And fired.
The large-caliber round blasted slightly to the left of the thick stalk. While it wasn’t a perfect kill shot, it was good enough.
The Volitox queen reared out of the water in a spasm, her flanks jolting with bioluminescent energy. Her mouth peeled open to splay thousands of hooked teeth.
To his left, Riley stumbled back a couple of steps, bumping into Christchurch, who dropped the LRAD dish. It clattered with a spark of electricity against the stone floor.
While the Volitox species might be deaf and blind, they were keenly attuned to electric fields or currents—any currents.
The spatter of sparks triggered a reflexive attack. The tentacle lashed out, finding Christchurch’s neck. It wrapped once around his throat, burning that flaming gelatinous sphere into the side of his face. Flesh smoked as the soldier screamed, choking on a flow of acid down his lungs.
Christchurch was yanked off his feet, his neck snapping, and thrown far into the river.
Riley fled past Dylan and out into the darkness, back toward the distant camp.
Coward.
Dylan held his ground, remaining still, trusting his shot. He waited for death to take its course.
The Volitox queen — her last energies spent on this attack — slumped to the ground, her huge head cracking hard against the rock.
He waited a full minute, then approached cautiously with his dagger. He slipped a screw-top metal water bottle out of his pack.
Cutter Elwes had said he only needed the creature’s blood.
Easy enough.
He stabbed the beast in the side and collected the black flow into the aluminum container. Once filled up, he secured the cap.
Mission accomplished.
Now to get out of here.
The pound of running boots reached him, growing louder. He leaned around the dead bulk of the Volitox to see Riley returning toward him.
Apparently the young soldier had found his spine after all.
Unfortunately he quickly lost his head.
A rifle shot blasted loudly, and the side of Riley’s face exploded into a mist of blood. His body flew forward, crashing headlong across the cavern floor.
Dylan dropped back behind the carcass of the Volitox. His hand found his holstered Howdah, but he had shot his load. He looked across the cavern to where he had set down his assault rifle. If he attempted to reach it, he knew he’d suffer the same fate as Riley.
Whoever was out there was a keen shot.
He could guess who it was, picturing that American, knowing it had to be him.
Not dead yet, are you?
Maybe it was time to change that. He knew his adversary wasn’t as knowledgeable about fighting in the dark as Dylan was. He planned to take advantage of that.
He called out. “It’s high time we talked, mate!”
“About what?” Gray yelled back.
He crouched behind a rocky outcropping about thirty yards from where Dylan Wright hid. He studied the terrain through his night-vision goggles. The body of the soldier lay sprawled on the rock between them. Earlier, he had heard another man scream, followed by a loud splash — then the commando he’d just shot had come running in terror.
By Gray’s count, only one man should be left, the X-Squadron leader.
He kept his rifle fixed on the bulk of the dead beast beached on the riverbank. From the slack tentacle draped over its side, it had to be one of those predatory eels with the bioluminescent lures.
“About a deal,” Wright answered. “The bloke I work for can be very generous.”
“Not interested.”
“Can’t say I didn’t try then.”
Suddenly the world exploded in front of Gray, blinding him. He ripped off his night-vision goggles — just in time to see Dylan click off a flashlight and dash out of hiding. The sudden flare of bright light in the darkness, amplified by the goggles, still left a burn on his retina.
Gunfire erupted from Dylan’s new hiding place.
Gray fell back, realizing his mistake. The bastard had used the darkness against him in order to reach a weapon. But it wasn’t just the gun. A pop of electricity and a short hum erupted into a screaming wail.
An LRAD.
The noise stabbed into his ears, shaking the sutures of his skull. He had no protection against it this time. Vertigo quickly set in. He lifted his rifle and blindly shot in the direction of the sound, but it didn’t stop.
His vision squeezed tighter from the sensory overload.
He was moments from passing out.
Positioning the LRAD dish atop a boulder, Dylan kept it pointed toward the location of the American. He then shouldered his assault rifle and shifted sideways, staying clear of the sonic cannon’s blast. Still, some of the infrasound backwash crawled over his skin, raising the hairs on his arms.
He smiled, imagining what the American must be experiencing.
Ready to put an end to this standoff, he took another two steps to the side, almost back to where he hid beside the bulk of the Volitox. He sought a clear shot to take out his target.
Another step — and something bit deep into the back of his leg.
He reached to his thigh and yanked off a sausage-sized slug, taking a chunk of skin with it. Teeth gnashed at his fingers, burning his palm with acids. Disgusted and horrified, he tossed the nymph into the river.
He glanced back to the nest. With the LRAD diverted away, the builders of that bone pile must be returning. But for the moment, he saw no movement, no evidence of that missing horde. The nest looked as empty as before.
So where were they?
In his fear, his shoulder brushed against the Volitox’s body. He felt a tremor in that dead flesh, as if the beast were suddenly reanimating.
No…
He stumbled away, suddenly realizing the truth.
It wasn’t the queen that was stirring.
It was something inside her.
Proving this, a fat gray grub squirmed out of a gill slit and dropped heavily to the shore.
Choking on horror, he backpedaled away from the carcass as more nymphs squirmed out of other gills, poured from that gaping maw, or corkscrewed out of nasal folds.
After fleeing the nest earlier, the nymphs must have sought their mother, hiding inside her, fleeing from the sonic assault to a refuge that was safe. The adults were immune to such attacks, likely protected by the bioenergies surging through them, which in turn protected their offspring in times of danger. He knew some species of fish and frogs could carry their young — but no one suspected this trait in the Volitox.
Dylan could also guess what had just stirred them up.
I did…
He glanced over his shoulder to the LRAD unit. He remembered how agitated the nest had been when his team had first arrived, still disturbed by the infrasonic backwash of the larger dish. When he activated the smaller weapon a moment ago, its echoing infrasound must have agitated the horde hiding inside that lifeless body, angering them.
He knew what was coming, what this activity was building toward.
By now nymphs poured into the river, onto the bank, several bounding with muscular leaps toward him. He dodged and batted at them with his rifle butt until he reached the LRAD.
He snatched the dish off the boulder and swung it to his chest like a shield, turning the sonic cannon toward the horde — and just in time. From river, rock, and flesh, the nymphs boiled toward him, a carnivorous wave of vengeance.