Paulson mulled it over, pressing his lips together. His eyes flashed to the floodlights and the darkness beyond and then back to my eager face. “Fine, but report back as soon as you find them, and take them straight to the medic tent.”
“Understood, sir,” I said, and he nodded, dismissing us. I turned to Roxy. “Ready?”
Roxy nodded, a small grin on her face. Although I could tell she was uneasy about scouting for the mystery body, she was also ready to do something besides just wait. Paulson had plenty of strong soldiers near this line, our other teammates included.
We jogged away from the group, and while I was pleased at our side mission, I was unimpressed that no one saw us go. Instead of paying attention to their surroundings, everyone had their eyes completely trained on the floodlights. Lieutenant Paulson should really be engaging more with his troops, instructing them where to keep watch. On the next block over, I spotted a half-devoured street sign. Main Street sounded promising.
Roxy followed me as I maneuvered between abandoned cars, stopping only to stare at the chunks missing from the devastated machines. The swarm had torn through the frames easily, consuming massive quantities of metal. I passed a van that closely resembled a piece of lace. A shiver ran down my spine, from both exhilaration and unease at not knowing exactly where the threat awaited us. Clemmins had given us some idea of what it would be like, but I wanted to see it for myself.
“God,” Roxy muttered as she hopped over another pothole. “They’ve eaten the streets.”
It was true. Potholes marked the road like Swiss cheese. A fallen tree at the side of the road had a gaping cavity through its center. What had once been a drive-through coffee shop was now a crumbling shell. A front door swung on its hinges in a local hardware business. Half-eaten nails and screws littered the sidewalk out front. The streetlights remained dark, unable to offer their services after the grid went down. The empty swarm had consumed everything in its path.
After a few minutes, the sound of rushing water reached my ear. A stream ran alongside Main Street with a quaint bike path next to it. A grove of hardy trees shifted in the breeze, relishing their survival. In the slowly dimming light of dusk, I could see that their leaves had curled and yellowed at the edges. Could they have been poisoned by the smoke in the air? I didn’t know how trees worked. I grimaced at an abandoned half-eaten bicycle wheel lying on the path.
There was something else near the path, a human-like form lying face-down in the grass. Something about it seemed odd as I loped toward it, careful to keep a wary eye on our surroundings.
“Are you kidding me?” Roxy asked as I came up to the object. “It’s a mannequin.” A mannequin in a pale gray suit, which covered most of its body except for the plastic hands and hair. It was easy to see how Bravi could have made the mistake from a distance.
“There may have been some looting the past few days,” I said with a grimace. “Doesn’t look like the bugs have a taste for mannequins, at least.” I prepared to call Paulson; he would want to know it was a false alarm to calm his nerves. A twig snapped in the distance.
Insidiously, a buzz began to swell around us, starting low and building. Roxy sucked air through her teeth. I froze. The sound came from everywhere at once. It was a terrible creaking sound, like an army of monstrous cicadas. Something flickered beside me, and I turned sharply toward it. A shadow slipped past us low to the ground, disappearing into the hazy night. I glanced at Roxy as if to say, Did you see that? She nodded, and even in the half-light that didn’t quite activate my dark vision, I could see her face tighten. We steeled ourselves and crouched slightly, ready for anything.
A moment passed. Nothing happened. We moved as rapidly as we could toward the source of the sound, farther inside the thicket of trees. The whining increased. My skin erupted with goosebumps. There was something unnatural about the sound.
Dusk rapidly darkened the surrounding area. The dark vision in our visors switched on, turning everything to ghostly shades of green and gray. Shadows shifted around us. A skittering to the left drew my attention, and I turned toward the motion. My breath stopped in my throat.
An empty swarm creature was perched on a nearby tree branch. It looked like a stone cricket, except it was nearly a foot and a half long. A thick head connected to a disturbingly hunched back. It had eight legs, haphazardly assembled slices of jagged rock. Its black eyes sat upon two wandering eyestalks. And the worst? A gaping round mouth full of lamprey-like teeth.
The creature turned its terrifying mouth toward us. The teeth began to whirl, making a grinding noise. The source of the buzz. My heart slammed against my chest. Roxy swore.
Our comm lines crackled and activated. “Paulson, calling for reinforcements,” he barked. “The floodlight we’re protecting is malfunctioning. We need all the help we can get.”
Roxy and I turned without hesitation, but a sickening crack made us freeze. I wheeled around to see that several other bugs had gnawed through the base of a tree. The bark creaked as the trunk split. It fell between us with a groan, sending up dust and leaves and forcing us to jump apart to avoid being crushed.
As I leapt back, a heavy weight slammed into me from the side. I lost my balance and fell awkwardly in the dry grass with a pained gasp. The whirring sound began again, closer this time, as a swarm creature clung to my left arm and side, practically pinning me down. It was heavier than I’d imagined, twenty pounds or more.
Scrambling backward, I tried to throw it off. The creature moved its eyes toward me, operating the stalks like antennae, the movement almost curious. The mouth stopped whirring. It didn’t appear to want to bite me. From my belt I grabbed my small flashlight, shining the sharp white beam directly into its face. Beyond a slight recoiling of the eye stalks, it seemed unaffected. My heart sank.
“Here’s some breakfast!” Roxy shouted and slammed her sledgehammer into the monster. With a stony chitter, it let go of my arm and rolled to the side, twitching briefly. However, despite the force of the blow, there was no visible damage to its armor.
She hovered over it and spat in the grass. “This thing is one ugly SOB. Let’s get out of here.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I groaned as she helped me up.
The buzzing sound grew behind us and then all around us. Before we could register what was happening, more trees began to shake and fall. We ran for the edge of the grove. If we wanted to live, we had to get away from the trees.
“Repeat, I’m calling for reinforcements!” Paulson bellowed into the comms.
Roxy and I ran, dodging falling branches and leaping over those already on the ground. How many of these monsters were in here with us?
I sucked in a sharp breath as something yanked me to the side. My flashlight fell from my hand, and the dark vision visor slipped sideways, leaving me with only one eye able to see out of it. I fell into a crouch from the force. Horribly close to the flesh of my thigh, a creature greedily gnawed on the end of my golf club. I yanked it back from the ugly monster’s mouth, but the bug had already eaten the head, reducing the club to a stick.
As I scrambled backward on the uneven ground, the creature tensed its back legs and hopped, aiming above our heads. I jammed what was left of my club into its underbelly to knock it off balance, and Roxy swung the heavy sledgehammer with a grunt, slamming the bug back as hard as possible. It rolled away, tumbling into the creek below. Immediately, a grisly sucking sound rose from the water, as though the bug were trying to suck up the water like a vacuum cleaner. It stopped after a few seconds, leaving only the regular grinding of the empty swarm around us. We exchanged a glance, then darted down to the creek and away from the trees. The creature lay submerged in the water, eye stalks moving with the current. Otherwise, it was completely still.
“Could water—?” I said, cutting myself off as I turned to Roxy.
“I think so,” she replied.
We might have something! Triumph surged through me. This trip wasn’t a complete waste of time.
“I’ve got a giant swarm coming toward Section F,” Dorian said into the comm.
My heart lifted upon hearing his voice.
“That’s us!” Paulson shouted.
“Lyra Sloane, reporting in—” I started, but Paulson cut me off.
“Just get back here, now!”
Returning to action, Roxy and I hauled ass back toward the Visitors Center. Bugs hopped past us left and right, no longer tempted by our tiny metal sticks with a feast of abandoned cars before them. One bit into an unlit lamppost, and I leapt aside as it fell. The lightbulb shattered on the ground, sending shards of glass across the mauled street. The air teemed with buzzing. The empty swarm moved like grasshoppers, but I spotted a few of them gliding with transparent wings. Those wings didn’t seem capable of supporting their stone bodies, but I’d seen stranger things.
We rounded a bend and spotted the line of floodlights. The areas covered by the bright rays remained free of bugs.
Paulson’s shouts carried through the night, a note of panic evident in his voice. A team of techs gathered around the base of the light directly above the first lieutenant’s group. My team would be nearby. The light flickered briefly. The techs shouted to each other.
“It’s the base!” one cried as he bent over a panel in the pole.
These things could destroy the entire city if the lights went down. The destruction would ruin people’s lives. And it was only a matter of time before they moved on to the next town like a pack of unstoppable locusts. How long until they ate their way across the country?
“Don’t let them near the extension cord or the generator,” Paulson snapped on the comm. His voice was high and tight, the carefree attitude long gone. “It’ll cause a chain reaction and destroy all the lights connected to this generator. We can’t afford a huge hole in our defense, so don’t let them get close!”
I ran up to the group. Zach and Gina had their backs to the techs, protecting them from any oncoming threats. The light flickered in and out.
“There’s thousands of these things,” Zach said, shaking his head in frustration. “And they’re heavy as hell.”
“Sir,” I said, addressing Paulson. “We found a way to kill the bugs. If we drown them—”
“Do you see any water around here, Sloane?” Paulson said, exasperated. “Forget that and keep them off this light.” He turned back to the techs, dismissing me.
The soldiers were barely holding the stone bugs at bay. Colin smashed a crowbar into one, but the creature reared and ate half the bar in one bite.
“They keep eating our weapons,” he snapped, visibly frustrated even though we’d been warned of exactly that. He grabbed his backup weapon and shot a flare into the open mouth of the same creature. It reeled backward from the hit and skittered on the ground, knocking over two oncoming members of the swarm.
This strategy wouldn’t work. In a game of exhaustion, supernatural stone locusts already had the advantage of their natural physiology and numbers. The empty swarm would easily overwhelm us. The floodlight above us flickered. My nerves burned with determination. Using water was a strategy that held potential. I pressed my comm into my ear.
“This is Lyra Sloane calling for Captain Clemmins,” I said firmly. “I have a lead on how to stop these things.”
The line crackled. Paulson looked around angrily. “Stay off the line, Sloane!” he yelled. “We need to keep it clear for command.”
“I’m trying to help you!” I shouted back.
“Clemmins is busy,” someone else said on the line. “He doesn’t have time to talk to you.”
Another voice chimed in to say something to the same effect, but all I could hear was my frustrated blood pumping through my head. Roxy sidled up beside me, launching a firecracker she’d snagged from the ground at an oncoming creature.
“Nobody is going to listen about the water,” I told her.
Her face contorted smugly. Was she about to point out that this was how she felt under my command? Because this really wasn’t the time. Instead, she slapped a hand on my shoulder.
“If they won’t listen, we’ll just have to blow these little creeps up all night long,” she said with a mad grin. “You light the firecrackers, and I’ll throw them in.” She tossed me a full pack of the red firecrackers.
I nodded and got out my lighter. There were a few abandoned cars near the floodlights, and the bugs that were feasting on them inched toward us in the shadows.
“Light up as many as you can.” Roxy chucked her firecracker at one bug that scuttled toward us, its gaping maw whirring. Unfortunately, she didn’t see the one behind it. I quickly threw another right after hers. The fireworks sparked and exploded, ripping those particular members of the empty swarm apart. It was only a temporary victory, however, as four more moved in to take their place.
Our only advantage, except for the nearest fading floodlight, was the bright light shining behind us. Although the light didn’t hurt them, the bugs certainly preferred to stay out of it. But if the lights failed…
I had to try Clemmins again. Firepower wouldn’t work. I lit another firecracker while Roxy threw two more.
“Please, I need to speak with Captain Clemmins,” I said on the line. “I found a way to stop the swarm.”
Again, a chorus of officers told me to stay off the comm. This time I understood the tone underlying their dismissive words: distrust. They brushed me off as a meddling dissenter instead of putting aside the fact that I was a suspended Bureau soldier and listening to what I had to say. I scowled.
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” Roxy said, having overheard the exchange along with everyone else on the line. She clicked her tongue when she saw how few firecrackers were left. The vampires remained quiet on the line, but I guessed they were reluctant to interfere in the human hierarchy. It was hard enough for them to be involved already. I could only imagine what Dorian must be thinking about this.
Despite our best efforts, the swarming creatures grew closer, and we pulled back to the generator. Paulson’s team hovered around the base, shouting for us to hold our ground. We would, but we were running low on things to fight the stone bugs with.
Colin lured an insect toward him with the promise of a golf club, and Gina stepped in to fire a flare gun straight into the bug’s mouth. Zach was doing something similar with Bryce. Our former captain baited a line of hopping swarm monsters by waving around the remains of another crowbar. When they opened their mouths and hopped forward, Zach tossed grenades down their throats.
A bug hopped toward a tech, slipping past Zach and Gina on the left. I smashed it straight in the mouth with Roxy’s sledgehammer as it zeroed in on the light’s base, briefly knocking it back.
“Duck!” Bryce bellowed. I did as he said, and he rammed the whirring blade of the hedge trimmer into the bug’s mouth. There was a hideous shriek of metal as the blades met the bug’s grinding teeth, but the bug rolled backward from the force and stopped near an abandoned car. Its oncoming comrades paid it no mind as they continued to hop past. They had no sense of one another. As long as there were enough to swarm, they would continue to do just that.
The buzzing grew louder and louder. Shots rang out. Soldiers fired at the impenetrable creatures, but the bullets only grazed the bugs’ stony skin or ricocheted back dangerously. A soldier nearby screamed in pain as a bug took off one of his fingers along with his metal knife.
We couldn’t fight much longer if the enemy kept eating our weapons.
Clemmins’s staff could dismiss me all they wanted, but I saw what happened to the bug back in the creek.
“Dorian,” I said into my comm. “I have a plan. When Roxy and I fought one near the creek, it fell into the water and completely stopped moving. We think water kills them, or at least makes them still.”
“Sloane!” Paulson yelled. “What did I tell you about using the comm?”
“Paulson, get your chatterbox vampire fans off the line,” someone bellowe
d. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Water,” Dorian echoed, ignoring the interruption. “I hear you. Okay, what do we need to do?”
“Have you or anyone else seen any ponds or streams on your scouting? Something deep enough to submerge them?”
A lit firework fell from Roxy’s hand as she fumbled to avoid Colin. He was forcing back another bug with a baseball bat, his swing powerful enough to have led to a home run in any other scenario. I swiftly kicked the sputtering explosive into an oncoming monster’s mouth.
“We’re not going to last much longer with our limited supplies,” I warned Dorian. “This needs to happen fast.”
“I saw something when I swept over the south of town,” Bravi said suddenly. “A pond on a farm, I think. We could try to herd them there.”
“We can use the lights,” Dorian said.
A male voice I didn’t recognize came on the line. “Hey! If we need water to stop these things, the Colorado River runs north of town.”
Clemmins didn’t have time for me, but at least his soldiers did. After this was over, I would probably get a lecture that would go down in history for both length and intensity. Roxy and I looked at each other.
Worth it.
“Do whatever you can,” I said. “I’ll communicate with First Lieutenant Paulson.”
Roxy covered my back as we made our way over to Paulson, who was close to the right side of the base.
Paulson was trying his best with his massive flamethrower. He tried to scorch an oncoming line of nearby bugs, but his fire was useless against their closed mouths.
“Roxy, get ready with some sparklers,” I said. I snatched up a discarded soda can and threw it in front of the monsters. They opened their mouths upon sensing the metal. As they did, Roxy threw a bundle of sparklers into Paulson’s oncoming spray of flames. The combined effort created a small series of explosions, forcing the bugs back.
It was too dangerous to stop to talk, but Roxy and I worked alongside Paulson to try to keep the insects back.
Darklight 3: Darkworld Page 11