5th in the series! YaY! Anywho, as I mentioned in the last story, this was built around the character proposed to us by boblennon1. He had no part in the making or even idea of the plot though. Just the character. Which you won't meet in this chapter, but soon. Very, very soon. :)

*DISCLAIMER* RV makes no claim to own Tremors or its characters. They are the property of S.S. Wilson and Scy Fy Entertainment. No profit is made from this writing.

Prologue

Larry cast a curious, though a bit bored look, across the empty desert. Nothing was really going on, and he sat back in the seat of the jeep.

"Burt does this every day?" he asked.

"What's the matter? I thought you liked him and his survival paranoia," Tyler teased as he drove over another hill.

"Well, I do... but... every day?" Larry said. "There's nothing out here!"

Tyler laughed. "Well, get used to it Larry, Burt'll be gone for another week yet."

The survivalist had left for another seminar lecturing others of his kind so the job of patrolling the valley had fallen squarely on Tyler and Larry.

Larry blew out a small puff of air. "Well, maybe something cool will happen!" he perked up. "Like flying Gila monsters or giant spiders," he grinned.

Tyler rolled his eyes. 'Here it comes,' he thought. 'The moment when Larry's so bored he starts seeing creatures everywhere.'

Larry leaned slightly out of the jeep as if he had spotted something.

"Hey, Tyler, look! Did you see that?" he asked, pointing.

'Yep, knew it.' "See what?" Tyler asked, deciding to play along. He was a bit bored too anyway.

"I don't know," Larry said. "Looked kinda like the Invisibat," he leaned out a bit further, and then jumped out of the jeep.

"Hey!" Tyler pulled the jeep to a complete stop, grumbling under his breath. At least he'd been driving slowly. He got out and hurried after the overgrown child who had disappeared among the trees. "Larry! Where are you?"

"Over here!" Larry called from the area he searched. He pushed aside some scraggly desert bushes, finding nothing.

Tyler walked over and watched him hunt around for his supposed creature. "You really think you're gonna find anything? You've probably scared it off by now anyway."

Larry frowned. "But I coulda sworn I saw it," he said, taking a couple steps toward another patch of weeds. He pushed them aside but lost his balance, falling out of sight.

"...Larry?" Tyler hurried over to where he had just been. He knelt to move the weeds aside and felt the ground sag beneath him. Before he could scramble back to safety it gave way and he let out a startled yell as he fell and landed on cold, hard rock.

A couple feet away, Larry groaned, rubbing the back of his head. "Ouch. Didn't expect that."

Tyler picked himself up and looked around. From the little light coming from the hole he could see they were in an old stone hallway.

Larry got to his feet slowly, checking himself for injuries. "Geez. Where are we?" he asked.

"Looks like it might be another area of the lab," Tyler replied, pulling out his flashlight to look farther down the hall.

"Cool," Larry said. "Do you think any of those scientists are still here?"

"Well Burt and I checked after Ben left and there weren't any," Tyler shrugged. "But with those people who knows?"

"Well, come on! Let's check it out," the sci-fi fan said, moving ahead.

"Larry, I don't-" Tyler paused as he realized the man had already disappeared. He sighed, glancing back up at the hole they'd come through. Probably wouldn't be able to get out that way anyway.

They continued through the tunnels, eventually finding a door. "Where do you think this leads?" Larry wondered.

Tyler shrugged and pushed the door open, shining the light inside. On the other side of the door was a dark, dusty lab. It had clearly been abandoned a very long time ago, and in quite a hurry judging by the broken glass scattered on the floor.

"Hmm. Looks like it's been abandoned for years," Tyler observed. "Guess this is part of the lab that was never re-inhabited."

Larry began looking around the smallish room. He dusted off a console to a machine with his sleeve. "This is so cool!" he said. "I wonder what it did."

"Don't touch anything," Tyler warned. "You could end up turnin' us into frogs or something."

"Come on, nothing in here is gunna work anyway. There probably isn't even any electricity," Larry said, leaning on the machine as he turned around to look at Tyler.

"There was electricity in the other part," Tyler reminded him.

"But that was-" Larry started to say but accidently snapped back a lever he had been leaning on. "Oops," he said, biting his bottom lip guiltily.

Tyler glared at him as the machine whirred to life, making a faint humming sound that filled the room. "Nice goin' brainiac, now turn it off."

"How? I don't even know how I turned it on!"

Tyler pushed him out of the way and grabbed the lever. It wouldn't budge but before he could do anything else there was a sudden rumble from the machine and the room was bathed in a blinding flash of blue-white light.