by Jake Bible
Darren pointed at the floor and shrugged. There was nowhere to walk without crushing beetles. A few were spilling out of the corridor and milling about the team’s boots. Ronald bent and picked one up, easily gripping it in his huge hand so that the mandibles couldn’t pinch him. He studied it then took it in both hands and snapped it open, letting guts spill down his wrists.
He gently moved everyone out of his way and stepped to the front. He tossed the two halves of the beetle into the corridor. Where the halves landed, the other beetles parted. They didn’t give the broken body parts much space, but they didn’t attempt to crawl over them either.
“Interesting,” Ronald said aloud.
The noise was like a rumbling explosion in the corridor. Beetles instantly were drawn to it and the walls, ceiling, and floor began to move towards the team.
“Dude,” Max hissed, ready to open fire.
“Hold, Max,” Ronald said as he reached down and grabbed a beetle in each hand.
He crushed them and smeared the guts all over himself then stepped right into the swarming insects. Some beetles crawled across his feet, but he quickly smeared guts there and they retreated. He took a couple more steps and the beetles parted for him. Some weren’t quite fast enough, and were smashed under Ronald’s huge, bare feet, but the majority avoided him like the plague.
“Do it, now,” Darren ordered as the beetles came at the team. “Now!”
He stomped a couple and bent down to grab up the gunk, rubbing it across his boots, up his legs, and over his chest as more beetles came at him. They inspected his boots then moved on, heading for the rest of the team.
More beetles were crushed, cracked, opened up, and smeared all over. The smell was overpowering, but there was nothing to be done about that. Five humans and a gigantopithecus covered in beetle guts proceeded down the corridor, parting the beetles like they were a chitinous Red Sea.
Not that there weren’t hiccups.
“Dammit!” Max snapped as a beetle fell from the ceiling and onto his shoulder. Its mandibles sank into his shirt, but he plucked it free before it could pierce his skin. He smashed the insect into the heel of his boot then used the crushed body to reapply guts to his shoulders. “I hate these things. We’re getting a contract with Orkin wherever we end up retiring.”
Darby didn’t respond, just kept walking, her body tense and meaning business.
They made it to the end of the corridor and found themselves staring at a vault door. The thing was huge.
“This wasn’t in Ballantine’s schematics,” Lucy said. “Not good.”
“We have explosives,” Kinsey said.
“No, we don’t,” Darren said. “Grenades, yeah, but I didn’t bring any C4 or that other plastic stuff the elves made.”
“I thought you were bringing that,” Kinsey snapped.
“Why? This door wasn’t on the schematics and we decided no packs on this op,” Darren said. “We knew we’d need to run our asses off at some point and packs would have weighed us down. We talked about this, ‘Sey.”
“I hate to give Ditcher his due, but he’s right,” Max said. “We talked about this.”
“Then what? We go back?” Kinsey grumbled.
“No, we can find a way through,” Darren said. “There has to be.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Ronald asked from behind the group. “I know you are the experts in missions like this, but there might be an easier solution than using explosives.”
“Explosives we don’t have,” Kinsey said.
“Yes, precisely,” Ronald nodded.
“What do you have in mind?” Darren asked.
“Let me show you,” Ronald said. “It is merely a theory, but theories are meant to be tested.”
He walked up to the vault door, grabbed the spokes of the wheel in the center, and heaved to the left.
“I believe the term is lefty loosey, righty tighty, yes?” Ronald asked. “Left it is.”
The wheel spun for a couple of seconds then came to an immediate halt, stopping dead. There was an audible click and Ronald pulled on the vault door. It swung open. It didn’t move easily, having probably been closed for a very long time, but in the hands of a gigantopithecus, a couple rusty hinges weren’t an issue.
Ronald stood by the open vault door and looked towards the team.
“Is using explosives and blowing things up how you always handle obstacles?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Kinsey said.
“Pretty much,” Max agreed.
“That sounds good,” Darby said.
“Goddammit,” Darren said and walked up to the open door. He gave Ronald a pat on the arm. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure,” Ronald said. “I will go back to the rear.”
Darren nodded, looked over his shoulder at the others as they got back into position, then motioned for them to move forward.
The second he stepped over the vault door’s threshold, he was gone. Snatched up into the darkness without warning.
***
Shane heard the shouts.
Hard not to when all he’d been hearing for the last twelve hours were the sounds of oversized baby spiders munching away on the corpse of their mother. The sound of human voices was unmistakable at that point.
Not that Shane could do a damn thing about it. Yes, the corpse on him was considerably lighter due to the ingesting of half its contents by the spider brood. Didn’t matter, though. Shane knew if he moved, he’d be set upon in seconds.
Which was the other part he couldn’t do a damn thing about. He flat out couldn’t have moved if he wanted to. He’d been in the same position, literally, for twelve hours. His legs, arms, entire body were dead asleep. He wasn’t sure if he could turn his neck even if he wanted.
All of his years of sniper training had come into play. He’d once spent four days in a hide in Afghanistan that wasn’t much bigger than his own body. He’d at least gotten to shift and move slightly to keep his body awake. Being under the massive spider corpse had put that time to shame. Mainly because he got to pee then. Under the spider, he couldn’t even do that.
Not in the suit. He’d be swimming in piss and smelling it for hours. He just couldn’t do that to himself.
So there were several layers of relief when he heard the shouting. The relief was tempered quickly when he heard the gunshots. But, if it was Grendel coming to get him, gunshots were expected. They just meant that it wasn’t going to be an easy snatch and grab.
Shane began to wiggle his fingers and toes. Time to wake up.
The pain as sleeping nerves came back to life was excruciating.
***
The pain was excruciating. Darren dropped his M4 as he was yanked up to the ceiling, but he kept his wits, pulled his .45, and fired into the thing that had him gripped by the shoulder. Hot, steamy something splattered all over him and he found himself falling fast.
Luckily, his fall was broken by Ronald, the last one through the vault door. The gigantopithecus barely grunted as Darren collided with him.
“You are bleeding,” Ronald said, his nostrils flaring. “And there is a toxin in the wound. Let me take care of that.”
He tore open Darren’s shirt and squeezed the puncture marks. Yellow venom oozed out.
“Front pockets,” Darren said, trying not to cry out as Ronald continued to squeeze Darren’s puckered flesh together.
Ronald reached into Darren’s pockets, removed the field dressing and clump of medical putty that Moshi had developed for the team, and quickly applied both. He shoved the medical putty into the punctures then taped the field dressing over that, making sure it was tight. Ronald lifted Darren to his feet and handed him his M4.
“Not good as new, but no longer toxic,” Ronald said.
He didn’t stay to chat. Instead, he reached out and snagged a spider out of the air as it leapt at Darren. Ronald smashed it against the wall next to the vault door opening, sending spider guts exploding everywhere.
“Not
as pungent as the beetles, but certainly not pleasant,” he said.
“Agreed,” Darren replied, opening fire on a large spider coming down from the ceiling, its body suspended by a thick coil of web. The spider burst open like a disgusting piñata. “Yeah, They still stink.”
“Agreed,” Ronald said and smiled a massive fanged smile before diving into the fight fully. Darren joined him, M4 up and barking quick bursts.
The team was surrounded on three sides and above by very large spiders. Most were maybe slightly bigger than small dogs, but a couple here and there were easily as big as sheep. For anyone else, it may have been a mind-numbing, petrifying experience. But for Grendel, it was just another day at work.
“More coming!” Kinsey yelled as she emptied her M4 and let it fall away on its strap as she pulled her two .45s and opened fire with those. “The corridor is full of them!”
“Press forward!” Darren ordered. “They are in our way!”
“Got it!” Kinsey said.
“We’ll clear some room!” Max yelled as he took a knee and settled his elbow on his leg to steady his rifle. He popped off six shots, one after the other, and four of the larger spiders dropped. “Bam, motherfuckers! Bam!”
Darby took a knee next to him. She looked at his posture then shook her head and fell onto her belly, flipping down the mini-tripod at the front of Shane’s .338. She steadied her aim and emptied the magazine in the same time it took to let out one, slow breath. The remaining large spiders dropped.
She rolled onto her back, letting the sniper rifle fall away from her hands, and pulled her Desert Eagle. Gripping it in both hands, she opened fire on the smaller spiders that were crawling across the ceiling, ready to fall onto Grendel.
Her aim was perfect. Each shot vaporized a spider, sending guts raining down on the team. No one cared. They were busy working.
“Nice shooting,” Max said, slapping a fresh magazine into his rifle then grabbing the .338 and doing the same. “You missed one, though.”
Darby aimed her huge pistol up without even looking, her goggles watching Max the whole time. She fired and two spiders fell, both landing on top of her. She brushed them aside without flinching and got to her feet.
“We move,” she said.
“Works for me,” Max replied.
Ahead a few feet, Lucy had a spider pinned to the wall with her combat knife. She tried to get her rifle up and the barrel against the thing to finish it, but it was wriggling around too much and kept swatting the barrel to the side with its flailing legs.
Kinsey pressed a pistol against the body and fired, popping it like a disgusting balloon.
“Thanks,” Lucy said.
“No problem,” Kinsey replied.
“Duck,” Lucy said.
Kinsey frowned and ducked as spider guts exploded around her. She looked up and saw the remnants of two spiders dripping down the wall. Lucy lowered her rifle.
“Two with one shot,” Lucy said.
“With a rifle that size, you should have gotten three or four,” Kinsey said with a smile.
“I know, right?” Lucy laughed.
The spiders had lessened considerably and were being picked off one by one by Darby and Max as they slowly walked down the corridor, rifles to shoulders.
“They’re going to feel that tomorrow,” Lucy said. “Me too. There’s a reason snipers stay in one spot when shooting. The recoil’s a bitch.”
“Come on,” Darren said. “We’ve got about half a click to cover before we get to the tunnels under the trailer.”
Grendel moved, finishing off the last of the spiders and breaking into a slow jog to cover the distance they needed to cover as fast as possible.
***
The shooting slowed then stopped. Shane assumed that meant Grendel had taken care of business and killed whatever they needed to kill. He sure as fuck wasn’t going to entertain the thought that Grendel had lost the fight. Not an option.
Neither was staying where he was.
Some of the spiders had left when the fighting had broken out, but many stayed, still feeding off the remains of their dearly departed mother. Maybe half the number as before.
The odds weren’t great, and Shane was far from being in the shape needed to start brawling a bunch of eight-legged freaks, but he knew there was no way Grendel would find him where he was. He’d barely found the space himself.
Also, Grendel was about to be occupied. There had been a reason he’d squeezed his ass through the crack in the wall. There had been several hundred reasons. It was about to be a beetle swarm out there, and realistically, Grendel was about to walk right by him.
Time to make his move and see what he could do.
He really hoped the suit would hold up against the spider fangs. It held up against beetle mandibles, but spiders weren’t the same thing. Only one way to find out.
Shane began to move.
***
Darren felt funky. He wiped at his brow and his hand came away covered in sweat.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Darren?” Ronald asked. “Are you feeling okay?”
“No,” Darren said. “I think some of that spider venom got into my system.”
“I tried to squeeze as much out as possible,” Ronald said. “I probably did not get it all. Unfortunate.”
“Yeah,” Darren said. He doubled over and barely got his goggles yanked off his head before he started vomiting.
“‘Ren!” Kinsey called. “‘Ren, what is it?”
“He suffered a spider bite,” Ronald said. “I patched it, but some of the venom is still working its way through his system. I am unsure what will happen.”
“Carry him,” Kinsey ordered. She hurried to Darren and stripped him of his gear keeping what she could carry, tossing the rest. “Your job is to keep him alive, got it?”
“I cannot guarantee that I will be successful,” Ronald said. “The venom will do what it will do.”
“You keep him alive,” Kinsey snapped, jabbing a finger into Ronald’s midsection. “Hear me?”
“I will do what I can,” Ronald said and nodded, tossing Darren up over his shoulder like he only weighed as much as a beach towel. “Lead the way. I can keep up.”
“We’ve got more beetles coming!” Max announced. “A lot more!”
All goggled eyes fell on the approaching mass of black carapaces. Max was right, there were a lot more beetles coming at them.
“Do we still stink enough to keep them off us?” Lucy asked.
“After that shower in spider guts? Probably not,” Kinsey replied.
“Grenades,” Darren whispered.
“We’ll bring the ceiling down on us,” Kinsey said.
“No,” Darren said. “They’ll block it.”
“How?” Kinsey asked.
Darren muttered something then passed out.
“Ah, yes, good idea,” Ronald said. “Slick the grenades with your blood so the beetles will mass over it. Their bodies should keep the blast from destroying the tunnel’s structural integrity.”
“Using our blood is a good idea?” Max asked. “How is that?”
“Like this,” Darby said and quickly snatched a grenade from Kinsey’s belt plus a knife.
She slashed her arm, smeared blood all over the grenade, pulled the pin, and tossed it as far as she could into the mass of beetles coming at them. It was instantly lost from sight as a four-foot high pile of beetles formed over the grenade.
The explosion was a dull thud and beetle guts went everywhere. Everywhere.
Max stumbled back as several pounds of shell and gunk slammed into him. The wave of dead beetles slammed into everyone else with just as much force. Kinsey was knocked back, same with Lucy. Darby, being the closest, was sent sprawling on her ass.
“One more,” she said and held out an open palm.
Kinsey didn’t hesitate. She handed Darby another grenade, which was quickly slathered in blood and tossed into the still moving, although lessene
d, mass of beetles.
Everyone was prepared for the results that time. They crouched down, arms over heads, and let the explosion of beetle yuck wash over them. They were up and firing before the last parts had even settled, sending as many beetles as they could to Hell.
There were a lot to send to Hell.
“Keep pressing!” Kinsey shouted over the rifle fire. She’d put her pistols away and was using the M4 again, keeping it swinging back and forth, strafing what was left of the beetles with hot lead. “Don’t let up!”
They obliterated most of the beetles, but there was no way to destroy the entire mass of them. There were just too many. Max, Darby, and Lucy occupied themselves with stomping and smashing the bugs that were left, conserving ammunition for the return trip out once they found Shane.
Kinsey rushed forward to a second vault door, one that looked like it had been blasted. She hurried over the threshold, firing at the beetles that came for her. She’d gone several meters before she realized there was no Shane. There was also no way out except up and she peered into the darkness, her goggles seeing nothing but metal.
“Shane!” she yelled. “Can you hear me? Shane! Are you up there?”
“Unauthorized access denied,” the computer voice said, but it was muted and fuzzy. “Detainment protocol initiated.”
Kinsey realized that she was standing directly under the trailer. The computer voice was above her and coming from inside. The speakers down by her only cracked and hissed.
“Shane! Are you up there?” Kinsey yelled. “Shane!”
“Detainment protocol initiated,” said the far off computer voice. “Unauthorized access denied.”
Kinsey shook her head. What the hell was the detainment protocol? Was Shane stuck up in the trailer? Or had he been moved?
“I guess this is one way to get through the door,” Ronald said, as he stepped over the threshold and joined Kinsey. He followed Kinsey’s line of sight and looked up, Darren still draped over his shoulder. “Is Shane up there?”
“I don’t know,” Kinsey said.
“Hmmm,” Ronald said then set Darren down. “I am not abandoning him. Merely freeing myself for a hard climb.”