“What the fuck is going on? Will somebody tell me what the fuck is happening here?”
Donnie couldn’t take his eyes from the doorway as another worm came through, this one even larger, eighteen inches wide, slithering over the remains of those that had come before, mouth wide as it lunged, like a striking snake, for Davies. The private had to step back quickly and consequently his aim was off—one of his shots missed completely and the second raised a long, ridged wound along the worm’s length. It didn’t slow the beast down and its mouth gaped wider, ready to bite down at Davies’ thigh just as Wiggins stepped forward and fired three shots into its body.
The beast collapsed to the floor, where Davies, his balance recovered, put two more shots down its throat to make sure it stayed down. It fell apart in a mess of pulpy gore, white teeth rattling on the stone floor.
“Let’s show these fuckers who’s the boss around here,” Wiggins said. The corporal stepped into the doorway and began firing, three rounds at a time in rapid bursts, out and downward into the gloom outside the hut. Davies stepped up alongside him and joined in. Donnie had to clamp his hands harder at his ears as the gunfire rang like overhead thunder, echoing around the chamber and setting everything ringing as if they were inside a great bell being struck by hammers.
The men emptied a full magazine each out into the dark—Donnie didn’t bother counting rounds, although the scattered shells on the floor told him there had been scores fired. The air tasted burnt at the back of his throat and even after Wiggins called a cease-fire, the echoes appeared to ring long and loud in Donnie’s ears. When Wiggins spoke, he sounded as if he was far off, shouting into a heavy wind.
“I don’t see any more of the fuckers,” he said to Davies. “Do you see any more?”
“No, Corp,” the private replied. “I think we’ve seen them off again for now.”
Donnie turned to check on the professor in time to see the older man clamber out of his sleeping bag. His face was still pale but Donnie recognized the look of excitement in the man’s eyes—he’d seen that gleam every time they came across a new find at the dig site. Gillings was all the way out of the sleeping bag and kneeling beside the remains of the largest of the downed beasts before Donnie had stood away from the fire.
*
By the time Donnie reached him, Gillings was sifting among the putrid remains with a pencil.
“We’ve got a mouth, teeth, skin, gut, rectum,” he said, pointing at places along the length of the thing. “A simple worm for all intents and purposes. So what causes the electrical discharges? There’s bugger all else here.”
Donnie knelt by the professor’s side, covering his mouth against a rising stench of decomposition. What little there was of the worm was going fast, turning into a thick waxy residue.
“It must be something in the tissue,” Donnie replied. “Something at a cellular level.”
Gillings sifted the pulpy protoplasmic ooze with the tip of his pencil. The red skin was breaking up and melting as the decomposition became even more rapid. He held the pencil up and the ooze dripped thickly from the point. It seemed to be steaming faintly.
“It’s not acidic, is it?” Wilkins asked.
“It’s a worm, not a bloody alien,” the professor replied.
“If you say so, Prof,” Wilkins replied. “But I’m pretty sure we never learned about anything like this in Mrs. Graham’s O-level biology class.”
“No, I doubt if you would,” Gillings replied. He was distracted again, sifting through the remains with the pencil again, as if expecting to find something.
“So what the fuck is it?” Wilkins continued.
“To find that out we’d have to capture one to study it properly,” he said.
“Aye, good luck with that,” Wiggins said from the doorway. “Leave that thing alone, would you? You don’t ken where it’s been.”
“I ken where it’s going though,” Donnie said, looking down as the ooze dried on the stone floor into ridges of wax. Only the teeth were left behind, thirty or more of them. Donnie lifted two of them, each as long and thin as the professor’s pencil, and knocked them together. They rang like clinked glasses.
“Silicaceous?” Gillings said.
“Looks like it,” Donnie said, raising one of the teeth for a closer look. It was the same shade of white along its whole length, as smooth and clean as fine porcelain, cold to the touch despite the heat of the room, no obvious root that might have held it in place in the mouth and with a slight barb at the pointed end. He touched the barb, feeling the cruel point of it, like a fish hook.
“Whatever gets caught in that mouth isn’t getting out in a hurry,” Donnie said, remembering how quickly the camel had been taken earlier.
“Aye,” Wiggins replied. “Top tip for everybody, remember to keep your fingers, toes, and tadgers well clear. Are we learning anything here, or are you just playing in shite?”
“The truth?” Donnie said as he stood away from the remains. “More the latter than the former.”
Gillings attempted to stand from his crouched position but his legs gave way and almost fell before Davies got an arm around him.
“Back to bed for you, Professor,” the private said. “That’s enough excitement for one night.”
“I bloody well hope so,” Wiggins muttered under his breath and went back to guard duty in the doorway as Donnie helped the professor back into the sleeping bag.
*
The professor fell asleep again almost immediately. Wilkins reheated the coffee in the pot and Donnie took a mug and a smoke over to Wiggins at the door.
“Anything moving?” Donnie asked.
“Naw, they’ve buggered off again. If we’re very lucky, they’ll have learned their lesson, but from what I saw, they don’t have any kind of brains at all, do they?”
“Didn’t look like it,” Donnie replied. “They just open their mouth and eat anything that comes in reach.”
“Like me after a night on the bevvy,” Wiggins replied.
While Wiggins drank his coffee, Donnie bent to have a look at one of the oval vases that lined the walls of the hut. He noticed that all but the two on either side of the doorway were connected by strands of what looked to be copper wire and that there was a spare length of wire wound around the top of the one on the left of the door. He remembered the show they’d been given by the monks.
“I think these vases are meant to be connected,” he said.
“Aye? So what?” Wiggins answered, wincing as he took a deep draw of smoke from one of Donnie’s cheroots.
“They’re batteries, at least I think they are,” Donnie replied. “Remember back in the monastery, how they used them to keep the worms enclosed in the sand pit?”
Wiggins nodded.
“Aye, so what?” he said again.
“So, what if we can use them here to keep the beasties out?”
- 15 -
Banks and Hynd’s luck held for another hour of running; they managed to stay on rocky ground and well away from any encroaching worms, although they had seen several more ‘forests’ of raised trunks sucking down the rain to either side of their track. The rain continued to pour down, slowing them more than Banks would have liked and forcing them to find routes around the larger puddles that had formed on the rock. Still, Banks was cheered by their progress and already looking ahead to reaching their goal and returning to the others with aid.
Their luck ran out when they reached a dip in the ground and arrived at a rocky ledge some ten feet above the level of the sand below them. Blue flashes of electrical charge provided all the illumination they needed to see that they weren’t going to get any farther while it continued to rain. The ledge looked down over a channel, an old riverbed was Banks’ guess, filled with a seething, rolling mass of worms. All of them, from some a mere two feet in length to monsters ten feet long and more, traveled from west to east across Banks’ view, a new river to replace the old one, the worms heading with a single purpose.
“What the fuck is this now?” Hynd said in little more than a whisper.
“Migration? Or some kind of feeding behavior maybe? Maybe one of the boffins would ken but I’m buggered if I do,” Banks replied. “All I know is that they’re in our way.”
“So now what, Cap?”
Banks raised his head, checking the weather. It might look a bit brighter away to the north.
Might. Then again, that might just be wishful thinking.
“I’m not going back,” he finally replied, keeping his voice low although the worms below them seemed fully intent on their eastward movement and were paying no heed to the men above. “We’ll wait here for a bit, see if the rain stops and these beasties settle down. We’ve come too far to turn back.”
Hynd didn’t reply, merely lit a smoke for himself and passed another over to Banks, who took it gratefully. They smoked in silence, cupping the cigarettes from long habit inside fingers closed against the rain and wind. The procession of worms continued below their feet, flowing away east, the blue static brilliant enough to leave yellowish clouds swimming in Banks’ eyes after the flashes.
“So how come nobody kens these buggers are here?” Hynd asked after a while.
“The monks certainly knew all about them. I’m guessing they come and go with the rain—it disnae rain all that often and when it does, folks aren’t out and about to notice what the local wildlife are doing.”
“They’re terrifying me, that’s what they’re fucking doing.”
*
By the time they’d finished their smokes, it was obvious that the rain was slowing, first to a drizzle then to a few droplets and finally as quickly as it had come, it was gone. The sky cleared fast from the north, stars winking into existence behind high wispy clouds. As the dampness in the air disappeared, so too did the worms, sinking down into the sand, the larger ones first, the blue aurora fading and dissipating until there was only still, disturbed sand in the old river bed below. Banks began looking for a way down from the ledge.
“I don’t like it, Cap,” Hynd said, watching Banks clamber down onto the sand.
“What’s not to like,” Banks replied. “We’re in the middle of the desert, with no comms, surrounded by big fuck-off electric worms and with two injured men depending on us for a rescue. It’s a piece of piss.”
Hynd laughed.
“Aye, and at least we’ve got smokes this time around.”
“And I’ve got all my clothes on.”
Hynd laughed, then Banks hushed him as he took his first step on the sand.
“Quietly now. We take this slow, keep our wits about us, and shoot the fuck out of anything that gets in our way. Follow in my footsteps.”
He headed out slowly onto the old riverbed.
*
They moved carefully, every nerve tingling, their gun lights washing the ground immediately ahead and ready to shoot at the first sign of an attack. A blue crack of static slashed ten feet to their left, then another to their right. Banks resisted a sudden urge to turn and flee for the safety of the high ledge and forced himself to take another step.
The sand was still slightly damp, firm underfoot. He wondered whether the mass of worms had moved on or whether they were still there, just below his feet. His mind gave him pictures of a great mouth opening below him, sucking him down like rainwater before he had time to do anything about it. He had to force the thought away, concentrating only on the next step then the one after that.
Another crack and blue flash came from his right, further off this time and eastward, giving him hope that the mass of worms had already moved away in that direction. To the north, he saw a deeper, blacker shadow loom and risking the chance, shone his light in that direction, letting out a sigh of relief when it showed another ledge to match the one to the south. If their luck held, it would signal another patch of harder ground leading north. They still had a chance of reaching their target.
He had another dozen steps to negotiate before the safety of the rocks and he forced himself to take each one as carefully as the previous. He was getting ready to congratulate them for getting to safety when a blue crackle of electricity ran across the sand, sending a tingle through him as if he stood too close to a generator. The sand shifted and raised in a mound three feet to his left. He didn’t wait to see if it was going to break the surface—he fired, three shots into the highest part of the mound, then turned and leapt for the rocks.
He knew Hynd would be right behind him. As soon as Banks stepped up onto harder ground, he put his back to the rocks and turned, weapon raised. Hynd was indeed only a step behind him but wasn’t going to make it—a blood-red torso came up out of the sand like a missile, three feet and more wide with a mouth that was already opening enough that it might swallow the sergeant whole when it closed.
“Down,” Banks shouted, already raising his weapon and once more Hynd didn’t hesitate. The sergeant threw himself down and forward to Banks’ feet at the same moment that Banks fired, three shots into the worm’s great mouth, splintering a handful of the white teeth and sending shards of sharp slivers flying across the sand. Even with half of its mouth blown away, the thing kept coming, but Hynd had already rolled onto his back and put three shots of his own into the thick red torso, which popped as if a balloon had burst, showering the immediate area in pink pulp and gore.
Banks helped Hynd up and dragged them both up atop the shelf before turning back to look down at the fallen creature. The sand beneath it shifted and roiled and five smaller mouths appeared above the surface. Banks raised his weapon again but these had no interest in the men, intent only on feeding on the dead. Within seconds, the carcass was reduced to scraps of skin, then even that was gone and the sand was still once more.
“Voracious wee buggers, aren’t they?” Hynd said, lighting a smoke with a hand that trembled slightly with tension.
All that remained of the beast they’d shot was the pulpy tissue that had spattered their clothes. When Banks brushed the worst of it off, it felt cold and waxy under his fingers, slightly slimy like the river eels he’d sometimes caught as a lad when trout fishing. The stink caught in his throat and he was grateful when Hynd handed him another cigarette to mask the smell.
He turned his back on the riverbed, looking north. They once again had a carpet of stars overhead and he saw a long stretch of rocky ground laid out ahead of them.
“Finish the smoke fast, Sarge,” he said. “Looks like we’re in for some decent running.”
- 16 -
“What do you mean, batteries?” Wiggins asked as Donnie moved to connect the copper wire across the vases on either side of the doorway.
“I’m betting there’s a rolled copper sheet around an iron rod inside each of these pots,” Donnie said. “You pour in an electrolyte, say vinegar or grape juice, and you’ve got a simple voltaic cell. Connect them in series with the copper wire and they’ll generate a weak electric field. Think of it as an alarm system if you like. Not very powerful but having seen the vases in operation back at the monastery, I’m guessing it’s enough to interfere with the worms’ own field and confuse them.”
“It’s already fucking confusing me,” Wiggins said. “I thought you dealt with fossils and shit like that?”
“Aye, but I read a lot,” Donnie replied. “And I watch a lot of crap on satellite telly. I heard about these vases in some Ancient Aliens documentary. Chariots of the Gods and all that shite.”
Wiggins laughed.
“Aye. They practically own South America. In that case,” he said, patting his rifle, “I’ll trust to Sweaty Betty here but go on, knock yourself out, connect them up—it cannae do us any harm.”
Donnie finished connecting the wire to the vase, wet his finger, and touched the copper. He felt a slight tingling, heard a faint buzz.
“So now what, Einstein?” Wiggins said above him.
“I’ve no idea. I guess we’ll find out if the worms come back.”
*
; Rain continued to run in sheets off the roof. They’d see an occasional blue flash out in the night, dim as if far off but for now at least the worms were not encroaching. After a time, Wiggins and Davies swapped places and Donnie joined the corporal as he brewed yet another pot of coffee.
“Do you think they’ve got to the airstrip yet?” Donnie asked.
Wiggins checked his watch.
“If they got a clear run, they should be getting close,” he replied. “But in this rain, I don’t know. They may have found shelter and be huddling down ‘til it passes. Or they might have met worm trouble. Either way, there’s bugger all I can do about it right now, so I’m not going to waste time worrying.”
It was yet another thing that distinguished the soldiers from Donnie; all three of them, despite the recent shooting and the possibility of another attack at any moment, seemed as calm as they might be sitting around in someone’s front room having coffee and a chat. Probably even calmer than that, for there was a quiet surety to their movements and actions, a sense of control that Donnie could only watch and envy.
It made him feel slightly nervous, as if he was a young schoolboy dropped among a group of his elders. Although he was clearly of a similar age to both Wilkins and Davies, they seemed somehow more assured, more adult.
And they don’t even know it; it’s second nature to them.
*
They smoked, drank coffee, and listened to the professor snoring for another half an hour before Davies called out from the doorway.
“Here they come again.”
Wiggins clapped Donnie on the shoulder as he rose from beside the fire.
“Now we’ll see if your wee theory holds up.”
Operation Mongolia (S-Squad Book 8) Page 8