Authors: Jason Halstead
The next bug cleared the doorway, leaping past its dying brother at Jeremy. He thrust his gun out, batting it aside. He felt the material in the gun give, then felt as much as heard the sudden hum from inside of it as the stored energy dissipated. The insect, he noted, had landed on Synnamon’s leg. She screamed and tried to flail her legs to knock it free.
The bug held on, grabbing tight with its four legs and sinking its mandibles into her thigh. Jeremy stared, at a loss for what to do while the bug worked its grip tighter. It pulled back, tearing off a chunk of flesh and feeding it into its mouth. Blood ran down her leg freely, adding to a growing puddle beneath it. Synnamon was gasping and whimpering, her cheeks white and her eyes starting to roll back into her head.
“Jeremy!” She whimpered, reaching for him.
Jeremy had slid away from her. His back was against the wall of the office. He looked around, unaware of how rapid his breaths were coming. He was trapped! One final look above him and he saw the window. He jumped to his feet and worked the release on it, jamming his fingers twice before he coordinated the safety lock and then the actual window release.
Synnamon whimpered again, breaking his frantic need to escape for a terrible heartbeat. He stared as the other bug leapt onto her and bit into her abdomen. It tore its mandibles free in a shower of blood. She grunted and reached for Jeremy again. “Please!” She wheezed.
His mouth worked but no sound came out. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to give her hope. He even wanted to grab her hand and pull her with him. Then the bug on her leg lifted its head and stared at him with its alien eyes. He heard himself whimper and felt the nearly overwhelming urge to urinate. Jeremy jumped and pulled himself through the window head first with no thought to what awaited him on the other side.
Chapter 13
Synnamon’s screams echoing in his ears, Jeremy pulled himself up from the hard ground he’d slammed into. He rolled away, uncertain if the screams were real or imagined, then lurched to his knees and finally his feet. He ran, putting distance and speed first, then only later realizing he wasn’t headed in the right direction. He saw the body of the Megasaur moving, which made him skid to a stop.
He saw after only a moment that the Megasaur was dead. The movement came from inside its midsection. A bloody gash in it rippled and pulsed as yet more of the bugs crawled free of it, covered in the fallen creature’s ichor. He stared at it, unable to comprehend just what he was seeing. Something tugged at his mind, trying to quell the terror that paralyzed him. It was more than an urge, he knew he needed to look at something behind him. His muscles remained frozen, locked on the site of the six or seven insects that were chewing on the Megasaur. Were the feeding on it or doing something else?
A sharp pain in his back made him gasp. He took a step forward from the impact, then spun rapidly. Had one of the bugs gotten behind him and attacked him? Was it chewing on his back and ripping out his blood and muscle just as they had done to Synnamon?
He saw Fiona waving at him from behind a ruined truck. He glanced behind himself again, still imagining the phantom bug clinging to him, then ran towards her. He collapsed beside her, cowering behind the truck and hugging his arms around his knees while he fought to catch his breath.
“Damn Sinclair, what happened to you?” Fiona asked.
Jeremy stared straight ahead, unable to put the words to the sights he’d seen. He shook his head and fought back the tears that threatened to blur his vision.
“Is that your blood?”
He jerked, his entire body twitching at the realization that he had Synnamon’s blood on him. He stared at his clothes and saw the blood spattered on them. He opened his mouth but closed it rapidly, afraid he was going to vomit. He shook his head and bit down hard, fighting hard to breathe through his nose and find some semblance of sanity.
“What the fuck happened to you, Jer? You’re white!”
Jeremy risked a glance over his shoulder. The derelict truck was in his way, so he turned and climbed onto his knees to peer over it. He realized after only a moment that the bugs weren’t feeding, they were enlarging the gash. Whatever was causing the rippling inside the corpse shuddered, then began to emerge through the gash.
“Holy shit, what is that?” Fiona breathed. Jeremy whimpered without meaning to.
A larger version of the smaller bugs had emerged. It was nearly three times the size of the smaller drones and looked similar, save that it had an additional body part more in line with a traditional Terran insect. Unlike the Terran counterpart, this body part was in place of its tail and rose up. The mandibles on its head were different as well, instead of simple pincers they resembled the segmented limbs of a crab, only they had single blades instead of claws.
“A queen,” Jeremy whispered. He shrunk back down and stared into space.
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Lance Corporal Kate said. “I found a few others and directed them over to where you and Dr. Rice were at. Why’d you leave, anyhow?”
Jeremy shook his head. He couldn’t talk about it yet, not this soon and definitely not this close. “Later,” he said.
Fiona stared at him for a long moment, then nodded. “All right, let’s go.” She walked away, bent into a low crouch. Jeremy followed, nearly sprawling on his face multiple times as he tried to move as fast as the awkward position would allow.
Fiona rose up into a full run a few moments later. Jeremy gave it no thought as he matched her pace. He’d tried jogging with her in the weeks past and she’d always left him gasping for breath. This time he was keeping pace and breathing easily. Focusing on the run helped him put distance, both physically and emotionally, from the science camp.
They didn’t stop until they jogged into the shorter grasses surrounding the gathering site. Kira was waiting there, as well as a few others. Jeremy noted Taylor was there first, but he forced himself to ignore her to keep the thought of what had happened in her office out of his mind. Wes Roberts was climbing to his feet to greet them, Wes had been a veterinary technician for Crymm Hall. Dr. Hall was missing. The other survivors were two marines, Private First Class Alecia Swift and Private Alex Jamison, and one of the maintenance crew, Coral Watson.
Kira’s eyes rapidly took in the state of Jeremy’s clothes. “Where’s Synnamon?” Her stride towards him was strong and intimidating.
Jeremy opened his mouth and shut it, then shook his head. He glanced down and to his left, searching for words. When he looked back up Kira was right there, her fierce stare piercing him and leaving him feeling exposed. “She’s dead,” he said. The words came out weak, so he repeated them. “Those bugs. They trapped us. I shot one but they kept coming! The rifle didn’t recharge in time so I hit one and it… They got her. They tore her leg and then they swarmed her. She screamed but I couldn’t help. There were too many!”
Kira’s response was to explode. She grabbed his shirt and yanked him off balance only to drive her knee into his stomach. Almost before the air could explode out of his mouth she’d release one hand from his shirt so should draw it back and slam it into the side of his head. Jeremy heard the pops in his neck as his head twisted from the power of her punch. He fell to the ground retching out his last meal and gagging as he tried to breath. The world spun around him even though everything was growing darker and more distant by the moment.
Chapter 14
The next thing Jeremy was aware of was the background noises sharpening themselves into words. He knew they were words, he just couldn’t make sense of them. He blinked, letting a brilliant spear of sunlight plunge through this eyes and into his brain. The cry of pain he let out silenced the warring voices and restored his own ability to understand them.
“You’re alive!”
Jeremy moaned in response. It sounded like Fiona had been the one to speak. Through the slits of his eyebrows he thought she was the blurry form standing next to him.
“You’re lucky,” Kira spat out. It was definitely Kira, there was no mistaking her voice or the anger in it. “We’re the endangered species on this planet. You do what I say, when I say it or you go your own way. You risk the life of another human and your own life is forfeit.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Fiona snapped back.
“I’m the one that keeps you idiots alive! The rest of your settlement is gone. In a month the ruins will be overgrown and falling apart. In a year you’ll be lucky to find any evidence this base was ever here. The creatures here don’t fear you, and your weapons don’t do much more than piss them off. If you pull your heads out of your asses I’ll take you back to my people. We know how to survive. It’s your only chance.”
Jeremy started to roll but somebody put a restraining hand on him. A shadow fell across his face, shielding him from the sun’s glare. He opened his eyes slowly and saw Wes looking at him. “Lay still, we thought you were dead. It sounded like she broke your neck when you fell.”
Jeremy started to nod then stopped himself. If his neck was broken, nodding would be one of the worst things he could do. “Okay,” he said through barely parted lips. “I can feel my fingers and toes though. I feel really loose and weird, but I can feel.”
Wes nodded and offered him a shrug, then glanced up.
“Great, so now he’s going to slow us down? Better to leave him for the animals!” Kira growled.
“What’s your fucking problem? I saw him in there, he was scared shitless! I don’t know what you think you saw but—“
“No, I don’t know what you think you saw,” Kira’s sharp voice cut her off. “When I found the two of them right here he was about to shoot her. She talked him out of it, then I let them know I was here. She insisted on going back for her logs or something. We got separated and he used the opportunity to take care of what he couldn’t do the first time!”
“He wouldn’t do that!” Fiona insisted. She raised her gun to her shoulder and pointed it at Kira. “You back the fuck down and take us to these people you’re talking about, at least until another shuttle is sent for us.”
Jeremy felt the wetness rolling down his cheeks. He hadn’t killed Synnamon, the bugs had. He’d just been trying to get them away.
“You really think that’s going to work, Marine? Technology’s got a way of failing around here, haven’t you noticed? The guy taking care of our weapons used to be one of yours. Well, he was more than that, he was a FIST. He made regular Marines like you look like a security guard on a budget class starliner. He lost them one after another, until after ten months he couldn’t even put enough spare parts together to keep one of them working.”
“You want to test this one and find out?” Fiona dared her.
Jeremy risked turning his head a few degrees to see the confrontation. He realized that Fiona must have found some clothing while she was looking for other survivors. She’d slipped on an oversized armored vest, a loose fitting pair of pants with the regulation camo print on them, and a pair of combat boots. His eyes had barely taken it all in when the two women went at each other.
Fiona’s rifle discharged its lethal beam into thin air, Kira had already slipped under it and to the side. She came up grabbing it with both hands and ripping it free of Fiona’s hands. The rifle swung around and into the ground, bending it so badly that there was no doubt the internal workings had been fried. A spark and a puff of smoke from the broken circuits added an air of finality to the weapon’s status.
Fiona was quick, she kicked out, trying to crush in the side of Kira’s knee. Kira twisted away from the kick, making Fiona’s foot glance off, then she completed her rotation and smashed the broken rifle into Fiona’s side and hip. The high tech club broke apart, showering Jeremy with pieces of the shattered circuit boards and a few larger screws that flew loose. Fiona slammed into the ground beside him, grunting at the impact.
She rolled and tried to come back to her feet but never made it. Kira dropped on her and locked her arm and her neck in her grasp. She spun the Marine around, putting her between Kira and the other survivors, then picked both of them up using only the strength in her legs. She moved with a smooth grace that should have been impossible, considering her load.
“I won’t mess up this time,” Kira hissed. She had her other hand around Fiona’s head, ready to twist it at an angle that would guarantee a broken neck.
“Stand down!” Fiona wheezed to the other Marines. “I’m the senior NCO, stand down!”
They glanced at each other then nodded, lowering their weapons. Unlike Fiona they were dressed in their regular combat uniforms, but AJ was only a private and Alecia a Private First Class. Fiona outranked them, even out of uniform.
“You going to behave or do I need to set an example?” Kira hissed at her.
“I’ll behave,” Fiona growled after a moment.
Kira let her go and stepped away quickly. The Marine pulled her vest back into position and stretched her neck before rubbing it. She glared at Kira a moment, then turned and met Jeremy’s eyes. “He’s coming with us,” she stated.
“You’re a feisty bitch,” Kira remarked.
“You don’t want to know what kind of bitch I think you are!”