by Shuvom Ghose
I got back to the barracks energized, Zazlu was grumpy but barely winded, as were Juan and Ann-Marie. The privates and Steve were a little exhausted, which made it the perfect time to parade everyone in front of Three-Spot one at a time and ask them questions about their hometowns. The privates were too tired to wonder what was going on and we got a good baseline reading on all their amygdalas, and readings on Juan after one death and Zaz after two. I jotted everything down on a sheet for Doc Murphy and tucked it away inside my fatigues.
Omega Squad went out on patrol north of the mountain that afternoon. We warned Red-Stripe through Three-Spot, so Ching and his boys didn’t even report one contact. Immortal Squad went out that night, south and west of the valley, almost to the edge of the swamps. Red-Stripe couldn’t get all his hunters back in time, so the Immortals saw a few Spider butts disappearing into caves near the swamp but lost them after getting off the helicopter to pursue. Phoenix and Second Chance squads were getting some motivation from Hughes the next morning and didn’t patrol at all, which was fine with me.
Our next patrol was interesting, to say the least. Three-Spot warned us to take only our calmest, steadiest members so I took Zaz, Butcher and what the hell, Juan. As Jinx flew us to the clearing, Ann-Marie leaned forward in her seat.
"Why do you think Three-Spot told us to bring only light weapons?" she said, tapping the sub-machine gun slung under her shoulder instead of her normal assault rifle.
I shrugged. "I don't know. His voice sounded a little strange this time. Friendlier."
"Hold on a second!" Juan said. "The Hell-Spiders can TALK?"
"Of course they can talk," Butcher said, then turned back to me. "So I brought some frag and flash grenades but I was thinking I might leave them in the helo-"
"SINCE WHEN?" Juan demanded.
"Since always," I said as Zazlu and Ann-Marie started laughing. I saw the look on Juan's face and had to join them.
"Don't worry kid, I didn't know until now either," Jinx said through our headsets.
I grabbed Juan's shoulder, then reached back to touch Jinx's as well. "So now you both know our secret. The secret that's been keeping us alive. Relatively. And the secret that could get us all thrown in prison for a hundred years if you spill it. The Hell-Spiders can talk and don't want us to kill them any more than we want to try. Anyone who doesn't think they can keep that one-hundred percent to themselves, please remove your buffering band and step outside."
Neither Juan or Jinx threw themselves onto the jungle speeding by hundreds of feet below, so I nodded. "Good. Because I've got another huge secret for everyone."
I sighed, then continued. "Resurrection is killing us. Doc Murphy and Three-Spot and I are trying to put numbers on it, but it seems like a little of your mind may be replaced by the clone's memories each time you wake up in the tanks."
"So that's what that parade of hometowns in front of Three-Spot yesterday was?" Butcher asked.
"Yes. I haven't given the data to Doc yet because I want to test some high death clones like Immortals or Omegas. But, here's the important part- from this point on, no one in Infinity Squad is going to die again. Let the other fool squads get mind wiped away. We're going to do things smart and professional and careful, and keep our minds exactly the way they are right now. Hoo-ah?"
Zazlu was nodding. "Hoo-ah."
"Hoo-Fucking-Ah," Butcher agreed, the only one of us still in their original body.
I turned to the pilot. "Jinx?"
"No complaints here."
"Juan?"
The young soldier was staring out at the passing canopy. He finally looked at me. "Would have been nice of you to decide that TWO DAYS ago."
"Juan, we all make mistakes. I didn't know. And it was a snake the size of a dinosaur. Tell me that wasn't worth getting killed by! I first got killed by a spider." He was still frowning. "Hell, Zazlu got killed by a bee."
That finally got Juan smiling. "That's right, he did."
"Hey- it was more than one," Zaz said. "And they exploded!"
"It took a snake the size of Godzilla to do me in," Juan laughed, "but my Second Lieutenant got killed by a bumble bee this big!"
"Come on now..." Zazlu began, but he was tracking with me enough to let Juan have his way for a while. He and I should go open a Vaudeville act somewhere.
Ann-Marie was smiling at Juan. "The size of Godzilla, you say?"
"I'll show you a picture sometime."
I coughed to pull his eyes out of Butcher's and asked, "Hoo-ah, Private?"
He grinned and nodded. "Hoo-ah, sir."
We landed in the clearing, and Red-Stripe and his gang we waiting, in their same protective ring as always. But then three of them moved and opened a hole in it. Right toward their home caves.
"Really?" I asked.
Red-Stripe nodded. "Three-Spot thought it was time." He looked at my squad. "But not everyone in the clan agrees. You will need to keep all of your thoughts calm and peaceful, or a protective male may tear you to pieces."
"Sure, no problem." I turned back to the helo. "Butcher, leave the pineapples here. Everyone, safeties on and hands off weapons. And be cool." Just to be sure, my eyes flicked up to each of their buffering bands. Five bars, green. I turned back to Red-Stripe.
My thoughts were calm or I wouldn't have been able to speak to him, but I saw the large black-shelled hunter turning his head and looking at the other three. Specifically, he was looking at Juan.
"The kid's okay. He's just a little scared," I told him, then turned back to Juan. "Private, it's going to sound like sliding knives when this spider talks to you, but that's okay. That's just his voice." Back to Red-Stripe. "Go ahead, say hello."
The spider paused for a moment, looking at the nervous Private, then said into all our heads, "You are a natural hunter."
"Holy fuck!" Juan cried, grabbing his head.
"Be cool," I warned him. "Be cool. Now Juan, what do you say?"
He gulped, then looked at the massive jet-black spider looking down at him. "Um... thank you?"
I slapped them both on the shoulder. "Great! We're all friends! Now, who wants to see a Hell-Spider village?"
Red-Stripe and his party led us through the jungle, the path becoming wider and more well travelled the deeper we went. The only real noise was the clump-clump-clump of our human footfalls; the spiders centipeded forward and each of their six ground legs landed and picked up with barely a whisper of noise. I had seen one gallop last time, hunting the sheep, he had been loud as a horse then. Was this the other way they travelled- strolling, maybe? Or, considering how little noise they made, stalking?
Of course the path was wrong for us, instead of the plants and moss being worn away in one central line like humans would make, it was a set of two tracks, spaced spider leg-width apart. Butcher and I took one side and Zaz and Juan took the other. The spiders were ahead, behind and on both sides of us, like we were precious cargo to be protected. Or prisoners.
No- think peaceful thoughts, I commanded myself. Three-Spot wouldn't lead us into a trap. Yes, Three-Spot, the spider we were still keeping locked away as a prisoner on our base.
"Um, Red-Stripe," I said, "what is the plan after we get to your home caves?"
"We will have dinner, of course."
"Oh, of course."
That should have been reassuring. Except I had seen this Twilight Zone as a kid, the one where aliens said they had come to Earth "To Serve Man", except that ended up being the title of their cookbook-
"You are not the meal," Red-Stripe said. "We still have one sheep left from your tribute. Surely you can digest that?"
Oh thank god, I thought.
"Oh thank god," I said.
"Freshly roasted sheep would be most delicious," Zazlu said. "But wasted on us, since we can get more easily. Do you not have something more... native that we could try?"
"Do you wish to taste lightning snake?" the knives-on-knives voice said. "It gives the eater speed and reflexes for a short w
hile. Or, Three-Spot has told us how delicious your flesh is. We could kill and roast the nervous one if you would not miss him." The spider turned to look at me.
"Holy shit. Did you just make a joke?" I said it loudly so Juan wouldn't go off the handle.
"Three-Spot has been coaching me on which elements of our humor would translate. Expect more levity in the future."
I grinned at Zazlu, who was grinning back.
That was the first of many surprises that night.
As we approached their village and the path got more worn, we started seeing groups of smaller green-shelled Hell Spiders. They ranged in size from Border Collies to Great Danes, and they skittered and hovered around the edge of our escort, peeking at us between the centipeding black legs. It wasn't until one of our escorts suddenly lashed out with his razor claw and affectionately tick-ed the shell of a green spider that we realized.
The Hell-Spider children increased in number and boldness until we were practically walking alongside a mob of them. I figured someone had to start the diplomacy so I reached out and flicked one on the shell with my finger as the adult had done.
Now I had done it.
I and the green spider with two black dots on its skull played a version of tag all the way back to the village. I would be walking along when suddenly a dull claw would jab into my backpack from behind and lurch me forward. When I chased him, he disappeared behind the protection of an elder, because that wasn't the game apparently. I came to see that the idea was to walk alongside your opponent, appearing to be outwardly calm and peaceful, and then suddenly lash out to poke them when they didn't expect it. I took a lot of bruises to my legs since I wasn't psychic, but apparently the children weren't good at reading minds either, so the score was about tied when we reached their home.
"It teaches them to sense the hostile intentions of others," Red-Stripe explained. "And to avoid the attacks of predators." He reached out to try and tag a larger green spider next to him but the child was already avoiding where the blow would have fallen. Red-Stripe's other claw, however, was waiting right where the young one would retreat and got him hard from the other side. I saw the child practically shake in frustration and run off. "He will learn yet."
"That probably comes in useful when dealing with lightning snakes," Ann-Marie said.
"It does," Red-Stripe agreed. "A snake’s mind thinks of nothing but their target just before they strike. Alone, they are not a problem for an adult hunter, except for the exceptionally fast ones whose fangs find flesh anyway. But a pack of them...it is too many to read at once."
I shuddered, remembering battling the snakes hand to hand. And them tearing my body apart.
"Exactly," the spider said, reading my mind. Then he pointed. "We are home."
The convoy passed through a narrow cleft in a wall of rocks twenty feet high. The piled rocks were held together with roots and branches and sloped severely, making any attempt to scale them treacherous. Also, I saw at least two large males patrolling a path around the top of the wall, and once we were all through the cleft, spiders on the inside moved torso sized boulders to seal us in. The boulders were stacked quickly and efficiently, the results of thousands of repetitions. I looked at my guys in amazement.
"Nice berm," Zazlu whistled.
Ann-Marie scampered up to the parapet and looked out. "They've thinned the jungle for a hundred yards all around," she announced. "A clear field of view for the lookouts. Just like ours."
"Yes," Red-Stripe said. "Our elders were displeased that you copied our ideas so closely. Some of our construction techniques took generations to master."
I didn't have the heart to correct him as he led us to the center of their village. The ring wall enclosed at least ten acres, just like a medieval castle, but on the inside were many openings to a cave system. In front of some caves, smaller, almost gray spiders tended flocks of the green ones. Some of the gray spiders carved dead animals or stoked fires, and their shells were all a matte finish compared to the hunters' glossy.
These women greeted their mates as the convoy broke up. I noticed that Red-Stripe had two gray spiders flock to attend him, both with the smooth, unblemished matte shells of youth. But I was too much of a gentleman to say or think anything about it. We all gathered around a fire, and the gray spiders started coming towards us with pieces of animals. More than twice our number could have possibly eaten.
"Oh god," I gulped.
Cultures that come from 'the Old Country' always seem to have a certain rule: their women will feed you until you burst. Forcibly, if necessary. My first girlfriend's Italian grandmother did it, heaping seconds and thirds onto my plate without asking. My college roommate's Indian mother did it. And these Hell-Spider women did it.
"More, take more," they said for the next hour, pushing one type of meat on us after another. Their voices sounded like bells or flutes, and though they tried to tell us what we were eating, if we didn't have a similar image already in our head, the translation was gobblety-gook.
I know I liked the fatty, juicy cooked leg of something that flashed as 'lion' in my mind, and I didn't like the stringy brown raw meat that Zazlu kept telling me to try. One of Red-Stripe's women handed me a wooden plate with round appetizers on it that smelled spicy and wonderful, but every time she tried to explain it, my mind flashed 'testicles'. I passed on it, as did Juan, although Ann-Marie tried a few and gave them the thumbs up.
We sipped from our canteens as needed, since it seemed like the spiders didn't have cups or drink water during meals. It also was amazingly quiet. Apart from the women explaining the source of food to us, there were no sounds for minutes at a time. But the way the seated spiders jostled and slapped each other, or when all the women suddenly pointed at one of the men, I realized there was a lot of hearty conversations going on. We just weren't allowed to hear them.
"Your minds would be overwhelmed," Red-Stripe explained.
"You could try us," I said.
"Not yet." He put one plate down, then reached for another. "These are the lightning snakes I promised, to finish the meal. And then we will try you. On a hunt."
I bit into one crispy skinned snake. It was like the best bacon-wrapped scallop I had ever tasted. And I did start feeling jittery immediately. "Hunting what?"
Juan broke off half a snake, as did Zaz. They were jumpy and tapping their feet ten seconds later. Red-Stripe laughed. "Hunting this," he said. But the image was muddy in my mind.
It turned out to be something between a boar and a gazelle, a nimble animal that hopped like it was on springs but would turn and gore you with its tusks if you got too close. The spiders didn't hunt the boazelles as much as they herded them into a tighter and tighter group, picking off the stragglers with one precise razor claw through the spine.
It was good that we each had eaten half a lightning snake before the hunt, because the spiders moved through the jungle like a tidal wave. My lungs ached trying to keep up with them, my shins and forearms burned with the whip strikes of the branches we sprinted through and my ankles threatened to twist with every slippery rock we stepped on. It reminded me of our first run with Hughes except I had tried to keep up with him just to shove it up his ass, while I wanted to keep up with the spiders to gain their approval. I wanted Red-Stripe to tell the squad 'good job'.
We were on the left side of the line, the spiders a wave of death to our right. The spider closest to us, a huge one with a blue wave across his skull, got too close to the nearest boazelle, which suddenly turned back to charge him. The razor claw was already coming down towards its spine when the boazelle slipped on a wet rock and Blue Wave's claw took it in the flank instead. The pain must have caused the animal to react subconsciously because Blue Wave didn't seem to have any more foreknowledge of where the flying hooves or sharpened tusks would go than I did. I saw him get mule kicked in the face and gored in one armored leg before his stabbing claws perforated the boazelle's chest repeatedly to drop it.
"Are you okay
?" I yelled.
"Yes," he panted in a bass drum voice, falling to four knees. "But I cannot run."
"Squad close right!" I ordered into my mike. "Close right!"
They did, Zazlu, Ann-Marie and Juan running diagonally to the right until we were one unbroken line with the spiders again. We had the advantage of being able to drive boazelles far ahead of us with bursts of machine gun fire, but the spiders were still moving too fast. Zaz, Juan and I were in bodies made to run, and Ann-Marie was practically as nimble as the prey itself, but I could hear their labored breathing in my implants. And the spiders were still pulling away. The line was about to break, the prey about to turn back and escape through the hole that human shortcomings would create.
Somewhere, far back in my memory, I remembered what I had read about the battle of Gettysburg and the tactic that had saved the day.
"Wheel left," I panted, then yelled with my throat and mind. "Red-Stripe! We will stay! Your line should wheel left!"
Red-Stripe had probably never read a book about the Civil War. But the beauty of psychic teammates is that I could just picture the formation, the heavy barn door swinging on its hinges to slam against the doorstop, and the spider instantly knew what I meant. I was the hinge. The spiders were the door, the rest of the squad was the doorstop.
"Yes," Red-Stripe called back, from somewhere far beyond my vision. "Prepare yourselves."
"Squad, HALT! Cross-fire formation, 45 degrees! Butcher with me!" I said, kneeling behind a fallen log.
Ann-Marie braced behind a tree slightly behind and to my left. Zaz and Juan ran farther left until there were fifty yards between us, then took up similar positions, Zaz in front and Juan behind and to his right. We were a funnel of death, waiting to shred the herd from two sides as it tried to pass between us.
