Now our team was halved. And with RP that was stating the obvious.
Brainpan screamed. But give him his due, he funnelled his horror into rage and he fired, unloading on the vicious tentacle weapon and ripping it to fragments. But it was hardly respite, because half a dozen more tentacles writhed overhead, and the creature had picked the next man to die.
Me.
Lance-tipped, one of those writhing tentacles exploded towards me. I threw myself down, and the tip struck the wall instead of my body. It jammed in the plaster, before the creature yanked free, but by then I was scrambling for my life. The lance scythed overhead by inches and again I just threw myself bodily away. I went down flat on my face. A second lance-tentacle snapped into the floor inches from my eyes, and gritty concrete peppered me. I scrabbled sideways, finally got my M4 up, and fired off an arc of rounds. Whether I hit anything of importance or not I’ll never know, because by then I was back on my knees, then my feet, and then hauling arse away from the next sweeping tentacle.
Something snagged my collar.
I hollered, battering furiously backwards with an elbow.
“Watch it! You nearly broke my fucking face!” It was Hooky, and he had a hold of me, propelling me towards the door we’d so recently entered by.
“Sarge, where’s Brainpan?” My words were a breathless wheeze.
Hooky thumbed backwards.
I looked, but my vision was filled with grit and tears and I could make nothing distinct out of the writhing mass now filling the vestibule area.
The harsh detonation of a grenade hinted at where our pal was. But it was followed seconds later by the ripping and tearing of flesh, Brainpan moaning as each chunk of him was torn away.
“Should have held on to that grenade, Brainpan,” I said as I slammed my shoulders to the wall alongside the doorjamb.
“Hold that door, Muppet.” Hooky was braced against the other doorjamb. His carbine flashed.
I fired too, but the mag fell empty after a short burst of rounds. I grabbed at a full mag even as I dropped the empty one, rammed in the fresh ammo. Before I could hit the arming bolt my M4 was snatched upward. A hand – human-like – but on the end of an insectile arm with too many joints, wrenched my gun up and away. Another one grasped my throat, even as a third punched me in the groin. Only my armour saved me, but I still experienced the dull ache in my nuts from the impact. A lance speared for my face. I ducked out of instinct, my chin mushing into the jellied flesh encircling my throat, and the lance-tip careened off my helmet and sank into the doorjamb with a crack louder than a gunshot.
I fought to get free of the hand choking me. But I went down, and now the insectile arms rose up and the hands transformed into wicked hooking talons. They raked down on me, not to rip me apart but to ensnare my clothing and drag me towards the pulpy mass now rearing over me. Hooky swung in like a barbarian warrior, his M4 empty, but still a club. He batted at the arms dragging me, breaking fragile limbs that at once reformed, growing needles that hardened into giant thorns. Something akin to a giant thresher arm ripped sideways through the air and hit Hooky in the chest. He flew out of my vision, and if I’d to be totally honest, out of my immediate concern. I tore away from the grasping limbs, and fell out of the door.
How many minutes had passed since I’d gone inside?
It’d be under three, but it had felt like an eternity.
Five heavily armed soldiers had died in less than one hundred and eighty seconds. What did that mean for the rest of humanity? I was never very good at math, but even I could add up our chance of survival if this thing was allowed to continue unchecked. If it were only about halting this one mass then perhaps the human race had some hope, but this was only one of millions of outbreaks already reported. Though this was the first where the individually infected had been known to come together in one massive conjoining. Was that the plague’s eventual intention, to become one entity? A world-wide mass formed of a singular living organism? Fleetingly I imagined a planet wreathed in a reddish pulpy mass, the only signs of terrestrial life the trees and bushes, all animal life consumed – no, combined. It was a nightmarish snapshot, but it was enough for me to rage against it.
“Sarge?” I yelled. “Hooky! Where are you?”
The chatter of his gun told me he was still fighting for his life.
I looked back to where our command and support team was entrenched. There should have been a dozen armed troopers, vehicles, and a 50-cal machine gun. They were no longer where I’d last seen them. I saw the back end of a truck – troopers stacked in the rear – burning rubber for a nearby underpass.
“What the fuck?” As usual my question was rhetoric. I knew what was wrong. Our ill-fated assault on the warehouse had been observed via our helmet-cams, second by second, and death by violent death, and our officers had given the order to fall back from a fight they knew they couldn’t win with conventional weapons. They thought both Hooky and I were dead, so I could partly forgive them for abandoning us, but they should have made sure. You didn’t leave anyone behind, not ever.
That thought galvanised me, because I’d all but abandoned Hooky to his fate, so who was I to judge? I immediately turned to the open doorway. My Remington 870 still hung on its sling from my shoulder, and I’d regular ammo in the chamber – once the Hatton round was fired, you needed a backup plan in case the breach man came under immediate assault. I swung it up into play, and went back inside.
The amorphous creature now filled the vestibule area, a writhing mass of limbs and protuberances less identifiable. Heads on tubular arms swung towards me. One of those malformed faces was still identifiable by its twinkly blue eyes, the defining feature that had given him his nickname during basic training. There was no hint of recognition in Twinkle’s eyes as they swivelled towards me. His mouth opened in a soundless snarl and his teeth were wicked barbs.
“Sorry, Twinkle,” I whispered.
I blasted his head to mince.
“Muppet? Muppet!”
Despite the odds, Hooky was still alive. I looked at where the creature seemed to be focusing and saw the vague form of Hooky barricaded behind an overturned desk. He was out of ammunition for his M4, and down to only his sidearm. Rather than waste bullets, he was using his revolver’s barrel to bat away the questing hands reaching for him, but other thin, pulsating tendrils had wrapped his arms and one leg. The creature seemed to understand that he was no longer much of a threat and had chosen to assimilate rather than rend him to pieces.
“Get it the fuck off me!” Hooky roared.
I racked the Remington, fired, racked and fired.
Chunks of protoplasmic jelly flew, splinters of chitinous stuff crackled on the floor. The bulk of the creature swung towards me, but those tendrils kept a firm grip of Hooky, tugging him up and out of hiding. He fired at close range with his pistol, to little effect.
“Muppet! Do something!”
“I’m trying, I’m trying!”
Racked and fired.
“I’ve one round left. I’m not gonna waste it!” Hooky promised.
“Don’t! Let me…”
Too late. Hooky placed his gun barrel under his chin.
Our gazes met, both our heads shaking in denial.
Hooky squeezed the trigger.
“Fuck!” he yelled. “I miscounted. Muppet, you’ll have to do me. Don’t let this thing have me.”
“Can’t, Sarge,” I said.
“Fuck you, you can. Just fucking do it. That’s a bloody order!”
I fired.
But not at Hooky. I placed the shot into the nearest claw bearing down on me. I’d tried to count my rounds too. How many left? I racked and the spent shell clattered at my feet. It caught my eyes as it bounced, and only then did I see the squirming tendrils that had wormed across the floor to latch around my ankles. I turned the Remington on them, but the gun clacked empty. I used the stock as a club, mashing the tendrils into the floor, kicking and dancing free. When next I checked, Hooky was suspended in the air, and now it wasn’t only tendrils that had him, but four of the insectile arms. In desperation, Hooky had yanked out his knife, his final recourse to cut and slice.