The Winchester Boys and the Tremors of Doom - Chapter 4
It was not quite mid-afternoon, but the sun was already beginning to dip behind the hills, casting long cool shadows across the valley floor as Carl Massina and his team made their way toward the hills.
Having come up from the pit, Sam had relayed the gruesome details of what he’d found. Carl had been both grieved to learn the fate of his animal and overwhelmingly relieved to know it hadn’t been his son in the bottom of that wretched hole. From that place, the subterranean tunnel had tracked away from the Massina farm; the evidence pointing to a pair of tread marks from two dirt bikes that traveled alongside it.
Convinced that the boys had also found the tunnel, and had set off to track it and its origins down, the group set out after them. Following the trail— moving slowly and spread out with 10ft between them—each man kept a watchful eye on his surroundings as the group searched, hopeful for clues to the boys’ disappearance. For Sam though, hope was sinking like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
He had been careful when describing the scene below ground to Carl, leaving out the extra gory details of how the cow had met her end. He’d allowed the man to believe that it had been the fall that had killed the animal, when in truth there hadn’t been a carcass below the surface, only a splattered mess of partially-digested blood and tissue; a fact that Sam found worrying. Anything that could chew up and spit out a mammal the size of a full grown cow was big. Real big.
Sam played the specifics of what he knew through his mind, working hard to fit them like puzzle pieces into some known criteria that could be found in his dad’s journal. As of yet, nothing was ringing a bell, and he was becoming aggravated by it. Sam needed more information, a break in the case, something. With his mind full of questions and incomplete answers, Sam didn’t notice that Carl had dropped back in their search.
It was a high pitched whistle that caught Sam’s attention and had him turning his ATV around. Twenty yards back, Carl had pulled up and cut the engine of his machine. He had the walkie up to his mouth and was animatedly waving his crew back to him.
“What is it?” Sam asked, joining the circle last. “What’s wrong?”
“They found ‘em…alive,” Dodger replied, grinning like a mad man. The older man was leaned over the handlebars, trying to catch as much of the conversation as he could.
Sam let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
“He said Luke,” Angel corrected. “They found Luke. They didn’t say nuthin’ about Brian yet.”
Carl lifted his hand for quiet and upon his voiceless command they all fell silent and listened.
The reception on the walkie was spotty at best. Sam was able to make out a few vague details, but waited patiently to hear the news from Carl.
“They found him,” he said; relief visibly refreshing the father’s spirits. “He’s hurt and in shock, but alive.”
“That’s great, Carl,” Dodger crowed, clapping the other man on the back.
Carl smiled and then lifted his chin in Sam’s direction. “It was your brother and Cahill what found him. They radioed in and Virgil’s on his way out with the Jeep to pick Luke up. Doc’s on standby—”
“But what about Brian?”
The group collectively turned their eyes on Angel. The boy, who all day had been so laid back and casual about the search that he had appeared uncaring, now looked manic with worry. He was standing on the foot pegs of his vehicle with both hands tucked into his curly dark hair, his breathing unsteady.
“Nobody’s saying anything about Brian. Why are we still sitting here? We should be out there,” he threw his arm out, waving at the hills, “looking for him.”
“We will, son,” Carl soothed, reaching out to comfort the boy. “We will.”
“Don’t…” Angel snapped, sharply drawing away from the contact. He clambered off the far side of the ATV, stumbling over his own feet in his escape.
Dodger hollered and made to go after the boy, but Sam caught the older man by the arm. “Leave him alone. You can see he’s got a lot on his mind.”
“Ain’t no call for him actin’ like that.” Dodger snatched his arm out of Sam’s firm grip and shook his head in disapproval. “Not when we just got the good news.”
“Doesn’t seem like it’s all good news to him,” Sam said, thumbing over his shoulder. Ten feet away, Angel was pacing. His arms were wrapped tightly around his midsection and he was talking a mile a minute to himself. The rest of them might not have been able to hear the obviously distressed words, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that this was more than a little outburst.
Sam looked to Carl to fill in the blanks. “He and this Brian kid are friends, I take it.”
“Brothers. Or well…half-brothers. Angel’s daddy stepped out on his mama when he was just a baby and… voilà.”
The news didn’t surprise Sam, not like it did Dodger who was sputtering on his own words. “How di – I – um…”
“S’alright, Dodge. It’s not something they advertise.”
“Small town like this?” Sam’s eyebrows crept up his forehead, surprised. “Gossip tends to run rampant whether you want it to or not.”
“Small towns are like small boats, Sam. It doesn’t take much to capsize one, but we’re not like most small towns.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to get that. So what’s our next move?”
Carl rubbed his chin and shot a sheepish look over at the still-pacing Angel. “Well I’m gonna meet up with Virgil and my boy and go into the Doc’s with him. You all should keep following the tunnel. Maybe we’ll find Brian injured somewhere too,” he unclipped the walkie from his belt and handed it over to Dodger. “Let us know if you—” A burst of static and panicked shouting erupted from the device and Dodger almost dropped it.
“Mayday, mayday! [tschhhhh] somethi— [tschhhhh] atta— [tschhhhh] omigod [tschhhhh] what [tschhhhh] —ell? [tschhhhh] —king hu— [tschhhhh] Holy fu— [tschhhhh]—”
“What is it?” Angel rejoined them. “What was that on the walkie? Did they find Brian?”
“Eric?” Carl said. “Is that you? This is Carl. What’s goin’ on? Over.”
“Carl? It’s Cahill. Is everything all right? Over.”
“We’re fine. That was Eric. Eric can you hear me? Is everything alright?”
There was nothing from the Motorola but static.
“Carl? Eric’s team is searching out toward Silver Hill, right? Your team is closer. Any chance a couple of you could check it out?”
Sam put a hand to Carl’s shoulder. “Happy to,” he said.
“Sammy! Sammy!” Dean’s voice broke in over the radio. “You be careful out there. I don’t know for sure, but crazy as it sounds, I’m thinkin’ graboids. You copy that?”
Sam frowned.
Carl, meanwhile, looked from Sam to Dodger and back again. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Sam and Dodger can go out there. Angel can come with me—”
“Like hell, I’m goin’ with you. If Brian’s out there somewhere, I gotta find him.”
Dodger bristled and looked like he was fixing to have words with the younger man, but Carl shook his head minutely and Dodger subsided.
“Angel,” he locked eyes with the younger man. “You right to lead Sam out there?”
Angel nodded and Carl clapped him on the back. “Alright. Give Sam the walkie, Dodge. We’re on it Cahill. I’ll see you at that rendezvous point we set up in,” he checked his watch, “in fifteen minutes.”
“Roger that, Carl.” The radio clicked off, with Dean still yelling in the background.
As Sam took the walkie-talkie from Dodger he cleared his throat and said, “Carl, can I just have a quick word in private?”
Carl frowned, but allowed himself to be led to one side, out of earshot of the others. Sam glanced back at the group just in time to see Angel scowl and fold his arms across his chest.
“I know Angel don’t exactly live up to his namesake,” the older man said suddenly. “And I’ll admit he wouldn’t look outta place in a prison yard, but—”
“What?” Sam frowned. “No. That’s not… Look, I didn’t want to say anything when your son was still missing, and I didn’t want to say anything in front of Angel because his half-brother is still missing, but that cow I found? Let’s just say it was less cow and more partially-digested ground beef.”
Carl’s eyebrows shot up beneath the brim of his hat. “What the hell?” he breathed.
Sam nodded. “Whatever’s going on—it’s bad, Carl. And this?” he waved the Motorola, “this is not good. And Angel’s just a kid. I really think you should take him with you.”
Carl smiled wryly. “Well, listen to you, Grandpa. You’re what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”
Sam drew himself up to this full height and squared his shoulders. “I can take care of myself.”
“So can Angel. He may only be nineteen, but he’s one hell of a shot. He can hit his mark, reload a pump shotgun and hit his mark again in about four seconds.”
Sam was grudgingly impressed.
“I just don’t like the idea of anyone out there on their own right now,” Carl continued, “I like it even less with what you just told me. But if it’ll make you feel better, when I meet up with the others, I’ll get them to head your way while I go into town with Luke and Virgil.”
Angel gave Sam the stink-eye when he and Carl rejoined the others, assuming, Sam guessed, that Sam had been objecting to working with a ‘tattooed punk’. Sam figured he’d have to find some way of extending an olive branch and letting him know that wasn’t the case. As the two of them rode out together, Angel slightly in front so that he could lead the way, Sam pondered Dean’s cryptic comment. Graboids? The word sounded familiar; like something he should know. If only he had his laptop.
The country out beyond Silver Hill was flat and dry, and out on the horizon Sam could see the winding tower of a mine shaft and a bunch of fibro-cement out-buildings surrounded by cyclone fencing. He was so busy watching the horizon that he almost failed to realize that Angel had come to a sudden stop. The kid was off his ATV and retching into blood-soaked dirt before Sam had even stopped. Sam squeezed the brakes harder and zigzagged to a halt, throwing up a cloud of dust that made his eyes water. He swung down from the quad bike, clumsy in his haste, his feet slipping in red-slicked sticky goo, as he picked his way to Angel’s side. He squatted down and put a hand to the kid’s shoulder, the bitter iron tang of too much blood causing his nostrils to flare.
“You okay?” he asked.
The look Angel gave him could’ve cut glass. “I’m better ‘an Eric Proctor,” he said.
Sam’s eyes sliced across to the corpse beside them. “He was a friend?”
“It’s a small town,” Angel waved vaguely in Chloride’s direction. “Everybody knows everybody,” he glanced at what was left of Eric Proctor and finally lost the battle to keep his shock from showing on his face. “¡Dios mío!” he shuddered. “What happened to him?”
“Honestly? No clue. I would’ve said he got bit by a Great White Shark, only,” Sam spread his arms wide. “We’re in the middle of a freakin’ desert.”
Angel pulled himself to his feet, his wide eyes darting about. When he spoke his voice was a whole octave higher than usual. “You think the rest of him got ate? You think some tunneling thing came outta that hole?” he nodded at the small crater a few feet ahead of them. He met Sam’s eyes and by unspoken agreement the two of them approached the hole cautiously and peered inside.
Dean raised an eye to the sky and scowled at the half dozen turkey vultures that had gathered overheard. “How far is it from here to town?” he asked without losing sight of the airborne scavengers.
“Just a few minutes by vehicle,” said Cahill.
“And how long’s it been?”
Cahill looked at his watch and rolled his eyes. “‘Bout ten minutes, give or take. You got a hot date or somethin’?”
“No.” Dean stood up from the limestone seat he’d made and shook his leg, trying to adjust some feeling back into his hip. “Just don’t like sittin’ around when we’ve got work to do, is all.”
“Yeah, well, I can get behind that philosophy, I guess,” Cahill agreed, wiping his hand across his brow before sliding his hat back into place.
On the south-facing slope of the mountains, the rocky foothills provided little protection from the afternoon sun that reflected hotly off the granite, which wasn’t helping Luke any. They’d given him water and set up a makeshift shade using the shock blanket Cahill had packed in his gear, but the boy needed more medical attention than a bit of field dressing could provide. Add to that the fact that Sam and the rest of the searchers were quite probably walking blind, and Dean was fit to come unglued; a fact which didn’t go unnoticed by Cahill.
“Look, Carl’ll be here pretty quick…” he said stealing Dean’s attention away from the rocks that he was anxiously kicking. “With their 4-wheelers, we can manage to bring young Luke down out of these hills and meet up with Virgil that much faster. So, if you wanna head out on foot to where Ronnie is and help him gather the horses, I wouldn’t object.”
Dean considered the offer for a moment, torn between staying to help with Luke and leaving to find Sam. The want in Dean, the instinct to hunt whatever sonuvabitchin’ thing had caused all this was strong. Real strong. And Dean found himself easily persuaded. “Yeah,” he nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I could do that.”
Dean made his way down out of the foothills and onto the valley floor just as the high pitched whine of twin quad bikes broke over the horizon. It eased his mind a bit to know that Luke would soon be on his way back to town and away from the Hell he had obviously faced over the last twenty-four plus hours.
Worms…Dean shook his head in disbelief. He’d seen a lot of things in his twenty-seven years, but giant killer worms? Those were the things nightmares were made of. Nightmares and really bad movies…not that Tremors was a bad movie. Tremors was a great movie, but damn…where the Hell were they gonna get the kind of explosives needed to blow a giant killer worm to kingdom come? The only guy he knew had those kinds of munitions was back in Lincoln, Nebraska. What Dean really needed was to confab with his brother.
Problem was, Sam was heading in the opposite direction, toward the most recent attack and most likely toward the giant killer worm, itself…without Dean. The thought of his little brother facing off against this thing alone set Dean’s teeth on edge. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he’d said. Well it wasn’t fine. It was miles away from being fine.
Lost in his head and chewing himself out over the decision to ever stop in Chloride to begin with, Dean didn’t notice the deep rhythmic thum-thum-thump of hooves until the trio of horses was practically on top of him. His arms went up instinctively to protect himself and in doing so, caused the lead horse to rear up and its frightened scream to echo loudly off the mountains around them.
“Whoa!” He scrambled for and caught hold of a loose rein—Blossom’s rein, as luck would have it—and he held on tightly. The mare fought hard to free herself and escape with the other horses. She tossed her head and pulled Dean off balance, but wasn’t able to shake him loose.
“Whoa,” he repeated, dropping his voice down into a deep, soothing tone as he moved up to take a firm hold of her bridle. “Easy girl. Easy Blossom.”
She nickered nervously, but seemed to calm slightly under his touch.
Dean ran a hand up her neck to rub idly at her velvety soft ear, all the while speaking quiet comforting words to her. He wondered how Blossom and the other horses had come to escape and began to worry about the boy he’d left behind to watch over them and cussed himself. “Dammit, I never should have left the kid alone.”
He scanned the lower scrubland, looking for any sign of Ronnie and pulled up short when his eyes stumbled over a thin trail of white-grey flare smoke. “Dammit,” he repeated.
Dean threw the reins up over Blossom’s neck and grabbed the saddle horn in one hand. “You’re gonna have to trust me, girl,” he warned and then swung up into the saddle like a pro.
The mare danced nervously, her ears ticking forward and back, awaiting his command. Dean moved in his seat, squeezed his legs and gave a soft hiss. That was all it took and she was off at a full gallop, Dean leaning into her gait as she powered across the land, racing back to Ronnie.
“Oh man,” Angel moaned. He turned away from the crater, his hands on his knees and his breathing uneven. “You think that’s Pete and Dave?”
Sam wrinkled his nose. “Hard to tell. Was this team on horseback or quad bikes?”
Angel didn’t reply, just straightened up and put his hands to his head, muttering under his breath in what sounded like it might have been Spanish.
Sam put a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare and looked around for any sign of vehicles, horses or monsters. There was a tunnel mound just beyond the hole, stretching out into the distance, but no sign of anything else out of place.
Sam unclipped the walkie from his belt. “Carl? Cahill? You guys read me?”
Cahill’s no-nonsense voice crackled into the air. “I copy Sam. Did you boys find Eric’s team alright?”
“Yeah. Well. We found Eric, anyway. He’s dead.”
“Say again, Sam?”
“Eric Proctor is dead. No sign of the others, but there’s a lot of blood out here.”
There was a rushed intake of breath and then a moment’s silence before Cahill came back on the air. “You’re sure Eric’s dead?”
“Yessir,” Sam said. He hesitated. “There’s nothing of him below the waist.”
Sam heard a muttered ‘Goddamn’ and then Cahill said, “I’ll call it into Lyn. Get her to notify the sheriff. Doesn’t sound like there’s much more you can do out there. Maybe we better regroup, try to figure out what in Hades is goin’ on.”
“Do you mind if I have a quick word with my brother?” Sam interrupted.
“He’s not here. Went out to fetch Ronnie back. We left him with the horses. You boys should come and join us at the rendezvous point too.”
Sam agreed and ended the conversation, clipping the walkie back onto his belt, his forehead creased and his mouth set. He would’ve really appreciated the chance to talk this through with Dean; ask him about his cryptic comment and talk through what type of monster could’ve been responsible for Eric’s injuries.
“Sam!” Angel’s voice had an edge to it. “We’re about to have company.”
Dean may have been deaf to anything other than the thundering of hooves and the whistle of warm wind against his face, but he could see Ronnie. The kid was alive—Thank God— and waving frantically, both arms swinging in full wide arches above his head. Dean urged his mare on and she responded in kind although Dean knew that she was fighting against her instinct to flee.
“Ron! You alright there, buddy?”
“It’s not me,” Ronnie answered, his eyes wide with alarm. He pointed off into the distance and shouted “It’s him!”
Dean followed Ronnie’s line of sight. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now that he was mounted he could see that further towards town, a vehicle was in distress. He could hear the groan of its four wheels, spinning idly, kicking dirt and rock into the air like a fountain of debris.
It was a black Jeep Wrangler, the same one that he’d seen in town and belonged to the man who Cahill had called on to come out and fetch Luke. The irony was not lost on Dean that the rescue vehicle was in need of rescuing.
“Come on!” Dean reached out for Ronnie. “Come on!”
Ronnie grasped hold of Dean’s forearm and pulled himself up on Blossom’s back, flinging the gear from the saddle as he quickly settled behind Dean, and they took off across the plain.
“That’s Virgil’s Jeep,” Ronnie hollered through the wind. “What the Hell’s wrong, do you think?”
“Don’t know for positive, kid, but it ain’t good.” He looked back over his shoulder at the young man. The kid looked so young,
Dean had to swallow down the big brother urge to take the kid as far away from danger as possible, but they’d come too far. There was no turning back now. They’d just have to power through and hope that he could protect Ronnie and see him back to his family safe when this was over. “Can you fire a weapon?” Dean asked.
They might have been galloping at full speed, but Dean didn’t miss Ronnie’s eyebrow quirk up as if to say, ‘D’uh.’
“Alright then.” Dean tugged his .22 free from the saddle scabbard, nearly unseating himself in the process, and then passed the rifle back to the boy.
“What do I need this for?” Ronnie yelled, plastering himself to Dean’s back as he tried to balance the added weight of the gun.
“We’re about to find out!”
A powdery orange haze trailed the fast-approaching Jeep. Sam licked at his lips, considering their options. What if it wasn’t something supernatural going on out here? What if they’d stumbled over something mob related? Didn’t the mafia like to bury people out here in the back blocks? Maybe the tunnels were some kind of mass grave? Maybe Eric was killed because he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe Sam had misheard Dean; maybe he’d said Gambiono. Or Gagliano.
“Sam?” Angel edged a little closer to him, his expression wary. “You don’t think…?” he nodded at Eric’s corpse and then looked back at the Jeep, bigger now, closer. Olive green, Sam thought blankly, one man in the driver’s seat, another in the passenger seat.
“Get your rifle,” Sam said. He positioned the ATVs side by side, creating a makeshift barrier and then picked up his own gun, holding it loosely by his side, ready to bring it up and into action if he needed to.
The Jeep stopped a little way away and the men, Native American, Sam could see now, climbed out, their steps cautious and their eyes wary.
“Hey now,” the one closest, wearing black jeans and a light grey tee-shirt emblazoned with the words Arizona Wildcats 1885, held his hands up in a gesture of submission. His face closed up tight when he spotted Eric. “Friend of yours?”
Sam nodded. “We got a Mayday call over the walkie. Found him like this.”
The newcomers glanced at each other.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Sam said.
The Wildcat shook his head. “I’m Noah. This is my cousin Blake. We’re with the Hualapai Natural Resources Administration.”
“Do you know what’s causing these tunnels?” Angel asked.
Noah shook his head. The other man, Blake, spoke up for the first time. “You mind putting those guns down? They’re makin’ me nervous, man.”
Sam nodded at Angel and they complied with the request. “You know of anything out here that could do that?” he asked, nodding at Eric.
Blake and Noah shared an uneasy glance. “No,” Noah said finally. “But something...not good…is going on. We’ve had reports of a lot of dead birds and gophers. Sick coyotes too. We found flooding out past the mine and took some samples. They had a lot of these raised dirt mounds around there too.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “You think maybe they had a dam failure?”
Blake nodded. “I think the base of their tailings pond cracked, and contaminated water leaked out into the surrounds. They’re a pretty unscrupulous company. We’ve had to report them to the State Mining Inspector more than once.”
Sam briefly considered the possibility of a Godzilla-like creature, some poor local lizard mutated by contaminated water, bursting from beneath the sand to wreak havoc on the local human population. He shook his head with a wry smile. He’d clearly read far too many of Dean’s Japanese comic books as a kid. It did raise the question though; if a local mining company was trying to cover up a serious breach of health and safety regulations, then maybe this wasn’t their kind of thing after all? Maybe it was just asshats being asshats.
“You think the mining company could’ve had something to do with this?” he waved at Eric.
Noah ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t have said so. They’re unethical, but I wouldn’t have said they were murderers.”
Sam pursed his lips and then gestured out at the crater and the tunnels. “And there’s no natural, geological explanation for this that you can think of? The flood from the tailings pond couldn’t be causing the tunnels?”
Noah scrubbed at his forehead and then shook his head.
“What about local legends? Are there any that could maybe explain all this?”
Angel looked at him thoughtfully, but Blake looked positively affronted. “Dude,” he said, “just because we work for the Hualapai Tribal Council, it doesn’t make us ‘noble savages’ with some kind of arcane knowledge. I’m a Biosystems Engineer, Noah is an Agricultural Engineer. You wanna talk Myths and Legends, call up the Cultural Department.”
Sam held his hands up. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to cause offense.”
Noah moved closer to Eric’s body and peered down at it and then looked down into the crater. “You call this in to the police?”
“I called it in to our team leader, Ben Cahill. He said he was going to radio the search base and have them contact the sheriff.”
Angel pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed hard. “You know, there are legends in the South, in Mexico, in Brazil, of the minhocão. It’s supposed to be some kind of giant, underground worm-like creature, big enough to prey on cattle, and to leave tunnels like these. You think we could have something like that here, Sam?”
Sam’s eyes became improbably large. “That’s where I’ve heard the word Graboids before. It’s from that movie Dean made me watch when I was eight. And then every damn time it was on TV for the next ten years!” he snapped his fingers. “Tremors. With Kevin Bacon. Giant worms. Holy shit.”
Blake raised an eyebrow. “Dude. What’ve you been smoking?”
“So there are no local Indian legends about giant worms?”
Blake scowled. “Okay, firstly, do I look like I’m from Mumbai or Delhi to you? I’m a member of the Hualapai tribe. If you must, I’m Native American. I’m not Indian. And secondly, seriously? I mean, seriously? Giant worms? Are you listening to yourself? I’m an engineer. I don’t deal in superstition.”
The words were barely out of Blake’s mouth when a tremor shook the earth around them and another tunnel began to form in the middle distance.
Blake paled; quite some feat, given his natural skin tone. “What the hell?” he breathed.
“Minhocão,” Angel said flatly.
“Come in to town with us,” Sam urged the Hualapai engineers. “We’ll talk this out; see if we can figure out what’s going on.”
Blake and Noah nodded slowly. “We’ll follow you,” Noah said.
“Hey,” Angel called out as they headed for their Jeep. “Maybe you should call your Cultural guys on the way and get the skinny on local legends?”
“What?” he said, when he caught Sam studying him.
“You really believe it could be a giant worm?”
Angel shrugged. “We’re a ghost town on the edge of a desert. We’ve learned to be open-minded around here.”
Twenty feet away from Virgil, Dean’s horse came to an abrupt stop, crow-hopping anxiously and refusing to go any further. She pranced and threw her head, circling around while Dean tried to urge her forward, but it was no use.
Too far away to be of any real help, all they could do was watch as the vehicle tipped up on its back axle, rocking and surging like a boat on a tempest sea.
“What is it?” Ronnie gasped and Dean cursed inwardly. They couldn’t see the beast, just the raised ground, dirt and rock pushed up and out, opening the earth like a giant maw waiting to chomp and tear and swallow the Jeep down whole. It belched and coughed out dust, painting the truck and Virgil in a cloud of rust colored dirt.
Dean shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to aim his voice. “You’re gonna have to jump for it. Jump now!”
“Come on Virg,” Ronnie pleaded, beckoning the man to get out of his vehicle. “Get out of there!”
The man was trying, but every time he clambered to get free, he was knocked back into the seats or thrown half out of the vehicle which had him scrambling in fright to get back into the safety of the Jeep.
“We can’t just sit here,” Ronnie cried. Dean shook his head. Even though he agreed, he was struggling with a no-win situation. Going to Virgil’s aid meant leaving the horse and stranding all of them in the middle of nowhere with a giant killer worm. Whereas staying with the horse meant watching Virgil get eaten alive.
The decision was taken away from him, however, when Ronnie threw his leg over and slipped to the ground, running.
“Sonuvabitch.” Dean tried one last time to press Blossom on before giving up and jumping from the horse’s back, tearing after Ronnie on foot. “Ron, dammit. Wait!”
Behind him, Blossom whinnied in terror, her sweaty sides heaving and her eyes rolling wildly. She took off at a gallop, back the way they’d come, just as Dean reached for Ronnie.
He caught the boy, grabbing him around the waist just as the ground shifted and the inky black head of the creature broke through, knocking the Jeep on its side. Ronnie fell back against Dean’s chest and in the scramble to escape, toppled them both onto the ground, tangled together.
The monstrous thing emerged further from the hole and rose up, lifting its hefty body straight up in the air like a cobra, ready to strike. It was covered in large, black scales, and appeared to be sightless, using multiple tentacle-like appendages as big as Dean’s arm to direct it. They stuck out at all angles from the creature’s armored head and moved independently as if scenting the air, but Dean knew that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t scenting. It was feeling, sensing their movement…their vibrations.
The graboid—because pending further intel that’s what Dean was going to call it—turned suddenly, seeming to focus its attention on them. It towered over them, and Dean could feel Ronnie tense up in terror. He tightened his grip around the boy’s chest and whispered a command into the back of the boy’s head: “Don’t move.”
Ronnie nodded, ever so slightly; his hair tickling Dean’s chin. This was not a good situation. Knocked to the ground with Ronnie trapped practically on top of Dean, left the kid exposed and Dean helpless to maneuver quickly. He couldn’t fight off an attack from this position.
Worse yet, Dean’s rifle – which Ronnie had been carrying – had been knocked out of the kid’s hand when they’d fallen, and Dean’s own handgun was tucked securely into the back of his jeans, pressing uncomfortably into his back beneath him.
There was a deep, rumbling hiss followed by a wave of dirt cascading down around their feet as the graboid pushed its thick, black body up and out of the earth. It was much more than Dean had expected and he swallowed down the knowledge that this…was not going to be resolved by decapitation. Damn. He hadn’t meant to prove Ronnie wrong.
As the great beast moved, the ground shifted and fell away beneath the Jeep where Virgil lay trapped and unmoving. The vehicle rocked, teetering on the edge of the opened earth, and Dean could only watch in horror as the graboid swung its attention toward the moving vehicle. It shrieked, a glass-shattering sound that had them clasping their hands over their ears. It was enough to bring Virgil around, and the man scrambled, in his half-conscious state, to get free of the vehicle, to put distance between himself and the monster bearing down on him, but it was too little, too late. There was no saving the man. Dean clasped a hand over Ronnie’s mouth and held the struggling boy tight in his arms as the beast claimed Virgil.
Having come up from the pit, Sam had relayed the gruesome details of what he’d found. Carl had been both grieved to learn the fate of his animal and overwhelmingly relieved to know it hadn’t been his son in the bottom of that wretched hole. From that place, the subterranean tunnel had tracked away from the Massina farm; the evidence pointing to a pair of tread marks from two dirt bikes that traveled alongside it.
Convinced that the boys had also found the tunnel, and had set off to track it and its origins down, the group set out after them. Following the trail— moving slowly and spread out with 10ft between them—each man kept a watchful eye on his surroundings as the group searched, hopeful for clues to the boys’ disappearance. For Sam though, hope was sinking like a stone in the pit of his stomach.
He had been careful when describing the scene below ground to Carl, leaving out the extra gory details of how the cow had met her end. He’d allowed the man to believe that it had been the fall that had killed the animal, when in truth there hadn’t been a carcass below the surface, only a splattered mess of partially-digested blood and tissue; a fact that Sam found worrying. Anything that could chew up and spit out a mammal the size of a full grown cow was big. Real big.
Sam played the specifics of what he knew through his mind, working hard to fit them like puzzle pieces into some known criteria that could be found in his dad’s journal. As of yet, nothing was ringing a bell, and he was becoming aggravated by it. Sam needed more information, a break in the case, something. With his mind full of questions and incomplete answers, Sam didn’t notice that Carl had dropped back in their search.
It was a high pitched whistle that caught Sam’s attention and had him turning his ATV around. Twenty yards back, Carl had pulled up and cut the engine of his machine. He had the walkie up to his mouth and was animatedly waving his crew back to him.
“What is it?” Sam asked, joining the circle last. “What’s wrong?”
“They found ‘em…alive,” Dodger replied, grinning like a mad man. The older man was leaned over the handlebars, trying to catch as much of the conversation as he could.
Sam let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”
“He said Luke,” Angel corrected. “They found Luke. They didn’t say nuthin’ about Brian yet.”
Carl lifted his hand for quiet and upon his voiceless command they all fell silent and listened.
The reception on the walkie was spotty at best. Sam was able to make out a few vague details, but waited patiently to hear the news from Carl.
“They found him,” he said; relief visibly refreshing the father’s spirits. “He’s hurt and in shock, but alive.”
“That’s great, Carl,” Dodger crowed, clapping the other man on the back.
Carl smiled and then lifted his chin in Sam’s direction. “It was your brother and Cahill what found him. They radioed in and Virgil’s on his way out with the Jeep to pick Luke up. Doc’s on standby—”
“But what about Brian?”
The group collectively turned their eyes on Angel. The boy, who all day had been so laid back and casual about the search that he had appeared uncaring, now looked manic with worry. He was standing on the foot pegs of his vehicle with both hands tucked into his curly dark hair, his breathing unsteady.
“Nobody’s saying anything about Brian. Why are we still sitting here? We should be out there,” he threw his arm out, waving at the hills, “looking for him.”
“We will, son,” Carl soothed, reaching out to comfort the boy. “We will.”
“Don’t…” Angel snapped, sharply drawing away from the contact. He clambered off the far side of the ATV, stumbling over his own feet in his escape.
Dodger hollered and made to go after the boy, but Sam caught the older man by the arm. “Leave him alone. You can see he’s got a lot on his mind.”
“Ain’t no call for him actin’ like that.” Dodger snatched his arm out of Sam’s firm grip and shook his head in disapproval. “Not when we just got the good news.”
“Doesn’t seem like it’s all good news to him,” Sam said, thumbing over his shoulder. Ten feet away, Angel was pacing. His arms were wrapped tightly around his midsection and he was talking a mile a minute to himself. The rest of them might not have been able to hear the obviously distressed words, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that this was more than a little outburst.
Sam looked to Carl to fill in the blanks. “He and this Brian kid are friends, I take it.”
“Brothers. Or well…half-brothers. Angel’s daddy stepped out on his mama when he was just a baby and… voilà.”
The news didn’t surprise Sam, not like it did Dodger who was sputtering on his own words. “How di – I – um…”
“S’alright, Dodge. It’s not something they advertise.”
“Small town like this?” Sam’s eyebrows crept up his forehead, surprised. “Gossip tends to run rampant whether you want it to or not.”
“Small towns are like small boats, Sam. It doesn’t take much to capsize one, but we’re not like most small towns.”
“Yeah. I’m starting to get that. So what’s our next move?”
Carl rubbed his chin and shot a sheepish look over at the still-pacing Angel. “Well I’m gonna meet up with Virgil and my boy and go into the Doc’s with him. You all should keep following the tunnel. Maybe we’ll find Brian injured somewhere too,” he unclipped the walkie from his belt and handed it over to Dodger. “Let us know if you—” A burst of static and panicked shouting erupted from the device and Dodger almost dropped it.
“Mayday, mayday! [tschhhhh] somethi— [tschhhhh] atta— [tschhhhh] omigod [tschhhhh] what [tschhhhh] —ell? [tschhhhh] —king hu— [tschhhhh] Holy fu— [tschhhhh]—”
“What is it?” Angel rejoined them. “What was that on the walkie? Did they find Brian?”
“Eric?” Carl said. “Is that you? This is Carl. What’s goin’ on? Over.”
“Carl? It’s Cahill. Is everything all right? Over.”
“We’re fine. That was Eric. Eric can you hear me? Is everything alright?”
There was nothing from the Motorola but static.
“Carl? Eric’s team is searching out toward Silver Hill, right? Your team is closer. Any chance a couple of you could check it out?”
Sam put a hand to Carl’s shoulder. “Happy to,” he said.
“Sammy! Sammy!” Dean’s voice broke in over the radio. “You be careful out there. I don’t know for sure, but crazy as it sounds, I’m thinkin’ graboids. You copy that?”
Sam frowned.
Carl, meanwhile, looked from Sam to Dodger and back again. “Yeah,” he nodded. “Sam and Dodger can go out there. Angel can come with me—”
“Like hell, I’m goin’ with you. If Brian’s out there somewhere, I gotta find him.”
Dodger bristled and looked like he was fixing to have words with the younger man, but Carl shook his head minutely and Dodger subsided.
“Angel,” he locked eyes with the younger man. “You right to lead Sam out there?”
Angel nodded and Carl clapped him on the back. “Alright. Give Sam the walkie, Dodge. We’re on it Cahill. I’ll see you at that rendezvous point we set up in,” he checked his watch, “in fifteen minutes.”
“Roger that, Carl.” The radio clicked off, with Dean still yelling in the background.
As Sam took the walkie-talkie from Dodger he cleared his throat and said, “Carl, can I just have a quick word in private?”
Carl frowned, but allowed himself to be led to one side, out of earshot of the others. Sam glanced back at the group just in time to see Angel scowl and fold his arms across his chest.
“I know Angel don’t exactly live up to his namesake,” the older man said suddenly. “And I’ll admit he wouldn’t look outta place in a prison yard, but—”
“What?” Sam frowned. “No. That’s not… Look, I didn’t want to say anything when your son was still missing, and I didn’t want to say anything in front of Angel because his half-brother is still missing, but that cow I found? Let’s just say it was less cow and more partially-digested ground beef.”
Carl’s eyebrows shot up beneath the brim of his hat. “What the hell?” he breathed.
Sam nodded. “Whatever’s going on—it’s bad, Carl. And this?” he waved the Motorola, “this is not good. And Angel’s just a kid. I really think you should take him with you.”
Carl smiled wryly. “Well, listen to you, Grandpa. You’re what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”
Sam drew himself up to this full height and squared his shoulders. “I can take care of myself.”
“So can Angel. He may only be nineteen, but he’s one hell of a shot. He can hit his mark, reload a pump shotgun and hit his mark again in about four seconds.”
Sam was grudgingly impressed.
“I just don’t like the idea of anyone out there on their own right now,” Carl continued, “I like it even less with what you just told me. But if it’ll make you feel better, when I meet up with the others, I’ll get them to head your way while I go into town with Luke and Virgil.”
Angel gave Sam the stink-eye when he and Carl rejoined the others, assuming, Sam guessed, that Sam had been objecting to working with a ‘tattooed punk’. Sam figured he’d have to find some way of extending an olive branch and letting him know that wasn’t the case. As the two of them rode out together, Angel slightly in front so that he could lead the way, Sam pondered Dean’s cryptic comment. Graboids? The word sounded familiar; like something he should know. If only he had his laptop.
The country out beyond Silver Hill was flat and dry, and out on the horizon Sam could see the winding tower of a mine shaft and a bunch of fibro-cement out-buildings surrounded by cyclone fencing. He was so busy watching the horizon that he almost failed to realize that Angel had come to a sudden stop. The kid was off his ATV and retching into blood-soaked dirt before Sam had even stopped. Sam squeezed the brakes harder and zigzagged to a halt, throwing up a cloud of dust that made his eyes water. He swung down from the quad bike, clumsy in his haste, his feet slipping in red-slicked sticky goo, as he picked his way to Angel’s side. He squatted down and put a hand to the kid’s shoulder, the bitter iron tang of too much blood causing his nostrils to flare.
“You okay?” he asked.
The look Angel gave him could’ve cut glass. “I’m better ‘an Eric Proctor,” he said.
Sam’s eyes sliced across to the corpse beside them. “He was a friend?”
“It’s a small town,” Angel waved vaguely in Chloride’s direction. “Everybody knows everybody,” he glanced at what was left of Eric Proctor and finally lost the battle to keep his shock from showing on his face. “¡Dios mío!” he shuddered. “What happened to him?”
“Honestly? No clue. I would’ve said he got bit by a Great White Shark, only,” Sam spread his arms wide. “We’re in the middle of a freakin’ desert.”
Angel pulled himself to his feet, his wide eyes darting about. When he spoke his voice was a whole octave higher than usual. “You think the rest of him got ate? You think some tunneling thing came outta that hole?” he nodded at the small crater a few feet ahead of them. He met Sam’s eyes and by unspoken agreement the two of them approached the hole cautiously and peered inside.
~~~
Dean raised an eye to the sky and scowled at the half dozen turkey vultures that had gathered overheard. “How far is it from here to town?” he asked without losing sight of the airborne scavengers.
“Just a few minutes by vehicle,” said Cahill.
“And how long’s it been?”
Cahill looked at his watch and rolled his eyes. “‘Bout ten minutes, give or take. You got a hot date or somethin’?”
“No.” Dean stood up from the limestone seat he’d made and shook his leg, trying to adjust some feeling back into his hip. “Just don’t like sittin’ around when we’ve got work to do, is all.”
“Yeah, well, I can get behind that philosophy, I guess,” Cahill agreed, wiping his hand across his brow before sliding his hat back into place.
On the south-facing slope of the mountains, the rocky foothills provided little protection from the afternoon sun that reflected hotly off the granite, which wasn’t helping Luke any. They’d given him water and set up a makeshift shade using the shock blanket Cahill had packed in his gear, but the boy needed more medical attention than a bit of field dressing could provide. Add to that the fact that Sam and the rest of the searchers were quite probably walking blind, and Dean was fit to come unglued; a fact which didn’t go unnoticed by Cahill.
“Look, Carl’ll be here pretty quick…” he said stealing Dean’s attention away from the rocks that he was anxiously kicking. “With their 4-wheelers, we can manage to bring young Luke down out of these hills and meet up with Virgil that much faster. So, if you wanna head out on foot to where Ronnie is and help him gather the horses, I wouldn’t object.”
Dean considered the offer for a moment, torn between staying to help with Luke and leaving to find Sam. The want in Dean, the instinct to hunt whatever sonuvabitchin’ thing had caused all this was strong. Real strong. And Dean found himself easily persuaded. “Yeah,” he nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I could do that.”
Dean made his way down out of the foothills and onto the valley floor just as the high pitched whine of twin quad bikes broke over the horizon. It eased his mind a bit to know that Luke would soon be on his way back to town and away from the Hell he had obviously faced over the last twenty-four plus hours.
Worms…Dean shook his head in disbelief. He’d seen a lot of things in his twenty-seven years, but giant killer worms? Those were the things nightmares were made of. Nightmares and really bad movies…not that Tremors was a bad movie. Tremors was a great movie, but damn…where the Hell were they gonna get the kind of explosives needed to blow a giant killer worm to kingdom come? The only guy he knew had those kinds of munitions was back in Lincoln, Nebraska. What Dean really needed was to confab with his brother.
Problem was, Sam was heading in the opposite direction, toward the most recent attack and most likely toward the giant killer worm, itself…without Dean. The thought of his little brother facing off against this thing alone set Dean’s teeth on edge. ‘It’ll be fine,’ he’d said. Well it wasn’t fine. It was miles away from being fine.
Lost in his head and chewing himself out over the decision to ever stop in Chloride to begin with, Dean didn’t notice the deep rhythmic thum-thum-thump of hooves until the trio of horses was practically on top of him. His arms went up instinctively to protect himself and in doing so, caused the lead horse to rear up and its frightened scream to echo loudly off the mountains around them.
“Whoa!” He scrambled for and caught hold of a loose rein—Blossom’s rein, as luck would have it—and he held on tightly. The mare fought hard to free herself and escape with the other horses. She tossed her head and pulled Dean off balance, but wasn’t able to shake him loose.
“Whoa,” he repeated, dropping his voice down into a deep, soothing tone as he moved up to take a firm hold of her bridle. “Easy girl. Easy Blossom.”
She nickered nervously, but seemed to calm slightly under his touch.
Dean ran a hand up her neck to rub idly at her velvety soft ear, all the while speaking quiet comforting words to her. He wondered how Blossom and the other horses had come to escape and began to worry about the boy he’d left behind to watch over them and cussed himself. “Dammit, I never should have left the kid alone.”
He scanned the lower scrubland, looking for any sign of Ronnie and pulled up short when his eyes stumbled over a thin trail of white-grey flare smoke. “Dammit,” he repeated.
Dean threw the reins up over Blossom’s neck and grabbed the saddle horn in one hand. “You’re gonna have to trust me, girl,” he warned and then swung up into the saddle like a pro.
The mare danced nervously, her ears ticking forward and back, awaiting his command. Dean moved in his seat, squeezed his legs and gave a soft hiss. That was all it took and she was off at a full gallop, Dean leaning into her gait as she powered across the land, racing back to Ronnie.
~~~
“Oh man,” Angel moaned. He turned away from the crater, his hands on his knees and his breathing uneven. “You think that’s Pete and Dave?”
Sam wrinkled his nose. “Hard to tell. Was this team on horseback or quad bikes?”
Angel didn’t reply, just straightened up and put his hands to his head, muttering under his breath in what sounded like it might have been Spanish.
Sam put a hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun’s glare and looked around for any sign of vehicles, horses or monsters. There was a tunnel mound just beyond the hole, stretching out into the distance, but no sign of anything else out of place.
Sam unclipped the walkie from his belt. “Carl? Cahill? You guys read me?”
Cahill’s no-nonsense voice crackled into the air. “I copy Sam. Did you boys find Eric’s team alright?”
“Yeah. Well. We found Eric, anyway. He’s dead.”
“Say again, Sam?”
“Eric Proctor is dead. No sign of the others, but there’s a lot of blood out here.”
There was a rushed intake of breath and then a moment’s silence before Cahill came back on the air. “You’re sure Eric’s dead?”
“Yessir,” Sam said. He hesitated. “There’s nothing of him below the waist.”
Sam heard a muttered ‘Goddamn’ and then Cahill said, “I’ll call it into Lyn. Get her to notify the sheriff. Doesn’t sound like there’s much more you can do out there. Maybe we better regroup, try to figure out what in Hades is goin’ on.”
“Do you mind if I have a quick word with my brother?” Sam interrupted.
“He’s not here. Went out to fetch Ronnie back. We left him with the horses. You boys should come and join us at the rendezvous point too.”
Sam agreed and ended the conversation, clipping the walkie back onto his belt, his forehead creased and his mouth set. He would’ve really appreciated the chance to talk this through with Dean; ask him about his cryptic comment and talk through what type of monster could’ve been responsible for Eric’s injuries.
“Sam!” Angel’s voice had an edge to it. “We’re about to have company.”
~~~
Dean may have been deaf to anything other than the thundering of hooves and the whistle of warm wind against his face, but he could see Ronnie. The kid was alive—Thank God— and waving frantically, both arms swinging in full wide arches above his head. Dean urged his mare on and she responded in kind although Dean knew that she was fighting against her instinct to flee.
“Ron! You alright there, buddy?”
“It’s not me,” Ronnie answered, his eyes wide with alarm. He pointed off into the distance and shouted “It’s him!”
Dean followed Ronnie’s line of sight. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now that he was mounted he could see that further towards town, a vehicle was in distress. He could hear the groan of its four wheels, spinning idly, kicking dirt and rock into the air like a fountain of debris.
It was a black Jeep Wrangler, the same one that he’d seen in town and belonged to the man who Cahill had called on to come out and fetch Luke. The irony was not lost on Dean that the rescue vehicle was in need of rescuing.
“Come on!” Dean reached out for Ronnie. “Come on!”
Ronnie grasped hold of Dean’s forearm and pulled himself up on Blossom’s back, flinging the gear from the saddle as he quickly settled behind Dean, and they took off across the plain.
“That’s Virgil’s Jeep,” Ronnie hollered through the wind. “What the Hell’s wrong, do you think?”
“Don’t know for positive, kid, but it ain’t good.” He looked back over his shoulder at the young man. The kid looked so young,
Dean had to swallow down the big brother urge to take the kid as far away from danger as possible, but they’d come too far. There was no turning back now. They’d just have to power through and hope that he could protect Ronnie and see him back to his family safe when this was over. “Can you fire a weapon?” Dean asked.
They might have been galloping at full speed, but Dean didn’t miss Ronnie’s eyebrow quirk up as if to say, ‘D’uh.’
“Alright then.” Dean tugged his .22 free from the saddle scabbard, nearly unseating himself in the process, and then passed the rifle back to the boy.
“What do I need this for?” Ronnie yelled, plastering himself to Dean’s back as he tried to balance the added weight of the gun.
“We’re about to find out!”
~~~
A powdery orange haze trailed the fast-approaching Jeep. Sam licked at his lips, considering their options. What if it wasn’t something supernatural going on out here? What if they’d stumbled over something mob related? Didn’t the mafia like to bury people out here in the back blocks? Maybe the tunnels were some kind of mass grave? Maybe Eric was killed because he saw something he shouldn’t have. Maybe Sam had misheard Dean; maybe he’d said Gambiono. Or Gagliano.
“Sam?” Angel edged a little closer to him, his expression wary. “You don’t think…?” he nodded at Eric’s corpse and then looked back at the Jeep, bigger now, closer. Olive green, Sam thought blankly, one man in the driver’s seat, another in the passenger seat.
“Get your rifle,” Sam said. He positioned the ATVs side by side, creating a makeshift barrier and then picked up his own gun, holding it loosely by his side, ready to bring it up and into action if he needed to.
The Jeep stopped a little way away and the men, Native American, Sam could see now, climbed out, their steps cautious and their eyes wary.
“Hey now,” the one closest, wearing black jeans and a light grey tee-shirt emblazoned with the words Arizona Wildcats 1885, held his hands up in a gesture of submission. His face closed up tight when he spotted Eric. “Friend of yours?”
Sam nodded. “We got a Mayday call over the walkie. Found him like this.”
The newcomers glanced at each other.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” Sam said.
The Wildcat shook his head. “I’m Noah. This is my cousin Blake. We’re with the Hualapai Natural Resources Administration.”
“Do you know what’s causing these tunnels?” Angel asked.
Noah shook his head. The other man, Blake, spoke up for the first time. “You mind putting those guns down? They’re makin’ me nervous, man.”
Sam nodded at Angel and they complied with the request. “You know of anything out here that could do that?” he asked, nodding at Eric.
Blake and Noah shared an uneasy glance. “No,” Noah said finally. “But something...not good…is going on. We’ve had reports of a lot of dead birds and gophers. Sick coyotes too. We found flooding out past the mine and took some samples. They had a lot of these raised dirt mounds around there too.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “You think maybe they had a dam failure?”
Blake nodded. “I think the base of their tailings pond cracked, and contaminated water leaked out into the surrounds. They’re a pretty unscrupulous company. We’ve had to report them to the State Mining Inspector more than once.”
Sam briefly considered the possibility of a Godzilla-like creature, some poor local lizard mutated by contaminated water, bursting from beneath the sand to wreak havoc on the local human population. He shook his head with a wry smile. He’d clearly read far too many of Dean’s Japanese comic books as a kid. It did raise the question though; if a local mining company was trying to cover up a serious breach of health and safety regulations, then maybe this wasn’t their kind of thing after all? Maybe it was just asshats being asshats.
“You think the mining company could’ve had something to do with this?” he waved at Eric.
Noah ran a nervous hand through his hair. “I wouldn’t have said so. They’re unethical, but I wouldn’t have said they were murderers.”
Sam pursed his lips and then gestured out at the crater and the tunnels. “And there’s no natural, geological explanation for this that you can think of? The flood from the tailings pond couldn’t be causing the tunnels?”
Noah scrubbed at his forehead and then shook his head.
“What about local legends? Are there any that could maybe explain all this?”
Angel looked at him thoughtfully, but Blake looked positively affronted. “Dude,” he said, “just because we work for the Hualapai Tribal Council, it doesn’t make us ‘noble savages’ with some kind of arcane knowledge. I’m a Biosystems Engineer, Noah is an Agricultural Engineer. You wanna talk Myths and Legends, call up the Cultural Department.”
Sam held his hands up. “Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to cause offense.”
Noah moved closer to Eric’s body and peered down at it and then looked down into the crater. “You call this in to the police?”
“I called it in to our team leader, Ben Cahill. He said he was going to radio the search base and have them contact the sheriff.”
Angel pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbed hard. “You know, there are legends in the South, in Mexico, in Brazil, of the minhocão. It’s supposed to be some kind of giant, underground worm-like creature, big enough to prey on cattle, and to leave tunnels like these. You think we could have something like that here, Sam?”
Sam’s eyes became improbably large. “That’s where I’ve heard the word Graboids before. It’s from that movie Dean made me watch when I was eight. And then every damn time it was on TV for the next ten years!” he snapped his fingers. “Tremors. With Kevin Bacon. Giant worms. Holy shit.”
Blake raised an eyebrow. “Dude. What’ve you been smoking?”
“So there are no local Indian legends about giant worms?”
Blake scowled. “Okay, firstly, do I look like I’m from Mumbai or Delhi to you? I’m a member of the Hualapai tribe. If you must, I’m Native American. I’m not Indian. And secondly, seriously? I mean, seriously? Giant worms? Are you listening to yourself? I’m an engineer. I don’t deal in superstition.”
The words were barely out of Blake’s mouth when a tremor shook the earth around them and another tunnel began to form in the middle distance.
Blake paled; quite some feat, given his natural skin tone. “What the hell?” he breathed.
“Minhocão,” Angel said flatly.
“Come in to town with us,” Sam urged the Hualapai engineers. “We’ll talk this out; see if we can figure out what’s going on.”
Blake and Noah nodded slowly. “We’ll follow you,” Noah said.
“Hey,” Angel called out as they headed for their Jeep. “Maybe you should call your Cultural guys on the way and get the skinny on local legends?”
“What?” he said, when he caught Sam studying him.
“You really believe it could be a giant worm?”
Angel shrugged. “We’re a ghost town on the edge of a desert. We’ve learned to be open-minded around here.”
~~~
Twenty feet away from Virgil, Dean’s horse came to an abrupt stop, crow-hopping anxiously and refusing to go any further. She pranced and threw her head, circling around while Dean tried to urge her forward, but it was no use.
Too far away to be of any real help, all they could do was watch as the vehicle tipped up on its back axle, rocking and surging like a boat on a tempest sea.
“What is it?” Ronnie gasped and Dean cursed inwardly. They couldn’t see the beast, just the raised ground, dirt and rock pushed up and out, opening the earth like a giant maw waiting to chomp and tear and swallow the Jeep down whole. It belched and coughed out dust, painting the truck and Virgil in a cloud of rust colored dirt.
Dean shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth to aim his voice. “You’re gonna have to jump for it. Jump now!”
“Come on Virg,” Ronnie pleaded, beckoning the man to get out of his vehicle. “Get out of there!”
The man was trying, but every time he clambered to get free, he was knocked back into the seats or thrown half out of the vehicle which had him scrambling in fright to get back into the safety of the Jeep.
“We can’t just sit here,” Ronnie cried. Dean shook his head. Even though he agreed, he was struggling with a no-win situation. Going to Virgil’s aid meant leaving the horse and stranding all of them in the middle of nowhere with a giant killer worm. Whereas staying with the horse meant watching Virgil get eaten alive.
The decision was taken away from him, however, when Ronnie threw his leg over and slipped to the ground, running.
“Sonuvabitch.” Dean tried one last time to press Blossom on before giving up and jumping from the horse’s back, tearing after Ronnie on foot. “Ron, dammit. Wait!”
Behind him, Blossom whinnied in terror, her sweaty sides heaving and her eyes rolling wildly. She took off at a gallop, back the way they’d come, just as Dean reached for Ronnie.
He caught the boy, grabbing him around the waist just as the ground shifted and the inky black head of the creature broke through, knocking the Jeep on its side. Ronnie fell back against Dean’s chest and in the scramble to escape, toppled them both onto the ground, tangled together.
The monstrous thing emerged further from the hole and rose up, lifting its hefty body straight up in the air like a cobra, ready to strike. It was covered in large, black scales, and appeared to be sightless, using multiple tentacle-like appendages as big as Dean’s arm to direct it. They stuck out at all angles from the creature’s armored head and moved independently as if scenting the air, but Dean knew that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t scenting. It was feeling, sensing their movement…their vibrations.
The graboid—because pending further intel that’s what Dean was going to call it—turned suddenly, seeming to focus its attention on them. It towered over them, and Dean could feel Ronnie tense up in terror. He tightened his grip around the boy’s chest and whispered a command into the back of the boy’s head: “Don’t move.”
Ronnie nodded, ever so slightly; his hair tickling Dean’s chin. This was not a good situation. Knocked to the ground with Ronnie trapped practically on top of Dean, left the kid exposed and Dean helpless to maneuver quickly. He couldn’t fight off an attack from this position.
Worse yet, Dean’s rifle – which Ronnie had been carrying – had been knocked out of the kid’s hand when they’d fallen, and Dean’s own handgun was tucked securely into the back of his jeans, pressing uncomfortably into his back beneath him.
There was a deep, rumbling hiss followed by a wave of dirt cascading down around their feet as the graboid pushed its thick, black body up and out of the earth. It was much more than Dean had expected and he swallowed down the knowledge that this…was not going to be resolved by decapitation. Damn. He hadn’t meant to prove Ronnie wrong.
As the great beast moved, the ground shifted and fell away beneath the Jeep where Virgil lay trapped and unmoving. The vehicle rocked, teetering on the edge of the opened earth, and Dean could only watch in horror as the graboid swung its attention toward the moving vehicle. It shrieked, a glass-shattering sound that had them clasping their hands over their ears. It was enough to bring Virgil around, and the man scrambled, in his half-conscious state, to get free of the vehicle, to put distance between himself and the monster bearing down on him, but it was too little, too late. There was no saving the man. Dean clasped a hand over Ronnie’s mouth and held the struggling boy tight in his arms as the beast claimed Virgil.