Operation: Sahara

-THEN-

I peered up to the steps behind the statue, it seemed that I felt fresher air in my face as I did so, but the sound wasn’t coming from there, it was coming from outside, out in the valley. And it was most definitely getting louder.

Benson and Hynd had started shooting before I reached the archway. I saw what they were firing at as I reached their position.

Their target was as black as that statue inside, not quite as large, being only eight feet from tail to pincers, but it was the biggest bloody beetle I ever hoped to see. And it seemed to be very much alive. Moonlight glinted off one pincer that looked as sharp as any razor as it came forward across the valley floor, heading straight for the temple entrance.

“Well don’t just stand there, lads,” I said to Benson and Hynd. “Shoot the bloody thing again.”

Hynd fired, his shot ricocheted off the carapace and left no sign of a wound, and the oncoming beetle did not slow.

“What do you think we’ve been trying to do, Sarge?” Benson replied, firing another shot that did nothing to stop the approaching beast. By this time the rest of the squad had arrived in the archway entrance. I didn’t even have to give the order, they lined up and sent shot after shot at the beetle which finally faltered under the onslaught after two of its front legs were blown out from under it. It collapsed in the dirt, still not dead until I ordered one last volley put into it for good measure. Finally it stopped twitching. In the dark it looked like no more than just another large rock on the ground.

The valley echoed with the shots then fell still and quiet, but not for long. The whine I’d heard earlier, the one that had alerted me to trouble in the first place, started up again, a drone that came from everywhere and nowhere at once, filling the night air with a hum that seemed to set my very bones vibrating inside me.

“What the hell is this shite, Sarge?” Mac said beside me.

“I don’t know, lad,” I replied. “But get back inside the passage, no sense in making ourselves any bigger targets than we need to.”

The squad complied, and just in time as the rocks on the verges of the valley floor started to rise up and creep forward, not rocks at all, but more of the huge black beetles, a great many more, scores of them, all coming our way.

We used the tables from inside the temple as makeshift barricades, getting them up just in time as the valley floor filled up with crawling beetles, varying in size from little more than a foot across to monsters more than ten feet in length and as tall as a man at the height of their domed shells. At first they scarcely seemed interested in us at all. They fed on the one we’d just killed, stripping it to pieces in seconds. When I saw how expertly a large beetle sliced the dead one open with its pincers, I knew exactly what had happened to poor Jennings, and I remembered.

We had found his body inside the temple.

There might be more of these things at our back.

I sent Hynd and Benson to keep an eye on the inside and give them a chance of a break and a smoke while the rest of us lined up against the makeshift barricade. Several of the men needed fresh ammo; I sent Mac to fetch a box from the donkey.

That was all it took. Mac went over toward the beast, the donkey brayed in response, the sound carrying clear across the valley floor, and every one of the beetles outside suddenly took note of our presence. The humming drone rose to a higher pitched whine and now that we were close enough I saw that it was caused by the beasts rubbing their back legs together so fast that they seemed little more than a blur. The sound was eerily spectral, the only thing I had heard that was remotely similar was a wolf pack in the Afghan hills, but this was worse, it felt unnatural, against any law of nature with which I was familiar, setting my teeth on edge and bone of my skull to buzzing.

I had little time to dwell on it however. I was still checking my revolver to ensure I was fully loaded when the beasts attacked our defenses. Fortunately, the squad remembered their drills and waited for my order. I let the beasts approach to some thirty yards distance, then gave the command.

“Aim for the legs. Open fire.”

The first volley didn’t stop them all, but enough went down to cause a feeding frenzy among the rest as they quickly forgot about us at the sudden availability of something else to eat. A second volley added more carnage to their feast. But I saw little sense in continually feeding what was, after all, our enemy. I ordered the squad to stop firing, the two volleys had already filled the air with the tang of powder and smoke, and my ears rang for long seconds afterward but when things cleared, I still heard the drone, the high whine of the beetles. And although we had indeed felled a dozen or more of their kind, the valley floor still swarmed with them.

But for the moment at least, they seemed to have lost all interest in us again, being fully intent on dismembering and devouring their kith and kin.

“What the bloody hell are those things, Sarge?” Mac asked. He’d already put down his rifle and was lighting up a smoke. I hadn’t ordered a stand down, then again, neither had the lieutenant, and it was his job more than mine. I looked around for the officer; he hadn’t fired a shot, but was standing, some yards back in the corridor near the donkey and was clearly in a blue funk.

“They’ve got us cut off,” he said, again loud enough that all could hear. “And have you seen them feed? And what they did to Jennings? We can’t fight the likes of these. We’re going to die here. We’re all going to die.”

His voice had been rising the whole time, and now echoed around the corridor. The donkey picked up on his panic and started to bray again. The sound of the beetles’ drone outside got louder, more insistent.

“Shut that bloody thing up,” Mac shouted. I wasn’t sure whether he meant the donkey or the officer but there was certainly one of them I could deal with immediately. I slapped the young lieutenant, hard. He went quiet, a new red mark on his cheek accentuating his sudden paleness.

“I’ll see you in chains and flogged for that,” he said when he recovered his composure.

“Better that than in the belly of one of yon beasties,” I replied. “Now be a good gentleman and keep quiet; you’re frightening my lads.”

He at least had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. He must have seen that I was more than ready to hit him again if it came to that. I turned my attention to the donkey, managing to calm it down without having to hit it; it clearly had more sense than our young C.O.

But I was too late. Mac shouted out from the barricades.

“Here they come again.”

I got back to the men just in time to get them lined up properly again.

“Put that fag out, MacLeod. Eyes front, pick your targets. Remember, aim for the legs.”

The moon had risen higher in the past ten minutes and now lit up the full length of the valley floor. I had a good, too good, view of the throng of beasts rallied against us. They seemed to cover the whole area in a seething black carpet, the larger ones crawling over the smaller in their haste to be at us. I’ve stood in some tight spots in my years of service, but nothing had ever chilled me to the core so much as those few seconds before the shooting started.

We just had enough room for all of us to line up along the barricade. Lieutenant Timkins was still holding back in the tunnel, so I called Hynd and Benson forward.

“The Lieutenant has got out backs, haven’t you, sir?” I said, and this time I made sure I said it loud enough for all to hear. The young officer still looked pale, terrified even, but he nodded in reply, and then I had to turn away, for I couldn’t afford to waste any more time on him.

The beetles were nearly upon us.

“Fire at will!” I shouted, and the valley echoed and rang with the crack of Lee Enfield rifles. The first rank of beetles fell immediately but this time the pack behind did not stop, either already engorged on their previous feeding, or too intent on reaching us, I would never know which. I took the legs off a big bugger that must have been near twelve feet from pincers to rear end, and Mac took another that looked bigger still, but no matter how many we put down still more clambered over and among the fallen.

The air stank of powder and also acidic tang I realized must be coming from the dead beasts themselves. Their bodies were piling up in front of the barricade, with ever more pushing up behind them, but luckily for us the press of beetles against their own dead was creating almost as effective a barricade as the old tables. And I knew my squad could keep pumping fire into them for quite some time yet, as long as the shells held out.

Even as I had that thought the first call for ammo came down the line, then another.

“Lieutenant,” I called out. “We need a box of shells over here right now.”

I turned, expecting to see Timkins getting the long box off the donkey’s back. Instead the corridor was empty, there was no sign of our lieutenant, nor of the donkey, and more importantly, we had no more ammo to hand.

“I’m out,” Mac called from the barricade.

“Me too,” shouted Benson, just as a large black beetle forced its way forward. Jock stabbed it in the eye with his bayonet, then sliced a leg from under it. It was a small victory, for another crowded in immediately to take its place, with more coming over the top from behind it. Jim Woods tried the same trick with his bayonet but was grabbed tight in a huge pincer and swept away out of sight before any of the rest of us could move. His screams were loud, but mercifully short lived.

“I’m out,” another man shouted from the line.

The beetles were now forcing themselves against the overturned tables and we were being pushed back to avoid being swamped, back into the corridor. If we were pushed back all the way to where it opened out into the temple, we would then be overrun in seconds. I had few choices left. I emptied my revolver into a huge beast that was threatening to charge through our defenses all on its own, and gave the order.

“Fall back, quickly now. Back to the temple, and back to yon staircase. It’s our only chance.”

As a man, we turned and fled. I heard, but didn’t see, the old tables of our barricade being torn into so much kindling as the beetles came through after us. Then there was only the sound of our running footsteps on stone and the ever increasing howl and drone of the beetles as they forced their way over and around each other in their desire to flood into the temple.

The lieutenant was already on the staircase behind the statue, trying to coax the donkey up the narrow steps. He saw us coming across the temple floor and with a squeal like a startled child turned and ran, bounding up the steps with no seeming thought to the danger of falling. He was soon lost in the gloom above. I had no time to consider his treachery just then, I had to get the men organized before we were completely swamped. Luckily for us the donkey did not bolt with the lieutenant, and stood long enough to allow Mac to divest it of the ammo box.

“Fill your sporrans, lads,” I called out as I tried to find the box of cartridges for my revolver. “Then up the stairs, sharpish.”

That was my plan, the only one I had, but I soon saw it wasn’t going to work. The beetles swarmed into the temple, pouring through the archway and quickly covering the whole floor, if we turned our backs on them we’d be taken immediately. Our only option was a retreat up the stairs, but not a full, running flight, we’d have to take it slowly, watching our backs the whole way.

And hope against hope that the buggers would give us the time to make some kind of an escape.

One thing I didn’t have to worry about was the donkey; as soon as we got the ammo off its back it turned and fled up the stairs, following Timkins into the darkness above.

“Follow that donkey,” Mac shouted, and got a dry laugh from the rest of us. Then the beetles were upon us, and our fight for survival really began.

As a man we backed away to the stairs and started up. I was among the first on the stairs, next to Mac, Benson and Hynd and the four of us did our best to provide covering fire for the poor chaps bringing up the rear. Having to fire over the heads of our men sorely hampered our effectiveness; we couldn’t help them with the closest beetles, instead we could only hope to keep enough of them at bay so that the nearest could be dispatched.

It worked, for a time at least, with us four at the top dragging the ammo box up with us, step by agonizing step, dispensing shells and providing covering shots where we could. But one by one the chaps fighting below us started to succumb to the encroaching horde of black carapaces. Ally Dunlop fell when he was too occupied with a pincer heading for his face to notice the smaller beetle that scuttled below his defense. It took a swipe at his shin, opening a wound down to the bone that sent the man to his knee, then quickly under a squirming, ravenous pile of the beasts. Colin Campbell stepped into his place and lasted as we backed up half a dozen steps, but a big brute of a beetle, ten feet long or more, barreled its way through its brethren, up the staircase and launched itself straight at the man. He put a bullet in its left eye and sliced its legs away from under it with his bayonet but its momentum carried it forward. A huge pincer caught Campbell by his waist, and his struggles, and the weight of the beast itself, toppled them both off the steps and away down to the temple floor, now some ten yards below us. At least the man was dead before he hit the ground, for the feeding frenzy that followed was a terrible thing to behold.

After that we developed a strange kind of rhythm for several minutes, reloading, dragging the ammo, then volleying covering fire before starting the process all over again. Nim Asbury was now our last line of defense, he took to it with gusto. He’d dispensed with the Lee Enfield in preference for his service sword, which he used to great effect in slicing legs and popping eyeballs, all the while weaving and bobbing like a dancer, keeping himself just out of reach of advancing pincers. He was one of the strongest, fittest men in the squad, but even he weakened eventually. He mistimed a thrust; his sword stuck between adjoining plates of the closest attacker’s carapace and was dragged from his grasp. A beetle caught him by the ankle, another took him around the thigh, and he too tumbled away out of view to the ground that was now thankfully lost from sight in gloom below.

Still we climbed, ever higher into the darkness. There was little light to aid us from the temple below. When I chanced a look upward it was only to see a sheet of black, whether it was rock or merely a clouded sky I could not tell. In truth, it scarcely mattered, for it looked like we would be taken long before we reached the end of the staircase. The last two men, Smith and Henderson, both fell within minutes of each other, until there was only Benson, Hynd, Mac and me standing.

“I’m right sorry to have got you lads killed,” I said as I shot out the front legs of the nearest attacking beetle. Mac leaned over my shoulder and speared the beast through the right eye, before sending it tumbling away with a push.

“Dinna talk shite, man,” he said, edging past me to take what should have been my place at the rear. “We’re no’ done yet.” He put a bullet into the head of a huge beetle, an instant before it was set to lop off his head. Then, dropping the rifle at his feet, he stepped forward and swung his backpack at the thing. I heard the pipes inside the pack squeal, and the beetles below us, as if in reply, answer with a louder drone of their own. The huge beetle Mac had shot wavered, and I thought it might tumble over. Then it steadied, and pushed forward. Mac planted his legs firmly against the join of step and rock and pushed back, grabbing its front legs and holding the beast high and away from his body. Its bulk covered the staircase, blocking any access from below. Mac had effectively created a new barricade, one that would only hold as long as he had his strength.

“Now, awa’ ye go, man,” Mac said. His muscles were bunched tight, and the strain showed in every feature, but he managed a grin, his teeth showing too white in the dark. “Get up the stairs. If yon wee jobbie Timkins is nae here, he must have got out. Go find him and give him a kick up the arse for me and the lads.”

Even then I might have stayed, but Benson and Hynd dragged me away, and put themselves below me on the staircase. They stood over the remaining ammo in the box, loading their weapons. I took the chance to reload my revolver with the last six cartridges I had in my sporran and moved to cover them, but they too pushed me away.

“Do what Mac said, Sarge,” Benson said. “We’ll watch the big man’s back for ye.”

Hynd spat out a wad of chewing tobacco.

“Aye, get yerself gone, Sarge,” he said. “We’re right ahin ye. Somebody’s got to get out of this mess, how will they ken who to give the medals to if we’re all killed here?”

Mac shouted.

“Stop bloody arguing about it, just fuck off the lot of ye.” His legs slipped, then he caught his grip again, but I saw he was weakening.

“I’ll see you all up top,” I said. “And that’s a bloody order.”

“Aye, right you are, Sarge,” Benson said, moving behind Mac on the stairs. Hynd moved to stand next in line.

“Tell your wife I love her,” Hynd said, winked, then turned his back on me.

I turned so that they would not see my tears, and ran, full pelt, up the empty staircase.

I didn’t turn, didn’t look back, so didn’t see them fall, but I heard well enough; I heard the Lee Enfields crack and whistle, I heard Mac bellow and cry, heard his defiant shout of ‘Fuck off, bastards,’ then a last howl of pain. Hynd and Benson’s guns fell quiet seconds later, and no matter how much I strained, I heard no more.