Operation: Mongolia

- 14 -

“What is it? What do you see?” Donnie Reid said as Davies went to join Wiggins at the hut doorway.

“More of that blue flashing crap,” Wiggins said. “And it’s getting closer, coming up the rock towards us.”

“The worms?”

“I’d guess so. Stay back by the fire with the professor. Wilko, you stay there and watch our backs. Davies, you’re with me. We saw these wee buggers off easily enough earlier. Let’s hope they didn’t go just to fetch their big brothers.”

The professor was still asleep, not disturbed when Davies stood to move away to the doorway. Donnie saw that Wiggins stood in the open space, his feet in a growing puddle of water coming in from out in the dark. The light from the fire meant that the wall of water and darkness at the door looked like a sheet of gray metal but after a few seconds, he started to see blue flashes show through from the other side.

“None of these fuckers get in here,” Wiggins said. “Is that clear?”

“Yes, Corp,” both Davies and Wilkins replied in unison. Wilkins hadn’t moved from his place beside the fire but he’d turned face on to the doorway and had his weapon raised in readiness. Remembering the cacophony in the service station when the firing started, Donnie clapped his hands over his ears.

The first worm arrived in the doorway seconds later.

The head came through the wall of water, and Wiggins and Davies took two steps back as a six-inch wide mouth opened, as if tasting the air inside the hut. Wiggins put two shots down its throat, blowing it away before Donnie had time to get a good look at it

The shots brought Gillings awake with a startled yell and as if in response, two more of the worms came through the sheet of falling water in the doorway. These were larger, each nearly a foot thick, each with mouths flared open like a flower looking for the sun, white fangs glistening in reflected firelight. Blue static sparked at the interface where their bodies met the sheet of rainwater and once again Donnie smelled ozone and felt his body hair crawl and rise up.

The two men at the door each took a worm and two shots from each of them sent the worms to the floor, little more now than piles of red and pink protoplasm, white teeth scattered like dropped needles at the soldiers’ feet. Professor Gillings was still only half awake and swearing loudly.

“What the fuck is going on? Will somebody tell me what the fuck is happening here?”

Donnie couldn’t take his eyes from the doorway as another worm came through, this one even larger, eighteen inches wide, slithering over the remains of those that had come before, mouth wide as it lunged, like a striking snake, for Davies. The private had to step back quickly and consequently his aim was off—one of his shots missed completely and the second raised a long, ridged wound along the worm’s length. It didn’t slow the beast down and its mouth gaped wider, ready to bite down at Davies’ thigh just as Wiggins stepped forward and fired three shots into its body.

The beast collapsed to the floor, where Davies, his balance recovered, put two more shots down its throat to make sure it stayed down. It fell apart in a mess of pulpy gore, white teeth rattling on the stone floor.

“Let’s show these fuckers who’s the boss around here,” Wiggins said. The corporal stepped into the doorway and began firing, three rounds at a time in rapid bursts, out and downward into the gloom outside the hut. Davies stepped up alongside him and joined in. Donnie had to clamp his hands harder at his ears as the gunfire rang like overhead thunder, echoing around the chamber and setting everything ringing as if they were inside a great bell being struck by hammers.

The men emptied a full magazine each out into the dark—Donnie didn’t bother counting rounds, although the scattered shells on the floor told him there had been scores fired. The air tasted burnt at the back of his throat and even after Wiggins called a cease-fire, the echoes appeared to ring long and loud in Donnie’s ears. When Wiggins spoke, he sounded as if he was far off, shouting into a heavy wind.

“I don’t see any more of the fuckers,” he said to Davies. “Do you see any more?”

“No, Corp,” the private replied. “I think we’ve seen them off again for now.”

Donnie turned to check on the professor in time to see the older man clamber out of his sleeping bag. His face was still pale but Donnie recognized the look of excitement in the man’s eyes—he’d seen that gleam every time they came across a new find at the dig site. Gillings was all the way out of the sleeping bag and kneeling beside the remains of the largest of the downed beasts before Donnie had stood away from the fire.

By the time Donnie reached him, Gillings was sifting among the putrid remains with a pencil.

“We’ve got a mouth, teeth, skin, gut, rectum,” he said, pointing at places along the length of the thing. “A simple worm for all intents and purposes. So what causes the electrical discharges? There’s bugger all else here.”

Donnie knelt by the professor’s side, covering his mouth against a rising stench of decomposition. What little there was of the worm was going fast, turning into a thick waxy residue.

“It must be something in the tissue,” Donnie replied. “Something at a cellular level.”

Gillings sifted the pulpy protoplasmic ooze with the tip of his pencil. The red skin was breaking up and melting as the decomposition became even more rapid. He held the pencil up and the ooze dripped thickly from the point. It seemed to be steaming faintly.

“It’s not acidic, is it?” Wilkins asked.

“It’s a worm, not a bloody alien,” the professor replied.

“If you say so, Prof,” Wilkins replied. “But I’m pretty sure we never learned about anything like this in Mrs. Graham’s O-level biology class.”

“No, I doubt if you would,” Gillings replied. He was distracted again, sifting through the remains with the pencil again, as if expecting to find something.

“So what the fuck is it?” Wilkins continued.

“To find that out we’d have to capture one to study it properly,” he said.

“Aye, good luck with that,” Wiggins said from the doorway. “Leave that thing alone, would you? You don’t ken where it’s been.”

“I ken where it’s going though,” Donnie said, looking down as the ooze dried on the stone floor into ridges of wax. Only the teeth were left behind, thirty or more of them. Donnie lifted two of them, each as long and thin as the professor’s pencil, and knocked them together. They rang like clinked glasses.

“Silicaceous?” Gillings said.

“Looks like it,” Donnie said, raising one of the teeth for a closer look. It was the same shade of white along its whole length, as smooth and clean as fine porcelain, cold to the touch despite the heat of the room, no obvious root that might have held it in place in the mouth and with a slight barb at the pointed end. He touched the barb, feeling the cruel point of it, like a fish hook.

“Whatever gets caught in that mouth isn’t getting out in a hurry,” Donnie said, remembering how quickly the camel had been taken earlier.

“Aye,” Wiggins replied. “Top tip for everybody, remember to keep your fingers, toes, and tadgers well clear. Are we learning anything here, or are you just playing in shite?”

“The truth?” Donnie said as he stood away from the remains. “More the latter than the former.”

Gillings attempted to stand from his crouched position but his legs gave way and almost fell before Davies got an arm around him.

“Back to bed for you, Professor,” the private said. “That’s enough excitement for one night.”

“I bloody well hope so,” Wiggins muttered under his breath and went back to guard duty in the doorway as Donnie helped the professor back into the sleeping bag.

The professor fell asleep again almost immediately. Wilkins reheated the coffee in the pot and Donnie took a mug and a smoke over to Wiggins at the door.

“Anything moving?” Donnie asked.

“Naw, they’ve buggered off again. If we’re very lucky, they’ll have learned their lesson, but from what I saw, they don’t have any kind of brains at all, do they?”

“Didn’t look like it,” Donnie replied. “They just open their mouth and eat anything that comes in reach.”

“Like me after a night on the bevvy,” Wiggins replied.

While Wiggins drank his coffee, Donnie bent to have a look at one of the oval vases that lined the walls of the hut. He noticed that all but the two on either side of the doorway were connected by strands of what looked to be copper wire and that there was a spare length of wire wound around the top of the one on the left of the door. He remembered the show they’d been given by the monks.

“I think these vases are meant to be connected,” he said.

“Aye? So what?” Wiggins answered, wincing as he took a deep draw of smoke from one of Donnie’s cheroots.

“They’re batteries, at least I think they are,” Donnie replied. “Remember back in the monastery, how they used them to keep the worms enclosed in the sand pit?”

Wiggins nodded.

“Aye, so what?” he said again.

“So, what if we can use them here to keep the beasties out?”