Three of them wrapped around the big man's legs, throat and right arm, and a wave of tentacles ripped the weapon from his hands. Demidov twisted around and took aim, but she was thinking the same as the others – Do I pull the trigger? They could not fire without hitting Zhukov.
The decision was snatched from them. Tendrils punched in through Zhukov’s eyes, he screamed, a creature leapt onto his back and plunged its limbs around and into his open mouth. His throat bulged with the pressures inside, and as he fell he was already dead.
Demidov felt a surge of unreality wash over her. Zhukov had saved her life several times, and years ago before Vasily, the two of them had enjoyed a brief, passionate affair. It had ended quickly, because involvement like that would have put their squad in jeopardy. But the affection for each other had remained.
"No," she whispered, and she started shooting. Her bullets ripped through the fallen man and the thing on his back, tearing them both apart.
"Too many!" Vasnev shouted, turning as his machine-gun ran out of ammo, swinging it like a club, falling beneath a couple of tumblers as they surged from the snow.
Yelagin dashed to Demidov's side and turned back to back with her captain, and both of them continued firing for as long as they could.
When Demidov's weapon ran out she drew her sidearm with her left hand. But too late.
Yelagin was plucked from behind her and thrown against a tree, several of the pale, grotesque creatures surging across her and driving her down into the snow.
By then Demidov understood.
They weren’t coming from across the valley anymore. A fresh wave had come up from the sinkhole. Dozens of them.
As they crawled over her, wrapped around her throat, tore the useless Kalashnikov from her hands, she raised her pistol. Too late. Her legs were tugged out from under her. Tendrils covered her mouth, pulled her arms wide, and she thought they might just rip her apart, that she’d be drawn and quartered by these impossible things, these tumbleweeds.
But whatever they intended for her, it wasn't instant death.
She felt herself sliding through the snow as they dragged her back toward the hole. They were warm where they touched her, and they smelled something like cut grass on a summer day. It was a curious, jarring scent. She tried to raise her head to see what was happening and whether she was alone. Am I the only one left alive? she wondered. But the tumblers were strong, and for the first time she sensed something in them other than animalistic fury.
There was intelligence. They kept her head back so that she couldn't see, and when she struggled she felt a slick, warm tentacle drape itself across her eyes, then pull tight.
Seconds later she felt the world drop from beneath her. She gasped in a breath and prepared for the fall, but she felt herself jerked up and down as the creatures descended into the hole. They must have been using their strange limbs to grab onto the sheer sides. Maybe they stuck like flies, or crawled like spiders.
Coolness became cold. She didn't notice the gentle kiss of weak daylight until it vanished entirely. The thing carrying her must have needed all its other limbs to descend, and her eyes were uncovered again. She could look up and see the circle of pale grey sky vanishing above. Around her, a strange luminescence seemed to accompany their descent. To begin with she thought it came from the walls, and that perhaps there was strange algae growing there, issuing a pale light through some chemical process. But then she saw a tumbler's limbs working before her as they rapidly descended into the hole, and they glowed.
A procession of terrors crossed her mind. Poisonous! Acidic! Radioactive! But she suspected she would be long-dead before any of those potential hazards caused her harm.
She caught a glimpse of Yelagin being carried by other things further along the sheer rocky wall, and then she heard Vasnev screaming. Three of them were still alive, but Budanov and Zhukov were dead. Perhaps soon she would have reason to envy them.
Amanda Hart was screaming.
Quiet, Glazkov wanted to say. Stupid American, keep silent. Can’t you hear? He liked Hart, had no real issue with Americans in general, but they had a tendency toward hysterics. Now was not the time for hysterics. In the dim glow of the creatures’ luminescence he could see Hart hanging from the ceiling like a forgotten marionette, but of course that was an illusion. Her limbs were not dangling, they were restricted. She screamed his name – Vasily, Vasily, Vasily – until he wished his mother had chosen another for him at birth.
Yes, Hans Brune might be dead. Given the way his ears had leaked after his skull had struck the wall, he pretty much had to be dead.
But we’re alive, Glazkov wanted to say. We’re alive.
His eyes blurred. It might have been tears obscuring his vision, or it might’ve been the blows he himself had taken to the head. He blinked and tried to focus. Glazkov hung upside down, so it might have been the head-rush contributing to his blurry vision.
No, he thought, looking at Hart. That’s not it.
She cried out his name again.
His vision wasn’t blurry after all. There were things moving on her face and body – things much like those that had carried them down into the hole, but so much smaller. Tiny things, like spiny creatures he might’ve found at the ocean bottom, but they were not underwater now. There must have been hundreds of them on her, perhaps thousands of the little things, moving around her with the industry of an anthill or a beehive, all of them producing that sickly glow. They moved with purpose, as Hart screamed.
As loudly as he could manage, Glazkov shushed her. Screaming wouldn’t help anyone.
It occurred to him that it was strange, how calm he was. So strange.
But then he felt a little tug on his right forearm and he tried to crane his neck ever so slightly to get a glimpse of it, to see what might have caused that tug, and he saw that they were all over him as well. The tiny ones. Babies, he thought. But something told him that despite the size differential, the tiny ones were not the babies of the larger ones. Not at all. No assumptions ought to be made. Particularly not when the tiny ones were so busy, so full of intent.
He felt that tug again and cocked his head, managed a glimpse. They were there, skittering all over him, but now he understood something else.
He understood why Hart kept screaming.
They weren’t just all over him, those little ones. They were inside him, too. Under the skin. Moving, and busy. So very busy.
Glazkov blinked, and for the first time he understood one other thing. Perhaps the most important thing. They weren’t just moving inside him.
They were also speaking to him.
Budanov’s whole world was pain and cold. He could hardly see. His head throbbed, his neck hurt, and his skull felt like something was tied around it so tightly that the slightest movement would cause it to burst. He'd spill his brains across the frozen ground. At least the pain would be gone.
No, Budanov thought. No, I won't let that happen. He never had given up in anything, and he wasn't about to start now.
He tried moving his limbs. They seemed to shift without any significant pain. Nothing broken. He rolled onto his right hand side and felt a heavy weight slip from his back, wet and still warm. He ran his hand up his front to his neck, checking for wounds. Nothing split open. He spat blood, and a tooth came out, too. His lip was split, and he'd bitten his tongue.