Donnie sensed the tension in the squad. He felt like a spare wheel, surrounded by armed men when he had nothing but the wads of cotton in his ears with which to defend himself so he was surprised when Banks once again turned to him for advice.
“This wee field of yours, does it cover the whole truck including the driving cab?”
Donnie thought about it before replying and knew what the captain was asking—can we drive through this?
“It might work but we’d have to hold the urns on the roof above you and you have to go slow.”
“Aye, well I wasn’t planning an auditioning for Le Mans,” Banks replied dryly, then helped Donnie shift the two nearest vases up onto the driver cab roof.
“Wilko, Davies, you’re up. Hold these in place here.”
“I’ve got one of them,” Donnie said. “You might need the extra gun.”
Banks nodded, clapped Donnie on the shoulder, slung his weapon so that it wouldn’t impede him, and being careful to avoid the copper wire lowered himself off the truck bed and ‘round into the driver’s seat. He turned as he was about to duck through the door, looking straight at Donnie and smiling.
“And if this doesn’t work, I’ll be back to haunt your arse.”
I’m going to be haunted enough already, thanks anyway.
- 21 -
Banks made sure he had his rifle on his lap and in easy reach before settling into his driving position. He had a distant hum in his ears and when he touched the steering wheel, he felt an electric tingle run up his hands, wrists, and forearms. Directly ahead of the truck, worms continued to crisscross the track across the lakebed, churning up the sand into ridges and troughs. It was going to make for a bumpy ride.
Here goes nothing.
He switched on the engine, letting it idle while he checked the worms’ response. They surged and circled even faster than before but none came closer than five yards away, as if wary of the combination of the field’s defense and the squad’s firepower.
Let’s hope it lasts.
He feathered the accelerator but the truck refused to budge until he put his foot fully down. The vehicle lurched forward and Reid banged on the roof overhead.
“Carefully please, Cap. We nearly lost the vases there.”
Banks bit back a rejoinder and drove forward along the increasingly furrowed track ahead of them.
Progress was slow but steady to begin with; the worms kept their distance and although Banks couldn’t bring himself to put the truck much above walking pace, they were making headway. The worms circled faster around them, sometimes darting forward only to be repelled back when they were within four or five yards of the protective field. The hum in the air around Banks grew steadily louder and a soft golden light filled the cab. He felt slightly light-headed as if he’d had too much coffee and nicotine on an empty stomach, but it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling.
He looked ahead and for the first time saw a solid outline of a rocky ridge, the far side of the lakebed appearing out of the heat haze. Resisting the urge to head faster towards it, he kept his gaze ahead and concentrated on maintaining a straight line.
The worms had other ideas. A large mound grew up out of the track twenty yards ahead, bigger than any they had yet seen, ten feet across, almost the width of the truck and just as high.
Hynd shouted from somewhere back and above him.
“Let’s plow the road!”
The roar of gunfire—three of them by the sound of it—filled the cab. The worm raised its head up out of the sand, a massive red, wet maw filled with hundreds of pencil fangs. Deep in its throat was a darker, squirming mass. When the rounds hit it, the whole thing exploded in a wash of gore and suddenly Banks’ windshield was coated solid an inch thick with two- to three-inch worms.
He had to slow—he had no visibility but didn’t want to stop, keeping the truck inching forward, chancing to luck that he was maintaining a straight line.
They ran over something large and wet that splashed beneath them, setting the truck wallowing for a heart-stopping few seconds before the wheels hit sand again. The worms on the windshield slid slowly downward, allowing Banks a view out of the top half. The rocky ridge was tantalizingly close now but half a dozen more worms were in danger of blocking their escape, two of them as large as the one they’d just ran over. He looked in his wing mirror and saw that there was only a wet red smear on the track now to mark where the big one had been. The roadway seemed to seethe and roil and he realized that it was the smaller worms eating the remains of the one who had given them birth.
He leaned over and shouted out the window.
“All okay up there?”
“Just fine, Cap,” Hynd replied. “We got a few of the wee fuckers on us but no damage done. The lad’s field seems to be doing the trick.”
“I’m going to head straight for the ridge ahead. Try to keep those fuckers ahead of us away from the road; we might not get so lucky the next time.”
He pressed his foot on the accelerator, taking the truck up to ten miles an hour.
They’d be safe within minutes.
Worms allowing.
- 22 -
Donnie held on to the vase with both hands. It was more difficult now that the captain had picked up speed and made more so by the fact that the surface of the vase had grown hot like touching a recently boiled kettle. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to keep contact with it. He’d almost lost it for good when the huge worm exploded right in front of them and they’d been showered with a rain of tiny worms. The soldiers’ calm, almost casual, brushing off and stamping on the menace seemed to spread to him and he was surprised to find his hands weren’t shaking as the truck headed for the valley rim.
“Let’s give the captain a smoother ride, shall we, lads?” Hynd said. “I’ll take the front. Wiggo, you’re on the left, Wilko on the right. You other two, just don’t drop yon vases. Another minute and this will be all over.”
Donnie’s hands felt like they were burning but if the sarge needed a minute, a minute is what he would have and he was once again grateful for the cotton in his ears as the firing started again. He saw Wiggins take out the largest worm so far, an almost fifteen-foot-wide mouth was a large target, even at over fifty yards, and Wiggins’ three-shot burst went right down its throat. It blew apart in the same fashion as the one they’d killed on the road. This one appeared to have been crammed to bursting with the smaller worms, a mass of them gathered in a tight ball that quickly collapsed onto the sand in a frenzy of feeding on the scattered remains.
All around the truck the same scene was being played out. Hynd blasted another large worm that was threatening to park itself on the road. Wilkins took out one that tried to sneak up behind them, rising high over the rear of the truck before the private took it out with two volleys of three down its throat. That got them another rain of smaller squirming worms but Wiggins and Wilkins were able to stomp them into oblivion before they could do any damage.
Donnie chanced a look up; they were almost at the rim of the lakebed and as if he too had noticed it, the captain put on another burst of speed. The truck lurched, Donnie stumbled, almost fell, and the vase slid away from him. He made a grab for it but was too late. It slid off the driver’s cab roof, tugged its copper wire attachment away as it fell, and tumbled off the side of the cab and out of sight.
As if emboldened, a huge worm came up out of the sand behind them, the largest one yet, its mouth big enough to swallow the whole truck. Davies abandoned his vase and turned to stand with the others. The line of four of them across the truck all fired at once, even as the vehicle lurched heavily left then right. The worm blew and the truck caught firmer ground and sped forward so that the mass of tiny worms escaping from the downed one fell and scattered only on sand.