Giselle opened her mouth to speak but her breath caught in her throat.
There was a soft, wet scraping sound barely audible from the other side of the strong barricade. Some thing was sliding along the wall, feeling for weakness. Tyson leaned his head against the barricade, listening. The sound stopped.
Giselle started breathing again when,
BOOOOM
The thick barricade shuddered as something huge slammed against it. Splinters flew away from the wall and loud cracks announced that some of the logs forming the barricade had snapped.
Gaunt, panicked faces appeared in the torchlight as the rest of the survivors ran from their beds, such weapons as still worked clenched white-knuckled.
The huge creature didn’t attack the wall again but something…worse…started slipping through the fresh cracks with the sound of thousands of tiny, scaly feet clawing for purchase.
The packed earth near the wall appeared to heave and rise. Giselle heard groans of terror and muffled sobbing as the world fled. She had fainted.