O'Doyle looked at him as if he were stupid. “What the fuck are you doing? Run!"
"There's nowhere to run, this ends in a cliff!"
"Well then get the gear out and scale down it, goddammit, we're out of time!” O'Doyle squeezed off a burst as Lybrand popped a fresh magazine into her weapon.
"We'd never make it,” Connell said. “The cliff is huge!” He dropped to one knee and raised his gun. Held the stock firmly to his shoulder and looked down the barrel with one eye as O'Doyle had instructed him. The rocktopi pressed closer, filling the narrowing funnel. They were less than fifteen yards away and moving fast. Connell squeezed the trigger; the kick of the gun and the noise of the shot shocked him, catching him off guard. He fell back a bit, then caught his balance, leaned forward and fired several times. The weapon responded, hurtling burning lead down the tunnel toward the pulsing rocktopi.
Something gray flashed in his cone of light — a rock smashed into the ground in front of him. It bounced past, kicking up a small cloud of fine dust. Connell fired twice more and saw one of the rocktopi fall, tentacles flailing in a seemingly painful death. He didn't have time to enjoy his little victory — another creature swarmed over the fallen body and continued the charge. A hand tapped him on the shoulder. As if he'd been told what to do, Connell turned and ran for the cliff while Lybrand fired until her weapon clicked on empty.
Connell didn't have far to go before he and O'Doyle stood only feet from Sanji, Veronica, Mack and the cliff's edge. O'Doyle moved quickly forward and looked over the edge of the cliff. He turned with a grave expression on his face.
"Lybrand, give Sanji your Beretta,” O'Doyle said as he handed Veronica his own sidearm, then took a step toward the funnel. He knelt in front of them, raising his weapon to his shoulder and pointing it toward the sickening mass of pulsating rocktopi that rushed up the narrow funnel like demons being birthed from Hell's womb. “Kirkland, give Lybrand your extra ammo."
Connell handed Lybrand the magazine, then knelt next to O'Doyle. Lybrand stood tall behind Connell and O'Doyle, weapon at the ready. The first rocktopi pushed through the funnel, stood tall on tripod tentacles, and strode forward as the second and third horrors oozed forth like toothpaste squeezed from a much-used tube. These were different from the young tentacle gods — these were thick and strong, agile and aggressive, wielding wicked curved blades instead of dancing with playful innocence.
They had only seconds to live, yet O'Doyle calmly barked definitive orders.
"Kirkland, switch to automatic, but use short bursts. Reeves and Haak, use your weapon only if they close on us, and don't fire until you can put the gun right up to the body. We only get one chance at this, people!"
"Fire!"
The glowing creatures has closed to ten yards when three Heckler & Koch HK416s on full automatic ripped the tunnel air and pounded bullets into their muscular, boneless bodies. Warm streamers of thick fluid squirted like gooey rain, splattering Connell's face as he squeezed off volley after volley. In the deafening, close confines of the tunnel, the rocktopi attack disintegrated under the concentrated fire of Lybrand, O'Doyle, and Connell.
Suddenly and without warning, the charge became a retreat. The remaining rocktopi poured back into the funnel, moving with terrifying speed on their thick tentacle legs, squishing through the opening not as individuals, but as a bulging mass of flashing flesh. Just like that, the attack ceased.
Dead, wounded, and dying rocktopi littered the sandy ground, spurting thick, oily, purple fluid in all directions. Some lay still, some shuddered as if caught in a freezing wind, still others reached their long tentacles toward the funnel, pulling themselves slowly forward inch by agonizing inch. Even in an unknown creature, Connell recognized the obvious struggles of wounded desperately grasping for escape.
O'Doyle stood, switched his weapon back to single-shot and silently handed it to Sanji. The big soldier took his Beretta back from Veronica and drew his K-Bar knife. O'Doyle wiped thick streamers of goo from his face and flung the mess to the ground.
His eyes bore the remorseless look of a cold-blooded killer. He looked back at Lybrand. “You ready?"
She slung her weapon, grabbed her Beretta back from Sanji and drew her own knife. Together the two warriors stepped past Connell. He remained kneeling, body taut and rigid, hands clutching his H&K as if he intended to hold the weapon tight for all eternity.
Lybrand looked at O'Doyle and nodded. Connell watched in detached amazement as the pair stepped forward and began hacking into the still-moving rocktopi. Strong, overhanded thrusts dug the blades deep into mottled white bodies, bodies that now shone only with the faintest of light. Again and again Lybrand and O'Doyle raised the knives, blades still dripping with the life juices of the last victim, and brought them down fast and hard into another soft body. Tentacles spasmed horrifically with each thrust. A thick smell, like that of rotting meat, filled the cave and the cliff.
Sanji lost his lunch with a guttural sound. Crippled rocktopi squirmed weakly, trying to get back to the tunnel mouth, searching for escape. Death squeals, like a million sets of fingernails on a million chalkboards, filled the cavern, making Connell wince with pity despite their inhuman source.
Within thirty seconds the two soldiers had finished the nasty business and walked back to the others. Weariness, mental and physical, slammed into Connell like a swinging hammer. He fell to his ass and stared blindly off into space, a thin string of viscous purple fluid dripping from his face onto his chest.
Chapter Twenty-nine
For two scientific minds accustomed to the controlled environments of a lab or the dangers of well-planned thrill-seeking, this was almost too much to handle. Perhaps for the first time since their respective childhoods, Randy Wright and Angus Kool didn't know what to think. They perched, well hidden, at the end of their tunnel, looking out into a sight that warped their notions of reality.
"What the fuck are those?” whispered a wide-eyed Angus, who rigidly crouched behind a boulder. “How did all this get here? And did you hear gunfire?"
Randy also hid behind the boulder. “I'm not sure, it sounded faint. It might have been shooting."
They stared out into a massive, kidney-shaped cavern, taken aback by its breadth and complexity. The walls arched high overhead until they met at the center, but the zenith couldn't be seen due to the blazing light that illuminated the cavern with a strange, bluish hue. The cavern stretched away so far they couldn't make out details at the far end. Acre upon acre of never-before-seen plants grew in orderly rows on the cavern floor. Near the cavern's center squatted a small village of dilapidated stone buildings, crumbling like the ruins of some ancient Aztec temple.
Far more captivating than the cavern, the crops, or the buildings were the apparent “villagers.” Randy and Angus started in jaw-hanging amazement at the creatures’ soft bodies and long, flowing tentacles. They pulsated with patterns of colored light. Their movements looked odd and yet graceful, almost fluid — like a jellyfish coursing effortlessly through deep ocean waters. Some towered a good ten feet from top to tentacle toes. Others were only a few feet high and stumbled around like uncoordinated one-year-olds struggling to walk for the first time.
The creatures moved softly about the cavern, occasionally piping up with a screech reminiscent of a diamond saw slicing through a core sample. The ceiling's blue light cast tiny reflections off thousands of spherical AL bodies — the robots littered the ground and walls. At a distance they looked very much like countless flashing ants scurrying about their hill. Hundreds of tunnel entrances pockmarked the arcing walls; most entrances rested at ground level but some sat as high as two or three hundred feet.