Alyssa screamed as if she’d witnessed someone beheaded.
Kenny bolted toward the sound, followed by Eldon. He rounded the corner of a tall metal cabinet and found Alyssa backing away from a doorway in the left wall. Eldon swooped around behind him, rifle trained. At the sound of their approach, Alyssa spun to face them and leapt into Kenny’s arms, sobbing.
The small bathroom contained a massive pile of human bones, all cleaned. The only trace of gore appeared to be rotting brains leaking out from the interior of the skulls. A rancid, though not overpowering, smell put them as far more recent than the Corporate War.
“Damn.” Eldon leaned into the bathroom and poked the tip of his rifle at the pile. “Gotta be like thirty people. We find the lair of a serial archaeologist?”
“Huh?” asked Kenny
“Look how clean these are… like they ’bout to go on display at some museum.”
“Uhh, guys?” yelled Hayley. “Is Liss okay?”
“Yeah,” Kenny shouted back. “Just found something disgusting.”
“What killed them?” whispered Alyssa. “Why is he storing the bones like this? This is so fucked up.”
Kathy shivered. “How did they get in here with the gate closed?”
Alyssa pushed back on him when he tried to step closer, resisting.
“Sec, kiddo,” said Kenny. “Let me take a look.”
Alyssa sniffled and moved around behind him, hiding as if the skeletons would be able to see her.
Kenny stooped and picked up a femur. The bone had thousands of tiny scrapes and blotchy areas of uneven shade, looking as though someone had splashed goopy acidic bleach on it with little care for neatness. Shit. “Millipedes.”
“Fuckin’ millipedes did this?” asked Eldon, holding his fingers about an inch apart.
“Yeah, millipedes, but they ain’t that little.” He dropped the bone and stood. “That explains why this mall is so untouched. We’ve gotta be in the middle of their damn nest. Locals know better than to walk in here.”
“Shit,” muttered Eldon.
“How big are they?” whispered Alyssa.
“Full grown? About twelve to fourteen inches in diameter, six to ten feet long. Acid spit, sharp pincers that’ll go through steel, and a tail stinger.”
“Dad…” Alyssa reached for him. “Hold me before I pass out.”
He pulled her into a hug. “They’re usually nocturnal. We should get the hell out of here.”
“Good plan,” said Eldon before shaking his head. “Why’s it always gotta be giant bugs?”
“Heh. ’Pedes aren’t as bulletproof as those cockroaches.” Kenny winked.
“Small fuckin’ favors,” muttered Eldon.
Kenny sucked in a breath to yell, but stifled it while he fast-walked back to where Hayley knelt by the chair. “That thing work?”
“I was waiting for everyone to come back.” She looked disappointed.
“Hit it.” Kenny smiled. “We should get moving quick.”
“Okay.” Hayley pushed the holographic button. Black text flickered and scrolled on the white window. A few small sparks burst from the circuit board, and the safe door emitted a resounding thud that carried into the floor. She jumped to her feet and shouted, “Yes!”
“What’s that?” asked Alyssa.
“That is the sound of how awesome I am.” Hayley examined her fingernails.
“No… I mean that scratching noise.” Alyssa turned to stare at Kenny, eyes wide as saucers.
Kenny held up a hand to silence everyone. A noise like a giant rat chewing on aluminum ductwork emanated from above the drop ceiling. His heart sped up. “That,” he whispered, “is the sound of we need to get the fuck out of here.”
Hayley’s expression went blank. A second later, she scrambled to disconnect her deck.
Kenny pulled open the safe. The onyx stallion didn’t stand out anywhere as being obvious, though a few unmarked white cardboard boxes looked about the right size. “El… gimme a hand. Grab anything big enough to hold a horse statue about yea big.” He held his hands about two feet apart.
“Kath… get the kids back to the truck.” Kenny grabbed a box and tore the flap open. Plates. Fuck. He tossed it aside and grabbed another.
“Why? What’s coming?” Kathy glanced up.
“An army of giant millipedes,” said Kenny, as casual as if he’d suggested lunch at the Poblano Taco Station.
Kathy stared at him, blindly reaching to take Alyssa’s hand. “Is that bad?”
Alyssa screamed amid a loud crunch and a clatter of foam. Seven feet of chitinous, black insect burst down from the drop ceiling and lifted her off her feet. She waved her arms and legs in the air, shrieking. The orb bot that had been hovering around her faced it and fired a laser from the middle of its ‘eye’ in a series of discrete pulses. Tiny flaming spots appeared on the creature’s shell and fizzled out to trails of smoke, tinting the air with a smell like burned lobster.
Hayley pulled her sidearm. Eldon swiveled and fired a burst from the Crusader. Yellow goop with the consistency of raw scrambled eggs sprayed out of three fist-sized holes about a foot above Alyssa’s head. The millipede thrashed and hurled her to the side. She flew half the width of the store before crashing against the wall a few feet off the ground. Her body bounced back; she hit the ground on all fours, still shrieking.
Kenny yanked his sidearm off his belt and put two bullets into the millipede’s head before Eldon could fire again. Nine feet of dead insect slithered out of the hole in the ground and landed in a coil. Yellow-white slime spattered a shiny black carapace festooned with an uncountable number of bright red legs.
Hayley yelled, “Die!” and opened fire on a second one emerging from the bathroom.
The orb bot hovering around her also lit it on fire, though this one nailed it in the eye on the second pulse, and the monstrous insect flopped dead
“Daddy!” wailed Alyssa. She scrambled to her feet and ran to him.
He caught her at arm’s length, and checked her over. Aside from a little blood dripping from her nose, she had no obvious injuries. Her armored vest had a small scratch on the back and front where the insect’s mandibles got a hold of her.
Kathy pounced on her, clinging. She babbled for a second, but gave up trying to speak. After squeezing her daughter, she pointed at the dead millipede and stared at Kenny.
Hayley folded one arm over her vest. “I want more armor… like Eldon. This only covers my chest.”
“What the fucking fuck is that fucking thing…” Kathy kept pointing at it.
“Swear jar,” muttered Alyssa, her voice trembling as much as her body.
After a pregnant silence, both Kathy and Alyssa burst out laughing.
Kenny’s mind filled with an image of removing the ‘Voltron’ statue from the case, and a giant boulder chasing him down a tunnel. I never should’ve touched the statue. Here comes the deathtrap. “Okay, everyone needs to stay calm.”
“It’s the bugs, isn’t it?” Alyssa put both hands over her mouth and took a few breaths. “They collected all those bones.”
“Yo,” said Eldon.
Kenny glanced to his right. Eldon held up a black horse statuette, faceted onyx with gold mane and tail. Diamond eyes caught even the weak light leaking in from the mall and sparkled.
“Wow,” whispered Hayley. “It’s beautiful.”
“Hello…” Alyssa pointed. “Giant bugs. Can we go outside?”
Eldon eased the horse back into the styrofoam packing he’d removed it from. “That”―he stuffed it back into its cardboard box―”is a damn fine idea.”
A sound like someone pouring marbles down a metal ductwork shaft passed overhead.
“Here they come,” muttered Eldon.
Hayley flung her deck over her shoulder on a strap. Kenny did the same with the laser cutter.
At a tremendous crash from the bathroom, Alyssa whirled and aimed her pistol toward the back of the store.
“Don’t
let them sting you,” said Kenny.
“Not exactly the kind of thing I’d do for fun.” Eldon put a hand on Hayley’s shoulder and ushered her toward the front.
Kenny stared at him. “I’m serious. It numbs at first, but of all of us, you’d probably be the only one to survive the venom.”
“How do you know so much about these things?” Kathy hurried after him to the front of the store.
“They’re pretty common. Seen ’em before.”
She grabbed his arm. “You’ve seen these things before?”
“Yup. Killed a bunch, too.”
Kathy’s stare compressed ten years of worry and fear into two seconds.
The girls’ pistols went off in a rapid series of shots, followed by the death squee of another millipede. Two long antennae whipped audibly in the air as it collapsed.
Eldon skidded to a halt at the hole he’d cut in the security mesh. “Uhh, we got a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” asked Kenny, while dragging Kathy up behind him.
“About a million problems.” Eldon pointed his rifle to the left. “So many damn millipedes I can’t even see the floor.”
“Uhh, Dad?” asked Alyssa. “They’re behind us too.”
Kenny whirled. The back end of the store came alive with writhing tubular forms. Smears of red from the legs rippled and undulated around a wall of glossy black chitin. He stopped trying to count faces after fourteen. “El.”
“Yeah?”
“You got any ’nades in that Crusader, now’d be an awesome time to use them.”
“Only eight.” Eldon stepped out into the mall, cradling the statuette’s box under his left arm and one-handing his rifle to the left. It made a foomp sound, soon followed by a bang muted under a torrent of yellow gloop.
Kenny opened up on the millipedes in the store, firing as fast as he could click the trigger in a haphazard effort to hit faces or eyes. The girls backed away from the swarm, also shooting. Kathy stared in horror until Alyssa screamed when some bug guts sprayed on her face. The sound of her daughter’s voice hit her like a slap and she ripped full auto into the onrushing tidal wave of insects.
Foomp! Foomp!
The resultant splattery explosion gave Kenny a mental image of hand grenades going off at the bottom of a swimming pool full of noseblow. Orbs A, C, and D hung in midair, making tiny pivots and adjustments to their orientation between thin red beams of laser light glinting in the dusty air. Each time they fired, a millipede’s eye burst into flame. No matter how fast or erratic the bugs moved, the orbs seemed unable to miss, and as far as Kenny could perceive, every time they fired, they killed one.
Damn, maybe that guy was a good idea after all.
“Aww man… that is so fucking nasty,” muttered Eldon. Foomp!
Splortch!
Eldon shifted and fired a burst, followed by three slower shots.
Kathy screamed. She leapt to the side as a millipede broke down from the ceiling and landed on her amid a rain of crumbling foam tiles. Her shriek of surprise morphed into a cry of agony as pincers sank into her right thigh. She bashed at its face with the butt of the rifle, but didn’t faze it.
Kenny drew his pistol, put it to the side of the creature’s head, and painted floor with bug brain. He kicked the dead thing off his wife and pulled her upright. Orb B zipped over and stabbed Kathy in the back of the thigh with its probe. She screamed again, but her expression went dazed and relieved before her lungs emptied.
“Go, go, go!” yelled Eldon.
The girls jumped through the hole in the grating at the same time. Both had two-handed grips on their pistols, and stood with their shoulders touching. Kenny pushed Kathy after them and backed out of the store, leaving the orbs to finish off the millipedes. No sense wasting ammo since it didn’t look as though the smaller number of bugs inside would overwhelm the precision laser barrage.
When he looked in the direction Eldon fired, his heart almost stopped. The entire mall concourse, almost twenty-four yards wide, had a six-foot tall mass of millipedes coming toward them.
“Holy shit…” His throat dried out. “We don’t have that much ammo.”
Eldon took a few steps to the left, away from the escalator down and closer to the oncoming bugs. “Time ta run!” He fired another grenade, which went off some thirty feet past the front of the swarm, throwing a huge plume of raw-egg goo and millipede chunks into the air.
Kathy stared at the horde with a face of perfect calm. “I don’t think they’re happy to see us.”
The girls took off sprinting for the escalator. Their ‘guardian orbs’ followed, flying backward while continuing to fire lasers into the huge cluster of millipedes. Orb A hung between Kenny and Eldon, pivoting about with microadjustments as it also peppered the swarm.
“I am sending the tracked bot in to give you cover at the door,” said Nasir from the medi-bot.
“Come on!” yelled Kenny to Eldon before giving Kathy a light push toward the way out.
She hauled ass after the kids, not bothering to waste bullets into thousands of millipedes. Eldon sprayed the leading edge with burst fire, which seemed to do little other than coat the floor with nasty ooze. Any bugs that died fell under the oncoming tidal wave without slowing it.
“Eldon!” shouted Kenny, before running after Kathy.
“Man, this is fucked up,” muttered Eldon, the faint plastic clicking of his armor coming up behind Kenny.
Though he could’ve outrun him, Eldon kept his position at the end of the line. Alyssa and Hayley skidded to a halt at the top of the escalator, both yelled “Shit!” at the same time, and started shooting downward. Kathy ran into the railing to the right of the escalator and, without a word, fired down the stairs as well.
Fuck. Kenny stared up through a hole in the roof at blue sky. He imagined all the rear hallways behind the stores had become nest tunnels full of eggs, and didn’t even want to think about what the basement or boiler room looked like. One way out of here. He rushed to Hayley’s left, taking up a firing position opposite Kathy.
A handful of millipedes attempting to come up the escalator steps lay dead, with more behind them falling one after the next.
Eldon backed up to them. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we gotta go. Six, seven seconds and our asses are going to be buried.”
Alyssa stared back at the flood of bugs for a half second with an emotionless face. “Well, that sucks.”
“Nasir,” yelled Kenny. “All orbs to the bottom. Clear us a path.”
“On it,” crackled from the medi-bot.
Alyssa let out a war cry and charged down the escalator while firing.
Kathy started to yell at her to stop, but one look at the rushing swarm sent her following. Hayley grabbed Kenny’s arm and tried to pull him down. After another second’s hesitation, he went. Three orbs sailed out over the open space between the first and second floors. Thin strands of red laser light appeared in camera-flash snaps, connecting the plastisteel spheres to millipede skulls. Smoke and seared insect stink filled the air. A leaping millipede burst into a shower of goo that rained over them when a laser beam split it in half.
Hayley slipped in a patch of slime and landed on her ass at the bottom of the escalator. A millipede bit her on the leg and lifted her up. Dangling upside down, she shouted, “Get offa me!” and shot it point blank between the eyes. Its mandibles snapped open, dumping her to the ground on her back. The millipede swayed side to side before collapsing. The medi-bot raced over to jab her with its probe. Hayley kept shooting at random bugs in front of her despite sitting on the ground.
Alyssa skidded to a halt by her side, also firing.
Kathy swooped in to pick her up.
“I’m okay. Keep shooting!” yelled Hayley.
Kenny jumped on the banister and slid down; at the bottom, his boots shot out from under him in the bug guts and he wound up on his ass as well, gliding a good twenty feet into a much smaller swarm of millipedes. His body hit
them like a ball on bowling pins, knocking them rolling, but it took them mere seconds to right themselves. Pincers squeezed at his arms, legs, and shoulder, but nothing penetrated his armored coat. When a millipede reared back to bite him in the face, he got his rifle up in time to block, though the force of the creature’s strike smashed the gun into his nose.
The kids’ pistols went off in a barrage that sounded more like a single submachinegun on full auto. Bug guts sprayed him, and a severe impact caught him in the left shoulder. Kenny walloped the millipede in front of him with the rifle, knocking it dizzy. Before it could recover, he fed it a burst, the barrel inches from its dripping mouth.
Eldon plowed into the smaller swarm as the front edge of the main group spilled down the escalator and poured over the railing. The first few to fall cracked open on impact with the ground floor. As more and more landed, they provided a cushion. Millipede by millipede, Eldon grabbed the bugs on Kenny, pulled them off his armor, and vibro-knifed them in the head. After killing six, he reached down.
Kenny accepted his outstretched hand.
Kathy shot millipedes launching themselves off the upper story, causing several midair detonations of white-yellow ooze to rain on everyone.
The sound of a heavy machinegun firing got Eldon to dive onto Kenny instead of pull him upright. It took them both a second to realize the source: the tracked bot Nasir sent in.
“Friendly,” yelled Eldon.
Kenny scrambled to his feet and rushed to the girls. As soon as he caught up to them, they ran for the mall exit. Kathy followed on his heels. The large 12.5mm rifle on the footlocker-sized tank bot pasted the millipedes into a shower of goopy yellow slime. Each bullet detonated multiple bugs, their chitin offering no resistance to such a big round.
Alyssa scrambled inches behind Hayley, sliding and skidding over the mucous-like coating on the floor. Hayley wiped out and pulled Alyssa down, but they didn’t lose much speed. They slid for a few seconds before hitting the side of a small fountain, long since devoid of water. Both girls clambered upright without even a whimper of pain, and sprinted. Kenny waved his arms for balance as his boots kept trying to fly out from under him.
The Harmony Paradox (Virtual Immortality Book 2) Page 30
