Instinct (2010) (34 page)

The second her fingers took hold, she was swung through the foliage and high into the air, her shoes almost touching the ceiling.

Webster was underneath her, also off his feet. He had lost his grip on the antler and was trying to stay upright.

They hung briefly in mid air then came down hard, shredding and crunching through the plants until the floor rose up to ram into them. Laura felt a rib crack and gave a dark moan through gritted teeth.

By twisting at the last moment, Webster just missed landing on his bad ankle, but this meant his right knee took the impact instead, sending a web of pain spreading up his thigh.

Then they were moving, speeding through the big, solid stalks. The beetle was behind them, so they were being used as a battering ram, smacking into dozens of stalks and branches.

One impact after another left hard shocks of pain
flashing through them. Skin was scraped raw as they rumbled and smacked and rolled and whipped, upside down, backwards, forwards and sideways over the rough floor, into the legs of upturned tables, over scatterings of broken glass and through brambles of claw-sharp thorns.

Arms bent backwards then jerked forwards. Knees ground glass into bloody wounds. Fingers stretched until joints screamed, but still Laura held on.

Then it changed direction, digging the antlers still further into Webster’s thigh and whipping Laura’s neck sideways.

She did not know how much longer she could hold on. Webster’s jacket was slipping further off his shoulders and her grip was severely tested every time the beetle swiped them through a tangle of stalks.

At last they slowed to a stop.

Although the pain and disorientation were overwhelming, they were most troubled by the fact that they were now in complete darkness.

Webster was so dazed he didn’t even feel the antlers release him. Beside him, Laura’s face was stuffed into a mound of soft earth. She tried to turn round but it hurt too much to move her neck.

In the pitch black, all they had to go on was the sound: a chattering, chittering, snickering noise.

They were in a nest.

‘Major,’ Laura said weakly. ‘Major Webster?’

He choked out a strained gasp.

‘Laura? You OK?’ He coughed, wincing at the bark
of pain each constriction of his chest sent through him. There was movement all around them, and Laura knew from the sound that they were surrounded by stag-beetle larvae.

Like a group of rootling moles, the young beetles used their stunted antennae to explore what their mother had brought them.

Whatever Webster and Laura did, they could not get out of range of the rubbery teasing and probing. The movement, accompanied by those vicious, stridulating sounds, peeled back Laura’s fear to its rawness.

They tried to push the antennae away, but there were too many. When they brushed one off, it was replaced by two more.

Webster’s right shoulder had almost been wrenched from its socket, leaving him unable to move his arm. Scrabbling about him, one of the creatures pushed it off his chest. The pain was like a flare of fire. His useless hand lay on the floor as he tried to defend himself with the other.

Without warning, the larvae crawled off to one side. The noise became quieter as each one retreated to the rear of the nest.

Webster wondered what was going on but Laura feared the worst. She knew what these creatures were like in miniature with no increased aggression: voracious feeders mercilessly consuming their way to adulthood. These giant versions would not stop until the two of them were chewed, liquefied and sucked into their stomachs.

From nowhere the mother beetle’s jaw came powering through the air, crashing into Webster’s lifeless bicep. It just missed the main part of the muscle, but the rough stabbing was another torture. He gave a long howl that put the insect off, but only momentarily.

It retracted its mandible, taking bloody flesh with it. Webster howled again.

Laura could only imagine what was happening. She felt tiny eddies of movement in the air and heard the decisive
chomp
of the beetle’s blunt dagger driving into Webster’s arm. Beyond that she was blinded by the darkness.

The beetle moved in.

Rising up on its rear legs, it took aim at Webster’s prone skull.

He rolled his head round to face the creature. Eyelids that had been matted shut with gore separated with crusted stiffness. Webster could see nothing, and the waiting multiplied his terror.

Then another sound.

It was so faint it could barely be heard, but it cheered Webster. He didn’t even know why, but that tiny, faraway echo of a deep, electronic drawl made him feel like this might not be the end.

‘Close your eyes,’ he mumbled, his good hand reaching for Laura’s. ‘Close them tight, now.’

The brilliant flash, like the inside of a lightning bolt, shot through the entire Abdomen. Anything unfortunate enough to be looking would have felt a blowtorch burn searing through its pupils.

The light pulsed for minutes in waves of decreasing strength until it gradually faded to nothing and darkness returned.

Laura and Webster lay on the floor, their fingers intertwined, crusted with dirt, blood and plant sap.

‘You still alive?’ Webster whispered.

‘Yes … You?’

Mills, Jacobs, Madison and Taj were hacking through the jungle behind the MEROS building.

‘We’re going the wrong way,’ said Mills.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Madison.

‘What the fuck would you know?’ Mills spat back.

‘I know you’d be a hell of a lot happier with some nuts on your chin.’

‘No, I’d be a lot happier with this rifle pointing up your arse.’

‘You’ve got it on the brain, man, putting things up guys’ asses.’

‘Jacobs, we’d better find this door pronto before I break this fucker’s face.’

‘Calm down, both of you. Do you really think we have time to have a grade-school argument?’

‘Aaaarrrgghh!’ Taj’s cry sent the birds ripping through the trees. The others ran over to where he was now lying on his back, clutching his foot.

‘What is it?’ asked Mills.

‘Fuckin’ toe!’

Taj went around barefoot, so if he were to walk into a large piece of half-buried concrete there would be pain involved and, as it turned out, a fair amount of blood.

‘Maybe you should go back and get some antiseptic and a Band-Aid on that,’ said Jacobs.

‘Maybe I should,’ winced Taj, limping off.

‘So what the hell is this?’ said Mills.

‘My guess is it’s the top of the staircase, blocked off with concrete,’ replied Jacobs.

‘Are we going to blast it off?’

‘Yes, we are, Madison,’ replied Jacobs. ‘Here’s where you thank us for bringing our escape kit. Mills, I think we need the CS-24.’

Mills smiled. ‘Coming right up.’

‘Is that explosive?’ asked Madison.

‘Well, we’re not going to get very far with fudge.’

‘Is there any danger of … ?’

‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know. Could you mangle whatever is under here so bad that we can’t get through?’

‘If that happens, we blow it up again. We’ve got enough to blast our way through every inch of shit under here if we need to.’

Mills returned with the explosives and detonators.

‘We’ve got to do this in stages. Pack on enough to get through the concrete first.’

‘How much do you think?’

Jacobs picked up a chunk of explosive the size of a cigarette packet and felt its weight. ‘I think that will do the job.’

Mills split it up into smaller sections and attached them by wires to the detonator.

‘That’s it: wide and shallow,’ said Jacobs. Mills set a
short timer and they fell back to the plane to make sure Taj was safely out of the way.

Waiting for an explosion always got the heart pumping. Mills held up his watch for the others to see. They braced themselves as the last seconds ticked down, hoping everything had been set right so they wouldn’t have to risk returning to a primed block of CS-24.

A distant bang followed by a shower of rocky fragments and a drizzle of dust told them it was safe to see what the concrete had revealed.

A blue hatch sat in the middle of a wide circle of scorched earth. It was still partially covered in a thin layer of concrete, so more work would be needed to get through it, but that was not what concerned them.

What occupied every single molecule of their collective attention was the soft, arrhythmic tapping that was coming from the other side.

‘What you think that is?’ said Taj, not at all keen to find out.

‘Could be anything,’ said Jacobs. ‘Could be wasps, could be them. But just to be on the safe side …’

She ran to the back of the plane and returned with a couple of large nets made from the same adapted Kevlar as the netspreaders.

‘Nice thinking,’ said Mills. They laid them across the hatch and bolted them into the ground.

‘Over to you, boys,’ said Jacobs, gesturing towards the hatch wheel.

Taj and Mills stretched open a couple of the net holes and reached in to grasp opposite sides of the
wheel. With the residue of concrete holding parts of it in place, the wheel was a stiff turn, but with a few grunts they got it going. When the lock was free and they could open the door, they looked to Jacobs.

‘OK, guys, get on the other side so the opening is away from you. And be ready for anything.’ She drew her weapon and pointed it at the hatch. ‘On three, open that hatch real, real slow. OK, one …two … three!’

At the first try nothing moved, then the boys heaved again and the hatch opened a crack. Nothing flew out, so they opened it a little further.

The noise stopped. With a tear of concrete their next effort hauled the door wide open, leaving it flat on the ground.

Jacobs and Madison looked down the hole while Taj and Mills lay flat on their backs, knocked clear of the hatch by the effort it had taken to pull it open.

That’s why none of them saw it: clinging to the back of the door was a termite, three feet long, with a bent wing and a broken leg.

Jacobs continued to peer into the staircase. ‘I can’t … Jesus Christ!’

Before she could aim her Glock 17, the termite tore through the net in a single bite and flew off into the jungle.

‘Stop that thing! We can’t let it get away!’ yelled Jacobs. ‘One of you stay here and make sure there aren’t any more of them.’

Jacobs took off with her weapon drawn. She was closely followed by Mills and Madison, who sprinted through the undergrowth, following Jacobs’ path.

At first it was easy to track. One of its four wings was also damaged, and that, coupled with its blindness, meant it had no idea where it was heading.

But then it was in the air, which gave it the kind of options no human could follow. Just as Jacobs was getting close enough for a shot, it took off into the sky. Mills aimed at it hopefully and missed by a long way, and the sound of the gunshot released hundreds of birds into the air, obscuring the termite.

‘Goddamn you, Mills!’ Jacobs exclaimed, coming to an exasperated stop.

‘What? It was getting away. I had to try something. If I’d killed it you’d be patting me on the back.’

‘Yeah, but you didn’t, numbnuts, so she’s looking to use your dick for dogfood.’

‘Madison, I FUCKING SWEAR–’

‘Quit it! We need to look for that bug. If it mates with a regular termite all hell could break loose.’

‘If it mates with a regular termite a whole bunch of lube is going to have to break loose,’ said Madison, chuckling at his own joke.

Jacobs rolled her eyes. ‘OK, split up. We don’t have much time, so if we don’t find it, meet back at the hatch in five.’

Mills and Jacobs headed further into the jungle, while Madison stayed where he was. Moving slowly, he took to pointing his gun around trees like a rookie cop. He had spent little time in the jungle, so didn’t know what to do when a spider monkey came screeching over his head. He almost shot at it, but it was too quick for him.

After a few minutes of walking, he realized that he was completely lost. He had let Mills and Jacobs run off without paying attention to where they had gone. Was it back up the slope or down towards the stream? Was that the tree they had stopped at or was it the one over there by those bushes?

‘Jacobs?’ He could not bring himself to call for help from Mills.

‘Jacobs!’ There was no reply.

She was probably half a mile away by now. And what chance did Madison have of spotting that termite? As far as he knew, it looked like every other bug and rodent in this jungle, only bigger.

But time was ticking on and he had no idea how to get back to the hatch. He turned to see if he could get a better view further up the hill.

As he swished through the bushes he heard a strange noise behind him. He couldn’t place it, but it sounded like Taj demolishing a King-Size Snickers.

He turned to see that the top of the nearest trunk was shaking, even though there was no wind.

The eating noise stopped and the shaking turned to a swaying, accompanied by a whining
cree-aaaak
.

By the time Madison realized it was swaying towards him, he had just enough time to run to the side before it came crashing down, the widest branches skimming his back.

Seconds later, Mills and Jacobs arrived, ignored Madison and ran to the trunk. They both emptied their magazines as the termite was blasted, like a giant
black egg, into a spray of cracked shell and sticky guts.

Satisfied there was no chance the thing was still alive, they holstered their weapons. Madison got to his feet and joined them by the tree stump.

Mills stood over what was left of the termite, grinding the guts into the jungle soil.

‘I knew it’d come looking for a tree. Those things are hard-wired,’ said Jacobs. ‘Didn’t think it’d be such a big one, though. It’s like a goddamn chainsaw.’

Madison tried to look calm, as if he had been expecting the same thing. In truth, he was still trying to slow his heartbeat after narrowly missing getting crushed by a tree trunk.

‘OK,’ said Jacobs. ‘Let’s get back to the hatch.’

She jogged up the slope at a good pace. Mills was right on her shoulder, with Madison struggling to keep up.