by James Axler
Within ten minutes, they came on Latham’s windrider marking the edge of the pit. Giving it a wide berth, Bough’s wagon headed past the covered hole on its right. They had gone about a hundred yards past it when Ryan and J.B., who were heading around the back of the train, heard a terrible scream, followed by panicked shouts and more screams. Punching the gas, they sped up to see a new horror show unfolding.
Bough’s wagon had disappeared, vanishing into another large hole in the ground. The other wagons had stopped, and several people were cautiously approaching the edge of the pit.
Krysty was Ryan’s first thought, and it had him jumping out of the truck and running over almost before he’d braked to a full stop.
“Watch the edge! Stay back!” he shouted as he ran over. “Anyone with rope, get it out now!” An awful screaming was coming from the pit, and Ryan looked over to see one of the oxen team dead and pinned underneath the wagon, which had also broken an axle. The other ox was bellowing as it was tangled up in the traces and thrashing around half-buried in the dirt.
“Everyone okay down there?” Ryan called out.
“Yeah, some bumps and bruises, but nothing major,” Krysty shouted back. “Lucky no one was pinned under the wagon—”
She stopped talking as the trapped ox’s bellows changed pitch, turning to high-pitched screams of pain. It whipped its head back and forth in a futile effort to escape, then gave one last, despairing shriek and collapsed, its head flopping onto the dirt. The silence that followed was profound.
“What happened to him?” Bough’s wife, a sinewy woman about forty years old, asked.
“I don’t know, but I think the body’s sinking into the dirt,” Bough said.
He was right—the body was slowly sliding under the fine dirt. One of the Bough children, maybe about ten years old, pointed to the ground near the body. “Something’s moving down there!”
Ryan squinted to look, but didn’t have the right angle from where he was. “What do you see?” Someone came up and pressed a coil of thick, nylon rope into his hand, and he nodded thanks.
“The sand is churning or rippling underneath the ox,” Krysty said, just as the entire wagon lurched over. “It’s affecting the dead ox, as well.”
“Okay, let’s get everyone out of there, and we’ll figure out how to salvage the wagon afterward.” Ryan uncoiled the rope and tossed an end down to the wagon. “Grab on and we’ll haul you up.”
“You’d better hurry, Ryan!” Krysty shouted. “Something’s coming up toward us!”
“What in the Lord’s name?” Bough shouted.
“Dark night!” J.B. said.
Ryan didn’t have any words to say as a group of dirt-covered tentacles, smooth, purplish-red and as large around as a person’s waist, burst out of the ground at the bottom of the pit. Instead, he handed the rope to the nearest person and shrugged off his Scout longblaster to start picking off the ropy, waving limbs.
“What are these— Oh, my God!” Bough’s wife screamed.
As they came closer, homing in on their prey, the end of each tentacle split apart to reveal a tooth-lined maw!
“Children up first!” Bough shouted. “Climb onto the back of the wagon!” His four kids quickly scurried up to the top of the slowly sinking vehicle.
“I got the right, J.B.” Ryan said.
“Hang on! I might be able to nip this all at once,” J.B. said, aiming his M-4000 shotgun at where the four tentacles had come up from the sand. “Here goes—look away!”
He unloaded a full magazine into the area, churning up a geyser of dirt and dust and completely severing three of the tentacles. The fourth one whipped back and forth before withdrawing back under the ground.
Cheers greeted the Armorer’s shooting, but Ryan waved his arms for everyone to be quiet. “Settle down, and let’s get them all out of there now!”
A rope-pulling detail was quickly formed, and in less than a minute, the first two children were back on the surface. The third one had just been hauled off the broken wagon when it heaved again, and this time began being drawn below the bottom of the pit, with cracking noises testifying to the strength of whatever was down there.
“Hurry, Ryan!” Krysty shouted, blaster in hand. “It’s getting closer!”
They pulled the last one up, and Krysty told Bough’s wife to go next. She did, fairly flying up the side of the pit. By now the wheels had disappeared, and the wagon was tilting at a steep angle, with the front end completely buried under the dirt. Someone had brought another rope and tossed it down, and Krysty and Bough each grabbed one, holding on as they started to be hauled out.
They were almost at the lip when the last tentacle erupted back out of the dirt. Its toothy maw snapped at the air for a moment, then it dived down, heading straight for Krysty.
J.B. was raising his shotgun again, and Ryan was doing the same with his longblaster, but it was going to be close.
However, before either of them could fire, Elder Bough shoved off the side of the pit and planted himself between her and the beelining tentacle.
The mouth slammed into his back and bit hard, making him shout with pain. “Go!” he said to her right before the limb’s hungry maw yanked him back off the rope and retracted, dragging him down into the dirt. It all happened so fast that neither Ryan nor J.B. could try to shoot the thing before it was gone. There was a brief thrashing around, and then he disappeared under the remains of the wagon.
“Mattias!” Bough’s wife screamed. “Mattias!” She lunged back toward the edge of the pit, but was caught by her eldest son, who held her as she sobbed.
Ricky lowered his carbine. “Do we try to go after him?”
Ryan shook his head, but it was Krysty who answered, “Not unless you want to end up like him. Whatever was down there was very large and very hungry. We need to move on through this area quickly. I don’t think it’s the only one around here.”
Ryan looked at the others, most staring in shock at the pit or the rest of the Bough family. “All right, people, we should keep moving so we can get out of this area.”
“Brother Ryan?” one of the other elders, a white-haired man named Chreis, asked. “Before we go, we need to pray over Elder Bough’s...final resting place.”
Ryan couldn’t help but glance back at the pit where the Silvertide leader had vanished. “Do what you have to.” He gathered his people around him. “Spread out and keep an eye on the bottom of that hole. Anything moves while they’re praying, and I mean anything, don’t wait, just blast it.”
All of the members of the collective assembled to stand at the edge of the pit and joined hands. Over the now-muffled sobs of Bough’s widow, Elder Chreis began to speak.
“O Lord, we commend our brother and leader, Mattias Bough, into your waiting arms. Mattias was a true blessing to our community, leading with grace and equality, and always willing to work with opposing parties to achieve a compromise that was fair for both. It was his words and vision that first led us out from our homes to seek our freedom, and it is in his spirit that we will continue this journey to found a home for ourselves and our descendants where we can all strive to live up to Mattias’s ideals, which he lived every single day. He leaves behind his wife, Leah, and four children, Aquila, Ethias, Hushai and Jairus. Let us all come together to comfort and help them in this time of trouble, and reassure them that they are not alone in their journey, that the collective watches over its members, always, and will watch over them, as well. Amen.”
The rest of the congregation muttered, “Amen,” and began dispersing back along the convoy. Elder Chreis and his family went to the Boughs and gently began herding them toward their wagon. Once they were situated, the elder came back to Ryan.
“I think we should leave this area as soon as possible, agreed?”
“Absolutely,” Ryan replied. “
It’s going to be slow going, though. There’s no telling how many more of those things are out there.”
J.B. mopped his brow and replaced his fedora before turning to Ryan. “We’re going to need a ground tester to keep moving.”
“Yeah, someone light. Ricky?” Ryan waved the teen over. “Got a job for you that isn’t going to be a lot of fun....”
* * *
FOUR HOURS LATER, Ryan signaled for the wagon train to come to a halt. Water and feed was distributed for the hungry, thirsty oxen teams, and the families took a moment to grab a cold bite in the meager shade cast by their wagons under the pitiless sun.
Ricky trudged back in from his scouting duty and untied the rope from around his waist. “Santa Maria, we must be clear of those—things by now, yes?”
He’d been walking about forty feet ahead of the truck, testing the ground with a spear. Ryan and J.B. had followed behind him: one driving, the other holding the other end of the rope around his waist.
Ricky had found several more holes in the first mile, each necessitating the train to stop so they could ensure there was a clear path around it. The first hole had another one within thirty yards of it, leading Mildred to theorize that two of these creatures may have created lairs near each other in order to drive food toward each other’s pit. The others were more isolated.
But there had been no sign of a pit in the past two miles, so Ryan was reasonably comfortable they were clear of the threat. “Yeah, I think we’ve left that behind now.” He scanned the horizon, spotting a line of hills about two miles to the west. “Let’s rest here for an hour, then make for those hills before camping for the night.”
“Don’t want to spend the night on the plains?” J.B. asked.
“Do you?”
The Armorer shook his head.
“Once we get moving again, we’ll send Tully and Jak out that way to make sure there’s no surprises. I might even have us go out there and keep Latham back as the intermediate scout for the train.”
Ryan liked his plan so much that once the scouts had gotten their meal, he filled in Latham and Ricky on what he wanted to do and had them hang back around the wagons. Then he and J.B. drove out to the hills to check them out. Twenty minutes later, they had their answer.
“Damn, this doesn’t get much better,” J.B. said after taking a cursory look around. “I can’t believe we actually found a clear spring here.”
Ryan nodded while staring down at the small trickle of water that had carved its way from the hills in the distance to here. It had created a small oasis amid the dry, dusty plains that was hidden in a cluster of foothills from the rest of the landscape.
A distant rumble of thunder made him look off to the west, where billowing cumulonimbus green clouds several thousand feet high filled the sky. As he watched, he saw streaks of lighting arc in the clouds, making them light up like glowing billows of smoke.
“Better get them here pretty quick. Looks like a storm’s rolling in—a big one.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
An hour later, the wagon train had arrived at the small spring, and people were busy unloading tents and getting the evening meal ready. Many were planning to sleep in, under or beside their wagons, making lean-tos by attaching tarpaulins to the backs or sides of their vehicles for shelter.
A somber pall had fallen over everyone since Elder Bough’s death. His wife was in seclusion with the Chreis family, although the children were out and helping with the various chores around the campsite.
At Ryan’s suggestion, they’d arranged the wagons around the spring in a three-quarters circle to create a barrier between the people inside and the rest of the plains, with the other quarter of their perimeter formed by the foothills to their west. He planned to have guards posted there for the night, giving them the high ground, and ideally enabling them to spot anyone trying to sneak up on the encampment.
However, as night approached, Ryan’s greatest concern was the oncoming storm. The wind had risen from the west, bringing with it the scent of fresh rain. While welcome, the breeze had steadily increased until it was gusting up to twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, creating small dust devils, blowing small items around and making tents flap and swell in the rising gale.
J.B. shared his pessimism about the weather. “If this storm’s as bad as I think it’s going to be, no one’ll be crazy enough to try to hit us in it—too risky.”
“Let’s hope they think like you do, then,” Ryan replied. “Either way, Jak’s not going to be happy about spending the night on the hill watching over the camp.”
“I’m sure he’ll manage,” J.B. replied. “Come on, let’s get something to eat. I got a feeling we’re in for a long night.”
* * *
THE RAIN STARTED coming down at dusk, and soon turned everything and everyone into a drenched, sodden mess. The thirsty ground drank up every drop at first, but soon reached its limit, and quickly turned from damp to wet to soaked to mud. Every step was through a squelching, filthy mire, with the sticky muck collecting on boots and making footing treacherous.
Ryan was correct—Jak had been less than thrilled about having to take guard duty for most of the night after scouting all day, but Ryan had pointed out that he’d pretty much sat on his butt all day while everyone else had dealt with the wagon accident and Elder Bough’s death, and he still had the best night vision out of everyone, even in the rain.
Still, the albino had grumbled all through dinner, then stomped off in a borrowed poncho to take up his position on top of the hill, carrying both a flashlight and an emergency flare from the truck’s repair kit as easy signals in the unlikely event that someone was going to attack them in the downpour. Even so, Ryan and his compatriots were resolved to not let their guard down. They had also set guards around the rest of the train, with strict orders for people to sound an alarm if they saw anything out of the ordinary—particularly one of their own suddenly returning to the convoy out of nowhere. Ryan and J.B. had been watchful for any sign of trackers or observers all day. Just because they hadn’t seen them didn’t mean they weren’t out there.
He’d parked the truck on the edge of the circle to prevent getting blocked in by the wagons. All of his people were using it for shelter, with four in the cab, and two in the cargo bay, sleeping comfortably under a rigged tarp.
It was well into the night—Ryan wasn’t sure exactly how late—when his eye opened. He looked around, but saw nothing immediately out of the ordinary. J.B. and Mildred had just finished their turn at guard duty, and were sleeping in the rear passenger compartment, covered by the Armorer’s leather jacket. Krysty was curled up in the passenger seat, her hair aligned in a thick ponytail over her shoulder and down her chest. The windows were cracked for air, and he slipped his fingers out to wet them and rub them on his face. He heard the staccato patter of raindrops on the cab roof.
Blinking, Ryan felt a familiar, insistent pressure in his groin, and he silently reached over to open the driver’s door and slip outside.
The torrential downpour had tapered off to a steady drizzle, but Ryan still stepped carefully to pry his boots out of the clinging, almost ankle-deep mud. He looked around, but everything was silent. He tried to make out the nearest guards on the wagons, but the rain was strong enough that it was difficult to see anything beyond the large, dim shapes of the vehicles.
Stretching, Ryan felt his shoulder and back muscles pop and loosen, still a bit sore from the fight the previous day and sitting in the not very comfortable truck seat all day. Boots squelching in the muck, he headed toward the rear of the truck to find a private area to take care of his business, grinning as the sound of Doc’s log-sawing snoring hit his ears.
At the tailgate, he stopped short. Standing a few feet away was a small girl, maybe eight years old, her blond hair and nightdress plastered to her skin by the rain. She was ankle
deep in the mud, with her hands and knees also covered in wet dirt that was slowly being washed away. She was from one of the Silvertide families, but he wasn’t sure which one. She stared back at him, blinking in the rain.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan asked. “Where’s your family?”
The little girl pointed to a distant wagon with a created tent off to one side. “My da’s come back.”
A chill settled in Ryan’s stomach, and his hand stole to his blaster. “Did he, now?”
She nodded. “Ma told me to crawl out the back and go get help. Can you help us?”
Ryan nodded. “Come here.” He gathered her into his arms while kicking the truck’s tailgate. “Ricky! Doc! Get up! We got company.”
He plodded back to the cab, opened the driver’s door and set the girl on the seat. “You stay right here while I go check on your ma.” Ryan stood on the doorjamb while turning his flashlight on and signaling to Jak that they had company. An answering flash verified that his message was received. Ryan gave him three more, indicating that he was to provide overwatch with one of the M4s. “Krysty, J.B., Mildred, let’s go. Enemy’s in camp!”
The others quickly roused themselves and poured out of the truck, weapons at the ready. “Remember, we don’t know who’s friendly and who isn’t, so we can’t go shooting anyone we come across,” Ryan said. “Follow me.”
He headed toward the wagon the girl had pointed at, trying to move as quietly as possible, given the circumstances. When he was about thirty feet away, a large form came out of the tent with a limp figure slung over its shoulder. A flash of lightning split the night, revealing a woman’s body being carried by a man.
“Stop!” Ryan said while aiming his SIG Sauer at the man, bracing the wrist of his blaster arm with his other hand. The man didn’t even blink, but ducked back under the lean-to and disappeared.
