<br/><strong><br/>Sunset, one week previous</strong><br/><br/>"The drops will work much faster than pills, but there are a couple of drugs she can try I'll scrounge some up for her."<br/><br/>Mary listened quietly to the men, then sighed and slipt down the wall to sit cross legged, her carryall on the floor beside her, both hands resting loosely in her lap.  "Bill, I've got nightmares already.  I haven't slept for more than thirty minutes at a stretch  at night for two years."  She leaned her head back against the wall and studied Theo with heavy-lidded eyes.  "Things, Theo? Things like the miraculous regrowth of arms and legs?  Things like a rotting corpse that weaves strands of black fire and had to be chopped to pieces today?"  Deep in her mind a doorway to memory that had been nailed shut and bricked over two years ago was bursting asunder.<br/><br/>She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees with her head lowered. "Things that bust out of a granite chamber that's been sealed since the height of the Persian Empire?"  Her head lifted to reveal an ashen face, trembling lips and empty, empty eyes.  "It was dead when I got there.  The bodies, I thought the limbs, the heads, I thought they had been  pulled, but they were bitten, bitten off.  There were shell casings everywhere.  Piles, scattered, sometimes carpeting the floor.  It didn't have that many wounds though.  But it was covered in smeared lead.  The rangers said the muzzle flashes bothered it more than the bullets did.  They said it walked through gunfire like it was a gentle rain.  When it got outside the fifty-cals and Mk 19s brought it down."<br/><br/>Her eyes were staring at something a thousand yards away now.  "I went into the hallway, corridor, tunnel whatever the hell it was.  The carvings, people were being fed to it,  It was biting chunks out of them.  They were biting chunks.  I went into the chamber 'cause I thought maybe somebody had dodged past it.  I found the remains of more of those things.  They fought each other, ate each other until only one was left, I think.  Then it just went into hibernation until something woke it up.  From what we were able to piece together, the Insurgents were doing something.  I think they wanted to , to bind it or something.  Bell, book and candle, hell, I don't know."<br/><br/>She blinked and her eyes regained focus.  "I'm not sayin' I can deal with "Things", but I know about them."