Feeling sick and jittery and wanting to roar out her fear for her mate, Demidov clicked off the safety on her Kalashnikov AK-12.
“Weapons free. Don’t let these things get anywhere near us.”
“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.
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.
"Fuck," he whispered. Good. I can still talk.
Everything was silent.
Still lying on his side, he scanned his immediate surroundings until he saw his gun. It was down by his feet. He leaned down, head swimming, pulsing, and snagged the weapon with one finger. Straightening, hugging the rifle to his chest and checking that it was undamaged, he felt more in control.
He feared that everyone else was dead. His last memory was of one of those things coming at him, tendrils spread wide like a squid about to attack. He'd felt the impact
of its warm, wet body upon him, then the sickly sensation of the limbs tightening around his neck and head... and then nothing.
He glanced behind him and saw the torn ruin of the creature, limbs split, body holed by bullets. A stinking fluid had leaked and melted into the snow.
Budanov sat up slowly and looked around.
Zhukov was to his right, dead. There was so much blood. Budanov's heart stuttered, then he calmed himself and brought his weapon to bear. His head swam. He'd known Zhukov for almost ten years, and they'd fought well together.
"Sorry, brother," he whispered. The words seemed too loud, as if a whisper could echo across the landscape.
He realized how silent everything was. How still. Groaning, biting his lip to prevent dizziness spilling him to the ground, Budanov stood and looked around. He staggered a few paces from the mess of Zhukov's body and leaned against a tree.
Nothing moved or spoke, growled or sang. The whole valley was deathly silent, and he wondered whether he was actually dead and this was what came after – desolation and loneliness.
Then he heard something in the distance. A buzzing, far away, so faint that he thought it might be inside his head. He tilted his head left and right, trying to triangulate the sound, but it came from everywhere.
There were many of those alien creatures lying dead all around, and trees and rocks bore scarred testament to the strength of the firefight he'd missed. But other than Zhukov's corpse, there was no sign of his comrades.
Except...
Drag marks in the snow.
"Oh, no," Budanov breathed. They'd seen the animals being gathered by the tumblers and hauled towards the hole, before those things had switched their attention to the Spetsnaz unit.
He checked his weapon, switched magazines for a full one, wiped blood from his face, and started toward the hole. He would not leave his people, not while there was even the smallest chance they were still alive.
SNAFU: Unnatural Selection Page 16
