New Title 1 by Dru Pagliassotti Page A

and choked as he was dragged out into the open air.
    He rolled on his back. The earth was shaking and trembling, and stars swam overhead as he tried to focus.
    “You’re alive?” A calm voice with a note of surprise. “Ah, yes, I see.”
    Clancy blinked, feeling dirt fall off his face, and clenched his hand as someone tried to tug the evidence bag out of it. Alarmed, he pushed himself up to one elbow. His wrist ached where it had been grabbed.
    “What—” he coughed and spat. The white-haired provost—Penemue, that was his name—raised an elegant eyebrow. Clancy wiped his face with his arm, still holding the bag that he’d grabbed from the technician moments before the man had been engulfed in a wave of dirt. “What the hell was that ?”
    An earthquake, of course. But not just an earthquake, not with those huge white things bursting out of the earth and sending dirt washing over them all. Jesus, had he really seen them?
    He rolled to his knees and looked around. The whole north campus looked like a battlefield that had been saturation-bombed. Even the generator-run spotlights had fallen over, their bright beams criss-crossing the ground in a haphazard manner.
    Huge pits and craters marred the earth, and heavy equipment was half-buried in giant ripples of dirt and shattered stone. He saw an arm without a shoulder attached to it, and somebody’s shoe, and a body that wasn’t moving.
    Jackson was sitting next to him, groaning and holding his leg. Shattered bone jutted through the flesh and his pants leg.
    Clancy licked his lips and tasted dirt.
    “You pulled me out.” He looked up at the provost. “Thanks. Did you call an ambulance?”
    Penemue regarded him with a thoughtful expression. “Not yet.”
    He seemed none the worse for wear. Dirt didn’t cover his fine wool coat and expensive suit the way it covered Clancy, and his bright white hair wasn’t even ruffled. Clancy shook his head. Some folks were born lucky.
    He pulled himself to his feet, feeling strained muscles protest.
    “Jackson? How you doing?”
    Jackson looked up, his face white with shock and his eyes glassy.
    “Think it’s broken,” he whispered, thinly.
    “Hang in there. I’ll get us some help.”
    “We’re the only survivors.” Penemue smoothed the front of his coat. “You were buried, but your head was left exposed.” He gestured to the large pile of upturned dirt from which Clancy had been drawn. Clancy shuddered.
    “Did you see those giant snakes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Thank God. I’m not crazy.” He looked around. Where was the forensics team? Buried underground? He felt a trace of panic. “You got any idea what they were?”
    Penemue was silent. Clancy wasn’t surprised. He didn’t have any good guesses, either. Everyone dead. Jesus! He looked down at the bag in his hand, then carefully folded it around the clay medallion and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
    Whatever it was, it was the only piece of evidence left from the investigation.
    “First thing we do is call an ambulance, and then report to the station,” he declared. Freaks of nature, aliens from outer space, or genetically engineered escapees from one of the local biochem labs—whatever those snakes were, they had to be reported.
    Maybe if both Jackson and Penemue supported his story, he wouldn’t be laughed out of the office.
    “Emergency services may be too busy to respond. The entire city seems to be in a state of emergency,” Penemue observed.
    Clancy took another look. The provost was right. The generator-powered lights had fooled him, but beyond them, everything was dark. And the ground was still shaking, although not as badly as before. He rubbed his wrist, then reached inside his jacket and touched the holster under his arm. He hadn’t lost his gun. That was something.
    “There’s a radio in my car. You stay here and keep an eye on Jackson. Don’t let him move.”
    “Wait.” Penemue lifted a hand. “Give me the seal before you