“What do you think we’ve been trying to do, Sarge?” Benson replied, firing another shot that did nothing to stop the approaching beast. By this time the rest of the squad had arrived in the archway entrance. I didn’t even have to give the order, they lined up and sent shot after shot at the beetle which finally faltered under the onslaught after two of its front legs were blown out from under it. It collapsed in the dirt, still not dead until I ordered one last volley put into it for good measure. Finally it stopped twitching. In the dark it looked like no more than just another large rock on the ground.
The valley echoed with the shots then fell still and quiet, but not for long. The whine I’d heard earlier, the one that had alerted me to trouble in the first place, started up again, a drone that came from everywhere and nowhere at once, filling the night air with a hum that seemed to set my very bones vibrating inside me.
“What the hell is this shite, Sarge?” Mac said beside me.
“I don’t know, lad,” I replied. “But get back inside the passage, no sense in making ourselves any bigger targets than we need to.”
The squad complied, and just in time as the rocks on the verges of the valley floor started to rise up and creep forward, not rocks at all, but more of the huge black beetles, a great many more, scores of them, all coming our way.
We used the tables from inside the temple as makeshift barricades, getting them up just in time as the valley floor filled up with crawling beetles, varying in size from little more than a foot across to monsters more than ten feet in length and as tall as a man at the height of their domed shells. At first they scarcely seemed interested in us at all. They fed on the one we’d just killed, stripping it to pieces in seconds. When I saw how expertly a large beetle sliced the dead one open with its pincers, I knew exactly what had happened to poor Jennings, and I remembered.
We had found his body inside the temple.
There might be more of these things at our back.
I sent Hynd and Benson to keep an eye on the inside and give them a chance of a break and a smoke while the rest of us lined up against the makeshift barricade. Several of the men needed fresh ammo; I sent Mac to fetch a box from the donkey.
That was all it took. Mac went over toward the beast, the donkey brayed in response, the sound carrying clear across the valley floor, and every one of the beetles outside suddenly took note of our presence. The humming drone rose to a higher pitched whine and now that we were close enough I saw that it was caused by the beasts rubbing their back legs together so fast that they seemed little more than a blur. The sound was eerily spectral, the only thing I had heard that was remotely similar was a wolf pack in the Afghan hills, but this was worse, it felt unnatural, against any law of nature with which I was familiar, setting my teeth on edge and bone of my skull to buzzing.
I had little time to dwell on it however. I was still checking my revolver to ensure I was fully loaded when the beasts attacked our defenses. Fortunately, the squad remembered their drills and waited for my order. I let the beasts approach to some thirty yards distance, then gave the command.
“Aim for the legs. Open fire.”
The first volley didn’t stop them all, but enough went down to cause a feeding frenzy among the rest as they quickly forgot about us at the sudden availability of something else to eat. A second volley added more carnage to their feast. But I saw little sense in continually feeding what was, after all, our enemy. I ordered the squad to stop firing, the two volleys had already filled the air with the tang of powder and smoke, and my ears rang for long seconds afterward but when things cleared, I still heard the drone, the high whine of the beetles. And although we had indeed felled a dozen or more of their kind, the valley floor still swarmed with them.
But for the moment at least, they seemed to have lost all interest in us again, being fully intent on dismembering and devouring their kith and kin.
“What the bloody hell are those things, Sarge?” Mac asked. He’d already put down his rifle and was lighting up a smoke. I hadn’t ordered a stand down, then again, neither had the lieutenant, and it was his job more than mine. I looked around for the officer; he hadn’t fired a shot, but was standing, some yards back in the corridor near the donkey and was clearly in a blue funk.
“They’ve got us cut off,” he said, again loud enough that all could hear. “And have you seen them feed? And what they did to Jennings? We can’t fight the likes of these. We’re going to die here. We’re all going to die.”
His voice had been rising the whole time, and now echoed around the corridor. The donkey picked up on his panic and started to bray again. The sound of the beetles’ drone outside got louder, more insistent.
“Shut that bloody thing up,” Mac shouted. I wasn’t sure whether he meant the donkey or the officer but there was certainly one of them I could deal with immediately. I slapped the young lieutenant, hard. He went quiet, a new red mark on his cheek accentuating his sudden paleness.
“I’ll see you in chains and flogged for that,” he said when he recovered his composure.
“Better that than in the belly of one of yon beasties,” I replied. “Now be a good gentleman and keep quiet; you’re frightening my lads.”
He at least had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. He must have seen that I was more than ready to hit him again if it came to that. I turned my attention to the donkey, managing to calm it down without having to hit it; it clearly had more sense than our young C.O.
But I was too late. Mac shouted out from the barricades.
“Here they come again.”
I got back to the men just in time to get them lined up properly again.
“Put that fag out, MacLeod. Eyes front, pick your targets. Remember, aim for the legs.”
The moon had risen higher in the past ten minutes and now lit up the full length of the valley floor. I had a good, too good, view of the throng of beasts rallied against us. They seemed to cover the whole area in a seething black carpet, the larger ones crawling over the smaller in their haste to be at us. I’ve stood in some tight spots in my years of service, but nothing had ever chilled me to the core so much as those few seconds before the shooting started.
We just had enough room for all of us to line up along the barricade. Lieutenant Timkins was still holding back in the tunnel, so I called Hynd and Benson forward.
“The Lieutenant has got out backs, haven’t you, sir?” I said, and this time I made sure I said it loud enough for all to hear. The young officer still looked pale, terrified even, but he nodded in reply, and then I had to turn away, for I couldn’t afford to waste any more time on him.
The beetles were nearly upon us.
“Fire at will!” I shouted, and the valley echoed and rang with the crack of Lee Enfield rifles. The first rank of beetles fell immediately but this time the pack behind did not stop, either already engorged on their previous feeding, or too intent on reaching us, I would never know which. I took the legs off a big bugger that must have been near twelve feet from pincers to rear end, and Mac took another that looked bigger still, but no matter how many we put down still more clambered over and among the fallen.
The air stank of powder and also acidic tang I realized must be coming from the dead beasts themselves. Their bodies were piling up in front of the barricade, with ever more pushing up behind them, but luckily for us the press of beetles against their own dead was creating almost as effective a barricade as the old tables. And I knew my squad could keep pumping fire into them for quite some time yet, as long as the shells held out.
Even as I had that thought the first call for ammo came down the line, then another.