Then the creature that had cried out did so again, a far horrible cry that drove its muzzle straight up and wide and had it screaming into the leaves. Its body shook from side to side in jerky moves. The men had seen that kind of movement before, when beasts were caught in the thick, gooey, black pits that pulled food to its death and sometimes spit up furry little dead things.
But there were no such pits here. The men watched and then started as something new was added to the giant’s convulsions: sprays of red that shot so far and high and wide the trees and its neighbors were covered with it.
The mss went down with a solid thump and now the other animals fled but they did not get far. Not quite as one, but close enough: the beasts were moving, then they stopped as if they were stuck, and then they went down in a rain of shrieks and blood.
The men looked from one to another, hooting and huffing and trying to decide what to do. There was easy meat out there, but there was also whatever was pulling them down.
One of the men crept forward very cautiously, looking, listening, sniffing, trying to peer through the thick, moving grasses.
Something came charging toward him. It was a mass of black with spots of blood and what looked like too-many moving limbs and teeth, all of them, and it, growing larger by the moment. The man didn’t decide to turn and run, he just did it. And on his feet, not his knees, though he never got fully upright. There was a severe burning pain in his ankles and just below his knees, which didn’t last long since his ankles and lower legs suddenly vanished. He fell on his face, his hands spread before him, and he began to scream into the cool earth as his legs disappeared up to the hips. The skin itself didn’t vanish: it flew up in the air in tiny pieces, like bits of rock from a volcano, streams and beads of blood arcing behind it like lava. He was shuddering violently, then, no longer entirely conscious of being pulled apart and eaten still-alive like the mss and, now, like his two companions.
Splats of falling skin and viscera lightly accented the screams that raced through the field like the roaring river. And then, very quickly, there was only the river.
Dismembered bodies of mss and men pulsated in the grasses, the dark soil soaking blood and bile as warm-blooded life passed from the plain. The insects, however, did not return to the grasses or alight on the carcasses.
Not yet.
Below them, things still moved, still tore into flesh, still snipped at sinew and bone until the marrow bled out. Things moved around and over the remains, clicking noises rising as they found soft tissue and eyes and aggressively tore back skin that kept them from their morsels. Before the sun had moved too much farther, nothing resembling either of the evolved species remained. It was just a mass of gore that would soon feed the insects and brave little rodents and the seeds that fell from the new, flowering plants that spotted the land.
By the time the sun set, the grasses were once again moving as before, the landscape was quiet, and the killers, having fed, had returned to their nest beneath the ground.
Chapter 1
Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Goodman’s head exploded with such force, and so near Josiah Key’s face, that a piece of the commanding officer’s helmet smacked the corporal’s forehead. It knocked Key unconscious, despite his own strapped-on flack helmet.
Key had no idea how long he was out. It could’ve been a second, it could’ve been an eternity. He might even be dead, he couldn’t be absolutely sure. What he woke up to certainly seemed like perdition; hell a la Yemen. Sergeant Morton Daniels’ contorted face filled his vision, bellowing at him. Then Joe noticed that all around the mans’ swarthy, mottled, sweaty head was a halo of fire.
Goodman’s brain and body started moving the moment consciousness touched him. Grabbing a fistful of Daniels’ curly, black, naturally greasy hair, Key dragged himself up while moving the other man’s head out of his field of vision.
Key immediately regretted it. His waking ears and opened eyes were immediately filled by the sound and sight of all-encompassing enemy fire.
At once, releasing the hair of his companion, Goodman’s M249 Squad Automatic Weapon was up, seeking targets at the same moment Daniels’s M240 machine gun was doing the same in the opposite direction.
Key started barking as soon as he found his voice. “What the hell happ—”
But as usual with the sarge, he was already answering just as loudly.“One sec, nothing, next sec, shit-storm!”
Key could now see that. The dead corporal had warned them things could always get messy as soon as they left base, but not this messy. This messy challenged even Key’s well-developed imagination.
“Take cover!” he bellowed, his M249 SAW finding nothing but ricochets, reports, and detonations to target. Where the hell was the enemy?
“Copy that!” Daniels yelled back. “Any suggestions where?”
Trust Sarge D to crack wise even in a firestorm. Key remembered that was one of the reasons he’d gravitated toward the man in basic, despite his rep of having a bite far worse than his bark. But, strangely, that was just about all Key could remember. As if God was scrunching the edges of his brain, his memories started dissipating like popping soap bubbles.
“Find a friggin’ hole and fall into it!” he yelled, getting increasing anxious and annoyed in equal measure.
He felt Morty’s huge, rough hand grabbing his arm, and the next thing he knew they were both flat on their backs in a shallow divot created by a tank tread. It was hardly enough to give them cover, but it would have to do.
One question, he thought. Where’s the fucking tank? Then God started rubbing petroleum jelly around the edges of his eyes as well.
Key tried to focus at the way the front of his boots poked up against the divot’s lip, expecting to see his toes blown off at any second. But it didn’t take more than another second for him to realize what was happening to him.
“Shit,” he said over the whomping going on all around them. “I’ve been conked.”
“What?” Daniels complained as a tree limb shattered above them, scratching their faces with jagged bark. “Not again!”
Yeah, that’s right, Key managed to recall. That’s where he had heard the “conked” term before. The base doc had said it when he had diagnosed Key’s previous, original, concussion. And doc had given him the self-diagnostic list then, too.
“Symptoms check.” Key grunted miserably. “I’m nauseous.”
“You’re nauseous!” Daniels snapped. “I’m nauseous! Anybody’d be nauseous in this shit!”
There was a vicious whine just above them, and Key could feel a wave of heat make a line from his forehead to his crotch. The thing causing it just missed them before continuing on to smash through an already crumbling wall fifty feet beyond.
FGM-148 Javelin, Joe automatically assumed. Nice that some hard-won memories defied even concussions. But whether the anti-tank missile was fired by the good or the bad guys was anybody’s guess.
“Headache, dizzy, ringing in my ears,” Key continued, trying to stave off total amnesia.
“Okay, okay!” Daniels grumbled. “You oughta know. What do you want from me?”
“Memory loss growing, need your help.”
“Christ, Joe.” The honest concern in Daniels voice was music above the cacophony. “Do you even know you’re Joe?”
“Yeah,” Key answered, struggling to be present, feeling stronger already.
“Tell me.”
“We’re 3rd Battalion, Marine Raiders, M Company, eighty-five strong.”
“Not anymore,” Daniels reported with his usual lack of empathy. “Heavy defensive fire. Surprisingly heavy.”
That