“Let’s make it happen, then.” Looking back at the rest of his men, Isaiah turned and found Neena’s eyes again. “It sounds as if the creature is in another part of the colony, but it’s not gone. A few of our men tried throwing spears at it, but the beast injured them.”
Looking beyond Isaiah at the limping men, she asked, “Are they all right?”
“They are shaken up and bruised. I think one might have a concussion. But they are alive. It is more than I can say for many others.” He glanced worriedly through the storm, in the direction of the creature’s distant rumbling.
“We saw some bodies near the Comm Building,” Kai told her.
Neena nodded grimly.
Isaiah’s eyes wandered to the weapon in her hand. “You have the device.”
Neena nodded. For a moment, she thought he might try to take it, but he surveyed it with wonder, instead.
“Have you used it?” he asked.
Neena nodded, returning to her thoughts of futility. “I shot the creature right before I came here. I made it bleed, but apparently, not enough.”
“My men’s spears wounded it, too. They stuck their weapons in its side, though it is hard to tell if the beast felt it.”
Noticing the strange-looking spear in his hand, Neena asked, “What’s that?”
“Bryan had an idea to put the creature’s quills on top of our spears,” Isaiah told her, holding it up. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have the chance to throw ours all together.” A thought overtook him. He furrowed his brow. “Where did you hurt the creature?”
“On its back,” Neena said. “If I had a better shot, maybe I could have wounded it more severely.”
Isaiah’s thought solidified. “Maybe we can help with that.” He scratched his chin. “If we can get the beast to rise, like Thorne and Bryan did, maybe we can hit it more directly. Who knows? Maybe you can even kill it. Between our spears and your weapon, we might have a chance at defeating it, where we have individually failed.”
Neena nodded, but she was still hesitant. “There is still the matter of survivors. For all we know, there are more out there.”
“If we don’t kill the beast, more will die,” Isaiah said determinately. “After we kill the monster, we’ll search for them, assuming we are still alive.”
“What about your injured?” Kai asked.
Isaiah looked at his wounded comrades. “Obviously, they aren’t in a condition to fight. We’ll need someone to escort them somewhere safer. Perhaps they can stay in the hovel with your other wounded?”
Maria stepped up to volunteer. “I remember where the house is. I can take them back. I might need help, though.”
The Right Cavers and Watchers looked at one another, deciding, until a small voice interrupted.
“I’ll do it.”
Neena looked over, surprised to find Raj stepping forward.
Lowering his head humbly, Raj said, “I know that I’m not as well-versed with a spear, or the best equipped for a fight. But I can be useful to Maria.” Gesturing to the injured men, and Maria, he added, “I can look out for the beast, and help the injured move to another hovel, if we need to evacuate. I can take care of Salvador.”
“Are you sure?” Neena asked, relieved by the solution to a problem she hadn’t even considered yet.
Raj nodded. Unlike before, when his eyes had blazed with rebellion, this time they shone with sincerity.
“That would be an important task,” Neena said.
Nervousness immediately struck her. The idea of leaving her brother alone again didn’t sit well with her.
“I’ll look out for him,” Maria promised. “Together, we’ll stay quiet and safe. I’ll make sure nothing happens to him.”
“Okay.” Neena opened and closed her eyes, praying to her ancestors that everything worked out.
Stepping forward, she hugged Raj.
Looking up at her, Raj told her, “Don’t worry about me. Just do what you have to do, Neena. Make sure the monster is dead.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
Chapter 84: Neena
More than two-dozen armed men and women stormed up the path, touting their quill-tipped spears and Neena’s weapon, gathering their courage while heading in the direction of the noise.
Not Right, Center, or Left Cavers.
Colonists.
Neena drew a breath.
The tension of the past few weeks no longer seemed important. The threat of the larger peril made all of their former differences seem miniscule. She calmed her beating heart and walked in the direction of the commotion.
The monster’s fearful rumbled accompanied the storm. In the time they’d talked, it sounded as if the creature had circled north, persisting in its rampage.
The loaded weapon felt heavy in her hands. Every now and then, she ran her hands over its smooth surface, praying she’d have better luck with it. Neena shifted the bag on her back, filled with extra spears. Too many uncertainties remained. But one thing was for sure: the monster must die.
Too many people had perished in its teeth.
She’d made the promise weeks ago to kill it.
It was time to make good on that promise.
Adjusting her goggles, she was surprised to notice that she could see farther ahead than before.
“The storm is tapering,” Kai observed, looking around through the gale, which blew at a steady pace, but not as wildly as before. “Maybe it’s past its worst point.”
“I hope,” said Neena.
In the time they’d been walking, they’d gotten closer to the midpoint of the path, where it split in two directions, circling the Comm Building. The structure’s enormous silhouette loomed in the center. In front of it were a swath of tunnels and holes. The creature had destroyed enough homes in the immediate alleys that it looked like the structure resided in the middle of a small desert, rather than a colony. Piles of rubble were the only evidence of the old houses.
Strangely, the booms had faded.
Neena glanced around, wondering whether the creature had gone away.
A new noise erupted.
All around her, people stopped and pointed.
Neena immediately saw what they did.
A seam cut the ground, creating a new path, getting dangerously close to the Comm Building’s walls.
“It’s tunneling near the building!” one of Isaiah’s Watchers shouted in a panic. “The rest of our people are in there!”
Chapter 85: Louie
Louie stared at the shaking walls. All around him, people hurried to the farthest corners of the building, gaining distance from the source of the noise. He looked around at the remaining few Watchers. Scant few were left. Ed and Nicholas were alive, but Isaiah and Clark were missing.
So were too many others.
Gideon’s tenets rang through his head.
Preservation at all costs.
If the monster killed them all, who would be left to rebuild Red Rock?
Louie looked at the ceiling, studying the inside of the circular dome, which thankfully seemed to be holding. Luckily he’d braced the doors.
Anyone outside was on their own.
A particularly loud crash jarred the ground under his boots. The animal skeletons shook. The table in the center of the room shifted, sending the piece of the old metal satellite dish scraping and creaking from one end to the other. A few Watchers near the table scrambled to catch it before it tumbled off, pushing it back to the center.
Others looked on, frozen.
The braces in the doors rattled.
Those doors were the only thing between them, the beast, and the storm.
Motioning to Ed and Nicholas, Louie yelled, “Help me with the entrance! We need to make sure the doors stay closed!”
Chapter 86: Neena
Neena and the others surveyed the ugly scene. Two hundred feet away, through the now slow, but steady storm, the creature took another pass near the building from west to east, rupturing the gro
und. Perhaps it recalled where it had tasted Bryan’s flesh.
Whatever the reason, it clearly wasn’t leaving.
Maybe they could use that to their advantage.
Neena looked over to find Isaiah getting her attention.
“Let’s lead it away from the building!” He gestured toward the right-hand side of the circling path. “We’ll find a way to lure it out of the ground, and then you use your weapon!”
Following his lead, Neena and the rest skirted toward the edge of the wide, curved path. The sand underneath their boots shook. It felt as if the whole planet might collapse. A few blood-soaked bags lay in the middle of the path, lying next to the detached appendages of their owners. With a shudder, Neena recalled the bodies Kai had spoken about earlier. She and Raj might’ve been closer to them than she realized.
They stepped around several flattened bodies before reaching the western edge of the path.
The beast had disappeared underground, but its familiar noises continued.
Isaiah waved his hands, signaling everyone toward some piles of large, broken mud bricks. Without question, the group rooted around the wreckage, picking up their own stones and returning with him to a distance thirty feet from the path’s edge, while Neena stayed behind.
She positioned herself in the sandy spot just before the rubble, where she could fire upon the beast when it rose.
Dozens of people glanced over at her.
Their hopes were in her weapon.
Everyone knew it.
She looked from Kai, to Roberto, to Samara, to Isaiah.
It was time to act.
Pointing toward a spot in the ground about fifty feet away that was free of trenches and holes, Isaiah reared back his diversionary stone. A flash of memory reminded Neena of Thorne and his men. They had died, but hopefully, this battle would go differently.
Together, the others reared back their arms, while Neena aimed.
Isaiah gave the signal.
And then dozens of rocks hurled through the air, knocking against one another, falling in the vicinity of the place Isaiah had picked.
With the diversions thrown, they waited.
Chapter 87: Neena
Neena’s hands shook on the weapon, as she trained it on the pile of thrown rocks. The others reared back their spears. The creature’s thunderous noise had dissipated, so that she could no longer tell its direction, or location.
She looked down the long tube of the weapon where she’d loaded her new spear, steadying her finger over the metal piece on the handle, the way she’d done before.
One chance.
That’s all she would have with the device, before it required moments of preparation.
Do not miss.
A burst of wind blew her long hair behind her. Thirty feet away, Kai, Samara, and Roberto settled into their stances with their spears. She forced herself not to blink behind her goggles, afraid she might miss the beast’s return.
Her father’s voice echoed in her head.
‘Breathe steady. Do not move.’
A memory came back to her, of standing in the desert below the dune on her last hunt, aiming her spear up at the Rydeer. That was before that other sandstorm, and the creature.
But was this moment so different?
She was hunting then, as she was hunting now.
That idea led her to another.
Was the beast like a snake, with its organs spread throughout its body? Or a Rydeer, with its organs clustered in one area? Neena didn’t know, and she might not have long to solidify her thought.
The rocks shifted. An explosion ripped open the desert, overturning sand.
And then the beast was in the open.
Its enormous mouth opened around the rocks they’d thrown, climbing higher. Cries echoed around her as people hurled their spears.
In the split moment before her attack, Neena made a decision. She’d aim for its neck. She lifted the weapon, following the beast’s ascent, and readied herself for the recoil.
Right as she fired, a heavy gust of wind struck Neena, knocking her off balance.
The small spear shot in the air—not directly at the beast, but wide of it.
Neena fell to the side as an awful truth washed over her.
She’d missed.
No! No!
Chapter 88: Neena
Neena landed in a heap, the weapon beneath her. She quickly regained her footing, but not in time to effect any change. The errant shot curved away from the beast and out of sight, while the beast curved over the rubble at the path’s edge. The spray of its tail was even worse for the two-dozen men and women in the line to her left, all of who tumbled like pieces of clothing in the wind.
Smearing sand from her goggles, she looked over in time to see Kai, Samara, Roberto, and Isaiah getting to their feet, their hands empty, spears gone.
And then the beast was tunneling down the alley past the edge of the path, knocking over more intact hovels.
Failure washed over Neena.
Holding her weapon tight, she hurried toward the others, who dusted themselves off.
“Did you get it?” Kai asked.
She shook her head. “I missed!”
Isaiah and Samara closed their eyes.
“How about you?”
“The spray made it hard to see what we hit,” Isaiah said. “But we all threw. We need to search for our spears!”
Without further delay, they raced forward to look for them.
While they searched around the hole for their lost weapons, Neena fiddled with the device, frantically trying to ready it again. Unslinging her bag, she grabbed one of the small spears sticking out the top, removing it and stuffing it inside the tube. She pushed until she felt a familiar click, double-checking that the arrow was secure. She fished around for the winding tool.
In her peripheral vision, she saw a flurry of running, panicked feet, as the others returned to where she stood. Not all of them had their spears.
Looking up, she heard Isaiah shouting, “I think a few of us hit it! Our spears are gone!”
Toward her right, several of the hovels down the alley under which the creature had disappeared caved and crashed. Moments later, more houses shook, teetered, and fell, as the beast recklessly tore underneath them.
“We wounded it some more!” Isaiah yelled.
Some of the downcast faces of the people around her turned hopeful. Quickly, Neena pulled the crank from the bag, sticking it into the weapon and starting to wind it.
“Let’s grab some rocks and reposition!” Kai yelled.
Waving a hand and his spear, he motioned for the people to follow him, grabbing more rocks and heading farther south on the path, avoiding the creature’s holes and positioning diagonally, so the creature wouldn’t end up near the Comm Building.
Neena followed, stopping thirty feet away again.
To their east, a seam cut up the side alley, moving erratically back and forth, coming toward them.
Neena continued winding the crank. For a moment, the grumbling grew loud enough that she thought she wouldn’t finish. And then the piece of metal stopped turning, and she stuffed the crank in her bag, raising her weapon.
Isaiah readied his rock and signaled.
“Now!”
Dozens of rocks flew through the air, landing in a new area. The people with spears reared them back.
Neena hefted the device in the right direction, just as the beast burst from the ground, soaring into the sky. Neena squeezed the metal, unleashing the small spear and sticking it in one side of the creature’s flank. Black fluid—the same black fluid she’d seen before—spilled from the monster’s massive body.
She’d gotten it!
Her hope compounded as she heard the thrusts of about two-dozen men and women around her. With satisfaction, she watched half of those spears land, poking holes in the side of the creature and spilling more of its blood.
The creature writhed from left to right in the air.
A noise emanated from the beast—not a rumble, but a guttural screech.
Cries of triumph followed.
For the first time in weeks, Neena saw joy, and not fear.
Their joy dissipated as the creature’s arc took it toward the Comm Building.
It burst back into the ground, tunneling directly for the enormous structure.
More cries pierced the air—this time of fear, rather than triumph.
With a crash, the beast collided with the structure’s southern wall. Stones fell in an avalanche. Screams emanated from inside. Neena’s mouth opened in a yell, as if she might stop something that was already happening.
But it was too late.
The damage was big, and it threatened to kill everyone inside.
Chapter 89: Louie
Louie stared up at the ceiling as cracks rippled through the top of the dome, spraying dust and stone. He let go of the braces on the door, which he’d been holding. All around him, men faltered and fell, caught unawares by the deafening collision. Large pieces of stone shattered and flew inward, smashing into the people around him. Cries of agony filled the air. In a panic, he watched several people topple, pelted by falling rock.
The doorway had become a place of death.
Coughing, Louie moved through the haze and away from the rubble. He needed to get to the other side of the building, and fast.
In his hurry, he stumbled over a piece of rock in the floor, losing his balance and colliding with another man.
Louie and the person fell to the floor.
Louie cried out in pain as he landed on his broken arm, frantically trying to untangle himself from whomever he’d crashed into. The man cried out for help, but Louie ignored him.
Whoever he was, he was on his own.
Pain burst through Louie, as he tried rolling and getting to his feet, only to fall once again.
He landed on his side.
Panting hard, he looked over to find Ed on his back a few feet away, shouting something he couldn’t hear.
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