I sighed and took a minute to answer, “Well, isn’t that the point? We’re supposed to make sure that there aren’t any people looking for refuge.”
“But the control room has been monitoring everything before we patrol it. They obviously knew this area was pretty much empty.”
“That’s…” I didn’t know what to say to that. It was true. They should’ve known how vacant the town was, so it made no sense why we’d been sent here.
Before I could analyze it further, I heard what sounded like scraping metal, so I put my hand up to my mouth to tell Wes to be quiet, then I made a few hand signals and pointed in the direction I’d heard the sound coming from. I motioned to the team behind us before Wes, Sanjha, and I started down an alley toward the sound right as I heard the metal-scraping noise again.
When we reached the end of the alley, we turned the corner and I breathed out a sigh of relief when I saw a knocked-over stop sign hanging by one bolt and occasionally scraping a car roof. I didn’t see any Ferals or other humans or Taoree around, but I knew if the sound attracted me, it could attract Ferals easily, so I hadn’t lowered my weapon as we took a closer look.
I looked over the roof of the car and noticed what looked like fresh blood on it, and all over the stop sign. Without making a sound, I got Wes and Sanjha’s attention to point it out. Sanjha’s nostrils flared when she saw the blood, but I didn’t know her well enough to interpret the look. I’d been spending all my spare time with my team, but she hardly spoke at all, and never directly to me. I had no idea why she didn’t like me.
“It’s a trap,” Wes whispered in a horrified voice.
I looked at him with wide eyes, then looked at Sanjha, but she was scanning the area. I scanned it too as the three of us went back to back so nothing could sneak up on us.
“It’s Ferals, I can hear them,” Wes whispered eerily.
“I don’t hear anything,” I whispered back a moment later. But as soon as the words left my mouth, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked to my right and saw something moving behind the dumpster there, so I whispered, “Movement, my three o’clock.”
“There’s a whole horde of them. At least eighty,” Wes said.
I didn’t have time to wonder about how or why he knew that many were nearby because suddenly Ferals started stepping out from behind cars, dumpsters, and yards. They had us completely surrounded. Wes was right, there were at least eighty of them, and they were on all sides of us.
I quickly grabbed my ricah, held down the button to contact my team and said, “Bravo team is surrounded by more than eighty Ferals. Our coordinates ar—”
I didn’t have time to rattle off our location because as one, all of the Ferals came at us, though I knew the others would hear the fighting and come even without the coordinates. I picked up my two reelians first since I could fire off two shots while they were still a distance away. Normally we wouldn’t use our reelians because the sound would draw more Ferals to us, but the fact that we were already surrounded made that a moot point. So each of us fired and killed a couple of Ferals, but then we had to pull out our Feral sticks—okay, shoians, but I still liked my name for them better—and start some hand-to-hand combat, holding a reelian in one hand and a shoian in the other. Every time I used my Feral Stick, I’d shoot my reelian to take out another one… though the bastards just kept filing in, like they were never-ending.
They were fucking everywhere, and they had so many different weapons. Saws, wrenches, pieces of wood, lamps, planting pots, brooms, one guy was even using a crock pot, plug and all. It was ridiculous.
I had taken out five by the time I heard a voice in my earpiece, “Alpha, Charlie, and Delta coming in from all sides. Hold and we’ll get to you, Bravo.” It took me a second to realize it was Cal’s voice. I was relieved that they were helping, even if I couldn’t see them yet.
I ducked under a metal pole as I held my shoian up to a Feral, and I aimed at the Metal Pole Feral with my reelian, taking the shot. It hit him in the stomach, but unfortunately, as he fell, his pole knocked me on the side of my head, making me have to shake it out as my eyes went a little blurry.
The Feral I got with my shoian fell to the ground on top of Pole Feral and I was immediately stabbed in the shoulder with a pitchfork.
“God dammit,” I muttered as I shot the asshole who stabbed me.
I held my breath and winced as I pulled the pitchfork out of my shoulder, then I flipped it through the air and brought it down on another Feral, knocking him on his ass. I dropped the pitchfork and stabbed him with my shoian, then turned my reelian on a Feral that was heading toward me with a rather large knife.
After I shot him, I aimed behind him and saw Cal standing there, fighting off a Feral that had a big old, rusty sledgehammer. I shuddered when Cal caught the sledgehammer on his forearm as he protected his face. That had to hurt like a bitch.
I heard Cal let out a little yell as he thrust his shoian at the Feral with his now-broken arm. I knew he needed help, so I shouted over my shoulder to Wes, “Cal needs help, go back-to-back with Sanjha.”
“Got it,” he shouted back as he moved completely behind the Taoree.
I shot two more Ferals as I made my way to Cal, and as soon as I reached him, I started covering his back and right side as best I could.
“You need to heal that,” I shouted at him as I fought the Ferals around us.
“I... don’t… have… time,” he panted out as loudly as he could.
I knocked down a Feral and noticed that I had a very small break before any more got to me, so I pulled out my juhere, reached behind myself to grab ahold of Cal’s arm, and pressed the button as I pushed my light through it and ground out, “Let me heal you.”
Cal didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull away from me either, so I knew he was fine with it. He was moving around, obviously still fighting off some of the bastards, but he was trying to keep his arm in my grasp. It took less than thirty seconds, but it felt like an eternity since we were still being attacked.
When I felt that his arm was healed, I shouted, “We need to make…” I whacked a Feral upside the head with my reelian, then shot him in the head before continuing, “make it to Wes and Sanjha.”
“Agreed,” Cal shouted back before giving me a little push so I knew to move.
We remained back-to-back as we slowly fought our way over to Wesley, and as soon as we got there, he and Sanjha moved to make a bigger circle with us. We didn’t even need to say anything, we all just knew what needed to be done.
“What the fuck is that?” Wes said loudly.
“What? What is what?” Cal asked from beside me. The sounds of the rest of our team fighting were all around me, and I caught a glimpse of a camo jacket to the left of where I stood. The others were trying to reach us.
“I don’t fucking know…” My brother’s voice sounded freaked out. “Sanjha, what the hell are those things?”
When I could see most of the other members of my team through a small break between Ferals, I looked over my shoulder real quick to see if I could figure out what the hell Wes was talking about. It took me a second to find it as I scanned the area, but once I found it, I almost wished I hadn’t. There was a thing at least two feet tall, and just as wide, moving toward us, and it looked like a fucking metal spider, or maybe a crab. Its silver body was off the ground, being carried by at least eight silver legs. The top of its body was clear, but I caught a glimpse of a blue light inside of it. And its creepy legs were crawling over top of dead Ferals to get to us.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Sanjha answered my brother, “I… don’t know… but it looks like a—”
She cut herself off, but Wes said, “A what, Sanjha? Just tell us.”
“It sorta looks like… a giant Qiren,” she said breathlessly.
“No. Not fucking happening,” Wes announced. “We are not dealing with brain-melting giants right fucking now.”
“I don’t think
you have a choice, little bro,” Cal replied before shooting his reelian at a Feral.
“I’ll just shoot,” Wes said before I heard his reelian go off. I turned to see the giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing get pushed back from the force of the bullet, but then it just powered on toward us.
“Fuck,” Wes breathed out.
Before I could respond to that, Cal said, “Oh no.”
“What now?” I asked as I followed his line of sight.
“Oh no,” I blurted, “They’re fucking everywhere.” And they were. There were giant-Qiren-spider-crab-things everywhere I looked. I saw Orrean and Nolan trying to fight one off together, but the thing had so many legs that it just kept attacking them with its extra limbs. “So. Not. Good,” I whispered in terror. There were a lot less Ferals running about, but those creepy things were everywhere.
“Let’s go take one of those bastards down,” Cal said to me, then added to Sanjha, “You and Wes take that one. Watch his back or I’ll kill you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Sanjha actually sounded like she had a smile in her voice—so weird under the circumstances, especially since she never smiled, though I supposed Cal had that effect on people. “It’s always with the threats with you.”
“Just do it, Sanj,” he replied while shooting a Feral that was running full-speed at me.
“You know I will, tiny human.”
Cal snorted at that, but didn’t reply. Instead, he said to me, “Let’s get that one at my ten. Ready?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Follow my lead,” he said, ignoring me.
When Cal started running for the giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing, I followed, shooting both my reelians at two Ferals, using my last reelian bullets for the time being, so I took the extra reelian from Cal’s belt and shot another. Cal used his other reelian to shoot the stupid giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing, but the bullet merely ricocheted off its gross metal body.
“Use your shoian,” I suggested as I put my back to him so I could continue fighting off the Feral horde.
Cal was grunting and jumping around a little behind me, but thirty seconds later he sounded panicked as he panted, “Shit, J, it’s not working.” He jumped and knocked into me so hard I stumbled as he grunted out, “It didn’t… even twitch… or anything… Fuck!”
I used my shoian against a Feral’s neck as I shot another with my reelian. As they both fell to the ground, I saw Orrean and Nolan still fighting off what I suspected was the same giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing as before, then I noticed Tabby and Leeknohr fighting their own giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing. It didn’t look like they were having any more luck than the rest of us.
“Let’s both use our shoians at the same time,” I ground out, “maybe that… will be… enough power.”
“When… ever… you’re…” Cal sounded very out of breath, “ready.”
I quickly turned and yelled, “Now,” as I thrust my shoian onto the giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing. The thing stopped moving for about two seconds and I thought we were going to kill it, but then it used one of its eight legs to knock my feet out from under me, making me land on my ass with a loud, “Omph.”
Before I even had time to recover, another one of its legs wrapped around my ankle and pulled me so forcefully, I fell on my back, hard, knocking the wind outta me and making me hit my head. My hat got knocked off as it dragged me over dead bodies. Ow. Motherfucking ow.
“J!” Cal yelled. “Jeremy! Fuck! Shit!”
I looked behind me and saw that Cal had taken chase, but the damn thing had eight legs, so it ran a hell of a lot faster than he did. I started looking frantically around for a weapon. Something, anything that I could use to knock it hard enough to let go of me. I needed to get away from it before it… dragged me back to… wherever the fuck it was taking me.
We were still passing dead Ferals, so I grabbed the first weapon I could reach, which happened to be a shovel. Then I held it over my shoulder, sat up and swung at it with as much force as I could from my seated position. I must’ve hit it pretty good, because it stopped walking—running, really—and its grip on my ankle loosened.
I took advantage and knocked its leg with the shovel so I could get my foot away from it, then I scrambled to my feet. The giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing didn’t seem to like that because it started snapping all its limbs at me, making me jump and move around like I was playing fucking jump rope or some shit. I knocked its legs again, but it retaliated by jabbing one of its legs out and stabbing me in the calf.
“Fuck,” I yelled out in pain. “You stupid fucking bastard,” I screamed as I raised the shovel over my head. Then with all my might, I slammed the shovel down, blade first, right into its body. The shovel blade went through the clear metal top—somehow I knew the alien metal was called nzok—and right into the weird blue light inside it and I swear to god, that fucking thing screamed so loud my eardrums were ringing.
But then the screaming stopped, the blue light faded out, and the giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing went completely still. I killed that motherfucker.
I was out of breath, but I pressed the button on my ricah—my comm—and panted out, “Stab them… through that blue light… to kill the… things.”
“Fuck, J, you okay?” Cal asked as he stopped beside me, panting. I pointed to my calf that was covered in blood and he immediately pulled out his juhere, knelt down and started healing me.
“S’fine,” I mumbled as I tugged the shovel out of the dead robot.
“Good, ‘cause there’s like three more heading our way,” Cal said as he pulled the juhere off my now-healed leg.
“Fan-fucking-tastic.” I took a deep breath. “You need a shovel or something, Cal.”
“On it,” he muttered as he ran a few steps away and pried a metal bat out of the grip of a dead Feral.
When he made it back to me, I asked, “What is with you and bats?”
He stood at my back, so I felt rather than saw him shrug. “My weapon of choice.”
I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me, then I stepped forward, raised my arms above my head and brought the shovel down into another giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing. It twitched its legs a few times before falling still. I could hear Cal swinging his bat over and over, hitting metal against metal as he tried to break through another’s body.
“Doesn’t work so well against giant-Qiren-spider-crab-things, does it?” I managed to breathe out as I dodged the legs of another one.
“No,” he panted, “not… really.”
“Trade,” I shouted. Cal knew exactly what I meant because suddenly a bat was over my right shoulder at the same time that I held the shovel back over my left. I grabbed the bat, Cal grabbed the shovel. It didn’t surprise me that he’d understood what I wanted. We’d had to trade weapons many times, especially before we had shoians, and occasionally even afterward when one of us would get a shoian knocked out of our hands.
Pretty soon, we were trading back and forth. The metal bat was good for knocking the bastards off-balance, but it didn’t seem capable of breaking through the metal on the giant-Qiren-spider-crab-things’ bodies. I could only pray that the others had found suitable weapons to use against these things. The only plus was that the Ferals seemed to be gone, at least for the time being.
When Cal stuck the shovel through the last giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing around us, neither of us wasted a moment to catch our breath. We just took off, back toward the rest of our team, to make sure everyone else was okay.
We reached Wes and Sanjha, and Cal stabbed one giant-Qiren-spider-crab-thing in the blue light. Then the four of us stood back-to-back, just watching, listening, and waiting for the next threat. After a few moments, Nolan and Orrean joined our circle, then Tabby and Lee—aka Leeknohr—joined us too. Eventually everyone from our team made it to us, though we were all covered in blood, some ours, some not, and most of us had injuries. The worst one was a broken leg that Orrean started healing as soon as Bek showed up with it.
> Everyone stood in the circle for several long minutes, just listening and waiting.
It didn’t surprise me that Cal was the first one to speak. “So any theories on what the fuck those things were?”
“They looked like giant Qiren,” Devon, another human on our team, stated.
“No shit. Any idea what they do?” Wes asked.
“You mean besides drag you by the ankle to fuck-knows-where? No,” I said.
“One of them dragged you?” Nolan asked.
“Yes, it dragged him,” Cal answered for me. “It was fast as shit, too. I couldn’t keep up with it. Thank fuck J grabbed that shovel.”
Nolan cleared his throat. “Okay. Everyone heal your injuries, then we need to load up a couple of Feral bodies and a couple of these Qiren things. I’ll check them for trackers while you finish scouting the area.” I made a face at the implication that there could be trackers in the Ferals or the giant Qiren. I was sure that the Legion would do whatever it took to find out where our base was so they could take us out in one fell swoop.
Everyone started gathering what Nolan wanted to carry back to the trucks. Orrean walked over to me and I startled when he placed my blue hat on my head, then he just walked past me.
“Thanks, Orr,” I called after him when my brain—and mouth—caught up to what he’d done. I was more relieved than I’d ever admit that he’d found my—Colt’s—hat. I had no doubt that I would’ve been a mess later if he hadn’t found it. It had become more than just my good luck charm over the months.
When I saw Sanjha’s arm bent all weird, I reached for it to heal her, but she moved away and said, “We have other things to concentrate on right now.” She started walking away immediately without waiting for a response from me.
Not wanting to push the issue, I just shrugged it off and turned to Nolan. “How did the Ferals band together like that? How is it even possible?” I asked, still trying to catch my breath.
“They were being controlled,” Nolan supplied from beside me.
“Gee, thanks, Professor Obvious. I didn’t realize that the fucking Ferals were being controlled by the fucking Taoree Legion,” I stated.
Independents: Taoree Trilogy #2 Page 14