It all clicked into place in the same moment that their adversaries attacked.
They surged forward with shocking speed, only to retreat almost instantly and leave only the barest impression that they’d been there, an afterimage of claws and fur and snapping jaws. Men screamed and two of the sentries simply vanished into the jungle.
“Pull in! Form a perimeter!” Jan shouted. He was already running toward the gear at the center—not to evade danger, but to snatch up one of the extra rifles. “Pull in!”
This had begun far too quickly but it would not be over at the same speed. They had a fighting chance yet and were only doomed if they lost control. Jan T Shalwar was not a man who panicked easily.
He found a rifle amidst the gear and was relieved that he’d instructed they should be left in places where they could be retrieved at an instant’s notice, loaded and ready to go. With practiced calm, he swung it up as his hands clicked the safety off. With the butt secure against his shoulder, his eyes scanned hastily to take in as much as he could in the shortest possible time.
Other guns were already firing—good. Someone wailed horribly to his left. In the panorama before him, muzzles flared and foliage shredded. He caught flashes of the creatures seemingly driven back in some places, but a man directly in front of him stumbled with blood welling from a slash wound in his shoulder.
Dr. Curie raced toward the center near where he stood and the remnants of Klaus’s team lay on their stretchers. All but a couple of them were dragged to consciousness now by the blasting of guns, the eerie shrieks of their attackers, and the swearing and groaning of men in combat.
Jan fired slightly ahead of a flash of orange that darted between the branches slightly to his left. The rifles and shotguns were too loud to hear if the creature made any sound, but it seemed to jerk and vanish deeper into the jungle.
One of his men—the wolf-faced Gefreiter Schultz who had mistaken a licorice plant for an aphrodisiac—slipped into a battle-rage and stormed toward the edge of the jungle as he fired into it, his rifle on full auto.
“Schultz! Pull back!” Jan barked.
The man didn’t seem to hear. A claw whisked out of the foliage and slit his throat. His eyes bulged and he stumbled as blood spilled down the front of his uniform. In an instant, his attacker seized him and jerked him out of sight.
The hauptmann clenched his jaw in barely suppressed fury. These things were even worse than devilcrows or snakecats because they would never come out and fight in the open. He could already see the essence of their strategy—keep moving, strike at random from oblique angles, and use feints and false attacks. Worse, they were incredibly fast.
“Everyone pull together at the center! Fall back from the trees!” he shouted. Another man screamed behind him and leaves swished to indicate he’d been dragged through as well. “Stay out in the open!” At least they’d been attacked in a glade near the huge tree rather than in a denser area where there was no open space.
Dr. Curie ran closer to him as his troops moved to obey his orders, and it seemed the creatures’ attacks and movements slowed or stopped. The men continued to fire but by now, half had run out of ammo and were reloading.
“Flame unit!” Jan ordered during a pause amidst the din and gestured with his hand to indicate where they should focus. The only man with a flamethrower stepped forward and swept the part of the jungle that lay opposite the path they’d come from. A few hisses issued from behind the vegetation and enough of it blazed to give pause to any of the creatures who might consider bursting through.
The flamer fell back and turned his weapon off —it was potentially as dangerous to them as it was to their enemies—while a few others covered him with scattered gunfire.
“That way! Fighting retreat, back down the path!” the hauptmann ordered. The flamethrower had at least covered their rear, for now. They would only have to fend off potential attacks from the sides. Unless, of course, they could simply kill all the mutants and be done with it.
A lull gave them a moment’s respite and he saw the colored fur of one of the creatures across from him, mostly concealed behind two trees. It remained motionless and to his surprise, it seemed that the fur changed its hue from red-orange to yellow-green to make it almost imperceptible amidst the leaves. He glimpsed this for only an instant as his men began their retreat.
Their harried march was accompanied by scuttling as if the creatures ran or scrabbled through vines and branches, but oddly, the sounds did not seem to grow fainter. To discourage them from another attempt to attack, a few of his men took scattered shots with isolated bursts or single rounds. It seemed to work, and he thought they might actually get out of this.
Aside, that is, from the six or seven of his people who’d already been killed.
“Now move!” he ordered. They had already made their way beyond the edge of the glade and onto the beginning of the path that would lead them in the direction they’d first come from. The pace would be slower than he’d like, though, due to the necessity of transporting the wounded. Fortunately, only five of Klaus’s team still needed to be dragged on stretchers. The others had regained enough of their faculties to walk.
He’d almost allowed himself real hope when the second wave of the attack came from above.
“Hauptmann!” the man next to him screamed as a brownish-red form plummeted directly onto him. Jan spun and to his horror, numerous forms leapt out of the trees while the soldier beside him seemed to almost shatter into pieces amidst a burbling fountain of his own blood. In an instant, the creature bounded into the air, taking one of the larger pieces with it, before he could fire a single shot.
Even he was on the verge of panicking now, but he would not. He refused to succumb to such weakness.
“Aim upward. They’re in the trees,” he said unnecessarily as his troops had already adjusted their aim to deliver a fusillade of lead at about a forty-five-degree angle up into the understory of the jungle. One of the mutants fell next to him, dead or dying, and sprawled in an ungainly heap.
There was no time to examine what it looked like. He took Dr. Curie by the arm and pulled her back toward the center of the formation. “I need a gun!” she said.
She probably did, actually. Two or three more of his soldiers were already dead. Before he could respond, however, another of the creatures—this one very much alive—crashed on top of the dead one.
He pivoted barely in time and scrambled backward as he fired. The monster tried to lunge but thrust into a wall of bullets. They struck its limbs, chest, and open mouth, and bleeding and screeching, it fell back. The corpse collapsed behind that of its fellow.
The brief impression of the beast was something like a giant, vicious ape or monkey but more like a lizard. And he could have sworn the color of its fur became darker and duller as it succumbed to death.
Once again, there was no time to assimilate the perception as two more of them appeared. One plunged down from the high branches and the other pushed out horizontally to leave him time for only the reflex of survival. He held Dr. Curie tightly and half-ran, half-stumbled toward the glade. Something in his gut sank. Even in that split second of dodging certain death, he knew in the back of his mind that he was being separated from his troop.
Jan fired two bursts at the creatures. One seemed to take enough lead to the face to flail back, wounded, and the other darted into the jungle.
He drew his pistol, clicked the safety off, and slapped it into the researcher’s hand. “Hold it with both hands, aim straight, squeeze the trigger, and—”
She was already in the process of obeying his instructions and turned to fire at the creature he had wounded. The first shot pulled the gun far too high and she gave a squeak of surprise, but she seemed to gain control of it in time to fire three more rounds into the mutant’s head. It writhed in pain and slumped.
He attempted to track the other one. It seemed to have vanished, but the bright fur of two others appeared on either side of where
he and Curie stood back to back. The sounds of his platoon grew fainter behind the increasing sounds of more and more of these monstrosities being driven down the path.
One of the two he’d identified made a feint out of the vegetation. He stopped himself from firing immediately and instead, fired where he assumed it would retreat to before it launched its real attack. His assumption was correct. It uttered a half-screech, half-hiss and stumbled away to safety.
The other targeted Curie. She blazed away at it and while she didn’t place her shots with much care, she handled the gun better than he would have thought. Thankfully, the abomination slowed. He pivoted toward it and fired a low burst toward its groin and belly. Its abdomen burst, wet and steaming, and its legs kicked out from under it to sprawl it into the mud to die.
One more colored patch in the jungle watched them. Jan switched to single shot and fired at it twice. To his relief, it ran off.
The two of them stood in the uncanny peace and quiet. They were safe for the moment.
Unfortunately, they were also alone. He could no longer see the rest of the troops.
He turned toward the British scientist and suddenly remembered why these creatures had been led to them. Anger surged through him but when he saw her face as she turned toward him, he decided that she must be thinking something very similar to his reluctant realization that overrode everything else.
They weren’t done fighting yet.
Chapter Twenty
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” Laura demanded, suddenly furious. She’d been shaking with the fear and intensity of battle. It had subsided for a moment once they’d driven the monsters off but now, the trembling was even worse but for a different reason.
“What?” Hauptmann Shalwar responded and his lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace. “Why didn’t you listen to me? I told you not to wander off. You could’ve been killed!
“Every minute I’m in this place is almost getting myself killed!” she answered. “That was obviously all a trap, to begin with. They were waiting for us and even marked the route they’d take to that tree.”
“I fulfilled my duty by trying to complete the mission. I was sent here to rescue those men, no matter what the danger involved, so that is what—”
“Now do you believe me that there is some new species here?” she asked. “If they are smart enough to scratch markings into trees, they’re smart enough to set a trap. Those men were stuck to that tree so we would find them and they could all pounce on us like that.”
The truth of that seemed indisputable. As soon as they’d arrived at the tree, the trap had been set and ready to spring at any moment. Obviously, it had succeeded.
Jan gritted his teeth and shook with rage over what had happened to his men, but something shifted behind his eyes and it took him a second to respond. “You could have endangered yourself,” he said and motioned to her with a chopping motion of his hand. “I am responsible for your protection—”
“We were all in danger. You agree we walked right into an ambush,” Laura surmised. “If you want to protect me, you need to change how you view these creatures…” She had sidestepped away from him as they spoke, trying to move in the same direction everyone else had already gone.
“Do I now?” He followed her and glanced periodically at the jungle but mostly kept his attention on her. “I wasn’t sure about your theory at first, but now—”
“Good,” she shouted. “So why are we still arguing? We should go toward—whoa!” She had looked at him as she took a step and hadn’t noticed a thick vine or root on the ground. The heel of her boot caught it and she stumbled, her arms flailing in an attempt not to fall.
He muttered what sounded like a curse in German and came toward her with his hand extended.
Laura was certain she would fall on her face and was genuinely surprised when she didn’t. That was mainly because the vine had looped around both her ankles and now pulled against her.
“Oh, shit.” She gasped in something close to panic.
When she looked at her own unsteady legs, she grimaced at a thick length of brownish-green plant fiber covered with nasty little thorns that wound around her from the ankles up and which had now reached her calves. She aimed the pistol at a section that still attempted to pull her back, but it jerked hard and without warning, threw her off balance. With a muttered oath, she dropped the gun.
Jan renewed his attempt to help. “Now what, for God’s sake…” He grunted, stooped in mid-stride to snatch up the handgun, and used his free hand to grasp hers while he aimed the weapon at the vine.
To her alarm, it gave another and even sharper tug, and she toppled. The plant seemed to catch her in midair and now pulled her slowly upward as she lay suspended more or less horizontally. “Shit, shit, shit,” she cursed. “Hauptmann, can you kill this thing at its source? That would work better than yanking on my arm, I should think—ugh.” By now, the creeper had entwined itself all the way up around her waist.
Jan put an arm under her shoulder and held firm to slow the plant’s drag while his other hand held the pistol and tried to find the right target. “Of course I am trying to kill it,” he said. “These things need to be—scheisse!”
He fell away from her and she uttered another curse when she realized that he ascended slowly into the trees alongside her with another vine wound around his hips and midsection.
“Our situation has not—ugh—improved much,” she observed while her gaze searched for a sturdy branch to hang onto. She was now mostly upside down and it was difficult to talk. The thick branch of a tree came into view and she clutched it with both arms. The vine pulled harder now, but she’d slowed it. Its thorns dug into her and probably drew blood. She looked up.
Hidden between the boughs of two trees that grew closely together was the mouth of the plant that now held them with its greenish tentacles. The monstrosity was like a slime mold in the shape of a giant wasps’ nest. It pulsed and throbbed within its perch of latticed branches and vine-arms dangled from multiple places. At the bottom was a broad opening like a shark’s maw without teeth. She could, however, see a little piece of something—some creature’s flesh—stuck at the corner of the mouth that seemed to almost sizzle or dissolve—from acid, she deduced, or perhaps flesh-eating bacteria.
“Hauptmann,” Laura said and struggled not to panic outright, “we really need to—”
“You have a gift for stating the obvious,” he quipped and fired his handgun.
Jan was twisted in the rising vines in such a way that he could only aim upward toward the monster itself, and his arm was partially entwined, which made it difficult for him to adjust his trajectory. He fired two, then three rounds. They sank into the mold-plant like toothpicks into bread pudding and with no apparent effect.
She looked around. One of the branches supporting the carnivorous plant was really quite thin. Above it, another branch was thick and heavy and looked dead and half-rotten. Her companion, in the position the vines held him, would not be able to see it. His gun hand was within reach of her arm, though.
“Give me the gun,” she requested. They were only about five meters below the mouth now.
“What? I’m not sure—”
“Oh, shush,” she said. “Trust me. You can’t see up there properly and I already proved I can shoot.”
Although his grimace spoke uncertainty, he loosened his hold on the pistol and swung himself sideways as best he could toward her. She snatched it from his hand and aimed it upward, between and beyond her own legs. It wasn’t the easiest maneuver. She was dizzy and had an awful headache from being held upside down but they were now only about three meters from the hideous maw.
“Both hands, aim straight, and beware of the recoil,” Laura whispered quietly. The sighting notch steadied over the rotten branch above. She squeezed the trigger twice.
The gun exploded in her hands and its chaotic report masked any immediate view of her success or failure, but wood cracked and the dead
, decayed branch broke from its trunk. It fell directly onto the slime creature, crushed its upper body, and impacted with the small branch beneath it. The second limb broke beneath the weight and pressure.
The vines around them alternately tightened and loosened before they released them entirely.
“Fuuuuuck,” Laura cried as she plummeted. She felt as though her internal organs had remained above while the rest of her fell, and she bounced and thrashed through leafy branches that slowed her at least a little before she met the jungle floor with a breath-stealing thump. Jan tumbled a few feet to her left. Ahead and between them, the mold-monster plunged to earth, already half-crushed by falling debris. What remained flattened into a loathsome mass of slimy chunks as it landed. Its vine appendages twitched, then went limp.
With a pained groan, Laura struggled to her feet. The fall had knocked the wind out of her lungs and her left knee and calf felt tingly and somehow not as they should be. She hoped she hadn’t broken or sprained anything. If she had, the pain would inform her soon enough. Fortunately, she hadn’t lost hold of the gun. She remembered the safety and clicked it on.
Jan had fallen more slowly than she had, as the vines hadn’t entirely released him until he’d already reached the ground. He stood as though merely rising from a nap on a couch and brushed himself off. Then, he extended a hand toward her.
“Here you go.” She placed the pistol back in his open palm. “I’m afraid I’ve lost track of how many rounds are left by now.”
He nodded and looked for his rifle, which he had previously slung over his shoulder on its strap. It had fallen when the vines had lifted them but it took him less than a minute to locate it.
“Let’s get away from that…abomination,” she suggested. It smelled like a loaf of bread that had been left in a drainage ditch for two or three weeks. “I think it’s dead but it looks like it might have had a carnivorous bacteria culture living in its mouth.”
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