I came up with a smaller side appendage, and examined it. What looked like small pieces of hammered, copper-colored metal were draped over the animal's soft, rubbery skin. Miniature armor. As a matter of fact, the metal looked very much like copper, perhaps with a slight leavening of tin. Bronze. The armor was attached with a sticky black gum, which was revealed when I pried the plates away from the leg. The skin was dun-colored and soft. I stood there scrutinizing it, absorbed.
"More of them!"
I looked up. More creatures had emerged from the mound while we were wrestling with me first. They were popping out of the top of the mound like blobs of lava from a volcano, wriggling down the steep sides, some of them running madly in circles, others getting a fix on us and charging, blades flashing in the sun. In an instant, there were hundreds of them all over the place.
We backed away toward the bus. I burned one who came toward us in a banzai charge, weapon whirling, pure hate in those black pin-dot eyes. That left two charges in the squib. More of them came at us. I shot two of them and stamped a third into the dirt, but not before he knifed me in the ankle and nicked my left shin with an armored pincer. I picked up his weapon. It was a sword ― no other word for it ― irregular in shape and crudely wrought, like the armor, but it held an edge to be reckoned with. The ankle wound began to pang.
The creatures were fast. They had already cut off our escape route to the bus and uproad to the bridge. We could only retreat parallel to the highway.
"We seemed to have disturbed their nest," Sukuma-Tayler observed dryly.
"You mean their barracks, don't you?"
We ran. Individual attacks broke off for the moment. They kept pace with us as we drew away, but when I looked back I was amazed to see them mustering into ranks for what looked like an organized pursuit.
Something whizzed past me.
I heard a scream and looked back. A black woman was. down, clutching the back of her head. We doubled back, and I bent over her. The projectile had left a bloody indentation in her scalp. I saw something shiny nearby and picked it up; it was a grape-size lump of copper. At closer range the girl would have been seriously injured. As it was, she was knocked silly. I looked out over the sea of crawling metal for the source of the barrage. From what I could make out, they were firing at us by means of a slingshot device operated by three creatures. Two took either end of a long elastic band of black material, probably a variant of the armor adhesive, while a third stretched the middle back about three meters. The release velocity was enough to make it a potent weapon.
Another ball buzzed by my ear. The artillery was advancing, leapfrogging forward after each shot. I helped carry the semiconscious girl back and away. There was no cover except for other nest-cones. The heat was beyond sapping me now; it was draining away my strength. The others looked to be on the verge of collapse, none of them sweating now, all body fluids leached through pores and evaporated. They had been out too long. I still had sweat in me, but the tap was full open. A floating sense of unreality came over me. I was hyperventilating.
Sam was just now turning around.
The infantry charged. They overtook us easily, hobbled as we were with the girl. By the time we brought her around and got her shakily to her feet, they were on us. The girl went down again.
No one had a working firearm, but we made do with what we had: both spades, a jack crank, a wrench, and an assortment of odd tools. I whacked at them with the parasol until it flew to pieces, then used my size-eleven Colonial Militia fatigue boots on them, wishing I'd worn my high boots that day. None of us fared very well. A man to my right went down, then another woman. I saw Sukuma-Tayler kick at the things until one grabbed him by the shoe and began hacking at his leg. He yelled, turned, and ran with the creature hanging on to him. He tried to kick it off, then went down and wrestled with it.
The creatures were swarming over the first injured woman. She was screaming hideously, but nobody could get to her. I tried to move forward, kicking at them, sending dozens of the bastards flying, but I couldn't make headway. One crawled up my leg from behind and I felt a searing pain in my thigh. I tore the animal off and threw it. I stumbled back over a partially buried length of metal, probably a tent pole. Not taking time to wonder who had had the misfortune to pitch camp in this crawling hell, I pulled it up and started to swing at them with it, with little effect except to keep them at a distance or knock weapons from their claws. I backed and swung, backed and swung, not having time to look up to see where Sam was. I heard him coming.
Finally, the offensive broke off on my section of front and I looked up. Sam was coming across the bridge, crunching and popping his way over a seething carpet of armor. It sounded as if he were running over a pile of eggs and scrap metal.
Something slithered through my legs. It was a mound-creature, but it had come from behind me. I whirled around. To our rear lay another army. Something about them looked slightly different, and I hoped they were from another hive, with any luck a hostile neighbor. It looked as though they were, because our attackers broke off completely and retreated a short distance, waiting for the first wave of shock troops from the other side to pass us by and reach them. We stood there in the middle of everything, watching the suicide squad from the challengers throw themselves at the front lines. They were quickly dispatched ― torn apart and left to jerk their lives out in the sand. Theses token charges seemed to be overtures to a major offensive. Heroic? Stupid? Maybe they had a purpose.
There were five of us left. Three bodies lay out in the writhing mass of armor.
"Everybody!" I yelled. "Stand still!"
As soon as I said it, the eastern army attacked. We stood there like log piers in a rushing river. A few stopped to sniff at my legs before charging ahead.
Sam was advancing toward us, passing through the battle line. Darla popped the hatch and aimed her gun at the ground.
"Hold it!" I shouted. "Friendly troops!" I motioned for the survivors to follow me as I picked my way gingerly through the flow of advancing soldiers. I finally reached the cab and climbed in, assisted by Darla. I slid the driver's seat back and helped the others inside. Sukuma-Tayler was the last, and I was surprised to see him alive. I shoved the seat forward, fell into it, and sealed the cab.
Sam was driving. We wheeled around and made for the road. My head lolled up against the viewport.
I saw a severed human leg being dragged away.
One of the women got hysterical, but Darla soon had her under control with a shot of something suitable from the tickler. The woman slumped over and groaned.
The hyperventilation subsided and my head was clear once more, but I closed my eyes and couldn't open them again.
6
When i came to, Darla was passing from casualty to casualty, doing what she could with the paraphenalia in the medicine kit. Most of us had moderate-to-severe lacerations. One man, a thin, ascetic blond fellow, had sustained a deep gash that had nearly taken off his foot at the ankle. He also had puncture wounds to the chest. For the leg, Darla improvised a tourniquet out of cloth and a screwdriver. The Afro and I had gotten off easiest, me with slash and puncture wounds to the lower extremities, he with the same plus stab wounds in the arm. We were a sorry lot. Blood ran in bright rivulets over the deck. Darla got to me last.