Colonel Belmont had been tending to Hilde for the better part of an hour. The worst of it was taken care of early on. The bleeding was quickly bandaged as the artery hadn’t been cut. Her shin had sustained a couple of fractures, and Belmont was able to fashion a splint out of spare parts from the wrecked mech suit. The rest of the hour was spent inspecting various contusions with sight and touch.
Hilde seemed responsive enough. The biggest fears had passed, but she didn’t look good by any means. Her face was as pale as an empty document on a wall screen, at least the parts of it that were free of bruises.
August sat in the sand, feeling as helpless as always in situations like this. The other men of the squad stood in a circle discussing the group’s next move while Belmont tended to Rosek. Sterling snapped and dropped a bitter comment before parting from the circle. He paced toward August and sat down beside him.
The exterminator exhaled sharply and shook his head once they met eyes. August wasn’t in the mood. He looked away toward Hilde and continued to watch as Belmont took care of her. Sterling shuffled around and scooched a bit closer. “Check it out.” The exterminator held up a cigarette. “The last smoke. It’s finally time.” He let out a long, drawn-out sigh and reached for his matchbox.
“Don’t do it,” August said.
Sterling hesitated. “Why not? The faster I smoke it, the faster I could start counting how long I’ve quit.”
“You won’t have anything left once it’s gone,” August was speaking absentmindedly with his attention fixed on Hilde.
“I see,” Sterling said. He put the cigarette away and smirked. “She’ll be fine, kid. Belmont’s the best in the business. Besides, we already know the worst has passed.”
He was right, but the one thing he was forgetting was that the worse was far from over. They survived every encounter so far, yes, but there was still one impossible, foolhardy task left to complete. He’d seen Hilde take enough damage for a lifetime. He’d seen General Wolf pierced by a dolo’s stinger. He’d seen enough, but it wasn’t over by a longshot. “We shouldn’t go to the nest.”
Sterling glared at him. “What are you talking about?”
“It won’t end well,” August said. “We didn’t stand a chance against that one monster. That thing will be there. There might even be a few of them. What the Hel do you expect us to accomplish?”
“Well, you’re probably right,” Sterling said. “But in case you haven't been paying attention, we don’t have a course of action available to us that leads anywhere good. Go back home, likely killed. Go to the nest, likely killed. Go back home, killed for nothing. Go to the nest, and maybe we can save those hicks back there. That would be enough for me.”
“Enough what?”
“Enough to die happy,” Sterling said. “I became a soldier because I thought the guns and all that were cool. Deep inside though, I think our ambitions to become soldiers stems from compassion, as contradicting as that sounds.”
August was going to say that he’d only become a soldier because he was forced to after nailing the aptitude test, but he let the comment die. Sterling was displaying an uncharacteristic amount of emotion, and it was probably best not to derail it.
Sterling hopped to his feet. “Hey, Farscout! How far to the nest?”
* * *
They’d fashioned a pair of crutches before continuing onward. The wrecked mech suit’s leg bones worked well as the stems of the crutches, and Belmont cut out segments of the cockpit seat to provide cushioning for Hilde’s arms.
It was a little more than an hour before they saw it. Thorn bushes and parched trees began dotting the landscape again, despite the sound of water running nearby. Their path sloped. A valley began to form as the trail they followed was the only part of the land that descended. It was gradual, but it went deep until walls of about fifty feet towered over them on either side of the now narrow path. They were covered in cool shade, and the running water revealed itself as a small creek gushing out from a hole in one of the walls.
August didn’t want to go any farther into the darkening valley. They were already deep in it, but there was still no telling just how far it would continue and how much deeper into the earth it would take them.
Farscout seemed unfazed. Since the horror of the massive dolorium made him retch, their Gardewall scout had taken on a new sense of purpose. He spoke to no one and never stopped for anything unless General Wolf called a halt to allow Rosek to catch up. August stayed with her at the group's rear, and sometimes the others would pull away from the pair, but Wolf never went too long without glancing back.
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The skittering of a thousand unseen legs echoed from wall to wall. A rock fell somewhere, and another followed a moment later. There was no way of locating the sources of these sounds because of the neverending echoes, but the party was tense. August had his MoShun Skybeam drawn and ready to fire. He was the only one in the party locked and loaded, but he didn’t care how nervous or jittery it might make him look. He’d promised himself already that he wouldn’t let anything more happen to Hilde, and now the mech pilot hopped along on a couple of makeshift crutches with nothing but blood-stained shorts, a sweaty tan tank-top, and a pistol in her back pocket. He was ready for anything.
The squad stopped. At first, August thought Wolf must’ve signaled another halt to allow Rosek and himself to catch up, but the theory didn’t last long. Farscout stood at the head of the party with a raised fist. Before him, stood a dead end. The two walls of the valley converged before them and formed a massive flat wall. August ran his eyes up its enormous height and was nearly floored when he saw just how deep they’d gone. The sky was no more than a thin strip of white as high up as the buildings back home, if not higher.
“What is this?” General Wolf said. His voice echoed back up the path and faded in the distance.
“We’re here,” Farscout spoke quietly to avoid the echo.
“Looks like a dead end to me,” Sterling said.
“Anyone got some sort of light?” Farscout asked.
Hilde sighed. “My mech suit had great headlights.”
“We’ve all got a light,” Wolf said.
“Turn them on and point them at the wall in front of us,” Farscout said. “Brace yourselves. You won’t like what you’re about to see.”
Wolf, Sterling, Belmont, and West drew their guns. Each was fixed with a light. Wolf exchanged a look with the squad and counted to three with his fingers. On three, the lights flicked on. Sterling recoiled a step, and Belmont sent a yelp bouncing up the path.
In the middle of the rock wall before them, about two feet off the ground was a diamond-shaped patch of moist, fleshy tissue that pulsated silently. It spanned the height of two men and the width of about five. The squad stared agape.
“What…?” Wolf couldn’t finish the thought.
“This is the entrance to the nest,” Farscout said.
More silence. August couldn’t see it. The abomination before them didn’t look anything like an entrance. It looked more like a rotten flap of pinkish skin that clung to the wall as it died slowly. Part of him wanted to shoot it and take it out of its misery. Another part wanted to drop the gun, turn one-eighty degrees and bolt it back up the path.
“I’ve seen this before,” Sterling said with a tinge of wonder in his voice. “It’s my ex-wife’s backside.”
“Can it, Sterling,” Belmont growled.
“Good idea,” Sterling said as he began to screw a can of gas onto his gun.
“That’s not what I meant,” Belmont said.
“I know,” Sterling winked.
Wolf turned away from the pulsating horror. “Rosek, Farscout, the two of you are staying out here.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Hilde said. “I didn’t come all this way and go through everything I went through just to wait here while the rest of you finish what we all set out to do.”
“I’m coming, too,” Farscout raised his voice. “I’m doing this for Gardewall! For my people!”
Sterling approached the entrance for a closer inspection. He looked the patch up and down with his poison gun aimed at it the whole time.
“I need two sets of eyes to guard the entrance against the outside,” Wolf said. “We don’t know if they have any means of calling reinforcements from inside, and if any do come, it would be nice to get a warning instead of getting sandwiched by a million dolo.” His voice took on a somber note. “Also, I’ll need someone out here who can run away and inform the others in Gardewall if something goes wrong in there.”
August’s gut was turning into a knot from fear. He couldn’t take his eyes off of the pinkish, heaving mess in front of him.
Wolf continued. “Rosek, you’re injured, and all you have is a pistol now that the mech suit is totaled. Farscout, you’ve got your vintage rifle which is less effective against these particular enemies. Besides, you have no obligation to come in with us. Your task was to lead us here, and you did one Hel of a job.”
“You’re wrong,” Farscout said. It sounded as if the scout were holding back tears. “I do have an obligation to go in there. I’ve lost more to these fucking bugs than any of you combined.”
Wolf watched the young man in silence. Sterling made a few comments about a horrid smell and strange little tails poking out the fleshy material at random. Rosek sighed and spoke up. “I’ll stay behind. Not sure I’ll be able to get back to Gardewall with much speed if anything happens to you guys inside, though, so just make sure nothing happens, alright?”
The general smiled and nodded. “Good. Farscout, you’re coming in. But just remember, you can turn back any time, and no one will think any less of you.”
“I would,” Farscout said. “I could never live with myself if I abandoned y’all now.”
“Guys,” Sterling said. “I think you should come take a look at these. They look like little tails or fingers. They keep popping out here and there. I’ve never seen anything like them.” He scoffed. “And I used to call myself an expert. I don’t know shit about dolo, apparently. Oh well. Less talk, more spray.”
He raised his gun and aimed it at one of the wiggling fingers. The finger thrust outward until it looked more like a striking snake. It wrapped itself around Sterling’s shocked form and pulled him toward the wall before anyone knew what was going on. Both Sterling and the tentacle disappeared into the wall through a tight slit in the moist matter.
“Trent!” Belmont screamed.
August was propelled by something stronger than his better judgement. He dashed for where the slit had been and intended to dive in after his comrade. General Wolf shouted desperate orders for him to stop, but August ignored them. He ran ahead with his gun ready and paid no mind to the many little fingers that wriggled around, begging for his attention. He was going in the same place Sterling had gone in, and they were coming out together. Alive.