I drove straight, casual, like I was just another commuter, until I was parallel with the mouth of the hive. Then I yanked hard on the wheel, steering the cart directly across the corridor, scattering pedestrians like frightened pigeons. A dense cluster of drone sentries was dead ahead of me. I gunned the engine.
The cart plowed into the cluster of drones. My makeshift steel rebar wrap-around bumper hit them like a battering ram. A few were knocked aside, their limbs bent at unnatural angles, their heads and torsos caved in. Most of the drones vanished underneath the cart. I bounced and jerked in my seat. Crunching sounds, accompanied by a few loud pops, came from beneath the cart. It was like I was driving over a pile of giant walnuts.
I drove through the mouth of the hive, into the first chamber. The greenish light emanating from the snot-coated walls illuminated a bunch of drones within. There seemed to be more of them here than there had been during my previous attack, but it might have just been a trick of my eyes. They scurried about, in and out of one another’s shadows. I could not get an accurate count, but it did not matter. The number had no bearing on what I had to do in this chamber.
I ran over them. All of them. I drove in large, sweeping circles, around and around the chamber, swerving to hit every little movement that caught my eye. Sometimes the movement was just a shadow and I braced myself for an impact that never came. Usually, the movement was a venomous, genderless, midget, insectoid and I bounced and jolted as their bodies were shattered by my rebar bumper or ground into paste under my tires.
I drove around and around. I zigzagged across the chamber and back again. I drove in figure-eights. I braked suddenly, drifting sideways to kill drones on my flank, then gunned the engine and took off again. I killed drones when I drove forward and I killed drones when I drove in reverse. A few more drones came into the chamber from the passageway that led to the second chamber. I ran over them. Several sentries that I had missed during my initial assault trickled in from the mouth of the hive. I ran over them too. I drove and drove and drove and I killed and killed and killed. Before long, I was the only thing alive in the chamber.
The first phase of the operation was complete. Phase two required me to move quickly. I threw the cart into reverse and backed up until I was parked just outside the mouth of the hive, beside the gargantuan generator. The genny grumbled and vibrated, pumping electricity into the hive and spewing exhaust into the air above it, completely indifferent to the carnage around it or the nefarious purpose I had planned for it. I gathered up my supplies... tools, cables, and the small satchel containing my two pounds of industrial explosives... then I climbed out of the driver’s seat, clambered over the wrap-around steel rebar cage, and dropped to the ground.
I placed the satchel of explosives on the floor a short way from the cart. Then I got to work on the cables. There were four cables total, two pairs, each with gigantic alligator clamps on both ends. I hooked up one pair to the cart’s battery and the other pair to the steel rebar cage. Then I climbed up on the cart and leaned over to flick the switch that activated the headlights. They flared to life. The greenish glow coming off the snot-coated walls retreated a bit, replaced by the cold white light coming from the cart. The chamber looked like it was cut in two, caught in a stalemate between organic and artificial.
I dropped off the cart and returned my attention to the cables. There were four more alligator clamps to deal with. They all went into the generator. The cart sprang to life behind me as power raced to the other ends of the cables. The headlights lit up like miniature suns, obliterating every last shred of greenish glow in the chamber. The steel rebar cage hummed with energy. Bluish-white bolts of electricity leapt across the spaces between the bars.
Phase two was nearly complete. I scooped up the satchel of explosives and ran into the chamber. The brilliant light pouring out of the headlights revealed every inch of the rough, lumpy insectoid snot-coated walls in vivid detail. I had witnessed some pretty damn revolting sights over the standard-years and that brightly-lit, insectoid puke-painted chamber was easily in my top five. My stomach gurgled uneasily at the sight, but I did not avert my eyes. My revulsion was a necessary evil. The light made it very easy to home in on my next target.
The narrow passageway the led to the second chamber stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding walls. It was a thin strip of smooth blackness running from floor to ceiling on the far end of the chamber. It looked like the crack of an enormous sagisi phlegm-coated ass. I ran toward it. When I closed to within a few feet, I reached into the satchel, flicked the switch that started the timer on the firing device, and then hurled the whole thing into the darkness. I spun on my heel and hauled ass back toward the mouth of the hive, squinting against the brilliant white light that was now bludgeoning my face.
I dove into the outer corridor an instant before the timer expired. I had just enough time to duck behind the cart and clamp my hands over my ears.
The bomb went off. The titanic explosion rocked the floor beneath me. The shockwave knocked me to my knees. The boom made my ears ache even with my hands clamped over them. The sharp tang of acrid smoke seared my nostrils and the back of my throat.
I waited for a few moments, long enough for the aftereffects rocking and rolling through my body to ease off a bit, then I looked around the cart, into the hive. The narrow passageway was gone. There was now an enormous gaping hole in the far wall. The brilliant white light pouring out of the cart now shown straight through to the second chamber and the honeycomb lining its walls.
Phase two was complete. I drew my revolver and moved from behind the cart to the opposite side of the entranceway. Phase three was about to commence. Then I would see if my diversion was worth all the time, money, and aggravation it had taken to create it.
First, there was nothing, just the awesome calm in the wake of the explosion. All I could hear was the grumbling of the generator, the humming and crackling of the electrified rebar cage, and the deafening silence of the deserted corridor. Then, a new sound caressed my eardrums. It started small, so faint that I was not even sure it was real, then it quickly escalated until it was undeniable. It was the sound of tiny feet slapping the floor... hundreds of tiny feet.
The drones came like water, cascading into the second chamber from all sides of the honeycomb, filling up the gaping hole and rushing toward the outer chamber. There were fucktons of them, way too many to distinguish individual insectoids. They were like a single organism, a giant blob with hundreds of running feet, clutching talons, and snapping jaws.
The onslaught of drones was a few feet from the outer chamber when the light from the cart hit them like a broadside. The effect was instantaneous. The ones in the front froze. Those coming from behind barreled into their petrified kin, knocking them down and stumbling over them. Then the light struck the new arrivals and they also froze. Then more came from behind and the situation was repeated over and over and over, until a large mound of dazed nutless insectoid midgets formed just inside the gaping hole, blocking the flood of drones pouring out of the honeycomb chamber.
A few drones managed to free themselves from the dogpile. They crawled to their feet, stared straight into the headlights, and began shuffling forward. They moved slowly. The fury in their bulbous alien eyeballs was gone, replaced by a mindless, hypnotized expression.
More and more drones pulled themselves out of the pile. They all followed their mind-fucked brethren. Soon, the mound of insectoids had disintegrated. All of them were up and trudging dumbly toward the cart. The swarm of drones farther back down the passageway followed suit. A thick column of insectoid midgets filed toward the light. The raging flood had transformed into a tranquil river.
The first drone approached the cart. It homed in on the light, keeping the same slow, trudging pace until it ran face-first into the steel rebar cage. There was a blue-white flash at the point of contact. A loud crackling drowned out all other noise in the area. The drone shook like it was having a seizure. Thin wisps
of grey smoke began to snake off of its body. The wisps multiplied. More and more tendrils of smoke seeped out of random points on its body until a hazy grey cloud hung in the air immediately above its head. Its eyeballs popped one by one. Then, there was a sharp crack, like bone snapping in two, and jets of yellow flame erupted from its mouth and eye sockets, making it look like a freakish insectoid jack-o’-lantern. The drone collapsed into a heap on the floor. The fire vanished when it lost contact with the cart. Dense black smoke billowed out of the holes in its ruined face.
The hypnotized drones were not deterred by the electrocution of their sibling. They marched straight toward the headlights, right into the electrified steel rebar cage. The drones cooked, one after another after another. Some vibrated and smoked like the first one. Some were blasted backward off the cage like diminutive insectoid rockets. Some burst into flame. Some exploded, shooting showers of gooey greenish-grey bug guts like shrapnel in a radius around them.
The death parade continued. Flash-fried insectoid carcasses began to pile up around the cart. The crackling sound of rampaging voltage was deafening. The air stunk like burnt meat. Blue-white arc flashes went off like fireworks, polka-dotting my eyes with so many sunspots it was like I had measles on my retinas. I turned my head away, to give my eyes time to recover, and listened to the unsettling sounds of the small-scale sagisi genocide I had instigated.
The crackling sound went on for a long time. It waxed and waned in intensity, but there were no pauses, no breaks, no intermissions in that symphony of insectoid electrocution. The stench of burnt meat thickened until I could taste it in the back of my throat. I was constantly fighting the urge to retch while I waited for the slaughter to be over.
The crackling began to break up. It paused, then crackled, then paused for a while longer, then crackled. I did not need to look to know that the flood of drones was slowing to a trickle. The last few stragglers were following their more-motivated brethren into whatever the fuck sagisi afterlife looked like.
Then there was a pause that did not stop. I stayed where I was, eyes averted, listening to the grumbling of the generator and to nothing else. After a few minutes of this, I turned and looked.
The chamber was littered with corpses. Blackened, disfigured husks, some whole, some in pieces, were strewn in a radius around the cart. A few had been blasted clear across the chamber. A few more were midway between the far wall and the mouth of the hive. The vast majority of the bodies were within ten feet of the cart. It looked like a dead-bug-meteorite had struck the hive except, instead of a blast-crater, ground zero was marked by a mound. There was a hill of twisted insectoid corpses encircling the cart. They were stacked so high that the vehicle was almost buried. I could just make out the top of the rebar cage and the upper rim of the headlights, still pumping out that dazzling light.
I moved around the cart, picking my way through a minefield of charred carcasses and gooey sagisi innards. I approached the generator and disconnected the cables, de-energizing the cart. My diversion had been a roaring success. Phase three of my plan was complete. Now it was time for the endgame.
I hopscotched over the smorgasbord of electrocuted drones scattered across the chamber. The hive was deathly still. The generator grumbled like usual, but nothing else made a peep. The sound of my passage seemed very loud. Bodies crunched and squished beneath my boots. I winced at the first few sound effects, but nothing came to investigate the source of the noise. My confidence grew as the extent of my success became more and more apparent. I had transformed the hive into a sagisi tomb. The Great Bank would have been proud.
The field of corpses thinned out when I stepped into the blasted hole that had used to be the narrow passageway. There was the occasional body here and a couple more there but they were not absolutely fucking everywhere like before. I did not have to hop, skip, and jump to get past. A slightly winding path worked fine.
I crossed the threshold into the second chamber. Nothing stirred. My grip on my revolver tightened involuntarily as my mind flashed back to the last time I was here. The honeycomb lining the walls looked like a giant cannon with hundreds of barrels, each aimed right at me, each ready to fire a venomous insectoid projectile. I forced myself to remember that those barrels were all empty. They had already been fired. Their ravenous payload had been neutralized in the chamber behind me.
I reached the middle of the chamber and no attack came. Then I was two-thirds of the way across, and still, there was no ambush. I paused near where I had been swarmed on my previous visit. The steel grating that guarded the inner sanctum was just a few paces ahead. Red and yellow lights blinked on and off on the small rectangular door-control panel beside it. If there was going to be a counterattack, now would have been the time. But, still, no attack came. There was no resistance whatsoever. Unless there were a few wayward drones ditty-bopping around somewhere else in the spaceport, it seemed as though I had succeeded in killing every nutless midget motherfucker in the entire hive.
It took less than a minute to hotwire the door panel. The steel grating opened, retracting up into the top of the door frame with a sound of grinding gears and screeching metal. I stepped inside.
The inner sanctum was much more claustrophobic than the previous two chambers. That standard greenish-brown sagisi excretion was caked on every surface. There was way more of that shit here than anywhere else in the hive. Stalactites of dried goop descended from the ceiling like giant disembodied fangs. Many of these were so long that they reached all the way to the floor, forming thin pillars of petrified snot, dividing up the chamber into a warren of smaller rooms.
Several pillars of goo were directly in front of the entrance, blocking my view of the rest of the chamber. Heavy footsteps were coming from somewhere behind them. I held my revolver before me and moved deeper into the room.
I followed my ears, homing in on the footsteps. My path zigged around snot-pillars and zagged past booger-stalactites. It was like I was bushwhacking my way through some twisted, upside-down forest. Occasionally the footsteps would stop and I would blunder around blindly, running into dead ends and having to retrace my steps, but they always started up again, acting like a beacon, guiding me toward my prey.
I came upon a snot-pillar that was larger and thicker than the others I had seen. The footsteps sounded like they were coming from directly behind it. I took a deep breath, and stepped around it.
I was in a circular area that was clear of any pillars or stalactites. Two enormous sagisi females stood a few feet in front of me. Ok-Mel, the sagisi I had encountered in the Sheriff’s Office, was off to one side. I threw her a cursory glance, and then focused my attention on the monstrosity beside her.
The thing was obviously related to Ok-Mel. They shared the same bluish carapace with black stripes, the same four muscular legs, the same six spindly arms, and the same triangular head with six bulbous eyeballs. That was where the similarities ended. This one was much bigger than Ok-Mel and way uglier. It was ten-feet-tall from the tips of its claw-like toes to the crown of its alien head. Its flesh was saggy and wrinkled, weathered by countless standard-years in this unforgiving galaxy. Its abdomen was bloated and distended... so much that it stretched down to rest on the floor between the insectoid’s massive legs. I knew what that swollen gut meant. I had seen sagisi in this state before. This bug was pregnant. This was Ok-Lem, the queen of the hive... my target.
Ok-Lem whirled toward me. “Murderer!” she said.
“Yup,” I replied.
I raised my revolver and fired three rounds. My shot placement was magnificent. All three rounds hit home within an inch of each other, right between two of her six eyeballs. The back of her head exploded, sending a shower of greyish sagisi brains down to splatter on the floor behind her. Ok-Lem collapsed like her bones had evaporated, slamming to the ground with a colossal THUD, shaking the floor beneath my feet. Her body twitched once, twice, then lay still.
I turned my weapon on Ok-Mel, but I held my fire. My tas
k was complete. There was no need to add her to the body count... not unless she made the mistake of seeking revenge on the human who had slaughtered her mother in front of her.
Ok-Mel did not move. She stayed the way she was when I had first stepped into the clearing, head slightly cocked to one side, six arms stretched out, three to either side. Her eyeballs were the only parts of her that moved. They rolled back and forth, from me and my revolver to her mother’s corpse, each moving independently of the other five, no two eyeballs looking at the same point at the same time.
I stared at Ok-Mel, making eye-contact with a different eyeball every other second. Neither of us spoke. I backed away, carefully shuffling my feet to keep from stumbling over any unseen obstruction behind me. It took a very long time to retreat from the kill zone.
I passed behind the large pillar of snot at the edge of the area, then spun around and ran out of the inner sanctum. I did not stop until I crossed through the doorway into the honeycomb chamber.
I aimed my weapon at the doorway, waiting for a furious giant insectoid to appear. Several tense minutes passed, but Ok-Mel did not appear. It dawned on me that she must have been more concerned with mourning than she was with revenge. Relief washed over me, like cool water running over my head and down my back. I was almost done with this sagisi shitshow. There was just one more thing that I had to do.
Odd Jobs 2: Solomon's Code Page 7