James Axler - Hive Invasion

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.

“Think you could have cut it any closer?” Ryan asked with the hint of a grin as they watched the bugs surge back and forth below them.

The Armorer shrugged. “Would have been here sooner, except I had to keep stopping for other folks,” he replied with his own wry smile.

“‘Stopping for other folks?’ In case no one happened to notice, Doc and I almost got killed down there!” Mildred said.

Both men turned to her, the smiles still on their faces. “We know, Mildred, we know. But we’re safe now—”

“No, we’re not,” Krysty interrupted. She was also standing at the edge of the rock ledge. “If anything, we’ve just made them madder.”

Curious in spite of herself, Mildred got up and joined the red-haired woman at the edge. All she saw was a huge group of the burrow-bugs below them, with more coming out of the tunnels every second. “You can sense their mood?”

Krysty shook her head. “I don’t need to sense anything to know how creatures are going to behave. Look there.”

She pointed at the bottom of the cliff wall, where a single line of bugs about five wide stood there, as if waiting for orders. Then another line of bugs ran over and stood by the first row. A third line ran over and climbed on top of the row nearest the cliff face, with another row behind that taking a position so that yet another row could climb on top of the second-level row.

“Oh, my God,” Mildred said. “They’re forming a ramp out of themselves.”

“It certainly appears so,” Doc said beside her. “And at the rate they are going, it will be high enough to reach us in less than two minutes.”

Chapter Five

“Fireblast!” Ryan swore. “Our asses aren’t out of the fire just yet.”

“We don’t have enough ammo to hold them off here,” J.B. said. “Have to fight hand to hand.”

“So be it.” Drawing his panga, Ryan turned to the others. “All right, Jak, Doc, you’re with me on bug-repelling duty.”

Doc redrew his sword and saluted Ryan with it. “Sí, mon capitaine! ”

“All right, Doc, save it for the bugs,” Ryan replied. “Ricky, Krysty, you take the right flank, Mildred, J.B., you’re on the left. We should be able to kill most of the bastards, but if any slip through on either side, you’re taking them down. Don’t leave your partner to face one of these muties alone.”

“Not to argue, Ryan, but are you sure Doc’s up to the job?” J.B. asked with a glance at the old man. “No offense, but you did hurt your leg down there.”

“None taken, John Barrymore.” Doc smiled grimly at the other man, revealing a set of peculiarly white and even teeth. “If I am given the chance to go down while stabbing at these hell spawn, then I will have at them until my blade is ripped from my cold, dead hand.”

“Good enough for me,” Ryan said. “J.B., we’re holding a fixed position and Doc’s got the reach with his sword. We need you on a flank.”

J.B. nodded. “You got it.”

“All right, positions, people. They’re almost here!” Ryan called out.

During their brief conversation, the bugs had ascended almost to the lip of the ledge. Those on the bottommost layer, no longer visible, had to have been crushed by the sheer weight of the ones on top, yet the others kept climbing, heedless of their brethren below.

Ryan, Jak and Doc stood a couple of yards apart at the edge of the plateau. “Hit them hard, get them away and move to the next one,” Ryan said. “No soliloquies or reciting poetry to them, Doc.”

“Never fear, my dear Ryan—Wordsworth or Burns would be wasted on these cretins. Besides, if my Harvard education still serves, most bugs cannot hear anyway, but detect movement and sound by vibration, so my eloquent words would be for naught.”

“Damn—Doc takes longer say ‘okay’ than anyone,” Jak muttered.

“Here they come!” Ryan said as the first of the bugs crested the ridge.

In their own unique way, each of the three men was singularly well suited for the task at hand. On the left, Doc had already seen action against the creatures during the battle on the ground, and as such had a good idea of how to face off against them. He was able to parry each bug’s attack and either feint to mislead it, then stab, or simply batter its legs aside and skewer it. His rapier darting and stabbing, he spiked every bug that came near him, shoving each carcass off his blade with his foot and sending it falling back into the charging mass boiling up from below.

On Ryan’s other side, Jak didn’t carry a melee weapon other than his lethally accurate throwing knives. He didn’t need one, since he was a melee weapon. His rock-hard fists and skinny yet powerful arms and legs were capable of frightening feats of strength. Even against armored opponents such as these, where an unarmed warrior would normally be at a disadvantage, Jak was still in his element. Despite three or four claws coming at him at once, he evaded every one and delivered devastating counterstrikes. His first blow split the abdomen chitin of one of the bugs in two, the kinetic shock wave from the impact pulping its internal organs and killing it. He soon found their weak spots, the heads and joints of their legs, and was crushing eyes and skulls and tearing off limbs with abandon.

And what about Ryan, in between them?

At this point in his life, Ryan was near physical perfection from a lifetime of survival. Two hundred pounds of pure, coiled power ready to be unleashed on command. He was the strongest of all of them, and Jak’s equal in dealing death to any opponent.

His fighting style was brutally efficient, and his chosen melee weapon, the panga, was the perfect weapon for this situation. Its broad, heavy blade was perfect for either cracking armor or pulping bug heads, and Ryan laid into the surging mass with abandon, his panga, hand, arm and face soon streaked with black, clotted gore.