OMG, I’m sooooo sorry this update took me so long! bows to her readers Turns out that this isn’t going to be the last chapter, since it was so many pages already, but I’ll try not to delay too long before the next one. Homework’s been getting in the way X.X.

--

Grissom released Catherine and ran to the door, hoping that the punk rocker had just wandered outside to see something. “Greg? Oh God,” his voice fell nearly to a whisper when he spotted the energetic youth, but he leapt into action immediately, yelling, “Nick, get the ax!”

The Texan bolted across the room, scooping up the sharp tool from where it had fallen as he ran. Hot on Grissom’s heels, Nick sprinted out the door. As was expected, the others followed suit and joined them barely a heartbeat later. The sight that greeted them was not at all like what they expected. Greg was firmly tangled in the creature’s grasp, but it hadn’t come to the surface to claim him. One of the beast’s appendages was wrapped firmly around his waist and legs, the sightless mouth clamped mercilessly on his ankle. A dark crimson stain was spreading across the denim.

Greg looked up as they emptied out of the convenience store; his face was torn between bewilderment and terror. One arm was pinned to his side, but he was tearing at the thick tentacle with his free hand. The lab rat yelled at them, “Wait! It’s doing something new, don’t come any-” A scream tore from his throat before he could stop it. The appendage tightened around him and another shot out of the earth to wind around his shoulders, biting into his arm.

Nick led the charge with a yell, “Hang on Greg!” Before he could get close enough to help, a hand seized his arm and brought him to a startling halt. The Texan whipped around, shooting a deadly glare into icy blue eyes. “What the hell are you-”

“Hush. Greg’s right, they’re doing something new. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m beginning to believe that these things are much smarter than we think they are,” Grissom said and released his grip on the CSI’s arm.

Nick hesitated and looked back at Greg’s pain-stricken face. The muscle in his jaw twitched compulsively, and he murmured, “I’m not waiting for that thing to eat him.”

The others stood on edge a few feet away, waiting to see whether the charge would continue or if Gil’s logic would win out. Sara was scarcely breathing, her gun held at the ready. Warrick and Catherine watched intently as Nick tightened his grip on the ax. When he lowered it, the mounted tension broke, but didn’t disappear. There was still the matter of getting Greg away from the creature.

“Um, guys? It’s kind of getting uncomfortable over here… when I said ‘don’t come closer’, I didn’t mean don’t help me! I don’t wanna’ be eaten!” Greg wailed helplessly. He let out a little yelp when the thing jerked him violently, but it turned into a yell when the beast started moving away from the CSI, dragging Greg with it. “Oh shit… GUYS!”

The group hesitated, looking to Grissom for guidance in the new development. The creature taking Greg with it across the desert obviously didn’t fit into his plan, but he couldn’t just let it slip away. The thing was picking up it’s pace and there was no good option for them to take.

“Grissom?” Nick ventured, his eyes fixed on the cloud of dust that the creature was leaving in its wake as it took Greg farther away from them.

Gil said something under his breath, then shouted, “Come on, or we’re going to lose him!”

They took off after the shrinking form, yelling for their companion to hang on. It was Sara who tripped over the first of Greg’s lost items and nearly fell face first into the dirt because of his shoe. They also passed his wallet, phone, and a few pieces of his CSI vest as they ran. Ms. Sidle looked behind her at the offending object and spotted three trails of flying dust behind them. A cold fear gripped her chest. Greg was the bait to lure them out where there was no protection. Just like they had when the creatures had taken Catherine, everyone came out of the store to help, leaving them vulnerable. The farther the beast dragged Greg, the farther they got from safety. It was a trap and they’d fallen right into it.

“The others are chasing us! It’s a trap! Grissom, look back!” She howled against the wind, hoping to catch someone’s attention.

Several heads turned, but it was far too late to change course. Gil whipped around, looking for a place that could offer protection. The monsters had led them out into the middle of nowhere and the only shelter was a large outcropping of rock nearly twenty feet to the right of them. “Warrick, Nick, get Greg! The rest of you, onto the rocks! Now!” he ordered.

CSI Brown caught up to their wayward lab tech, grabbing him beneath the arms. Greg desperately gripped his co-worker’s shoulder with his free hand, whimpering as he learned what it was like to be the rope in the tug-of-war.

“Nick, hit it!”

The Texan joined them a second later, the ax raised high over his head. The beast came to the surface with a carnal roar, just before he brought the blade down. It sank into both tentacles with a sickening crunch and Warrick fell away with Greg. Nick left the ax where it had landed, taking one of Greg’s arms so he could help Warrick haul the boy away at top speed. The young CSI tried to get his feet underneath him, but the men flanking him carried him like a rag doll.

Twin dust trails crisscrossed at their heels, the screeches of the beasts chasing them across the sand. The haven of the rock was only fifteen feet away, the rest of the team cheering them on and telling them not to look back. It was ten feet away and something lashed out to tangle in Nick’s legs, but he caught his balance and kept running. They were five feet from it and one of the beasts screamed in what sounded like frustration. Then they were safe, lying on the hot stone panting.

“Let’s... never do that again,” Nick wheezed, patting Greg’s shoulder to reassure himself that the boy was there.

Warrick agreed wholeheartedly. He sat up and looked out at the desert, watching the creatures circle just below the surface, before they dug lower and disappeared from sight. The heavy stone they sat on would keep them away from the monsters, but they were up on a rock… with no food or water… and no way to get to a phone or back to the town. Warrick groaned and put his face in his hands. They were so screwed.

Greg sat up and ran a hand through his unruly, dust-filled mane, sending a cloud of filth into the air. He did a quick status check to tally up the damage he’d received. His vest was in shreds, but the heavy-duty material had done a decent job protecting his shirt and skin. His blue jeans were a little worse for wear, and his pockets were empty, which was going to be a pain in the ass. He could replace what was in the wallet, but his phone had been expensive. From his leg, a pair of sightless eyes stared at him.

Greg screamed (causing the rest of the team to jump out of their skin), and reached out to swat the tentacle off of him. It fell to the rock limply. Confusion creased the punk rocker’s brow for a moment, before he realized that the thing wasn’t attached to the body of a large worm. When Nick had severed the tentacles, on of the heads had continued to cling to him.

Sara chuckled, a little nervously perhaps, and put a hand on Greg’s shoulder. “Well, now that we’ve determined that it’s not going to eat you, can we get rid of it?”

Greg raised his eyebrows at her, returning, “And get rid of valuable amusement device? Hell no!” He picked up the slimy appendage and started examining it.

“Greg, you’re still bleeding,” Nick pointed out.

Greg hadn’t even noticed the blood running down his leg, but he sat still long enough to let Nick wrap it up.

Catherine sighed and looked around their tiny refuge. The rock was approximately twenty to twenty-five feet across at the widest point and had a massive extension jutting out into the sky. The top of said extension was relatively flat, so Catherine climbed up the bolder cautiously, using cracks and ledges to get to the summit. Her ankle ached its complaint, still sore from the mad dash after Greg and the initial damage done to it. Once she was seated, the throbbing slowed to a dull annoyance.

“Hey Cath, mind if I join you?” Sara called up.

“Nah, not at all,” she answered, leaning over the edge to give her co-worker a hand. They settled in and shared a mutual sigh, feeling the sun beating down on them.

“Ugh, there’s a reason I work night-shift. I hate being sunburned,” Sara moaned, trying to shade herself from the evil UV rays.

Catherine laughed. Inside the building, there was no air-conditioning, but at least there had been shade. Out in the sun, the heat was excruciating and they were all going to look like lobsters when they finally got back to Vegas. “You know that 90 degree water bottle? It’s going to look really good in a few hours,” she commented dryly.

Down below, Greg had managed to make a sort of sock-puppet out of the creature’s tentacle. It was talking to Warrick, and getting a look that could melt metal. When he didn’t receive a warm welcome, Greg turned to a different kind of amusement.

Grissom was sitting at the edge of the rock, staring out at the churning desert. He’d been watching the beasts circle and surface, searching for their food. The boss was off in his own little world, processing information like the scientist he was. Greg took full advantage of his unobservant moment and slowly edged the head of the appendage over the graying man’s shoulder.

Gil caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and sighed. “Greg, throw it out, it smells, and I’m pretty sure Warrick is about to kill you,” Grissom warned, ruining Greg’s fun.

The spiky haired punk gave the creature a small sniff and wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, alright.” He chunked the thing over the edge of the rock and wiped orange goop off his arm. The hunk of flesh bounced once across the sand before being sucked under by one of the Graboids.

“Shows you how long we’d last out there,” Nick muttered quietly.

Everyone was silent for a moment. Nick was right; they’d never make it back to town, even if they wanted to. Walking across the sand now would be suicide because those things would wait for them.

Greg squirmed slightly in the quiet, bursting out, “Okay, enough depression. How about some knock-knock jokes? Anyone know any knock-knock jokes?” When no one spoke up, he told his own. “Alight then, knock knock…”

Warrick rolled his emerald eyes and got to his feet. If he was going to die on some rock in the middle of nowhere, he was not going to die listening to knock-knock jokes… Oh god and Nick was HUMORING him!

“Who’s there?”

CSI Brown didn’t bother to listen to the answer. He crossed to the far side of the rock and climbed up the side of the girls’ haven. They were in the midst of talking about someone called Prada… or maybe that was a shoe…

Catherine looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. “Excuse me, what are you doing?”

“Trying to get away from Greg; figured I’d come keep you company,” Warrick said.

“No no no, this part of the rock is estrogen only buddy. We want to talk about shoes and boys without you rolling your eyes at us,” Sara stated firmly.

“But…”

“Nope. If we make an exception for you, we’ll have to let every male up here. Then we’d be very crowded and no one likes that.”

Warrick sighed and hopped down. Since it was going to take Greg an hour or so to run out of jokes, the tall CSI went sat next to Gil. The older man acknowledged him with a slight nod. “Do you think we’ll get out of this?”

“I don’t know Warrick. I have ideas, but I wouldn’t risk anyone to try them. Trial and error doesn’t work when there’s a life in the balance…” Grissom said. The man sounded worn out. The excitement of a new species had faded and all that was left was exhaustion. Warrick could see a deep worry creased in the man’s brow for his team.

“You know Brass will come, or he’ll send somebody out. He knows we have a problem out here.

“Yeah… that’s what I’m afraid of.”

--

Hours crawled by as the sun made a slow track across the sky. Eventually, the knock-knock jokes trickled off into nothingness. When Greg got quiet, the whole rock was silent.

The energetic youth heaved a sigh and yawned. No one seemed interested in fooling around, so he unbuttoned his shirt. Nick raised his eyebrow at him, but Greg laid back and placed the shirt over his face, effectively shielding his eyes from the sun. “Mmm, naptime I think,” the punk rocker groaned and tried to get comfortable against the rock. “Not that it’s going to be a comfortable nap… man, I wish I had a couch.”

The Texan rolled his eyes and flopped down beside him. “Wishin’ doesn’t get you much Greggo, so you’ll have to make do.”

“Yeah, well… Papa Olaf always used to say that…” Greg trailed off, his expression completely unreadable beneath his paisley-patterned shirt. “Do you think I’ll ever get to see him again?” The strained question floated up from the green and yellow cloth, to touch Nick’s heartstrings.

“We’ll make it out of here alive… We will. You’ll get to go see your Papa this Christmas, like you always do and you’ll have a hell of a story to tell him.”

The paisley covered face was silent for a moment. “You really think so?”

“Yeah.”

The two started to relax, enjoying the light breeze that had started up. Before long, the breeze had turned into a brisk gale, catching Greg’s shirt in a particularly strong blast. The boy yelped and hopped to his feet, trying to snatch the material from the air.

The collared shirt flew across the rocks with the punk rocker in hot pursuit. He swiped for it and missed, coming to the edge of safety a little sooner than he’d expected. Greg’s foot scraped over the side of the rock and his center of gravity threatened to tip him over the brink. The boy pin-wheeled his arms to regain his balance and fell back onto the stone. The shirt continued out on the breeze and settled into the dirt.

Greg let out a soft moan, wrapping his arms around his knees. “Man, I liked that shirt,” he mumbled miserably.

“It’s alright Greggo, you needed a tan anyway,” Nick said with a pleasant smile.

Greg shot him a half-hearted glare in retaliation. He looked up at the darkening sky, thankful that the sun was nearly gone. At least he wouldn’t look like a cooked crab until tomorrow.

As the team watched, the sun sank into the horizon in a slow-motion flash of blood and fire. Eventually, even the colors were gone and they were left in darkness. So far removed from the world, there was no light but that of a crescent moon, making it easy to spot the police lights when they were still a mile away.

Grissom got to his feet and peered out across the desert. The faint glow of blue and red made him nervous. There was no way they could warn the rescue crew in time to save them. The boulder the team was inhabiting was too far away from town and the creatures would go after the new arrivals as soon as they heard them.

Catherine followed his gaze and said, “Well now, there’s our reinforcements. So how are we going to save them?”

As she spoke, four dust trails sprang to life and sped towards Shale Rock.

“Shit, there they go!” Greg yelled.

--

Detective Jim Brass was the first to climb out of his car. He pulled his firearm out of its holster and held it at the ready. If he’d driven all the way out to the middle of nowhere and the team was fine, he was going to kill Grissom, but there was no sign of the wayward CSI.

The SWAT van pulled in beside his vehicle, unloading in a matter of seconds. Brass ignored the tactical team as they got ready. He crossed over to Grissom’s abandoned Tahoe and peered inside, what he saw startled him. The dark gore on the seats and floor boards suggested that they’d arrived too late. Brass moved around to the other side of the SUV to examine the broken window.

The detective had worked with CSI long enough to know that none of it boded well for the missing nightshift. “Fan out and watch for any signs of life,” Brass barked and moved towards the tiny grocery store.

He glanced inside, but seeing only a destroyed table and a few upturned chairs, he didn’t venture any further. The SWAT moved out around him, finding no sign of the CSI.

“Sir, we’ve found something,” one of the tactical team hollered.

Brass barreled around the corner. Three of the SWAT were gathered around an empty squad car. “There’s another over here Sir,” another man came around to give an account. “According to previous reports, one of the squad cars came out with Mr. Grissom and the other, and its occupants, was reported missing several days ago.

There is, however, no sign of the suspect.”

“Keep a sharp eye out.”

The SWAT leader held up a hand for quiet, asking, “You hear that?” In the silence, there was the faint sound of yelling. “It’s coming from the south-west. Move team!”

--

“Get on the rocks! Brass! Get on the rocks!” Sara screamed towards the town. They saw a dark crowd of people emerge from the tiny cluster of buildings, heading their direction. The rest of the team got to their feet and began to scream their own warnings.

Greg jumped up and down, waving his arms, and yelled, “They’re going to eat you! You’ve got to get off the ground! I don’t think they can hear us.”

The Graboids made two apposing arcs of dust as they moved towards the SWAT team.

Nick chewed his lip as he watched, trying to think of anything to alert the Vegas-ites to the danger. In another moment, the creatures would be on them, or under them, and there’d be nothing they could do. An epiphany occurred beneath his dark head of hair and he pulled out his cell phone.

“What are you doin’ man? You know it doesn’t work,” Warrick said.

“Not the cell function, but the walkie-talkie should work just fine,” Nick returned and pulled up Brass’s contact info on the phone’s screen.

The SWAT member at the front of the line screamed and disappeared beneath the surface of the earth, bringing the entire SWAT team to a halt. Those who had seen the man go under began yelling and shooting at the ground. Another went down, and then another, and the feeding frenzy began.

--

Brass stiffened when he heard the first man scream. He pulled his gun up to the ready and scanned the surrounding area for the suspect. The group ahead of him went wild, shouting and firing round after round into… something. Brass couldn’t see what it was from his current position, but he assumed that it wouldn’t last long under heavy gunfire from the SWAT.

As the detective got closer, the SWAT team’s numbers got decidedly thinner. A cloud of dust slowly obscured them, but it didn’t keep Brass from seeing one of the men near him get sucked under the ground. It wasn’t like he’d fallen through a hole; he had literally been pulled down.

Brass stopped dead in his tracks, an exclamation slipping out before he could stop it, “What the hell!” At his hip, his cell phone bleeped with an incoming message.

“Brass, get off the ground now! Get on some rocks!” Nick’s voice yelled from the tiny speaker of his cell.

Brass didn’t give the command a second thought. If he’d learned anything as a cop, he’d learned that wasting time arguing an order could get you killed. So, if Nick knew something he didn’t, then so be it.

He yelled an order to the SWAT to get to the rocks before running for the nearest outcropping. The rock seemed like a hell of a long way away when he realized that something was chasing him. He turned slightly to scope over his shoulder, but didn’t see anything.

The CSI were yelling at him, and it sounded almost like they were cheering him on. When he leapt up onto the stone, there was a stout cheer from his onlookers. He fell onto the boulder and panted. Just behind him, there was a loud screech and he saw something churn beneath the surface of the sand.

As the detective caught his breath, he noticed several things: the SWAT team was gone, the rock he was occupying wasn’t far from the CSI’s home base, and he’d somehow managed to lose one of his loafers during his run. Brass looked over at the other rock and yelled, “What the hell was that thing?”

“That,” Grissom answered him, “was our suspect, or should I say ‘suspects’. They are large, subterranean worms that hunt by sound.

Brass blinked at him. “Oh.”

No one spoke for a long time. It had taken the beasts only seconds to destroy some of the most well-trained men that Vegas had to offer, but the silence wasn’t about that. The quiet fell for the men themselves. The fact that they had been well armed and well trained and were still killed was bleak indeed, but they were twelve men that would never return home.

The beasts were too dangerous to be allowed to roam free in Nevada.

Unable to stand the deadly quiet, Greg perked up for the first time in hours, asking, “Does anyone feel like we’re little kids playing the hot lava game? You know the game where you can’t touch the ground because its hot lava and it’ll kill you?”

He received a few stares and a whole lot of silence. After a moment, Nick spoke up in his defense, “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about Greg, but I’m not so sure it really applies to this situation… well, I guess it does…”

“Except for the fact that we would actually DIE if we stepped out there,” Warrick added.

Catherine smiled at Brass and said, “We’re glad you could join us.”

The older man rolled his eyes and replied, “Gee, thanks. How long have you guys been sitting out here?”

“Hours.”

“Great. And those things haven’t gone away?”

“Nope.”

Brass sighed and got settled on his modest-sized rock. It seemed like he would be on it for a very long time.

--

TBC