Hive Invasion (3 page)

Chapter Four

Mildred was more than familiar with the concept of the ant lion, a small, predatory insect whose larva scooped a pit trap in the ground to capture its prey. In her previous life, she’d given a report in the fourth grade about it and other insects of North America. However, she’d never,
ever
expected to find herself in one of those exact traps.

Of course, she’d never expected to awaken in this nightmarish land in the first place, filled with predators on two, four or, like these, six or more legs. But Mildred was a survivor, and had adapted as well as she could to her new, harsh circumstances. It had helped that her revivers were Deathlands natives, able to provide a brutal crash course in living day to day here.

The primary thought on her mind as she tumbled to the bottom in a cascade of sandy dirt was to keep hold of her pistol—if she lost it down there, odds were she wouldn’t live long enough to find it again. The secondary goal was to avoid landing wrong and injuring any limbs. It would be difficult enough to climb out of here, and nearly impossible with a busted arm or leg. Bad enough Doc, with his sprained ankle, was also in the trap with her.

Spitting out grit, Mildred scrambled to her feet, aware that the ground was already shifting as the first of the burrow-bugs began emerging to see what they’d captured. She could still hear gunshots above, and knew Ryan and Ricky were keeping the bugs at bay. But that wasn’t going to help get Doc and her out of there.

As she began reloading, her fingers ejecting shells and inserting bullets as if they had a mind of their own, Mildred glanced up to see how far up the pit edge was. Her heart sank when she saw it was easily six feet overhead.

“Upon my word, Mildred...that is a ride I would not care to embark upon again.” Doc shook his head, sending a shower of dirt pattering around them.

“If you can talk, Doc, you can stand,” Mildred said. “We’ve got to get out of here before we’re bug food.”

“But of course, dear lady. Never let it be said that Theophilus Algernon Tanner did not come to the aid of a friend in need—”

“Less philosophizing, more stabbing,” she replied as she aimed at the bottom of the pit and pulled the trigger of her revolver twice. The dirt there rippled and sprayed around as the insect underneath thrashed and died. However, no sooner had it stopped moving than it was replaced by another one.

“You okay, Doc, Mildred?” J.B.’s head appeared over the edge of the pit.

“Oh, just fine, thank you, except I’m
stuck at the bottom of a pit with huge bugs trying to eat me!
” she yelled back.

“Well, yeah, I meant besides that,” J.B. answered. “Here, grab my jacket.” He dropped his arm over the edge of the pit, holding the sleeve of his leather jacket. The rest of the garment dangled down the side of the pit, the other sleeve a tantalizing couple of feet away.

A mortal, high-pitched squeal drowned him out as Doc skewered the next bug that appeared, driving the point of his rapier into the armored joint between its head and thorax. With a twist, he withdrew the blade, bringing a trail of the black gunk that served as the insect’s blood with it. “They seem to be exhibiting a sort of hive mentality—” he began.

“That’s great. You can tell me all about their social structure later. Right now, I’m going to boost you up so you can grab John’s jacket. You get out, then the two of you can get me out.”

“Are you sure I should go first, Mildred?” Doc asked. “After all—”

“No time for chivalry, Doc!” Mildred said as she put another two slugs into the bottom of the pit. “Your ankle’s sprained. That means you go first. Now, shut your yap and step up! Use both hands!”

While the latest bug casualty was being swallowed back up by its brethren, Mildred shoved her blaster into her waistband, then laced her hands together to form a stirrup. Doc tossed his rapier and its sheath up out of the pit, then, grimacing in pain, braced himself with a hand on her shoulder as he put his feet into her improvised step. As he did, she heaved him up with all of her strength.

“Whoa—!” Caught off guard by the move, Doc waved his arms like a particularly ungainly stork, then grabbed hold of the leather sleeve. “Got it! Pull, my good John Barrymore, pull!”

His long legs scrabbled against the side of the pit, sending another shower of dirt into Mildred’s face. Shaking her head to clear her eyes, she felt Doc’s weight leave her, and drew her blaster and turned just in time to confront the latest abomination coming for her.

“Not today.” At less than a yard away, she couldn’t miss—and didn’t. The .38 bullet entered the bug’s eye and punched out the back of its armored head, splattering the pit wall behind it with globs of black goo. The brain-dead bug stood there for a moment, then toppled backward, falling with a
crack
on the next one coming up.

“Okay, anytime you guys want to get me out of here would be fine!” Mildred shouted up.

“Working on it! Sit down and watch my back, Doc!” J.B. replied. “Here it comes, Mildred!”

J.B.’s entire upper body appeared over the pit edge this time as he leaned down so he himself dangled into the hole. The reports of Ryan’s longblaster echoed steadily overhead, reassuring Mildred that Doc wasn’t left to fend off the bug army alone.

“Be careful, John!” she said.

“Grab the sleeve, and I’ll pull you up!”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there!” Backing up to the far side of the pit, Mildred used the sinking corpse of the burrow-bug as a precarious platform to push off. Running as hard as she could across the shifting dirt, she scrambled up the side of the pit and grabbed the jacket sleeve. “Got it!”

“Okay, just hold on.” J.B. was starting to pull her up when the wall next to her exploded. Pelted by dirt clods, her vision obscured, Mildred didn’t see what hit her. The next thing she knew, she was knocked backward by a powerful blow that made her lose her grip on the jacket and tumble back down to the bottom.

Something thrashed and writhed on top of her, and Mildred felt a sharp pain stab into her upper chest. Hearing something clacking near her head, she blindly thrust out a hand, ignoring the stabbing ache that coursed through her arm, and grabbed a thick, jagged mandible, cutting her fingers. Realizing a bug had landed on top of her, she jabbed her pistol, still clutched in her other hand, above the shaking bug pincer and squeezed the trigger twice. The bug’s body shook spasmodically on top of her, then collapsed and lay still.

“Son of a
bitch!
” Still feeling the dirt quiver and move around her and knowing she couldn’t rest, Mildred squirmed out from under the bug carcass, wiping dirt out of her eyes.

“Dark night, that was close! Come on, Millie, let’s get you out of there!” J.B. said.

“Amen to that!” Still clutching her pistol, Mildred took a running start again and leaped for the jacket sleeve. This time she used the edge of the hole in the wall for leverage, and was able to get even higher. She grabbed the sleeve with her free hand and pointed her blaster down the black tunnel, hearing faint skittering and chittering noises from inside. “Pull me up!”

J.B. started to do so again, and had almost gotten her to the lip of the pit when Mildred felt a strong tug on her combat boot. She glanced down to see yet another of the bugs with its mandibles firmly clamped around her foot. “Shit! Hang on, John. I have to do a little extermination!”

“Hurry up, for shit’s sake!” he said through gritted teeth.

Mildred aimed and squeezed the trigger, but the hammer fell with only a dull
click.
She pulled it again, but with no better result. “Damn it, I know I had one left—misfire!”

“Great!” J.B. said. “Doc, a little help!”

The old man’s head appeared over J.B.’s. Apparently he was lying on the Armorer to provide ballast. “Oh, my. One moment...” He stretched out a long arm with his LeMat revolver extending from his hand. His face was caked in dust and dirt, and his eyes were watering profusely, leaving wet tracks down his face and making him resemble some sort of demented, muddy clown. “Do not move, Mildred!”

“Jesus! Can you even see what you’re aiming at, Doc?” she shouted back while trying to dig her other foot into the dirt. The burrow-bug increased its pull on her, making Mildred feel as if she was being stretched apart.

“The beast is fairly large—” Doc squeezed the trigger of his LeMat, and the slug buried itself in the bug’s head. “That should do it!”

And it did. The bug slumped to the ground—but its mandibles were still locked tight around Mildred’s ankle.

“Dammit!” Still holding on to the jacket for dear life, Mildred kicked at the bug’s head with her other foot. Slowly it began loosening from her foot.

“Careful, it’s starting to tear!” J.B. said. He was right—his jacket had been through a lot already, and the stitches around the shoulder were starting to pop loose.

“Almost got it—off!” With a last hard kick, Mildred freed her foot just as Doc shot another of the tunneling beasts scuttling toward her. Its body slithered back to the bottom, where it disappeared into the tunnel below.

“Can’t...hold...on!” she cried. Her bleeding fingers were slippery, and Mildred felt the leather slide through her slick hand. She glanced down to see three of the hungry muties jostling one another to be the first to sink their pincers into her when she fell. Although she squeezed the jacket sleeve with all her strength, she still felt herself slipping. Mildred tried to lift her other hand to support herself, but the injury in her chest flared when she raised her arm higher than her elbow, and she had to let it drop again. Looking back up, she saw more thread tearing away, and the hole between the sleeve itself and the rest of the jacket growing larger. “Please—”

A strong hand suddenly gripped her wrist, and she looked up to see Doc’s lined face smiling down at her. “You are so close to being free of this accursed hole, and the world is an infinitely more interesting place with you in it, my dear Dr. Wyeth. Now come with me.”

And just like that, with Doc and J.B. helping her, Mildred was free of the pit. J.B. gave her a quick hug, also patting her down for injuries at the same time. “Where are you hurt?”

“Below my shoulder. I can walk,” Mildred replied, already rising to her feet. “Let’s go.”

“No time to reload,” J.B. said. The cylinder of Mildred’s target pistol didn’t swing out for quick reloading—each shell had to be manually ejected with the rod on the side of the gun and bullets inserted one at a time.

He handed her the Mini-Uzi and took up Doc’s LeMat. “I’ll help Doc, you cover us. Only got about fifteen rounds left. Make each one count.”

“Ace on the line with that,” she said, switching the fire selector to single shot for more accuracy.

J.B. hoisted Doc’s arm over his shoulder, and with the old man’s silver stinger ready to repel attackers, the three skirted the large pit and continued on their way toward the large rock plateau.

But they had no sooner gotten around the hole in the ground than they faced a group of the bugs at least three deep and six wide. Aboveground, the bugs were about six feet tall, each one rearing to form an L shape. Eight legs were now visible—the rear four used for balance and movement, the front four for attack and defense.

Mildred glanced back to see more of the armored killers forming to encircle them again. “Damn it, boys, didn’t we just leave this situation a few minutes ago?”

“Back in it now...” J.B. began, just as the heads of the first row all opened up as if each one had been hit with a hammer, one after another, spraying black goo over Mildred, J.B. and Doc. Booming reports thundered around them as the entire first row keeled over, dead.

The surprise attack seemed to confuse the second wave of bugs, and they hesitated for a moment. It was all the time Mildred and J.B. needed.

With both the Uzi and the LeMat raised, the three charged forward as fast as Doc’s injured ankle would allow, clearing their own path with lead and steel. Six more went down in the first seconds of their charge, five by bullet, one by sword.

Two others stepped into their path and were mowed down by accurate head shots. With a loud, long war cry, Doc impaled another one trying to flank them, pinning the struggling bug with his blade as if he were mounting a particularly large specimen under glass.

The rear guard was charging after them in a wave, and Mildred could feel the animalistic fury at their backs. It just made her go faster, although not fast enough to leave J.B. and Doc behind.

The burrow-bugs were getting closer now, braver. Any that got within three steps died, but Mildred sensed others closing ranks around them. If someone tripped, if an ankle turned on a loose rock, then that’d be all she wrote—the others would have to make the split-second decision to try to help the downed person and risk being torn apart, or keep moving.

J.B.’s Mini-Uzi bucked in Mildred’s hand, each shot finding a home in a bug’s head. Again, at this range, she couldn’t miss, but she also couldn’t just shoot indiscriminately either. Only head shots would do.

The bugs were close enough now that they could brush her with their claws if they chose, although Mildred would make sure she was the last thing they touched in their lifetime. She snapped off a shot at one that lunged at her, dropping it in its tracks.

She heard the deafening boom of J.B.’s shotgun and glanced up to see Jak standing like a snow-haired avenger at the edge, blasting away at the bugs behind them. They just might make it....

Doc let out a strangled gasp as his leg buckled. J.B., however, didn’t miss a step. He just hauled the taller man with him the last few steps to the rock wall.

“Jump!” Ryan called down, his hand extended to grab the first person coming up.

“Go!” J.B. said to Mildred. Mildred didn’t need further urging, and leaped for Ryan’s hand. Before she knew it, the powerful man hoisted her up onto the rock shelf, unceremoniously dumping her nearby and leaning down again.

“Hey—” Mildred said, then clamped her mouth shut as she realized he was going back for the others. Doc was next, the old man wheezing as he stumbled away and sank to the ground. Mildred rolled to the edge of the plateau, still firing the Mini-Uzi into the mass of bugs as Ryan hauled J.B. up and onto the plateau. As his combat boots hit the rock floor, the submachine gun clicked on an empty chamber.