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"That's all you ever do anyway," Tilly retorted.
"Children, children," Doc chided, chuckling, "please let's save the arguments
until we are safely home."
But Jak wasn't listening to the easy banter of the tired people who had rest
within sight. His attention was taken by something that was just to the right
of the course they were taking.
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"Look," he said, indicating the object, "what that?"
Lonnie followed the line of the albino's arm to where the object lay on the
desert floor.
"Fucked if I know," he murmured. "It's not in our path, though, so why
bother?"
"Because whatever make it mebbe is," Jak answered.
Lonnie indicated his grudging agreement with a shrug. "Mebbe take a look,
then," he grunted, leading the party off their chosen course.
"Aw, c'mon, is this really necessary?" Mik moaned, his ratlike features
contorted into mock agony. "We really need to make camp."
"I don't want to detour any more than you do," Lonnie retorted hotly, "but
Jak's right, dammit. We can't take risks out here."
He led the group toward the object that Jak had questioned. It would waste
little time and effort, in truth, as the object was only a short detour from
their objective, and so would still enable them to make camp before the
rapidly cooling night became too cold.
As they approached the object, they realized that it was much taller than it
at first appeared. It was about ten feet in height, and seemed to be made of a
spiral of round earth, damp and somehow molded together, that wound its way up
from a broad base to a point that seemed to end arbitrarily. They gathered
around the bottom of it, and at a gesture from Lonnie spread out so that they
encircled it.
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"What you reckon?" Lonnie rasped. "How far around does this damn thing go?"
"Got to be twenty-five, thirty feet," Dean answered. "Shit, what makes
something this big? And how?" Tilly asked tremulously.
"That ain't difficult to answer," Danny said with a sad shake of his head.
"Think about it, Tilly. What do we know that's this big?"
"You have got to be kidding me," she replied. "Not all the way out here?"
"My dear girl," Doc chided softly, "just because you think of those rather
large worms as always burrowing through the depths of what you have taken as
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your home, it doesn't mean that they exist purely within the confines of that
area alone. Good Lord, they are, after all, in transit. Where, pray tell, do
you think they have come from, or indeed where they are going?"
"Yeah," Mik interjected, "but you never see anything like that down in the
tunnels, for Chrissakes& just what the fuck is it, exactly?"
"A cast," Dean answered him in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's what the worm
shits out after it's eaten its way through the earth."
Mik stepped back. "So this is worm shit?" he screeched.
Dean allowed himself a laugh. "Yeah, good as."
Mik spit on the ground, and was about to say something when Lonnie cut him
short.
"If it's leaving this here," the recce leader stated flatly, "then it means
that it must
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_65_-_Hellbenders have surfaced near here."
Jak nodded. "Wonder how long that take you," he muttered. "Check it long gone,
yeah?"
Lonnie restrained himself from attacking Jak for what he saw as the latter's
insolence in the face of his position as recce leader, and nodded briefly.
"Fan out and search," he said sharply.
"What the fuck are we looking for?" Mik whined. "And will it take long?"
"Look burrow," Jak stated, breaking across Lonnie.
"Yeah, and it shouldn't be hard to miss," Dean added.
The party spread out, fanning backward around the cast, which stood like some
mute monument to mutie nature.
It was Doc who found the hole, following a trail in the dust.
"This way," he called. "The desert wind has covered the impression, but if the
light was better I think you might notice that it has left a trail. It must be
remarkably light for its size, as it has not impressed much, but I fear it has
left its burrow here."
Doc prodded around with his foot as the others all turned toward him. He
seemed to be probing the earth with his toes and the end of his cane, as
though something didn't make sense.
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Jak quickened his pace, breaking into a run. Dean did likewise when he saw the
albino increase his speed, but he didn't realize why Jak had taken such
action.
Seeing Doc's apparently aimless motions, Jak had realized that the giant mutie
worm had left some cast behind it to cover the hole it had made at the entry
to the burrow. But this was just to cover its tracks the majority of the cast
was aboveground, as they had seen. On the assumption that the worm couldn't
produce more than it had ingested from the earth, that meant that there wasn't
enough cast left for the hole to be covered deeply.
With a sudden cry of surprise, Doc found the boundary of the wormhole as his
cane and left leg plunged through the thin crust of the cast, and he began to
fall through into the hole beneath, which could extend into the earth to any
depth before the cast deposits began again.
Within a matter of seconds, Jak had reached Doc. He slowed when he was a few
feet from the older man, scanning the earth around for signs of where the
wormhole began. Doc's descent had been slowed by the fact that he was
relatively light, and although the cast couldn't support his weight,
particularly after his prodding had broken through it in one spot, it was
still porous and damp enough for the earth to hold together, and thick enough
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to stop him falling straight through.
The line delineating where the hole ended was indicated by the damper earth of
the cast, which had begun to be sucked in at the sides. So it was easy for Jak
to pick out even in the fading light just where the solid ground ended and the
thin crust of earth cast began.
Dean came up beside the albino, and following his line of view, took in what
Jak
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Axler,_James_-_Deathlands_65_-_Hellbenders could see.
"Hang on, Doc," he called. "Don't move too much, it'll disturb the surface."
"While I thank you for your sage and timely advice, I think I may just have
been able to work that out for myself," Doc returned with more than a hint of
sarcasm.
"However, I fear that before too long I may not be able to help moving,
particularly in a downward direction at a rapid rate."
"Okay, Doc just hang on," Dean repeated as he turned to Jak. "Well?"
The albino looked from the old man to the edge of the circle, sizing it up
rapidly.
"Follow," he snapped, running around the hole until he came to the point where
the prone Doc was nearest to the edge of the cast circle.
The other members of the recce party had by now joined them, but stood back to
let Jak take control.
Pointing across and gesturing, Jak told Dean, "Crawl across, spread weight.
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