by Scott Moon
The mutated arachnoids seemed terrified of Maximus. He saw a pack of them fleeing across an intersection up ahead. Maximus flashed after them.
“Holy smoke, dog, I didn’t realize you had those kind of wheels!” He tried to catch up but abandoned the pursuit. “I have to find Shaunte,” he said into the night.
The Mother Lode was crowded when he arrived. People from several neighborhoods were crowding around the imitation hearth fire or staring out windows.
Leslie Stargazer pushed through the crowd to accost him. “Thad, I tried to stop her. She ran out of here halfcocked. I tried to slow her down—and tell her I let the Carter dude go like we talked about—but she ignored me.”
Distracted, Thad looked her over, then studied the crowd. “Are you armed?”
“A little bit.” She patted her garter belt under her knee-length silk dress.
“Good. Does anyone else know how to use a blaster?”
“Pierre has that old shotgun thing behind the bar. I’ve been hearing a lot of strange talk about blood-sucking alien monsters,” Leslie said.
“I think they are more of the face-eating variety, but better to be safe than sorry. I won’t forget about Carter. If he was here, I was going to press him into fighting the mutant spider menace,” Thad said.
“I’m worried about him,” Leslie said.
Thad, already on his way outside to resume his search, stopped and stared. “Are you sweet on him?”
“Not like that. I just… I don’t know. I’m worried about him,” Leslie said. “He’s different.”
“Okay, fine. Um, good luck with that. Stay here in case Shaunte or Dixie come back,” Thad said.
“Okay, Sheriff. I’ll be holding down the fort.”
He took a different route back to the jail. Dixie should have arrived during the time he made the same trip she was making twice over.
The expression on Sledge’s face told him his assumption was wrong.
***
Mast regulated his breathing as the sheriff had taught him. The people of Ungwilook did not run without reason, nor did they exercise as Thaddeus had taught him. He was learning, but still a novice runner by any criteria that mattered.
"Suck the buttercup," Mast said. This was one of the many things Sheriff Fry said to encourage him. It made little sense, especially the way Thad muchly incorrectly said “Suck it up, Buttercup.” Mast Jotham was not a cup of butter and didn’t understand how sucking anything would make him run faster. And why suck it up? Why not suck it down, or sideways?
Mast decided humans were muchly confused about sucking.
"Maximus! Wait for me! We can fight these things together." He drew his blaster and fired at a large, slow-moving creature with hideous mandibles and hairy antennae twitching above its eyes. The shot would've been more impressive if the thing had not already been grievously injured.
Maximus had been here recently.
Something dashed across the street not far ahead. For the first time in hours, Mast recognized the shape. He called out to Maximus and sprinted forward.
Exhilaration raced through his veins as he closed the gap. He was getting closer, and closer, running for everything he was worth. He was going the distance, going for speed in the time of need. He wished Thaddeus was here to see this. Mast Jotham, the Deputy Sheriff of Darklanding, had finally found his stride.
His foot slipped in blood and gore, the guts of some creature Maximus had spread across the street. Mast wasn't sure how he knew this, because it happened so fast. One moment, he was charging gloriously forward, and the next, he was swinging his arms for balance and sliding on his backside.
Such was his momentum that he tumbled several times and twisted his left shoulder and right knee.
"Yuck! That is muchly horrible!" He wrinkled his nose and tried not to breathe in the horrid smell, certain that some of it had gone into his mouth.
He pushed himself to his feet and looked around. Dozens of medium-sized creatures circled him. He raised his blaster. “Do not swarm at me like ants, you foul monstrosities.”
The crawling things moved closer. A ripple surged through them like an electric shock and they charged in unison.
Mast flailed to his feet and fired on the move just as Sheriff Fry had taught him. He even found time to kick one of his attackers very muchly against the wall.
***
Dixie knew how to run down the stairs wearing high heels and a tight, short skirt. She was even faster barefoot, so that was what she did. Thad’s angry and near-panic voice reminded her that Shaunte wasn’t as smart or as tough as she thought she was. The young woman needed a momma bear to protect her. Since none of those were available, she was going to get the madam from the Mother Lode.
"Dixie, wait!" Leslie shouted from the bench she sat on near the music player. "I have something to tell you. That man Carter you had me watch…”
"Not now, Leslie. Shaunte's runoff to get herself killed." Dixie almost regretted being melodramatic. Her shouted comment sent ripples through the crowd at the Mother Lode. It was the first life she'd seen in the place for some time. This was how rumors started.
She loved rumors. And drama. And running barefoot, now that she thought about it.
Carrying her high heels in one hand, she raced into the night to find the Company Man. And thus began the worst night of her life.
Creatures with many legs ran along the building tops above her, their grotesque forms silhouetted by hazy moonlight. Some had eight or nine legs. Others had twenty or thirty. She noticed one that was very large that seemed to have one leg and two arms that were long enough to almost function as legs but not quite.
Dixie screamed. Unlike most of the girls she protected, she didn't stop running. Freezing in panic wasn't her style. Caterwauling like a prima donna opera star worked. Lights came on. Windows and doors opened. She wasn’t sure if anyone came out to help because she didn’t stop to find out.
“Shaunte! Where are you? I don’t like this at all!” She shouted again and again for the Company Man. “My hair is an absolute mess, and now that my skirt is riding up, I don’t think I did a great job shaving my legs this morning!”
Dying would be bad, but what would she look like when they found her?
A flood of head-sized spiders poured off a building in front of her. She backed up, hands held up defensively, the high heels dangling from her fingers almost forgotten now. The only way she could escape was by running through an alley, something she swore she’d never do again.
All of her worst memories had happened in such places.
CHAPTER TWELVE: A Call for Help
Thad stumbled through the door. Fatigue, blood loss, and worry had worn him down to a shadow of himself. Enemies who wouldn’t show themselves were the worst. It would save everyone a lot of time if this new alien menace would just show up in the street with Shaunte as a hostage, hit him with sinister but tediously overused monologue, then fight it out like man versus alien or whatever.
He checked to be sure all of his blaster charge packs were reloaded, repositioned on his belt so that the fullest would be the next he used, and swept his eyes over the room. Sledge and Proletan stared back at him. They were geared up for a fight.
“She never showed up, did she?” Thad asked.
Sledge shook his head.
Thad strode back and forth across the office, thinking, cursing under his breath, and disregarding one plan after another. “I left Ground Forces for this? War actually sounds pleasant by comparison. At least I would lead soldiers who followed orders.”
Sledge laughed. “Yeah, women. Always mucking things up for us men. Dixie’s gone AWOL too.”
“Sorry, Sledge. I’ve been focused on my own disasters,” Thad said. “Maybe they’re someplace safe together.”
“Maybe. Why don’t you call Shaunte again?”
“I’ve called her ten times,” Thad shot back in frustration.
“Call her again or go back out there. Your pacing back an
d forth is driving me crazy,” Sledge said.
“You should seek calmness within,” Proletan said. “Then you might find the answer you seek.”
“Stow that talk, you murdering freak,” Thad muttered. He dialed the phone and waited for it to ring. Something was wrong with the button. He was about to curse all the ship travel into and out of the system for no reason when he realized he hadn’t pushed the button.
He was that tired. Recovering from the bite wound wasn’t exactly making him feel good. The moment Shaunte was accounted for, he was going to take a fifteen-hour nap. Pressing the button caused the call to go out, but he couldn’t get through. He sat at his desk and tried over and over again, all the while wishing he had the strength to go looking for her but knowing it was stupid to do anything without a plan or reasonable intelligence of the situation.
“The call cannot go through as dialed. Please try again later,” the phone said.
Thad wasn’t sure there was going to be a later.
“If you were thinking clearly, like the commander you are, you would know what to do,” Proletan said.
The man was right. Thad moved to the far corner of the room, wishing his office was private. Day to day, it was nice having his desk right in the middle of the bullpen. It wasn’t much for OpSec, however.
He called Tiberius Plastes and waited what seemed a hundred years.
“Thad, thank God you got through,” Tiberius said. The space line sounded worse than usual. Quantum physics hadn’t been able to beam people across the galaxy, but scientists had done an amazing job with communications. “I have been trying to get in touch with my daughter for days.”
“No time for chitchat, Tiberius. Shaunte and the rest of Darklanding are in trouble. I need you to send your TerroCom Soldiers,” Thad said.
“Listen, son. I’ve been doing this much longer than you have. Military force is not the way to handle Ortega,” Tiberius said, his voice fading away like he was a ghost just on the other side of life.
“Who the hell is Ortega? I’m talking about the creatures from the ship under Darklanding,” Thad said.
“Ship? I’m losing you. Cornelius Vandersun and his granddaughter took the ship. What are you talking about?”
“Forget about the ship. We have alien mutants slaughtering people in the streets. I don’t know who Ortega is, but I’ve got bigger problems. Send me some muscle or there won’t be a Darklanding to exploit,” Thad said.
“Calm down, Thad. I understand you have some problems. You’re not making sense. The native life of Darklanding isn’t malicious. That is one of the reasons we picked the place. If we wanted to fight off monsters, we would have set up the mines on the next planet over. Or used the military to reclaim one of the pirate holds that actually has more exotics than Darklanding, if a person could get to them,” Tiberius said.
“I don’t need a lecture or a business plan. I need ass-kickers with guns and some disaster relief ships, ASAP,” Thad said.
“Calm down, Thad…”
The line went dead.
Thad faced his team. “What else do you have?”
“Proletan has devised a way of using the anti-theft alarms and motion sensors on all SagCon warehouses to track the ebb and flow of the swarm,” Sledge said.
“Great. Now we have a swarm,” Thad said. “How does this help us? Can we plot a course through the town that keeps us from getting overrun?”
“No,” Proletan said. “However, we might be able to pinpoint the hive queen or swarm leader. She—it—should be near the center of the largest concentration. The creatures are too spread out for us to get a good location.”
“Once we find the head, we can cut it off,” Sledge said.
“Famous last words.” Thad considered his options and found he had fewer than he’d like. “I’m guessing we need to convince the flesh-eating, mutant alien spiders to concentrate for this to work.”
“Yep,” Sledge said. “Sounds like a job for the sheriff. They haven’t gone after the obvious population centers, which would make sense if they are mindless feeding machines. We need to figure out what they’re after, lure them toward it, and strike down the leader or leaders.”
***
Nothing could be simple for Kenneth Carter, probationary Security Chief for Interstellar Enterprises, Wilok System. Sabotaged by his enemies who might be his best friends now, mistrusted by his backstabbing boss, and surrounded by creatures that could strip a human to bones in minutes, he was nonetheless faced with an impossible moral dilemma.
“That’s her,” Ortega said. “Shoot her. I’m ordering you to shoot her.”
“I must respectfully ask you to shut your mouth before these things see us,” Carter said.
“Listen, you little twerp. Your future in the corporation is done if you don’t learn to do what you’re told. She knows too much. She’s dangerous. I believe she is trying to play me. All she wants is to make money off a deal with Interstellar Enterprises, then convert those assets to her own use,” Ortega said.
“Sounds familiar,” Carter muttered.
“You little shit.”
He watched Dixie pause, evaluate her best course of action, then rush between two approaching clusters of oversized, flesh-eating spider things.
“Nice,” he said. “I’m not sure if I would have had the balls to try that.”
“Hmmph.” Ortega snorted. “She got lucky.”
“She picked the only way out of the circle they were closing around her. That took guts,” Carter said as he tracked the madam from the Mother Lode. He didn’t like her. She had caused him a lot of trouble. But that didn’t mean he wanted to see her torn to bits like the poor corpses he had found two streets back.
Blaster wounds, burns, and missing limbs from explosions haunted his dreams but still wasn’t as bad as seeing the body of a person who had been eaten alive. Some of the bones had been crunched into pieces and devoured. These monsters were hungry.
“If you don’t shoot her, I’m going to shoot you,” Ortega said.
He turned slowly, expecting to see her pointing her small weapon at him and not being disappointed. With one quick move, he snatched it from her hands. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“You’re so fired. I’ll have your benefit package liquidated and you brought up on charges…for something…as soon as we reach Melborn,” she spat.
“We have bigger problems than your rival.”
“She’s not my rival!”
Carter pointed to the edge of the roof above them. Silhouettes crawled over and down, swarming at them from every possible direction. He pulled a stun grenade from his gear—quietly thanking Remi for setting him up despite all the drama—and threw it. “Let’s go if you want to live!”
He dragged her toward the stun grenade, reaching it a second after it exploded and cleared a path.
“That won’t last long. If you tell me to murder anyone else before we reach safety, I’m leaving you behind. We don’t have time for bullshit,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Dropship
Thad reached the plaza moments before the TerroCom dropship arrived. He’d hoped for a squadron with ground pounders and air support. A squad was better than nothing.
Thad keyed his TerroCom frequency. “You’re coming in right on the money, Red Squad.”
“Roger, Darklanding One. Stand back, the boys are fired up and ready to get some. They’ll be coming out hot.”
“Received and understood.” Thad moved back to the corner of a building.
The dropship flared its engines, raised the nose slightly, and touched down. Two side ramps dropped. Soldiers swarmed out like professionals. Thad didn’t recognized them but was glad the tradition of excellent training had continued.
“Red One to Darklanding One. We’re moving to your location,” a voice said on the radio.
“Belay that. Sweep and clear your way to this location. There are two possible MIA friendlies you need to scoop up.” Thad sent pictures to each of
the soldiers.
“Best mission ever,” one of the men said. “Two hotties in need of rescue.”
“I wouldn’t use that exact language when you find them, and the young one is my girlfriend.”
“Trust me with your life, Darklanding One, but not your money or your wife,” the anonymous soldier said.
Thad ignored the banter. “The enemy consists of alien, semi-sentient creatures resembling mutated spiders. They’re up to two meters tall and can strip a human of flesh in minutes. Don’t forget about the small ones. They’re at least as dangerous.”
“Understood,” Red One said. “We’re moving out. Will you be joining us?”
“Eventually,” Thad said, then headed back to the jail for the next phase of his half-assed plan. He called Sledge. “Have you pinned down the locus of this swarm?”
“Not yet. Street surveillance is showing three or four concentrations. All very fluid,” Sledge said.
“Okay, I’m moving to phase two. If you see Shaunte or Dixie on one of those cameras, I want to know immediately.”
Proletan answered. “Are you sure? Because the knowledge might force you to make a choice you don’t like.”
Grenades and small-arms fire exploded from the direction of the fast-moving TerroCom soldiers. Thad plotted a parallel course and set off at a fast jog. He needed to be in the right place at the right time.
Running while avoiding the smaller clusters of aliens proved harder than it seemed, as all such things did. The plan seemed straightforward in his head. He took one side street after another, cut through alleys, and constantly fell behind the soldiers as they fought toward the Mother Lode.
“Sledge, give me a status report.”
“Our theory looks correct. The swarm seems to believe our leader is surrounded by the heaviest concentration of soldiers. We are approaching critical mass. Are you in position?”