by WW Mortensen
Only seconds ago, she’d thoroughly checked the surrounding barrier web, scanning it on all sides. As best she could tell in the fading light, there were no workers about. The web appeared deserted.
She checked again.
• • •
In truth, Jessy didn’t require the litter but was given no choice. Strapped on her back into a long and shallow wire basket, she rose through the trees with Sergeant Johansson riding shotgun on the outside. Priscilla, too, was with them, inside a harness attached to Johansson’s chest, frightened, but quiet.
Emerging from the bustling treetops beneath the huge body of the hovering Black Hawk, Jessy looked up as Raven Two’s crew chief—operating the electrical rescue hoist—leaned out to swing them aboard. It was a practiced movement, and before long he was unhooking the Stokes litter from the harness, preparing to send Raven Two’s Forest Penetrator back down for the remaining troops. Johansson moved to help, and as he did, he caught Jessy’s eye and smiled, gave her the thumbs up.
Jessy smiled back, for the first time truly revelling in the moment.
Finally.
She was safe.
• • •
Something wasn’t right.
Rebecca didn’t know what, but she was restless.
Come on, get a grip…
The approaching Black Hawk was close now and started to slow. Behind it, the second aircraft hovered like a giant wasp above the north-western vantage point.
What was she worried about? In a matter of minutes, Ed, Jessy and herself would be away from this place, safe at last. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
You’re being overcautious.
Maybe so, but the feeling gnawed at her. Somehow, it was all too easy—too good to be true.
And unfortunately, she was right.
Rebecca saw the long white streak emerge from the jungle to the north—and gasped.
• • •
Sergeant Diez was on one knee, M16 pressed to his shoulder, staring intently down the sight at the surrounding jungle. Above him, the hovering Raven Two thumped loudly in his ears. All around, leaves shook in its downdraft.
Diez scanned the tangle of dark roots at the base of the tree before him. Just now, his eyes had been drawn back to it, and somehow things looked different to when he’d checked the spot not thirty seconds ago. In what way, he wasn’t sure—still a tangle of roots, just different. A mass of broad leaves in the undergrowth at the base of the tree obscured his vision, so he slung his rifle and got down on all fours to part the veil with both hands.
His breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t been looking at a tangle of roots after all. Not solely, anyway.
Amongst the root system at the base of the tree, not two feet from his face, a large pair of eyes stared back at him curiously.
• • •
In the air one hundred feet above Diez, Jessy spurned the order to stay put and freed herself from the litter. Johansson had his back to her, having already moved forward to the flight deck to issue instructions to the pilot. Straining, Jessy pulled herself up to a seat up by the door and strapped herself in. Beside her, the crewman manning the pintle-mounted .50 calibre M2 didn’t seem to care, intent as he was on scanning the terrain below. Jessy guessed he couldn’t have seen much through the cover of the trees: for the most part, the deep green of the canopy beneath them, shifting and rippling at the mercy of the huge blades thumping powerfully overhead, was impenetrable. Still, she followed his gaze, staring down through the open door of the hovering Black Hawk. From up here, not even the Penetrator was visible, just the thick steel cable to which it was attached sinking into the sea of foliage like a fishing line into dark water. As the cable retracted, the hoist above the door whirred.
Jessy again peered down, watching for the Penetrator to clear the canopy, eagerly anticipating the emergence of the first group of troops.
But her gaze was ripped away.
Through the leaves, at ground level, she caught a flash of orange light. Perplexed, she squinted, searching the swirling green sea beneath her. A quick succession of flashes followed, maybe half a dozen at once, flaring brightly.
Muzzle flashes—
Oh no…
Jessy couldn’t see what the soldiers were shooting at, but the bursts of light grew more sustained, coming from all sides. Around her, crewmen shouted, but the thumping of the blades overhead drowned out their voices. A slow panic rose in her, and she sensed it, too, in the men as they swung quickly into action.
We need to get out of here.
The hoist above the door continued to whir, and as the Penetrator finally came clear of the canopy, Jessy screamed.
• • •
Rebecca watched the thin white streak rise from the jungle in an unerring straight line, chasing the Black Hawk from behind.
Though she’d never seen one before, except maybe in a movie, she knew the smoke-like stripe was a vapour trail. More importantly, she knew what such a trail meant.
Someone had fired a rocket at the chopper nosing towards her and the pyramid’s northern face—the chopper that was their only means of escape.
Rebecca watched in horror as the projectile chased down its target and hit its mark.
90
Jessy screamed.
Beneath her, framed by the open doorway of Raven Two and swinging from the empty Penetrator trailing beneath the aircraft, was a single jumper. Having caught the device as it was lifted from the jungle floor, the creature raced up the cable as though it were a thread of silk, the body of the chopper shielding the superspider against the powerful downdraft.
The chopper’s crew chief—perhaps unable to believe his eyes—froze momentarily… then hit the cable’s brake, bringing it to a jarring halt. But he was too late. The jumper was too close, and the crewman next to Jessy—who had already opened up with the M2—couldn’t swing the weapon around low enough.
Unhindered, the jumper leapt straight up through the open doorway, into the cabin of the chopper.
• • •
The first of the bullets whizzed past her ear and Rebecca leapt backwards into the temple.
This isn’t happening…
The rocket fired from the jungle by parties unknown had nailed the approaching Black Hawk in the tailfin. There’d been an explosion. Now, a volley of bullets slammed into the surrounding columns, causing eruptions of dust and shards of stone to fly in all directions. Rebecca dived to the ground, out of the way of the onslaught, as Ed and Oliveira took cover somewhere behind her.
The bullets were coming from the second Black Hawk, which now hovered erratically in the distance. Obviously, its gunner was firing at something, but he seemed to be spraying his shots recklessly, maybe in panic.
Abruptly, the gunfire ended. Rebecca popped her head up.
Somehow, the first Black Hawk had survived the rocket attack, its protective armour presumably designed to withstand impact from small arms. But the tailfin was shot to pieces; the aircraft was crippled. As Rebecca watched, the Black Hawk dipped dramatically, spewing black smoke, before spinning on its axis and plunging through the sky like a loosed missile.
…oh no… God no…
The chopper, totally out of control, dived towards the temple, heading straight for them.
• • •
Inside Raven Two it was mayhem.
Jessy hadn’t stopped screaming. No sooner had the first jumper cleared the open doorway than a second assailed the soldier manning the M2 beside her. Bullets spurted wildly from the weapon’s heavy muzzle, spraying through the air above the canopy, the soldier’s finger caught on the machine-gun’s trigger. The thunder of the spitting rounds hurt Jessy’s ears, but it was the least of her concerns. As she watched, the first jumper swept Johansson into its smothering grasp and swatted him out the opposing portside door. In a flash—his face frozen in horror and his arms and legs wriggling in the jumper’s grip—Johansson and his abductor dropped from view. Jessy wailed hysterically. U
p front, the pilot himself screamed, raising his hands in fright as a third jumper appeared on the windshield. The chopper spun violently, losing altitude, and the terrified pilot struggled for control. He couldn’t regain it. The Penetrator, trailing unrestrained at the end of the cable several feet below, snagged in the canopy.
Again, the chopper sank and yawed right, but this time the rotor-blades clipped the trees. It all happened quickly, and Jessy, still screaming, could do little but watch in terror, squeezing shut her eyes as the green of the canopy rushed up through the starboard window.
91
Rebecca watched with dismay as the Black Hawk hurtled towards the temple and straight into the web, metal screaming. Instantly, its fifty-foot titanium and fibreglass rotor-blades entangled and ground to an ear-piercing halt. But the aircraft’s momentum was too great, and neither the trees nor the catching-sheet could stand in its way. Squealing in protest, the Black Hawk heaved sideways, rolling laterally on itself and spinning side-on towards the pyramid, wrapping itself in silk like a giant insect.
The web—as its design dictated—was absorbing the crash as opposed to halting the chopper outright, but Rebecca realised it would never do so fast enough. The tumbling Black Hawk grew larger by the millisecond through the columns of the temple, which lay directly in the chopper’s path. The huge machine was going to smash into it and take them along with it.
Go! Run!
Rebecca snapped out of her daze and turned to flee. She didn’t get far.
The huge, pale grey leg appeared out of nowhere, hooking her by the ankle and dragging her to the ground and the open shaft.
• • •
It was a single, segmented limb, maybe fifteen feet in length, and then suddenly there was another, shooting out of the shaft with the speed of an angry snake. As she slid across the floor towards the hole, Rebecca saw the second leg swat Oliveira aside, sending him soaring. The flamethrower flew from his hands.
Five or six seconds had passed since the rocket had struck the Black Hawk. His attention most likely drawn to that, Oliveira clearly hadn’t noticed the Female climbing the shaft, rising from below. Ed, too, had been caught off-guard, but he was able to dive and grasp Rebecca’s outstretched wrist as she slid past screaming. With the gun in his opposing hand, he fired down at the pale, hairless limb as it drew them towards the open hole. With each shot a gush of dark blood jetted high into the air, but still the leg dragged them. The hole yawned. Ed kept firing.
SHIIITTT!!
Barely three feet from the lip of the shaft, the shattered leg finally relented, releasing them. Rebecca skidded to a halt beside Ed, who seized her and rolled her sideways as a third limb appeared, crashing down hard on the spot she’d occupied a second earlier. A fourth and a fifth appendage followed, all thrashing and straining up through the shaft, and before long each of the pale limbs was braced solidly against the temple floor as the creature tried to draw her grotesque, bloated body up through the opening.
Ghostlike, the Female’s pale form rose. She was almost free.
Rebecca scrambled to her feet, the sound of gunfire in her ears again. The flamethrower was an irretrievable distance from Oliveira, who was only now drawing upright himself. She shot him a despairing glance. “ARE YOU COMING?”
Oliveira nodded. “I have reconsidered your offer…”
Trapped between the terrifying image of the emerging Female on one side and the chopper hurtling towards them on the other—crunching through the web and now only yards away—the three of them ran as the Female burst fully out of the shaft behind them—
—and together leapt from the temple out into space, towards the chopper as it in turn hurtled the final few feet to meet them in mid-air.
• • •
Rebecca heard a whoosh and a whip-like snap behind her as the enraged Female lunged furiously with her forelegs, evidently unable to squeeze her great bulk through the narrowly spaced columns of the temple. She missed Rebecca by inches. Fortunately, the hurtling chopper reached the end of its run before striking the temple, finally surrendering to the strength of the web. Coming to a sudden, weightless halt, it sprang back away from the temple just as Rebecca and her companions reached the peak of their leap and began to fall—
—catching it on the way.
Rebecca hit it hard, the wind driven instantly from her body as she slammed into one of the wheels towards the nose. At the same time, Ed and Oliveira hit the open portside doorway. Bouncing out of the Female’s reach, the Black Hawk settled in the damaged web, but Rebecca sensed it sinking, threatening to plunge to the ground. Terrified, covered in silk, she scrambled to get a better handhold. Her fingers were slipping, the force of the rebounding chopper almost too much to bear.
Behind her, the Female hissed, barked madly…
The chopper dropped, sagged. The three of them jolted down with it and almost fell.
“Ed!”
“Just hold on!”
“I’m losing my grip!”
Again, the chopper sank in the web, lurching, twisting. Metal groaned. Rebecca’s knuckles were white. Ed and Oliveira struggled, too. Below them, the steps of the pyramid loomed. They wouldn’t survive the fall.
“No…”
Another lurch. The Female seemed furious, her legs reaching for them, straining through the columns. Her hissing intensified. Both hands around the wheel, Rebecca tried and failed to swing her legs up. Another lurch and she’d be history…
“Ed! I can’t hold on…”
Ed opened his mouth, but before he could say anything—and as if to test her—the chopper slipped once more.
As promised, Rebecca lost her grip and fell—
—just as a bloodied hand shot from inside the chopper and snatched her wrist.
Leaning almost fully outside the forward portside window, the soldier tossed her a wink. “Got you,” he said, straining through gritted teeth. His face was deeply lacerated. A cloth strip bearing the name ‘Aronsohn’ was stitched over the right breast of his fatigues. He pulled her up to the opening.
Two more bloodied soldiers scrambled to the doorway. They had Ed and Oliveira halfway inside when one of them glanced towards the temple and paled. “Shit! Hold on!”
Half-inside the window, Rebecca turned in time to see the Female—who had pressed her mouthparts between the central columns of the temple—spit a huge thread of silk from the glands behind her fangs. With a resounding thud, it slammed into the Black Hawk, gluing to its side like a thick, taut rope. The other end was still connected in a sticky mess to the Female’s open mouth, and she grasped it with her pedipalps and jerked it backwards. The chopper lurched savagely sideways, and up, towards the temple, the Female reeling them in like a fish at the end of a line.
Oh shit…
And if that wasn’t enough, it was then that several of the Female’s fellow egg-layers poured from the yawning shaft behind her, leaping through the air and onto the chopper like a pack of hyenas falling on a carcass…
92
Jessy held on for dear life as Raven Two nosedived through the canopy, punching a gaping hole as it went.
On all sides, branches snapped like match-sticks; others scratched and clawed through the open doors and windows. The scream of twisting metal filled the cabin.
Jessy squeezed shut her eyes. The soldier who’d manned the M2 beside her had vanished, so too the crew chief. She hadn’t seen them go. The two remaining jumpers had also disappeared, perhaps brushed free as the Black Hawk fell.
Maybe they escaped, taking the men with them.
Though she wasn’t religious, Jessy began to pray, and as she did, the chopper—with a sudden jarring, bone-crunching lurch—came to an abrupt and unexpected halt.
• • •
Aronsohn pulled Rebecca through the window and into the chopper as gunfire barked. Rebecca turned and saw one of the egg-layers, at that very same opening, disappear in an explosion of blood.
She jumped to her feet. The floor listed, and s
he thrust out her arms for balance. The Female, straining against the temple’s columns, pulled again on the heavy strand of silk, but the catching-sheet that had ensnared the Black Hawk resisted, fighting to retain its prize. The tug-of-war tossed the aircraft like a ship in a storm. The floor tilted, and Rebecca fell against Ed, who, along with Oliveira, had joined her and Aronsohn inside. Two more soldiers, and at least one other crew member, stood at the aircraft’s various openings, firing into the gloom.
An egg-layer materialized at the portside door, hissing. Legs wide, it leapt onto one of the soldiers who stumbled backwards, screaming and thrashing.
“Jenkins!” Aronsohn yelled, reaching for him as the chopper lurched back towards the pyramid, expelling the younger soldier and his attacker. The remaining occupants hit the deck hard, sliding inexorably for the opening themselves. Screaming, the crew chief, at the top of the pile, disappeared out the door, wide-eyed in terror. Another heave, and the Black Hawk listed in the opposite direction, saving the rest of the group from the crew chief’s fate but causing them all to slide back towards the starboard door.
On the outside of the Black Hawk, the remaining egg-layers scrambled about like crabs on a tin sheet. One of them appeared with a hiss through the starboard door, companion in tow. The two creatures came for Ed as the floor surged again, Ed sliding back the other way and out of reach. They turned on Oliveira, who had snatched a fire-extinguisher from the wall, but before he could swing at them, he lost his footing and fell. On his back, sliding again, he raised the extinguisher like a shield as the first of the megarachnids leapt voraciously onto his chest. He kept sliding with the huge spider pressed upon him, desperately holding it at bay as he disappeared out the door.
• • •
As Oliveira dropped from view, the egg-layer on top of him fanned into a starburst with the speed of a sprung trap. Latching onto the door’s threshold—its middle legs on both sides gripping the doorframe, its rear legs grasping the deck of the Black Hawk—it abruptly ceased its forward motion. It must have been incredibly strong, because Rebecca realised its forelegs still gripped Oliveira, who hung just below the opening.