Chapter 8: Doomed

The sun was high when they ventured forth. Diane would have come, but the two men would have none of it. They remembered the sight they had seen; they knew what was left of a man’s body lying on the rocks above; and they ordered the girl to stay hidden while Kreiss remained with her as a guard.

There were only the four who lay hidden in the woods; Schwartzmann and Max, with the remaining three men, were gone. Harkness’ calls were unanswered, and he ceased the halloo.

“Better keep quiet,” he advised himself and the others. “We are out of ammunition, though they don’t know it. And they have got away. They will keep on going, too, and I am not any too well pleased with that. I wanted to put Schwartzmann where I could keep an eye on him ... Oh, well, he isn’t very dangerous.”

But Chet Bullard made a few mental and unspoken reservations to that remark. “That boy is always dangerous,” he told himself, “and he won’t be happy unless he is making trouble. Thank the Lord he hasn’t got that gun!”

He came out cautiously from among the trees, but the red horde was gone. The reptiles’ wings had rasped and clashed furiously for a time; they had darted in fiery flashes before the protecting trees: and the fitful breeze had brought gusts of nauseous odors--until a thin haze formed in the higher air and the red things were gone.

“There will not be any more for a while,” said Harkness.

He pointed toward the fumerole they had seen from the lookout earlier in the day: again it was emitting jets of thin, steamy vapor that did not disappear like steam but floated up above their heads. “The gas has driven them off,” he added.

The two men climbed slowly up the slope that had been the wave front of molten rock. Chet found his pistol by the path and picked it up.

“We’ll get more ammunition up top,” he told Harkness, “and we will toss some down to Kreiss. He can have the extra gun you brought for Schwartzmann, too.”

He stopped suddenly. He had reached the level top of the lava flow. Here was where they had stood when the beasts attacked; where Harkness had dropped the boxes of ammunition and the pistol--and except for a few scattered bodies of unbelievable reptiles and for a stain of blood where his own wound had bled, there was nothing to show where they had been.

“He got ‘em!” Chet exclaimed. “That son-of-a-gun Schwartzmann got the gun and shells. I saw him scrambling around on the rock. I thought he was just scared to death; but no, he wasn’t too frightened to grab the gun and the ammunition while one of his own men was being killed. And that’s not so good, either!”

A dozen paces beyond was a huddle of clothing that stirred idly in the breeze. “The poor devil!” exclaimed Chet, and moved over beside the body of the man who had gone down under the red swarm’s attack.

It lay face down. Chet stooped to turn the body over, though he knew there was no hope of life. He stopped with a gasp of dismay.

Two eyes still stared in horror from a face that was colorless--a drained, ghastly white face! No tint remained to show that this ever had been a living man. More dreadful than the waxen pallor of death, here was a bleached, bloodless flesh that told of the nameless horror that had overwhelmed this man, beaten him down and drained him of every drop of blood.

“Vampires!” Chet heard Harkness saying in a horrified whisper. “Those beaks that were like tubes! And they--they--” He stopped as if in fear of the words that would tell what they themselves had escaped.

Chet turned the body to its former position; that dreadful face beneath a pitiless sun was a sight no other eyes should see. “Let’s go on to the ship,” he said. “We’ll get some ammunition, go back and get Diane--”

He did not finish the thought. Before him he saw the lifeless body moving; it rolled and shuddered as if life had returned to this thing where no life should be. Chet raised one hand in an unconscious gesture as if to ward off some new horror that the body might disclose. It was a moment before he realized that the rock was shaking beneath his feet, that he was dizzy and that from no great distance a rumbling growl was sounding in his ears.

The moving body had shaken Chet’s mental poise as had the earthquake his physical equilibrium. Harkness had not seen it; he was looking off across the level plateau.

“Look!” he exclaimed; “another vent has opened! See it spout?”

Some hundred yards distant were clouds of green vapor that rolled into the air. At their base a fountain of mud sputtered and spouted and fell back to build up a cone. The green cloud whirled sluggishly, then was caught by the breeze and began its slow, rolling progress across the flat rock. It was coming their way, rolling down toward the ship, and Chet gripped suddenly at his companion’s arm.