Richards grabbed him by the back of his suit and dragged him away from their advance. Graves stepped between them and the creatures and started shooting even as they swarmed over him and buried him beneath their numbers.
Byrne rolled to all fours. Shoved Richards ahead of him.
“Run!”
“Marines don’t know the meaning of the word,” Richards said, and opened fire.
Byrne didn’t even have time to turn around.
Impact from behind.
His face was driven into the dirt. He rolled over. Tried to shield his face with his forearms.
The gunfire ceased.
Byrne’s screams rose above those of the primates before they were silenced by a stabbing pain in the side of his neck and the sudden descent of darkness.
The agony was beyond anything Byrne had ever experienced. Fire flowed through his veins. The venom pulsed within him, branching out from the deeper vessels, through his flesh, and out to his skin, where every nerve ending was a live wire. Even the sensation of his clothing against him was more than he could bear.
He could feel himself winding down. His thoughts became increasingly sluggish and disconnected. He was only peripherally aware of the creatures around him. Their attack had been a blitzkrieg, and had ended as quickly as it started. The screaming faded to grunting, then to sniffing and shuffling sounds, and finally to silence as the primates vanished into the shadows, leaving their prey to suffer in peace as the venom worked its paralytic magic.
Byrne clawed at the gravel in a futile attempt to drag himself from the street. He sputtered and coughed, freckling his face shield with blood. His eyes focused in and out on the blood of their own accord. He caught one final glimpse of Richards to his right before the muscles in his neck failed him and his head struck the ground.
If they were still here when the creatures returned, they would be dragged into the forest and hung from the trees with all of the others, to serve as sustenance for whatever the hell they actually were. With as many chemicals as they pumped into the ground in these diamond mines and at the rate the indigenous viruses mutated, there was no way of knowing what kinds of monsters were breeding in the darkness beneath the dense canopy.
He screamed, and yet no sound formed. The dirt scraped against the Plexiglas. His fingers curled into the earth one final time, but dragged him no farther.
With his last conscious thought, Byrne prayed for death.
Byrne felt like he was drowning in a fathomless black sea. The waves of unconsciousness pulled him under and only occasionally did he breach the surface and experience moments of what could only loosely be considered consciousness. His appendages were warm and unresponsive, yet he could feel his pulse throbbing through every vessel with exquisite clarity. He tasted blood, felt damp warmth on his neck and chest.
He had no idea how long he opened his eyes, only that he experienced a surprising sense of disorientation every time he did, as though he’d been awakened from a dream that was somehow more real than the plane his body inhabited. The pain returned in subtle increments. Tears crawled down his cheeks, but he couldn’t summon the physical release of a scream.
The simian handprint in the dirt served to remind him of the siege and the incremental brightening of the sky of the passage of time. Try as he might, he could no more see the others than he could raise his head to look for them. There was still no sign of the primates, but they were right there waiting for him with their ferocious teeth bared when the waves of unconsciousness pulled him under again…
Fire in his toes roused him. The sunlight was blinding, but it tethered him to consciousness. How long had he been out? A meek whimper passed his lips. The almost blissful warmth was gone, replaced by an electric sensation akin to a razor stropping his nerve tracts. With the pain came fleeting moments of lucidity, when he understood completely that he was paralyzed and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He was a prisoner inside his own flesh. The prospect of being suspended high in the trees, completely aware of his situation and helpless to do anything about it…
The suffering the townspeople must have experienced was beyond the limits of his imagination. They’d been drained of their blood, like a spider drained a fly, their necks tapped in the same fashion as a maple tree being harvested for its sap.
That was why the bull’s legs had been disarticulated. Either its weight had caused the joints to dislocate while it was being dragged or when they attempted to hang it from the trees. Byrne wondered how many others they might have seen had they looked up into the canopy through the scopes of their rifles.
A clattering sound from somewhere above him and to his right. The buckling sound of a heavy object landing on a tin roof to his left.
The creatures were coming back now that he and the marines were helpless. Now there was nothing they could do to stop it. The creatures could now maintain a steady state of envenomation without the threat of them fighting back, keeping them paralyzed but alive until they were drained of every last drop of blood.
The clamor of nails on rooftops. Snuffling and grunting.
Byrne pictured himself being dragged into the jungle and strung up by his heels while he was slowly bled to death. Worse, he envisioned doing so while he was conscious of everything around him. Feeling every pain. Staring blankly into the trees while those monsters climbed all over him. He couldn’t think of a worse way to die.
He eyes closed his eyes and once more welcomed the darkness, from the depths of which he heard the distant rumble of thunder and the clatter of nails on the buildings and the tin awnings.
The thunder transforms into the recognizable thupping sound of helicopter blades. Byrne opens his eyes. The crippling pain returns, and with it the realization the chopper has frightened off the creatures. He closes his eyes and struggles not to sink back into darkness. He has no idea where the monsters are now, only that they can’t have gone very far. His sole overriding imperative is to warn the men who’ve come to rescue them.
He opens his eyes and struggles to his feet as the Sikorsky MH-60G Pave Hawk descends through the dust. Fights through the lingering paralysis and the rotor wash. Shields his eyes from the dirt whipped up from the road. He passes Graves and Richards, but can barely see their silhouettes through the dust, let alone any signs of life.
“Don’t…”
Byrne gurgles blood and watches the chopper settle to the road. The rotors slow and the cloud of dust billows outward. He waves his arms over his head to get their attention before it’s too late, but loses his balance. Hits the ground.
“Don’t…get…”
He rolls onto his back and stares into the sun. Their rescuers have no idea the nightmare that awaits them if they get out of their chopper. Byrne can’t let that happen. He somehow finds the strength to stand again. Waves his arms over his head.
The latch on the sliding door of the Pave Hawk disengages with a thunk.
“Don’t get out!”
His voice echoes away into oblivion. He looks from one side of the street to the other.