ONE

Chris Larabee stretched, enjoying the slightly cool morning air even more for knowing that in another hour it would be hot enough to fry an egg on the truck. And thinking of eggs…he looked into the truck bed at the man-sized lump cocooned in the threadbare sleeping bag. Buck's turn to cook, he thought smugly. He'd already tried to wake his friend twice with no results, but he was getting hungry so maybe more desperate measures were called for. His eyes were drawn to a handful of cattle cropping at the sparse desert vegetation near the fence he and Buck were out here to repair…

The largest longhorn looked back at him placidly. Chris smiled.

Walking around the side of the truck, he grabbed hold of the rusted bed and used his weight to make the worn shocks bounce. "Stampede, Buck! Stampede!"

Buck Wilmington came awake with a start and made a panicked attempt to get away from the marauding cattle. He ended by falling out of the truck bed, still tangled in his sleeping bag, and shot a wild-eyed look in the direction of the range they were fencing in - a range supporting nearly a hundred head of half-wild steers…

The longhorn blinked at him and continued chewing his cud, unimpressed.

Buck struggled to his feet, swearing, and sat heavily on the tailgate while he tried to get out of the sleeping bag and into his boots. "I was in a stampede once; three hundred head goin' hell-bent for the horizon…"

Chris cut him off before the story could continue; he'd heard it before, and every time Buck told it there were more cattle involved. "You need to get breakfast fixed so we can get this fence finished and get on to the next job."

"Breakfast? I made breakfast yesterday!"

"Like hell you did - I did, it was bologna and beans."

"No, it was eggs - I made eggs."

The argument ended - like their arguments always ended - with a fast game of rock/paper/scissors which Buck invariably lost. They had eggs, finished the fence, and then were back on the road to Perfection. About halfway to the little desert town Buck spotted a small red truck parked offroad amid the rocks and sagebrush. "Hey Chris, isn't that new grad student supposed to be a girl?"

"Not if the university knows you're out here," his friend replied dryly, grabbing the steering wheel to keep the other man from turning off the road; Buck had something of a reputation as a skirt chaser in spite of the fact that the nearest skirts for him to chase were forty-five miles away in Bixby. "You know we've still got to get over to Nestor's today and suck out that septic tank…"

"Aw shoot, do we have to do that today?" Buck hated the unpleasant sheep farmer and his bratty son almost as much as he hated the leaky pump they'd have to rent from Josiah to suck out the man's underground septic tank. "You know, we're awful close to the doc's place; how 'bout we do his concrete today and then go to Nestor's tomorrow?"

"Nestor won't be home tomorrow," Chris reminded him. "We're stickin' to the plan, Buck; Nestor's septic tank today and Doc's concrete tomorrow. And Nestor's paying in cash, which we're mighty short of right now."

Buck thought about it. "How much is he payin' us again?"

"Fifty bucks - which is forty-seven more than we've got right now." Chris ran a hand through his cropped blonde hair and leaned his head against the back window. "It was not havin' a plan that got us in this mess of livin' off odd jobs in the first place…"

"Hey! We're handymen, pard; handy men!"

"Whatever, Buck - so we're damn well stickin' with the plan now. And the plan says we go to Nestor's to suck his shit out of the ground, so that's exactly what we do."

+ + + + + + +

Ten minutes later the two handymen reached Perfection and hitched the battered septic pump setup on its little trailer to the back of the truck before going into the run-down store to let the owner know they were taking it. Josiah was agreeable to waiting for his money - as usual - and the men used one third of their remaining financial resources to buy two sodas from him; the two of them proceeded to lounge around at the counter while the big storekeeper waited for his other customer to finish picking over his purchases, making small talk about what little went on in and out of town. "Saw that the new grad student is out here already," Buck said, hoping Josiah knew something about her. "What is it exactly they keep comin' out here for, anyway? A rock is a rock is a rock, isn't it?"

"Guess that depends on who's lookin' at the rock," the big man rumbled. "This new one must have just got here, hasn't been in the store yet." He was sure the student would be, though; Sanchez' General Store was the only store of its kind in Perfection - the only store at all for forty miles, if truth be told. "Now, Ezra," he said to his other customer, who was frowning at a small rectangular box. "I know you asked for hydroshock hollowpoints, but these regular hollowpoints were all I could get. That gonna be all right?"

"A bullet is a bullet," the man said with a shrug, opening the box and taking out one of the bullets to look at it. He looked jarringly out of place in the dusty, cluttered store, his expensive suit and polished shoes seeming to belong more to some urban paradise than to the dilapidated backwater he currently resided in. His voice was soft and cultured and carried a faint Southern accent. "These will do; I had simply wanted to try the others. Another time, I suppose." He replaced the bullet and went back to neatly stacking his supplies in the worn cardboard box that sat in front of him. "Who knows what those students are really doing out here?" he entered into the previous discussion with dry amusement. "Looking for oil, perhaps? Or maybe plutonium, uranium? Quite possibly these collegiate 'researchers' are merely the vanguard for governmental hordes waiting to declare immanent domain and snatch our homes out from under us in order to rape the desert of its hidden wealth. You gentlemen may get your chance to move to Bixby sooner than you think."

"You're all sweetness an' light today, ain't ya, Ezra?" Buck observed; he and Chris had been 'planning' to move to Bixby for years now but hadn't so much as packed a box that anyone knew of. He drained the last of his soda from the can and then tossed it across the room toward the box beside the cooler. His aim was off, and the can bounced off the side of the cooler and clattered across the floor. Buck went to get it after a pointed look from Josiah.

The ancient cooler as if on cue began to shake and squeal. "Bearing going out, what'cha say, boys?" the storekeeper rumbled hopefully. "Can you fix it?"

Buck frowned thoughtfully and made a move in the direction of the noisy machine, but Chris caught his arm and shook his head. "Can't do it now, Josiah, we've got to get out to Nestor's. Maybe we can take a look tomorrow after we get done at Doc's place, okay?"

"That'll work," Josiah said, and wandered off to the back room of the store to get Ezra another bottle of gun oil. The Southerner returned Buck's wave good-naturedly as the two men left.

"Wonder what that little bastard wants with all them guns?" Buck mused idly as he settled into the passenger seat of their battered blue truck and they set off to do their least-favorite odd job. "He must have enough stuff up in that fortress he calls a house to start World War Three."

"Or to live through it," Chris replied with a shrug. "Or maybe he's just afraid whoever he's bein' hid from is smarter than the Feds that are hidin' him." They drove past Billy Travis bouncing down the rutted dirt road on his pogo stick and waved to his mother Mary, who had obviously brought the novel she was working on outside so she could keep an eye on her son. "Oh, Mary wants some more shelves built, I told her maybe next week I could get over there."

"Sure you don't need my help?" Buck asked, all innocence. "Seems like you ain't doin' too good of a job on your own, she's always callin' you back over there to either do somethin' new or to fix somethin' you've already done." Chris growled but didn't answer and Buck smiled to himself and held his peace; he enjoyed teasing his friend about the widowed writer but didn't want to push too hard and drive the man away from the first relationship he'd even attempted since his own family died. It was good to see Chris starting to live and sometimes even to laugh again; Perfection had done that much for them, at least.

They reached Nestor's dilapidated holdings far too soon for Buck's taste…but although the man's car was parked out front there didn't appear to be anyone around and no one came out of the house when they called out. "Maybe he's out back with the sheep," Buck offered, although his voice sounded nervous in his own ears. "I'll go have a look."

"I'll take the house," Chris agreed. "Holler if you find them." He looked around again and then stepped up on the porch and approached the front door…which was open. That unnerved him; it wasn't like Nestor to leave the door unlocked when he wasn't there. He banged loudly on the side of the trailer and called out, "Nestor? Melvin? It's Chris and Buck, we're here to do the septic tank!"

No answer. Chris pushed on the screen door and frowned when it swung open, then stepped in cautiously; there was money lying on the kitchen table next to a cup of coffee, the bills stacked in two piles as though someone had been counting them. And closer inspection showed the coffee to still be warm. Chris' bad feeling started to get even worse. He hesitated a moment, then scooped up the money and did a rough count of it before stuffing it into his back pocket; fifty of it was his anyway, the other sixty or so he'd return to Nestor when they found him. Going back outside, he took a good look at the surrounding area from the slightly elevated vantage point of the porch. Everything still looked normal…

A yell from Buck made him jump, and Chris made his way around the back side of the trailer and over to where his friend was standing by the sheep pen; it was only then that he noticed that the ever-present noise of the nervous animals was absent. And once he arrived at Buck's side the reason was horrifyingly obvious.

Nestor's flock of sheep had been torn to pieces - literally. "Not even a whole pack of coyotes could have done this," Buck said. "You find any sign of Nestor or Melvin?"

"Cup of coffee on the table, still warm," Chris answered, not taking his eyes off the carnage. "And a whole pile of money right beside it."

"Damn." Both men knew that the tight-fisted farmer wouldn't leave money lying around, if for no other reason than because his shiftless son would steal it. With a sigh, Buck stepped over the low wooden fence and began to pick his way through the grisly scene; wishing for a gun, Chris followed right behind him. Nestor's hat was lying on the ground near the center of the pen as though it had been dropped there, and Buck was relieved to see that it had no blood on it. "Maybe he's chasin' whatever did this," he said, bending over to retrieve the hat. "Probably Melvin's with him…"

The hat came off the ground, and the sheep farmer's death mask stared up at the two men accusingly from it's nest in the dry sand. Chris swallowed hard.

TWO

After a quick search of the area failed to turn up any sign at all of Melvin, Buck and Chris headed back to town, planning to use Josiah's phone to call the police. Phones were few and far between in Perfection due to the cost involved in getting the phone company to run a line away from the mains, and most of the inhabitants of the geographically-isolated valley relied instead on CB radios for communication - even cell phones were useless in the dead area created by the encircling mountains.

Josiah's phone wasn't working; neither was Mary's. And Dr. Jackson wasn't answering on the CB.

A lot of half-panicked yelling into the radio did get one result, however; Ezra's small Jeep pulled up in front of the store in a spray of gravel not five minutes after the call went out. He 'just happened to have' several guns and extra ammunition in the vehicle with him and volunteered to drive out to the doctor's himself while Chris and Buck made a run into Bixby for the sheriff. Mary and Billy agreed to stay at the store with Josiah until the authorities arrived at the insistence of all four men and then the truck and the Jeep zoomed off on their urgent missions, their drivers all hoping for the best.

Hope was not fulfilled. Buck and Chris found the only road out of Perfection completely blocked by a rockslide and the truck that had belonged to the telephone repair men abandoned nearby; further searching turned up a few…pieces that indicated the line repair had been in progress when the killer had happened by the site. Chris had almost bust a blood vessel when Buck, backing up too close to the slide, had hung up on something and stalled out the truck. After a lot of swearing and seriously abusing the transmission the truck popped loose and they were back on the road, Buck protesting that he hadn't been hung up and Chris insisting that they had to be careful because he didn't need to spend the night out there in the middle of nowhere with a killer on the loose. And that brought up another thought. "Oh damn, that college kid…"

"Shit, I hope we're not too late…" Buck stepped on the gas and the truck barreled down the highway in the general direction of the last spot they'd seen the little red truck. They finally spotted it parked in the shade of some rocks a few miles from where it had been before and, a few hundred yards away, two people with their attention fixed on something on the ground. "Woo-oo! Look at that pretty long hair," he exclaimed happily. "And long legs, nice ass - just my type. Who do you think the other one is?"

"Hopefully not the killer." Chris leaned forward and squinted through the dirty windshield; a startled expression appeared on his face, then the beginnings of a wicked smile…which he quickly concealed. "Sure that one's your type, Buck?"

His friend grinned. "Hell, looks like she fits all my requirements - if she's got big blue eyes I may just have to marry her!"

Their approach had been noticed, and the two individuals moved away from the piece of equipment they'd been fussing over to wait for the vehicle to reach them. Buck's face fell as they pulled up, and Chris laughed. "Can't wait to hear you tell him that - just look at those big blue eyes."

The two young men approached the truck once it stopped, the shorter, dark-haired one coming right up to Buck's open window. "Hey, you must be Buck and Chris! Martin told us all about you guys. I'm JD and this is Vin, we're here for the summer."

Martin had been the previous grad student and both men had fond memories of him. Buck grinned in spite of himself. "Geology, right?"

"Seismology," Chris corrected. He got straight to business. "You boys haven't seen anyone else out here, have you? Or anything unusual?"

"Should we have?" The long-haired student - Vin - was immediately concerned. "You're the first people we've seen since we got here."

"We have been getting some kind of strange readings, though," JD added. "Looked like someone was doing some blasting or something, is that what you're talking about?"

"Blasting? Ain't nobody doing any blasting out here, kid," Buck said dismissively. "No, we've got some kind of killer on the loose, took out the phone repair guys and another guy we know - and his son is missin' now too. Phones are out and the road's blocked, Perfection's on its own."

Vin whistled. "Damn, that ain't good." He looked around, frowning at the red truck not quite out of sight by the rocks. "You guys mind stickin' around a few minutes? We'll gather up this equipment and then follow you back into town."

His eyes met Larabee's and an instant of silent communication passed between them; Chris suddenly felt like he'd known Vin for years, and he realized that the younger man was worried because he couldn't see the truck but didn't want to further alarm his fellow student by saying so. "Sure, no problem," he answered. "Matter of fact, why don't we give you a hand with that stuff."

Buck didn't want to leave their truck unattended either, so he stayed with JD to help get the equipment packed up for transport while Vin and Chris - the older man with one of Ezra's high-powered rifles at the ready - took over the job of going to get the other vehicle. It was while he was squatted down beside the grad student that Buck noticed something dangling from the truck's rear axle. "Well I'll be damned, I was hung up!" he swore, standing up and going over to investigate; curious, JD trailed along behind him. "I can't imagine what it could be, though, shouldn't have been nothin' out there but rocks and sagebrush…"

Dropping to one knee to peer under the truckbed, already reaching for the unidentified attachment, he suddenly started back with a cry of alarm and nearly toppled JD in the process. The younger man quickly moved in to look for himself.

It was…remains; a flat, eyeless head had its jaws locked around the truck's rear axle in a literal deathgrip with a vaguely eel-like body trailing across the ground behind it and terminating in a mess of ripped leathery skin and raw orange flesh. It gave off an odor reminiscent of rotting meat and compost that made his eyes water. "Hey Buck, could you hand me that little shovel?" he asked, never taking his eyes off the creature. "I want to pry it off of there so we can take a look at it."

"Are you sure we should mess with it?" Buck countered, but obligingly handed over the little camp shovel. "I mean, this thing stalled out the truck! What if it's…"

"Don't worry; it's dead," JD reassured him. He used the narrow blade of the shovel to pry the dead jaws off the metal and then dragged the creature out from under the truck. Pulling a pocketknife out of his back pocket, he carefully stuck the blade through what looked like the creature's nostrils and lifted its head for a better look. "Nope, no eyes; it must be totally subterranean. That would mean it 'sees' by sensing heat, maybe vibration…"

"I ain't never seen nothin' like that out here, what is it?"

"No idea - I've never heard of anything like it either," was JD's reply. He put the head back down and pulled his knife back out, grimacing as clear mucous clung to the blade. "Do you have some gloves? We should probably take this back to town with us for further study, but I'm not sure we should have contact with it until we know for sure none of the substances on it are toxic."

Buck sorted through that for a minute and then frowned at the younger man. "Why can't you just say, 'Don't touch it, it might be poisonous'?" he complained, and went back to the front of the truck to get the gloves. The red pickup pulled up as he was putting them on and he yelled at Chris, "Pard, the next time I say I'm not hung up you for damn sure better listen!"

Chris gave him a puzzled look and then frowned, looking around at the equipment still strung around the site. "What've you two been up to? You were supposed to have all this stuff packed up and ready to load…" He walked around the back of the truck to see what JD was doing and froze as he took in the thing spread out on the ground. "What the hell is that?"

"That is what stalled out the truck," Buck informed him with a very self-satisfied expression. "Looks like it was tryin' to take a bite out of the back axle, the kid here pried it off with a shovel."

Vin had hurried back to see as well; with a low whistle he squatted down beside JD and sniffed. "Meat-eater," he observed, wrinkling his nose. "But…" He pulled his own work gloves out of his back pocket and tugged them on. "JD, lay out a piece of that tarp in the back of your truck, let's get this where we can see it better." JD did as he asked and with Buck's help Vin soon had all four feet of the creature spread out in the back of the red truck and was poking at the ripped end with a stick. Then he moved up to the head and lifted it, looking inside the mouth...and paled. "Oh shit."

"Can't be too much to shit about, it's dead," Buck began.

"No, it ain't," was the unhappy reply. Ignoring the three shocked looks being leveled at him, Vin began to roll the corpse up in the tarp, tucking in the ends so the sticky orange ichor that leaked from it wouldn't get on the truck bed. "JD, get the rest of our gear, we've all got to get out of here right now."

Reacting to the urgency in his friend's tone, JD rushed back to the scattered equipment and began to hurriedly pack it up; Buck reacted too, taking a moment to start his truck before going to help gather things up. Chris scowled and looked around; everything looked quiet. "Vin…"

"Ain't got no throat," the younger man said, coiling the full tarp and sliding it into a corner of the bed, wedging it in so it wouldn't roll around. He looked up then, his blue eyes wide with worry. "This part we've got, it ain't a whole animal - just a little piece like an arm or maybe a tongue. It smells like a meat-eater but that little mouth don't have no way to swallow anything, just a row of sharp little hook-teeth to grab into things with."

"Things to eat," Chris added unnecessarily. "So if that's just a little piece…"

"The whole thing's probably as big as a truck," Vin finished for him, jumping down out of the truck bed and pulling off his gloves. "It stalled out your truck?"

Chris nodded. "Had to put it in third gear to get loose, must be one strong son of a bitch." He stepped out of the way so that JD could put an armload of equipment in the back of the truck. The sight of rolls of paper with lines on it stirred his memory. "Hey, didn't you boys say you were getting some sort of weird readings out here?"

"Yeah, we've been picking up microtremors," JD told him. He picked up some of the paper and traced a line on it with his finger. "See right here, that was one from this morning, and then over here…" He scowled suddenly and grabbed another piece, traced another line. "These were all at around the same time, just in different spots. If this is actually a reading of one of those things moving…then there are three of them, not just one." A small plume of dust puffing up from the valley floor just a small distance away caught his attention. "And I'm guessing they're under the ground…"

As if on cue, the earth under their feet trembled and suddenly the running truck with its noisy engine lurched forward as the ground under its front tires caved in. Buck started to go check it out, muttering something about sinkholes and old mines, but Chris caught his arm. "It must have heard the truck," he said.

"Felt it," JD corrected. "No eyes, it felt the vibration and homed in on it." A muffled roaring from under the ground made them all jump and the blue truck lurched forward again. JD thought fast. "My truck runs quiet, if we can all get in and take off fast enough we should be able to outrun it."

"I've got the keys," Vin told him. "But we'll all have to jump in at once, as soon as all that weight hits the shocks that thing's gonna know something's up - Little Red's just runnin' off a V-6, if that thing gets a hold of him we're all gonna be spendin' the night on top of a rock and hopin' it can't climb."

"Shit, for all we know it can fly," Buck said, swallowing hard. "Hate to rush everyone, but I know my engine and she's about to die."

"On three, everyone jump in the truck," Chris ordered. "One…two…THREE!"

Three men jumped into the pickup bed while the fourth leaped into the driver's seat, slamming the door just ahead of a seeking tentacle which instead slid harmlessly down the smooth surface, leaving a trail of mucous behind it. The little red truck leaped forward like it had been fired from a gun and bounced across the uneven ground while the men in the back hung on for dear life and watched with growing relief as the small dust plumes that were chasing them fell further and further behind. Finally Chris rapped on the rear window. "I think we lost him, Vin! You can slow down now!" The truck slowed slightly and then angled off toward the highway, and Chris sat back against the cab with a sigh. "That was too damn close."

Buck nodded, but he still looked worried. "I just hope monster number 3 isn't out at Doc's place - after what we just saw, I bet it could suck that little Jeep right out from under Ezra."

"Yep." Chris tipped back his head and shut his eyes. "I'm not gonna borrow trouble, though; let's just hope he's already back in town."

THREE

There was no sign of the Jeep when they got back to the store, but Dr. Jackson was inside sitting at one of the tables with a shell-shocked look on his face. "Where's Ezra?" Chris demanded, fearing the worst.

"He went back up to the house," Josiah answered unhappily. "Said he'd keep the radio on 19 in case we needed anything, but he thought it might be better if he got out of here for a while."

Chris didn't like the sound of that either; Jackson was openly suspicious of Standish at the best of times because he was in the protection program, it would be like him to try to blame the Southerner for what was going on. "Someone want to explain that? We need to all keep together…"

"He wouldn't let me get her." The doctor didn't look up from the scarred tabletop, but his hands were clenched into fists and his voice was too flat, too even. "Bastard wouldn't help me dig up the car, forced me to come back here and leave her…"

"Shit." Chris had hoped Jackson's wife was in Bixby. After what had nearly happened to them he had a pretty good idea what must have happened to Rain, but he also couldn't just let the distraught man sit there and put the whole thing on Standish either. He was at the table in two long strides, pulling the resistant doctor up out of his chair. "C'mon, you too Josiah, you boys have to come see this - we found out what's doin' it, we've got part of one of 'em in the truck. Would've brought it in here but it stinks to high heaven and JD ain't sure if we should handle it too much, might be poisonous."

"Poisonous?" Nathan pulled against Larabee's grip as he was dragged outside but it didn't do him any good. "No, it was…it was the Mafia or some drug lord that killed Rain, killed all these people just to get to…" He saw what was in the back of the truck and his voice trailed off. "What in God's name…"

"They come from up under the ground," Buck told him, a slight scowl on his face; he liked Ezra and thought Nathan formed too many of his opinions based on supposition instead of fact. "Trashed our truck, almost got us - Mafia don't hire man-eating worms, Doc."

Nathan took a closer look, careful not to touch. He wasn't willing to let it go that easily. "This little thing ain't big enough to pull a whole car…"

"It sure as hell hung up the truck," Chris told him. "See back there at the end, where it's all ripped up? That's where we pulled it off the rest of the monster when Buck put the truck in low gear, this part was biting our axle."

"Like Buck said, they're under the ground," JD chimed in. "We've been picking up vibrations all over the place from them moving through the Pleistocene alluvial that makes up the valley floor…"

"He means the dirt," Vin translated. "Some worms have these little hairs that work kind of like oars, they 'swim' through the dirt; the one of these that came after us would have bigger ones, maybe even something like little flat bone spikes, but it would work the same way. They can move as fast as a car."

Josiah was frowning now. "They?"

"From the readings we took, there are three of them," JD said. "These little snakey things," he gestured at the torn corpse in the truck. "These are just…well, think of them like tongues, the animal senses vibration through the soil and then uses these to hook whatever's vibrating and drag it in to be eaten." He made a face. "They have to be some sort of mutation, there's nothing like them in the fossil record."

"This is JD, by the way," Buck told Nathan and Josiah. "Him and Vin over there are this summer's grad students. Hell of a welcome to Perfection we gave 'em, I'd say." He looked around with a frown. "Hey, where's Mary and Billy?"

"They went home," Josiah told him. "Mary thought she ought to get Billy out of the store for a while."

Chris sighed, seeing the look the big man shot at Nathan. He understood what was going on; even though Rain and Nathan's marriage had been anything but a happy one, he knew that the shock of what had evidently happened was deep and they couldn't really blame the doctor for his behavior right now. He wondered briefly how Ezra had gotten the man to leave the buried car and then decided it didn't matter - the Southerner had probably saved the doctor's life, and if that had to be done at gunpoint then so be it. Nathan would get over it eventually. "Well, I guess as long as they're in the house they should be okay. Let's all go figure out what we're going to do next, then we can bring them back over here. We really should all stick together from here on out."

+ + + + + + +

Vin wrapped the piece they had back up and tucked it back into its corner and then they all went inside the store to go over their options. There weren't many. With the only road out of Perfection blocked the only route out of the valley was an old Jeep trail that wound up into the mountains, but unfortunately there were only two vehicles in town that could navigate the rough backcountry track and one of them had just been sucked halfway into the ground. Ezra's SUV could probably make it, but that brought up the question of who they were going to tell once they were out of the valley.

And of what they were going to tell them. "These things don't even have a name," Buck complained. "The kid here says they're…uh…"

"Completely unprecedented in the fossil record," JD supplied.

"No one's ever seen anything like 'em before," Vin clarified. "Which is gonna make gettin' someone to believe us awful hard, even with the evidence we've got - the local law is a lot more likely to figure one of us is doin' the killin' and this is all part of some big scam."

"I still think…"

Josiah cut the doctor off before he could get started again. "Dammit, Nathan, we're not going over this again! This isn't Ezra's fault, all right? I don't even see how a smart man like you could think that."

The doctor scowled. "We don't know why he's out here! Could be anything, these things could be genetically engineered…"

"You watch too much TV, doc," Buck interrupted disgustedly. "Even I know better than that."

"And I don't think someone's gonna spend billions of dollars on science-fiction monsters just to take down one investment banker," Josiah added. At Nathan's look of surprise he snorted. "Yeah, that's what he is - stumbled onto something fishy one day and reported it, now here he is. He's been helping me with my money, store ain't been this far out of the red in ten years and I've actually got some retirement set back now. Boy's good at what he does, let me tell you."

"This ain't gettin' us anywhere," Vin said abruptly. "We have all got to get out of here - those things move through dirt like a fish through water."

"They're not as fast as a car," Buck observed. "We outran 'em in that little one-lung truck you boys have."

"I ain't too sure about that," was the surprising answer. "I was slowin' 'em down by drivin' over rocks; I didn't think they'd be able to go through solid rock."

"Which means we should be safe once we reach the mountains," Chris said, with an approving look at the younger man, who just shrugged. "I'd been wondering if they'd be able to follow us up the jeep trail, so that's one problem out of the way. Now all we need to do is call Ezra to come pick us up and try not to do anything that might attract those things before he gets here."

"Since they seem to be attracted to vibrations, as long as everyone stays inside and reasonably quiet we shouldn't have a problem," JD said. "We'll have to be quick when the SUV gets here, though, because for all we know they could be right outside…"

At the far end of the store, the ancient cooler groaned and began to shake and squeal. The floor vibrated, heaved…and erupted as something out of a nightmare burst through the worn wooden floor and let out an inhuman scream. It was huge and eyeless, and had a gaping tripart mouth; half a dozen snake-tongues came boiling out of the horny hooked beak to grope greedily at the vibrating cooler, dragging it across the floor toward the hungry creature. "Graboid," Buck whispered, gagging a little at the foul stench that had come with the monstrous worm. "That's what they are, Graboids; they just come up out of the ground and grab you."

The floor vibrated and heaved again from the opposite direction, breaking the men out of their shocked paralysis. "Get off the floor!" Chris yelled. "That trap door over there, climb the shelves, let's get up on the roof!"

Six men scrambled up onto the rickety shelves to reach the small trapdoor in the ceiling that led to safety as the cooler's electrical cord was pulled from its socket and it rattled into silence. A second Graboid erupted through the floor and screamed. Buck was the first one to reach the door, slamming it open with his elbow and then looking back to make sure everyone was following him. Everyone else was almost there except…the second, now frustrated Graboid could feel the vibration from the shelves nearest it and hooked onto them; the shelves began to tip like dominoes falling. "JD, jump!"

The seismology student managed to hop across the tops of three sets of shelves before the domino effect caught up with him and he was thrown through the window with a yell, followed by a shower of canned goods and assorted hardware. Buck yanked himself up onto the roof and ran for the raised edge, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Kid, get off the ground! GET OFF THE GROUND!" He looked over…and his heart sank into his stomach; only the canned goods and rusted tools remained in front of the shattered window. "Oh God, kid…"

"I'm okay, Buck!" the young man's voice called out breathlessly, and his head jerked up. JD was scaling the splintery ladder attached to the side of the water tower not ten feet away, and he waved when he saw Buck looking. "Did everyone else make it?"

Buck looked back, saw Nathan and Chris pull Josiah up onto the roof and then saw Vin clamber out right behind him. He turned back to JD with a smile. "Yeah, everyone's okay! You stay put over there, don't vibrate!" JD had reached the narrow maintenance walkway that circled the tank by this time and sank down to sit on it; he gave Buck a thumbs up and a grin. "The kid made it," the relieved handyman told the others.

Vin came over to look and waved at JD, then began to look around. Chris came up beside them and did the same, followed by Josiah; Nathan remained by the trapdoor, looking down into the store, watching the Graboids. "We've got to get that CB," Chris said grimly, looking down the side of the building. "Got to get Mary and Billy and Ezra up on their roofs, figure out a plan…"

"I've got a plan," Vin said. He had pinpointed the window the CB radio was sitting in front of, and with a little help was able to climb down and grab it, handing it up to the other men before allowing himself to be pulled back up onto the roof. "Lucky thing the cord stretched this far."

They called Mary first, and within minutes they were relieved to see her and Billy edge out onto the sloping shingles of their house. Ezra didn't answer his radio, which scared everyone until Vin spotted something moving around outside of the house up on the hill and realized that the man was outside. "I think he might have binoculars with him," he told everyone, squinting. "Probably checkin' things out, lookin' for something out of the ordinary - everyone wave your arms around, give him somethin' to see!"

Moments later the radio crackled. "What are you all doin' up there?! Is somethin' wrong?"

"Ezra, we found out what's doin' it! They're these things, under the ground…"

Another static crackle. "Hold on, I'm not hearin' you right. Try switching to channel 2 and try again."

Chris twisted the little knob, squinting at the faded numbers, and Nathan reported quietly that the Graboids below had left. Buck pressed the button. "Can you hear me now, Ezra?"

"Much better." There was only a hint of static now. "Now whatevah are you talkin' about? I thought you just said somethin' was under the ground…"

"They are under the ground!" Buck exclaimed, frustrated. "They're these big monster things, they come up from under the ground and grab you."

"That explains why you're all up on the roof," the man said. "I don't think they can surprise me that way, though, seein' as how the basement floor is solid concrete. I have the front perimeter alarm on, do you think that would detect one if it came close? I could try to shoot it…"

Buck started to answer…and then stopped, his mouth hanging open; he could have sworn he'd just seen a dust plume on the hill. "Josiah, you ordered those perimeter things for him, how do they work?"

The big man frowned. "They send out a sonar pulse every five seconds to a matching sensor a little ways away, then if something interrupts the signal they…" He broke off in horror as he realized what he'd just said. "Oh my lord, sound waves…"

Chris snatched the radio from Buck's lax grip. "Ezra, get up on your roof! There's one headed right for you, those sensors will draw it right to the house! Get out of the basement!"

"Headed right…where? I don't see anything, what do you mean 'draw it right…" There was a rumble and then a crash and Ezra yelled, "What in God's name…" before the radio went dead in Chris' hand. Buck's shoulders slumped. "Damn," he muttered.

Suddenly the sound of small-arms fire echoed across the hard desert floor. Five men stood frozen on the warped roof, staring out toward the distant house, none daring to breathe through the brief silence that spoke of reloading or changing weapons preceding each volley of shots. And then there were no more shots. Four of the men turned away, but Josiah continued to squint across the distance, gripping the wall tightly and murmuring what might have been a prayer under his breath. JD's voice cut through the silence, plaintive and hopeful. "Did he…did he get away?"

A muffled explosion sounded; Josiah roared in triumph, pumping his fist in the air. "YES!"

The other men flew back to his side. "What the hell was that!?" Chris demanded. "What does he have in there, a rocket launcher?"

The older man shook his head. "Nope, but he's got a box of concussion grenades - I just hope he got his ears covered in time…"

Behind them, the radio crackled and came back to life. "Does anyone know a good taxidermist?" a tired Southern voice asked breathlessly. "I want this bastard stuffed."

FOUR

Ezra was all for boosting the signal on his perimeter sensors to see if he could draw the other two Graboids up to his house, but to do that he would have to go outside and the other men insisted that the risk wasn't worth it. Well, some of them insisted. "The other two are here now, he wouldn't be takin' much of a risk," Nathan had observed. "And while they were up there we could get everyone out of here in JD's truck."

"Yeah, and save the government some money on the protection program while we're at it," Buck had replied sarcastically, and that had been the end of that discussion. But the problem of what to do next still remained.

They had finally decided that Ezra would take the jeep trail to Bixby and get help when Mary's house started to shake, almost dislodging she and her son from the roof. Dust shot up from near the foundation. "What the hell?!" Chris exclaimed. "They weren't makin' no noise."

"I thought these things only respond to vibrations," Nathan agreed. "JD, what are they botherin' them for?"

"They must be trying to figure out the buildings," JD called out. "They know we're here, they just can't figure out how to get to us."

As if on cue, the store shook again and the roof buckled alarmingly, knocking everyone off their feet. "Think they're learnin' fast enough," Buck grunted, pushing himself back to his feet. "We've got to get off this roof."

"I'm open to suggestions," Chris said sarcastically, leaning over the edge to try to see what was going on at the base of the building. "We still need to make it to the mountains, but that ain't gonna be too easy with every four-wheel drive in the area sucked halfway into the ground."

"Except Ezra's," Josiah said. "But even if he drives down here, as soon as he stops for us they're going to get him."

"And if he goes on into Bixby we'll most likely all be dead by the time anyone gets to us," Vin added. The building trembled again. "These things are gettin' smarter by the minute."

"We'll have to try to hold out somehow." Chris had made a decision. "He can't stop, but maybe he could get close enough to, I don't know, throw us a bag of those grenades or something so we could defend ourselves. It's the only chance we've got." He picked up the radio. "Ezra, slight change in plans; do you think you could get some of those grenades to us before you head out?"

Once the Southerner understood what was going on he was all for trying a rescue in spite of the Graboids, but Chris and Buck convinced him that it wouldn't work and he reluctantly agreed to their plan. "All right then, I'll be there momentarily - as the remaining two creatures are down there harassing you, I shouldn't have a problem getting to my vehicle…"

The sound of a car alarm going off interrupted him and they heard him swear. "Ezra, what's goin' on?"

"Looks like another slight change in plans, gentlemen," Ezra's voice came back tiredly. "And perhaps you should count your Graboids again, I believe you'll find you're missing one."

The men on the roof exchanged a horrified look; they had all assumed, just as Nathan had, that both Graboids were still in town. "There's another one up there with you?"

"Unless there are some other subterranean vehicle-consuming lifeforms here that I'm not aware of, then I should say so. And I don't believe I will be going anywhere in the foreseeable future."

"You just stay put, we'll think of something," Chris told him and then turned back to the other men. "Well, so much for that idea. Anyone got a better one?"

"Ain't no more vehicles in town that'll go off road," Buck mused unhappily. "What we need is somethin' big, somethin' they can't suck down…like a tank."

"I don't see a tank anywhere," was Nathan's rather acid comment. Chris and Josiah both shot him a look and he bristled. "Well, what we need is plans we can use! Speculatin' about what we don't have ain't gonna get us anywhere."

"Brainstorming can get you lots of places," Vin corrected quietly, startling the doctor. "'Cause it gets you thikin', and once you're thinkin' your problem's halfway solved."

"Make that all the way," Buck announced triumphantly. He grinned at the hopeful expressions. "We may not have a tank, boys, but we have the Cat! That danged thing weighs twenty tons, ain't no way them Graboids can suck it down!"

"We won't all fit on the bulldozer," Josiah pointed out.

"No, but we could pull somethin', maybe drag a car, I don't know…"

"That old semi trailer!" Chris exclaimed. "The tires are shot, but that bulldozer can pull anything."

"We got us a god-damned plan!" Buck yelled. Then he visibly deflated, looking over at the Cat…which sat about two hundred yards away from the store. "Okay," he said weakly as everyone noticed what he'd noticed and groaned. "Now if someone comes up with a plan to get us to the plan, we're home free."

"What we need is a distraction!" came from JD on the water tower.

"Yeah, a distraction," Vin repeated. "Gotta buy someone time to run over there and get that bad boy started."

"Pity Melvin ain't here," Buck said under his breath to Chris. "I could'a probably got him to be a distraction if I offered him five bucks."

"Probably, but I think he already was a distraction," his friend replied in kind. "Too bad we don't have one of Billy's little remote-controlled trucks over here, that might do it."

"How 'bout the riding lawnmower?" The question took everyone by surprise, and Josiah shrugged. "Why can't we start it up, sent it off on its own? Let them chase the lawnmower for a while if that's what they like."

Everyone grinned. All four men helped Josiah ease down onto the windowsill near his little lawn tractor, and he braced the gas pedal and the steering wheel with sticks before starting the small vehicle up and letting it go. It rattled off noisily across the uneven ground, and after they had pulled the big man back up everyone watched it, waiting. And then a dust plume went up, heading away from the store.

Mary's trembling house stilled, and then another dust plume followed in the wake of the first. "It's working," Nathan breathed. "They're followin' it!"

Buck beamed and slapped Chris on the shoulder. "Okay, here I go. Wish me luck!"

Chris grabbed his arm before he could reach the edge of the roof. "No, here I go; I'm better at drivin' the Cat."

Buck wrenched out of his grip. "Not while I'm around." The two men locked eyes, made identical faces…and then each stuck out a clenched fist. "Okay, on three…"

Vin looked over at JD perched on the water tower and then across the way to Mary's house where the writer and her son were cowering on the roof, and he made a decision. Pushing past the two arguing men, he vaulted lightly over the edge of the roof to land on the rusting porch awning; his weight proved too much for the rickety structure and both metal roof and college student hit the ground with a frightening crash. Vin sat up, shook his head to clear it, then scrambled to his feet and started running full speed toward the distant Cat.

Larabee swore as he watched the younger man run. "God dammit, what does he think he's…can the little bastard even drive a bulldozer?!"

Everyone looked toward the water tower. "JD, can Vin drive that Cat?" Buck yelled.

"Yeah, he can drive just about anything," the kid yelled back. "He usually works construction during the summer, it's how he pays for school."

Buck nodded and waved a thank you, but Chris' frown deepened. "Wonder what he's doin' out here, then?" he mused, not taking his eyes off the running figure.

Vin was less than halfway to his goal when, unbeknownst to him, the little lawn tractor hit a rock and turned over, its small engine sputtering and dying into stillness almost immediately. The hidden menaces underground stopped for a few seconds…and then turned around.

JD watched as the two sets of dust plumes streaked toward his friend, realizing that the Graboids could 'swim' faster than Vin could run and that he was still too far away to make the safety of the Cat. But they weren't too close to him yet… "Vin! Stop running! Stop running, DON'T MOVE!!"

Vin heard the warning and froze just in time; the ground trembled under his feet, a growing ripple of movement that suddenly erupted into the gaping beak of a Graboid a few yards in front of him. The little snake tentacles shot out and flailed around on the ground, searching…

The horrified men left behind stamped and screamed and cursed, but the hungry worm was not interested in such faint vibrations when it knew that there was prey to be had so much closer - if it could only find it. JD, watching the tentacles sweep back and forth from the top of the water tower, suddenly realized that the only way to draw it away from Vin's position was to convince the creature that there was much larger prey to be had. He looked around wildly, wondering if he could somehow tip the tower over…and then he spotted the patched and leaking pipe that led down from the tower to the trough underneath. Quickly he swung down the ladder and began to kick the pipe for all he was worth, swearing when the rickety-looking thing proved much tougher than anticipated.

Buck was the first to notice his absence from the tower platform and he drew the others' attention to the plan he could see unfolding before him. "Vin, hold still just a minute more," he yelled, hoping the other man could hear him and would know help was on the way. "Josiah, how full is that thing?"

"Full enough, I hope." The pipe finally gave way and water began to splatter down on the hard-packed ground.

One of the tentacles had just made a nearly successful grab for Vin's leg when the Graboid suddenly dove back underground and vanished. Vin waited a heartbeat and then ran for his life, expecting any moment to feel the ground reach up and swallow him. Reaching the Cat, he vaulted into the driver's seat and began to coax the diesel engine into starting, hoping the others had been right about the bulldozer being too heavy to be sucked down; it was going to take him a few minutes to hitch on the semi trailer.

He picked up JD first, raising the bucket so the younger man could jump down into it and then high-fiving him when he clambered back into the cab. "Owe ya one, pard. Now let's get everyone collected and get the hell out of Dodge!"

Soon everyone was safely ensconced in the back of the trailer and Chris was navigating the Cat up the road to Ezra's house while Vin kept watch from the roof of the cab, rifle in hand. "We're headed to the mountains!" he called out as they pulled alongside the concrete-walled structure. "Come on, we can't stop for long! These things are damn smart, they're already figurin' it out, tryin' to dig out from under us when we stop!"

Ezra appeared at the edge of the roof, looking more than a little the worse for wear with one arm secured in a makeshift sling and streaks of orange ichor staining his face and clothes. He tossed two heavy bags down into the trailer with a shouted warning to get out of the way; when Buck protested that they were only going nine miles, he yelled over the rumble of the Cat's engine, "And those things will be on you every step of the way. Now get moving!"

"You can't stay here!" Vin yelled back.. "They'll pull this place out from under you in half an hour!"

"That's as it may be, but going with you would only slow you down," was the response. "This exodus will have to be completed on foot, and my altercation with that…animal has left me unable to make such a journey. Not that I could have gone into Bixby anyway…"

"Dammit, Ezra, we are not leaving you here!" Chris roared from the drivers' seat. "Now grab those grenades and jump! Josiah, catch him!"

At that moment the bulldozer lurched as one of the Graboids - or perhaps both of them - tried to attack it from underneath. Ezra saw the determination in Larabee's face…and the fear in Billy's. It was the latter that decided him. Swinging the sack of grenades over his shoulder, he clambered awkwardly up onto the ledge and locked eyes with Josiah, who nodded and braced himself. And then he jumped.

Chris had the Cat moving again almost before Ezra had hit the back of the trailer, but from the corner of his eye he had seen the smaller man go limp in Josiah's grasp and he called back over his shoulder, "He all right?"

"He's got a dislocated shoulder and a hurt ankle," Nathan called back. "Hang onto him, Josiah, puttin' that shoulder back in place is gonna bring him around in a hurry…" An indignant yell of pain proved him right, and Chris heard the doctor's voice turn soothing. "Now you just sit back again and let me take a look at that ankle, see what needs to be done…"

Vin leaned over the cab roof and grinned. "He's gonna be okay - just gave Nathan the damn dirtiest look I ever did see."

"What do you think he would've done if we'd left him behind?"

The grin disappeared. "I think the minute we were over the hill he would have waded out into the desert with a grenade in his hand and blown some hungry Graboid all to hell." Vin jumped lightly down into the bucket and scanned the horizon, estimating how long it would take them to reach the safety of solid rock. "That's what I would've done if I were him."

FIVE

They had almost made it to the mountains when the two remaining Graboids proved just how smart they really were.

Vin noticed something unusual from his lookout perch in the Cat's rusted bucket but didn't realize what he was seeing until it was too late for Chris to stop; the solid-appearing ground under the bulldozer's tracks disintegrated and the heavy vehicle pitched forward into a yawning pit, dumping Vin out of the bucket and almost throwing Chris out of the cab to join him. The older man caught the edge of the roof just in time, then scrambled down to the ground anyway to haul the dazed college student back into the relative safety of the trailer. A trickle of blood was running down the side of Vin's face from a gash above his left eye. "They dug a trap," he muttered disbelievingly. "They dug a trap."

The trailer shuddered and lurched to one side, dust shooting up in the air, and there was a mad scramble for the guns everyone had dropped. But the bullets couldn't penetrate the hard ground far enough to have much effect. Then Ezra limped to the downward-tilting side of the trailer with a scowl on his face and a grenade in his hand. "You hungry?" he hissed at the unseen Graboid, yanking the pin out of the grenade. "Then you can eat this!"

He threw the grenade and yelled for everyone to duck, which everyone did. Over the sound of the exploding grenade came the high-pitched scream of a Graboid, and as everyone watched in amazement two plumes of dust streaked away from the trailer at high speed. "You scared 'em," Chris said approvingly.

"I don't think so." JD was squinting at the hole the grenade had made in the ground. "I think it hurt them - they're so sensitive to vibrations, I don't think they had any choice but to run."

"Then maybe we could use the grenades to get out of this," Buck said. "Do we have enough to make it to the mountains?"

Vin shook his head. "Naw, we'd need fifty of those things, we're a good mile, mile and a half from where we'd need to be."

"We could use them to make it to those rocks, though," Josiah said suddenly. Everyone turned to look. Sure enough, a fairly large outcropping of the residual boulders that studded the valley floor were within running distance. "One or two grenades should get us there, and then we'd have more time to come up with another plan."

No one said anything, everyone just stared at the wide expanse of ground between the trailer and the rocks. Then Chris straightened up from where he was leaning on the side of the trailer and slapped Josiah on the back. "Aw hell, he's got my vote. If we stay here they're just gonna suck us down, at least over there we'll have a fighting chance."

The dust plumes were coming back. What supplies they had were quickly divided up, and Ezra handed off the bag of grenades to Vin. "You run the fastest," he told the younger man. "You can make the rocks before the rest of us and throw another grenade if necessary to keep those monsters away."

"Good idea," Buck said, checking his gun even though he knew the weapon wouldn't do him much good. "Havin' an up close and personal encounter with a Graboid ain't high on my list of things to do today."

Everyone ducked again except for Vin, who stood with grenade in hand waiting for the right moment; the trailer lurched violently and he yanked the pin and tossed the little bomb toward the rocks before ducking down next to Chris. Another explosion, more screams…and JD, keeping watch from the other side, jumped up and yelled, "It's working, there they go!"

Vin was already over the side and sprinting for the rocks, Buck, Nathan and JD close behind him. Chris lifted Billy into his arms and ran as well, followed by Mary, Josiah and Ezra. No one looked back; no one wanted to witness the moment when the two Graboids turned around and came after them…and so no one noticed when Ezra's injured ankle gave way and sent him sprawling face-first onto the ground.

Ezra's first instinct was to yell for help, but he thought better of it. Calling out to the others would result in one of two things, he knew; either someone would risk their life to run back and save him …or no one would. Taking a chance on either option was unacceptable to him, so he fumbled out the grenade he'd hidden inside his shirt and then froze, hoping the hard pounding of his heart wasn't enough of a vibration to draw the monsters to him. But if his hope proved unfounded, at least he'd be able to take one of the Graboids down with him.

Yelling from the direction of the rocks let him know that not only had Vin reached safety but also that the Graboids were returning; he didn't dare move enough to look up and see for himself, but his grip on the grenade tightened. The vibration of something approaching transmitted itself to Ezra through the earth he was lying on, and he drew the grenade in close enough so that he could pull the pin out with his teeth…

…And then strong hands grabbed his shoulders. Ezra's head snapped up, and he found himself looking into Josiah's fear-widened pale blue eyes. Before either of them could say anything, however, the ground shook again and then erupted just beyond the Southerner's feet to release the gaping beak of a Graboid. Ezra didn't think twice; he ripped the pin out of the grenade and hurled it into the monster's mouth, then threw himself against the older man and knocked him over backwards.

Josiah barely had time to register what was happening before the Graboid blew apart with an indignant shriek that was echoed by the other monster as it fled the grenade's painful ground-shaking concussion. Scraps of reeking orange flesh and gobbets of slimy fluid rained down around them…and then there was silence. The compact body that covered his went limp with relief. "The rocks, Mr. Sanchez," Ezra whispered. "The remaining creature will return momentarily."

"Of that I have no doubt," Josiah replied. He climbed to his feet and pulled Ezra up with him, supporting most of the younger man's weight and half-dragging him to safety. Once the others had pulled them up onto the rocks he sat down heavily and looked out at the blasted remains of the second Graboid. "That was too close."

"It sure as hell was," Chris snapped, dropping down on his haunches next to Ezra, who had flopped down on his back with his eyes closed and hadn't moved again. "Just what exactly did you think you were doing out there, Standish? Why didn't you ask someone to help you?"

One green eye opened to squint up at him, then closed again. "Ah…thought ah could make it."

"Yeah well, you thought wrong," Larabee insisted, but the hand he dropped onto Ezra's uninjured shoulder squeezed a reassurance, not a reprimand. "Don't pull that shit on us again, okay?"

"Ah have no intention of doin' so," the Southerner drawled, a small smile gracing his face. "The last monster is all yours."

"'Bout time you shared," Buck quipped. "So does anyone have an idea how we're gonna get the last one? This here rock might be safe, but unless it starts to rain it's gonna be gettin' mighty dry up here mighty quick."

"These MREs have juice in 'em - some of 'em do, anyway," Vin put in, holding up one of the silver-gray packets that had been in Ezra's supplies. "We can hold out for a bit." He ripped into the MRE he was holding and started taking out food. "Get over here, JD, you need to eat - the rest of you too, man don't think straight on an empty stomach."

Chris made sure Mary and Billy were taken care of before settling himself next to Vin and tearing open his own dinner. "You're damn handy to have around, you know that? We get graduate students out here all the time, you ain't like any of 'em I've ever met."

Vin snorted. "Probably 'cause I ain't a graduate student."

"Vin's part of the Wildlife Department program," JD jumped in. "He's, uh, out here because my professor thought I needed some help, uh, because I don't…"

"JD," Vin said softly, and the younger man subsided and dropped his head. Vin sighed. "Professor Hill did send me with JD an' he did ask me to look out for him, even said he'd see to it I got some kind of credit when we got back…but officially speakin' I ain't even out here and I never was. I ain't gonna lie to you all, I'm hidin' out as much as Ez over there is. Got a pretty high price on my head, if the professor hadn't decided to help me lay low for a while I'd probably be dead right now."

Everyone stopped eating to stare at Vin, and Nathan scowled. "Oh great, that's all we need, someone else that's willing to get innocent people killed to save their own skin," he snarled disgustedly. "What did you do, get in trouble with a gang or cross someone up on a drug deal?"

Now everyone was staring at the doctor, and Buck shook his head. "Soon as we get off this rock, Doc, I'm unpluggin' that satellite dish of yours."

"And I'm haulin' it off to the dump," Chris grunted, giving Nathan an unfriendly look. "This shit we don't need right now, Doc."

"Really, Dr. Jackson," Mary admonished. "That was uncalled for."

Ezra sighed and painfully rolled himself into a sitting position before anyone else could say anything. "Gentlemen, Ms. Travis…we truly don't need any of this right now. Mr. Tanner, you will have to excuse Dr. Jackson's behavior; he has not been given opportunity to process his loss as of yet and we must extend him all due consideration. And let me be the first to tender my regrets that your expected safe haven proved to be anything but. Should we both escape this situation, I will do whatever I can to assist you in your predicament."

"Ain't sure there's much anybody can do, but thanks all the same," was Vin's reply. "Sounds like you and I've got a bit in common, Mr. Standish."

"Unfortunately," Ezra said, but a dimpled smile blossomed on his face. "And please, call me Ezra."

"Vin," the younger man told him, returning the grin. But his grin faded into a slight frown as he watched Ezra gingerly settle himself back down on the sun-warmed rock with a small gasp poorly disguised as a sigh. "You sure you're all right, Ezra?"

"As long as ah'm not expected to move for a time, the answer is yes," the Southerner drawled tiredly. "But thank you for asking."

Vin locked eyes with Chris. Think that worm messed him up more than he's lettin' on, the concerned look said.

Think you're right, Chris answered in kind by means of a slight nod, with a flick of his eyes toward Nathan and an almost inaudible sigh that said he expected no help from that quarter at the moment. But there ain't nothin' we can do about it now. "You got any ideas, Tanner?" he asked out loud. "Other than jumping down off this rock and trying to chuck a grenade in that thing's mouth before it eats you?"

"If we had a stick of dynamite or something maybe we could fish for it," was Vin's answer. "That ain't gonna work with a grenade, though – no way to set it off from a distance."

"We've got food, can't we just wait it out?" Mary wanted to know. "I mean, won't it get tired of waiting for us and eventually go look for something else to…hunt?"

"It's possible," JD said thoughtfully. "But these creatures are absolutely unprecedented, there's nothing like them in the fossil record. They could predate the fossil record…"

"And we've just never seen one until now," Vin interjected with only the barest trace of sarcasm.

"…but that's not plausible," JD continued with a nod to his fellow student. "And since we don't know anything about them, there's no way of predicting this one's behavior except for the obvious. And what we do know would make me think it won't be going anywhere; this rock is a perfect conductor, the Graboid can 'hear' every move we make so it's not going to forget that we're here."

"Yeah, we already know they're smart," Buck put in. "Too damned smart if you ask me. Where would something like this come from, anyway? Outer space?"

"Are they space monsters?" Billy piped up excitedly. "We could call the Power Rangers to come save us!"

Everyone laughed. "Wish it was that easy, Billy," Chris told the little boy. "But I think this time we'll have to get the monster ourselves. And I don't think they're space monsters."

"Could be some sort of genetic experiment," Nathan said without looking up, toying with the crackers he'd pulled out of his MRE. "Maybe the government…"

"So now we've gone from Homicide to the X-Files," Buck cut him off. "I was joking, Doc, wish I could say I knew you were."

"Actually," Josiah said slowly. "He might have something there." Everyone stared at him and he shook his head. "I've been in Perfection longer than any of you, remember hearing some of the old-timers talk about an old mine hereabouts that the Army was 'storing' stuff in back in the forties and fifties." He sighed, looking troubled. "Big black barrels, they told me. Lots of 'em."

JD sat up a little straighter. "Some biochemical agents have teratogenic effects…"

"Whatever toxic waste they dumped down there could cause mutations," Vin translated quickly. "But that ain't our problem right now; right now we just need to figure out what to do about the last Graboid and knowin' his momma's name and his home address ain't gonna get us there."

"Hear, hear," Ezra agreed drowsily.

"Shut up, Ezra," Chris ordered without heat. "We want your opinion, we'll wake you up – this one's ours, remember?" The Southerner snorted softly but didn't open his eyes or say anything else, so Chris turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "Okay, what we've got so far is that this thing chases anything that makes a vibration and bullets won't kill it but a grenade will if you ram one down its throat, else it just runs away from the noise and then comes right back. And it's smart enough to figure things out and make plans."

"This thing may be smart, but there ain't no way it's smarter than us," Vin insisted. "We've got to remember that it's just an animal. If we can make it react like an animal, not give it time to think, we can take back control of this situation."

"Hmm, you mean kind of like startin' a stampede to drive your cattle someplace they don't want to go," Buck said. Then his eyes and Chris' both widened. "Wait a minute, that's it! A stampede!"

"That's it!" Chris exclaimed. "The canyon rim, fellas," he prompted, seeing everyone else's mystified looks. "Buck and I've been repairin' fence three days now, tryin' to keep any more of Dobson's longhorns from goin' over the side. We can use the grenades to drive that sucker right out through the canyon wall!"

"We got us a God-damned plan!" Buck yelled. Then he flinched, shooting an apologetic look at Mary. "Pardon my French. But guys, this'll work!"

Vin looked thoughtful. "Might," he said, standing up and peering out in the direction that he knew the canyon lay. "Just one problem I can see, though; how you gonna make him go in the direction you want him to? He'll only run so far at a time and we ain't got too many grenades left, can't afford to waste 'em."

"Vin's right," JD agreed, looking a little sickened. "We're about what, two, three hundred yards from the canyon rim?"

"About that," Chris confirmed, frowning as he saw where the two college students' reasoning was going. "You don't think we could drive him that far with the grenades we have left?"

"We could try, but if he took off in the wrong direction we'd have wasted our last chance," Vin said. "Only got three grenades left. No, what we'll have to do to make this plan work is lure the Graboid out that way and then drive him over with the grenades when he gets close enough so we can be sure."

"You're sayin' someone's gonna have to make a run for it," Buck observed slowly. A horrified hush fell on the group, and Ezra opened his eyes. "One of us is gonna have to try to outrun that thing."

"I'll do it," five voices said at once.

Chris snorted and shook his head. "He said outrun not outcrawl, Ezra."

"I can make it," the Southerner argued. "If I wrap up my ankle very tightly, I can make it. And ah'm the only logical choice and you know it, because if I fail you haven't lost anything. I'll take just one grenade with me…"

"Haven't lost anything!" Buck exploded – made even angrier by the fact that he could see agreement with the younger man's suicidal offer on Nathan's face. "What the hell do you mean, that it don't matter if you get killed?!"

Ezra tipped his head so he could look directly at Buck, and the expression in those green eyes made the other man go cold inside. "Ah'm already a dead man, Mr. Wilmington."

"No, you aren't," Josiah rumbled, scowling. He scooted over next to Ezra and planted a large hand in the center of his chest to keep him from sitting up; Ezra's wince at the restraining pressure told the store owner that bruised or cracked ribs were most likely on the man's list of Graboid-induced injuries. "Where there's life, there's hope, son – and ain't no one here going to let you sacrifice yourself to that monster just because you can't find your hope right now."

"JD, you can't go either," Vin said. "You can't trust that trick knee of yours not to go out, runnin' over this rough ground."

"I can make it," JD echoed Ezra's earlier assertion with an equally stubborn look. "And because the soil right around here is kind of rocky, it'll take the Graboid a little bit to get up to full speed…"

"Buck has bad knees too," Chris interrupted. "So neither of you are going, end of discussion." He looked at Vin and cracked a grin. "Looks like that leaves it between you and me. Rock, paper, scissors?"

Three rounds of rock, paper, scissors later both men were still coming up with the same hand each time and Buck was all but rolling on the ground with laughter. "Dammit, cowboy, I think you finally met your match!"

"Don't call me cowboy," Chris growled. He glared at his callused hand like it had betrayed him. "Well, I guess the old standby ain't gonna work this time." He cocked an eyebrow at Vin. "We could go together?"

Vin nodded slowly. "Reckon that's what it's lookin' like – might be safer that way too, be able to back each other up. We need to find out where that Graboid is before we do this, though, 'cause I don't want to jump off this rock and land in its mouth."

Everyone scattered to find rocks to throw to try to flush out the Graboid except for Josiah, who was still pinning Ezra in place. "Why don't you get back to that nap, son?" the older man suggested firmly. "We'll wake you when it's time to go home."

Ezra's protest was cut short by a slight increase of the pressure against his chest and he gasped slightly and shut his eyes again, biting his lip. "Ah'm…not your son."

"For now we'll just pretend you are," Josiah insisted with a smile and eased back on the pressure again. "Billy, bring me some of those rocks if you would please? I can pitch them over the side from here…"

They finally settled on throwing the rocks to one spot at a time to try to draw the Graboid as far away from Chris and Vin's chosen jumping-off spot as possible. "There he is!" Buck yelled triumphantly as the ground he'd been aiming at heaved and a few tentacles erupted through the sandy soil. One of them was torn and headless and he grinned. "And it's our old pal Stumpy, too!"

"Even better," Chris snorted. He looked at Vin. "Ready?"

"No time like the present," the younger man answered, and they both jumped off the rock and ran for the distant edge of the narrow canyon. Neither of them dared look back to see if JD had been right about the Graboid needing time to get up to speed. They skidded to a stop not two feet from the steep drop and spun around with grenades in hand; the monster was closing in, the ground heaving up and then caving back in as it rushed along close to the surface. When it was about fifteen feet away both men threw their grenades into the trench it was leaving in its wake and then dove out of its path as the small but deadly missiles exploded.

The twin explosions were followed by the Graboid's now familiar high-pitched scream and the earth in front of it was plowed up violently as the monster hurled itself away from the source of its pain. It erupted through the canyon wall and, with a final, echoing scream, fell to burst like overripe fruit on the rocky ground a thousand feet below. Chris and Vin peered over the edge at the mess, grinned at each other, and turned to head back to the rocks. "Think we can get the Cat out?" Chris wanted to know.

"Sure as hell gonna try – be a long walk back if we can't," Vin replied.

"Yep, sure would." Chris waved at the rocks, where the others were jumping and cheering to see them coming back. "Hey, Buck!" he yelled. "Guess they can't fly after all!"

+ + + + + + +

The ride back to Perfection was a much happier trip than the ride out of it had been. Mary took Billy home as soon as they returned to town, and the seven men all sat down in a hastily cleaned area in Josiah's store to discuss what to do next. They were still cut off from the outside world until the road was cleared of its rockslide and the phone lines were repaired, and although it would be possible for someone to hike out of the valley now there were other problems that required more immediate attention. "Tomorrow mornin' early we need to head back out to Nestor's and look for Melvin," Buck said. "Got to do somethin' about ol' Nestor's…remains, too, and all them sheep that thing tore up…"

"Gotta do somethin' about what's left of them Graboids, too," Vin added. "Especially that one in Ezra's basement. No tellin' what's gonna happen when that thing starts to rot – if it ain't already."

"What a pleasant thought," Ezra drawled. "But I believe we have larger problems than carrion to worry about, gentlemen."

"You mean like tellin' the cops?" Buck asked. "Well they may not want to believe us but they ain't gonna have much choice once we show 'em a dead Graboid or two. Hell, boys, we might just get us our fifteen minutes of fame out of this!"

"That could be a problem for Vin," JD said with a frown. "No one's supposed to know he's out here."

"Could pose that same problem for Ezra, too," Josiah chimed in. "Unless one or both of you boys wanted to disappear, we could always say the Graboids got you…"

"I ain't gonna lie," Nathan insisted. "Especially not to the police."

"No one asked you to, Doc," Chris told him tiredly. "But I'm more worried about what's going to happen to Perfection when this story breaks – and trust me, if Mary had a working phone it would have broken already."

"That is part of the larger picture but I believe you all are missing the obvious," Ezra said. "Those…things, they had to be mutations, the product of generations of worms warped by radioactivity or God knows what else seeping out of that forgotten mine. But think, gentlemen; worms aren't the only multiplicitous life forms in this particular ecosystem."

"He's right," Vin agreed, shocked. "Oh damn, I can't believe we didn't think of that."

"All those bugs," JD breathed, his expression reflecting increasing alarm. "Some insects turn over a new generation every few days, the mutation rate would increase exponentially…"

"Wait a minute, you boys are saying there could be more Graboids?" Buck demanded. "I thought you said there were only three!"

"There were only three…Graboids," was the graduate student's pointed answer. "That doesn't mean there aren't a hundred of something else."

"And that's only the tip of the iceberg," Ezra spoke into the shocked silence that followed. "The mutations themselves may seem to be the immediate problem…"

"But the government's response to them could be even worse," Chris finished for him, his mouth setting in a grim line. "That's what I was getting at before. At best the government will send in the EPA, who will take over this valley and Perfection will disappear - and we would be lucky not to get in trouble for wiping out an entirely new species. At worst," he looked at Ezra, who nodded solemnly, "the government might decide to cover it's own ass before the EPA finds out about the shit they dumped out here and we would all disappear."

Nathan looked from Chris to Ezra and shook his head. "Stuff like that don't happen in this country," he insisted. "I'd expect Ezra to be paranoid, bein' in the Witness Protection Program and all…"

"You never asked me who ah was bein' protected from," the Southerner interrupted softly, and there was a look in his eyes that closed the doctor's mouth with a snap. "But in this instance, my…situation may actually be of benefit to all of you." He pulled what looked like a small silver cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open and pushed a single button; after a long moment of listening he said, "It is important - to you as well as me. And it can't wait." He listened again and then flipped the phone closed; his eyes were bleak, his face not quite as expressionless as he was trying to make it. "Our only hope will arrive within a few hours, gentlemen," Ezra told them. "I have an idea that may save us - and Perfection as well."

Nathan's hackles rose again. "You had a cell phone all this time…"

"Obviously it wouldn't matter if I had, as this valley is a 'dead area' service-wise for such devices," Ezra interrupted tiredly, tucking the silver phone back into his pocket. "You might liken this device to a portable version of the infamous Bat Signal; it is designed to contact but one individual and I am only permitted to use it in direst emergencies."

Buck made a face. "Them Graboids weren't dire enough for ya?"

"Sadly, no," was Ezra's reply. "The qualifying definition of 'dire' was not left up to me, and I dare not challenge the judge's parameters. He was none too happy to hear from me as it was."

"Why'd you call him then?" Vin asked.

"Because we need help – help I believe he can provide." Ezra rubbed his eyes with his hand. "It would be best if we could bring one of the carcasses back here, or at least enough of one to prove our tale of monsters that erupt from beneath the soil to devour anything that moves."

"We can take him to see the one at your house if we need to," Chris said. "The one part we already had with us is still here in the back of JD's truck wrapped up in that tarp, and that plus all the damage around here should be enough to give him the idea." He frowned at the Southerner, who was still rubbing at his eyes. "Why don't you get some more sleep while we wait for this guy to get here, Ez? You could use it."

"I certainly second that," Josiah rumbled; the Southerner still hadn't let anyone look him over, but the fact that he was in pain was plain to see.

Ezra sighed. "Much as I would like to do so, it would not do at all for me to be asleep when the judge arrives - or drowsy from being hastily awakened either. The outcome of this meeting is far too important to jeopardize it with such a display of weakness."

"Sounds like you're afraid to piss him off," Vin commented.

"Ah am," Ezra admitted. "Judge Travis can be a hard man, but he has a strong sense of justice and fairness and I believe he will be inclined to do what he can for us so long as his initial impression of the situation and the players involved is a favorable one."

"You mean his impression of you, don't you?" came from Nathan.

The Southerner sighed again, shifting in his chair to find a comfortable position that probably didn't exist. "That too. Ah'm afraid my first meeting with him was under…less than ideal conditions. Ah was definitely not at my best."

Nathan looked like he wanted to pursue that, but several less-than-friendly looks from the other men stopped him. "Well, I don't know about you boys," Chris said, taking a long pull from the dented beer can in front of him. "But I think we should all just kick back and relax until this guy gets here, ain't really nothing we can do until then."

"Yeah, the Cat's gonna need some fixin' up before we can do anything else with it," Vin seconded. "And the sun'll be settin' in another couple hours, too."

"I'll go check out your backup generator, Josiah," Buck said, levering himself up out of his chair and draining the rest of his own beer before tossing the empty can in the general direction of the debris pile that now scattered itself across the space where cluttered shelves of dusty merchandise had once stood. "We'll see about gettin' the main line fixed up again tomorrow, all right?"

"Sounds good." Sanchez drained his beer as well and reached for another. "We can use the microwave to nuke up some dinner, then; I don't want to try the stove until we've checked the gas line."

"You and Ezra need to take a shower if you can," JD pointed out. He had declined the beer and was nursing a cracked bottle of YooHoo instead. "You've both gotten fluids from the Graboids on your skin, it would be a good idea to get it off as quickly as possible."

"He's right," Nathan concurred with a frown, unhappy with himself for not thinking of that earlier. "Don't know what kind of reaction you might have to that slimy stuff. Mary's electricity's still on, why don't I walk you both over there and then I'll check you both out once you've got it all washed off – need to check Ezra over anyway."

Ezra had closed his eyes and was cradling his beer in both hands. "Ah'm fine, Dr. Jackson."

Vin stood up. "I'll help you get 'em over there," he said. "JD, while I help him why don't you get all those readouts and things put together so we can show the judge when he gets here? Might make a better impression if it looked like we was organized."

"Sure thing, Vin," JD agreed. "I'll get our sleeping bags and stuff, too. You mind if we crash in here tonight, Mr. Sanchez?"

"I don't think that's such a good idea," Chris said, vetoing the store owner's nod. "This place is too wrecked, anything could crawl in here – and I mind what Josiah said about the gas line, too. I'll walk over to Mary's with you boys and see if she'll let us all spend the night there."

"Might make her feel better, at that," Josiah agreed. He stood up and stretched, then jerked his head at Vin to come help him pry Ezra up out of his chair. "Somehow I don't think any of us are gonna want to be alone tonight. I know I sure as hell don't."

+ + + + + + +

Two hours and forty minutes after Ezra's call for help a helicopter set down in the middle of the rutted road that ran through Perfection and a heavyset older man got out of it and stood looking around. He leaned back into the craft to say something to the pilot before striding across the dusty, debris-littered ground toward the sagging store. "What the hell happened here, Standish?" he called out to the man who had come out of the wrecked building to stand on top of the fallen rusted awning. "Are Mary and Billy all right?"

"They are unharmed, sir," Ezra answered quickly, doing his best to minimize his limp as he walked out to meet the judge. He saw the man's eyes narrow and knew his best hadn't been very good. "The house sustained some minor damage, but nothing that cannot be fixed."

"Unlike this building here," Travis said dryly. "Are those six gentlemen over there part of this?"

"Yes, your honor." The Southerner led the judge over to JD's truck where the others were waiting. "Judge Travis, these are Mr. Larabee, Mr. Wilmington, Dr. Jackson, Mr. Sanchez, Mr. Tanner and Mr. Dunne. And this," he said once the man was close enough to view the severed tentacle lying on the unrolled tarp. "Is a piece of one of the culprits. Mr. Wilmington christened them 'Graboids' due to their practice of coming up through the ground under the intended victim and grabbing it with these biting tentacles in order to drag it into the creature's mouth."

"This isn't the whole thing then?" The judge looked over the ragged remnant thoughtfully. "Where's the rest of it, gentlemen?"

"The rest of that one is splattered all over the bottom of Abbott Canyon, thanks to Chris and Vin here," Buck told him. "Ezra killed the other two, one's about six or seven miles from here by some rocks and the other one's in his basement."

"They did a number on the bulldozer or we would have tried to bring a bigger piece back to show you," Vin added.

"It looks like the bulldozer wasn't the only thing they did a number on." Travis held up his hand for silence before anyone else could speak. "No, gentlemen, my time is limited so I'd appreciate hearing this story in order from one person." Everyone looked at Chris, and the judge smiled slightly. "Looks like you're appointed, Mr. Larabee. Now the short version, if you please."

Chris took a deep breath and told him, starting with he and Buck finding Nestor's severed head in the pen full of ravaged sheep and ending with their plans for the next day. Travis didn't interrupt him once, just listened and watched the expressions of the other men as the story was told. When Chris was done explaining their concerns about the outside world finding out about the Graboids, the judge nodded and said, "That would be about right, I think. Now what is it you want from me?"

The question had been directed at Ezra, who quickly straightened up from where he'd been leaning rather heavily against the side of the truck. "It was my idea that we might be able to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement," he said. "The main consideration here being that neither any unnatural creatures nor the news of them needs to leave this valley. Were at least some of us to shoulder that responsibility and be provided with resources to do so, I believe we could contain the problem."

Travis cocked an eyebrow at him. "And if you can't?"

Ezra's expression didn't change. "Arrangements will have to be made for that eventuality, of course."

"I think I see what you're getting at," the judge said thoughtfully. "And just how many of you are willing to do this?"

"I can stay," Vin said quietly. "If that's all right with everyone, of course."

Nathan started to say something but Buck elbowed him sharply and he closed his mouth. Travis looked at the two of them and then asked Vin, "Who's after you, son?"

"Construction union had a contract put out on me," Vin answered without hesitation. "I'm worth five thousand to the first person that can show proof they killed me." The judge's expression said he wanted the rest. "They were sabotagin' one of our jobs, messin' around with the machines; got one man killed and hurt some others. I saw two of the ones that did it and testified against 'em, got 'em sent up the river for a good long time. Union won't let that go."

"No, you're right, they won't, so you'll most likely be safer staying here," Travis agreed. "You and Mr. Standish have that in common. What about the rest of you?"

"Sounds like the change of pace I've been lookin' for," Buck spoke up. "Bixby would seem mighty boring after this."

"I've lived more than half my life here," Josiah rumbled. "I'm not leaving Perfection because of a bunch of bugs."

"Could end up being more than just bugs," Chris said quietly. "I plan to make sure we get a handle on this before what just happened here spreads out to someplace else."

"I'm staying too," JD said.

Vin immediately objected. "JD, you've got your degree to finish…"

"I have this summer's research and my thesis," JD corrected. "I can do both of those right here, Vin."

"What do you think those things were, Mr. Dunne?" Travis demanded of the graduate student. "You seem to be the one that would know."

The abrupt question startled JD, but he recovered quickly. "They look like they could have developed from nightcrawlers or some other large worm," he answered. "But we don't really have enough information to start forming any solid theories so there's no way to be sure at this point, sir."

"And are you planning to try to find out?"

JD knew a loaded question when he heard one; it was a tactic his mentor, Professor Hill, was fond of using. "I'd like to, sir," he said carefully. "If…if that's going to be all right with you?"

The judge smiled, pleased. "You are a private citizen, Mr. Dunne; you can do whatever you like. But if you were inclined to find out anything about those creatures, I would certainly be interested in hearing about it."

JD beamed. "Yes sir!"

Nathan sighed deeply. "I can't rightly say I don't want to be in on that research either…and if you're all gonna be going up against monsters you're gonna need a doctor around. I'll stay too."

"Are you certain, Dr. Jackson?" Ezra asked softly. "After what happened, it may be difficult for you to remain…"

"What the hell would you know about it?" Nathan snapped bitterly. "Don't try to talk to me about what happened, you don't know nothin'."

He wasn't looking at the Southerner when he said it or he would have seen Ezra flinch – and Travis' sudden troubled frown. "Dr. Jackson, what are the nature of Mr. Standish's injuries?"

"He'll be fine," was the sullen reply. "He just got banged around some, ain't nothin' to worry about."

"Whether to worry or not is my decision, not yours." The judge's voice was suddenly hard and cold as steel and the doctor's head snapped up. "Now answer the question I asked you."

Nathan's mouth opened but no sound came out. "A badly sprained ankle, dislocated shoulder, couple of cracked ribs and a bunch of bruises, and a bump on the back of his head that probably didn't do him any good either," Josiah answered calmly. "So far neither of us are having a reaction to being splattered with dead Graboid, though."

"Thank you, Mr. Sanchez," Travis replied in a much more cordial tone. "In that case, I would say that Mr. Standish should be in bed instead of standing around outside. Will you see to it?"

"My pleasure, Your Honor," Josiah told him with a grin; he liked the judge already. The big man gently took Ezra's uninjured arm. "C'mon son, you heard the man."

Ezra started to protest…and then stopped, a look of utter failure and disappointment flickering across his face as his shoulders slumped. He didn't resist the store owner's careful pull on his arm. "Ah told you before, ah'm not your son," he protested softly

Josiah just chuckled as he led the smaller man away. "And like I told you before, for now we're just gonna pretend you are."

+ + + + + + +

Judge Travis spoke with the other men for a little longer, asking pointed questions and having them write down the names of the dead for him, and then they found other things to do while he went to the house himself to see Mary and Billy. Chris was waiting, though, when he came back out. "Everything okay, Judge?"

"I'm sure if it wasn't you would have done something about it before I arrived," Travis told him with a small smile. "My daughter-in-law talks about you sometimes. She says you're good with the boy, I appreciate that."

Chris shrugged. "I like Billy, he's a good kid."

"Remind you of your son?" Chris shot him a startled look and the judge shook his head. "I make it a point to know who I'm dealing with, Mr. Larabee, especially where my daughter in law and my grandson are concerned."

"I can understand why you would," Chris answered. "No, he doesn't remind me of Adam, not really."

"Glad to hear it; just wanted to make sure Billy wasn't standing in for a ghost." Travis wasn't apologetic. "He's got enough stacked against him without that, losing his father so young and all. So, do you think you and these men can keep this situation from turning into a bad science fiction movie?"

"I don't know," Chris said honestly, taking the abrupt subject change in stride. "Personally I'd say what worries me the most is that it's possible there are already sequels in the works all over this valley. We need to find that mine first and then work from there to plan out what we need to do."

"Sounds like a solid strategy to start off with," the judge approved. "What about these men, think you can make that work too?"

"Dr. Jackson's just had a rough time today, he'll come around eventually," Chris told him. "And if you mean Ezra, I'd trust him with anyone's life but his own. He's got this idea that he's pretty much a walking dead man anyway, I got the impression that he doesn't trust you too much because he knows you don't like him – said your first meeting was 'less than ideal'."

"I'm afraid you don't know the half of it," the judge sighed, remembering where Ezra had been the first time he'd seen him. "You have to understand, Mr. Larabee, I don't dislike Ezra – wouldn't be helping him if I did. But I think that boy has only trusted one person in his life that didn't turn around and slap him in the face and the U.S. government was no exception, ashamed as I am to admit it. Some of what went on…well, there was no excuse for what he was put through, let me put it that way." Travis actually shuddered. "Don't ever let anyone bring up the subject of autopsies around him, by the way. I stuck him out here because it was the only place I could come up with where I could keep tabs on him without tipping anyone off; Billy is my only grandchild, you see, and I do come to visit him quite often and often on the spur of the moment as well since my son died. Ezra may be afraid of me, but I believe you'd also be rather leery of irritating the person who literally holds your life in his hands, wouldn't you? Especially if everything in your experience tells you that person will eventually turn on you and throw you to the wolves?"

Chris had to agree with that. "So Ezra didn't do anything wrong?"

"Good God no!" Travis exclaimed. "We were the ones who did wrong, and I've done my best to correct that. Not that what happened can be made up to him, of course. But the way I see it, this situation could very possibly be the saving of that boy, it could give him a new lease on life…or at the very least, he'll certainly be guaranteed a much more merciful death if your monsters get him than he will if his do."

"Judge Travis, who did Ezra inform on?" Chris asked. "Now you're calling them monsters and it sounds like the government was right in there helping them out! Just who exactly is after this guy?"

"That I can't tell you," the judge answered evenly before turning on his heel and walking back to the waiting helicopter. But he paused before getting in, looking back at Chris with an indefinable expression on his face. "But if his mother ever shows up here looking for him, Mr. Larabee…shoot first and shoot to kill. Because she will."

END