by Isaac Hooke
She crouched as low as she was able, no longer caring about the dead mice and the droppings beneath her.
“Can they smell me?” she remembered asking Bardain during training. “I’m a cyborg…”
“Cyborgs have a characteristic scent,” Bardain had replied. “It’s closer to robot than human, but just as strong as the latter. The bioweapons won’t care either way: they’re drawn to anything that smells unlike the surrounding environment. And don’t you worry, they’ll eat you. The brain you carry in that metal skull is a tasty treat. For them it’s like cracking open a nut to get at the meat.”
“Thanks for that metaphor,” Rhea had told him.
She gazed at the dead mice and their droppings. The stench was overwhelming… with luck, it would mask her scent.
The thud of footfalls increased in volume until it sounded like the Karg was directly outside the cabinet. There was a pause, then one of the doors quickly opened and shut again as a dark crimson limb attempted to flick it wide. She caught a fleeting, terrifying glimpse of the segmented Karg head beyond.
The creature tried to open the door twice more like that, and Rhea caught sight of the Karg each time. After the third try, it paused once more. The creature would have caught short glimpses of the interior with its weak eyes, and perhaps that was enough to satisfy the Karg that there was nothing inside but dead mice and their poop. So far, she hadn’t noticed any of the characteristic noises of echolocation. Probably useless in such a confined place—too many echoes.
She glanced at her overhead map. It had updated, placing a red dot outside the cabinet, marking the Karg’s last known position as recorded by her vision.
She heard a muted thudding, as of feet shuffling in place. It was turning around.
She exhaled in relief.
They were going to get out of this without a fight after all.
Motion drew her eyes downward. A mouse crawled into view, squeezing through the left side of the hole where the metal drainpipe descended into the floor.
Instinctively, Rhea slammed her foot down, and crushed the mouse beneath her heal.
THUD.
Oops.
The doors shattered as a crimson appendage plunged inside. Rhea narrowly ducked as the talons that tipped it smashed into the wall beside her.
Rhea slid the pistol from her hips and rolled forward in a single motion, sliding underneath that head and its hanging tentacles. She fired repeatedly at point-blank range into the exposed neck and underbelly. As usual the pistol couldn’t keep up with her inhumanly fast trigger pulls, and the weapon only discharged half the shots she intended.
Even so, the creature howled in pain, struggling to retreat beneath the deadly onslaught. The Karg only made it a few steps before it collapsed. Rhea ceased firing and watched the black blood pool onto the floor beneath it.
What have I done?
She heard frantic clicking and clattering outside; glancing over her shoulder, she caught side of the clearing through the window. Kargs raced en masse toward the farmhouse.
The cacophony from without was quickly superseded by heavy footfalls coming from the adjacent hallway. The lumbering clip-clops rapidly grew in volume…
She swiveled her torso toward the hallway, centering the pistol over the entryway. She realized she wasn’t in the most advantageous position and decided to risk maneuvering closer to the hallway. She leaped over the dead Karg in a move that was almost a somersault. She had never trained in such acrobatics—had to be some latent muscle memory from her past life.
When she hit the floor she rolled, landing on her back against the wall just beside the kitchen entrance. She aimed her pistol upward at the opening.
The Karg barged into the kitchen a moment later.
Rhea was ready.
She fired at the exposed underbelly, ripping through tentacles and smashing into the tender flesh of the soft tissue underneath. Gory chunks tore away. The Karg roared in outrage and spun to lunge at her with that segmented mouth. She rolled again, still firing, and several shots bit into the unfolding petals of its jaw, tearing a piece of its head clean away.
More bolts suddenly struck its underbelly—the attack came from the direction of the hallway. The creature stumbled forward under the combined attack for only a few paces before collapsing.
Will leaped over the corpse. “Buckle up!” He landed beside her and aimed his pistol at the far wall, above the countertop.
Rhea followed his lead. An instant later the wall sagged inward as something big smashed into it from outside. The cupboards bent outward, shelves and doors snapping. Windows shattered.
More walls sections buckled in the same general area, to similar effect. In moments three Kargs had plowed through the wooden walls and were scrambling inside, crawling over the rubble of broken windows and smashed cupboards.
Since the underbellies weren’t accessible at the moment, Rhea and Will aimed at the tentacles and opened fired. The shots caused enough pain to make the three creatures flee.
But the Kargs were promptly replaced by two more bioweapons that came leaping through the gaps in the wall. They cleared the debris and stood in the center of the kitchen.
Rhea had switched to a crouch, and she transferred her aim to these newcomers. Together they fired at the tentacles. The creatures grunted in pain but kept coming.
Other walls began to buckle around Rhea and Will.
“Into the hallway!” Will scrambled to his feet. “Now!”
He continued firing as Rhea stood up. She backed into the hallway with Will, then raced to a side room and took up a defensive position at the opening. Will followed more slowly, continuing to fire as he backed away, before finally turning around and joining her.
The two of them aimed past the doorframe, with Rhea at a crouch, and Will standing. Horatio stood at the doorway of another room across the way, and similarly targeted the kitchen. They opened fire at the Karg that had squeezed into the hall.
“Nice of you to join us,” Will commented to Horatio during the firefight.
“I was always here backing you up,” Horatio said. “Decided it was best to stay back: too many cooks in the kitchen…”
Will suddenly turned around and aimed in the opposite direction. Rhea glanced over her shoulder and saw another Karg had been attempting to sneak up on them from that direction.
The room’s far wall buckled as yet another bioweapon threw itself into the fray.
Rhea dove beside a couch next to it and fired up into its underbelly. The creature collapsed, blocking the gap it had formed in the wall.
She hurried back to the hallway entrance to support her friends. She fired at the forward Karg with Horatio, while Will concentrated on the bioweapon behind them. Between them, she and Horatio managed to sever enough of the tentacles to strike the underbelly with their shots; that, in combination with the damage to the creature’s head caused it to fall in short order. They joined Will in targeting the creature behind them, and it dropped a moment later.
The corpses of the bioweapons plugged either side of the hallway. But already she could see the creatures shifting as the bioweapons behind them began to tear them apart.
“We can hold these spots all day,” Will said.
“Uh-oh!” Horatio glanced over one shoulder and then leaped into the hall. Two appendages appeared from the doorframe behind and narrowly missed snatching up the robot.
Horatio shoved between Will and Rhea. “I’ll watch your backs.”
Rhea and Will fired at the new Karg, and their shots ripped into the tentacles. The creature screamed, and tried to retreat, but another Karg was apparently behind it, and forced it forward.
Rhea penetrated the tentacles, and her energy bolts struck the sensitive underbelly beneath. Will’s shots also aggravated the creature, until they killed it. The corpse filled the gap, so that all ways were blocked. For the moment.
She glanced toward the kitchen. The carcass blocking that route abruptly tore in half, and an
other Karg barreled forward.
At the same time the roof tore away just above. Rhea dove deeper into the room and swung her pistol upward in time to catch the upper Karg’s exposed underbelly. The creature dropped down lifelessly.
Will rolled away and the bioweapon landed with a weighty thud where the man had crouched only a moment before. The body filled the room’s opening, blocking all access from the hallway. But the ceiling still had a gap in it…
“Take the high ground before more come!” Will leaped onto the corpse and used it as a ramp to the ceiling. Rhea followed, along with Horatio.
More Kargs clambered onto the roof from the edges of the house.
Rhea quickly gave Will a boost onto the rooftop of the next floor, and then leaped up on her own. Horatio followed, also unaided.
They then took up defensive positions on three sides of the roof and fired down into the fray. She aimed for the tentacles that dangled beneath the creatures, and every creature she hit soon turned around, screaming as it ran away.
“High ground is isn’t the greatest for targeting underbellies!” Rhea said.
“No, it’s not,” Will agreed. “But it’s great for disheartening them!”
They kept sending Kargs running away, until the last of them turned around and fled, the entire herd routed.
“Well, that was fun,” Will said, coming up beside her. “The fight was a bit too noisy for comfort, however. Best we move on as quickly as possible. I’m just going to cut myself some meat…”
“Wait, what?” Rhea said with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. “Meat? You eat them?”
Will leaped down to the rooftop of the first level below. “Saves on rations. Besides, when you cook it, it tastes like chicken. Makes sense I suppose, since the original Kargs were genetically engineered from the base DNA of roosters. All those latent T-Rex genes and whatnot.”
Will approached the gaping hole the Karg carcass had fallen through.
“Careful…” Rhea said.
Will shrugged, and produced a small bag, along with a knife. He lay flat on the rooftop, next to the hole, and lowered his upper body inside. Rhea flinched as he reached underneath the Karg’s carapace—she half-expected the creature to lurch at him, but it did no such thing.
Will began sawing at a large tentacle.
The creature shuddered, and Rhea almost leaped down, ready to grab him from its clutches.
Will raised a calming hand. “Just reflexes. Hasn’t realized it’s dead yet.”
He continued sawing, and when the tentacle section fell away, Will lifted it out of the gap and hunkered down on his knees. He set the knife down beside him and squeezed the tendril between both palms, turning his hands in opposing directions, just as if he was wringing out a piece of laundry. When he was satisfied that most of the blood had drained free, he stowed the piece in the bag and wiped his hands—and knife—on his cargo pants.
“That’s about all we have time for,” he said, standing. He shoved the bag and knife into his backpack and turned toward the clearing below.
“We got trouble,” Horatio said. “Southwest. Giz has spotted more bioweapons.”
Will glanced at Rhea. “Guess we’re not abandoning the high ground just yet.” He raised an expectant palm.
Rhea reached down and helped him back onto the highest level.
Weapons drawn, the pair hurried to the far side to join Horatio on the southwest corner of the roof. Since the robot was lying flat, when Rhea and Will approached the edge, they switched to a low crawl.
Will gazed at the tree line and narrowed his eyes.
“Werangs,” Will said.
13
Not wanting the Werangs to spot her, Rhea shrank away from the rooftop edge. She kept them in view just enough to study them.
Werangs were lumbering, ugly things, most about twice as big as the average Karg. Resembling a cross between bears and sharks, they had the black, furry bodies of the former and the gray, scaly heads of the latter, replete with parallel rows of razor sharp, triangular teeth. Those heads also had long tentacles dangling from either side, which the Werangs used like the feelers of an ant to search for scent trails. The tentacles could also be used to batter or grip prey.
The bigger Werangs carried the Kargs they had caught fleeing the farm. Holding them either directly in their mouths, or in the tentacles that lined their heads, the creatures proceeded forward warily, as if worried about disturbing whatever it was that had spooked the Kargs into their jaws in the first place.
Other Werangs—those not harboring prey—went forward to scout the outbuildings. Some of them poked their huge heads into the gaps of the main house below and retrieved the bodies of the dead Kargs within.
When the scouts were apparently satisfied that the farm was safe, they began to raise their heads one by one and issue low-pitched calls. As more and more joined in, a loud, monotonous hum descended over the clearing.
The sounds ceased a moment later. Those Werangs that had discovered Kargs in the house began to dine upon them, while those that had carried their prey into the clearing dropped them. Some of the latter Kargs were still alive, and tried to flee, but the Werangs rammed their shark-like heads into the carapaces and bit down, cracking the hard shells with ease.
Rhea looked away from the gorier scenes. She didn’t enjoy watching death, regardless of whether it involved pretty birds or deadly bioweapons.
The creatures spread out so that there were one or two dining on each body, but there weren’t enough dead Kargs to go around. There seemed to be an obvious hierarchy among the Werangs, because some of the smaller ones tried to sneak bites from the carcasses occupied by their bigger brethren, only to have the larger creatures snap or lunge at them, chasing them away.
The smaller creatures began to invade the different buildings, including the main house, searching for corpses that the others might have missed.
One of those runts, smaller than the others, made its way to the lower level rooftop. Small was a relative term, of course—the creature was about the same size as a large Karg. With those tentacles feeling out the surface, the Werang advanced, hugging the edges of the next level, whose rooftop Rhea, Will and Horatio sheltered upon. The bioweapon was on a course to pass by directly underneath them.
Back away, back away! Will sent.
The trio quickly moved away from the edge of the rooftop and rose to a crouch as they retreated. They hid behind a brick chimney that was wide enough for the three of them. There weren’t really any other places to hide—the few vents were too small to offer any cover.
She heard a subtle creaking behind her, as of bending roof planks and eavesdrops. She tightened her grip around the pistol. Though she wanted very badly to look, she didn’t dare peek past the edges.
She didn’t actually have to, because well overhead, Gizmo remained hovering soundlessly: Rhea still had read access to the drone’s cameras, so she accessed the feed.
Via the drone, she watched the Werang pull itself onto the rooftop with those hairy legs. The creature’s tentacles continued to probe away, and suddenly stopped on the edge, precisely where the party members had lurked only moments before. Its body stiffened, then it crouched, as if trying to hide from the others that it had stumbled across prey and wanted them all to itself.
The Werang continued forward, its tentacles feeling out the rooftop as it traveled the same route Rhea and the others had taken.
It’s going to find us, Horatio sent.
Get ready to strike, Will agreed. If we’re lucky, the others won’t notice.
From Gizmo’s perspective, she continued to watch the Werang approach. It was coming in on her side. Apparently, she was going to have to be the one to do the deed, unless Will or Horatio decided to lean well past her and open fire.
She reviewed her training on taking down Werangs, as taught by Bardain. These particular bioweapons were most vulnerable to energy weapons in the eyes, with the mouth coming in a close second.
She knew where the creature was going to appear beside her, so she reduced the size of Gizmo’s feed to about one tenth its previous dimensions and repositioned the video to the upper right of her vision, below her overhead map.
Then she tilted her body and aimed past the edges of the chimney in anticipation.
The tentacles appeared first, feeling around the perimeter; keeping her pistol pointed in the general direction of the wriggling appendages, Rhea edged backward, sliding into Horatio.
The tip of the long head appeared. Then more of it, along with the razor-sharp teeth.
Rhea was forced to slide further away as the tentacles grew closer to her; Horatio and Will yielded, giving her room.
And then, the slitted eye came into view.
It blinked once, seeming all too human.
Rhea hesitated only a moment. She squeezed the trigger.
The energy bolt slammed into that eye, sending yellow blood splattering onto the chimney.
The Werang lifted its head straight up and then spun away. It retreated, and screamed as it leaped onto the floor below, and again when it bounded onto the ground beyond. Such a terrible, blood curdling sound.
I caused this creature that pain…
But she had no choice.
The runt stumbled, then bolted across the clearing, yelling the entire way. The other Werangs lifted their heads from their meals—lower jaws steeped in blood—and followed the runt’s dramatic departure with their gazes.
The others won’t notice, huh? she asked.
I did say if we were lucky… Will replied.
One of the bigger Werangs looked toward the rooftop that housed Rhea and the others, then grunted at another who had already returned to eating from the same carcass. The hungry Werang ignored its companion, until the first slammed its head into the creature’s side. That got its attention.
The second Werang hissed angrily at the first, and spread its jaws wide, making it look more like an alligator than a shark. The first firmly swung its head toward the rooftop, twice; finally, the second stopped hissing and bowed its head in acquiescence. It left the carcass to investigate.