Guns & Roses (Tremors story)

Well, what should we do?

Chapter two --

"It must push itself along with these. Hundreds of them pushing at once. That's how it can move so fast. I mean this thing was tripping sensors all over the valley. No wonder I couldn't..." Rhonda said, A chilling thought stops her in mid-sentence. She springs down into the drainage ditch to get her backpack, pulling out her seismograph printouts. She studies them frantically during.

"Hey, Rhonda, have you ever heard of anything like this before?" Earl said turning to Rhonda, Val elbows Earl.

"Sure, Earl, everybody knows about them. We just didn't tell you. Come on, nobody's ever seen one of these! We're really in on something here!" Val said sarcastic, rolling his eyes at Earl's stupid question. Allea rolled her eyes as well, like really guys.

The guys looks at each other. One thought immediately springs to their minds. "Pham Van don't get his mitts on this for no measly fifteen bucks!" Earl said to Val.

"Really, guys" Allea said to herself she knows they're going to try to sell it.

"You got that right!" Val said getting up to walk to the end of the tail with Earl. While they bask in their fame-to-be, Rhonda continues to study the print-outs, Allea walks to Rhonda, "Hey, didn't you say to Val and Earl about the explosions." She said looking at the spiks the thing had. When Rhonda had come to a terrifying conclusion. She runs to her backpack.

"Here's the plan, we'll get a...a flatbed, I guess, with a big winch, figure a five ton anyway." Earl said, putting a hand on his chin thinking.

"Naw, don't want to winch it. That'd tear it all up. Want to lift it.Some kind of crane with lifting straps." Val said to Earl.

But Rhonda interrupts, now really scared. "Hey, hey, shut up! The way I figure it. There are three more of these things!" She said showing her paper. "Um what." Allea said.

"Three more?" Earl said in disbelief, Rhonda paws through her unwieldy printouts, pointing out jagged ink lines on the graphs, comparing different ones. "Yeah, darn it, look. I've got seismographs all over the valley. If you compare the different readings, there have to be five. Here's one at two o'clock yesterday, but here's another one three miles away at the same time. So that's two. Now, here..." She said to show different parts of the land that these things were at.

The men leap from their perches and hustle her and Allea in the direction that Rhonda had come from. "We'll take your word for it." Val said, pushing them forward.

"Yeah. Where's your truck?" Earl said, pushing Rhonda, "The other side of that dome." She said pointing to where her truck was. She indicates what to most of us would be a hill, dotted with huge boulders thrusting out of the sandy desert soil like big mushrooms. The four jogs toward the hill. En route to the truck, they pass near one of Rhonda's seismographs. Suddenly Earl stumbles as one leg drops knee-deep into the ground! He screams. Val wheels and bodily yanks him up. They back away from the small hole in the ground, calming a little as they realize.

"It's just a Prairie dog burrow..." Allea said looking at the hole that just scared the living hell out of her.

"Little sons of bitches." Val said, Rhonda tenses as she hears a sound she knows well the soft scratching of the seismograph needle across its paper cylinder. She whacks Val on the shoulder and points speechlessly at it.

The needle is going wild!!

She doesn't have to explain. All four of them dash dash for The remains of an old rail fence lay beside one of the boulders. Val, Earl, Allea and Rhonda scramble over the wood, up onto the rock and stand there tensely. In a moment, the creature gently rustles the earth at the base of the rock. The monster's slimy hook-tentacles slither out, searching the rock base. Shuddering, the humans move as high as they can, well out of reach. The tentacles slip back beneath the earth. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.