Some people freeze when they’re terrified. Apparently I’m not one of them.
“Spears, form up!” I ordered. “Casters behind them. Earl, we need light!”
“You got it.”
I was expecting the flashlight, but instead he pulled out a bundle of something I couldn’t make out in the darkness. A moment later a road flare blazed to life, and he tossed it off to one side of the spear line as it formed.
The glow revealed that Hana was already checking on Bob, but his injury didn’t look nearly as bad as hers had. The flyby attack had caught the side of his neck instead of the front, and he had enough aura that it wasn’t too deep.
Sheryl put her back to a tree, and scanned the branches overhead. “I can’t stop monster hogs from the front. Their skulls are too thick for this little Barbie gun.”
“Then take out the birds when they come back,” I decided. Earl tossed out a second road flare, and my mind raced. We only had a few seconds now.
“Mitsi, watch our rear and warn us if the termites come back. Shasa, protect Hana. Everyone else, take cover and pick off what you can. If it’s boars, hit them in the side once they’re close enough.”
Anthony and Dale were side by side, with their spears already leveled. Jenny looked tiny on their left, between Anthony and a tree. I hurried to take cover behind the same tree, while Earl and Tyler moved to the other flank. Jason edged up behind me, and then the enemy burst into view.
It was the giant hogs, alright. I could see four of them, each a massive wall of fur and tusks that must have weighed in at more than a ton. Accompanying them were dozens of small, buzzing shapes that were probably giant mosquitoes.
When they caught sight of us the monster hogs squealed in rage, and charged directly towards our line. They didn’t move much faster than a human, but the jungle foliage had hidden them until they were only a couple dozen yards away.
I leveled my rifle and popped off a couple of shots as they charged, to no visible effect. Sheryl’s gun roared repeatedly, and half a dozen insects exploded into clouds of blood and guts. At the last moment Earl tossed another road flare out in front of the rightmost boar, and the massive creature stumbled as it tried to shy away from the fire. Then I realized there were more monsters than we had spearmen, and the extra had picked me as his target.
I ducked back behind the tree, hoping that would buy me a few seconds to ready a spell. But Jason stepped past me, fingers already sparking with electricity, and unloaded a lightning bolt right in its face. The concussion was deafening, and the flash left me blinking spots from my eyes, but the boar enjoyed the experience even less than I did. The massive creature still rammed into Jason, throwing him back to land in a heap, but it was in no shape to take advantage of his vulnerability. Instead it collapsed, limbs twitching and thrashing randomly.
I wasn’t sure if it was dead or not, but I wasn’t going to waste such a golden opportunity. I rushed to one side, took my best guess about where its heart was, and started pumping rounds into it. Tough as it might be, neither its hide nor aura could stop the heavy 7.62 bullets. Whether they were actually penetrating to its vitals was hard to judge, but it was certainly bleeding a lot.
Then a swarm of giant mosquitoes descended on me, and I was suddenly far too busy to keep track of anything else. My aura had recovered enough that their first few attempts to stab me just glanced off, but that wouldn’t hold them for long. I switched to my pistol and retreated, letting my rifle dangle from its strap while I tried to fend off the bugs.
Their erratic flight patterns made them hard to hit, and I was no great marksman. But even so, I could manage when the things were within arm’s reach. I picked one off as it came in to land on my shoulder, ducked away from another one’s lunge, and found myself back in front of the downed boar just as it shook its head and started to get back up.
Bob stepped up beside me, and blew the top of its head off with his .50-caliber rifle. Bits of bone and bloody gore pinged off my aura, and knocked a couple of mosquitoes out of the air. Guess their wings were still as fragile as they looked.
“Good job,” I shouted, straining to be heard over the din of gunfire and monster sounds. “Do the next one, I’ll cover you.”
A mosquito thumped uselessly off my helmet, and I reached up to crush it. A shower of overgrown sparks zipped through the air, maneuvering nimbly around me to pick off two more, and the remaining bugs retreated.
“Sure thing,” Bob shouted back, and moved to circle the giant body that was lying between us and the rest of the fight.
Looking around it, I caught a glimpse of Jenny and Dale standing side by side, straining to keep the boars impaled on their spears at bay. Dale’s boar was trying to crawl right up the spear shaft to get at him, and the crude crossbar I’d affixed to the weapon snapped off as I watched. But Jenny’s opponent was trying to shake off the spear stuck in its chest, and she wasn’t heavy enough to keep the weapon under control. The butt came out of the ground, and a sudden jerk of the shaft sent her flying over the boar’s head.
My heart leaped in my chest, but there was nothing I could do. I shot the boar with my pistol, knowing that wouldn’t kill it but hoping to distract the thing.
“I got this!” Bob confidently stepped closer, trying to line up a shot on the beast’s head. The wildly swinging spear shaft caught him in the side, and I hear a rib crack as he staggered back.
But instead of landing in a heap between the struggling monsters, Jenny somehow ended up on her attacker’s back. Balancing there with impossible ease she drew her pistol, and started unloading .45ACP rounds into it.
Jason edged up beside me. “I’m down to my last bolt, and I can’t use it on a boar. Those spears are metal.”
I glanced around. Bob was lying on the ground clutching his side. Sheryl had her back to a tree trunk with Hana crouching at her feet, and was putting fire into something in the branches overhead. Everyone else seemed to be busy with the pig monsters, and the swarm of mosquitoes that came with them.
“I’ll finish the next one,” I decided. “Just keep the bugs off me.”
I spun up another big, penetrating force bolt with extra explosive power, while Jenny unloaded a whole magazine in the monster’s back. It bucked and thrashed, trying to throw her off, and finally it managed to send her flying again. A normal person would have smacked into a tree trunk and fallen to the ground, stunned or worse from the impact. But my badass girlfriend flipped in midair to hit the tree feet-first, and jumped up to grab onto a branch overhead.
The boar spun to orient on her, too focused on killing this little pest to pay any attention to the rest of us. That was its last mistake, as I finished building my spell and activated the homing feature. A brilliant ball of blue light flashed through the air to strike the monster’s side, penetrating a foot or so of fur and dense muscle before exploding with the force of a grenade.
The blood spatter was spectacular enough to make me glad of Jenny’s aura trick. Blood and gore bounced off the invisible barrier, not touching me at all. The boar stumbled, swayed drunkenly for a moment, and collapsed.
Two down, two to go. There were still the mosquitoes harassing the rest of the group, too. Did I have enough mana to finish this fight, and heal everyone who would need it? That would be rough, but I didn’t see an alternative.
I was a couple of seconds into building another big force missile when a shout of alarm from Jason distracted me. Then a stream of liquid bounced off my aura, accompanied by the most horrendous stench I’d ever smelled. I gagged, my gorge rising, and lost control of my spell.
The force missile blew up in my hand.
I screamed, clutching at my wrist, and tried to stumble away. One of Jason’s lightning bolts went off somewhere nearby, but my eyes were watering and I couldn’t focus. My lungs were starting to burn, and I couldn’t breathe through the stench.
“Tom!”
Small hands grasped my arm, and pulled me away. I stumbled along, half supported by Jenny’s body beneath my good arm, and ended up leaning against a tree some distance away.
“Fucking skunk monster!” Jenny growled. “There was a gas cloud forming around you, Tom. Not just the smell, I think it’s some kind of chemical weapon. Shit, your hand is a mess.”
Bleeding, right, I had to stop the bleeding. I could barely focus through the pain in my eyes and lungs. Stop the pain. Stop the bleeding. Diagnostic spell. Fuck, had I been breathing some kind of acid mist? Heal the damage to my eyes before it blinded me permanently, and do a patch job on my lungs-
That was when my stomach decided it was done being ignored, and abruptly emptied itself.
There was some kind of commotion nearby, but I was too busy hurling to react. By the time my body finished rebelling and I could focus again it was over. I looked up to find Jenny surrounded by four dead termites, nursing a nasty acid burn on her left arm.
“You back with me, Tom? We’re in deep shit.”
Nothing was immediately trying to eat us, so I took a moment to take stock. My right hand was a bloody ruin, with two fingers completely gone. At that I was lucky – another second or two and that force missile would have had enough explosive power to kill me. As it was my aura was gone, I was still shaky from whatever was in that toxic gas, and all I could smell was super-skunk.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Jenny’s aura must be running low as well, if termites could get an acid arrow through it. Fuck, the termites were back and I had no idea where my rifle ended up. Guess I was going to try using the pistol in my off hand.
As for the rest of the group, I couldn’t see how they were doing because there was a big cloud of yellow fog between us and the lighted area. But I could still hear gunfire, so someone was alive.
“We need,” I started, only to be interrupted by a coughing fit.
Jenny pressed a bottle of water into my good hand, and I downed a few swallows before trying again.
“We need to link back up with the group,” I said. “Circle left around the poison cloud, and we should find Shasa and Earl.”
She hesitated for a moment. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just run? You’re in no shape for more fighting, and everything’s distracted right now.”
“That’s a bad road, and we’re not going down it,” I said firmly.
“Yes, sir. Let me help you up.”
Somehow I made it to my feet, although it felt like I might pass out if I tried to move too fast. We made our way cautiously around the perimeter of the toxic cloud, expecting to be ambushed by more monsters at every step.
Instead, about halfway around the cloud we found a group of termites looking the other way. They were hiding behind a fallen log, popping up to lob acid arrows at someone we couldn’t see and ducking back to avoid return fire. But they were completely exposed from our position, and so distracted they didn’t even notice us.
Jenny stopped, and went up on tiptoes to whisper in my ear. “I’ll start from the right. You start from the left. On three?”
I nodded. She took aim, and held up one finger with her free hand. I awkwardly aimed my own gun, wishing I’d lost the other hand to that backfire.
Was I permanently down a hand? I could heal the damage with time, but regrowing fingers was another matter. Later. Worry about it later.
Two fingers.
The distinctive boom of Bob’s rifle echoed through the woods, and I wondered what he was shooting at. At least he was back up. Did that mean Hana had healed him again?
Three.
I shot, missed, tried again and hit. Moved to the next bug, shot and missed. Missed again, then finally hit. The next one had turned around, and was starting that distinctive motion that meant it was about to spit an acid arrow. Then Jenny blew its head off, and there weren’t any more.
“Friendlies coming out!” She called, leaning around a tree to wave at whoever the termites had been fighting. A bullet narrowly missed her, and went whining past me to bury itself in another tree.
“Hey! Watch it!” Jenny shouted.
“Hold your fire,” Earl shouted.
“Sorry! Sorry! You can come out now,” I heard Dale say.
Jenny did another quick wave before actually leaving cover. We approached to find Earl and Dale holed up in the space between a big tree and the looming bulk of a dead boar, with Tyler lying on the ground behind them. The big black guy looked like he’d been trampled by a boar, and was bleeding badly from a mosquito sting in his shoulder, but he was still clutching his rifle.
The other two weren’t much better off, just a little more mobile. Dale was bleeding from a head wound, and his armor had been wrecked by acid arrows and a boar’s tusk. Earl had avoided the boar, but the bugs had done a number on him.
“Who’s bleeding?” I asked. All three hands went up, so I started with Tyler. That anticoagulant the mosquitoes injected was nasty stuff, and the big guy looked like he wasn’t far from bleeding out. But now that I knew how to fix that problem I could talk at the same time.
“I still hear shooting. Anyone know who and where?”
Earl shook his head. “We all got split up after the gas attack. I think Shasa ended up with Sheryl and Hana, off that way somewhere. Not sure about the others.”
“I’m almost out of ammo,” Dale put in. “Anyone got some 7.62?”
I finished with Tyler, and paused to pull a couple of magazines off my harness. “Here. My rifle is somewhere in that cloud, so I won’t be using it. Earl, you’re next.”
While I was treating him Dale climbed up to take a cautious peek over the top of the dead boar. “I see shooting in two directions. I think that might be Sheryl off to the left. The other group… ah, shit. I think they’re in trouble.”
He laid his rifle over the top of the dead monster, and started carefully squeezing off shots.
Earl was a lot more resistant to the mosquito bites than a normal person, but his wounds still would have been oozing blood for hours. I put a stop to that, did a quick check for other injuries I’d missed, and moved on to Dale. One good thing about the damage to his gear, at least I didn’t have to make him stop shooting to find a patch of bare skin to touch.
I was just about done with that when there was a cry of alarm from Jenny, and she started shooting again. I turned around to find a horde of termites swarming through the trees towards us, and fumbled for my pistol.
Dale and Earl turned to add their firepower to the mix, and even Tyler managed to sit up and get his gun into action. But this wasn’t just a scouting squad. There were dozens of the things scuttling through the trees, erratically bobbing and weaving as they came, and visibility hadn’t improved any since our first fight with them. Some of them died, but the rest were on us in seconds. Then we were down to pistols and knives, and none of us had much aura left.
I think normal people would have died in seconds. But everyone in this group had left normal behind twenty or thirty points ago, and we weren’t going to fall that easily.
Jenny was a whirlwind with knives in both hands, killing anything that got within reach. Dale switched to his axe, while Earl emptied the rest of his pistol’s magazine before dropping it in favor of a machete. Neither of them could match Jenny’s deadly grace, but they were strong enough to cut a termite in half and quick enough to dodge most of the attacks that came their way. Meanwhile, the enhanced reaction time I’d bought to deal with the murder squirrels also let me follow the fight well enough to shoot bugs without endangering my companions.
For a few seconds I thought we might hold them off. Then a termite latched onto Earl’s leg, and distracted him for a crucial moment while two more streamed past him to jump on Tyler. Jenny killed one, but another got past her to bite my foot. An acid arrow smacked into my chest, hissing as it ate into my armor, and I didn’t have time to deal with that because another termite was going for Jenny’s back.
We were killing them. We were killing a lot of them. But we were taking injuries while we did it, and they weren’t stopping. As one moment of terror and violence blended into the next, and the next, I started to realize that we weren’t winning. They were slowly wearing us down. Soon one of us would falter, and it would be all downhill from there.
There was no time to think of a clever plan, when every heartbeat brought another monster intent on eating my face. Nothing to work with, even if I did have time. No fancy spells that would turn the tide. No clever solution bought with the points I kept in reserve.
Was this how it ended? Was I going to die here, just another victim of the monsters? Well then, I’d at least take as many of them with me as I could.
“Hold on, guys! I’ll save you!”
Shasa bulled through the tide of bugs, trampling enemies underfoot as she rushed to plant herself in front of me. Acid bolts splashed off her battered shield, and her mace swept back and forth through the teeming mass of monsters. Then she hunched her back, and roared.
The sound stunned everything in front of her, sending the termites reeling back in fright. Then an impossibly rapid burst of gunfire cleared the ground behind her, leaving only a few stray bugs for us to deal with. I stomped on a termite that was biting Tyler, threw a force missile at one that was up in the trees spitting acid arrows, and found myself with nothing immediately trying to kill me.
Hana came running out of the darkness, vaulted the dead boar’s leg and skidded to a stop next to me. “Healer here! Dale, let me see that arm.”
More bullets poured into the mob of insects, which started to pull back. But then it abruptly cut off. Anthony and Sheryl limped towards us, leaning on each other for support. Sheryl still had her fancy tricked-out rifle in one hand, but her pistol was missing and the police riot gear she’d been wearing was a wreck.
“I’m out,” she complained. “Someone set me up with some 5.56, quick!”
Tyler patted his equipment harness, and came up with one magazine. “Make it count,” he said, tossing it to her.
“Has anyone seen the others?” I asked, eying the insect horde. They’d withdrawn just to the edge of my vision, and taken cover in a patch of dense underbrush. But they weren’t leaving.
“I’m here,” Mitsi said, creeping down the side of one of the tree trunks above me. “Jason is hiding in the trees on the other side of the stink patch, but he’s out of magic.”
“What about Bob?” Earl asked.
Mitsi shrugged. “Don’t know. I got the crows, but there’s still something smart behind the bugs. The flying ones were hunting me up in the trees, but now they’re all gathering up with the spitting ones.”
“Damn. How many are left?”
“Maybe thirty flying ones? I’m not sure about the spitters, but at least a hundred.”
“Last stand at the Alamo,” Earl grumbled darkly.
I sized up our battered group of fighters, and the sad dregs of our ammo supply. Yeah, he was probably right. We weren’t going to move fast enough to get away from the bugs, not without abandoning our injured. But we weren’t dead yet. If the enemy was hesitating, we could make use of the time.
“It looks bad, but we’re not beaten yet. Everyone, grab any mist balls you can reach and buff yourselves. Sheryl’s our best shooter, so I need someone who uses 7.62 to hand off their rifle and ammo to top her up.”
“Take mine,” Dale said. “I’m getting good with this axe.”
“Great. Take his gear, and I’ve got six magazines for you. When they hit us again the mosquitos are your priority targets.”
“You got it.”
What else? Pain and fatigue were making me fuzzy, but we needed a plan.
“Mitsi, when they come back can you keep the bugs off Hana, so she can focus on healing?”
“You want me to stay down here and fight?” The little catgirl glanced in the direction of the gathering swarm, and gulped. But after a moment’s hesitation she nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m almost out of mana,” Hana warned. “I can close cuts and make mosquito bites stop bleeding, but I can’t do anything for acid burns.”
“That’s a lot better than nothing,” I said. “Shasa, step back between those trees. Jenny, kill the ones that get past her. Earl, Dale, you’ve got our flanks. Work fast with the XP harvesting, and focus your buffs on winning this fight.”
I knelt, and started grabbing XP balls from the dead termites at my feet. Most of the others did the same, although Hana and Sheryl were too busy healing and rearming. I eyed the enhancement points I was getting, and another idea occurred to me.
“Hana, the termites give magic points. Grab some when you get a chance, and you can buy up your mana.”
“Oh, good idea. But I didn’t kill any of these?”
“It doesn’t matter. This is do or die time. We’ll worry about even XP division later.”
“Thanks.” She scooped up a mist ball in her free hand, and moved on to check Earl.
Just over two points from each termite, most of it physical. What did I need the most? More aura, for survivability? Maybe, but it didn’t seem very efficient. Reaction speed and fighting skills were all mental, so no joy there. Did I have time to figure out how to buy a regeneration ability?
Jenny hopped up on the dead boar to scoop up its mist ball, and handed it down to Dale. Taking a quick look around, she frowned.
“There’s another group forming up behind us,” she announced. “A few dozen termites, and some mosquitoes.”
“Everyone, I think they’re getting ready to attack,” Shasa warned.
Damn it, no time for anything. I dumped points into fitness, aura and my mana pool indiscriminately. As everyone hurried to take up defensive positions I looked past the front line to see an army of bugs swarming. Giant mosquitoes emerged from the shadows, and groups of termites started forward.
The sky opened up, and a torrential downpour drenched the forest.
The giant insects didn’t like that at all. I saw some of the mosquitoes knocked right out of the air by the sudden rainfall. The termites chittered, ran in circles, and abandoned their formation to fall back under the cover of the bushes.
“Are they retreating? They are!” Dale exclaimed.
“Guess they don’t like getting wet,” Earl drawled. “I suppose they still have termite instincts in there somewhere.”
Thunder boomed overhead, and the rain intensified.
“This is our chance,” I realized. “Everyone, grab all the mist balls you can and get ready to move. Shasa, can you find Bob?”
Shasa hurried over, with a little less bounce than usual. “He’s that way. But we’ll have to hurry, before the rain washes away his scent.”
“Right. Loot as we move, everyone. We’re getting out of here.”