“Surely we have not come this far to fall prey to something as simple and neutral as an earthquake,” Doc said, almost to himself.
“Could have been worse—could have been floods,” Ryan replied, although Doc’s exclamation had required no answer.
But it was Mildred who, in the flash of a second, knew what Doc meant. It crossed her mind, as it always did when they faced such problems, that they had taken and fought their way past so many man-made obstructions on their path, so many who would wish to chill them for no good reason, that it seemed as though the scales of justice were unfairly tipped for them to take their last bow at the mercy of the earth itself. Yet, given their location and the factors that had made the earth itself so unstable, was that not a man-made obstruction?
This crossed her mind in the time it took her to move closer to the pack, finding herself beside Jak as J.B. and Dean closed in. Doc, Ryan and Krysty stood a few yards away.
A crucial few yards.
The earth rumbled around them. The stressed steel girders supporting the concrete pillars that had stood firm for so long against the outside pressure of rock began to sing and screech with the torsion that made them begin to bend within the concrete itself. The large gaps in the surrounding walls that had seemed hairline cracks a few minutes earlier began to assume the proportions of gaping maws. The hurried repair to the walls that they had passed a few yards back fell out with a loud bang, tumbling to the shaking floor and breaking into a myriad of pieces that danced across the unsteady surface.
“Try to stay on your feet,” Ryan yelled above the noise. “Move toward the next level—mebbe it’s localized.”
As an option, all the companions knew that it was grasping at nonexistent straws. The intensity of the vibration here was such that it was highly unlikely to have abated if they could make their way up the sloping tunnel to an upper level. The earth shifts, they knew from experience, were stronger the deeper you went, but this was too harsh to suddenly drop away in an ascent of less than a hundred feet.
That was always assuming they could make any progress at all before the pressure of the shifting rocks caved in the redoubt tunnel. Every step forward seemed to take them three steps back as they tried to move on the unstable floor.
J.B. led the way as he was nearest the ascending path. The inclines in the tunnel slopes were always relatively gentle, to allow the internal use of some maintenance vehicles, so the ascent by slope would be of necessity slower than by the elevator—useless in the current circumstances—or by the emergency stairwell, which they didn’t have time to find.
Jak and Dean were at J.B.’s heels. Mildred hung back and stopped for a second to look behind, a vague awareness hitting her that she could hear or feel no one immediately to her rear. Krysty and Ryan were some way behind, helping Doc, who had lost his balance and crashed to the tunnel floor. Hoisting him with a hand under each of his arms, Ryan and Krysty had propelled him forward as he hit the upright, hoping to give him some impetus. Thus, Doc was coming toward Mildred at some speed. His balance still looked precarious, and Mildred took another step toward him in order to try to steady and assist him. Although she called him a mad old buzzard, and could be exasperated by his wandering mind at times, Mildred had a grudging liking for the older man—perhaps because he, like herself, represented an earlier age set adrift, and they were both strangers in this strange land.
It was a step that was to prove decisive. Doc was a few yards from her, keeping his balance well, the intense concentration showing on his face. Mildred was focused on him, which may explain why neither of them noticed that the wall of the tunnel to one side was suddenly beginning to break up with a spiderweb pattern that resembled a cracking glass.
Mildred felt a sudden rush of air almost simultaneously with the hail of tiny concrete shards that sailed across the breadth of the tunnel, completely obscuring Doc from view. Where a moment before she had a clear view of the old man as he ran stumblingly toward her, she now saw nothing but gray and darkness. Some of the shards that flew out from the main cluster hit her on the head and upper body. She felt a numbing blow on her face and stinging on her hands. There was no pain, but her eyes filled with blood from what she figured was a superficial scalp wound. The problem was, with the dust and concrete rain, the blood was now making it almost impossible for her to see. Her torso had been protected by her fatigue jacket, for which she was grateful. She had felt the concrete chips rip at her clothing, but they had caused no pain.
At least she was still conscious. She moved her arm to wipe the blood from her eyes and realized that everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Hell, she was even thinking in slow motion…a cold wave of nausea and fear swept through her gut as she realized that the blow to her head had affected her more than she had thought, and that she was now lying on the floor of the tunnel, mildly concussed but enough to slow her actions to a possibly fatal degree. The tunnel was vibrating much less, as though the pressure had been released by the sudden explosion.
And then the mist cleared for a moment as she wiped her eyes, and she thought that the blow had to have rendered her mad, as well as concussed.
For Doc Tanner, too, the sudden hail of concrete had come as something of a shock. One moment he had been moving toward the good Dr. Wyeth, who was holding out a hand to help him maintain his equilibrium, as well as his momentum; the next moment a force much greater than his own had hit him full in the body, arresting his forward motion and flinging him back, as though he had run straight into a wall. He felt rather than saw the hail of concrete that passed before him, stray shards like an abrasive rain that showered over his face and body, plucking at his clothes and breaking the skin of his face and hands in several places. The wind knocked solidly from his body, Doc collapsed to the ground. He hadn’t been quite as near the point of impact as Mildred, and so wasn’t as concussed. Nonetheless, time did seem to run a little slower than he had expected as he tried to gather his thoughts and marshal his actions. For instance, he had noticed that the tunnel had ceased to shake.
When he looked up and saw what had made the impact, and what had caused the cessation of the vibrations, he truly believed for one second that he had lost all possession of his senses.
For the thing that both Mildred and Doc saw from their prone positions was quite unlike anything that either of them had seen during their travels—or hoped that they would ever see.
It was moving quite slowly, which was hardly surprising given the size and construction of the creature. It was immense in size, possibly fifteen feet in diameter, and with a pale and almost translucent flesh that seemed to move independently in every part. The smell of the oozing mucus that covered and moisturized every part of the flesh was intense within the tunnel, filling their nostrils with its stench even though one breath had made both, independently, decide to try to breathe as little as possible while it was crossing the floor.
The giant mutie creature, from the shape that was just about discernible, and from the length that could only be estimated, as part of it was still concealed in the wall, seemed to be some kind of earth- or sandworm. In the glistening ooze that covered the pale flesh, large ring segments could just about be distinguished, and it had no features at the front of its body, just an open maw with teeth that were double rowed around the almost perfect circle of its mouth, seemingly made of matter little harder than the flesh.
Not that either Mildred or Doc wished to discover the truth of this. Both were still, partly from shock and their injuries, and partly from the sudden numbing fear of encountering something so alien.
The mutie creature had obviously been burrowing through the earth, and the tunnel of the redoubt was just a tunnel that crossed its path at one point. Now the huge hole that had been badly repaired back along the tunnel was explained. The casts of the giant
