David Golemon - Event

"Colonel Fielding, you can get your men settled just over there, sir. We don't know the full story yet, but my on-site commander is Major Collins, U.S. Army," Ryan said, holding his black helmet against the thrust of the departing Hercules.

"Jack? They have Jack Collins in on this?" the colonel asked.

"Yes, sir."

The man looked around and spit onto the roadway. "Take me to him, young lieutenant," Fielding said. "If Collins is here, then the real skit's here."

The two state troopers were spent after their long night out at the Tahchako ranch counting slaughtered cattle and trying to find out what had killed them.

"Say, what's this?" Dills asked.

Two men appeared in the middle of the road, rifles slung on their shoulders. They wore black and had the same color baseball caps on their heads.

"I don't know, but I smell military," Wasser said from the driver's seat.

The two troopers reached down and unsnapped the straps holding their automatics in their holsters. They stopped a few feet in front of the two waving men.

Wasser opened the door and stepped from the car.

"What's this?" he asked loudly to thefirst soldier.

"Sir, we have an airplane about to utilize this roadway."

"The hell you say!" Wasser replied, not too gently. His sense of humor had left with the thousandth mangled cow part he had viewed the night before.

"Sir?" the soldier asked.

"We can't be havin' planes coming down on state highways, boy," Dills chimed in, puffing his chest out.

The two soldiers looked at each other, then hurriedly moved to the side of the road and knelt down holding their hats.

"Ain't you hearing me, boy? We're not allowing any planes to come down on this or any other highway in this state," Dills said, sunglasses reflecting the morning sun.

"Yes, sir, we heard," the first soldier said.

The two state troopers were suddenly knocked off-balance, and they grabbed the open doors of their cruiser to keep from being thrown face-first into the roadway. Their hats flew from their heads and they dove to the hot asphalt when the noise hit them full force. A windstorm blew sand and scrub brush against their bodies and rocked their cruiser as the giant C-130 touched down two hundred feet in front of them.

After the strangest night shift of his life, Trooper Dills had reached a point where any more input would just swirl around in his mind and not take hold anywhere.

"Jesus Christ, how can I put all this in a report?" Wasser yelled.

But Dills was already up and climbing into the police cruiser, mentally clocking out for the day.

The News 7 chopper was speeding to the scene at Chato's Crawl. The word was out that the army, in conjunction with the State of Arizona, was quarantining the town and closing the airspace within a hundred miles. The race was on to get there before they could enforce it.

As reporter Ken Kashihara watched from the backseat of the newsroom's Kiowa helicopter, he saw below them the blue-and-white Channel 4 bird slightly ahead of them.

"Goddammit, Sydney, I thought you said we were the only ones up in the air. Look at that asshole," Kashihara said, pointing down. "That's that Janice Mitchell bitch from News 4. If I lose an exclusive to her one more time, it's your ass!"

As the pilot started to tell Kashihara to go screw himself, the helicopter was buffeted so hard he thought he'd lost the entire tail boom. He fought to maintain control of the Kiowa as a giant C-130's tail section screamed over them, and then they saw the Hercules turn for the roadway outside Chato's Crawl.

"Goddammit, you see that, you almost got us killed. And for what? Because you got an inferiority complex about that chick from Channel Four!" the pilot said loudly into his mike.

Kashihara was bone-white after the near collision with the Hercules. He looked at the pilot shakily. "Just get me to that town, and watch the fucking road!"

The cavern was from an ancient underground river that had dried up a thousand years before the creature's arrival. It was spacious, and here the beast had chosen to nest. Meat was stored all around the huge cavern, and the smell of blood was heavy as the beast made its way to the birthing chamber where she had collected water. Her distended belly was ripe with the offspring that were only moments away from taking in the food she had waiting for them. They would be born starving.

The beast roared as the first dilation of her exoskeleton began. The thick armor plate protecting the animal's reproductive organs split with a loud crack and widened with a sickening ripping noise reminiscent of tearing paper. The creature slammed its claws into the side of the rock-lined chamber and roared again. Her legs buckled at the knees and she squatted, bringing the dripping birthing orifice close to the water that lay beneath. Slime dripped from the opening, creating a natural lubricant for the young as they fought their way out. The beast screamed and slammed her massive claws again into the rock as the first of the new generation slowly slid out. The purple mass fell free of the mother and into the water below. The hardened eggshell of the baby sizzled as it began to expand. This egg was already cracked open and had the remains of one of the small animals sticking out of it, being eaten by the occupant of the egg. Another fell; again its shell hissed and cracked. The first baby, free of its shell, was already attacking the second egg as the mother reached down and slapped it away. It flew completely clear of the water and next to the gathered food. She would have to repeat this a hundred times in the next hour as she pushed the newborns toward the stored food.

The last of the offspring was the most difficult because of how large it was. By instinct the mother understood that if the creature wasn't expelled quickly, it would eat its way free, thus killing her. The single male left inside was the largest of the offspring and the last to be born. It would be killed by the mother to keep it from mating with other females in the hatching cycle because she carried enough eggs for millions upon millions of generations, and the male she had originally mated with had been enough to fertilize her eggs--she'd synthesized more sperm after her initial mating, copying the cells that were needed to reproduce. But if this male lived, it would kill everything in its path to protect this cycle of females until they too gave birth, to its offspring. It would kill her because she carried and copied another's sperm.

Even the small beings of which Gus's new friend was a part didn't understand the true nature of the horror that they had brought. The beast crushed her clawed hand into her abdomen and tried desperately to expel the male. The small creature was clawing and ripping at her insides until she finally reached into herself and grabbed it. She brought the struggling male up to view. Its shell had already been shed and it had started to form what would become its armor. Its neck armor was already intact and merely held to its neck by a mucous membrane that would soon dissolve. It snapped and hissed at the mother as she roared and tossed the creature hard into the wall of the cave, but failed to kill it.

The two-foot-long male struck the rough wall and immediately gained its feet. It snatched at a female and took it into its claws. It started devouring it even as the mother slapped at it, knocking it farther away into the darkness. Then she started screaming and throwing mutilated cattle toward it.

The male saw its parent in the darkness as it started in on the bloody meat. The yellow and greenish tinted eyes never left its current threat, the mother.

For the next few hours, as the animals grew and learned their abilities, the real Destroyer ate and grew faster, and it continued to stare with hatred at its parent, only shifting its gaze to the others if they came too near it. And coming near it was the last thing its siblings ever did. Soon they would gather around him and him alone, forsaking the parent that had brought them into this world. Then the work of devouring all life on this world would commence.