by JE Gurley
“Ticks,” he moaned, recognizing them from Costas’ vivid description. “I’itoi, give me a friggin’ break.”
Calling on the Tohono O’odham god of creation was pure instinct, on par with the adage that there are no atheists in foxholes. He had no more faith in the Tohono O’odham god than he did in the Christian God, and even less faith in McGregor.
“What’s your plan now, Captain?” he spat at McGregor, as he fired into the creatures’ midst.
The Ticks were amazingly agile despite their sluggish appearance. They raced across the chamber utilizing floor, walls, and ceiling and attacked the group with unbelievable ferocity, heedless of the volley of weapons fire aimed at them. Two of the creatures pinned Perez against the wall, their combine weight almost as much as hers. Their mandibles snapped together mere inches from her throat. Only her combat training and her upper body strength kept the creatures at bay, as she grabbed each one by the neck and hung on as she struggled to push them away. Other Ticks rushed to join the two creatures.
Talent saw her predicament, and without thinking, took out his kukri and lunged at the nearest Tick, driving the blade deep into its back. Because of its resemblance to a terrestrial tick, he expected to see red blood gushing out. Instead, a thick gray, malodorous sludge oozed from the wound, hardening so quickly it sealed the wound and gripped the blade. Talent yanked the blade free, taking a large chunk of Tick flesh with it. The smell almost gagged him. Tossing the useless kukri aside, he fired a burst into its head from inches away. The head exploded and the creature fell away from Perez, splattering her with gray sludge.
Before either of them could stop it, the second Tick slashed Perez’s left shoulder almost to the bone. She screamed in agony and shoved the Tick away, but it clamped its mandibles around the drum and held on with bulldog tenacity. Talent killed it with a second burst.
Around him, the others were embroiled in a vicious hand-to-hand melee, fending off the sharp mandibles with rifles, feet, and hands. McGregor kicked one creature down the shaft in front of him, like punting a field goal. A second, he killed with his MP5. The six-barrels of Hightower’s M 134 minigun hummed as they spun deadly fire into the massed creatures.
Perez’s shirt was soaked in her blood. Gray lumps of Tick blood had sealed one of her eyes shut. Her left arm dangled uselessly by her side. Left-handed, the S.E.A.L. specialist could no longer fire her MP5 or the shotgun, but she kept a firm grip on her Beretta with her good right hand, shooting one particularly adventuresome Tick in the head. Talent took pity on the injured S.E.A.L. and shoved her against the wall; then, stood in front of her, cutting down any Tick that got too close.
Their numbers seemed infinite. They poured from the shafts like a gray flood, parting in the middle and dividing into two streams to navigate around the open shaft in the center of the chamber. Dead Ticks disappeared beneath the horde of freshly arrived Ticks, their bodies churned to mush by hundreds of pointed little legs. For the first time, even counting his first encounter with the Squid aboard the Radiant Princess, Talent expected to die. As if on command, the flap covering the hole in the floor closed, allowing the Ticks to surge back together into one mass and use the entire chamber to press their attack.
He continued firing until he exhausted his regular ammunition, and then switched to his last clip of Kaiju-piercing rounds. When that was gone, he pulled out his Beretta and fired the last four rounds in the clip. All he had left was the grenade launcher. Using it in the small chamber would be suicide, but it was tempting nevertheless. It would less messy dying that way than beneath the horde of Ticks.
Perez’s hand shook as she struggled to pass Talent the Mossberg shotgun. Weak and one-handed, she could barely lift it. Talent admired her courage. Most people would have passed out from the shock of such a severe wound, but Perez was a S.E.A.L. More, she was a female, a minority within a minority. She refused to cry out or give in to her wounds. She continued to do her job.
The Mossberg held only five more shots in the eight-round clip. A quick mental count told him he would have to kill a dozen Ticks with every shot to stay alive. To conserve ammo, he waited until a Tick got too close to ignore. The battle had raged for less than three minutes, but to Talent it seemed half a lifetime. His life didn’t exactly pass before his eyes, but he did remember incidents from his past he wished he had handled differently, but he could not see any path that would not have brought him to this place at this time. His prospects of ever reaching Australia grew dimmer by the minute.
When the head of one of the pair of Ticks he was fending off exploded, Talent looked up to see Walker and Costas running down the corridor. Reinforcements, he groaned appreciatively. Seeing Walker alive was like seeing a long lost brother. However, his relief was short lived as he took in the pair’s battered condition. Splotches of yellow alien blood covered both men’s tattered uniforms, as well as more than a smattering of their own blood. Walker’s right wrist sported a bloody bandage, and a second one adorned his forehead, standing starkly white against his dark skin. His helmet was missing and gobs of yellow Wasp blood matted his black hair. Injured he might have been, but he waded into the Ticks with abandoned fury, scattering them left and right with powerful, angry kicks, shooting them with short bursts from his SCAR.
Costas had fared no better. The front of the sergeant’s ripped-open blouse revealed a hastily applied bandage that only partially covered the series of parallel gashes running across his upper chest. Cuts and gashes of various depths and severity marked the flesh of his legs visible through his ripped trousers. He limped across the chamber favoring his left leg.
“You’re alive,” Talent said, almost gushing at the joy of the reunion, and then immediately regretted the obvious absurdity of his statement.
“Nothing can kill me, Cowboy,” Costas replied, “not even bad booze or badder women.” He fired a round from the M107 SASR that that went through one Tick’s body and struck a second one, killing it as well. “Two for one!” he yelled.
“Sorry we’re late,” Walker said. “Our guests got a little rambunctious.”
Talent nodded and fired a shotgun blast into a Tick trying to do and end run around him to get to Perez. Its head exploded with a satisfying popping sound. “I thought I’d have to kill this thing all by myself.”
“I told you we’d have fun,” Costas whooped, blasting holes in several Ticks charging him simultaneously.
“The K-2!” Perez yelled, scrambling on her one good arm and knees from behind Talent and across the chamber after the runaway drum, leaving a trail of blood behind. One of the creatures had succeeded in yanking the drum from Perez’s shoulder by the strap and was rolling it across the floor of the chamber by butting it with its head. Injured, Perez made it only a few feet before collapsing.
Talent charged after Perez, now beset by two Ticks, emptying the shotgun into them, and hurtling over their dead bodies to catch up with the drum. Without the infected nanites in the weapon, their mission was over. Walker was two steps ahead of him. He lunged for the drum, blasting one of the Ticks pushing the drum as his body arced through the air. He tucked and rolled as he landed, bowling over Ticks like a Bocce ball. He succeeded in recovering the drum, but just as he lifted it from the floor by its strap in triumph, the closed flap covering the vertical shaft opened, creating a yawning chasm directly beneath him. Walker glanced at Talent with a bemused look of resignation on his face just before plunging down the shaft still clutching the drum to his chest. Then the flap snapped shut behind him.
Talent fell to his stomach and pounded on the edge of the flap in an insane effort to force it open, heedless of the Ticks surrounding him.
Costas dispatched the nearest threats, grabbed his shoulder, and said, “He’s gone.”
Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the Ticks vanished back down the tunnels, leaving a vacuum of silence in their wake. Talent sat beside the shaft trying to catch his breath. It came in ragged gulps as he fought to control his rage. Men lik
e Walker didn’t die in some absurd quirk of alien physiology, an air duct opening or closing to divert a stream of air to cool an overheated Kaiju. They died in a blaze of glory – like heroes.
After a few minutes in which he silently railed against God, I’itoi, nature, and the aliens, he forced himself to his feet. He was accomplishing nothing sitting and brooding. He knew the Ticks had not left because they had beaten them. By all rights, he and the others should be dead. Something had called them back. Whatever that something was, it didn’t bode well for him and the others, but he was too tired to care. He took advantage of the brief respite to remove Perez’s ammunition and reload the MP5. Perez was slumped against the wall, nearly unconscious.
“They took the drum,” she croaked out, bemoaning her failure as Hightower examined her wound and slapped a compression bandage over it.
“It’s gone,” Talent muttered, still not believing what had happened. “We have to go after it. We have to find Walker.”
Hightower stopped what he was doing and stared at Talent. “You’re insane,” he said. “The drum’s gone. The major’s dead. The mission is FUBAR.”
“The mission is over,” McGregor said, walking over to stand above Perez, evaluating her condition; then, frowning. “We’re leaving.”
“No one’s leaving,” Costas growled.
“Just what do you intend to do?” McGregor asked.
“Like Cowboy said, we go after the drum.” He pointed to the pack on Hightower’s back. “We’ve got rope.”
“Damn straight,” Talent added, thankful for Costas’ help.
“You are insane,” McGregor said, addressing Talent instead of Costas. “You don’t stand a chance.”
Talent tried to remain cool. Instead of punching McGregor in the face, as every fiber of his being urged, he laughed. “That’s been pointed out to me before. I was insane to fight so hard to join the fire team, and I’m surely insane to give a hairy rat’s ass about the future of mankind. I’m not leaving until I kill this damn thing.”
To his surprise, his words did not sound hollow to him. He wanted the Kaiju dead because it was a threat to civilization, not because he hated it or because it had taken from him the only two people with whom he had ever felt kinship. It was a strange feeling for him, but he found he liked it.
He turned away from McGregor, dismissing him as no longer relevant. He and Costas would complete the mission. Maybe that was why Walker had asked him along. He noticed blood seeping through Perez’s bandage and knew she would die of blood loss long before she reached help. He picked up a piece of severed Tick flesh, ripped away the useless bandage from her shoulder, making her moan in pain, and smeared the creature’s gray blood, which was already hardening, over the wound. Within seconds, the bleeding stopped. He did not know if the blood was as venomous as the bite, but in her condition, it did not matter.
“An old Indian remedy,” he said to Hightower’s look of astonishment.
“You’re not my responsibility, Talent,” McGregor replied. “Do as you wish.” He turned to face Costas. “However, you are, Sergeant. We’ve lost both our K-2 weapons. You’re pulling out with us.”
“Fuck you, Captain,” Costas replied, “respectfully, of course.” He laughed. “I ain’t ever pulled out of anything until I was done. Ask any whore in Bagdad. I ain’t going nowhere until I see the major’s dead body. Until then, this is a search and rescue mission.”
McGregor leveled his MP5 at Costas. “I order you to evac with us, Sergeant.”
Talent swung the shotgun up to cover McGregor, unsure if there was a shell left in the clip.
“Cover them, Corporal!”
Hightower raised the minigun and pointed it at both Talent and Costas, but he seemed unhappy about it.
Costas eyed the rifle pointed at his belly. “You going to shoot me, Captain? Because that’s what it’ll take to stop me.”
“Don’t do it, Captain,” Talent warned. “I’ll cut you in half.”
“Shoot them both, Corporal,” McGregor ordered.
Hightower shook his head and lowered his weapon. “No.”
“What did you say?” McGregor snapped.
McGregor tensed. For several tense moments, Talent had been afraid the mission would end with Fire Team Bravo killing each other. Hell of a way to end the day, he thought. As if the aliens aren’t killing us fast enough. Then, to his relief, McGregor lowered his weapon.
“Suit yourself.” He dismissed Costas and Talent as if they no longer mattered. “Corporal, help Perez up. We’re leaving.”
“You can’t just leave them here,” Hightower argued. “We don’t leave men behind.”
“We’re leaving Rhoades and Wiggins behind. We left Watts behind.”
“No.”
Hightower’s refusal surprised Talent as much as it did McGregor.
“Don’t compound your insubordination, Corporal Hightower. I’ll overlook your refusal to shoot a fellow soldier, but not this.”
“I’m not going, sir. I’m going to help the sergeant and Talent to complete the mission.”
“I gave you an order, Corporal. You will comply.”
“No, sir, I will not. I’m not leaving this beast until its black corpse is rotting in the sun. We’ve lost too many comrades to simply slink away with our tails between our legs.”
“When we get back, I’ll —”
“You’ll do nothing, Captain,” Costas said. “You have a man down. You and Corporal Hightower need to escort Perez back to the sub for medical treatment. Tick bites are highly venomous, as you know from experience.”
“The K-2 is gone,” McGregor said. “It’s down there, with Major Walker.” He pointed to the closed shaft. “It’s sui –”
“Not another word, Captain,” Costas warned. His rugged mien was chiseled from the same cold, hard stone as the faces on Mount Rushmore. It was as rigid and as unyielding as the impervious ebony armor of the Kaiju. All he needed was a fedora pulled low over one eye and he could have been mistaken for an old-timey Chicago gangster. McGregor took one look at him, saw the determination in his eyes, and closed his mouth.
Hightower took a step forward. “Sergeant, I’d like to complete this mission with you.”
Costas’ face softened as he answered, “I appreciate the offer, Corporal, but the captain will need help getting Perez out. She’s too weak to walk. Leave me the rope and climbing gear.” He turned to Talent. “I can do this alone, Cowboy. Maybe it’s time for you to finish that trip to Australia.”
Costas’ suggestion stabbed Talent like a ten-penny nail in the heart. “You can’t order me out, Sergeant. I’m a civilian. Besides, the Kaiju is headed for Australia. I thought I could save bus fare.”
“This isn’t going to go well, Talent. We’re behind the eight ball. Walker suspected the next alien attempt would utilize everything they’ve learned about us from the previous Kaiju, but we didn’t expect them to send intelligent creatures with it. Hell, for all I know, these Squid could be the aliens.”
Costas’ estimate of the Squids’ capabilities stunned Talent. “They’re smart, but intelligent?”
“Walker and I talked about that some on the way here. He gets a little talkative sometimes. That Wasp grabbing the loose K-2 drum and making off with it was no accident. The same thing happened here. The Ticks got the drum and suddenly lost interest in us.”
Talent was so absorbed in thought considering what Costas had suggested, that the crackle of his headset made him jump. A second squeal quickly followed.
At first, the big grin that spread across Costas’ face mystified him, but then Costas burst out, “He’s alive. Walker’s alive!”
“Impossible!” McGregor snapped.
“Two squelches means yes. He’s alive.”
For the first time since the sinking of the Radiant Princess, Talent felt a glimmer of hope. Provided Costas isn’t grabbing at noisy straws, he added.
22
Wednesday, Dec. 20, 0345 hours Inside Kaiju Kiriba
ti –
The fall down the shaft did not kill him, but it felt like it as Walker made a mental inventory of the various aches and pains in his body. He had expected to die when the floor suddenly disappeared beneath him. Instead, like Alice down the rabbit hole, he bounced along the gradually sloping shaft before popping out into a strange chamber. He was sore, dizzy, and disoriented from his inelegant descent. However, the three Ticks that had fallen through the opening with him were not. They skittered around in the swath of light cast by the flashlight on his SCAR lying a few yards away out of reach. He pulled his Beretta and popped off two rounds into each of their heads.
He forced himself to his fee, wincing at the sharp pain in his leg, and retrieved his rifle. He shined his flashlight around the walls and ceiling, recoiling at the long, undulating fibers lining the wrinkled and folded moist flesh of the walls. As he watched, several strands of cilia reached out to snag a bit of material floating by on the breeze. The fibers curled around it, enclosed it in a network of strands, and drew it into the wall, which promptly secreted a glob of milky goo that trapped it. The flesh of the wall quivered like a bowl of pudding, and the object sank into the wall and disappeared. He decided to avoid contact with the wall and its alien air scrubbers. He had no wish to test the limits of the fibers or the digestive ability of the wall.
Larger tendrils dangled from the ceiling. These, too, were alive, lashing out at invisible objects, and then curling into tight balls, before extending once again, writhing like Medusa’s serpentine hair. Even the floor was alive. It pulsed and shuddered, sending ripples of flesh spreading outward with his every step. It was as if the aliens had designed the entire nightmarish chamber to frighten human visitors.
He double-checked to see if the Ticks were dead. They were. As he watched, tiny filaments pushed up from the floor, wrapping around and forcing their way into the dead Ticks’ flesh. He checked his boots, but no threads appeared. It seemed they only attacked dead flesh, or so he hoped.