Стефани Перри - SNAFU - Survival of the Fittest

As Knight reached the corner of the catwalk, and another doorway to their left – most likely to another watchtower, he darted inside, holding his arm up to show her that he held the transmitter for the bomb-spike. He was going to flick the switch.

Pawn darted into the doorway, just before the pressure wave ripped along the metal floor, nipping at her heels. As soon as it was done spewing shredded fabric and shattered, blood-stained chunks of rock their way, she darted back out onto the catwalk, which was now mangled and on fire at the end. She leaned over the railing and fired a bomb-spike from her own spear gun down into the lab. The spike implanted in the ground right next to the largest vat of lime green fluid. Pawn then pulled back and swept her SCAR up to cover Knight. He had reloaded his own spear gun and leaned over the rail, as she had done, firing his spike to a far corner of the lab’s floor. They took turns, laying suppressive gunfire and launching their deadly cargo, until Knight had loosed four of his seven remaining spikes and Pawn had fired all eight of hers.

Wordlessly they turned to ascend the darkened stairs of the new tower, hoping there would be an exit, because the space behind them was about to erupt in a fireball of chemicals, pulverized stone and slivers of metal and bone.

“What in the name of Michigan J. Frog happened to the friggin’ storm?” Rook asked, scrambling to his feet and racing toward the distant brawl between Queen and one of the patrolling guards.

With the air suddenly clear of ice and grit, he could see she had already taken one of the men down, but while she grappled with another, there were four more men. Two had turned already and were rushing toward their fallen comrades.

Rook loosed a controlled burst of fire from his FN SCAR, dropping one of the men, and winging the other. He kept running toward them, firing again as he got closer. He dropped the second alarmed guard, just as Queen plunged her huge knife in the chest of the man she had on the ground. Rook kept advancing and was pleased to see the last two guards hadn’t even turned yet.

Queen climbed to her feet. Rook was still half-a-dozen yards from her position and heading for her at a run. He was about to fire on the last two guards, when one of them turned and the other simply dropped. Rook raised his weapon to fire on the turning man, but he dropped as well.

Queen felt the ground trembling again and then saw Rook heading her way, aiming past her. She turned back and saw the last of the guards fall down. Then she and Rook both understood what had happened to the men.

King, approaching from the back of the building, he had taken both men down with single shots from his rifle, as he’d come around the corner.

But something was wrong. He was running toward them, and moving full out.

“King, what’s—” Rook started to ask.

Then Rook noticed the vibration beneath his feet. At first he’d written it off as another of the tremors Aleman had mentioned. But it was stronger now, and the ground was bucking and jumping, as if this earthquake was going to be a huge one.

Then the source of the quake became clear, as a monstrous thing followed King around the corner, hissing and frothing.

King ran faster than ever before, but it still wasn’t enough.

Once he’d heard there was a bioweapons lab concealed underground, he’d planted four bomb-spikes – one in each corner of the ground-floor courtyard inside the outer wall, then he’d headed out a rear gate. That was when the trembling had begun. He’d sensed that it was closer than the rumble they had experienced the last time, and that its force was increasing at an exponential pace.

He had wondered if it was something Knight and Pawn had set off underground, but then the wind died. He could see. A hundred yards behind the building, the soil had erupted, as if a mole twelve feet in diameter was burrowing up from underground. He had thought of the giant 250-foot-diameter sinkholes that had opened in Siberia months earlier.

But the thing that fired out of this hole like a breaching whale was no mole, and the hole had not been a sinkhole, but a tunnel. The creature was ten feet in diameter, and rose up out of the hole straight into the air, at least twenty feet high. It had shiny, wet skin, blood red and covered with cascading rains of dirt. Its long, tapering body was ribbed into segments, and the front end of its tubular shape opened into a huge gaping maw.

It’s a worm , he had thought. It’s huge!

And then the mouth had opened wider, and a plume of purple vapor shot out, making the rocks and soil that it hit steam with wavering fumes.

And... King had thought, Time to go .

As soon as he’d started running for the southwest corner, the massive thing had begun to chase him. He reached the corner and took down two guards, but he didn’t slow.

“King, what’s—” Rook was starting to say.

King had no time to answer him, and the man would get an eyeful in just a second. “Bishop! Going to need that 240, southwest corner. Coming in hot!”

Rook and Queen were already turning to run as he approached them.

“Why am I not surprised it is you who started the big rumbling?” Bishop replied from the other side of the building. She hadn’t said so, but he knew she would be hauling the machine gun to the location he had specified.

“Yeah, count on him to find the one thing out here bigger than a damn rabbit. Knight, Pawn. We’re leaving in a hurry,” Rook said, running side by side with King.

“We’re already on the roof. What the hell is that?” Knight said.

Then King, who had opened his exterior microphone, heard the small man take three shots at the pursuing worm with his sniper rifle. “Didn’t even slow it,” Knight said.

“Slow what?” came Aleman’s disembodied voice. “What are you dealing with?” He was used to being able to see everything the team saw through high tech lenses and video feeds, and he was clearly at a loss with no visuals.

“Seen Tremors or Dune?” Rook asked.

“A giant worm?” Aleman said, disbelief coloring his words.

“Yep, but redder than a Doberman’s wanger.”

Queen had taken the lead in the sprint and was veering toward the corner of the building, just as Bishop rolled on the ground from the opposite direction, coming to rest prone and planting the 240B on its bipod legs.

Queen nimbly leapt over the long weapon and Bishop, and she rounded the corner of the structure. Rook was right behind her, and hopped over Bishop, too. King dove to the ground, next to his sister, just as she opened up with the chugging big gun. He added his FN SCAR to the process, unloading a full magazine at the giant slithering thing heading their way. The ground trembled slightly as the monster approached. King assumed the full-on earthquakes were from it tunneling under the soil and rock.

“ Kakova hera ,” Bishop swore in Russian – What the fuck? – while pounding the approaching worm with a withering torrent of 7.62 rounds, highlighted with the occasional tracer shot of brilliant orange, so she could adjust her vector of fire. The concentrated fusillade chewed a ragged hole through its side, just to the right of its black, gaping maw, but the beast’s approach wasn’t halted or even slowed.

“Pick up,” King said, buttoning out his magazine and quickly inserting another before blazing away at the worm again.

Bishop scooped up the machine gun and ran. King turned to follow her around the corner of the building, just as the rumbling thing spit at him again. This time a burst of the purple liquid arced forward out of the cloud of vapor, dashing against the side of his environment suit. He saw his left arm start to smoke, but he didn’t slow down his pace.