After Wiggo finally bedded down, Banks stood looking over the moonlit city. It was strangely beautiful, ageless and solid under the stars. He knew that some of the darker shadows concealed more of the beetles but for now the beasts had returned to ignoring the men. If they were still quiet in the morning there was a chance the squad might be able to creep through them and make an escape.
He hoped that would be the case, for this was already a fucked-up rescue mission.
It couldn’t get any worse, could it?
He was asleep a minute after Wilkins took over watch duties from him.
He woke with the dawn to see Davies and Wiggo standing at the balcony looking over the opposite view from that across the city.
“Fuck me sideways,” Wiggo said.
Banks rose to join them. He was forced to agree with Wiggo’s comment.
Last night they’d seen the huge crater from up on the lip but the night had hidden its secrets. Now, with the coming of day they were exposed. The ancient dead volcano stretched away for several miles below them. At the nearer end, below the causeway wall, there was a ledged platform containing what appeared to be an altar. Strewn around it, covering an area the size of a football ground, was a sea of bleached bone, all too human, long dead skulls grinning in the morning light. Beyond that, the crater was a natural oasis, a vast forested area punctuated with pools of water that appeared to steam in the daylight. Between these pools, on long used trackways, moved beetles, travelling in trails like an army of ants, but ants the size of horses, and many larger still.
There were thousands of them. They seemed to congregate tighter together in the center of the caldera over a mile away where Banks saw a black, domed hump, the unmistakable shape of a great beetle. He hoped it was dead, for it was the height of a house and seeing it move wasn’t on his list of things to do for the day.
“Can we no’ just call in a wee air strike, Cap?” Wiggo said. “Blast all these fuckers away at one time?”
“We’re not even supposed to be here. You ken that. They’re not about to let us provoke an international incident, or even a war, over the sake of a few beetles, no matter how fucking big they are. No. We get out of here, shank’s pony, right fucking now, and we leave the big decisions to those that get paid to make them.”
He went to the other side of the turret to check out the view below. He’d hoped to see a quiet scene of dormant beasts but the whole causeway was a seething mass of beetles. It took him several seconds to realise what he was looking at; they were scavenging their dead, eating the soft parts and carrying the shells and debris away. A steady train of beetles went over the side of the causeway and down into the caldera where they joined the file heading into the center, towards the large hump.
The only ones not in motion were the four beasts, each the size of a small car, who sat directly in front of the doorway that was the squad’s only means of escape.
-Davies-
Davies joined the captain in looking down over the causeway. Standing had proved to be less of an effort than he’d feared and his bad ankle was bearing his weight just fine, for now at least, so he held off on the self-administered morphine in favor of a clear head.
“In coming to get me, you’ve managed to trap yourself here,” he said.
“Aye. But we got to you, so I count it as a win,” Banks replied. “How’s the ankle?”
“Bearable. I doubt I’ll be doing any five-minute miles though.”
“Don’t tempt fate, lad. We might have some running to do this day.”
I bloody hope not.
The captain was still looking down at the four huge dormant beetles guarding the doorway.
“I’ve got a plan,” he said. “But you’re not going to like it.”
Banks called the others over.
“I want you three to get down to the bottom but stay around the first bend above the main entrance.”
“What about you, Cap?” Wiggo said.
“I’ll be up here, lobbing two grenades down onto those four beasties,” he said. “When they blow, you head for the foot of the stairs up to the rim. Then you cover me from there while I leg it down and across to join you. Just don’t fucking shoot me.”
As a plan its main benefit was its simplicity; there weren’t too many parts to go wrong, but Davies knew it would all depend on speed. He could only hope his ankle stood up to it.
He was at the rear of the group of three going down the stairs five minutes later. The captain had synchronized his watch with Wiggo’s but Davies had no means of checking the time; his own watch had stopped, broken at some point during the adventures of the night before. All he could do was follow Wiggo and Wilkins down the steps and hope that the captain and the sergeant had got their timing right. They came to a turn near the bottom, Wiggo went down four more steps then turned and motioned them backwards for four. He looked at his watch.
“One minute,” he said softly.
A minute had never felt so long to Davies, then Wiggo held up three fingers, two, one, and right on cue there was a deafening crash from ahead and down in the entranceway.
“Leg it,” Wiggo shouted, and took the lead without turning to check if he was being followed.
The immediate area in front of the doorway was a blasted jam of black ichor and bits of carapace. Davies splashed through it, all thought of a damaged ankle forgotten as adrenaline kicked in. All around them beetles had scattered after the grenade blasts but already heads were turning and talons scraped on rock as the now well-known high drone was taken up all along the causeway.
The first part of the captain’s plan was successful enough; the three men reached the foot of the steps and turned, weapons in hand, already taking aim. Captain Banks appeared in the doorway of the turret but the brief respite provided by the grenades hadn’t lasted; the beasts closed in on his position. Davies went to step forward to his aid but Wiggo held him back.
“Cap’s got this,” he said. “Cover his left flank. Wilkins, right flank. I’ve got his back.”
The captain broke into a run while at the same time maintaining rapid fire from his rifle aimed directly ahead of him. Wiggo took out a large creature that attempted to come up behind the running man; there was no subtlety in it, no finesse of going for head or legs. Wiggo blew holes in its shell from just above its head along its back and kept firing until it went down. Davies chose a target that was moving in on the captain’s left flank and, taking Wiggo’s lead, kept firing until it went still.
Things were happening fast. Wiggo put down two small ones almost under the captain’s feet, Davies concentrated on a large one that was just beginning to move, taking out its front legs as the shell lifted from the ground. The captain was only yards away now but a horde of twenty or more of the beasts were gathering ten paces behind him.
“Grenades,” Wiggo shouted.
He, Wilkins and Davies all had a grenade in hand two seconds later.
“Fire in the hole,” Wiggo shouted. All three men pulled their pins and threw at the same time. The pineapples fell amid the bunch of beetles and they went off in three distinct crumps, blasting a haze of vaporized shell and ichor across the concourse.
The cap arrived on the steps, breathing heavily, but he didn’t stop, immediately heading up the stairs towards the crater rim.
Davies followed at his back, aware as he took to the stairs that his ankle was hurting.
They went up the staircase to the rim at a flat run and Davies was out of breath when they reached the top. The captain didn’t pause but turned away onto an outer cliff path that threaded down the outer wall of the mountain towards the desert far below. Davies paused for several seconds to catch his breath before following. He happened to be facing into the long caldera. A movement caught his eye at the center. A vast mass of beetles was on the move, heading towards the city. The high black dome of the massive beetle rose up, a head the size of a cow emerged and even at that distance, Davies seemed to feel a malevolent glare that was directed straight at the squad.