Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

A hand tightened around my arm. The power of the grip and reaction to Oliver’s voice let me know Kelvin was part of our little group. Our little group shorn off another little group, the remnants of another group—

“Come out or we’re shooting,” Oliver said.

A deep growl followed. At first I thought it was my stomach, giving us away. Then I feared Tarsi and Mindy had disturbed the rubble, if indeed they were still up in the mineshaft. I cursed myself for allowing the group to get separated as the rumbling grew, a vibration in the wall accompanying it.

I looked down the round tunnel to my side and peered into the blackness. The sound of crunching rock could be heard in the distance. Behind me, a gunshot rang out, causing every muscle in my body to spasm. Our group contracted together. We ducked down—and not just from the sound of gunfire but for stability. The earth beneath us was moving, drowning out the rattle of the idling engine and Oliver’s yelling.

Turning back to the light, I saw a muzzle flash lance out, accompanied by another boom of gunfire. The shot zinged off the stone above the other mineshaft.

Over the growing rumble, one of the voices yelled out: “That’s your last warning. Come out of there! We can see you!”

Tarsi and Mindy stood up from behind their shelter of rubble. From our angle, I could only see them from the shoulders up, their hands by their ears.

“Get over here,” one guy yelled.

I saw Tarsi’s head dart side to side, looking both ways down the large tunnel. She was searching for us, but it looked like a refusal to the demand.

“Get over here or I shoot!” the voice insisted.

“Can’t you feel that earthquake?” Oliver shouted at her. “That’s a sign from the gods for you to do what we say!”

A sudden and larger rumble amid the vibrations seemed to punctuate his audacious claim, lending a mad sort of credence to it. I peered back into the blackness—felt a draft of cool air across my cheek—and had a sickening realization, both mind-shattering and obvious.

It wasn’t an earthquake heading our way.

The rumblings grew, and I could hear rock clattering to the floor of our cylindrical tunnel. To my other side, the voices by the tractor shouted at each other and to Tarsi and Mindy. More gunfire was promised. Our group pawed at each other, daring to hiss our fears as we collectively realized something was moving in our direction. Kelvin clutched my arm and tried to say something to me, but I couldn’t hear over the rest of the noise, the loudest of which had become the pounding of my own pulse throbbing in my ears.

I pulled away from him, the need to run more powerful than any other.

“Oliver!” I shouted, as I stumbled into the light. I looked up the curved wall at the bulk of the tractor above. Its three headlights shone out around two silhouetted forms, both completely black save for the glint of gold in each of their hands. It was their guns. They immediately became trained on me.

“Don’t shoot! Let us up!” I turned to look back at my group and waved them out. I had to bend my knees and keep my feet apart, as the vibrations grew into tremors. “This isn’t an earthquake,” I yelled up to Oliver, and for everyone else’s benefit.

One of the girls in the opposite stretch of tunnel yelped as it sank in. The rest of our group poured out, joining me in the light. The guy beside Oliver began yelling at us, his golden gun darting back and forth. I finally placed his physique and voice. Rogers—one of the enforcers from the supply group.

“Rogers, Oliver,” I yelled, “there’s something coming!” I pointed back down the tunnel. Three figures emerged from the other side of the darkness and ran in front of me. Leila, Karl, and Samson. They began scampering up toward the tractor, but the two enforcers yelled down at them.

“Get back!” Oliver shouted, his gun twitching across the group. I turned to see Tarsi and Mindy at the edge of the other shaft, their hands next to their ears. Dust rained down around them as the tremors transformed into violent shakes. Bright specks of powder caught in the beam of the idling tractor. It fell everywhere like a waterfall of crushed stone.

“Get out of here!” I yelled to Tarsi, pointing over the rubble behind the two girls.

“Nobody move!” Oliver roared. We could barely hear him over the grumbling of crunched rock. A shot rang out, causing those running up the curved wall to fall flat, their hands on their heads. I whirled in place, noise and action on all sides, fear holding me in place. I felt trapped in the center of several dangers as the loud noise continued to grow.

“Oliver, let us up, we’ll come in peace, I swear!”

The silhouettes conferred, the sight of so many of us obviously giving them pause, fearful we might overwhelm them. I turned to see if Tarsi and Mindy had used the confusion to get away, but they remained motionless. A chunk of rock fell from the ceiling and crashed nearby. Oliver yelled down for none of us to move until the earthquake was over. Everyone around me started shouting that it wasn’t an earthquake. A few of them even made a mad dash toward the shaft, trying to get out of the round tunnel.

A bullet was fired at their feet, which caused them to pull up and reconsider. I could see in several sets of eyes that they were about to decide, as a group, to run for the two enforcers anyway, bullets be damned. Staying where we were seemed worse.

A deafening roar shattered all those thoughts. Through the side of the mineshaft, the side Oliver and Rogers stood in, a circle of destruction appeared. It came through the solid stone: concentric rows of glimmering steel that vibrated and seemed to grind together.

The two silhouettes turned and fired, their bullets zinging off something shiny, metallic, and alive .

Oliver froze. Rogers backed away and aimed his flashlight at the creature, which gave us all a surreal view of the impossible shimmering thing. The floor of the mineshaft tilted up ahead of its arrival, throwing Oliver back. I watched his arms pinwheel in slow motion, an arc of glimmering gold sailing out of sight as he lost the gun—and then his balance.

He danced in Rogers’s spotlight. The stage tilted, a massive chuck of rock falling toward the beast. Oliver’s arms went forward, as if to ward off the indomitable. A thing that could eat through solid rock caught his hands and seemed to suck him forward.

His body popped. The skin was pulled off first, the weak lining of him yanked away like a parlor trick. Meat and muscle were left, and then that went as well, pulled into the ferocious spinning and grinding. There was a squirt of blood, the clanging of grinding bone, and a horrible shower of gore. Then he was gone. Oliver had become nothing but a smear. A memory. A shape in my recollection but no longer anywhere in the actual world. The great metal beast roared by, never slowing, never noticing. It had encountered a soft pocket of no resistance during its jaunt through solid earth. A lazy bit of air to bite through. Mere flesh.

It kept moving, crashing into the tractor, which splintered in an explosion of mechanical bits. The groan and shriek of bending, shattering steel pierced the rumbles, drowning out the screams from Rogers, whose life winked out as quickly as his flashlight.

Those of us in the old tunnel fell back, away from the wall of moving alloy in front of us as the glimmering skin of the great creature slid by. The thing was a massive cylinder of waving metal plates that overlapped and rubbed against each other, shrieking with the sound of steel sliding against steel. I called out for Oliver, felt the words in my head, but couldn’t hear anything over the maelstrom of noise.