“A rifle?” Harker was intrigued. “Why?”
“Because they’ll come up from under the sand and pull you right down into it. I’ve seen them take limbs, even whole people. We never could wipe them out because they moved out under the sea and onto the shelf and through here and then came back when nobody was looking. No poison or other impediment seemed to do any good at all.”
Harker looked over at Mogutu and N’ Gana in their boat. “They know about this?”
“Of course. It only now occurred to me how few briefings you had on this world.”
Harker sighed and shook his head. “Sure must have made afternoons with the family at the beach a real adventure. Anything else like that I should know?”
“Nothing lethal. Actually, we used to have a kind of grid that gave a small electrical charge to the sand. You never even noticed it, but it drove all the no-see-ums away. My thinking is that it probably hasn’t been powered for almost a century.”
“Good point. And when we get off the sand, if we can?”
“Beyond the beach, I suspect that it’s going to be as new to me as it is to you. You’ve seen the three-dimensional maps, the scanning data, all that. I can recognize the land-forms and some of the old patterns, like I said, but the rest—it’s new. The scour took most everything out, and this is all new growth. It even appears that the roadways and farms had been scraped away, although you can still see the road paths and patterns in the pictures. How easily they’ll be to find on the ground is a different story.”
“I’ll settle for any kind of road,” Socolov moaned. “Nothing on land could be worse than this!”
They continued on in with the tide. In another half hour, they approached the beach near the rocky outcrop the priest had called Capri Point. “Going in fast,” Harker warned. “Father, you first. Get onto the rocks and cover us from as high as you can safely stand. Doc, I’m sorry about your sickness, but you’re gonna have to get off fast and pretty much under your own power. Get to the rocks and stay there! As soon as you’re clear, I’m gonna try and throw the line for the supplies. Doc, you’ll have to hold onto it because the padre’s gonna be shooting, I suspect. Then I’ll come up with the line for the boat and Father Chicanis and I will bring it up onto the rocks as fast as possible. Doc, your job is to hold onto that supply rope and don’t fall onto the sand. Got it?”
She looked nervous and still sick, but she nodded.
Harker went to the back of the boat, Chicanis took a rifle, inserted a clip, and stood near the front. Harker lowered a plastic tiller into the water and with all his strength battled the tide and waves to bring the boat as close to the rocks as possible without crashing onto them.
“Hold on!” he shouted above the sounds of crashing waves. “Everybody ready! Now!”
There was a tremendous lurch, and the boat ran up on the sand just a meter or so from the start of the rocky outcrop. Harker had proved himself a real expert sailor. Chicanis had been briefly knocked back by the force of the landing. He was unsteady as the waves continued to hit, but fired three loud shots into the sand just beyond and then immediately jumped out and raced for the rocks.
The bullets had done nothing, but as he hit the sand there was a sudden series of undulations of the yellow beach as if a horde of tiny rodents lived just beneath, and they all headed right for him. He made the rocks before they could catch him, though, and they stopped dead, as if waiting.
“Did you see ’em?” Harker called, pointing.
“I got ’em! Don’t worry!”
Harker turned to Socolov, who looked suddenly more terrified than green. “Doc, you can’t stay here and we have another boat coming in! This is what the job is. It’s a little late to lose your nerve now! Come forward!” He didn’t like to be so blunt and commanding to her, but time was not on their side.
She moved forward, but he could see her shaking. He took the long line of yellow rope and put it in her hand and then adjusted things, twisting this way and that, so she’d have a good grip. “Now, you don’t have to haul the stuff in,” he reminded her. “Just hold on!”
She looked out at the beach. There were perhaps five, six meters to the start of the rocks, not much more.
“Go, little lady!” the priest shouted. “I will cover you! Just follow my footprints!”
She started, then froze. “I—I can’t seem to move.”
“You go or I’m going to pick you up and throw you out on the sand,” Harker snapped. “Now!” He moved as if he were going to do just that, and she shot him a glance of fear and hatred that he’d not seen in many years, not since he was training recruits in Commando units, but she went.
Almost immediately the sands began to come to life again, but now Father Chicanis took aim and started firing.
The sands suddenly erupted and there was a tremendous angry roar, and a knifelike claw bigger than a man shot out of the sands and straight into the air. Chicanis ignored it and concentrated on a spot to the right and just a bit back of the claw; it was clear that he was hitting something big and nasty from the way things were shaking. It was almost as if the sands had erupted in a kind of volcanic fury.
Harker didn’t wait to see the show. He took the boat line and made for the rocks, dragging the boat behind him. Only when he felt he was on the rocks did he turn and call, “Father! Help me pull it in!”
Chicanis was by him in an instant and the two pulled the boat onto the rocks. Harker immediately looked inside for another rifle. He’d had some elementary instruction during the time on the island, but he knew damned well he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with one. On the other hand, he could hit a beach, and anybody could hit one of those monsters that lurked below.
He took one glance around and saw Katarina Socolov sitting on the rocks, line still wrapped around her right hand, staring straight ahead, not at them or any action, as if in shock. She would have to wait; there was a second boat to get in.
Chicanis pointed to the sands where something was still convulsing. “We may be in luck! That’s a smaller one than I’m used to, and to put up that much fuss I’d say another one is taking advantage of its weakness and attacking it.” He turned and waved Mogutu in.
The colonel wasn’t any more thrilled by the sights on the beach than Socolov had been, but he understood the problem and had faced equally nasty creatures in the past.
“Probably should have used the machine gun,” the priest commented to himself, ejecting a clip and slapping in a new one. “Oh, well, too late now. Here they come! Think of a blind crab, Harker! Don’t shoot the claws, shoot the body!”
Mogutu had thought of a machine gun, but he was more concerned with just getting on shore near the rocks. He wasn’t as precise as Harker, and at the last minute the boat was lifted up by a wave and deposited slightly inland on the beach about ten meters away and perhaps twenty meters from where the monsters were obviously ending their fight.
“Get out and both of you pull the boat here!” Harker virtually screamed at them. “We’ll do the cover! Get a move on! They’ll be able to feel you walking through the bottom of the boat!”
The idea was sufficient to get even the still pale N’Gana moving. Mogutu lifted his machine gun and sprayed the area around where the underground titans were going at it and then started some bursts along the path where they would have to run pulling the boat and its contents. To everyone’s relief, nothing erupted, and that was enough for the two mercenaries, who leaped out of the boat and began pulling it on the run toward the rocks.
Suddenly something popped from the sand under the rear part of the boat with enough force to throw it into the air several meters and spill out some of the contents. Said contents included the Pooka Hamille, who launched into the air and went into a steady whirling motion that made him next to impossible to see in detail. He was a long sausagelike blur, and he was headed straight for the rocks.