come.'
'What are they, Skip?' Julie asked.
'Not know,' he answered. 'Smell… smells not from… here.'
The ten of us were spread out over a forty-foot area, holding low behind trees, roots, logs and mud. Each of us was scanning the swamp for threats. The rain and mist made it difficult to see very far. My area of responsibility was a confused mass of light and shadows, vines and trees, moss and mud. Nothing moved. The swamp was quiet except for the noises of small animals and the occasional bubble of mysterious organic gasses creeping to the surface.
Gunfire and explosions erupted to the north. Bravo team had made contact. Some of the Newbies jumped at the sounds and began to turn.
'Hold!' Harbinger shouted. 'Watch your area! That's their problem. Deal with yours!'
I forced myself back into position as the supersonic cracks of rifle bullets and the duller whumps of high explosive filled the air. Bravo team was unleashing hell upon something. After several seconds the initial salvo died down until there was only a sporadic firing of weapons. Then nothing.
Franks' deep voice drifted through the trees, shouting orders and commands to his men.
'Bah. Whatever they are, they ain't so tough,' Sam said as he spit into the water.
Harbinger held up his hand for quiet. He closed his eyes and listened intently, almost as if he was meditating. Suddenly he stiffened and swore quietly.
There was a whistling noise from the direction of Bravo. Then another, and another, until the swamp echoed with dozens of the strange sounds, and then the damp thuds of hundreds of separate impacts. Wails of pain and human agony followed.
'What was that?' Lee blurted, a hint of terror in his voice.
He did not get an answer. Harbinger snapped his tommy gun into position and squeezed off a long controlled burst into a patch of black water. The. 45 slugs tore into the muck and geysered upwards. The surface exploded under the impacts as something sprang upward through the mist.
I got a brief glimpse of the first creature before it was torn to pieces in the storm of hot lead and silver, orange fluids spraying into the surrounding foliage. It was about the size of a man, only hunched and misshapen. Insectile in its joints and extra limbs, the creature seemed all unnatural angles and claws, with two sets of interlocked jaws, and dozens of red eyes set into a blunted skull of a face. It ruptured open as the bullets pierced its carapace, almost as if its internal contents had been under great pressure. The torn thing thrashed about, falling backwards into the muck, finally lying still.
It was only because of my hearing protection, and its electronic amplification of sound, that I was able to hear Julie talking to herself. She sounded terrified and shaken. Julie Shackleford did not scare easily.
'Not them. Not again.'
'What was that thing?' Holly shouted. None of the experienced Hunters answered. I lifted my cheek from my stock, looking over at the others. Milo blinked slowly, as if in disbelief. Sam stared silently into the distance. Julie had begun to shake uncontrollably. Harbinger changed magazines, looking down at his weapon instead of us. In the background more screams and random gunfire erupted from Bravo. Finally Harbinger pulled the bolt back, regarded it solemnly, and finally answered us.
'It's the things from the Christmas party.'
'God help us,' Milo said.
'This time we're armed, though,' Sam answered. 'It was hand-to-hand then, now we got guns.'
'So do they,' Harbinger replied sadly. 'So do they.'
'Incoming!' Julie shouted as she fired into the swamp. Orange-and-red shapes appeared from the murk or came charging out of the fog. Once again I heard the whistling noise, only this time it was closer, much closer. Something impacted the mud inches from my face, spraying my goggles. It appeared to be a long bone spine, dripping in dense orange fluid. I aimed at the source, a hunched insectoid demon thing, and stroked the trigger, blasting a slug through its thorax. More spines flew into our position, thudding into our cover like a volley of medieval arrows. The creature I shot stumbled, righted itself, hunkered down, pointed its crest in our direction, and launched another spine, cracking it deep through the bark of the tree I was hiding behind. I hit the creature with two more rapid shots, bursting some sort of internal fluid sack, and sent it back into the mud.
Spines landed all around me, each one impacting like a spear. The demons bobbed and crawled through the trees, closing the distance for their primitive weapons. They appeared to have no concept of fear, charging straight into our position, bodies exploding and breaking, limbs tearing off and being left behind, alien eyes pushing onward.
'Milo! Light 'em!' Harbinger ordered. Milo dropped his rifle onto its sling and scooped up the flamethrower. He fired a ten-second burst through the swamp, igniting the creatures, engulfing them in flames, sending them crackling back into the water. Some of the creatures reappeared, still burning, the water not being able to extinguish the lethal chemical mixture. They thrashed about, launching spines randomly until they expired.
Then it was still. There were no more moving orange shapes, only exploded and burned husks, charred and opened like overmicrowaved hot dogs. In the distance horns sounded as the demons regrouped, preparing to attack again.
'Everybody okay?' Harbinger shouted. One by one we shouted back in the affirmative. Somehow our team had gotten through the skirmish uninjured. Judging by the cries coming from Bravo's position, they had not been as lucky.
'They ain't so tough,' Sam bellowed angrily as he shoved more massive shells into his. 45–70.
'Sorry, Cowboy. Those were just scouts,' Harbinger answered. 'They were just probing us.'
'How do you know?' I asked. 'You don't even know what these things are.'
'I can just tell. The ones we fought in '95 were just workers or drones. Mindless things with just claws and teeth. These things are the soldiers. They're gonna come again. That was just a test.'
Explosions rocked from the direction of Alpha team as their position was attacked. We waited in anxious silence as the battle raged on without us. Sure enough, after a few minutes of fighting, Charlie team was attacked in turn. A stray bullet pulped a tree branch above my head. Other bullets whipped around us, sounding like angry bees.
'Watch your field of fire, you derelicts!' Sam shouted uselessly.
'MHI! I'm coming in,' Franks shouted as he splashed toward us. He pushed his way to Harbinger's position and squatted in the mud.
'How's it going?' our leader asked.
'Two dead. Two wounded. One critical,' the stoic man answered. He did not bother to ask about us. 'We need to push out. Head for extraction.'
'Negative. They can breathe under water. We could walk right into an ambush. If they get in close, those spear chuckers are gonna own us,' Harbinger stated flatly. 'We need to hold here.'
'They are feeling us out for a rush.'
'You saw how fast they move. We can't ditch them through the swamp, and with no cover, they're gonna tear us up.'
'We have to fire and maneuver,' Franks insisted.
'Listen, we're not fighting people. This ain't the army,' Harbinger insisted. 'We move out and we're dead.'
'We're moving with or without you,' Franks said. 'Two minutes. We'll send up flares.' The federal agent swiveled and moved away. 'You can stay if you want.'
Harbinger watched him go. 'Shit.'
'Earl? What do you wanna do?' Sam asked.
'We ain't got much choice. Without them, we get flanked and we're dead. We have to stick together.' He changed the tone of his voice so that we could all hear. 'Okay, team. When we see the flares, we move back the way we came. Lay down fire on anything that looks suspicious.' He tried to rally us. 'We can do this. We are the best. We've beaten these orange bastards before. I'm on point, then Skippy and Ed. We have the best senses. If we fire on a position, follow suit, it means we saw something.' He switched magazines. 'I'm loading tracers. I'll mark it, you kill it. Everybody get ready.'
Flares rose into the rain-drenched sky. A cold weight shifted in my gut. The swamp before us was vast with
