Title: Grissom's Tremors
By: TresMaxwell
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13
Warning: WiP
Author's Notes: Well, I think this is the first work I've done without some kind of relationship being involved. There's a slight hinting towards Nick and Greg, but really not even enough to post it as a pairing. They're just really friendly with eachother.
This is a interesting little whim that came to me when watching a movie. I won't say which movie here, because that could ruin the suprise, but I'm sure you can figure it out if you've ever seen it...
Summary: An entire town has gone missing and Grissom and his team intend to find out why, but the murders haven't ended yet...

***

Heat danced off the desert in long, distorted waves. The blazing sun kicked slow, lazy dancing into fantastic frenzy as it began its final decent for the day. A local thermometer reported a reading of one-hundred and three, while the chipping duck on the plastic next to the instrument seemed unfazed by the heat. It continued to stare out into the desert, frozen with a glass of bleached lemonade raised in a silent toast.

The cheap thermometer was attached to a house. It was watching the setting sun with dark windows like blank, soulless eyes, showing no signs of life from within. The front door stood open in a never-ending yawn, exposing the house's insides to any passing scrutiny.

The building was giving off every sign that something wasn't right. There was something wrong with its people, with its lifeblood, but no one had come to investigate. It was trying to draw attention to its disturbing emptiness and there was no one to hear its cries. Other houses on the same dirt road gave off the same signals, crying out that the people were gone and they had lost all purpose.

A swift wind came in across the desert, bringing the scorching heat with it. It curled around silent automobiles, whipped through the dusty corners of the houses, and played in the empty street. Its movement caused a long, lonely wail to rise up from the quiet town, like a final plea for help.

Once the breeze had passed, the only movement left was the steady turning of the lights atop a police cruiser, the red and blue beams passing repetitively over the wood paneling of a tiny grocery store. Both doors of the vehicle stood open, a light dusting of sand settling on the seats and dashboard. The CV radio crackled with the silence of extended distance between it and the home radio, the handheld end lying on the floor where it had been forgotten.

The occupants of the car were nowhere to be seen, as though they'd walked out into the desert and never returned. A fine, crimson mist covered the black and white's windshield and door, the only sign of the officers who had come to check on the silent town...

-----------

Intelligent blue eyes swept over a report as the body they belonged to navigated a hallway by instinct. The CSI avoided collision easily enough, making his way towards his office. It was rare that he navigated his workplace so blindly, but the report he'd received was fascinating enough to require his immediate attention.

It was barely six in evening when Gil clocked in. He was usually just prompt to work, but something as puzzling as the sheriff's report they had received a half an hour earlier was a good reason to show up before shift.

Upon entering his office, Grissom picked up his kit and checked to make sure he had restocked it properly. Of course, its contents were flawless, but he needed to kill another minute or two before his team arrived. He made a quick trip to the supply closet anyway. If they ran out of materials at the scene, they'd be stuck, because it was a long drive from Las Vegas.

Sara found Grissom in the hall, and raised her eyebrows at the large brown bag he was carrying. She smirked and crossed her arms over her chest, asking jokingly, "So, lunch already Gil?"

"We've got a crime scene to work, get your kit," he returned.

She couldn't help but smile at his blunt answer, but didn't say anything about it. Sara nodded and hurried away. Grissom swung by the locker room to see who else had come in. The room was dead. Dayshift was crawling home in numerous states of exhaustion, so it was easy to spot one of his own.

Greg was drumming rapidly on any surface he could find, jamming to the hard rock he had going on his mp3 player. A dayshift lab technician gave him a glare and muttered something about 'too much energy' before shambling out. The young CSI paused his air-playing only long enough to give his fellow employee a brief wave and finish tying his bright blue Converse shoes.

Grissom set down his extra supplies and called to the spiky-haired youth, "Greg... Greg... GREG!"

On the third yell, Greg looked up and slid his headphones off. A cheery grin cut across his face. "HeyGris,what'sup?"

"How many cups of coffee had you had this morning?"

"Threecupsofmy favoriteHawaiianbrewand *breath* asingleshotofespresso!"

Gil quirked an eyebrow, it was no wonder Greg was so pumped. He was lucky his heart didn't just stop dead from all the exertion. "You really should cut back. Anyway, I need you for a case, get your kit," Grissom said.

Greg's eyes widened slightly and he spoke quietly, as though in awe, "You need me? This is a monumental moment! Grissom needs me."

"It's a big case, I need everyone."

"Thanks for crushing the moment..." Greg whined playfully and shoved his mp3 player in his locker. "I'm ready whenever you guys are."

Gil rolled his eyes as dramatically as he could and picked up his bag, heading for the door. "Just meet us out in the parking lot in about ten minutes. Has Nick come in yet?" he added.

Greg shrugged and Grissom left the young CSI to gather his things. Halfway to his office, the graying entomologist saw trouble coming. Gil didn't even stop walking when Eckley began one of his many spiels.

"What do you think you're doing, Gil?" the balding supervisor snapped. He was obviously twisted into a knot, but Grissom rarely saw him otherwise.

Trying not to sigh, Grissom responded coolly, "Aren't you supposed go home when your shift ends?"

"Like you're one to talk."

"I'm taking my team out to a crime scene."

"You can't drag the entire nightshift out there; it's hardly worth the effort. If you want to go chase this thing, fine, but I'm ordering you to leave the rest of the team here."

So he'd read the report. It was more than likely that Eckley was just trying to make things difficult, because it seemed to be a form of entertainment for the man. Grissom felt his blood pressure rise slightly, but he refused to be irritated.

"An entire town is missing Eckley, I'm going to require as many hands as I can get."

"A town of twenty-two people, Gil. You know what happens in those little towns. The state of Nevada offers land to people who are willing to settle it, people come stay for a few years and when one decides to move out, they all move out. There's no crime out there, it's a waste of time," Eckley supplied uselessly.

Yes, Gil was well aware of this, but he was looking at different evidence than just the absence of people. "And the state trooper that went to investigate and never game back?"

"He went for donuts and coffee."

"And decided not to call anyone or return to work?"

Eckley's face twisted into a scowl and he relented, "Fine, but I want at least two people here to handle anything else that comes in."

Barely ten minutes later, Gil was heading west with Sara in the passenger seat of his navy Tahoe, and Nick and Greg lounging in the back.

-----------

"Are we there yet?"

"Greg, if you ask me that question again, I'll fire you," Gil threatened.

Greg snickered and settled back, shooting a smirk at Nick. He was rewarded only with a roll of chocolate-colored eyes as the laid back Texan didn't even look up from his book. Greg lost a bit of his mischievousness and looked out the window. He could only tease Gil so long before the older man really would can him, but he hadn't known that the crime scene was nearly four hours away.

"You know, if you'd brought somethin' to do, you wouldn't be so bored," Nick mentioned in an amused drawl.

Greg shot him a glare, grumbling, "Well, if SOMEONE had told me it was going to take so long, I would have at least brought my mp3 player. This radio silence is killing me."

"Greg, we're out of radio range. There's nothing we can do about it," Gil said, for probably the eighth time in the past hour.

"This thing's got a CD player; don't you have anything we can listen to?"

"Yes, but I highly doubt that you'll like my choice in music."

Thinking almost anything would be better than the current state of silence, Greg asked, "You never know, what have you got?"

"Mostly opera and classical..." The audible groan that came from the back seat caused the slightest of smiles to tug at the corners of Gil's mouth, but he shook his head and let it go.

Sara chuckled and tossed in a different suggestion, "Why don't you take a nap Greg? It would make the time go by faster... for all of us."

"Very funny," Greg snapped. Sometimes, he hated Sara, but only when she was being sarcastic and witty. He really didn't like being backed into a corner with no clever come-back. If he wasn't crashing like the plane that ran out of fuel mid-flight, he'd be in a better state of mind to battle her. He shouldn't have had so much coffee...

Rather than settle down, Greg leaned over and set his chin on Nick's shoulder. "Wanna play tic-tac-toe, or thumb wars?"

The level three CSI gave him a sidelong glance and sighed, "You really are bored, aren't you?"

"Yes, and if I use Grissom for entertainment any longer, I'm not going to have a job..."

"So now it's my turn?"

Greg gave him the most convincing puppy-dog stare that he could, slightly watery eyes and all, so Nick closed his book.

"Alright, it's not like you're going to leave me alone if I say no anyway," the Texan admitted wearily and held out his hand. "It's going to have to be thumb war, 'cause I don't have any paper."

Greg grinned and grabbed Nick's hand, reciting the typical phrase that precedes every civilized thumb war, "One, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war."

Nick waited until Greg was done and easily crushed the younger man's thumb beneath his own. The DNA specialist flailed with a lot more of his body than was really necessary, but Nick managed to keep a grip on his hand until he'd counted to ten.

"You cheated!" came the immediate accusation. If Greg didn't win, there had to be something wrong with the game. It was rigged against him.

"I did not. I just have an advantage 'cause my hands are bigger than yours," Nick said in his defense as he picked up his book.

"You're hands are not bigger!"

Gil's voice cut into their conversation, "Don't make me stop this car."

A good round of laughter came from the other passengers, but Grissom didn't join them. He managed to remain perfectly stoic while they chuckled. When they were done, he set his jaw. "I'm pulling over."

"What? Why!" Greg yelped, not sure what they'd done to piss him off.

"Because we have to stop here to get an officer that can escort us into town. Since it's too far out of LVPD jurisdiction, the local authority has to be our helping hand," Gil explained as calmly as though he hadn't been 'angry' just moments before.

It was the first time any of the others even really noticed that they'd entered a town, if it could really be called that. There was a single row of buildings on either side of the street and a few gravel roads trailing off of the main road.

Gil pulled into one of the poorly marked parking spaces. "Alright, take a break, walk around, and grab yourselves something to eat. I'm going to go see what we can arrange with the sheriff."

The team climbed stiffly out of the SUV and marveled at the blood flow that they hadn't been aware was missing. A quick bite of lunch and a well deserved bathroom break later, they were ready to get back on the road.

Before they left, Gil introduced his team to the two deputies that would be accompanying them to Shale Rock. The first was in his mid-forties and had a shaved head that was obviously covering for a bald spot. He was very friendly and introduced himself as Andy Westings.

The younger deputy, Dave Charleston, was about a year or two older than Nick and had a rather sour disposition. He made it very clear that he didn't want to trek out to Shale any more than he wanted to voluntarily get a root canal, but he left it at that and didn't heckle the CSI for being the cause of his misery.

They all piled into respective cars and headed north, the police cruiser leading the way. Gil fell in a few car lengths behind them. It was another hour and a half of solid driving before they reached their destination, Greg complaining about boredom the entire way.

-----------

Inside the town of Shale Rock, Gil parked in front of the only gas station in sight. The small, wood-paneled building also appeared to be the local grocery store. Grissom killed the engine and surveyed the crime scene for the first time. The town was perfectly quiet, but to an eerie degree.

A shout from their supporting officers drew the attention of the entire team. The older deputy, Andy, was running around the side of the building, towards something they couldn't see from their vantage point.

The employees of the Las Vegas Crime Lab traded glances and Nick spoke up, "I'll go see." He ran off after Andy, trying to catch him before he compromised any possible evidence. "Hey! What's your hurry?" he called to the officer.

"It's Jamison's car!"

Nick rounded the corner just after him and stopped. The black and white was covered with what looked like arterial spray, and a good deal of it. Whoever had been attacked near the car was defiantly dead. The shell casings Nick spotted near the driver's side door suggested that it was the cop's blood.

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you not to touch the car," Nick told the deputy calmly.

Officer Westings was anything but calm, but he stopped where he was, babbling almost incoherent questions, "What happened to him? What could have done this? Did somebody take an ax to him or something?!"

"That's what we're going to try and find out."

Greg came around the side of the building at a jog and gave a low whistle. "That's a lot of blood."

Nick didn't say anything, but walked around the car slowly. There were no signs of drag marks or retreating footsteps. It was more than possible that the wind had swept the area clean, but there should have at least been at trail of blood following the body, especially with a wound so big.

"There's not enough blood to suggest that he bled out here, so where's the rest?" Nick questioned, more to himself than anyone standing near him.

Greg answer him anyway, "Maybe the culprit carried him off, buried him somewhere?"

"But why would you bother to bury a body in a town this small? By the time the officers got here, the town had already stopped communicating with anyone nearby. That's why he came out here. There would be no point in wasting the time, especially if you weren't going to bother cleaning up the blood," the Texan mused.

Officer Westings moved away from the scene with a slightly queasy look as Gil and Sara joined them. He went and sat on the hood of his squad car to get out of the way of the investigation. Dave flopped down beside him and they began talking in low tones about their own suspicions as the CSI began collecting evidence.

Gil supervised as Nick and Greg got started on the empty squad car. "Alright, this entire town is a scene, so we're going to need to spread out to work on this. Greg, I want you to stay and work the car. Nick, I want you to take one of our officers and go make a full sketch of the town. Sara and I will start going through the houses."

There was a mutual understanding among the group, but only Nick and Sara voiced it. Greg was too busy examining a rather bizarre sinkhole of soft sand next to the car. "What do you think this is?"

Nick knelt beside him. "Probably some kind of collapsed burrow, maybe the officer stepped in it during the tussle," he theorized out loud.

It seemed reasonable enough, so Greg nodded and stood up. Sara snapped a picture of it and gave the lab tech turned CSI a wide smile. "And now your gofer burrow is in evidence."

"You don't have to be an ass about it," Greg whined and stuck his tongue out at her, just before Gil dragged her away.

"Alright, children, it's time to figure out what happened here."

***

Barely thirty minutes after he'd received his orders, Nick was already tired of the drying heat that he had no air-conditioned escape from. Even as uncomfortable as the feeling of his shirt clinging to his skin was, he managed to finish his general sketch of the town. It helped that Shale was incredibly small and had a grand total of twelve buildings, including the water tower.

As his sketch detailed, the town was arranged around the main highway. There were two buildings that were situated on the highway itself, while the others were based off of a small network of heavily-traveled dirt roads.

The west side of the town was organized into a cul-de-sac with five houses arranged around it and the east had one long road that elbowed off the highway and supported three smaller homes. All in all, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the small town of Shale Rock, except one long, gravel road. The house at the end of the gravel drive was set so far back from the rest of the town that it suggested that the resident had a reclusive nature.

Nick made careful notation on his map of the distance between the grey brick house and the rest of the buildings as Officer Charleston drove him back into town. He requested to be dropped at the house Gil and Sara had started processing, going in to deliver his sketch.

"Okay, this place is not very big. There were a total of ten houses. They're mostly arranged near each other, except for one, but that probably doesn't mean anything in a town with this much unused space," Nick reported when he found his supervisor.

Gil filed the information away in his mental file cabinet as he continued his walkthrough. There was a good deal of chaos in the house, broken dishes on the floor, items that had either fallen or been thrown off of shelves, toppled furniture. Grissom furrowed his brow at it all.

"Nick, what do you see here?"

The Texan tilted his head to one side and gave the room they were standing in a good look. "A lot of struggle, maybe a violent fight," Nick offered.

"But the damage is so uniform and there's no sign of blood," Grissom countered effectively.

Nick knew when to back down, especially when his boss had that thoughtful look. Nine times out of ten, Grissom was on a better track than Nick was when he started throwing questions at him, so he made the inquiry he knew Grissom wanted to hear, "Then what caused it."

"It looks like the aftermath of an earthquake."

Nick quirked an eyebrow, trying not to let his disbelief take over his reasoning. There had been no report of a recent earthquake in Nevada, nor was it very likely that there would be. There had been so few earthquakes in Nevada that Nick couldn't recall ever hearing about one, but unlikely didn't mean impossible. If he'd learned anything in his job, he'd learned not to be too surprised by the totally bizarre.

"Okay, so if there was an earthquake, why would all the people just pack up and leave?"

"They didn't leave, or, if they did, they didn't take their bags," Sara announced as she emerged from one of the hallways. "There are three full suitcases in the bedroom. Whoever was packing was in a hurry, because none of the clothes are folded. They wanted to get out of town, but I don't think they ever made it."

"Then where are they?"

The question settled over them in a thick blanket, it was going to be a very difficult one to answer. They'd found bodies in the desert before, but it had always taken dozens of cadets and they'd usually had some general idea of where to search. With the population of Shale Rock to look for, it was quickly becoming a daunting task.

"It's very likely that whoever did this would hide the bodies in one of the houses rather than take the time to bury them. We'll continue the investigation, making a thorough sweep of every house," Grissom rationalized easily. It was always amazing how he could stay perfectly calm, and sometimes optimistic, in the face of a truly difficult task.

They were just wrapping up on the house when Greg joined them, quite worked up and rather pushy. "There's something you have to see, now!" He all but corralled the team out the door and around the back of the building, explaining as he went, "I finished processing the car, or as much of it as I could without having it towed to the lab, so I was heading over here to see if I could give you guys a hand and..."

Grissom interrupted, "Get to the point, Greg."

Greg gave him a little glare and continued, "I decided to walk over from the gas station, so I cut across, rather than take the roads, to come up on the back of the house and I found this."

He finally stopped and motioned toward his discovery. It was one of their missing citizens, half-buried in the dirt. The DB was a slightly decomposed male that had been buried, feet first, up to his chest. There was a look of shock and fear frozen on his face, his hands stretched out, reaching for some unknown hope that he never found.

Nick was the first one to break the silence that had taken over the group, "Well, I guess that officially makes this a murder case."

The scene reminded Grissom of another case he had worked several years back. The victim had been buried alive to his neck and left for the wildlife to feed off of. Where the cases differed, was the fact that the DB he was currently looking at had the use of his hands to dig himself free and didn't have any signs of animal activity.

At the thought of animals, though, Grissom's mind trailed off and he looked around. Since they'd arrived, he hadn't seen a single bird or domestic pet. Even the insects were quiet. The apparent lack of life was almost disturbing, if not extremely unusual. There had to be a reason for it.

Gil returned to the problem at hand and realized that the team was waiting for some kind of response from him. Since he'd completely missed the question, he mentioned his notation instead, "Has anyone seen an animal since we arrived here? Heard an insect, anything?"

"Um, Grissom, what does that have to do with this?" Sara asked, a little miffed that he hadn't been paying attention.

He had no good answer for her, he sighed. "I'm sorry, what were you saying?"

She took it in easily as one of his many quarks and ran her words past him a second time, "I said that we need to get a doctor down here ASAP to declare him dead. I thought maybe you could call the sheriff in the next town and ask him to send someone... Oh, and we think that we're going to need some backup on this. You should call Warrick and Catherine and get them up here. If the entire town it like this, we're going to need some help."

"Of course. In the meantime, start processing around the body, see if you can find any trace of our suspect," Gil ordered and stepped away from the group.

Greg yelled a little side note after him, "And tell Warrick to bring the seismo-thingy, we could use it."

Grissom raised an eyebrow at the request. Greg could still be considered a newbie on the field, but he should have learned the name for most of the equipment rather than refer to it in terms like 'seismo-thingy'. Rather than bring that up when they all had other things to work on, he grabbed his cell off his belt and hit speed-dial for the local sheriff.

It had become habit to program important scene-related numbers into his phone before each case; it was a lot of work to keep it updated but always helpful in a sticky situation.

The cell beeped angrily at him when the call failed. Gil winced slightly and pulled the offending device away from his ear. A slight furrow creasing his brow, he pressed the appropriate speed-dial button a second time with the same result. A quick glance at the faceplate revealed that he had absolutely no service. Grissom suspected that he probably lost the signal about the same time that the radio gave out on them. They were just out of range.

Grissom couldn't help but roll his eyes at the 'advanced' technology that the crime lab insisted that they carry to every scene. What good was it when it didn't work? Instead of getting angry at the phone, he stuck it back in its carrying case.

"I'm going to go see if I can use the officers' CB radio; my cell doesn't have any signal," he announced and left the team to do what they do best. He took the shortcut that Greg previously mentioned, setting out across the vast empty space towards the gas station.

Gil was glad to see the police they had brought with them doing their job so well. They were effectively securing the scene as well as keeping an eye on the CSI by sitting on the hood of their squad car playing what appeared to be a game of poker.

The entomologist cleared his throat, but didn't receive the surprised response he was expecting. The deputies clearly had no idea that they were doing anything wrong. Grissom made sure to clear things up.

"You know, in Las Vegas, when an officer escorts one of us to a scene, they are there for our protection. They have a tendency to stay with us and make sure that the scene is both safe and secure. Now, I'm not entirely sure what your normal jobs entail, but I'm fairly certain that they don't pay you to play Texas Hold'em."

Both officers seemed thoroughly confused by his irritation, but Andy was the one to speak up, "But, sir, it's not like anyone's out here. There's really nothing to worry about."

"How do you know? Have you personally checked every house? I've had CSI attacked, murdered, and kidnapped because the officer at the scene didn't do their job properly and I don't think you have any idea whether or not this place is safe. You are to accompany us whenever we are investigating. If we take a break, then you can take a break, but not while we're working. Got it?" Gil snapped.

There were two brief nods following the proverbial 'chewing-out' of the deputies' asses and Grissom was satisfied with that. They probably, honestly, didn't have a clue about what was to be done at a crime scene, but Gil found that certain tactics worked better than others when it came to getting people to follow orders.

When he wanted answers from a subordinate, he used the silent treatment to guilt them into a confession, but, in the right situations, anger gave him just the edge he needed. If he had to choose though, he preferred to be passive-aggressive about getting his way, it required so much less yelling.

"Now, I need to use your CB to get in contact with town. We need them to send down a doctor to replace the coroner. We can't do anything with the body before it's been declared."

Officer Westings glanced at his partner, the sweat from the day's heat rolling down the side of his face. The uncertainty in his voice gave Grissom a sinking feeling before he'd even heard the news. "Well, you see, sir, our CB doesn't have a very long range. Since we don't normally go outside our own city limits, it usually works just fine, but it's got a fifty mile radius... We're too far away."

Dave cut in, his mind working on a completely different track, "Wait, what body?!"

"The body we just found," Grissom said briefly and walked past them.

If the CB didn't work, then that only left him with one option, a landline. While he hated the idea of hurting any potential evidence by using the first phone he could find, he despised the idea of losing a conviction on a murderer because they didn't follow procedure.

A very brief search of the grocery store produced a corded phone with large buttons and a worn-down earpiece. After snapping latex gloves securely over both hands, Grissom moved the telephone from its hiding place behind the counter and set it on the surface.

The call to the sheriff's office didn't take long, but it was a string of silly questions:

"Yes, we'll need him to fill out paperwork."

"No, he doesn't need to do anything besides pronounce the body."

"Yes, he has to have a degree!"

After putting up with as much incompetence as he could, Grissom told him to send down a doctor and hung up. He punched in Warrick's number next, grateful that he would have a far more intelligent discussion to cancel out his last conversation. He didn't want to go back to work wondering how a sheriff could possibly think that an unlicensed doctor could pronounce at a scene.

Warrick picked up his cell on the third ring, "Brown."

"Warrick, this is Grissom, I'm calling from a landline. I'm going to need you and Catherine out at this scene."

"This is the case with the town, right? Have you figured out where they've gone yet, because Eckley is convinced that you are chasing geese?"

"Forget Eckley. They're dead Warrick, and we need help," Gil told him firmly. It was hard enough to work Shale in pairs of two, but a few extra hands would help immensely.

"Alright. The only thing we've had here is a b and e, but we've pretty much wrapped that up. I'll grab Catherine and we'll head your direction."

Gil was about to thank him and hang up when he remembered Greg's request. "Oh, and Warrick, Greg wants you to bring the seismo-thingy."

"The what?"

"Oh, you know," Grissom said cryptically and set the phone back in the cradle. A little smirk crossed his face. Warrick was very bright; he'd be able to figure it out easily enough.

When they got back, he was going to get quite an earful from Eckley, but Grissom solved puzzles and he had no intention of leaving this one alone until he'd found the big picture. If that required his entire team, then so be it, he wasn't going to let a pompous know-it-all control his resources.

-------------

The investigation continued while they waited for a doctor to arrive. After posting one of their officers on body watch, the team split up and began the extensive search of each house.

Grissom's theory about earthquakes continued to hold strong, with uniform damage in every building. Items had been rattled off of shelves and picture frames sat at skewed angles on walls. But, a simple tremor didn't explain the DB that was buried to his chest in the desert, nor the blood-covered police cruiser.

Strangely, there were no signs of blood in any of the houses, even though there was plenty of blood outside. There was blood in the sand, on the sides of garages, spattered across porches, and dried on the meager plant-life. The bodies the blood belonged to were nowhere to be found.

When the doc arrived, almost forty minutes late, Gil and Sara went out to meet him. They led the lanky man to their strongest piece of evidence, which he took one look at and pronounced dead. He didn't go near it, or touch it, but it was easy enough to tell by the stench of decomposition.

At the first word, the excavation began. Sara laid out a tarp and Greg and Nick (having been brought in from their own work) began digging around the body. The sand was soft and easy to move since the body had been buried relatively recently. The dirt was scooped out and dumped on the tarp for sifting. Part of the way into it, Greg sat back on his heels.

"Guys, this body has no legs."

Everyone paused to look at him.

"What do you mean; was he handicapped?" Sara asked from where she was running the sand through a mesh-bottomed container.

"No, his legs are gone. They've been removed, or torn off maybe," Greg answered.

Nick shifted over so he could check out what it was that Greg was seeing. The DB was cut off just below the waist; the sand around it was soaked to a dark crimson. Greg glanced up at Grissom with an unspoken question.

Gil nodded and said, "Pull it out carefully."

Nick and Greg each took a side and slowly removed the body from its resting place. As Greg had noticed, the bottom half of their DB was completely gone. It appeared that he was severed in one, clean motion, but the body was going to have to be transported to Dr. Robbins before they could determine anything conclusive.

"What do you think? Could it have been an ax or a chainsaw?"

"It's too clean. An ax would need more than one swing and a chainsaw would make the flesh into hamburger meat. This looks like it was one crushing blow that split him in two," Grissom said, adding, "We've got to get this body into autopsy. Once Catherine and Warrick get here, I'll probably send one of you back with him."

They didn't bother to pick the big winner yet, but Gil had a few hours to think about it. A more thorough search of the gravesite revealed no sign of the victim's legs, so they split up again. Greg and Nick went to the north-west corner of the town to check out the only building that remained unsearched.

"Doesn't it seem kind of unusual that this one house is set back when the rest of the town is built so close together?" Nick asked as they approached the low, grey-bricked building.

Greg shrugged and fiddled with the Velcro on one of the pockets of his vest. He tucked it in on itself when he couldn't get it to stay closed. "Not really. I mean, if you move to town no one has heard of in the middle of nowhere, maybe you don't want neighbors. Did you take a peek inside when you made the sketch?"

"No, I just wrote down where it was."

Greg hopped up the porch steps and tried the front door. It swung inward easily. "Well, the door's unlocked, so let's take a look."

Both men had to stop and stare at the contents of the house.

"I think we've found our suspect..." Nick murmured quietly.

"Yeah, and his motive," Greg added.

The room they'd entered was jammed full of high-tech forgery equipment. There were laminators, block printers, engraving machines, and about half a dozen machines that they didn't recognize. Several computers were setup in the back corner and stacks of what appeared to be driver's licenses were piled around them.

Nick set down his kit and started taking snapshots of the scene. He made sure to get doubles of everything to ensure that he had a clear picture. In the meantime, Greg snapped on his gloves and began shifting through one of the many cardboard boxes on the floor.

"He's got the equipment for everything. There are birth certificates, social security cards, green cards, everything. If someone found out about his setup, he'd be in some serious trouble," the bleach-blonde CSI observed.

"But, in a town this small, he couldn't just make one person disappear without drawing attention."

"So, what, then he kills the rest of the town and runs off?"

Two sets of eyes met in the dark space, both investigators thinking the same thing; there was a very dangerous man on the loose.

***

Grissom was the last to sit down at the surrogate break room table. The rest of the team had gathered there to swap discoveries and try to piece together what had happened in the small town. While they intended to be productive, their gathering was also for a well deserved break.

They'd been working for almost four hours and they were all tired, thirsty, and hot. The grocery store had a small fan that provided some minor relief from the heat. Greg fooled with it until it was running on full blast, before he flopped back down in his spot at the table.

"When are 'Rick and Cath getting here?" The blonde rocker asked as he turned his chair backwards.

Sara opened a warm water bottle she'd left in the car and answered him, "Well, we called them quite a while ago, so it kind of depends on who's driving and how fast they're going. They could be here any minute or it could be another hour." She made a face at the wholly unsatisfying water, screwed on the lid, and dropped it on the table. Water at a ninety-something degrees wasn't incredibly quenching.

Greg nodded. He was beginning to think that he'd volunteer to take their DB to the Doc. At least the Tahoe had air-conditioning.

"We think we've got a suspect," Nick said, successfully distracting them from the temperature.

Grissom's bright blue eyes moved up from his page of notes, giving Nick his undivided attention.

Knowing it was his cue to continue, he did so, "Greg and I checked out the house that's farthest out. That guy had every piece of forgery equipment I've ever seen. He was very well set up and it looked like he'd been doing business through the mail. We think that someone might have found his arrangement."

"He's got a lot of tools in his yard, but we didn't find any blood on any of them. We did find some really weird orange stuff," Greg added, fishing the disgusting sample from Nick's kit.

Grissom took it and slid on his glasses for a better look. A slight crease formed in his brow. "I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. We'll have to get it to the lab."

"We think it's biological, because it smells like it's decomposing," Greg tossed in as he eyed the coolers pushed up against the back wall. There was a plethora of frosty drinks behind the glass, just waiting to be enjoyed. Greg didn't think that Gil would go for the idea, but he really wished that there weren't such strict rules about crime scenes.

"That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Maybe it just smells," Sara said. She shuffled through some papers she'd found and slipped them into an evidence bag. "From what I can tell, there were only sixteen people living here when all of this happened. So, unless there was an accomplice, I think we're looking for fourteen more bodies, assuming no one got out of town..."

Fourteen. The number was daunting, especially with only four CSI and two bored deputies to find them all. They were going to need some serious backup, and a much better idea of where to start searching.

The sound of an approaching car interrupted their meeting. If the rest of the team was arriving so soon, it meant that Warrick had been driving. Nick hopped up and went to the door to greet them.

The green-eyed CSI slid out of the driver's side door and removed his sunglasses. "Hey bro, how's it goin'?" Warrick called and sauntered over. He left the car running. "Where's Gris want the equipment?"

"We don't know yet, why don't you and Cath come in and we'll fill you in," Nick said and stepped aside.

Catherine got inside first, taking charge, as was in her nature, "Alright, what have we got?"

"A missing town, very few clues, a possible earthquake, a forgery factory, one body, and fourteen missing persons," Greg concluded easily. He didn't mean to make it sound bleak, but it really was.

Warrick whistled. "So, where do you want the 'seismo-thingy'?"

"Oh god, Grissom! Did you tell everyone that I forgot what that damn thing was called?" Greg mock-wailed.

"Well, I didn't know that you were the one who'd said it," CSI Brown laughed. "Anyway, you really think that this'll be enough to find so many?"

"It'll help," Catherine stated, taking a seat at the table and picking up Sara's discarded water. She took a sip and made a face, promptly dropping it back to the table. "I take it that's been out a while."

Sara grimaced and nodded.

Grissom dropped his notes into his kit. He gave out his orders according to the plan he thought to be most suitable in their situation, "We're going to start up at the forger's house. We'll use the equipment to search the backyard and cov-" Gil stopped short as a very loud screech permeated the room.

The horrid noise came from outside and could easily have been sound of metal being torn apart. When it stopped, all that remained was a heavy silence. Wild, bewildered looks were passed around the room, but no one had an explanation for it.

"My car isn't running anymore," Warrick stated in the deadly quiet. He'd left the SUV running so he could drop the equipment where Gil wanted it, but he couldn't catch the sound of the idling engine.

Like someone had pulled the trigger on a starting gun, the stillness in the room broke as everyone moved for the door.

There weren't any outward signs that the Trail Blazer had been tampered with, so Warrick circled around to the driver's side. The keys were still in the ignition. He reached in and gave them a twist, but the engine didn't start. In fact, it didn't even sputter, cough, or make a noise of any kind.

Nick tapped on the hood and called, "Hey, pop it, would ya'?"

Warrick pulled the release and Nick stuck his head under the hood. He was good with cars, actually, he was great with cars, but nothing could prepare him for what had made Warrick's vehicle stop.

The engine was gone, completely. All of the support structures were bent downward and twisted out shape. The undercarriage was also torn open, but it had pieces of metal going in two directions, in and out. Whoever had removed the engine, they'd somehow managed to do it from the bottom.

"What's wrong with it, Nick?"

"Nick?"

The Texan looked up at Grissom, who had called his name last. "It's gone," he stated in complete shock.

Gil and Greg came forward to see for themselves, as Warrick walked around the side of the car. "What do you mean it's gone?" he asked.

Nick ran a hand through his hair, trying to process what had happened. "No one could have possibly removed an engine in that amount of time! They'd need tools and equipment and... and a hell of a lot more time. That's impossible," he muttered. There were no signs of another vehicle near the SUV, nor the trace of a human being.

Sara put her hand on her gun and scanned the area around her. "I'm going to go get the officers," she said, while moving cautiously around the side of the building.

"Hey, there's a hole in the dirt," Greg declared.

Nick glanced up at him with a raised eyebrow. "What does that have to do with anything?"

The blonde CSI dropped to the dirt to peer under the vehicle, replying, "Well, it might have something to do with it, since its right under the hole in the car. Maybe somebody-"

Sara barreled around the corner of the grocery with her gun drawn, cutting him off, "Guys! Our supporting officers are gone and, judging by the blood, I think they're dead!"

Her frantic report stopped the group cold. Whoever had killed the population of Shale Rock was still in town, and now they were alone. A faint whimper escaped someone, but nobody bothered to determine who. They were in some serious danger and fear was expected.

Grissom took control, seeing the need to keep his team safe. "Everyone who has a weapon, get it out. I want everyone inside the grocery store now," he ordered in a low voice. It was completely devoid of alarm, which helped keep the others from panicking.

Nick, Warrick, and Catherine drew their guns, while Greg edged closer to the group. He'd decided at some point that he really didn't need a gun in the field, now, he was changing his opinion.

They moved hastily into the building, securing the door firmly. Once they were inside, the panic started. Sara paced around the room, speaking in terrified whispers, "He destroyed the car so we couldn't get out! He wants us here! These people didn't stand a chance, this guy is crazy! We're well armed and haven't even found a trace of him, so why would he bother us?"

"Besides the fact that we're on his trail?" Nick shot into her frantic theory.

Catherine put a hand on Sara's shoulder and guided her into a chair, trying to calm her. "We'll be fine. We've still got Gil's car and the police cruiser, if we absolutely need it. He hasn't stranded us," she reassured.

Grissom set his gun on the counter and picked up the phone he'd used hours ago. He manually transferred a number from his cell to the ancient, yellowing machine. No longer worried about ruining potential evidence, Gil put the phone to his ear and waited for the call to go through.

The other end rang four times before a friendly, pre-recorded voice told him that the line for Henderson police department was busy and he could either wait for an operator or try back later. Since he didn't have time to wait for the line to clear, Gil gave up on local police help and dialed in another number. The second number only rang twice before he got an answer.

"This is Brass."

"Brass, we need assistance. There is a suspect on location. We don't know... Brass?" Grissom slowly put down the phone. The line was dead. He took a moment to compose himself before he looked up at his team. Three sets of curious eyes were staring at him, waiting for his explanation. "The line was cut," he said gravely.

Greg couldn't hold back a hysterical snicker, as he asked, "Hey Nick, do you know much about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? You know, being that you are from Texas and that seems kind of congruent to this."

Nick gave him a horrified look. "That never actually happened, Greg."

"Any particular reason we aren't using a cell phone?" Catherine asked. She didn't want to think about Greg's question, nor did she think that anyone else wanted to either. There was no need to cause any more stress than necessary. She pulled out her cell and noticed the complete lack of signal.

"We're in some kind of dead zone; they can't get in contact with a tower," Grissom explained. "I tried earlier. The CB radios are out of range as well."

"We need to get out of here. I think we should just go to Grissom's car and leave, before this psychopath makes another appearance," Warrick suggested needlessly. Everyone was all for the idea. They gathered at the door, prepared to make a mad dash for safety.

Grissom pulled out his keys. "Listen, we just need to be careful. I want Sara watching to our left, Catherine to the right, and Warrick and Nick, watch our backs. Greg..."

The young CSI looked up at him.

"Just stay close. Let's go."

They moved out in a tight formation, guns held at the ready and Grissom leading the way. The twenty yards to the car seemed like a mile and a half, but they made it with no mishap. Gil unlocked the doors and they all piled in, Nick watching the immediate area until everyone was inside. He jumped in last, slamming the door shut and making sure that it was locked.

Warrick had claimed the front seat and it was a little cramped with four people stuffed in the back, but no one was complaining.

Gil stuck the keys in the ignition, and muttered, "Let's get the hell out of here." He brought the engine to life and slammed the Tahoe into gear, putting the petal to the metal. The machine roared, but didn't move. Grissom could hear the tires spinning fruitlessly in the dirt.

"What's wrong with it?" Catherine asked, a distinct edge of nervousness entering her tone.

Ignoring her question, Grissom furrowed his brow and shifted the SUV into a higher gear. The engine whined with exertion, but the car still didn't move. He was about to shift again when a loud, metallic screech nearly deafened all of them. The Tahoe jerked violently, jarring the team, and then fell silent.

"What the hell was that?" Greg panted from the floorboards, where he'd been tossed. No one answered him.

Grissom tried to start the car again, but, just like Warrick's Trail Blazer, it didn't make a sound. He turned the key a few more times with no success and slammed a hand down on the steering wheel.

They were stuck. Whoever this guy was, he was damn good. He'd somehow managed to rig both of their cars so that they couldn't get out of town and now they were at his mercy. He'd made sure that they had no way of calling for backup. They were mice in the paws of a cat that enjoyed playing with his food.

Suddenly, the team learned that the danger wasn't above the ground, but below it. In a shower of sand and clods of dirt, a monstrous beast burst out from the earth and stretched almost seven feet into the air. It clashed three mandibles together hungrily and fell back towards the ground. The creature was long and limbless, with no sensory organs, such as eyes or ears, to speak of and a black, smooth head that looked like bone or exoskeleton. It screeched, the sound like rusty sheet metal grinding together.

A CSI normally reacted to things calmly and with a certain level of control. A CSI was trained to deal with any number of unusual situations and approach them with a clear head. A CSI had no prior information on how to deal with a giant worm-like thing that seemed inclined on eating them, so the CSI's in Grissom's Tahoe did the only thing they could think of, scream and get as far away form the right side of the car as possible.

Gil, on the other hand, blinked at this new development, stating, "Oh, that's new."

The grotesque thing settled its upper half on the ground and opened its mouth. Three long tongues shot out at the car, slamming into the window. The glass cracked from the force. The tentacle-like appendages had mouths of their own, lined with rows of sharp teeth and they left long trails of iridescent, white slime in their wake.

Greg calmed down slightly when the glass didn't break. Sure, he was really freaked out, but screaming really wasn't helping the situation. They had to do something, but no one else seemed interested in jumping into action, so Greg grabbed the nearest gun and unloaded it into the beast.

The first two shots shattered the window and tore into the tongues, spattering orange material and shards of glass all over the inside of the vehicle. The rest went into the creature's head. It screeched and retracted the tentacles before diving back underground.

For several seconds, nobody moved, and then Nick spoke, "Damn Greg, why don't you carry a gun around again? You're a crack shot."

"While it's really interesting that Greg is such a good shot, may I suggest that we get back inside the building before that thing comes back?" Sara said flatly and unlocked the door. She opened it up, but hesitated before she set her foot on the dirt. "It should be gone, right?"

"There's only one way to find out," Warrick shouted and jumped out of the Tahoe. He hit the ground running, the rest of the team on his tail. They made a beeline for the building. As he ran, Greg glanced over at the hole the creature had left; it looked exactly like the 'collapsed burrows' that he'd seen all over town. Whatever this thing was, it had eaten Shale Rock.

The sand near his feet bulged and shifted as he sprinted the last few feet, sliding into the store dead last. The moving curve of earth disappeared beneath the foundation of the building. "Guys, I don't think that there was a motive to this at all, I think that thing ate everyone."

A literal storm of questions and exclamations flew through the air before the team could cope with what they'd seen.

"What was that thing?!"

"It tried to eat us!"

"What are we going to do now?"

The only calm person in the room leaned against the counter and rubbed his beard. His blue eyes sparkled with excitement as he said, "It appears that we have an undiscovered species in Nevada."

***

"We aren't just going to sit here, are we?" Warrick sighed.

Action would be the best course in their situation, if anyone could come up with a good idea. So far, they had nothing logical or safe. Greg had voted for running for the squad car, when Sara mentioned that she'd checked for the keys and one of the officers must have had them when he was taken. He'd then asked if anyone knew how to hotwire a car, but only Nick spoke up. The Texan could, but it would take some time for him to get around the safeguards in a squad car. By that time, that thing probably would have devoured them.

Greg then suggested running like mad for the next house to see if they had a phone, but that too was voted down.

"Look, I say we just sit tight. Some one will come around to see what happened. Besides, Grissom did get a hold of Brass, even if the call was cut short," Catherine reasoned easily.

Warrick stood and began a slow circuit of the room. "But we don't know how much of that got through to Brass, not to mention the fact that it will take him hours to get here. As far as anyone else knows, we already have several officers on the scene with us and a scene this big could take days to process. We have to get out of here."

"And where exactly do you expect us to go?!"

Sara jumped in for Catherine's defense as voices were raised, "We're safe in here with that... that... whatever-it-is out there. There's no need for us to take any unnecessary risks. We don't know what it's capable of."

Greg rolled his chocolate-brown eyes towards the ceiling. There didn't seem any point in breaking up such a fight, since they'd had three others already. He glanced over at Gil, who was busy being deep in thought (which he'd been in since they'd first seen the creature), and opened one of the coolers. A can of Miller's was the closest thing to his hand, so he grabbed it and popped it open.

There was something strangely familiar about the whole situation. Greg wasn't sure whether it was something he'd seen in some cheesy B-grade horror flick, or if it was something else. He just had this nagging feeling that he knew more than his mind would tell him.

Sara and Warrick got into an all out yell-fest, raising their voices until even Grissom looked up. Everyone knew that it was the stress of the situation, but Sara and Warrick didn't always see eye to eye anyway.

Before anyone could get up to separate them, the center of the wooden floor creaked and bulged where something rammed into it from below. It cracked sharply and the team scattered to the edges of the building, the argument falling silent.

The attack cleared up something for Grissom. "They hunt by sound. There were other options with them living underground, but that proves it," the entomologist whispered.

Gil's epiphany gave Greg the weirdest sense of déjà vu. He'd heard that phrase before, and it had to do with the familiarity the circumstances were giving him. Greg slapped his fist into his palm with a cry of, "That's what it is!"

Several people shushed him, but he hurried on in an excited voice, "It's a Graboid! That thing is a Graboid! On the way home from California this one time; I stopped at this tourist trap in Perfection Valley with a claim of giant monsters called Graboids. According to the girl running the gas station, they showed up like ten years ago and ate a bunch of people in Perfection. She said they live underground and hunt by sound! They had all kinds of gift shop stuff with those worm things!"

"Greg! Hush! That's really good to know, but the Graboid can hear you and he's trying to eat us right now!" Nick whispered fiercely.

Greg shut his mouth.

Slowly, the hyper-stressed boards groaned and shifted back into place. The creature slid away from their safe haven, rattling bottles and glasses with its movements.

"I guess that's where the earthquakes came from. Those things cause a lot of vibrations underground," Grissom said quietly, and moved to pick up his chair from where it had fallen. "Now, Greg, what do you know about all of this?"

The blonde punk-rocker crossed over to the table. It was rare that he was a sole source of information, even if it was because he let himself be dragged into a tourist trap. There seemed to be a grain of truth in everything, however, and he had the team's full attention.

He started explaining as the others came over to join them (Catherine removing her high heels so she wouldn't make as much noise). "Like I said, the people in Perfection named them Graboids when they showed up about ten years ago. From what they could determine, they were some kind of ancient creature that hunted its prey from below ground. They sense the vibrations of sound and pull their victim down. A pack of four of them ate most of Perfection before they killed them."

"Wait, so how'd they kill them?" Warrick questioned. If the people in Perfection had done it, then why couldn't they?

Greg glanced over at him with a sigh. "Well, they had a reclusive military expert with loads of high powered guns and explosives that helped blow them to hell. We have Nick, who can fix cars but is wholly un-useful when it comes destroying giant worms," he joked.

The Texan shot him a glare, but didn't bother to respond.

"But that's really all I've got. By then, my tank was full and I'd paid for my Cheetos, so I was on the road again. Since there were no live giant worms, I really didn't feel like hanging out," Greg concluded with a shrug.

"How have we never heard of this before?" Sara muttered. She shook her head and commented, "It really looks like we just have to wait until help comes. I mean, what else can we do? Like Greg said, we don't exactly have high explosives to get rid of these things."

"Too bad, that would have been fun," Nick lamented offhandedly. It wasn't often that he got to play with things that exploded. He didn't really like going through debris to figure out what kind of bomb it was, but blowing things to hell to see if they had the right materials was quite entertaining.

Grissom sighed, trying not to roll his eyes at Nick's remark, and said, "We wait."

So they waited... and waited... and got bored, and tired, and into the coolers for drinks, and watched Greg search every inch of the store for some kind of amusement, and were amused by Greg's level of boredom, which was above and beyond their own.

Almost two, eventless hours passed out in the desert wasteland. Occasionally, someone would pull out their cell and hold it up, trying to get any kind of signal. They were always disappointed, but they tried anyway.

Conversation was minimal for fear of attracting the creatures. The team would hear the beasts break the surface of the earth or pass under the building from time to time, and wondered what the Graboids were capable of. They could only speculate that the things were responsible for the death of Shale Rock's population, but it was a good bet and the evidence defiantly pointed in that direction.

One of the creatures shrieked, causing its prey to shudder.

Catherine rubbed her arms in a subconscious gesture of comfort, whispering, "Why does it have to make that noise?"

Sara looked over at her and shook her head, her lips pressed into a thin white line. CSI Sidle was scared, much more so than she'd ever admit. She knew she wasn't alone though, because fear was pretty easy to read on every other face in the room. At some time or another, they'd all had their lives on the line, but being at the mercy of a creature they knew nothing about was more difficult to handle than being at that of a human being. A person was readable, a person made mistakes, while a predator was a killing machine designed by nature to be flawless.

Unable to sit idle any longer, Catherine got up and went to the door. They'd propped it open to get some air flowing through the stifling room and she stood in the empty frame. The single mother crossed her arms over her chest, thinking about the child she had to get back to. It didn't matter that the baby-sitting fees would be a small fortune, but Catherine was supposed to be home with Lindsey hours ago.

Every so often, Catherine got a case that kept her away from home too long and (despite the cool and slightly cruel exterior Lindsey had been putting up lately) the young teen worried about her. Her concern showed through the phone calls she gave when Catherine wasn't at the house on-time. The teen would disguise the call as a complaint about hunger and the lack of dinner, or wanting to know where her mom had left something trivial, but Catherine could always detect the distress of a child who just wanted her mother.

Catherine sighed and looked down at her quiet phone. There'd be no way of knowing if Lindsey needed her, nor any way of telling her little girl that she'd be alright, that she'd be home soon. Not that getting back was a certain thing.

Warrick watched Catherine with a furrowed brow. He'd known Cath a long time, and he knew her stance, the way she was twisting her hands just slightly, was a sign of inner turmoil. Catherine always kept a cool head in a situation, and, if anyone was going to lose it, she'd be the last one, so Warrick doubted that it had anything to do with the worms.

The green-eyed CSI got up and crossed the room, intent on finding out what was causing the tension in Catherine's shoulders. He reached out a hand to get her attention and then she was gone. There was an audible crack of her head hitting the floor as she was torn off her feet and dragged away by an ankle.

It took a single heartbeat before Warrick realized what had happened. "Catherine!" he yelled and bolted out the door after her.

The creature had used one of its long tentacles to grab her when she'd come to the edge of the building. It pulled her towards its waiting mouth, oblivious to the attack Catherine was making on the extension wrapped around her foot.

"Hang on Cath! I've got you," Warrick shouted and grabbed her arm. Grissom slid to a stop next to him and seized Catherine's other arm, making record time for someone who had crested fifty. Sara, Nick, and Greg tumbled outside shortly after.

The beast screeched its annoyance and pulled back, gaining ground in their battle, despite Gil and Warrick's attempts. Catherine cried out, feeling as though she was going to be pulled in two. The thing's grip on her ankle tightened.

The trio stood dumbly by the door for a moment, not sure what to do nor how to do it. They had to get Catherine free. Warrick and Grissom could only do so much, and there was no way that they were going to win against a beast that had to weigh several tons, that was like trying to win a game of tug-of-war with a industrial-sized John Deer tractor. If they didn't do something, the beast was going to devour Catherine and things would really just never be the same at the lab.

Greg turned and ran inside, at the same time that Nick bolted around the corner of the building to find a tool. The youngest CSI looked around the grocery store frantically before he spotted what he was searching for. He snatched a bottle of hard liquor from one of the shelves and grabbed a lighter off of a display on the counter, scattering the others as he knocked the cardboard set-up over in his hurry.

Tearing a strip out of his shirt, Greg opened the bottle of vodka and stuffed the cloth down into the liquor, making sure that the material filled the neck of the bottle. He bolted back outside to find little change in the situation. Warrick and Gil were still holding strong, but they were wearing out and had lost a good deal of ground to the creature. Sara had moved around to the side and was popping round after round into the Graboid. The gunshots sounded loud and clear over the tussle. The subterranean beast seemed to take no notice of the metal slugs as they entered its body, too busy with its uncooperative meal.

Greg turned the bottle over and soaked the strip of cloth thoroughly, some of the vodka splashing on the ground near his feet. He pulled out the lighter as Nick came around the corner with an ax in hand. Before the Texan could get close enough to free Catherine, Greg set the fabric in the bottle ablaze.

"Get down!" the punk rocker yelled and threw the vodka as hard as he could. His aim was much better than he expected it to be and the bottle disappeared down the creature's throat.

There was muffled 'whump', the beast's thick skin bulging slightly, and then it retracted its tongues quickly (Catherine, Warrick, and Grissom falling into a messy pile when it released). It screeched once more, a sickly, gurgling sound, and fell forward. Foul smelling orange liquid poured slowly from its mouth. It didn't move again.

Five sets of eyes turned to Greg, who looked back at them, his hands on his knees and his breath coming out harder than normal. He ran his tongue over his lips lightly and said, "Molotov cocktail... Oh, by the way, that wasn't the one I shot earlier. I think we'd better get inside."

---------------

Once Catherine was seen to, and had an ice-pack secured around her ankle and pressed against the goose egg forming on the back of her head, attention was turned to the fact that Greg could make a dangerous and highly illegal explosive.

"What?! You honestly want to know that? Why? Nick made pipe bombs that one time to test the materials," Greg diverted as quickly as he could.

"I didn't make those, I just figured out what they were made out of. Somebody who is certified for that in the lab made the bombs for the experiment. To be able to toss something like that together in a crisis... you've obviously made that thing before."

"What do you want me to say, that I'm a violent rioter on the weekends and frequently enjoy supplying the mob?"

Catherine cut in sharply, "Stop it! We'll worry about that nonsense later. Now, I think we need to be a little more concerned with our welfare." When the room quieted, she continued, directing a question at Greg, "Are you sure that wasn't the one you shot earlier?" The woman was surprisingly calm considered she'd nearly been eaten.

"I'm sure. All of the wounds were fresh from Sara's shooting; none of them had dirt in them. That was a different Graboid."

"So there's more than one of these things?" Warrick asked, alarmed.

It was bad enough with one, but a group of them meant that there was little or no chance that they could kill them all. One was dead, yes, but it had been an extremely dangerous escapade and there was no way they were going to use someone as bait to get another creature to the surface. Without help, they were as good as stuck, but that was precisely the situation they were in earlier, so it wasn't exactly news.

"What we really need is an airlift," Gil said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, and a phone to call it in on," Catherine added. "Look, one, or eighteen of those things, it doesn't matter. Brass knows we need help out here; he must have picked that much up before the line was severed. We are safe in here for now, but we have to keep quiet."

"What's Brass going to be able to do? Those things will tear up his car just the same, and then we'll all be stuck," Nick pointed out.

It was a very blatant, and almost painful statement, but it was true. Brass's car made noise, like every other vehicle in existence in the world, and those things would be on it as soon as it rolled into town. The least of their worries was whether or not Brass could actually rescue them. What was really of concern was whether or not they could get Brass inside before the creatures got HIM.

Grissom got up to slowly pace the room. There had to be a way out, it was just a matter of finding it. They had no idea how many creatures there were and they had no way of communicating from their current position. The other houses possibly still had active phone lines, but there was no safe way of reaching them.

Gil crossed his arms over his chest, racking his brain for ideas. There was one thought that he'd come up with hours ago, but he really didn't like the risk involved in it. Unfortunately, no other option had presented itself since. He sighed. "We can, potentially, get to the other houses. It will be dangerous though."

The team quieted and turned to him.

"These things hunt by sound, so the best bet for anyone moving across the ground would to be to take off their shoes and move at a nice, steady walk. The only thing we don't know is how sensitive their hearing is, so I really don't-"

A terrible tremor stopped any thought of escape, as bottles and boxes rattled off of shelves. Following the start of the vibrations, one of the beasts slammed into the floor. Dozens of cracks zigzagged across the wood and splinters catapulted from the surface, but it didn't give way.

The CSI scattered across the room, staring at the weakened floor with horror. If the creature was capable of tearing a car apart, then it was quite capable of ripping through wooden floorboards. A deathly silence fell over the room. Despite the only sound in the room being the rapid beating of several hearts, the creature attacked the floor again, towards the back of the building.

A large shelf full of Nevada-themed merchandise suffered most from the attack, and teetered precariously off-balance before making a suicidal dive for the floor. It missed Sara by scant inches as she scurried to get out of the way. CSI Sidle leapt over an upturned chair and joined Warrick on the Eastern wall.

"What the hell are they doing?" Greg yelled. There was no point in being quiet if the beasts were attacking regardless. One of the Graboids slammed into the floor directly at his feet, causing him to jump and back towards the entrance of the building.

Gil helped Catherine out of the way as the creatures attacked again, this time near the center. "They seem to be testing the integrity of the flooring. Maybe they're looking for a weak spot," Grissom returned. Actions like that would mean that the subterranean beasts were extremely intelligent, and were capable of a higher level of thought than the scientist had originally anticipated.

The next three attacks came in rapid succession, starting farther back and moving towards the team. They pressed back, away from the approaching onslaught. The last blow split the wood only five feet from the door and then everything went silent. For several moments, no one dared to breath, let alone move. It seemed as though the slightest of sounds would bring the beasts back, and if they came back again, they wouldn't leave until they'd had their meal.

When Gil finished regaining his senses, which really only took a few seconds, he took a visual status check of his team. Next to him, Catherine was a little out of breath from trying to get around on her heavily bruised ankle, but was doing all right. Warrick and Sara were huddled near the large coolers along the left side of the building. Neither seemed injured and Sara gave him a thumbs-up when he looked their direction. Nick was leaning against the counter a little heavily and he had a superficial scratch on his forehead that was probably inflicted by one of the flying shards of wood, otherwise, he'd survived. Last, Gil glanced over at the front of the store. Greg was... Greg was gone.

***

Grissom released Catherine and ran to the door, hoping that the punk rocker had just wandered outside to see something. "Greg? Oh God," his voice fell nearly to a whisper when he spotted the energetic youth, but he leapt into action immediately, yelling, "Nick, get the ax!"

The Texan bolted across the room, scooping up the sharp tool from where it had fallen as he ran. Hot on Grissom's heels, Nick sprinted out the door. As was expected, the others followed suit and joined them barely a heartbeat later. The sight that greeted them was not at all like what they expected. Greg was firmly tangled in the creature's grasp, but it hadn't come to the surface to claim him. One of the beast's appendages was wrapped firmly around his waist and legs, the sightless mouth clamped mercilessly on his ankle. A dark crimson stain was spreading across the denim.

Greg looked up as they emptied out of the convenience store; his face was torn between bewilderment and terror. One arm was pinned to his side, but he was tearing at the thick tentacle with his free hand. The lab rat yelled at them, "Wait! It's doing something new, don't come any-" A scream tore from his throat before he could stop it. The appendage tightened around him and another shot out of the earth to wind around his shoulders, biting into his arm.

Nick led the charge with a yell, "Hang on Greg!" Before he could get close enough to help, a hand seized his arm and brought him to a startling halt. The Texan whipped around, shooting a deadly glare into icy blue eyes. "What the hell are you-"

"Hush. Greg's right, they're doing something new. From what I've seen so far, I'm beginning to believe that these things are much smarter than we think they are," Grissom said and released his grip on the CSI's arm.

Nick hesitated and looked back at Greg's pain-stricken face. The muscle in his jaw twitched compulsively, and he murmured, "I'm not waiting for that thing to eat him."

The others stood on edge a few feet away, waiting to see whether the charge would continue or if Gil's logic would win out. Sara was scarcely breathing, her gun held at the ready. Warrick and Catherine watched intently as Nick tightened his grip on the ax. When he lowered it, the mounted tension broke, but didn't disappear. There was still the matter of getting Greg away from the creature.

"Um, guys? It's kind of getting uncomfortable over here... when I said 'don't come closer', I didn't mean don't help me! I don't wanna' be eaten!" Greg wailed helplessly. He let out a little yelp when the thing jerked him violently, but it turned into a yell when the beast started moving away from the CSI, dragging Greg with it. "Oh shit... GUYS!"

The group hesitated, looking to Grissom for guidance in the new development. The creature taking Greg with it across the desert obviously didn't fit into his plan, but he couldn't just let it slip away. The thing was picking up it's pace and there was no good option for them to take.

"Grissom?" Nick ventured, his eyes fixed on the cloud of dust that the creature was leaving in its wake as it took Greg farther away from them.

Gil said something under his breath, then shouted, "Come on, or we're going to lose him!"

They took off after the shrinking form, yelling for their companion to hang on. It was Sara who tripped over the first of Greg's lost items and nearly fell face first into the dirt because of his shoe. They also passed his wallet, phone, and a few pieces of his CSI vest as they ran. Ms. Sidle looked behind her at the offending object and spotted three trails of flying dust behind them. A cold fear gripped her chest. Greg was the bait to lure them out where there was no protection. Just like they had when the creatures had taken Catherine, everyone came out of the store to help, leaving them vulnerable. The farther the beast dragged Greg, the farther they got from safety. It was a trap and they'd fallen right into it.

"The others are chasing us! It's a trap! Grissom, look back!" She howled against the wind, hoping to catch someone's attention.

Several heads turned, but it was far too late to change course. Gil whipped around, looking for a place that could offer protection. The monsters had led them out into the middle of nowhere and the only shelter was a large outcropping of rock nearly twenty feet to the right of them. "Warrick, Nick, get Greg! The rest of you, onto the rocks! Now!" he ordered.

CSI Brown caught up to their wayward lab tech, grabbing him beneath the arms. Greg desperately gripped his co-worker's shoulder with his free hand, whimpering as he learned what it was like to be the rope in the tug-of-war.

"Nick, hit it!"

The Texan joined them a second later, the ax raised high over his head. The beast came to the surface with a carnal roar, just before he brought the blade down. It sank into both tentacles with a sickening crunch and Warrick fell away with Greg. Nick left the ax where it had landed, taking one of Greg's arms so he could help Warrick haul the boy away at top speed. The young CSI tried to get his feet underneath him, but the men flanking him carried him like a rag doll.

Twin dust trails crisscrossed at their heels, the screeches of the beasts chasing them across the sand. The haven of the rock was only fifteen feet away, the rest of the team cheering them on and telling them not to look back. It was ten feet away and something lashed out to tangle in Nick's legs, but he caught his balance and kept running. They were five feet from it and one of the beasts screamed in what sounded like frustration. Then they were safe, lying on the hot stone panting.

"Let's... never do that again," Nick wheezed, patting Greg's shoulder to reassure himself that the boy was there.

Warrick agreed wholeheartedly. He sat up and looked out at the desert, watching the creatures circle just below the surface, before they dug lower and disappeared from sight. The heavy stone they sat on would keep them away from the monsters, but they were up on a rock... with no food or water... and no way to get to a phone or back to the town. Warrick groaned and put his face in his hands. They were so screwed.

Greg sat up and ran a hand through his unruly, dust-filled mane, sending a cloud of filth into the air. He did a quick status check to tally up the damage he'd received. His vest was in shreds, but the heavy-duty material had done a decent job protecting his shirt and skin. His blue jeans were a little worse for wear, and his pockets were empty, which was going to be a pain in the ass. He could replace what was in the wallet, but his phone had been expensive. From his leg, a pair of sightless eyes stared at him.

Greg screamed (causing the rest of the team to jump out of their skin), and reached out to swat the tentacle off of him. It fell to the rock limply. Confusion creased the punk rocker's brow for a moment, before he realized that the thing wasn't attached to the body of a large worm. When Nick had severed the tentacles, on of the heads had continued to cling to him.

Sara chuckled, a little nervously perhaps, and put a hand on Greg's shoulder. "Well, now that we've determined that it's not going to eat you, can we get rid of it?"

Greg raised his eyebrows at her, returning, "And get rid of valuable amusement device? Hell no!" He picked up the slimy appendage and started examining it.

Catherine sighed and looked around their tiny refuge. The rock was approximately twenty to twenty-five feet across at the widest point and had a massive extension jutting out into the sky. The top of said extension was relatively flat, so Catherine climbed up the bolder cautiously, using cracks and ledges to get to the summit. Her ankle ached its complaint, still sore from the mad dash after Greg and the initial damage done to it. Once she was seated, the throbbing slowed to a dull annoyance.

"Hey Cath, mind if I join you?" Sara called up.

"Nah, not at all," she answered, leaning over the edge to give her co-worker a hand. They settled in and shared a mutual sigh, feeling the sun beating down on them.

"Ugh, there's a reason I work night-shift. I hate being sunburned," Sara moaned, trying to shade herself from the evil UV rays.

Catherine laughed. Inside the building, there was no air-conditioning, but at least there had been shade. Out in the sun, the heat was excruciating and they were all going to look like lobsters when they finally got back to Vegas. "You know that 90 degree water bottle? It's going to look really good in a few hours," she commented dryly.

Down below, Greg had managed to make a sort of sock-puppet out of the creature's tentacle. It was talking to Warrick, and getting a look that could melt metal. When he didn't receive a warm welcome, Greg turned to a different kind of amusement.

Grissom was sitting at the edge of the rock, staring out at the churning desert. He'd been watching the beasts circle and surface, searching for their food. The boss was off in his own little world, processing information like the scientist he was. Greg took full advantage of his unobservant moment and slowly edged the head of the appendage over the graying man's shoulder.

Gil caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and sighed. "Greg, throw it out, it smells, and I'm pretty sure Warrick is about to kill you," Grissom warned, ruining Greg's fun.

The spiky haired punk gave the creature a small sniff and wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, alright." He chunked the thing over the edge of the rock and wiped orange goop off his arm. The hunk of flesh bounced once across the sand before being sucked under by one of the Graboids.

"Shows you how long we'd last out there," Nick muttered quietly.

Everyone was silent for a moment. Nick was right; they'd never make it back to town, even if they wanted to. Walking across the sand now would be suicide because those things would wait for them.

Greg squirmed slightly in the quiet, bursting out, "Okay, enough depression. How about some knock-knock jokes? Anyone know any knock-knock jokes?" When no one spoke up, he told his own. "Alight then, knock knock..."

Warrick rolled his emerald eyes and got to his feet. If he was going to die on some rock in the middle of nowhere, he was not going to die listening to knock-knock jokes... Oh god and Nick was HUMORING him!

"Who's there?"

CSI Brown didn't bother to listen to the answer. He crossed to the far side of the rock and climbed up the side of the girls' haven. They were in the midst of talking about someone called Prada... or maybe that was a shoe...

Catherine looked down at him with a raised eyebrow. "Excuse me, what are you doing?"

"Trying to get away from Greg; figured I'd come keep you company," Warrick said.

"No no no, this part of the rock is estrogen only buddy. We want to talk about shoes and boys without you rolling your eyes at us," Sara stated firmly.

"But..."

"Nope. If we make an exception for you, we'll have to let every male up here. Then we'd be very crowded and no one likes that."

Warrick sighed and hopped down. Since it was going to take Greg an hour or so to run out of jokes, the tall CSI went sat next to Gil. The older man acknowledged him with a slight nod. "Do you think we'll get out of this?"

"I don't know Warrick. I have ideas, but I wouldn't risk anyone to try them. Trial and error doesn't work when there's a life in the balance..." Grissom said. The man sounded worn out. The excitement of a new species had faded and all that was left was exhaustion. Warrick could see a deep worry creased in the man's brow for his team.

"You know Brass will come, or he'll send somebody out. He knows we have a problem out here.

"Yeah... that's what I'm afraid of."

---------

Hours crawled by as the sun made a slow track across the sky. Eventually, the knock-knock jokes trickled off into nothingness. When Greg got quiet, the whole rock was silent.

The energetic youth heaved a sigh and yawned. No one seemed interested in fooling around, so he unbuttoned his shirt. Nick raised his eyebrow at him, but Greg laid back and placed the shirt over his face, effectively shielding his eyes from the sun. "Mmm, naptime I think," the punk rocker groaned and tried to get comfortable against the rock. "Not that it's going to be a comfortable nap... man, I wish I had a couch."

The Texan rolled his eyes and flopped down beside him. "Wishin' doesn't get you much Greggo, so you'll have to make do."

"Yeah, well... Papa Olaf always used to say that..." Greg trailed off, his expression completely unreadable beneath his paisley-patterned shirt. "Do you think I'll ever get to see him again?" The strained question floated up from the green and yellow cloth, to touch Nick's heartstrings.

"We'll make it out of here alive... We will. You'll get to go see your Papa this Christmas, like you always do and you'll have a hell of a story to tell him."

The paisley covered face was silent for a moment. "You really think so?"

"Yeah."

The two started to relax, enjoying the light breeze that had started up. Before long, the breeze had turned into a brisk gale, catching Greg's shirt in a particularly strong blast. The boy yelped and hopped to his feet, trying to snatch the material from the air.

The collared shirt flew across the rocks with the punk rocker in hot pursuit. He swiped for it and missed, coming to the edge of safety a little sooner than he'd expected. Greg's foot scraped over the side of the rock and his center of gravity threatened to tip him over the brink. The boy pin-wheeled his arms to regain his balance and fell back onto the stone. The shirt continued out on the breeze and settled into the dirt.

Greg let out a soft moan, wrapping his arms around his knees. "Man, I liked that shirt," he mumbled miserably.

"It's alright Greggo, you needed a tan anyway," Nick said with a pleasant smile.

Greg shot him a half-hearted glare in retaliation. He looked up at the darkening sky, thankful that the sun was nearly gone. At least he wouldn't look like a cooked crab until tomorrow.

As the team watched, the sun sank into the horizon in a slow-motion flash of blood and fire. Eventually, even the colors were gone and they were left in darkness. So far removed from the world, there was no light but that of a crescent moon, making it easy to spot the police lights when they were still a mile away.

Grissom got to his feet and peered out across the desert. The faint glow of blue and red made him nervous. There was no way they could warn the rescue crew in time to save them. The boulder the team was inhabiting was too far away from town and the creatures would go after the new arrivals as soon as they heard them.

Catherine followed his gaze and said, "Well now, there's our reinforcements. So how are we going to save them?"

As she spoke, four dust trails sprang to life and sped towards Shale Rock.

"Shit, there they go!" Greg yelled.

-------

Detective Jim Brass was the first to climb out of his car. He pulled his firearm out of its holster and held it at the ready. If he'd driven all the way out to the middle of nowhere and the team was fine, he was going to kill Grissom, but there was no sign of the wayward CSI.

The SWAT van pulled in beside his vehicle, unloading in a matter of seconds. Brass ignored the tactical team as they got ready. He crossed over to Grissom's abandoned Tahoe and peered inside, what he saw startled him. The dark gore on the seats and floor boards suggested that they'd arrived too late. Brass moved around to the other side of the SUV to examine the broken window.

The detective had worked with CSI long enough to know that none of it boded well for the missing nightshift. "Fan out and watch for any signs of life," Brass barked and moved towards the tiny grocery store.

He glanced inside, but seeing only a destroyed table and a few upturned chairs, he didn't venture any further. The SWAT moved out around him, finding no sign of the CSI.

"Sir, we've found something," one of the tactical team hollered.

Brass barreled around the corner. Three of the SWAT were gathered around an empty squad car. "There's another over here Sir," another man came around to give an account. "According to previous reports, one of the squad cars came out with Mr. Grissom and the other, and its occupants, was reported missing several days ago.

There is, however, no sign of the suspect."

"Keep a sharp eye out."

The SWAT leader held up a hand for quiet, asking, "You hear that?" In the silence, there was the faint sound of yelling. "It's coming from the south-west. Move team!"

------

"Get on the rocks! Brass! Get on the rocks!" Sara screamed towards the town. They saw a dark crowd of people emerge from the tiny cluster of buildings, heading their direction. The rest of the team got to their feet and began to scream their own warnings.

Greg jumped up and down, waving his arms, and yelled, "They're going to eat you! You've got to get off the ground! I don't think they can hear us."

The Graboids made two apposing arcs of dust as they moved towards the SWAT team.

Nick chewed his lip as he watched, trying to think of anything to alert the Vegas-ites to the danger. In another moment, the creatures would be on them, or under them, and there'd be nothing they could do. An epiphany occurred beneath his dark head of hair and he pulled out his cell phone.

"What are you doin' man? You know it doesn't work," Warrick said.

"Not the cell function, but the walkie-talkie should work just fine," Nick returned and pulled up Brass's contact info on the phone's screen.

The SWAT member at the front of the line screamed and disappeared beneath the surface of the earth, bringing the entire SWAT team to a halt. Those who had seen the man go under began yelling and shooting at the ground. Another went down, and then another, and the feeding frenzy began.

-------

Brass stiffened when he heard the first man scream. He pulled his gun up to the ready and scanned the surrounding area for the suspect. The group ahead of him went wild, shouting and firing round after round into... something. Brass couldn't see what it was from his current position, but he assumed that it wouldn't last long under heavy gunfire from the SWAT.

As the detective got closer, the SWAT team's numbers got decidedly thinner. A cloud of dust slowly obscured them, but it didn't keep Brass from seeing one of the men near him get sucked under the ground. It wasn't like he'd fallen through a hole; he had literally been pulled down.

Brass stopped dead in his tracks, an exclamation slipping out before he could stop it, "What the hell?!" At his hip, his cell phone bleeped with an incoming message.

"Brass, get off the ground now! Get on some rocks!" Nick's voice yelled from the tiny speaker of his cell.

Brass didn't give the command a second thought. If he'd learned anything as a cop, he'd learned that wasting time arguing an order could get you killed. So, if Nick knew something he didn't, then so be it.

He yelled an order to the SWAT to get to the rocks before running for the nearest outcropping. The rock seemed like a hell of a long way away when he realized that something was chasing him. He turned slightly to scope over his shoulder, but didn't see anything.

The CSI were yelling at him, and it sounded almost like they were cheering him on. When he leapt up onto the stone, there was a stout cheer from his onlookers. He fell onto the boulder and panted. Just behind him, there was a loud screech and he saw something churn beneath the surface of the sand.

As the detective caught his breath, he noticed several things: the SWAT team was gone, the rock he was occupying wasn't far from the CSI's home base, and he'd somehow managed to lose one of his loafers during his run. Brass looked over at the other rock and yelled, "What the hell was that thing?"

"That," Grissom answered him, "was our suspect, or should I say 'suspects'. They are large, subterranean worms that hunt by sound.

Brass blinked at him. "Oh."

Greg perked up for the first time in hours, asking, "Does anyone feel like we're little kids playing the hot lava game? You know the game where you can't touch the ground because its hot lava and it'll kill you?"

He received a few stares and a whole lot of silence. After a moment, Nick spoke up in his defense, "Yeah, I know what you're talking about Greg, but I'm not so sure it really applies to this situation... well, I guess it does..."

"Except for the fact that we would actually DIE if we stepped out there," Warrick added.

Catherine smiled at Brass and said, "We're glad you could join us."

The older man rolled his eyes and replied, "Gee, thanks. How long have you guys been sitting out here?"

"Hours."

"Great. And those things haven't gone away?"

"Nope."

Brass sighed and got settled on his modest-sized rock. It seemed like he would be on it for a very long time.

***

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