by Michael Todd
“Do you have a radio?” she asked.
“Of course.” Cort nodded at the helicopter.
“Sorry. I meant I need to use your fucking radio.”
“Yes, of course.”
She nodded and hurried toward the chopper.
“But how many of those things can there be?” she heard Cort say. “We killed more than a few of those attacking you, and…seriously, how many?”
Ava snatched the radio and tried to make contact. “This is the crew of the Flying Bastard. We made contact with the scorpion queen and have eliminated her. However, an army of scorpions is inbound for Wall Two. Repeat, an army of scorpions is inbound for Wall Two.”
She waited for a second, then two, and finally, the radio blared back at her.
“They’re here. They’re fucking here, so save yourselves and for God’s sake, call the president. Nuke this damn place.”
The man screamed and the sound became superimposed on that of flesh rending and bone breaking. Silence followed for a brief moment, broken suddenly by the scuttling of what Ava recognized to be insect legs on concrete. More screams echoed over the airwaves, more distant than before. Finally, the radio returned to its impassive silence. She spun and flung herself out of the helicopter.
“We need to get back to the base now,” she shouted and spat out the sand that blew into her mouth.
“But the storm—” Cort protested.
“It ain’t no thing, mate. It ain’t no thing. You have old Manny to take us back. And I already crashed two vehicles on this trip. The chances are I won’t crash the third.”
Chapter Seventeen
They loaded up immediately. The only minor delay involved Peppy and Gunnar, who retrieved their bag of weapons. Ava helped the soldiers release the tethers designed to protect the helicopter from the storm while Manny argued the controls away from the man who protested vociferously that it was his chopper.
“Have you ever landed a seaplane in the middle of a snowboarding contest, taken it off a jump at the same time as the gold medalist, and had that gold medalist grind the landing gear of the seaplane, then back-flip off?”
The man, utterly dumbfounded, pushed out of his seat and gestured for Manny to take the controls.
“Pity, mate. I’ve never done that either. I always wanted to, though. It was a silver medalist when I did that fly over.”
Ava scrambled into the helicopter without a moment to spare. He pulled up on the collective and they were airborne but were promptly rocked by the approaching windstorm.
“Planes are really better at this kind of thing, but we’ll make do!” The pilot jammed the cyclic and they moved forward despite the desert sand being way too close below them.
“What kind of thing?” Cort replied. Silly man, Ava thought. He still hadn’t learned to not ask questions he didn’t actually want the answers to.
“Surfing the storm wall of a Saharan storm as big as this one,” Manny responded with a whoop and raised the helicopter higher into the air.
By some miracle—or, knowing Manny, more likely a deal with the devil—they surged ahead of the grasping winds of the storm. They’d flown for perhaps fifteen minutes before Wall Two appeared on the horizon.
“Holy shit!” Gunnar said. “I had no idea we traveled that far in the Li’l Bastard.”
“The Li’l what?” Cort asked, confused once more.
“Son of Flying Bastard,” Manny explained over his shoulder.
“Who?”
“My grandson!” The pilot beamed. “Li’l Bastard could cover some ground. O’ course, the Flying Bastard could have too, but we had to watch that damn whale woman work through the sand.”
“I’ll simply pretend that he’s making sense because the rest of you don’t seem freaked out,” Cort said.
“Oh, that’s not a safe assumption at all,” Peppy pointed out.
“Yeah, we’re definitely freaked out,” Gunnar added. “But we don’t expect him to make sense. Although it would be nice if we somehow manage to survive all this, if someone would go back for those bastards.”
“It’d also be nice to wash this goo off and paint my toenails, but I don’t exactly think that will happen.” Ava pointed at Wall Two. Scorpions poured out of the sand, more than had attacked the Li’l Bastard—far more, enough to make the paltry thousand-odd they had faced seem like a joke with a weak punchline.
“Take us over the top, Manny. Let’s see where we have the best chance to take as many of these things with us before we’re dismembered,” Peppy said.
He nodded and eased the helicopter higher into the air.
“Is that another storm?” Gunnar asked when they were high enough to see over the wall. Another great plume of dust approached the wall from the other side. It didn’t go as high as the storm on their tail and it didn’t seem to lift the sand in front of it.
“No,” Ava said and her heart plunged. “Those are more chimesaurus. Damn it, I knew they were working with the scorpions. This must’ve been their grand plan.”
“Wow, does it suck to be right? It seems like it must suck,” Gunnar said.
“You’ll experience the sensation one day,” Peppy consoled.
“Not like you would know, Peppy,” Manny shouted, looped around, and headed back toward the outer part of the wall where the scorpions were already attacking rather than where the chimesaurus would attack soon. “We’re all still alive so that screws up all your damn predictions.”
“I’ll be right in the long run. You’ll see. Shit, I might end up being right today. I hope not, though.”
“Wow, Peppy, that’s surprisingly optimistic of you,” Gunnar said.
“I couldn’t care less if most of you get ripped limb from limb, but I hope one of you survives. Otherwise, no one will buy me a drink.”
“Consider it on me,” Ava said and hoped that she sounded more sure of herself than she felt.
An explosion at the base of Wall Two cut the conversation short and like a moth to a flame, Manny banked toward it.
“Where are you going?” Cort asked. Now that they were back in a life or death situation caused by hordes of unnatural monsters, the lieutenant once again deferred his authority to people he had only recently questioned the sanity of.
“That’s the hangar door,” Manny said. “They’re either about to overrun our damn firepower or—yup, exactly as I thought! You American pricks are funny about the damnedest things, but no one argues with you when it comes to firepower.”
A tank rolled through the explosion. Soldiers operated machine guns from inside while the main turret found a dense grouping of scorpions and fired. White guts spewed everywhere.
“I’m gonna get another chopper—something better armed. As much as I appreciate this little hang glider you brought out, I think the time for scouting missions is over. I’ll try to get airborne with the dumbest soldiers I can find,” Manny said.
“We’re sticking to the ground,” Gunnar said and gestured to him and Peppy.
“Did I say dumbest? I meant bravest.” Manny grinned.
“But you can’t fly. There’s a storm rolling in,” Cort protested.
“Like I said, stupid soldiers. The stupidest—as stupid as me!” Manny said and brought the helicopter way too close to the wall. Ava thought they would actually collide with it, but he stopped their forward motion and descended. He landed behind the tank. Any closer to the wall and they would have been part of it.
“No offense, you Australian bastard, but I’m gonna stay on the ground,” Gunnar shouted as he scrambled out of the helicopter and headed to the tank.
“None taken. It’s a good thing for a man to face his fears,” Manny responded as he bailed out himself and sprinted to a helicopter.
Peppy followed Gunnar but Ava didn’t know what to do. She was a better shot than she was a pilot, but Manny would probably need her more than Peppy and Gunnar. A wave of scorpion babies surged behind the tank as Peppy and Gunnar climbed aboard and made her mind up
for her. She barreled out and fell in with a stream of soldiers who hurried toward a huge helicopter Manny had commandeered.
The screams pierced through the mayhem and stopped her in her tracks.
They came from inside the walls—screams of the helpless, of civilians caught in a situation they didn’t understand. She cursed and accepted that she had to help them.
“Manny!” she yelled as loudly as she could. Fortunately, the crazy pilot stood at the entrance to the helicopter and invited passengers aboard like he was about to take a mangrove tour to see manatees instead of a suicide flight to kill monsters before he crashed in a storm. “Try not to do anything too stupid without me.”
“It looks like you have me beat in that regard,” he retorted. He’d heard the screams too, then.
Ava nodded. He was right. Running into an enclosed space with a bunch of freshly hatched, ravenous monsters probably qualified as stupider than flying a helicopter into a storm to shoot them from above. Not because it was any more likely that Manny would survive, but because he would probably die in a fiery explosion instead of being ripped apart by scorpions. After her time in the Zoo, Ava wholeheartedly believed death by fireball was in the top five ways to go in the Zoo.
She fired her carbine at the wave of scorpions and killed two without even aiming. The thought did little to quell her nerves.
Without a backward glance, she ran into the maze of Wall Two.
Blood and guts were strewn everywhere. Ava had thought she’d toughened up after being in the Zoo but actually seeing red human blood was totally different than seeing scorpion goo. There were dead arachnids too, many of them, but it seemed the slaughter in the halls was unfortunately one-sided.
Ava followed the carnage and stepped carefully on the slick mixture of goo and blood. It led away from the armory, which she thought might be a good sign. Hopefully, that meant everyone had been able to get weapons. Did that count as something stupid? She was sure Peppy would think so. Although the trail was obvious, it was not easy to follow. Not on her stomach, anyway.
She pressed on along the slightly curved hallway until the screams grew louder. They seemed more blood-curdling in the echoing space.
Two men in lab coats pounded desperately on a closed door. They looked constantly down the hall and pleaded for someone to let them in. The door finally slid open a crack and one of the men squeezed in. The other was about to when a flood of arachnids appeared at the far side of the hallway. There were so many that they literally crawled over each other.
New screams came from behind Ava and two men—cooks by the looks of their aprons—sprinted toward her. “More of the scorpion,” one of the men yelled in accented English.
Ava, channeling Manny’s stupidity perhaps, raced for the open door. The man pleading to get in froze when he saw her coming with two men wearing aprons and clutching knives at her heels. And, of course, the mass of monsters behind them. Great, so the fucking bastards came from both sides. Today simply got better and better.
Ava raised her weapon and the man cringed and raised his hands.
She fired into the scorpions behind him.
The two cooks made it into the door.
“Get inside!” she yelled.
The man didn’t listen and instead, looked behind him.
He gasped in shock as the wall of creatures swarmed over him and devoured him alive. He screamed for only a few moments longer. His agony was Ava’s salvation, though, as the scorpions focused on their meal.
She forced herself through the open door, afraid to open it more in case the scorpions pushed inside. Fortunately, the two waves of attackers now fought between themselves over the man’s still warm guts.
“Please!” he moaned. It seemed impossible that he should still be alive. “Please save me.”
Ava had been a nurse and knew that was impossible. She thought of Peppy, took aim, and shot the man in the heart.
She slammed the door shut behind her, threw her back against it as the scorpions began to shove and claw at it, and wept.
Chapter Eighteen
Ava didn’t mourn long. She couldn’t, but damn it, that had hurt. Despite her instincts to at least try to save him, she’d done the right thing, she told herself. She’d done what she’d want someone to do for her, but shit! If had been the right thing, why did she feel so horrible?
“She hero!” one of the cooks said. “Saved our life.”
“You did what any of us would have done in your situation.”
Ava knew that voice—the cold, calculating tone and shit, even the logic, was familiar.
“Dr. Kessler?”
“Correct,” he said. “You did well, soldier. You saved our lives. That is easily worth the sacrifice of one man.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Ava said. Ah, there was a more useful emotion than sadness at what she’d done—rage.
“And who do you presume to be?” the scientist demanded imperiously.
Ava stood and wiped her eyes. “Barricade the door,” she said. The two cooks and a few civilians hastened to follow her orders. She was in a machine shop of some kind. Tables with tools filled the room. Three of the walls were lined with large, industrial-looking machines. One of them had a line of windows reinforced with mesh between the panes of glass. Judging by the cracks here and there and the guts sprayed against the windows, they were bulletproof. They looked out into the hangar and she could see that Manny had gotten his helicopter out after all. Cool. Someone would mourn her when she died in approximately five minutes.
“I’m Ava.”
Dr. Kessler raised an eyebrow.
“Ava? Ava Martin?”
“You know me. I saved your fucking life from the constrictadile when you gorged yourself on too many zomberries.”
“I wasn’t of sound mind when that happened. If you are who you say you are then you would know I don’t remember much of what happened out there, especially not the names of the people involved.”
“I don’t think she is a spy for the Zoo!” one of the cooks yelled. He leaned against the door despite one of the tables pushed against it. The scratch of scorpion claws could easily be heard through what felt like a flimsy barrier.
“I’m friends with the man who tests your stupid fucking mech suit,” Ava said and pointed to the suit in the corner. The room they were in must be where Dr. Kessler worked on his robot suit.
“Ah.” That seemed to jog his memory. “Gunnar, yes. I like him. He, at least, respects good engineering. It is a pity you didn’t bring him with you.”
Ava scowled at the man. He didn’t react, but when she looked pointedly away from him and addressed the other forty or so people holed up in the room, he startled. Good, she thought. Let the asshole realize he wasn’t any more valuable than anyone else when it came to being scorpion food.
“My team and I were out killing the scorpion queen. Obviously, we were too late. What the hell happened here?”
A man stepped forward. He was bald with dark skin and tattoos of musical instruments up his left arm. A musician turned journalist, Ava remembered. Wilmers or Whethers or something? He had served a few times on the civilian part of the gate defense.
“What happened, uh…” Ava took a guess. “Wilmers?”
“Wilson, but no worries,” He shot her a practiced smile, well-trained from interviews and time on a stage no doubt. “About a half hour ago, the scorpions attacked from underground. I was with Captain Taylor at the time—well, close enough to hear him shout, so not that close.”
“Cut to the chase Wilson.” The clawing at the door became more urgent. Apparently, the invaders had finished their meal.
“Right, sorry. Thousands literally boiled up from the sand. Maybe tens of thousands, Captain Taylor said. They didn’t attack with any sort of precision like the chimesaurus did this morning. They simply go for anything that moves and eat everything that moves.”
“Yeah, I…uh, I saw that too,” Ava said. “Why are you all in here, though? St
anding orders are to go to the armory.”
“We could ask you the same thing,” Dr. Kessler pointed out.
“The point of an armory, Doctor, is to get a weapon.” She brandished her carbine. “I was able to skip a step.”
“We tried but we didn’t make it. We got this far, and a bunch of those damn things showed up.” Wilson shuddered. “Luckily, we made it in here. I thought we could wait this out and make a break for it, but…uh…” He looked at the door and shook his head. Ava knew the damn feeling.
Claws worked their way in from not only the bottom but the sides of the door as well. Had the creatures been fully grown, the door would already be gone, but still, they didn’t have long.
Ava’s attention was snatched away when a helicopter careened through the open hangar doors. It slid across the sandy floor of the hangar and spun as it spewed soldiers before it crashed into a plane. A wave of baby scorpions followed them in from the desert outside.
Manny scrambled out before black smoke poured from the helicopter.
“We have to help them,” she said.
Most of the civilians nodded. They understood as well as Ava that their choices were either to die with a gun in their hand and take some of the enemy with them, or simply be eaten.
“We don’t have any firearms.” Dr. Kessler folded his arms. He’d obviously used the same line on the group earlier. “We simply have to stay quiet and wait this whole thing out. Wall Two is a marvel of technology. It’ll hold.”
Another explosion was strong enough to rattle the glass windows of the machine shop. Peppy and Gunnar raced into the hangar with other soldiers at their heels. They turned and fired toward the door. It didn’t take a scientist to know what they were shooting at.
“Shit, shit, shit!” Ava said and began to pace the room.
In the few seconds it took to walk and turn, at least a thousand more scorpions had made it into the hangar. Peppy, Gunnar, and Manny led a ragged group of soldiers deeper into the structure and put their backs against a JLTV with a mounted machine gun. Gunnar climbed and fiddled with the gun. He kicked it instead of firing it. Not good.