“Then at least we’ll have front row tickets.” Ginger increased her pace from a jog to a sprint. “Let’s hustle.”
Though the blackness terrified her, Ginger’s imagination couldn’t help but return to the image of a nuclear bomb going off above Rhinegarde, of the grand, bronze walls of its cathedral-style keep buckling in the colossal blast. How big were the UEC’s nukes, anyway? Hiroshima big? Tsar Bomba big? She wouldn’t be surprised if various pre-UEC governments had developed something even more destructive since the Cold War.
But if they detonated it above ground, would it even reach the nest? The last thing humanity needed was irradiated roaches in addition to regular ones. And no matter how stupid she knew it was to nurture such an idea, there was no ignoring the tiny flame of hope flickering in the dark recesses of her mind – that by heading so deep underground, they might actually be improving their odds of survival.
No. It was stupid to think like that. Dangerous, even.
“We’re dead already,” Ginger whispered to herself. “All we can do now is make sure our deaths count for something.”
“What did you say?” asked Ghost.
Ginger stopped sharp. She could hear scratching up ahead.
“I said something’s coming,” she replied, searching for a place to hide. Her flashlight revealed a narrow alcove in the tunnel wall a few metres back. “Here. Get inside.”
Duke climbed in first, carrying his bulky sack of explosives beside him. Still, he barely fit. Even Ghost, who Ginger swore was the slimmest marine in the whole company (besides Private Bradley, that is), struggled to squeeze herself through the gap. By the time Ginger joined them, they stood shoulder to shoulder with their faces pressed hard against the slimy soil in front of them. It was so tight, in fact, that Ginger’s right arm almost hung free from the alcove entirely.
She could taste the rancid gunk running over her lips. It made her want to throw up, but she couldn’t risk spitting it off. Not while bugs patrolled the tunnels.
The soft squelch of claws in mud and the harsh clicking of mandibles and insect-speak grew louder. With her face against the wall, Ginger could only watch the tunnel out of her right eye. Not that it made much difference. Though her vision adjusted to the dark as best it could, it wasn’t as if there was anything actually in the dark to make out. The outside of the alcove looked marginally less black than the inside, and that was all.
She tried to make herself as small as possible. The clicking and clacking of the bugs drew even closer, and grew even louder…
…and then suddenly it stopped.
Silence.
That’s all there was.
Total, terrifying silence.
Ginger gritted her teeth, breathed through her nose as quietly as she could, and waited… waited for whatever came next.
Perhaps the roaches could detect their heat signatures, she wondered, even as slathered with mud as they were. Or perhaps it was the smell of motor oil wafting off Duke’s plastic explosives that attracted them – though from where Ginger stood, the foul stench of the gunk sticking the soil together overpowered everything else. It didn’t matter. They didn’t have time for this. Every second they waited was another second closer to atomic annihilation.
Yet to shift even an inch…
Movement beyond the edge of their hiding spot. Close, and as loud and sharp as a twig snapping in a winter forest. The sound of dirt being scratched away.
Ginger shut her eyes and waited for a serrated mandible to carve through her midriff like a hacksaw. She couldn’t tell what was running down her face anymore – mud, slime or sweat.
And then, as quickly as they approached, the roaches turned towards the surface and scuttled out of earshot. Within another five seconds or so, the tunnel was silent once again.
They piled out of the alcove as quickly as they could.
“That’s time we couldn’t afford to waste,” Ginger gasped, wiping as much of the ooze off her face as she could. “I don’t care what we come up against. From here on out, we run!”
They did. And as they continued to follow the tunnel’s counter-clockwise path ever downwards, they soon encountered something unexpected – light. A warm glow that ebbed and flowed up the tunnel towards them, as sluggish and golden in colour as honey.
“Rifles at the ready,” Duke whispered. “Something tells me we shouldn’t expect a warm welcome.”
A few seconds later, they came to the tunnel’s end.
“Oh my God,” said Ghost, stopping so abruptly Duke had to grab her arm to keep her from slipping in the wet dirt. “When they called it a nest, they weren’t kidding.”
“Nest doesn’t go far enough,” said Ginger. Her chest felt as hollow as the scene in front of them. “I’d call it a goddamn hive.”
The three of them stood within an enormous subterranean cavern on the highest of a great many concentric ring paths that, like the tunnel, wound counter-clockwise down towards a narrower, central point below. Tiny fireflies bathed the cavern in a nightmarishly ethereal light, which allowed an awed Ginger to spot at least another dozen tunnels around the chamber, each no doubt leading to a different bug-hole around the city. Webs hung like trawler nets from the rocky, stalactitic ceiling, incubating or gestating… something. Hundreds of roaches climbed or fluttered around the viscous walls. A handful of mutant bugs methodically patrolled the slopes around the cavern’s periphery.
Getting a hold of themselves, they crouched down at the edge of their vantage point behind a rocky pillar whose shadow was just large enough to keep them hidden. None of the bugs below had noticed them… for now.
Duke swung the large pack off his back and pulled it wide open. They stared at the small mountain of explosives inside.
“Okay, how do we do this?” asked Ginger, her heart palpitating. “We take a few each, try and figure out where the nest’s weak points are?”
“Maybe it would be best if we figure out where we’re going before we go running off?” said Ghost. “Also, I don’t know how to work any of this stuff. Probably should have mentioned that.”
“Nah, don’t worry.” Leaning over the edge, Duke sounded almost amused. “I’ve got a much better idea.”
Holding onto the pillar as hard as she could, Ginger peered down at the bottom of the chamber. She could barely keep herself from gasping. The cavern floor was submerged under a sea of explosive egg sacs. The only patches of rock not covered in the sacs were occupied by the grotesque, bulbous slugs forced to perpetually birth them.
“Oh boy,” she said, turning back to Duke. “Please tell me you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”
“We’ve seen what a single batch of those egg sacs can do to a bomber-bug when it goes down,” said Ghost, growing excited. “Imagine what a whole nest of them could do.”
“Might blow the whole city up,” Ginger replied with pretend concern in her voice.
“Would save the UEC a nuke,” said Duke, shrugging. “Those things don’t come cheap, you know.”
“You’d best get to work then, big guy.” This time it was Ghost who slapped Duke on the back. “The sooner we blow the nest, the sooner we get our medals.”
Duke quickly began wiring blocks of plastic explosive together with blasting caps. To Ginger, who still couldn’t wrap her head around anything more complicated than the pin of a grenade, it was like watching a genius solve a Rubik’s Cube. In barely any time at all, the bomb was ready. They even stuffed their spare grenades into the pack for good luck.
Ginger’s heart fell as she realised what came next.
“Right. So which one of us is going down there to set it off?”
Duke grinned.
“Oh, Ginger. Ye of little faith.”
“What? There’s no way the remote detonator is going to work once we’re back up on the surface. It’s short-range only. You must know that!”
“That’s why I set a timer,” said Duke, prodding a button on a small, black panel squished into the malleable plastic. It immediately s
tarted counting down. “We’ve got four minutes to escape.”
“You idiot! We’ll never get it down there in time!”
Duke stood up, fastened the clasps on the pack as tight as they would go, and then hurled it over the edge. The three of them watched as it spun down towards the eggs.
“I think we’d better get out of here,” he said quickly and coldly, as if only just realising what he’d done.
A flying roach, which never would have noticed them had something hard and fast not missed its head by mere inches, shot up to where Sigma stood and screeched in alarm. The upper reaches of the cavern instantly filled with black, chittering swarms. The ground trembled with the force of a thousand charging bugs.
“You think?” screamed Ginger. “Move!”
They turned and ran with a whole angry hive behind them.
Chapter Sixteen
Their flashlights swung back and forth, giving them short and stark glimpses of the tunnel ahead. The throbbing buzz of roach wings grew to an almost deafening volume behind them.
“How far to the surface?” Ghost yelled.
“What are you asking me for?” Duke replied in a tired, raspy voice. “You want me to stop and get a map out, or something?”
“Shut up, both of you.” Ginger forced herself to keep following the tunnel upwards, no matter how badly her thighs burned from the effort. “We’re out when we’re out!”
What Ginger didn’t mention was that she’d been asking herself that very same question. They’d been climbing for what must surely have been three minutes, at least – the only reason she knew it hadn’t been four was because their bomb hadn’t gone off already. They’d taken less time than that getting down to the hive. But that was just it, of course – going down was easy. Assuming they were on a suicide mission, none of them had put all that much thought into the practicality of coming back up the other side.
Duke’s flashlight swept across a lone roach that had wandered down the tunnel to see what all the commotion was about. He unloaded half a clip into the insect without slowing down. By the time they stomped passed it, the remains of its corpse were barely distinguishable from the dripping walls around it.
“They’re getting close…”
Ghost reached out behind her and sprayed into the approaching swarm. The strobing muzzle-flare from her submachine gun revealed a tidal wave of bugs clambering over one another in their bloodlust. Limbs and antennae blew apart in a stop-motion firework display.
Ginger expected the tunnel to plunge back into darkness when Ghost’s magazine ran dry. Yet when she did finally hear that hollow click sound, she felt none of her usual dread. Instead, she realised she could see better than ever.
“We’re close,” she gasped. “Just a little further…”
Now she could see not just the gelatinous, translucent slime that ran across every inch of the tunnel’s muddy interior, but the ribbons of it dripping down from the ceiling, too. Rounding the next corner, Ginger almost made the fatal error of stopping to shield her eyes as blinding white light rushed down to meet them with the force of a nuclear flash.
For a petrifying moment, she genuinely thought it was one. Then the thatched rooftop of a house on the other side of the bug-hole swam into focus, and she realised it was only daylight.
Sweet, safe daylight.
She ignored the way her muscles screamed and burned and pushed herself even harder towards the exit. Though the angle of the tunnel grew steeper the closer they got to the hole, and her vision grew darker and foggier from the blood thumping in her temples, her pace didn’t waver.
She had to get out. First the hive, and then the city.
But scrambling up the final rocky lip of the hole, with wave upon wave of roaches crashing and nipping at their heels – even fighting one another for their dinner, it seemed – she came to a cold conclusion.
They weren’t going to make it.
Ginger swore under her breath.
“God, I wish we hadn’t used up all our grenades!”
Duke fumbled with his belt and triumphantly held up a grenade for Ginger and Ghost to see.
“Always keep a spare,” he wheezed, before pulling the pin and chucking it over his shoulder.
They were a little over halfway up the rocks when the grenade went off. The blast blew Ginger clear of the tunnel, though she didn’t fully realise what had happened until she crashed back down on the muddy turf a couple of seconds later. Blinking until her vision cleared and ignoring the dull ache in her ribs (not to mention the agonising ringing in her ears), she rolled over to face the bug-hole. Everything seemed to move in slow motion, especially herself.
The tunnel had collapsed and there was no sign of Duke or Ghost. Plenty of splattered bug parts all across the boulevard, though. She reached out and tried to pull herself through the dirt towards where she saw them last.
“No…”
“No what?” said Ghost, suddenly standing behind her. She hooked Ginger under the arms and yanked her roughly to her feet. “Get it together, Sarge. We need to hightail it out of here.”
“Where’s Duke?” Ginger’s words came out slurred and her side hurt no less now she was standing up. “Is he…?”
“Dead? Of course not. Nothing short of a nuke will finish Duke off. Speaking of which…”
She put Ginger’s arm around her shoulder and together they hobbled onto the deserted street. Duke was forty, maybe fifty metres ahead of them, darting from one abandoned truck to another like a bloodhound sniffing out a wounded fox. He must have found one to his liking, because he started waving at them like a man stuck on a desert island who’s just seen a biplane pass overhead.
“This one still works,” he called out as they approached. “Here, Ghost. I’ll take her. You climb on in.”
“But none of us know how to drive,” Ginger groaned as Duke helped her climb up into the open-topped cargo bed at the rear of the vehicle.
“Yeah, about that.” Ghost threw open the door to the cab. “I used to go joyriding with my big sis back when we were kids. She did most of the driving, of course… but I reckon I can still remember most of what I saw. Desperate times and all that.”
“Private Flores!” Ginger sat down. “You never said.”
“What?” Ghost slammed the door shut, but Ginger could still hear her through a narrow slit of a window in the back of the cabin. “It was during the riots. There was a lot worse stuff going on than a few kids doing doughnuts in a derelict shopping centre, believe me.”
Duke cracked open two crates in the back of the cargo bed. One was full of empty canteens, the other with battle rifle magazines.
“Better stock up,” he said, tossing a magazine to Ginger. “I dare say the bugs have done an even worse job of evacuating the city than we have, and they ain’t gonna be happy about us trying to leave.”
Suddenly, the collapsed tunnel burst open again. A black storm cloud swelled up into the sky. The swarm carried at least a hundred flying roaches, and it grew and grew until the shade they cast covered the whole keep. Though they almost swallowed the sun too, Ginger struggled to look directly at them. It was like trying to stare at an eclipse.
A flood of wingless roaches scuttled out from the fresh bug-hole after them. Some were missing mandibles, and all of them looked pissed.
“Time we got moving, Ghost.” Duke thumped the back of the cabin.
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do since I got in here?” Ghost replied, kicking the accelerator pedal. The engine groaned but the wheels didn’t turn. “The damn thing won’t start!”
Duke loaded his rifle and aimed it at the incoming horde.
“Have you tried taking it out of neutral?” he asked testily.
Ghost didn’t reply, but a second later the truck lurched forwards like a horse bolting from a stable. The engine spluttered, hiccupped and, like a stallion, even bucked a little… but it didn’t stall. Ginger sighed, though she wasn’t sure if it was from relief, exhaustion or exa
speration.
“Christ almighty. Even Bradley got off to a better start.”
“I heard that,” said Ghost.
The charging roaches had been gaining on them, snapping viciously at the truck’s chunky, reinforced tyres. Now, the truck slowly pulled away. Other roaches crept out from the ruins of the surrounding houses at the revving of their engine, however, and the black swarm only grew thicker overhead.
“Oh, hell.” Duke pointed up at the sky – not at the bugs, but something smaller over to the west. “Up there. Do you see it?”
Ginger squinted. All she could tell was that it was a UEC gunship of some kind. But that was enough. With everybody save for Sigma out of the city already, there was only one ship it could possibly be.
The one sent to deliver the nuclear payload.
It was coming in fast.
“We’re cutting it fine,” said Ginger, holding onto the side of the truck for dear life.
“Jugular-level fine,” Duke replied, shaking his head. “There’s no way we’re getting free of the blast zone.”
Something shuddered beneath the street. Ginger felt herself lift up from the cargo bed. In fact, for a split second, the whole truck seemed to leave the ground.
Ginger and Duke turned to look at each other in alarm.
“Was that…?”
The explosions started going off before Ginger could finish her sentence. First, the street buckled. Slabs tore loose and climbed over one another like tectonic plates in fast-forward. Then a geyser of emerald fire shot up through a nearby rooftop like the beam from a military floodlight. The whole city was suddenly filled with the sound of exploding rubble and the smell of alien sulphur.
“I guess there goes the nest,” Ghost yelled from up front. She took a hard right without breaking. “Do you reckon we got—”
The following eruption was so loud that Ginger genuinely thought it had rendered her deaf for a good few seconds afterwards. The glorious keep at the top of Rhinegarde seemed to almost bulge at the seams, its spectacular bronze walls groaning like a bloated giant. And then a second later it was gone, eviscerated by a shimmering green fireball the size of a football stadium. The shockwave sent the truck screeching sideways across the street and through a storefront’s wooden facade.
Sigma (War for New Terra, Book 1) Page 15
