Chapter Five

This must've been the carcass Avril was talking about, thought Bones as he grumpily kicked the gore from his boots.

"Damn it Chekov," he muttered to himself. "Of all the places..."

He stepped back from the small dragon-like corpse and tried to hold his breath as he briefly examined it. Glazed white eyes, rotting innards and exposed green brain...it was definitely dead in any case but there were no obvious indications to the cause.

Moving on quickly, Bones ran towards the ruins for what felt like the hundredth time. So close yet always too far. He did not see the corpse's brain begin to pulse. Nor did he see the single claw scrape back sand as it tried to get up. In fact, Bones didn't realise the carcass was moving until it had leapt through the air and landed on his shoulder.

With a yell, he flung the thing off him. It was surprisingly light until Bones remembered that half of its insides were now coagulating in the sand.

"I hate my job," he growled, looking down at the pitiful thing with disgust. It was still viciously reaching up a dangling claw as if it was born to do nothing but attack the living. It was almost as if...but that would be crazy. Then again, it would explain why they were picking up no signs of life. It seemed they had discovered a planet of the living dead.

Not too far away, Jim was struggling to push a rather large rock out of the way. It was only fair, Jim told himself. Spock had done most of the work all ready. He was very nearly there...

"That does it," he yelled as another rock fell on top of his throbbing toes. "Bones? Scotty? Is anyone out there!" He put his eye back to the hole he had failed to make any bigger and as if in reply to his shouts, a large fanged mouth shot towards him. "Shit," he yelled, before stumbling backwards into the dirt. Luckily, it looked as if whatever it was could not fit through the gap.

"Oi, Spock," he hissed urgently. "Wake up." No response. "That's an order." He hurriedly crawled over to where Spock was sitting despite the persistent flapping and screeching coming from just above. He was at a loss. His instincts were telling him to get his friend as far away from the wall as possible, away from the raging creature who was frothing from the mouth. Yet, he did not want to risk any further injury, especially when Spock hadn't even said what was wrong with him. Apart from thinking he had some sort of virus that was going to zombify him, but Jim assumed he had probably been delirious from a blow to the head. Instead, he just sat there protectively, eyes fixed on that vicious little creature. He would have shot it had he not lost his phaser. The place was rumbling again. Please don't let it collapse on us, he said to himself, pulse thudding away in his throat.

Back on board the Enterprise, Scotty was pissed off. He knew that he was a very competent officer. All the more reason why he was getting so frustrated with his inability to find the correct equipment to beam down to the team. They had had some new recruits lately, perhaps they had been putting things in the wrong places.

Still, he had got there in the end. Triumphantly, he and Keenser wheeled the much needed equipment down to the transporter room only to find that during his absence, one person had been killed and Bones had returned to the planet alone. He was in the process of loading the bay when he received a rather tetchy call from the medical officer.

"Where's this equipment, Scotty?" said Bones.

"Hold yer horses," he replied. "Once this is over, I'm gonna be giving the young engineers a piece of my mind about puttin' stuff back where it came from. We're supposed to be professional for crying out loud!"

"Hang on a second."

There was a crackling at the other end, and screeching that sounded like an angry bat.

"I think I've found them," said Bones before shutting off the communicator. Scotty hated it when they left him in suspense like that and was starting to think they were doing it on purpose. Chekov and Keenser looked figuratively perched at the edges of their seats but all Scotty could do was turn around and shrug. Hopefully, the captain and Spock were safe, he thought to himself.

Jim, however, felt almost as far from safe as he could possibly feel. Somewhere close by, there was the sound of a phaser going off...someone was out there. Jim felt a surge of adrenaline and peered through the hole but the limp form of a deformed lizard creature blocked his view.

"Jim, are you in there?"

"Bones," shouted Jim. "We're both down here! Can you get us out?"

"I'm working on it. Scotty's beaming me down some dematerialisation equipment. Should have this rock gone in no time." The lifeless lizard thing was tossed aside and Bones' anxious blue eye was now staring down into the hole. "Where's the hobgoblin?" he asked. "He's being too quiet. It's not normal."

"Here," said Jim. "In a bad way."

"Concious?"

"Until a few minutes ago."

"Breathing?"

"Yeah," said Jim. There was the sound of rattling and scraping metal. What was left of the temple seemed to tremor. "What's going on?"

"I'm getting you out," said Bones before disappearing again.