He looked up at the sky. A few stars were showing dimly, palely. "Oh God, give me a quick ending when my time comes, that's all I ask. Don't let me crawl anymore on my belly. Give me the guts to keep walkin', straight up, like I'm walkin' now."
There was no answer. There was no sound except the cry of birds in the forest, the drone of insects and other louder noises from the river. He was alone. He walked faster.
But he soon tired, because he had never walked far at a time. Underground, people crawled a lot of the time through narrow holes. And under there no one could walk far unless they went in circles.
He sat down to rest beneath the canopy of stars. He lay back and looked up at them, a feeling of frightful awe pressing down upon him. The night around him was colder now, and the sounds of the night had risen to a hungry song. And then he rolled over with a quick, terrible cry, leaped crouching to his feet.
There were at least a dozen of them. Great shiny angular and cubed monsters sliding noiseless down the hill. A peculiar bluish radiance pushed out around them, bathing the surrounding night in a deadly-seeming pall.
With a pathetic defiance, Jon picked up the heavy stone, stood with legs wide apart, holding the rock in front of him. Every nerve in him shrieked, pulling his muscles away. But he couldn't run. He couldn't run, nor crawl anymore. A kind of dark resigned courage replaced the first impulses of flight, and he hurled the rock. There was a futile thud, and the rock bounded from the great unruffled wall of metal.
Then—for an instant he didn't think the thoughts, the voices, were anything but his own, strange, alien, terrifying, inspired by his own fears.
And then he realized it was the Mechs!
"A grub!"
"Yes. I thought they were all gone."