigosh, I did not sign up for this!”
A flash of bright lights caught her attention and she turned away from the mirror to eye the newcomer. She gasped.
Mariah leaned forward to look. “Agh!”
A gray pickup was hurtling toward them from the left side of their truck. Kicking up a storm of dust, its driver was obviously intent on cutting off their escape route. The smaller vehicle missed them narrowly and came to a stop about fifty feet in front of the machine, not giving Tegan enough time to swerve or stop. The men in the pickup must have realized that they had cut in too close. They launched themselves out of the vehicle like rockets just as the thirteen-foot-high tires of the mining truck rolled over the gray pickup, flattening it without slowing. Tegan and Mariah both let out screams when they heard the vehicle crunch under their tires.
Tegan felt ill. We could have killed those guys!
About
half a mile ahead, she saw floodlights on tall poles marking the main entrance to the mining site. A large security post stood in the middle with boom gates on either side.
No problem for this thing, she thought.
When she glanced into her side mirror, though, she realized they weren’t out of trouble yet. An orange Hummer was barreling toward them. Elvis leaned out of the passenger’s window with a shotgun in hand.
To make matters worse, she saw the Marauders tearing after the mining truck, closing the distance with each ten-foot bound. Mariah saw them coming, too, and let out a moan that quickly morphed into another scream.
The leading Marauder launched off the ground, then vanished from Tegan’s sight. “Where did it go?” she hollered. “I can’t see it!”
“That’s not good,” Mariah muttered. “It’s on the truck!”
“How? That’s a good twenty feet off the ground!”
The Marauder’s head popped over the top edge of the front windshield. The girls screeched. It stared at them in a demented fervor, upside-down, then tried to descend onto the platform next to the crew cab. Tegan turned the wheel sharply, hoping to fling the creature off the truck. It worked—somewhat. The beast was thrown off balance but instead of falling off the machine, it bounced and crashed against the railing. Its long, razor-like claws caught a bar and it hung precariously on the side of the truck. The girls watched, speechless. The angry Marauder let out a deep roar that rose above the noise of the truck’s engine.
The radio crackled and the man, Elias, spoke. “Alright, let’s see them go through this.”
Tegan goggled when she saw what he meant. A quarter of a mile ahead of them, a long white tanker truck had pulled in front of the guard post, blocking both boom gates. On its side, painted in large red letters, was a single word: FUEL.
“Tegan!” Mariah yelped.
“I see it!”
The Marauder was still hanging onto the railing and just when it seemed to be slipping off, it hooked its other paws in place. Bunching its hindquarters, it pulled itself onto the platform and approached the girls in the cab. Its long snout was wrinkled in a snarl and saliva dripped from its jaws. Fangs bared, it slammed against Tegan’s door again and again. The girls yelled curses as the safety glass began to crack.
