by Greig Beck
The green women withdrew their hypodermic-like proboscis and turned, their large compound eyes shivering and twitching in their direction, and immediately the room filled with a high-pitched whine.
“They’re giant fucking mosquitos,” Loche said and lifted his gun.
“Now I know what these monsters are keeping the children for,” Jane said, feeling ill. “We need to save them.”
“Back up.” Loche gritted his teeth and half turned. “Get ready to grab Watts.”
The green women’s wings extended and like they were jet-propelled, they shot from the ground. Though the stone room didn’t have a high ceiling, the green women were extremely fast and navigated the small space easily.
Loche kept his gun on them, but they headed for the exit and vanished outside. Jane rushed to the man on the table.
“How is he?” Loche joined them.
Watts looked ash-grey, and his eyes had sunk into deep sockets and his cheek bones were sharp. It looked like he was being mummified, as there was very little moisture left in his body.
The puncture marks on his torso were still leaking a clear liquid. She pointed.
“Massive blood loss. That liquid dribbling out is more likely to be something they injected into him to stop coagulation. Might be like a sedative or anticoagulant.” She looked up. “Just like mosquitos.”
Mike pulled one of Watts’ eyelids back, but the man’s eyes were rolled up and unresponsive. “He’s lost too much blood. He needs a transfusion.”
“We need to get him out,” Loche said. “We can rig a field transfusion, but not in here.”
Jane looked at Mike, and they shared a glance—they both knew he’d never make it. But they weren’t going to leave him behind.
Mike called to Matt who was looking at a large flat wall covered in writing. He turned to them. “This was a ceremonial chamber once. Like a chapel. The king’s name, the last king, was Usan The Great.” Matt shook his head. “Except for these kids, they’ve all gone now.”
“Give me a hand,” Mike said and lifted Watts.
Matt took his other arm. The man weighed next to nothing and felt more like a bag of twigs. He sagged between them, his feet dragging.
Loche looked back down the tunnel. “We find Nina and her team, and then head to that cave with the draft.”
“After we rescue the children.”
“We don’t have…” Loche began.
“We make time,” Jane insisted. “You want us to find the other red people, after we left some of their children behind? We bring the children, that’s final.”
“She’s right,” Mike urged. “We get them. They saved us once.”
Loche exhaled. “Okay, fine, we get them. Then we find a way out, or we make a way out.” Loche went to the exit and peered out. “Let’s go.”
He moved quickly but not fast enough to leave the rest behind.
“Hear that?” Matt called.
The whine filled the air, coming from behind them, ahead of them, and inside every alcove around them.
“Yeah, seems like the jungle drums are beating. We might have a lot of company real soon,” Loche replied.
In minutes more, they came to the junction and Watts made a wheezing sound and sagged even more between the two men. Loche turned back, drew his blade, and made an ‘X’ next to the cave they had felt the earthy breeze emanating from.
He then quickly stepped in closer to Watts and lifted his head. He examined the man closely for a few seconds before his shoulders slumped. “Ah, damnit.”
Jane also checked him. “We’ve lost him.”
“He was already dead,” Loche sighed. “Put him down,” he said to Matt and Mike, who laid the desiccated body of the man on the cave floor.
Loche crouched in front of him. “Thank you, soldier.” He reached into the man’s collar, took his tags, and wrapped them around his fist. He saluted the body and then got to his feet and turned. “We need to find…”
From one of the tunnels came the staccato blasts of automatic gunfire.
“That’s Nina. Hurry.” Loche sprinted into the tunnel ahead.
Mike ran with Jane, and Matt was close behind. Loche was already outpacing them, and just as he passed by the mouth of an open cave, something came out of it like a green torpedo to snatch him off his feet and keep going.
“Loche!” Jane yelled uselessly.
From up ahead in the darkness more gunfire and yells smashed out; they were closer now.
The trio looked indecisive for a split second until Jane started into the cave. “Loche first.”
The trio headed in, both flashlights and guns held up. They moved cautiously, and in seconds more, they heard a grunt of effort and rounded a small bend to find Loche holding one of the green women by the throat. Its face plates were pulled back, the probing spike of a proboscis extended just inches from his face.
It used its two longest arms to try and draw him closer. They could now see that its small arms had sharp talons that raked and tore his clothing. Loche’s gun and light were on the ground, and Mike lifted his own gun and aimed. But the pair moved too erratically for him to get a clean shot.
“Can’t get a shot,” he said, seething.
Matt charged in and grabbed one of the long wings of the thing, causing it to immediately crash to the ground.
Loche ignored the damage being done to his body, reached down to pull a blade, and then thrust it up into the side of the thing just between its first and second set of arms. The result was immediate and eerie as the green woman soundlessly folded in on herself. It released Loche and spun toward Matt who still had hold of its wing. It darted straight at him.
“Gaah.” Matt released the wing, threw his arms up, and fell back. The small green woman then sped from the cave.
Loche quickly looked down at his bleeding ribs covered in lacerations. “We’ve got to help the others, and then get the hell out of here.”
“You might need stitches, you’re losing blood,” Jane said.
“And if we hang around here, we’ll lose our lives. I’ll deal with it. Let’s go.” He began to jog back out of the cave, only pausing momentarily at the corner before leaving to enter the main tunnel, and then began to run.
As Loche ran, he reached down into a side pouch on his pants and drew forth a plastic package. He used his teeth to rip it open and tugged out a patch with something reddish-brown on the pad side—iodine, Jane bet—and he lifted his shirt to slap it on the lacerations.
Air escaped his lips in a hiss for a second or two as he dealt with the pain and then once plastered on, Loche began to accelerate again.
Jane, Matt, and Mike worked to keep up with him. But they could all hear that the battle ahead was close now.
***
Nina, Croft, and Angel backed up, firing as they went.
Until they hit the wall.
The green insectoid creatures were fast, darting and changing direction faster than the soldiers could track and shoot. For every half dozen shots they expended, they hit one target, and as there seemed to be many dozens of the things crowding into the cave, they’d burn through their ammunition long before they took down enough of the creatures to be safe.
“Fucking monsters.” Angel jacked a grenade into his launcher and lifted the weapon.
“Negative!” Nina yelled. “We could bring it all down on our heads.”
At that moment, with Nina’s head turned, one of the green women sped in and latched onto her with its four arms, and immediately the two smaller limbs with the dagger-like claws dug in. Being smaller than the two men, she was immediately dragged from their group.
Angel and Croft went to go after her but were swarmed and just as they began to get pushed back, saw Nina fighting hard, but then another landed on her back, gripping with its four arms, and spearing into the back of her neck with its proboscis.
“No!” Croft yelled and tried to charge forward, but more insect women dove into him, shredding his clothes and forcin
g him back.
Nina gurgled in pain, and whatever toxin it pumped into her acted quickly. Her arms dropped, and she slumped over.
“Can’t. Get. To her.” Croft gritted his teeth as he battled the swarm, shooting, stabbing, and clubbing them with his fists. But he could only watch as his team leader was drained of fluid. Nina twitched as the life was sucked right from her body.
“Fuck you, you ugly sonsofbitches.” Angel lifted his launcher and fired a grenade round into the center of the mass. “Fire in the hole!” he yelled and both men dove to the ground.
The pug only traveled a few dozen feet, and just as the insect beings began to land on the men, the brilliant red and orange thump of the blast filled the cave with blinding light and heat.
***
“Whoa!” Loche stopped and held his hands out to each side of the tunnel wall as the explosion shook the entire passageway. He waited a few seconds, and the group just stared at each other, waiting, as horrifyingly, there then came a sound like cracking ice from all around them.
“It’s gonna collapse!” Mike yelled.
“We gotta get ‘em.” Loche charged on.
“This is insane—wait.” Jane made a guttural sound in her throat as she watched the man sprint away.
“No choice.” Mike grabbed her arm and they continued to run, followed by Matt.
The professor cringed as dust rained down on him. “We’ve got about two minutes!” he yelled.
They burst from their tunnel into the chamber with a scene of carnage all around them.
“There.” Loche sprinted to the body of Nina among all the shredded green people. He immediately turned her over but saw she had suffered the same fate as Watts.
“Ah, shit, shit, shit.” He pounded the floor.
“Here, Croft, he’s alive,” Mike said.
“And Angel too.” Matt lifted the man who coughed and shook his head, trying to clear it.
“Nina,” was all Watts said.
Matt turned to Loche, who shook his head. “We’ve got to get out, now!” he yelled.
As their hearing started to return to normal following the blast, they all heard the growing high-pitched whine coming from the tunnels.
“Here they come,” Jane said.
“We’re outta here.” Loche lifted Croft and began to jog with the man stagger-running beside him on his shoulder.
Mike and Matt got Angel up between them and luckily for them, the big man was able to help by half staggering along with them. As they ran, the sound of their ragged breathing and the whine of the approaching insect women was drowned out by the cracking of stone.
“Here we go.” Jane began to sprint and urged them even faster.
Loche spotted the knife marks on the rock beside one of the caves and pointed. “This one.”
Jane skidded to a stop. “You go, I’ll get the children.”
“No,” Loche ordered.
Croft jacked in another magazine. “I got this, boss.”
The captain pointed at the man’s chest. “You got two damn minutes, soldier.”
Without anther word Jane sped off, with Mike right on her shoulder. The large form of Croft, still staggering, came up from behind.
As they careened down the tunnel, they heard the first thump of heavy stones coming down.
“In here!” Jane yelled and sped straight into the room. The red children were still there, and they all backed up when the huge people suddenly appeared.
Croft stayed at the door, looking up and down the corridor, and Jane went to the taller kid who had greeted her previously. She held his face in two hands and looked into his eyes. “I know you don’t understand me, but you must come with me, all of you, now.” She kissed his forehead, hard, and then took his hand and began to lead him to the door.
There she placed his hand in Mike’s, and then went back to urge the other children to follow. She grabbed another child’s hand and took the girl to link hands with the boy Mike held.
Each seemed comfortable doing this until she had all of them, all twenty-three.
“Gotta go, gotta go, people!” Croft yelled as the room began to fill with dust.
Jane nodded to Mike, and the procession headed out.
***
“Come on, come on, come on.” Loche bared his teeth with impatience as he waited at the cross tunnel.
Behind him came a whoosh of air and a dust cloud surged past them, obviously as some of the tunnels further in were beginning to collapse.
Just when he felt they were lost, he saw the pinprick of Croft’s barrel light come bouncing down the long tunnel.
“Hurry up!” he roared.
In seconds more, the long line of adults and children appeared, and Loche immediately pushed them into the marked tunnel. “Go, go, go!”
They sprinted for a few minutes until they all charged into a large, dead-end vault-like room that was crowded with skeleton fragments around the edge of a large pool of water. On its surface were revolting-looking bristling bulbs, five or six feet long, that shivered and jerked.
The children screamed and crowded in behind Mike and Jane.
As the group watched, one of the things at the surface started to spit down the back, and then rising up from within the casing came an abomination that was part green woman and part spindly insect.
“The birthing room,” Jane said.
“Not today,” Croft snarled. “For Nina.” He fired a stream of rounds into the rising insect body.
It was like an electric shock had been run through the pool of stagnant water as all the bodies flicked and jumped and then vanished below the dark surface. The green woman-creature he struck flopped sideways into the water and lay still.
“There.” Loche pointed.
In the ceiling above them, they could see a crack of red light, and water dripped down from it onto the water’s surface.
“It’s how the pond fills—maybe rainwater from outside,” Mike said.
“If the water’s getting in, then that’s how we’re getting out.” Loche looked up.
Beneath their feet, the rock jerked to the left, then right. He threw his arms out like a tightrope walker, just as the rock jerked again.
“Time’s up.” Loche stepped out of the way. “Angel, make a hole for us.”
Angel nodded. “Everyone take cover.” He lifted his launcher and pumped one of the explosive plugs into the chamber and fired.
He then dove backward as the plug struck the ceiling and detonated.
Rock blew in all directions and when the cavern settled, they could see a shaft of brilliant red light in the curtain of dust.
The cavern jerked again, this time by Mother Nature. But above the thundering sound of the shifting stones, a high-pitched whine was building.
“Here comes the army,” Croft said, as he raced to the tunnel they’d just exited from, and peered back down. “Time to go, boss.”
“Up and out!” Loche yelled, and one after the other, the group scaled the tumbled rocks to the exit. They had to wait for the small children to climb as Angel and Croft guarded the exit, and as Loche got to near the top, he turned. “Angel, shut the door, and we’re out.”
Angel nodded and turned to his friend, Croft. “Go, I’m right behind you.”
“Don’t make me come back for you.” He slapped Angel on the shoulder and turned to bound up the stones. At the top, he and Loche watched as Angel fired several rounds back down the shaft, and then turned and ran.
The explosive rounds detonated as he bounded up the rockslide. Loche pulled him up the last few feet as the rumbling continued after the blasts.
Then got louder.
“Oh shit.” Loche backed up, and then turned.
The group found themselves on top of the massive statue’s head and spread out before them far below was the jungle valley. But now cracks were running through the stone head that was the size of a football field.
The group began to cautiously back up as a sound like thunder reverbe
rated right through the cliff wall. It finished with a fissure opening in front of them.
There was silence and they all waited, holding their breath.
Then it started again, massively shaking the entire cliff face.
“Run!” Loche yelled to the group.
In front of them, more cracks began to appear and open.
“She’s gonna go!” Mike yelled and he, Jane, and Matt grabbed up two each of the smallest children in their arms, put their heads down, and sprinted.
More cracks opened, mostly behind but some in front of them. Mike leaped across one massive rent in the cliff top, followed by Jane, Matt, Janus, Loche, then Croft and lastly, Angel.
The last few dozen feet to a ridge of rocks they dove and then sprawled on the ground. They turned, just as the entire thousand-foot-high statue parted from the cliff. It hung there for several seconds before slowly tipping forward. Then the millions of tons of stone figure fell like the mightiest tree in the world.
Mike got to his feet. “Keep going.”
They ran back further, looking over their shoulders, and when the titanic weight of rock struck the valley floor, everything jumped as if an earthquake ran through the inner world. More land fell off the cliff edge into the void.
Janus was on his belly hugging the ground, and the others stood but had their arms out wide to maintain balance until the earth stopped shaking.
For many seconds afterward, there were still the sounds of huge rocks striking the valley floor as the last loose boulders were shaken out to fall free. Eventually, it fell to silence, and the group felt confident enough to straighten.
“I guess toppling a thousand-foot-high statue and destroying it is leaving a small footprint in the greater scheme of things,” Matt chuckled.
Croft snarled. “Yeah, and I’m just happy those green bitches got what they deserved.”
Loche turned and walked a few paces up through the trees on top of the cliff wall. He put a hand over his eyes and exhaled. “The end of the valley.”
The group joined him and stared out over the vista—the jungle valley ended in just a few miles, and like someone had drawn a line on the ground, there began the desert. He checked his GPS and turned to Jane.