What Lies Below by Glynn James Read Free Book Online

the ground outside and the sound of something moving away quickly across
the dirt.
    The crew – all of them awake now – sat in silence for a long
time until Tyler spoke.
    “What are the bets the top compartment is all scratched up?”
he asked. The other men nodded in return.
    “I’d say that was pretty much a done deal,” said Higgins,
looking up at the ceiling. “Guess you better file another one of your reports.”
    Tyler chuckled. “Not that that is going to do any good. I don’t
think they believe me.”
    “Must do,” said Rick. “They see the scratches every time.”
    “Until maintenance covers them up again like they were never
there.”
    Rick shook his head. “I don’t get that.”
    “What you mean?” asked Higgins.
    Rick pointed at the ceiling. “Maintenance always hammer the
panel back out and sand it off until the marks aren’t there and the panel is
shiny and new again, only for the scratches to turn up on a different spot the
next time. They don’t bother with all the rust holes and cracks in the outer
plating of the rest of the vehicle, why bother with a few scratches?”
    “I have no idea,” said Tyler. “But it’s really starting to bug
the hell out me. I want to know why something keeps fiddling around up there.”
    “Or someone,” said Higgins.
    Tyler looked at him. “Or someone. Whatever or whoever it is
only seems to like messing with us. No one else reports it, unless we just
don’t find out.”
    “Which also makes me wonder,” said Rick. “If it’s always us,
then how the hell does it know where we are every single time? I mean, we
travel for miles onto the next zone, but it always seems to track us down.”
    “Could be something stuck in that compartment that it can
smell for miles and miles,” said Higgins. “Like it’s an animal or summit. Maybe
something is dead in there.”
    “Enough dead things out here for a critter to smell without
having to track down our carrier,” said Tyler.
    “Hmm, still don’t make much sense,” muttered Higgins
    “We could try and prise the compartment open,” said Rick. “Have
a little nose at what’s in there.”
    “We don’t have the gear to open it,” said Tyler. “It’s at
least and inch thick, I reckon, and none of us have the tools to bust it open.
At least not without some alarm going off. You wanna be the one to explain that
to those that we must obey?”
    Rick shrugged. “No, I guess not.”
    “Hey,” said Boots, a man who rarely had anything to say. “May
we should set up a trap for the critter.”
    Tyler frowned. “What kind of trap?”
    Boots frowned and then shrugged. “Don’t know, just thought it
might be an idea.”
    Tyler looked down at the ground, squinting. A trap, he
thought. Well, maybe not a trap, but some way to record who was out there or to
scare them off. Something.
    That was worth thinking about.

Trapped
    Jack looked up and coughed as the dust settled in the room. He
could see Ryan through the gloom, standing a few feet away.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    The boy nodded and brushed some crumbling pieces of rubble
from his shoulder. Above them the floor groaned. Jack heard the hiss of the
radio.
    “Jack, you there?” came the voice of FirstMan.
    He grabbed the radio and pressed the button on the side. “I’m
here. What's going on?”  There was a moment of silence, then some crackling,
then another voice.
    “We found a bug nest,” came RightHand's voice.
    “Stay right where you are,” said FirstMan.
    Jack looked over to the entrance where they had entered and
saw that beyond the archway a pile of debris had collapsed into the large room.
“We’re trapped down here,” he said. He stared at the fallen pile of junk and
rubble, thinking that he and Ryan only just managed to avoid being crushed by
running through the double doors. That had been too close.
    Ryan turned to him, frowning, and stood up, taking two steps
towards the entrance.
    “Don't go any closer,” said Jack. “Just