Fragment

1:15 P.M.

Scientists and technicians inside Section Four continued to pull on their cleansuits to exit the lab.

Todd Taylor, suited up except for his helmet, looked nervously at a hairy woodpecker-like creature that had landed on the hatch window overlooking Section Three. The pseudo-bird smashed its pick-ax head against the window rhythmically. “What the hell is it doing that for?” Todd shouted, waving his arms to scare it away, which only seemed to make it strike faster.

In the video feed on the monitor, Nell sat frozen, watching the edge of the jungle recede behind Zero. Then she could see the lower sections of StatLab through his camera! She turned quickly to the window and saw Zero staggering up the hill.

“It’s Zero! Let him in!”

“He’s outside the seal!” Todd yelled. “We can’t-”

“Bullshit!” Nell snarled and ran to the upper docking hatch.

With a crash, the “woodpecker” smashed the window inches over Todd’s head, and Henders wasps and drill-worms poured in, followed by Henders mice and rats, all moving so swiftly that they ricocheted off the ceiling and walls.

Two rats squeezed down the neck of Todd’s cleansuit; he screamed as they thrashed inside the belly, ripping into his gut.

His cries drew other predators, which circled back to converge on him, and several squeezed into his mouth before he could close it.

Zero limped to the closed upper hatch. Nell waved him off, motioning him toward the Sea Dragon helicopter that was landing on the slope above.

Zero turned and clambered up the slope on his hands and feet like a wounded ape.

The scientists in Section Four, seeing the invading horde now vomiting through the shattered hatch window, panicked. They stampeded toward the upper hatch. The animals attacked, taking chunk after chunk from the exposed necks and faces of those at the back of the pack and homing in on those who screamed.

Nell punched the code into the keypad and bashed the “PURGE” button with her fist. The hatch’s bolts exploded and the door shot off like a bullet into the side of the hill.

Suitless in the Henders air, Nell yanked on Briggs’s elbow, and he kicked off the one pant-leg of his half-donned cleansuit.

“Come on!” she urged the hesitant scientists behind her, and she and Briggs jumped from the hatch and ran up the scorched field.

Zero was first onto the Dragon’s loading ramp, and he turned to help Nell on board. Then he collapsed, groaning, against her side. She propped him up as Briggs, Otto, and a handful of scientists and technicians jumped onto the ramp.

The rest lumbered in the awkward cleansuits as animals poured from the hatch of StatLab at their backs: the long segmented lab had become a pipeline straight out of the jungle.

Wearing a helmet offered them no protection: teeth and claws easily slashed the flimsy cleansuits. The tears admitted hordes of Henders beasts that turned the suits into gruesome feedbags within seconds.

Even those closest to the Sea Dragon fell, screaming, as it lifted off.

Nell saw a huge red spiger leap up the hill in two bounds and launch itself at the helo, but the wind from the rotors battered it down and the beast barely missed hooking the edge of the ramp with its spiked arms.

“Jeezus!” One of the helicopter crewmen hissed, the cool expression shocked from his face as he glanced out the window at the carnage. “Guess we need a new lab…”

Zero hung on Nell’s shoulders, and she hugged him tight against her.

“We may need a new planet,” she said.

Andy woke up in the dark and saw a glowing Henders wasp inches from his face.

He jumped back.

The movement startled other bugs all around him, also trapped in jars and bottles, which illuminated a strange chamber with cans, bottles, and other garbage piled against the walls.

A human skull in a niche wore a U.S. Air Force pilot’s hat.

The room, Andy realized, was an old airplane fuselage.

Suddenly there were snorts and scratches at a round door cut into the wall across from him. Fear immobilized him-all he could move were his eyes. He knew he was going to die and only hoped it would be quick.

The door in the wall opened inward and Copepod ran into the room.

The bull terrier licked Andy’s astonished face.

Andy stared as the creature he had only glimpsed earlier appeared behind the dog like an apparition in the room.

He hugged Copey in horror, but the burly dog barked and wriggled away, then ran right at the creature.