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Ally had always hated those useless blonde bimbettes in horror movies. Now she twined her fingers through her own fair hair and sighed. So, what could she do to keep from being a bimbette? She’d warned Pastor Lindgren about the monster—that was important, even if he didn’t believe her yet—but what now?

It would be pretty feeble to die without at least
trying
to stop the monster.

At least monsters weren’t as bad as supernatural creatures or serial killers who kept rising from the dead. Monsters could be killed, and when they died, they stayed dead, except then you had to kill all the baby monsters they’d laid while you were hunting them.

No problem. She figured she could kill baby monster snakes pretty easily.

On the other hand, monsters needed something really impressive to stop them, like chainsaws or dynamite or a runaway semi. Alison didn’t know how to use a chainsaw, didn’t know where to find any dynamite, and wouldn’t have the first idea how to put a semi into gear, much less actually drive one around.

Useless.

Now wait, she argued with herself, I’ve seen four
Tremors
movies. The snake probably tracks by vibration, so I know how to defend myself, even if I don’t have any dynamite. I’m not entirely useless.

Dynamite...didn’t construction companies use dynamite? There were two construction sites on campus: the north campus where people were saying a bunch of bones had been found, and mid-campus, where the new social sciences building was going to go up.

Omigod. She straightened up in the pew.

The bones.

The monster
had
to be linked to the bones. In fact, maybe the bones had been the snake’s, and it was a giant vengeful ghost.

No, it had smashed up all those people. Ghosts didn’t smash people. She swallowed.

So maybe the giant snake had been hibernating down there with all the bones of its old victims for centuries, and the digging woke it up and made it hungry.

That meant as soon as it ate enough, it would go back to sleep, right? This was December, and it was cold outside, even if it
was
California. A snake would totally go back into hibernation as soon as it could.

Good. Well, not the part about eating people, but the part about it going to sleep.

If they could find a bunch of cows or something, then maybe they could lure it away from campus, and it would eat the cows instead of people and then go to sleep so they could kill it.

Thanks, God, she said silently, flashing the cross a grateful look. She gingerly got to her feet.

Now all she had to do was tell the police about her plan before any more people got eaten.

Especially her.

XVIII

The shots were loud, much louder than they’d ever been at the firing range, where Clancy had always worn ear protection.

But the newly arrived creatures blurred as they moved, morphed into other shapes, and if his bullets hit them, he couldn’t see any sign of it. They pulsed and heaved in a multitude of colors: dusty red, pale blue, fleshy tan, off-white; a cloud of floating, diving entities, some of them high in the air, others bobbing through the earth. But whereas the earlier snake-things had dislodged dirt and caused tremors as they'd moved, these seemed to ignore the ground entirely.

Each of the monsters was surrounded by a nimbus of light that left tracks across Clancy’s retinas as they moved.

Something roared, a noise that seemed to cover the entire spectrum of soundwaves from the highest to the lowest and sent shivers down Clancy’s spine. He gasped and wanted to howl like dog.

A cloud of beings broke away, floating rapidly toward him, bobbing, sliding, changing shape and color, sometimes flashing like meat, other times glittering like spines or claws, and, oh God, teeth,
teeth
seemed to be at the vanguard, changing shape but pressing forward.

Horrified, Clancy lifted a shaking arm, took aim, and squeezed off three more shots at the largest of the floating beings. One of the creatures snapped back and forth, a low hiss shaking the air. A new globule appeared and darted toward him.

He jerked aside as viscous liquid struck the ground and seethed. He aimed down at it, reflexively pulling the trigger. The liquid bubbled where the bullet went in.

“Run!” he shouted to Penemue. Whatever mischief the white-haired man was up to paled in the face of these alien monstrosities.

But Penemue seemed frozen, staring at the bobbing creatures with horror. Swearing to himself, Clancy ran forward, throwing a shoulder against the man’s side. It was like hitting a sack of bricks, but his momentum carried him through and Penemue staggered backward, his wool coat flapping. The provost gave him a surprised look.

“Run!” Clancy shouted again, turning. Now the creatures were moving toward Jackson, and the sight of them was enough to snap the injured officer out of his state of shock. He opened his eyes and screamed, trying to lurch to his feet despite his shattered bone.

“Don’t!” Clancy took step forward, but then the monsters surrounded Jackson and grew until he was completely obscured.

Then they all vanished—the swarm of alien beasts and Jackson both.

Or most of Jackson, at least.

Wet organs fell loosely to the ground in a cloud of blood.

Clancy made a low, whimpering noise, staring at the pile of intestines and guts. The fleshy mass steamed gently in the cold December night air.

The second swarm of creatures hovered, bobbing. Clancy dragged his eyes away from Jackson’s innards and stared at them, his mind chattering madly. For a moment he thought, ridiculously, of that stupid old question about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin—but these were no angels.

“Be still,” Penemue hissed. Clancy looked at him. The white-haired provost was standing motionless, his face drawn and tight, his hands buried in his pockets.

The advice was pointless; Clancy didn’t think he could move if he wanted to. What had happened to Jackson had paralyzed him with fear.

The giant snakes had awed him, but he
understood
snakes. By comparison, these swarms of squirming tubes and pulsing spheres and clouds of teeth couldn’t possibly be alive. The fact that they existed at all was an affront to reality.

The cold breeze carried the scent of hot blood and fresh meat to him. Bile burned the back of his throat.

“They’re studying us,” the provost said, his voice low. “They’re trying to decide if we’re dangerous. Don’t do anything to make them think we’re dangerous.”

“Uh-uh,” Clancy croaked, in agreement. Aliens—they had to be aliens. Except if they’d wanted to anally probe Jackson, they’d forgotten to take his colon with them.

Clancy ground his teeth against a bubble of mad laughter.

The cry sounded again, a multitude of voices covering every note and then some. A trickle of urine burned its way through his urethra and dampened his boxers.

The ground jerked and rippled.

What was left of Jackson suddenly appeared in the air, several yards away from where it had been, still surrounded by black spheres. The eviscerated corpse dropped, smashing to the heaving ground, and the second group of aliens returned, throbbing and twisting, accompanied by a sound like radio being tuned—many voices saying something that hovered on the very edge of intelligibility.

“Run!” shouted a distant voice, repeating the advice Clancy had given Penemue only minutes before. Clancy looked across the street that divided north campus from south and saw a man dashing across the road. The man held a flashlight that bobbed with each step, its light looking horribly like one of the creatures.

“For God’s sake, get out of there now!” the man shouted again. He looked familiar, but Clancy was in no shape to figure out where he’d seen him before.

The ground took a sudden leap to the left and he fell, rolling onto his belly, digging his fingers into the dirt to stabilize himself.  He reached out and grabbed his pistol, yanking it toward him and sliding it into its holster. He couldn’t remember how many shots he’d fired, but he didn’t have time to change the clip now.

The newcomer shouted again: “Greg! Run, go, get away from those things!”

Clancy saw that, impossibly, Penemue was still standing, his legs wide and his hands out of his coat pockets as if to brace himself on thin air. The man turned, his pale eyes searching for the caller as he rode the bucking ground as easily as a sailor rode a heaving ship deck.

Clancy looked back at the monsters. They had swarmed away, moving closer to the center of the field as if losing interest in the humans. Thank God.  He pulled himself to all fours and began to crawl across the field toward the road and the shouting man.

Another quake nearly threw him off balance and he froze, looking back. One of the spotlights sputtered and blew, sending sparks into the air. A snake thing lunged upward at the aliens, its jaws gaping, its blind head swinging ecstatically toward them.

It was too much. He looked forward again and crawled as fast as he could, pausing only when the shaking of the ground threatened to throw him down.

Then the newcomer was kneeling next to him, stretching an arm around his shoulders and pointing a flashlight across the field.

“What—” For a moment Clancy tried to pull away.

“Careful.” The other man was staring past him. Clancy stared at his face and suddenly remembered where he’d seen him before.

“You’re the priest!”

“Minister,” the man corrected, his eyes still fixed on whatever was happening out by the monsters. Clancy was afraid to turn and look. “Luther Lindgren. We talked earlier today.”

Clancy grabbed his arm, feeling a surge of superstitious faith.

“Can you send those things away?”

“No.” Lindgren’s voice sounded distant. “No. My grandfather couldn’t, and I can’t, either.”

XIX

This time, instead of revealing a vast horizon, the hellpassage was a narrow tunnel, its walls composed of seething beetles and roaches and earwigs and other squirming insects. Jack kept his arms tightly against his sides as he sidled through. He wasn’t afraid of bugs, but damned if he wanted any crawling around inside his shirt, either.

It was bad enough that his magickal wards were acting up again, warning him that he was near evil—as if he might have forgotten he was walking through hell.

He liked the bugs better than the infernal crematoriums, though. If he had to take Todd’s twisty passages through space, he preferred them filled with natural creatures.

“If you say we can walk through both heaven or hell,” Andy was speculating aloud, “and all we’re perceiving is an interpretation of something too difficult for our mortal minds to comprehend, then why are our surroundings so grim? I, personally, would much rather be walking through a sunny orchard or on a pleasant beach.”

“Maybe the passage is taking us hellward.” Todd’s voice echoed through the tunnel and sent the insects rippling in reaction. “Hellward is darker than heavenward.”

“What exactly does that mean, ‘hellward’ and ‘heavenward’?” Andy complained. “Hell and heaven aren’t finite points on a map.”

“No, but the...the gravitational wells of Creation and Destruction warp space into dimensions beyond our own. I detect the varying effects of that warp as heavenward and hellward, even though they aren’t true directions.  I have to work within the constraints of my own perceptions and language, too.”