| |
When I hit the ground, the stench of blood, rot, and God knows what else assaulted my nostrils. The plateau appeared empty beyond the stakes implanted in the xenofungus – empty to the frontlines, perhaps half a mile away.
On our right, the railgun fired again, deafeningly loud, the sound like a colossal whip. The wind blew from the east, carrying with it the reek of thousands upon thousands of monsters.
Men stood at the railgun’s perimeter, their rifles pointed outward. We’d have to run across the empty expanse of the plateau to reach the frontlines, where Makara and the others had gone.
Anna and I weaved between two of the stakes and looked across the plateau. Nothing moved in any direction, so we set out at a quick run, toward a small rise a few hundred feet away. The shorter the amount of time we were exposed on the open terrain, the better.
We reached the rise, not slowing our pace as we raced to the top. I felt my heart beat wildly, but I only had to push myself long enough to reach the battle. Once we crested the top, we saw two crawlers engorging themselves on the flesh of a fallen soldier. These things were covered in thick chitin, from their angular heads to the tips of their scorpion tails, and were far more armored than any crawler we’d ever encountered. Three glowing eyes shone through their armored shells, one on each side of their heads, and one in the center.
Upon seeing them, Anna and I dropped to the ground, working ourselves back so the hill would obscure us. Unfortunately, both creatures caught wind of us, somehow. Their heads turned in our direction, and they let out shrill shrieks as they charged up the hill.
Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I jumped up, raising my rifle to my shoulder with surprising alacrity. I fired several bursts into the lead crawler, and was soon joined by Anna. Our bullets ricocheted off their chitin, sending showers of sparks to the xenofungal surface. Both crawlers approached at a scuttling run, and our bullets merely glanced off their shells. They would do zero damage unless they hit the right spot.
We could do nothing but back away and take careful aim for their heads and eyes – which was nearly impossible to do considering their speed. The crawlers were now dashing up the hill, and by some stroke of luck, I got a few key hits on the left crawler, in the lower neck. It stopped in its tracks to shake its head, temporarily immobilized. The crawler on the right surged ahead. As it neared, Anna lowered her gun, letting it hang by the strap as she unsheathed her katana.
“Cover me.”
The lead crawler’s tail arced in the air. The spike jutting from the tip of its tail swirled, rising high over its body. The tail struck back and forth like a scorpion’s.
“Back!” I said.
The crawler screamed, charging right for Anna. I fired at the creature, somehow hitting its tiny head. The crawler hissed and changed trajectory, scuttling right for me. Its spike arched back, readying to strike.
Anna intercepted the monster, blade flashing.
I ran forward to hold Anna back, but she only charged for the crawler, closing the distance. The creature drew itself to its full height, at least twenty feet tall – a fair bit larger than the crawlers we’d fought before. The tail swiped around its body, overshooting Anna by inches, who now stood frighteningly close to the monster. There was nothing I could do but take careful aim above Anna’s head and fire into the creature’s exposed underbelly.
When my shots connected, the crawler shrieked, but still focused on stabbing Anna with its tail. She lifted her blade, slashing the creature’s belly from top to bottom. The crawler screamed as it toppled forward. Anna thrust her katana deep into the creature’s gut, withdrawing a blade coated with purple blood. Blackened entrails spewed from the fissure, covering Anna from head to toe in sickening filth. As the creature fell, Anna backed away. The crawler’s tail convulsed, wrapping Anna in a viselike grip, constricting. Her arms were lifted above her body, her right hand still wielding her katana. She allowed the katana’s blade to rotate downward, grabbing the hilt with both hands.
I ran forward as the tail continued to constrict her, but Anna stabbed into the tail, twisting the blade. A surge of purple ooze gushed upward, splattering her face. The tail’s grip loosened slightly, allowing Anna to suck in several deep breaths.
I reached the crawler’s tail, withdrawing my Beretta and unloading the entire magazine of fifteen rounds into the open wound. By the seventh bullet, the tail had fully loosened, allowing Anna to crawl free. She was covered head to toe in purple slime. All the same, she screamed as she went back for the attack, stepping past the tail and slashing again and again at the crawler’s exposed underbelly. With each strike, the creature convulsed in pain, until it was lying on its side, spindly legs quivering.
With a final scream, Anna brought the blade down on the crawler’s thin neck, hacking again and again until the head snapped off. She dodged as the creature slumped onto the ground, finally dead.
She panted as she tried to catch her breath. No part of her body was untouched by the purple slime except the white of her eyes and the blazing green of her irises. She flicked the blade, though it did little to rid it of the slime.
That was when the second creature, the one I’d shot earlier, came charging around the first crawler’s quivering form. The crawler’s mouth hung agape, flashing rows of sharp yellow teeth. Anna stood between me and the creature, so I couldn’t open fire.
“Anna, get...”
But with a primal scream, she turned and extended her blade. It found the crawler’s exposed neck, and in one sweep, the head flew right off. An eruption of purple blood issued from its severed neck, slamming into Anna’s abdomen, forcing her onto her back. The second crawler twitched and settled into death.
I ran forward, not believing what I’d just seen.
She turned to me, still catching her breath. “I really need a shower.”
“Really? You can joke at a time like this?”
She shook her head. “We can’t get caught out in the open like this. We have to get to the frontlines.”
We ran for the eastern end of the plateau. The railgun continued to fire at the dragons flying in the east, ripping them from the sky.
Panting, we reached the outer fringes of the battlefront. We came across a group of legionaries; they stared wide-eyed at Anna, who was an alien-gore fest. One of the men reached into his pack, pulling out a towel. He tossed it to Anna, and she gratefully wiped herself down. There was no way she could get it all, but at least she could get a good deal of it off.
She tossed the towel on the ground. There was no chance the soldier would want it back.
“Where’s Makara?” I asked one of the men.
He pointed in the direction of the ridge. “Somewhere over there.”
“Let’s go,” Anna said.
We rushed along the rim of the plateau, past legionaries who were sheltered behind sandbags and wooden stakes driven deep into the oozing fungus. We approached the fortifications lining the eastern rim of the plateau. On the flatlands below the plateau, thousands of crawlers worked their way up the steep slope, and thousands more waited in the wings. That slope would have been nearly impossible for a human to climb, but the xenofungus provided an ideal hold for the crawlers’ sharp, pointed limbs.
The air was filled with the screams of man and monster, and it took a lot of bullets to bring down even one of the creatures. Still, crawlers would eventually fall under a barrage of concentrated fire. Carin and Augustus must have had a lot of ammunition stocked up, but even mountains of it would exhaust rather quickly under these conditions. I noticed trucks parked up and down the line, with men running back and forth to resupply the beleaguered troops. Machine gun nests on high points swerved their barrels back and forth, painting the slope with a salvo of bullets. The Reapers’ artillery fired from behind the lines, the glowing streaks of mortars whistling after they passed. They ignited in plumes of fire on the plain far below. The crawlers that made it past Carin’s gunmen were met with Augustus’s legions and their spear wall. The line was spread far too thinly, but it was the only way to cover the entire plateau.
From our height, I glimpsed the southern and northern parts of the plateau, each of which was sparsely manned. If the crawlers concentrated their attack there, they could break through easily, but for now, they hadn’t figured that out. Their numbers were so high that no matter where they attacked, they would probably win. It was a question of time more than anything else.
“We need to go up the line,” I said, pointing to the north.
Anna nodded her agreement, and we ran along the battle line, keeping our eye to the east. Just fifteen feet to our right stood the back ranks of Augustus’s legions, spears pointed outward. As the crawlers pushed against them, the legionaries’ spears stabbed mercilessly. Piles of twitching monsters piled in front of the soldiers, forcing other crawlers to focus their attacks elsewhere. Meanwhile, Carin’s men fired from the high points into the swarming mass.
We were about halfway across the plateau when a Radaskim dragon screamed, diving low. I grabbed Anna and fell to the ground as the creature swooped overhead. It passed, raking its claws on a machine gun nest. The Reapers manning the gun ducked behind the stakes, but the gun itself sailed into the air and over the legionaries, crashing onto the slope below. The dragon was wheeling back around for another attack, when a fountain of purple blood shot from the dragon’s side. A second later, a crack sounded in the air above. The dragon fell in a haphazard dive, crashing right into the legionaries. The soldiers broke to avoid the crash, but the falling dragon crushed many with its impact.
The dragon’s fall created an opening, which the crawlers began to assault. As more legionaries broke, centurions barked orders in Spanish to rally the troops.
“We have to do something,” I said. “That line won’t hold.”
First a few, then dozens, began a rout. Crawlers surged into the hole created by the fleeing soldiers. If the line broke here, it would break everywhere.
I ran forward, in the opposite direction of the wide-eyed, panicked soldiers, whose leathers and spears were bloodied purple and red.
“Turn back!” I yelled. “Turn back!”
Anna joined me in trying to rally the troops. Even if they didn’t understand our words, they understood our meaning. Maybe the sight of two teenagers running toward the battle would shame them into doing the same. Thankfully, at least a few men began turning back, forming a line with shields raised, as they had been trained. Most of those in the rout were young – the seasoned campaigners were still in the thick of it.
The veterans yelled at the younger men, urging them to stay and fight.
A centurion with a purple plume in his helmet withdrew a handgun, firing at the ground near several in the rout. Now, the men began to turn back, taking up their spears and shields to join the rest of the ranks. The crawlers pushed against the line, throwing everything they had against it. But the discipline of Augustus’s troops had managed to close the breach, pushing back the tide of monsters.
Just then, two more dragons swooped down. I aimed my rifle upward, looking through the scope for a decent shot. As I was about to fire, the railgun ripped the beast from the air in a shower of purple blood. I switched my focus to the other dragon. It had gone into a dive, its talons ripping into the ranks of legionaries. Men’s screams filled the air as the dragon slashed them with its talons. The dragon passed overhead, letting out a baleful roar, which revealed the inside of its fetid mouth.
I let out a breath, keeping the scope homed in on that opening. Then, I fired at full automatic, doing my best to eat the rifle’s kick.
Some of those bullets must have connected, because the dragon suddenly went limp, its muscles slackening as it plummeted past the battle lines. It crashed between two machine gun nests about fifty feet away.
Seeing that dragon fall inspired the men to keep fighting, to keep pushing back against the crawlers, bashing with their shields and stabbing with their spears. The machine gunners in the nests swept the eastern slope with a storm of bullets. The crawlers fought back viciously, stabbing with their long tails, but their opportunity had mostly passed. By now, the line stood strong and held back the monsters.
Anna and I ran to the leftmost machine gun nest to get a better view. The crawlers seemed to be pulling back.
“They’re withdrawing,” Anna said.
Some of the men cheered, but I knew this was no victory. Perhaps a thousand crawlers lay dead on the slope, twitching and dead, but thousands more still waited on the plain, regrouping. Dragons wheeled in the sky above like carrion birds. Maybe this was a temporary respite, but at some point, the attack would begin anew.
“They’re planning a new attack,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”
“What kind of attack?”
“I have no idea.”
The railgun continued to fire, taking aim at the retreating dragons. Range didn’t seem to matter; no matter how far these dragons were, its targeting computer could attain a perfect shot nearly every time. The longer we held out, the better things would go for us. Our only limitation was running out of rounds.
“We could really use the Elekai right now,” Anna said.
“It’ll still be a while before they get here. Even then...it’ll be dozens against hundreds.”
The dragons descended from the sky into the eastern valley, out of range of the railgun. For the first time since we landed, no more cracks echoed on the plateau, leaving a wake filled only with the shouts of men, the screams of the wounded, and the odd bullet being fired.
Anna raised her radio. “Makara? Makara, you there? Please answer.”
I heard Anna’s voice echo behind us. I spun around, to see Makara standing, purple blood splattered over her entire body.
“You too, huh?” she said, addressing Anna.
“Makara!” I said. “Where’s everyone else?”
“I don’t know about Michael. Julian, Samuel, and I...we fought with the rest of them. Char, Marcus, and Ruth were there with us. Michael got separated somewhere in the fighting...”
“We need to find him.”
“That’s what I was doing,” Makara said. “I guess he’s not to the south?”
I shook my head. “No. Unless we missed him.”
She sighed. “We weren’t fighting in that direction, anyway. We were where it was thickest.
She stared off to the east, over the slope and at the xenofungal plain.
“Let’s get everyone together, first,” Anna said. “Then we can search.”
Makara looked at us both. “We need to meet up with Augustus and Black to plan our next move. Maybe I can send one person to search. But first things first. We need to head to the Command Post.”
There was no arguing, so we followed Makara up the plateau, passing wounded men and dead crawlers. We came upon a wounded legionary, who had a gaping hole in his chest about the size of a fist. It had likely come from a crawler tail. The wound bled profusely, and there was no hope for him. His pallor was deathly, and the pain must have been horrible.
“Matame...matame...por favor...”
“What’s he want?” I asked.
Anna paused a moment before answering. She withdrew her blade.
“I don’t have to understand Spanish to know that.”
With that, she sliced his head off.