“Weapons free,” Zhukov confirmed.
Instinctively they spread into a defensive circle, edging thirty yards away from the hole and using trees and rocks as cover. Demidov glanced around at her squad, already knowing what she'd see – professionalism, preparedness, calm in the face of these strange, unknown odds. Her senses were alert and alight, sharpened on the fear she felt for Vasily.
Whatever the hell these things were—
"Incoming, my eleven," Yelagin said.
The creature carrying the wolf had diverted from its route towards the hole and now moved towards them. The wolf still whined and howled, snapping at tendrils that seemed to arc easily away from its teeth. The creature seemed almost unaware of its burden.
It paused twenty meters away, half-hidden behind a tree.
Almost as if it was looking at them.
"Another this side," Zhukov said. "They're paused, as if—"
The creature holding the wolf slipped past the tree and came towards them across the snow, leaping rocks, compressing beneath a fallen tree and dragging the wolf through the narrow gap.
Demidov's finger caressed the trigger, and she experienced a moment of doubt.
Then Vasnev opened fire. He shot the struggling, crying wolf from sixty yards out. The wolf’s blood spattered the snow and bits of fur and flesh scattered across the stark whiteness. The tumbleweed creature twitched and whipped backward, bullets tearing at its tendrils as it dropped the dead wolf. But then it drew itself up and began to slide toward them once more, skimming the surface of the snow, moving quicker as it came on.
“It’s not… the bullets aren’t…” Vasnev couldn’t get the words out.
“Don’t just stand there!” Yelagin moved up next to him and unleashed a barrage from her AK-12, took the tumbler mid-center, and blew it apart. It splashed across the snow a dozen steps from them, insides steaming as they sank into a drift. “Keep shooting till it’s dead.”
“Center mass!” Demidov said. “Blow them to hell.”
Hunkered down behind a rock she braced her AK-12 against her shoulder and zeroed in on the thing dragging the musk deer. Then she opened up. Bullets ripped it up, stitching the dead deer and scattering the tumbler's twisted, pale tendrils across the snow. Several of them slapped against a tree and remained there, held in place by the sticky goo that must have been its blood. The fear that had coiled into her heart calmed itself. They could be stopped. They could be killed.
The feel of the recoil, the stench of gunpowder, the reports smashing into her ears were all familiar to her, and she kept her calm amid the chaos. They all did. That was why they made a good team, and why they had never faced a situation they could not handle.
Not ever.
Budanov and Zhukov were on her immediate right and they were both better marksmen. They twitched their weapons left and right, letting off short bursts and then adjusting their aim, anticipating the creatures' movements. All around them, bullets impacted trees and showers of snow drifted down. Visibility was reduced. The creatures took advantage and rushed them, but the soldiers chose their targets and kept firing.
"Ammo!" Zhukov shouted, and the others covered his field of fire as he reloaded.
"How many?" Yelagin shouted.
"Don't know," Demidov replied. She saw movement ahead of her, a pale shape slinking from cover behind a rock, and she concentrated a burst of fire. The shape thrashed and spun, tendrils or tentacles whipping up a snowstorm. One more burst and it grew still. "One less."
For a few more long seconds, the hills all around them threw back brutal gunfire echoes. And then it was done.
Demidov's eardrums throbbed in the silent aftermath. She breathed in, let it out, finger still on the trigger.
"Clear," she breathed, and the others repeated the word in turn. She stood slowly from behind her covering rock and stood in the center of their defensive circle, turning slowly to survey the scene. It couldn’t have been more than a minute, but the area around them had taken on the appearance of a bloody battlefield.
Trees were scarred and splintered from the gunfire. The animals being carried by the tumblers were all dead, their demise signed across the snow in blood, bodies steaming, one or two still twitching their last. The other creatures – Whatever the fuck they are, Demidov thought – also lay dead, tendrils splayed across the snow's crispy surface and, here and there, melting down into it where their sickly pale blood had been spilled.
Hot-blooded, she thought. Hot enough to melt snow. But what the fuck has blood that color?
"Holy shit," Vasnev said. "What just happened?"
"Something from down there," Zhukov said. "Subterranean. Pale skin, no eyes..."
“What do we do, Captain?” Budanov said. “You want me to call this in?”
“Call it in,” she agreed. “But I’m not waiting. We all know Vasily and the others must be down there. Somebody’s got to stay up here and wait, but I’m—“
Zhukov and Yelagin called out that there was movement, the two of them shouting almost in the same voice. Demidov swore and lifted her weapon again, scanning the landscape all around. Between them and the sheer drop into that vast hole she saw motion down close to the ground, a slithering undulation, perfectly camouflaged but moving in.
"How many?" she asked.
"Can't tell," Zhukov said. "They're moving differently."
"Almost like they're under the snow," Yelagin said.
"Watch your ammo!" she shouted, then they opened fire again.
Snow flicked up and bullets ricocheted from scattered rocks. One creature erupted from a deep snowdrift and came apart beneath a sustained burst of fire, innards spattered down, those thin, tendril limbs whipping through the air.
Demidov's weapon clicked on an empty magazine. She ejected the empty, reached inside her jacket to grab another, smashed it into place and raised the AK-12 again—
—just as Budanov screamed to her right.
She turned just in time to see his head jerked hard to one side, tendrils across his face, skin stretching where they touched, tugged by some adhesive on those tendrils, or by octopus-like suckers. Even as she brought her gun to bear, blood sprayed from Budanov's mouth. He fell to the ground and the tumbler flowed onto his back, tendrils wrapping tight around his neck and skull.
"No!" Zhukov shouted, as he and the others opened fire. Their onslaught blew the creature apart. The thick white paste, its blood, splashed down across Budanov's back, mixing with his own in a sickly pink hue.
"Form up!" Demidov shouted. "Close in! We've got to get back to the base."
"Up that hill?" Yelagin asked. And she was right. They'd descended into the valley down a steep slope, almost climbing at times. To retreat up there with these things on their tail would be suicide.
They had to hold out down here.
"Mark your targets!" she said. The matter of ammunition was already worrying her. They'd come equipped for a simple in-and-out, an extraction that might not even have involved a firefight. As such they'd come light, bringing only the bare minimum of spare ammunition. Four mags each, if that, and she was already on her second. Three more shots and—
She ejected, reloaded, marked a new target and fired.
The chaos of battle had always remained outside for Demidov. Inside, her mind worked quick and calm, always able to place an enemy and work out the various strategies and logistics that would enable their success.
Now, everything was different. This was like no fight she'd ever fought, and already she could see its terrible, eventual conclusion.
"Grenade!" Yelagin said, lobbing a grenade and ducking down. The detonation was dulled by the deep snow, the gray sky made momentarily light by sprayed snow and pale body parts.
More came. More and more, and as she loaded her final magazine, Zhukov was taken down.