Clawing his way to his feet, Andy ran the rest of the way to the girl. He fell to his knees beside her. He felt her shoulders and her head to make sure she was okay. She stared at him in terror.
“It’s okay, Jane. Everything’s going to be okay.”
He smoothed her hair. Her expression softened a moment, then exploded into a preternatural scream.
Before he could turn, Andy felt himself buffeted by half-a-dozen blows on his back. He fell hard to the ground, his breath gone. Then something bit his leg. He kicked out and managed to free himself.
He rolled to his back and brought his pistol to bear. But what he saw froze him in place. Even his scream locked in his throat, blocking his breath.
Covered entirely in black and brown bristly hair, the tarantula stood ten feet tall. Its legs arched from the ground to a body with sections the size of VW Bugs. Its front two legs were poised directly above him. Andy drew his attention from the multifaceted eyes to the tips of the spiders fangs, poised to pierce his chest.
Finally his scream tore loose.
He fired the remaining bullets from his gun into the giant spider, but it had no effect.
Andy scrambled backwards.
The tarantula followed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Andy saw that the girl was stock still. Good — if she moved it might draw the monster’s attention.
He scrambled backwards again and threw his gun into the face of the creature.
The spider stopped. It shuddered once, then twice, then shuddered for a long time.
Andy scrambled to his feet just in time to get out from beneath the giant spider as it fell. He stood shakily. The girl ran towards him and threw her arms around him.
They both watched as the tarantula shuddered once more and then died. Who would have thought that he could have killed it so easily?
But then they heard buzzing coming from the spider’s back. Andy and the girl backed away. Horror dawned in Andy’s mind. Was it going to…?
A hand reached out and grabbed his ankle, pulling him off his feet. Batista! As he fell, the back of the tarantula exploded open and three wasps, each the length of a broom, clawed their way free. They appeared hungry and eager and mean.
The girl was transfixed.
Andy tried to scream, but a hand clamped around his throat.
“Fucking Tarzan puta!” Batista growled as he climbed on top of Andy. He clamped his other hand around Andy’s throat and began to throttle him. “Who the hell do you think you are to try and stop me?” Blood foamed at the corners of Batista’s mouth.
Andy struggled to break free, but no matter his newfound Tarzan desires, he couldn’t remove the other man’s iron grip from around his neck. He felt his vision dimming as Batista cursed him.
The hand suddenly relaxed. Light went out of Batista’s eyes. Abruptly his chest blossomed a long thin stinger. Andy watched, unable to move as a golf ball-sized egg pushed down the length of the stinger and squirted free of the end. It landed on his chest then rolled to the ground.
Andy screamed and heaved Batista backwards until they both fell, crushing the baby wasp to the ground.
Looking toward the girl, Andy felt his universe implode. Something bestial came over him.
He barely remembered breaking off the stinger from Batista’s chest and rushing over to the other baby wasp that had its own stinger deep inside Jane.
He barely remembered stabbing the giant insect with its brother’s stinger until it fell dead beside the girl.
He barely remembered taking her into his arms and heading away from the Rift, what was left of his battalion, and the miserable mess that Batista had left.
All he knew was that when he came to, he was carrying her, it was daylight, and he was past exhaustion.
The desert was nothing like he imagined. There were no sand dunes. No camels. No pyramids. Nothing to show the timeless mythic quality of the deserts he’d seen on television and the movies growing up. Nothing at all like he’d imagined from reading The Lion Man.
Just as Tarzan had been bringing a jungle cure for malaria to Jane in the famous desert Tarzan book, so was Andy taking his Jane to find a cure for the thing gestating inside of her. Somewhere in the distance over the border was a hospital. He hoped it was close, because her stomach had already begun to extend. He only prayed that he wouldn’t be too late.
She whimpered as he stumbled then caught himself.
He grunted and thumped his chest with his free hand. “Me Tarzan. You Jane,” he said.
Then he adjusted her weight against his back. He felt something move in her stomach. She whimpered. He had Batista’s knife. If need be, he’d use it. He thought about giving a Tarzan yell, but he hadn’t the strength. He just trudged on.
War Stories
James A. Moore
My grandfather was a good man. He raised his family well, and he raised my mother in a lifestyle that left her nurturing and caring. She did the same for me. But he and I had a special connection when he was alive, something my mother never knew about, and, if I have my way, never will.
He and I had both fought in wars on foreign soil. He fought in the Second World War and in Korea. I fought in Vietnam. We had both seen more than our share of combat, and we were both left scarred by what we’d been through. It’s hardly an exclusive club, even in this day and age, but it was definitely a connection.
Before I went to Vietnam he and I were not really very close. He’d show up, I’d spend the day with him and the family, and he’d leave. When I was very young, he’d tell me a few anecdotes about his time in the service, but he would never tell me about any of the combat he’d been through, and he would stop speaking of them if I came into the room.
He tried to shelter me from the horrors of war, and I guess a part of me just might have resented that. What kid growing up a baby boomer didn’t want to at least try to imagine what it must have been like to storm the beach at Normandy? Hell, half the movies made when I was growing up were about kicking Nazi butt. I almost felt that such stories were my due. So, yes, I suppose I did resent the loss of heroic tales that so many kids had. But I also understood that he didn’t like to speak of the wars, and I knew that my mother was glad not to have to listen to the tales. Both her husband and her youngest brother had died in Korea, fighting over ideals that meant a lot less when they cost a family member or two. As frustrated as I was by the lack of adventure tales from a man I knew had actually seen heavy combat, she was grateful, so I understood his reluctance. I just wasn’t thrilled by it.
We never spoke about his time in the wars, my grandfather and I, until after I came back from ’Nam. And when we did finally talk of the matter, it was in subdued tones.
I got home in ’69. They told me I could leave, that my term was done, and I went from the bloodstained rice paddies to the cool early October evenings of the family farm in Colorado. At least my body did. Harvest wasn’t really a problem. We lived on a dairy farm. So instead of losing myself in the frantic work of gathering the fall crops, I did what so many others did after they came back, I lost myself in resentment and cold, bitter rage. Every time I closed my eyes I found a different sight to haunt me. Sometimes it was walking through the steaming jungles, sometimes it was running for dear life from artillery fire that would have completely destroyed my little home town of Summitville, and praying the trees between me and the shells would be enough to save my ass again. They were, though only just.
Plenty of my friends and fellow soldiers died badly in that war and some of them did it only a few feet away from me. All of those movies I’d been weaned on hadn’t begun to prepare me for dealing with the madness. Surely they never said a thing about hostility on the home front when I came back. Just as often I saw the angry faces of strangers calling me hideous names when I stepped back on home soil. The names they called me too often reflected my own opinion of myself at the time.