A Town Called Dust: The Territory 1 by Justin Woolley

Author:Justin Woolley [Woolley, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781760081904
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2014-11-12T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

Melbourne lay in his sleeping roll, his body heat cocooning him against the rapidly cooling night air. He awoke some time later and lay for a few minutes listening to the eerie stillness of the desert. He realized he had woken into a heightened sense of awareness. He could hear something. His ears probed the darkness in an attempt to match the sound with something he recognized. It had been a guttural sound, he thought, like some large animal clearing its throat.

A sudden screech made him sit bolt upright. The sleeping sack fell down and he felt the cold air reaching in through the light shirt he had worn to bed. That sound was close. He looked out into the blackness around their camp, his eyes straining in the direction of the noise. The fire had died away to a pulsating orange that was being gently suffocated by the cold night. A figure was sitting slumped forward by the fire. Melbourne realized it was Major Tungsten. The wineskin that had been half-full when they’d gone to bed was sitting in the dirt in front of him, empty. At the Academy Melbourne had considered Major Tungsten an excellent swordsman, a master tactician and a good teacher. He had seemed an all-round shining example of soldierhood, but here he was now, fast asleep on watch.

Melbourne pushed his senses out into the darkness to try to identify the mysterious sounds he’d heard. But unfortunately it seemed those mysterious sounds were about to reach out to them.

Melbourne saw movement first. It was small, nothing but the shifting of darkness within darkness, but there was definitely something there.

“Major Tungsten,” he whispered urgently to the Digger who was supposedly guarding their safety. “Sir, I saw something.”

The sleeping Digger moved forward slowly. For an instant Melbourne thought he was rousing, but instead he tipped forward and landed with a gentle thud on the ground, his forehead resting in the soft dirt.

Melbourne climbed out of his sleeping roll and picked up one of the long mechanical rifles that lay on the ground near the sleeping Digger. It was one of the older Leopald models; he had won the Academy’s shooting competition with this type of rifle. That had been easy—everything had seemed easy at the Academy—but now his hands shook as he pulled back the compression spring of the firing mechanism. It locked in place inside the polished wood, ready to fire. He moved forward, the rifle held against his shoulder.

There was movement again. A figure was coming out of the darkness. It moved in a disjointed run toward them. The creature wore tattered clothes, matted pieces of cloth that seemed to hang from its body. If it weren’t for the unflattering way the strips of material fell it might be difficult to say which sex it was—but this was a male. Its skin was gray, mottled with colors somewhere between the shades of skin and blood. Its face was hollow and sunken as if its skin had been pulled tight over its bare skull.

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