Operation Syria

— 7 —

It was a tight squeeze to get everybody and the bodies into and onto the jeep. When Banks sat in front beside Wilkins, the nominated driver, the sarge and Brock were, somewhat precariously, perched in the back beside the gun, with the dead stuffed, haphazardly and with little in the way of respect, on the floor at their feet. It didn’t help that they were partially encased in web, or that the black wounds were suppurating, an advanced decay having set in that stank even worse than the cooked head on the hob had done.

The only good thing about the situation was that Brock had found a belt of ammo for the big gun and had loaded it up; if anyone came at them, they were going to get a blast of high-caliber shells in their face as introduction.

The main road out of the square was the one they needed to take to head back up to the escarpment and the ancient town on the hill. Banks kept an eye on the rooftops, fearing an ambush as Wilkins drove them away.

“We’re not stopping for anyone or anything, got that, lad?” he said.

“Got it, sir,” Wilkins replied. He handled the jeep like someone used to driving fast. He put his foot down hard as they left the square and they sped through the empty town leaving a cloud of dust and sand in their wake. Banks checked his wing mirror and saw that the sky was lightening in the east at their back.

Dawn was coming.

The rest of the town looked as dead — murdered — as the part they’d left. Gray web cloaked many of the shops and dwellings and more cocooned bodies hung from balconies and light fittings, swaying in the breeze. Some of them oozed, dripping black noxious fluids and again Banks glimpsed a wavering, oily vapor in the air, one that he thought might be luminescent in full dark. He was glad of the approaching sunrise as they barreled through the empty streets.

It was going too well to last. They approached the edge of town and could clearly see the road winding upwards towards the escarpment but the way ahead was blocked the full stretch across by a mass of web, thick enough to be nearly solid. It was also eight feet high and definitely impassable.

“Sir?” Wilkins said. “What do you want to do?”

Banks considered telling the lad to put his foot down, try to blast through but the risk of getting tangled up in that gray shit was too large to take.

“Hang a left,” he said. “Let’s see if we can go round it.”

A left turn, taken at speed, brought them into a narrow alleyway, fifteen feet high, where the night held off the approach of dawn. Wilkins put on the jeep’s headlights, which showed another gray mass blocking their exit fifty yards ahead.

It’s the perfect spot for an ambush.

“Back up. Back up now,” Banks shouted.

It took the lad a few seconds to brake, then find reverse gear on the unfamiliar stick, and that was long enough for Banks to look in his mirror and see two of the dog-sized spiders already spinning web side to side across the alley entrance behind them.

“Contact rear!” Banks shouted and felt the jeep rock as Hynd and Brock tried to get the mounted gun turned to the alley entrance. Wilkins had the vehicle reversing, slowly back towards the fast-growing web. Above them black shapes loomed, darker humped shadows on the rooftops against the lightening sky.

“Bugger this for a lark,” Banks said. “Floor it, lad. If we don’t get through now, we never will.”

The jeep shuddered as the gun in the back fired five quick blasts. The sound was deafening inside, setting Banks’ ears ringing. He tried to check his mirror but all he saw was a gray blur, coming up fast. He braced his feet in the stairwell, anticipating impact but the jeep’s momentum was enough to drive through the strands of web, although they were slowed considerably in the process. The big gun fired, twice more and the sarge shouted from the back, his voice coming to Banks as if from far away, in a wind.

“Incoming to the east. Multiple bogeys.”

Banks wound down his window and looked out. Dawn was close now, a pinkish glow lighting the horizon. It only served to illuminate the roadway back into the town center, from where a mass of the huge spiders some thirty feet deep filled the road from side to side, scuttling as fast as a running dog, coming straight at them.

“Get us the fuck out of here, Private,” Banks shouted.

Wilkins didn’t pause to question the order. He swung the jeep around until they faced across the road, then floored the accelerator as they barreled into an even narrower alleyway, one just about wide enough to accommodate them. Banks’ wing mirror screeched against the wall for a second then ripped off to tumble away behind them. Up top the heavy gun rattled, shaking the frame of the jeep. Ahead of them, the river was coming up fast at the end of the alley and Banks didn’t see anywhere they could turn to get back to the main roadways.

Three black shadows dropped from the rooftops at the far end of the alley and immediately spun web across their exit. He had a matter of seconds to make a decision and there were no exits on either side of them, not even a doorway or window, only a blank expanse of wall looming over them.

“Floor it,” he shouted and braced himself again.

The spiders had managed to spin half a dozen lengths of web across the entrance. The jeep went through them, barely pausing this time. Wilkins hit the brakes as they flew out the alley onto a wooden wharf but their momentum was too great. They skidded in a squeal of brakes and tires on wood, then toppled in slow-mo, off the end of the jetty. Banks felt a split second of weightlessness as they dropped four feet or so into the water, hitting the river with a hard smack.

“Bale out,” Banks shouted and, having to push against the weight of water struggled out of his door as the jeep sank. He managed to stand up, thigh deep, holding his weapon high. He saw Brock trying to save the bodies in the back as the jeep drifted slowly downstream in the current.

“Leave them, lad. At least they’ll get a clean burial here.”

The bodies drifted away, overtaking the jeep and heading away downstream. The vehicle stuck fast as it hit bottom. The sarge stood up on the back. He trained the big gun back to the shore, where half a dozen spiders stood, front legs raised, twitching as if tasting the air.

“Have some of this, wankers,” he shouted and emptied what was left of the belt of ammo into the beasts on the jetty, blasting them into pieces of leg, body, mouth parts, and burst eyes that fell into the water and drifted slowly away alongside the dead bodies.

The gun ran dry, the ringing echo of its boom and roar lasting long in Banks’ ears before a silence fell again around them. All that was left on the jetty was scattered remains of blasted spiders. They waited to see if anything else was going to come out of the alleyway but it stayed shadowy and still.

With the sun rising at their backs, Banks led the men away, wading up river, staying in the water until they were well past the outskirts of the town.