David Golemon - Event

Everett returned with a foul look on his face and looked the major in the eye. "It looks like one or two got away. And you can bet your ass on which one was among the two. Permission to give chase to that bastard," Everett asked.

Collins looked around, then at his watch. "Negative, let's get the hell out of here."

They both looked down the tunnel, knowing that the Frenchman was in there somewhere and there was nothing to do but hope he met a fate he deserved.

Thomas Tahchako was helping to unload what remained of his herd. The government boys had offered a good price for the lives of his now depleted number of cows, but he was secretly willing to sacrifice them all if he could just be a part of killing the horrible creature out there. He watched as the other ranchers in the valley unloaded their herds from trucks of every size.

As he turned his attention from the gathering cattle herd, he looked to the bright sky and prayed that this beast could be lured to this spot. He lowered his gaze toward the strange-looking drilling device and the heavy equipment that was busy smoothing the ground. He didn't really care to know what they were drilling for.

The army engineers that had been brought in from Fort Carson, using heavy drilling equipment they had confiscated from several construction companies in Flagstaff, had completed drilling the quarter-mile-deep pilot hole, between the two eastern edges of the Superstitions that slacked away to mere foothills and then nothing, as the mountain edges created a natural doorway out of the valley, or as Jack had earlier thought of it, a funnel.

With the hole drilled and all the sensors in place, the Special Ordnance Division of the U.S. Army out of Fort Carson, Colorado, started lowering the one device nothing could escape from, a fifteen-megaton tactical neutron warhead.

Operation Orion was about to be put into play with Jack's added plan of the funnel, if the animals could be lured to the open back door of the valley.

Collins was called forward by the Delta sergeant who had point. Jack left Ryan with the rescued civilians and patted Carl on the shoulder as he went by him.

"Everyone take some water and air," Jack ordered as he gave his canteen to Everett to pass back to Julie and the others.

The point man was kneeling and had his night-vision goggles raised as he peered into the shaft. He kept his eyes forward as he was joined by the major.

"What've you got, Sergeant?" Collins asked.

"We have another tunnel merging with this one. Looks like one of the town's buildings from above has fallen in, must have been a lot of animal activity. See how the two converging tunnels have been widened, like they were foraging for food or something?"

Collins saw that the two tunnels made up a good-sized cavern. He thought he saw trash cans, bright and shiny new, racks of hand tools, and other racked and shelved items.

"Looks like the hardware store fell in here," Jack said as he waved forward two of the Rangers. "You take some water too, sergeant, we'll check it out," he said as he lowered his ambient-light goggles and started forward.

The hollowed-out space was riddled with items of every description. He easily stepped around a rack of lawn rakes and hoes. He held his hand up and pointed to the-right for the two Rangers behind him to take that area. He continued forward as easily as he could. The expanded tunnel had a heavier than normal musky smell. As he looked up, he could see into the darkened recesses of the first floor of the hardware store. This must have been its basement as he saw large blocks of concrete that had once made up its foundation. From underneath one of the large blocks he saw an arm protruding. As he leaned over and felt for a pulse, he heard the shouts of the two Rangers as the far wall exploded in toward them. As Jack straightened, he felt the first shower of dirt as the roof of the tunnel fell in on him. He heard the screams and shouts as those men still in the tunnel rushed forward, but as quickly as it had started it was cut off like a radio being shut down. The tunnel behind had caved in, effectively sealing him and the two Rangers from the others.

The roar of an animal made Jack freeze as he tried to free himself from the fallen roof. He heard one of the men open fire and then the other started screaming. Collins moved from side to side, trying to push away the accumulated wall that encased him on all sides. Finally he felt his right arm free up, and he pulled himself up and out, spitting dirt and sand as he did.

Silence greeted his return to the air. He silently rolled down the hill that had been his own cage a moment before and found himself lying against plastic bags of fertilizer. Jack raised his goggles and reached into his vest and pulled out a flare and struck it. He tossed it over a jumble of wheelbarrows and immediately saw one of the creatures strike out at the light with its tail. Jack rose and fired a ten-round burst at the beast, which roared and turned on him. Collins fell backward over the fertilizer and landed with a thump into sacks of something whitish gray that plumed into the air around him. He fought to quickly right himself and came to his knees. Still off-balance, he saw the animal charge in the glowing red light of the flare. As he fired, the first three rounds hit the fifty-pound sacks of the whitish material in front of him, sending a cloud up as his other rounds passed through. He heard a roar and then the scrambling noises of the animal as it suddenly changed direction. He then heard the screams of the beast as it momentarily went crazy, slamming into the fallen racks and fixtures of the sunken hardware store.

Collins heard shouts coming from behind him as the rest of the tunnel team on the other side of the cave-in fought and dug to get to him. He saw the animal as it swiped at the white dust that clung to its sickening armor. Jack quickly fired ten rounds at the beast, and to his surprise he saw no ricochets as the armor-piercing ammo found weak spots all over. They seemed to stitch right up the animal's side armor as it screamed and fell forward, unmoving. Jack couldn't believe the easiness of this creature's death as compared to the others they had met up with. As he limped forward, he saw that the fifty-pound bags were full of potash. He figured some of the bitter-tasting stuff that he thought was used in planting may have blinded the creature, making it an easy target. He came forward and looked the animal over in the flare's light and could see where the armor had cracked as the bullets pierced it. Parts of its exoskeleton were lying beside it like fallen eggshell, and its blood was soaking into the ground.

Everett finally pushed the last of the dirt aside, and he and two others slid into the remains of the hardware store.

"Jack!" he called. "Where are the other two?"

Collins lowered his weapon and just nodded toward the far side of the tunnel. He reached out and rubbed a finger across the creature's armor, and his glove picked up a heavy coating of potash. He rubbed it together with his fingers and some soaked into his gloves; he felt a tingling but nothing any more significant than that.

"They're dead, Jack," Everett said as he returned.

Collins looked up from his fingers and into Everett's face. "We're all going to be if we don't get out of here," he said as he studied the unsteady and crumbling foundation of the hardware store, then finally turned and went back to the main tunnel.

It took thirty minutes for Collins's team to retrace their tracks through the tunnel to a large branch that he hoped led to another opening in the surface. The VDF machine had picked up nothing on their return but a far-off target that seemed too large to be one of the animals. Besides, the ghost target appeared to be at the far end of the valley where there had been no animal activity. The absence of any closer targets meant the offspring were heading out of the valley or were congregating somewhere else and keeping still, waiting around the next turn of the tunnel in ambush.