Author: Michael Cole
Date: 2023-09-26 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Science Fiction
Description: Deputy Thomas Rodney is no stranger to tense situations. Having served multiple tours in the worst of environments, facing death had practically become just another day at the office. But nothing could have prepared him for this. In a woodland county in the Pacific Northwest, a sinister presence has awakened. A roadwork crew has disappeared without a trace; a truck is found run off the road; a lakefront property is mysteriously vacant, its roof damaged as though something large descended from high above; and an eerie quiet has overtaken the countryside. In the curving hills, the quiet gives wa
Publisher: SEVERED Press

G.o.r.e Sector

HIVE

A NOVEL BY MICHAEL COLE

www.severedpress.com

Copyright 2023 by Michael Cole

CHAPTER 1

Since the fall of the Ecclesiastes Intergalactic Meteor Storm of 2019, there had been many strange reports circling the globe, all of which centered around bizarre circumstances. Unexplained disappearances, sightings of unusual lifeforms, covert military action, coverups. Basically, the normal world amplified by a thousand. But these were different from the usual hush-hush, cloak and dagger stories. Wars, government conspiracies, military industrial complex, the World Economic Forum, and all the other behind-the-curtain happenings—those were all child’s play compared to these stories.

The story of a winged serpent flying over the Indonesian Sea was tackled so quickly by the media arm of the world’s governments, it was almost obvious there was something to it. Only the absurdity of the story prevented the public from obsessing over answers. Many went with the assumption that it was a hoax.

It was when a cargo ship disappeared in the West Pacific that people really got interested. A New Panamax, twelve-hundred feet in length, sunk to the depths in clear weather. Some believed it to be terrorism, possibly an act of aggression from North Korea, Russia, or China. Except, what gain was there in sinking a typical cargo ship delivering trade products?

Then came the testimony of the lone survivor of the freight ship Jack Arnold. Rescued by the USCGC Kimball, he was sent to a military hospital in Honolulu. Not much was heard from him, except for one brief video blog he sent to the internet.

“It’s real. I saw it. Cast from the gates of Hell, it rose from the sea, its multi-armed form encompassing the freighter as though it was a toy. It was not a storm or an enemy warship. It was a monster.”

The government’s efforts to remove the video only drew more attention to the matter, from those who paid attention, at least. Most of the public lived day to day, not wanting to concern themselves with matters outside of their home and workspaces. The comfort of modern-day technology and entertainment often monopolized the attention of the average individual, even as more concerning reports made their way to the digital spiderweb which was the internet.

Over the past two years, more and more stories surfaced, all of which were about sightings of unusual biological lifeforms, most of which were giant and aggressive in nature. For those who kept track, it wasn’t the reported sightings themselves that drew speculation, but the government response.

There was the downed jumbo jet that disappeared over Egypt, one of its passengers texting a loved one about seeing a large shape in the sky; the small town in Mexico whose entire population disappeared overnight just days after a deep crevice opened up nearby; the sunken shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico, found with large gashes in its hull.

With each one, the government was quick to set up a news conference with a story that was clearly concocted on the fly, shielded by the usual rhetoric of “we will wait and see what the investigation reveals”.

In most cases, they either let the story dissipate into the void or came up with some kind of explanation. The problem with government storytellers is that they often lacked understanding of the details at hand. For instance, the shrimp boat was reported to have run aground, which was the explanation for the breaches in the hull. Except, the location where it reportedly sunk was over four hundred feet deep, the nearest shallow waters over twenty miles away.

Nothing added up. The rumors seemed too fantastical to be true, but the official narrative usually failed to make sense. And why was the government so quick to get on top of these reports?

That was the question some people had on their minds. That, and to what extent were these stories true?

And what strange event would unfold next?

There was a time when Thomas Rodney would have chastised himself for entertaining such bizarre possibilities, especially during a police investigation. Today, it was a different world. Even if the truth was hidden, its ripple effect had swept the planet regardless. Something strange was going on, and now it had reached the quiet area of Ramsey County.

Today had already been weird enough as it was. During the dayshift, Thomas had been busy handling a ruckus caused by a group of out-of-towners who thought it would be fun to start a brawl. It was an all-units type of call, which put tasers and expandable batons to good use. Only when shift change neared was Thomas able to patrol the forest. As usual, he gladly volunteered for the overtime. His home was a little too empty for him as of late.

A glance at his ring finger served as a daily reminder of the emptiness within him.

It had been a long drive through woodland areas, his only company being the birds, deer, and the trees. Oddly enough, he hardly saw a single deer during the day’s patrol.

At ten o’clock the previous night, the sheriff’s office had received a report that a three-man road repair crew had not returned. Their truck and equipment were still checked out and the office had received no phone or radio call from the team since early afternoon that day. The roads in the northern part of the county were in dire need of repair. With the woodland area having a low population, there were generally few complaints, leading to the county putting off inspections and maintenance. But, as with all things, the need for maintenance eventually arose.

The repairmen typically stuck close to Telegraph, a mid-sized town with a population of fifteen-hundred people. Aside from a few campgrounds, some cabins, and a handful of residences in the northern woodlands, Ramsey’s population was condensed to the south. Typical as with much of the Pacific Northwest, these lands were used for hunting, camping, fishing, and hiking. It was an outdoorsman’s dream, especially in the summer. For those who were unfamiliar with the area, it was a maze. Only those who devoted sufficient time in the area knew it well.

Hence, Thomas found the roadwork vehicle first, even before the county helicopter. He could see the bird buzzing high overhead, its pilot scoping the surrounding area. The pilot, Levi, was a laid-back kind of guy, much like most of the people in the department. Regardless, he was a competent pilot, who was too used to flying over rural and coastal areas where visibility was much greater. In the mountainous forests, all he saw was green and red. It all looked the same, aside from various unmistakable landmarks that even a rookie could identify.

The clock struck five when Thomas located the construction vehicles. The instant he turned the corner and saw the bright yellow paint of the road roller, he had one hand on his sidearm. Ten years in the military had given him a sixth sense for danger. He didn’t know specifically what that danger was, but he did know that something was indeed wrong. Deathly wrong.

There was no sign of life in sight, not counting the lush forest. Even the usual chorus of the birds had ceased, something he noticed the moment he stepped out of the SUV. Thomas always patrolled the forest, back roads, main roads, lakes, the hills—the birds always sang in the spring and summer.

Here, they were quiet.

Red and blue lights flashed from his parked SUV as he approached the worksite. The roller was parked several meters behind the asphalt mixer. Between the two vehicles was a road cutting machine. It was on its side, lying near a section of road which had been partially cut.

The asphalt mixer’s engine was still on. Near the east tree line was a white construction helmet and a single utility glove. Nobody was inside the vehicles.

Despite his gut feeling, Thomas had to continue the routine procedure of finding these men.

“Hello?! Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department. John Malley?! Anthony Luis?! Jeremy Gosly?! Anyone here?”

As he expected, none of the missing men responded.

“How’s it looking down there?”

Thomas looked up at the chopper. Levi kept it at three hundred feet, staying clear of the treetops while looking down at the crime scene. And there was no doubt in Thomas’ mind it was a crime scene. The extent of the crime, the identity of the perpetrators, and their motives were the real questions.

“We might need to get forensics out here,” he said.

“No sign of the workers?”

“None.”

“Okay, I’ll keep flying around. Maybe I’ll find something.”

“Maybe.”

Another voice came through the receiver.

“Unit Two to Unit Six.” It was Karl Olsen, the second shift sergeant.

“Go ahead.”

“Give me your location, please. If I try to find you myself, we’ll both hit retirement age by the time I get there.”

“Are you able to see Levi flying around from where you’re at?”

“We’ve heard him flying around in his chopper a couple times in the last minute or so, but haven’t been able to see him. Damn trees are in the way.”

“Where are you at now?” Thomas said.

“At the west end of Sudan Road.”

“Alright, go… Sudan Road? You heard the chopper all the way over here in the past minute from Sudan Road?”

“Unless there’s a big ass hummingbird flying around out here, I’m assuming it’s him.”

Thomas shrugged. Apparently, the sergeant had a hell of an ear. That, or there was another chopper buzzing around out here, but who that would be was anyone’s guess.

“Alright, then. Anyways, you’re close to the Douglas Pond. Head north until you hit the Berrett Trail, then turn west. Turn north when you hit Younkin Road.”

“Copy that. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Thomas stepped around the vehicles in search of any additional clues. The men were simply gone. Lunch bags were in the backseat of the asphalt vehicle. When Thomas checked, he found that one of them had an ice pack to keep the sandwich inside cold. It was warm now, having been out here for over twenty-four hours.

It was as though they had simply up and left. There was no obvious sign of conflict. No blood, no tire marks from getaway vehicles. By the looks of it, they didn’t even venture into the woods. If they did, they did a hell of a job leaving no trace other than the helmet and glove. No tracks marked the ground. Knowing the kind of steel toe boots those guys wore, they certainly would have left some kind of track. Maybe the average Joe would not be able to pick up on it, but for someone who knew what he was looking for, the trail should have been plain as day.

Yet, there was nothing.

Maybe someone picked them up. Who and why is a whole new mess of questions, but it’s the only thing that makes even the tiniest amount of sense. It’s either that, or they vanished into thin air.

“Or, who knows, maybe Olsen was right about there being a giant hummingbird,” he said, finishing his thought out loud.

That remark struck his mind, forming an image of something large dropping from the sky and carrying these men off. He probably would have pushed the idea aside, had he not looked up to the trees.

Some of the branches showed heavy damage, especially near the tops. Pieces of vegetation had been torn away and dropped onto the side of the road. Only here, this specific speck of forest, was there this kind of damage. Glancing around, the side of the road was spotless. Yet, it seemed something had emerged right over this area of canopy, scraping the side of the trees as it raced down.

His gut pinged its warning signs. He had felt those signs many times in various different circumstances, all of which were deadly. Every single time, his gut proved correct. In this instance, it would be the true test of its accuracy, for this specific warning seemed too fantastical to be real.

Memories of reading various reports cycled through his mind. The jumbo jet, the shrimp boat, the cargo freighter, and nearly a dozen others, all over the world. Each one centering around the presence of some kind of organism. They were terrestrial, nautical, winged, and subterranean—and all of them arose after the intergalactic dust storm that swept the planet.

Who was to say the Pacific Northwest was not next on this list of bizarre occurrences. Regardless if this case was connected to the others, one thing was certain. Something large came down the side of those trees, and it could not be a coincidence that the hat and glove had been dropped directly below the damaged area.

He picked up the hardhat, noticing a small crater in the ground where it landed. The top of the hardhat had been cracked, with bits of dirt caked near the slit. No doubt, this damage was the result of a fall.

He pressed his radio transmitter. “Levi?”

“Yeah?”

“You see anything up there?”

“So far, no. Hard to see anything below these trees other than the roads.”

“No, I mean above the trees. Anything airborne?”

“Airborne?” Levi sniggered, unsure if the Deputy was trying to tell some kind of joke. “Like an airplane or helicopter?”

“Anything unusual at all?”

“Um, no.” Levi chuckled. “What? You taking Sergeant Olsen’s remark about a giant bird literally?”

Thomas kept his eyes on the damaged branches. “Just keep an eye out, alright? Whatever did this, it might be airborne.”

Levi was quiet for the next several moments.

“I was joking when I said that…”

Thomas shook his head and took his thumb off the speaker mic. As long as the knucklehead kept his eyes peeled, he would likely be fine. Then again, not even Thomas was sure of what they were dealing with. All he did know was that the world had changed, and whatever was going on, mankind was not prepared for it.

A few minutes later, another SUV arrived. Inside were two deputies. Sergeant Olsen was behind the wheel. He was the ambitious type, always measuring his actions on whether or not they would help him climb the ladder. He had a bachelor’s degree in business and ten years of service in the sheriff's office, making no secret of his desire to become a lieutenant, captain, division chief, and ultimately get elected as sheriff. His prospects were good, for the only deputy in the department who surpassed his overall experience and competence was Thomas. Unlike Olsen, Thomas made it very clear he did not want to go past the rank of corporal. He preferred the loneliness of patrol work and the freedom to patrol the normally silent forest grounds of Ramsey County, while most of the police force stuck to the town area.

Olsen stepped out of the SUV. He was a man of forty, just a couple years older than Thomas. He was clean-shaven, keeping a fairly serious demeanor while on the job.

Out of the passenger seat came Bill Lex. Though not a slob, he lacked the level of care and professionalism demonstrated by the Sergeant. There were a few wrinkles in his uniform and his boots were chipped, needing replacing. Aside from that, he was a well-respected deputy who always rode with Sergeant Olsen.

“Anything swoop down from the sky?” he said with a chuckle.

Thomas, lacking a sense of humor at this time, shook his head.

“Engine was left running. They were midway through cutting a square when they ceased activity. I haven’t checked the woods yet, but it doesn’t seem like they went in that direction.”

Olsen looked at the helmet and glove. “You sure? Looks like someone dropped his stuff while heading that way.”

“No tracks,” Thomas said.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Lex said. “What? You mean to imply one of them tossed their helmet over there for no reason?”

Thomas shook his head. “I never said it was for no reason, and I didn’t say it was thrown.”

“Then what? Dropped?” Lex said. He smiled, on the verge of chuckling, barely holding it in as Thomas nodded with complete seriousness without missing a beat.

“The helmet was cracked,” Thomas said. “There’s not much around here that would crack a hardhat, except maybe a long fall.”

Olsen looked at the damaged treetops. Though clearly not ready to go along with Thomas’ bizarre theory, he couldn’t help but notice this situation was an oddity.

“I’m assuming you called out to see if anyone was around?” he said to Thomas.

“Nobody responded,” Thomas replied.

“I suggest we check the woods,” Lex said. Olsen nodded and led the group to the tree line. From there, they went several yards into the forest, repeatedly calling out the names of the three workers.

They branched out, covering almost an acre of distance, during which there was not one single sign that they, or anyone else, had been out here.

Olsen walked around the worksite, noting all of its details. He was frustrated at this point. Flabbergasted. Over the next minute, he went through the exact same chain of thoughts Thomas had when he first arrived. Nothing here made sense. He faced Thomas and shrugged.

“What do you suggest?” he asked. His ambition and seniority did not hinder his willingness to defer to the judgement of others, especially if their track record was proven.

Everyone in the department knew of Thomas’ record, both in the military and in the police force.

Thomas thought about it for a moment. He was sure the workers were not here. If by some chance they were, it would take a much larger team to comb the woods and find them.

“There’s a house up by Butternut Lake. It’s only a mile or so north of here. I know the gentleman who lives there. Owns a tackle shop in town. Rents out his private lake for vacationers.”

“Charlie Netty,” Olsen said. “Yes, I know him.”

“Might be a good idea to stop over there and see if, by any chance, he knows something,” Thomas said.

Olsen gave one last glance at the vacant vehicles, then nodded. “Yeah, I suppose that’s a good idea.”

“Should someone remain here at the crime scene?” Lex asked.

“We’ll come back,” Olsen said. “Better question is, is it even a crime scene? How do we know? Overall, there’s no clear evidence of foul play. Aside from the missing persons, that is.” Groaning, he returned to his SUV. He stopped with his hand on the door handle, his perplexity steadily growing. “Three men don’t just vanish.”

Thomas approached his own vehicle and opened the driver’s side door.

“These did.”

He took his seat and drove north to Mr. Netty’s property.

CHAPTER 2

“Unit Six to Dispatch?”

“Go ahead.”

“Looks like there’s been an accident out here. Blue Chevy pickup truck. Sideswiped a tree. The skid marks behind it suggest the driver was weaving all over the road. We’ll update you as we find out more.”

“Copy that, Unit Six.”

Thomas stood before the wreck, his mind performing a simulation of what might have occurred. The skid marks went for a couple hundred feet at least. It had come to a stop on the west side of the road, having been racing southward, ultimately coming to a stop after raking against a pair of western red cedar trees. Yet, the windshield was smashed, the fragments sprinkling the inside of the vehicle, as though it had run directly into something. The front bumper retained its shape, as did the engine… for the most part. There were a number of strange abrasions all over the hood. Scrapings, as though someone had repeatedly keyed the front of the truck… except they used a hunting knife instead of a tree.

Olsen and Lex approached from opposite sides of the road, having searched the woods to no avail. Just like at the worksite, nobody was around. Neither in the woods, or in the truck.

“Nothing,” Olsen said. “If the driver walked anywhere, they probably went up that way to the cabins.” He pointed north. Just a couple hundred yards shy of their location was the start of Mr. Netty’s driveway.

Thomas kept his eyes on the interior of the truck. The lever was still in drive, the engine appearing to have stalled. He went around the side and opened the door. The keys were still in the ignition, the owner’s smartphone on the floor near the brake pedal.

“If they left, they wouldn’t have left this.” He picked up the phone. The screen was unlocked. He went to settings, seeing the owner’s name at the top of the page. Katherine Rayne. Photos showed her to be a woman in her early thirties. Many of those photos included a handsome man of roughly the same age. Probably a husband or fiancé.

He recognized the location of the most recent photos. They were on the shores of Butternut Lake, on Charlie Netty’s private resort.

His eyes went to the skid marks, which led directly to Mr. Netty’s driveway.

“Maybe someone ran her off the road,” Lex said.

“Right as she pulled out onto the road?” Olsen said. “They would have to have been ready and waiting. And with what motive?”

Thomas shook his head. There were abrasions on the driver’s side of the vehicle. He looked to where the skids curved to the east side of the road. They went onto the grass, the tire marks arching as they neared the trees. On their trunks were signs of obvious damage. She had sideswiped the tree, raced down this way, only to make another grazing impact when the engine stalled.

That explained the markings and indentations on the sides of the truck. But nothing explained those that covered the hood and the cab. There were numerous grooves marking the cab, going in multiple directions, caused by the same instrument that caused those on the hood. Tight groups of these scratches were near the upper windshield frame.

They could not have been caused by the tree branches, which were too high to cause these kinds of markings.

“Maybe we should alert the state troopers,” Lex said.

“And wait four hours until one of them finally decides to come this way?” Olsen said. “You know how those guys like to operate with their Smoky Bear hats. They prefer to cruise the urban areas and highways. Not much around here to make their traffic ticket quotas.”

“Besides, it’ll take them longer than that to get out here,” Thomas said. “Half the roadways in this forest are dirt trails. Won’t show up on GPS or Google Maps. They’d get themselves turned around. Hell, look how long it took you guys to find the roadwork vehicles.”

“Rub it in, Mr. Force Recon,” Lex said. He scratched his head. “Oh, wait. That’s Marines, right? You were an Army man.” Thomas answered with a simple “mmhmm”, his attention mainly fixated on the damaged truck.

It was only for the briefest of moments that Thomas’ attention wavered. Memories of his dozen years in the service scrolled in his mind like a movie in fast-forward, settling on the day he chose to leave rather than finish out his twenty. He glanced at the wedding ring on his left hand. It was a topic he did not care to revisit.

If any good came from this investigation, it was that it served as a distraction. That wasn’t to say Thomas took pleasure in this string of oddities. In fact, it was one of the few times he would rather ponder about the elements of his personal life he so desperately wanted to move on from.

People were missing. That sixth sense never stopped broadcasting its warnings. Though he couldn’t prove it yet, Thomas knew these people weren’t coming back.

“Something was on top of this truck,” he said.

“Like what?” Olsen said.

Thomas put a foot on the front left tire and lifted himself up for a better view of the top. He furrowed his brow, noticing another peculiar detail. In the middle of the damage was a single crater. Shaped like a bullet hole, the wound in the cab went in for several inches. It resembled a bullet hole—from a fifty-caliber—though there were no friction or powder burns.

He made his way over to it and dipped his fingers into the vehicle’s wound. The steel had split downward over the backseat. There was a wet substance coating the jagged edges.

Thomas removed his hand and looked at his fingertips. They were caked with a watery, purple substance.

“What is it?” Lex asked.

“I don’t know.” Thomas used a handkerchief to wipe the stuff away, then stepped down. He knew that wasn’t a bullet hole in the truck, but could not think of any reasonable explanation of what it could be. “Almost seems like someone hammered a spike down into the—”

They all went silent and looked to the northwest. Through the woods came a collection of distant whirring sounds, as though numerous motors with loose bearings were switched on. So far, whatever was causing them were isolated in that specific direction. However, in listening to whatever this disturbance was, Thomas sensed that the source was moving. Gradually, it seemed to shift farther west, gradually growing fainter, until silence returned.

Thomas Rodney noticed Lex and Olsen looking at him, their eyes conveying the question: What the hell was that? He spent more time in these parts during his many double-shifts. Not once, until now, did he hear a sound like that.

The birds were still silent, another peculiarity that did not exist until today.

“Maybe we should head back to town,” Lex said.

“You should,” Thomas said. There was no condescension or mockery in his voice. This was an unusual situation, and these men were not ready for it. Thomas, on the other hand, had nothing to lose. “I’ll stay out here. If anything comes up, I’ll update you.”

“The hell are you guys talking about?” Olsen said.

Lex pointed in the direction of the whirring sound. “Sarge, we might be better off waiting for State to back us up. Either we’re dealing with a crazed maniac, or…” His voice trailed off and his eyes went to the ground. He knew the thoughts going through his head seemed ridiculous. Yesterday, he wouldn’t have believed them either. Now, he was starting to experience a similar sixth sense as Thomas.

Thomas knew his fellow deputy was a news hog. He enjoyed the independent circle of news, especially those that spoke about the so-called conspiracy stuff. From the looks of it, he was piecing today’s findings with some reports he heard on the internet.

“What is it?” Thomas asked.

Lex looked him in the eye. “Dixie County, thirty miles east of us—a farmer lost his entire herd of cows in the night. Day before that, a pair of motorcycles were found on a country road, similar to this, maybe three miles from that location. Owners disappeared without a trace.”

“You’re suggesting this is connected?” Olsen said.

“I’m saying this is weird,” Lex said. “A lot of weird things have been going on. Since the Ecclesiastes Intergalactic Meteor Storm, it seems a lot of really weird events have taken place.”

“Now’s not a time to fall for that conspiracy garbage,” Olsen said. He looked at Thomas. “We’re already close to Mr. Netty’s place. Let’s check it out and determine what to do from there. I’ll probably end up radioing the sheriff to get more units out here.”

Thomas shrugged. There was no arguing with the Sergeant. His mind was made up. All they could do was hope for a positive outcome to this investigation. The question was, would that hope pay off?

The answer was up the road.

CHAPTER 3

The answer only brought more questions. And a looming sense of dread.

When Thomas drove through Charlie Netty’s driveway, he saw the tire marks caused by Katherine Rayne’s truck. It confirmed that her escape attempt began at the resort and not on the road. What she was escaping from was still unknown, but when Thomas arrived on the property, he felt a greater understanding of its rage.

The driveway led straight to Mr. Netty’s house, then bent to the left, curving near the shoreline where the four rental cabins were set up. They were simple single-story lakefront buildings, each one assigned a dock and a twelve-foot rowboat.

Thomas, Olsen, and Lex parked their vehicles on the lawn and stood together, absorbing the scene all at once.

Not one soul in sight throughout the entire property. Only the placement of belongings, vehicles, and their conditions were left to paint a visual of whatever occurred here.

Each cabin had a vehicle parked in its driveway, suggesting their occupants never drove off. The lawn between the main driveway exit and the farthest cabin was marked by the tire treads of a large pickup truck. Katherine Rayne was flooring the accelerator from the very get-go.

Mr. Netty’s truck was parked in his personal driveway. The driver’s side door was open, a set of keys lying on the pavement beneath it. Only Thomas noticed them, his fellow officers completely fixated on the second floor of Mr. Netty’s house.

It was as though some kind of explosive had gone off from inside, the sidings completely torn outward, littering the garden below with pieces of wreckage.

Two of the cottages had similar damage, mainly to the roof areas. Tiles and boards had been torn away, exposing the rafters, which had been busted inward. The windows were shattered, the white sidings covered with numerous markings—identical to those on the truck.

One of the visiting vehicles had been turned over on its side, the windshield smashed. The front lawns separating the cottages from the lakes were littered with various items, ranging from picnic items to broomsticks.

Thomas walked toward the house. “Charlie? Teresa? Where are you?!” Mr. Netty nor his wife replied. Thomas stood before the front entrance, seeing that the door had been ripped right off the hinges. The living room was an absolute mess, with ceiling tiles now on the floor. The television had been smashed, the coffee table crushed, the walls lacerated in numerous places.

“Jesus.”

He turned around to face the lake. Olsen was standing a few feet ahead of him, putting a hand over his eyes as he watched the water. A hundred or so feet from shore was one of the rowboats, held in place by its anchor, completely vacant. Two fishing rods were angled over its bow, their lines appearing to be rigged for deep water. Gently, the boat swayed with the breeze.

Olsen lifted his speaker mic to his lips. “Dispatch?”

“Go ahead.”

“Call the Sheriff, tell him to come back in. Also, might want to call the state police. We’re at Charlie Netty’s property and…” He took a moment to figure out the best way to explain the situation, “…the area is deserted. There are signs of some kind of deadly conflict.”

“A shooting?”

“No, a, uh…” Once again, he lacked the words. “It’s like someone… something… tore through this place. There’s damage to the house, the cottages, the vehicles. We’re gonna take a quick look around to be absolutely sure nobody’s here. Once we’re done, we’re heading back to town. I recommend we don’t send anyone out here just yet. I’d feel better if we had a more organized squad. Lex is taking pictures. Trust me, what I’m saying will make a lot more sense when we get back.”

A few seconds of dead air passed before the dispatcher replied. “Okay. Ten-four.”

Olsen clipped his mic to his shirt, then joined Thomas in a search of the house. It was vacant, the back door opened where someone had gone out, presumedly to escape.

They exited the house and moved toward the cabins, which were on the left side of the lake. Each one had a picnic table in front of it. All of them had some sort of belongings left behind. Phones, radios, books, beverages, and snacks were all discarded, many of which had spilled onto the grass.

The officers went from cabin to cabin. As they predicted, each one was vacant.

Thomas stepped by the picnic table in front of the farthest cottage. Spilled Doritos, half-eaten sandwiches, and spilled beer covered its top. The bread on the sandwiches was brittle from prolonged exposure. He helped himself to one of the Doritos.

“Having a snack, are ya?” Olsen said.

Thomas bit the chip, then spat it out. “Stale. This bag has been left open for several hours at least. Maybe a whole day.”

Olsen nodded, now understanding his point. He walked around the table and its spilled contents. “It seems everyone was having a normal day. All of a sudden, chaos erupts, and everyone is trying to get the hell out of dodge.” That statement triggered a thought. He took a few steps away and looked at the lawn all around the property. “If someone rolled in here, they couldn’t have done it in a vehicle. There’re no tire marks, except for those left by the lady’s truck.” He returned to the fourth cottage, seeing Lex staring at the ground near some of the spilled beverages. “You alright?”

Lex looked up. “Hmm? Oh, yeah. Sorry, I was, uh…” His eyes went back to the ground. “Got caught up watching this mess.”

Thomas stepped beside him, seeing the little black specks going to war near one of the beer bottles. Two colonies of ants had moved in on the free sustenance. By the looks of it, they had a little disagreement. The grain-sized bugs tussled in tight groups, each one looking perfectly identical.

“Colonies at war,” he said.

“Not sure how they know who’s who,” Lex said. “They all look alike.”

“Chemical signals,” a disinterested Thomas said.

Lex backed away from the battle. “Listening to some National Geographic during your nonstop double shifts?”

“This case is beyond weird, but I doubt killer ants are the culprits,” Olsen muttered. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here. I’ll radio Dispatch again. We’ll regroup with the others and the state troopers, then plan a more comprehensive search of the area, complete with more chopper units.”

“Speaking of…” Lex looked to the southeast. Over half a mile in the sky was a single chopper, flying northbound. “Why the hell is Levi flying all the way over there. There’s only so far these people could’ve realistically gone.”

Thomas squinted, then put a hand over his eyes as he gazed across the gap in the forest at the chopper.

“That’s not Levi,” he said.

“You sure?” Lex said.

“Last I checked, we don’t have a Chinook in our department,” Thomas said. Jet engines far overhead drew his gaze to the sky. A squadron of Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightnings came in from the southwest, also heading northbound.

“I’m no military guy, but I don’t think jets on patrol tend to fly that low,” Lex said.

“Those aren’t patrol planes,” Thomas said. ‘Those are F-35s. They tend to deploy for strike missions.”

“Interesting,” Lex muttered. “We at war all of a sudden?”

“You think they know about this?” Olsen said, gesturing at the surrounding devastation.

“Hard to believe it isn’t connected,” Thomas said. He looked about in search of the police helicopter. From here, it was nowhere to be seen. It was surprising that Levi hadn’t reported seeing military aircraft in the area. In fact, he hadn’t reported at all since the deputies left the construction vehicles. Thomas clicked his mic. “Unit Six to Air One. Levi? Where you at?”

Silence.

“Unit Six to Air One. Come in, please.”

More silence.

Thomas jogged to Mr. Netty’s house. A two-story building, it had a balcony near the south bedroom, still intact despite the damage. Lex remained on the ground while Olsen accompanied Thomas to the second floor. From there, they had a better view of the landscape surrounding the lake.

Thomas helped himself to a set of binoculars Mr. Netty kept near the nightstand. He panned the lenses around the area, watching the Chinook slowly descend.

“What the hell are they up to?” He panned the glasses to the north, unable to see too far past the trees. He wondered if there was any other activity near the Milestone Hills. The elevation was high over there, the forest less thick. Over to the northwest, he was able to see the top of the Stone Tower, a cliffside overlooking the south half of the forest.

Somewhere in front of it was a tall smoke trail, stretching hundreds of feet into the air.

Thomas passed the glasses to Olsen and pointed at the smoke. “Look there.”

Olsen took a glance, then lowered the glasses. “That’s no campfire.” He pressed his radio transmitter. “Levi? Come in, please.” The lack of an answer drew a few curse words out of him.

“Unit Six to Dispatch?” Thomas said into his radio. “Has Levi returned?”

“Negative, Unit Six.”

“You have a read on his GPS?”

“One moment… Yes. By the looks of it, he’s roughly a third of a mile northeast of Butternut Lake. Near the Stone Tower.”

Thomas and Olsen sprinted downstairs and were out the door. A perplexed Lex followed the men to the vehicles.

“What happened? What’d I miss?”

“Levi’s chopper is down,” Olsen said.

They got into the SUVs and sped through the driveway, turning north as they reached the main road.

CHAPTER 4

“Unit Six to Dispatch, Air One has crashed near Stone Tower. Alert EMS and the Fire Department. The fuel has ruptured and we’ve got scattered fires. Units Two, Three, and I are attempting to tackle the situation.”

Thomas pulled one of the fire extinguishers from his vehicle’s trunk and raced toward the wreckage. The chopper was on its side, its rotors having shattered like glass upon impact. The tail had broken off and settled several yards behind the fuselage. The underside struts were bent like pretzels, the cockpit windows were shattered, the hull crunched inward in several locations.

All around it was a dancing fire. An orange lake consumed the undergrowth between the wreck and the cops. Thomas and Olsen doused it with the extinguishers, quickly diminishing its spread. Though large, the fire was not unmanageable. Its flames were eating away at the trunks and lower branches of a few nearby trees. Lex moved to the right, waving his nozzle up and down, the nitrogen mist cleansing one of the trees of flame.

They worked hastily, gradually shrinking the hellish lake. After a few minutes, only two of the trees were burning. Lex had extinguished the lower sections, but the flames had climbed to some higher branches.

“Damn,” Lex said. “I can’t get it with this. It’s too high. The mist spreads too much.”

“Hang on.” Thomas raced to his vehicle and brought it alongside the tree. “Climb up! Hurry!”

Lex understood the plan. First, he needed Thomas’ spare cannister, as his current one had run out. He pulled the spare from the trunk then climbed up top. Thanks to the extra height, he was able to douse the flames. He knelt on one knee as Thomas carefully brought him to the next tree. Lex carefully applied the mist, saving the tree, and by extension, the forest from what could have become a large-scale fire.

The three men blew a collective sigh of relief.

“Thank God,” Olsen said. “That could’ve been way bad.”

Thomas wasn’t about to break out the champagne and caviar just yet. He put his vehicle in park and went straight for the chopper.

“Levi?!” He peeked through the broken windshield. The cockpit was empty, the fabric on the pilot’s seat slashed, the harness ripped and frayed.

“He got out,” Olsen said. “He must be around here somewhere. Probably ran off to get away from the flames.” Immediately, he and Lex branched out in separate directions, repeatedly calling Levi’s name.

Thomas remained by the fuselage. Already, he knew there was no point in searching. Like the road maintenance crew and the people at Mr. Netty’s resort, Levi Erving was nowhere to be found.

His hand instinctively rested on his sidearm as he glared at the numerous scratches on the hull. The grooves were a few millimeters deep, caused by similar instruments that damaged Mr. Netty’s property and Katherine Rayne’s truck.

Olsen and Lex returned, exhausted and bewildered.

“I’d ask what you make of this, but then again, I suppose you’re not psychic,” the Sergeant said.

Thomas shook his head. “This is definitely one for Sherlock Holmes.” He started to turn around, only to do a double-take at some of the markings on the hull. Squinting, he leaned closer. The steel was corroded near the rotor shaft, discolored from what appeared to be intense burning.

“What’s the matter?” Lex said.

“Don’t know,” Thomas replied. “Looks like the chopper was burned.”

Lex shrugged. “Well, there was a fire…”

“It’d take more than a fire to do this,” Thomas said. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and pressed its tip to the scarred area. It was still hot, melting the tip of his pen. He pulled it back and gave it a close look. “This isn’t from fuel. It almost resembles an acidic burn.”

“Oh, geez,” Olsen said in an exasperated tone. He’d had his fill of this investigation. Though a deputy in a relatively quiet county, he still had his fill of strange investigations. In his rookie year, he received a call from a store owner who found a body in his dumpster. Considering the location and circumstances, it was easy to assume this was a murder case. Someone must have killed the individual and hid his body away in a random dumpster. A massive search of the area followed, while the Sheriff and his forensics team checked the security feeds at the back of the store.

As it turned out, the gentleman was from Portland, Oregon. He had no job, little family, and was suspected of having mental health issues, though none were diagnosed. During his aimless travels, he just so happened to choose Telegraph of all places as his rest stop. He had no money for a hotel, or even a place to eat. He slept in a ratty car which was running on empty.

The security feed showed that he decided to dumpster dive, and in the process, he faceplanted against the edge of the dumpster, knocking out a couple of front teeth. Perhaps to deal with the pain, he helped himself to some heroin he had on hand. An overdose resulted right then and there. The Sheriff figured he must have used up the rest of his stash, because no substance was found on the scene.

Had it not been for the store’s cameras, Olsen and his fellow deputies would have likely spent hours, if not days, searching the area for any clue to the supposed killer’s whereabouts.

Unfortunately, there was no such luxury with this present case.

“Dispatch?” Olsen said.

“Go ahead.”

“We managed to put out the fire. However, there’s no sign of Deputy Erving. We conducted a quick search, but can’t find any trace of him.”

“Unit Two, this is Unit One.”

“Yes, Sheriff,” Olsen said.

“I need the three of you to return to town at once.”

“Sir, we have a man out here,” Olsen said.

“I understand that, Sergeant. But I need you to vacate that area immediately. I’ll explain when you get back. Just know, this is an urgent matter.”

“What about EMS?”

“They’ve been ordered to remain off site. That’s all for now.”

“Copy that, sir.” Olsen exhaled slowly, staring at the wreckage. “Not how I expected that conversation to go.”

Their confusion hit new heights as thunderous echoes swept through the forest. Thomas turned to the east, his throat tightening. He knew what military artillery sounded like.

Lex backed toward his SUV, eyes wide. “What in the hell…”

“It’s those military fellas we saw earlier,” Thomas said.

“Wait… they’re firing missiles?!” Olsen said.

“Yep. Probably why the Sheriff ordered us out of here,” Thomas said. “Whatever’s going on out here, it’s already got the government’s attention. If we stay out here, we might end up in the crossfire. Sergeant, Lex, get in your vehicles and head back to town.”

Immediately, Thomas went for his SUV. He waited by his door, making sure the others left. Olsen was a good cop, but his ambition sometimes got the better of him. Fortunately, the thunder of military explosives was enough to get the Sergeant to abandon the case and get the hell out of dodge. As for Levi, all they could offer was prayer. He didn’t respond to the radio calls or move in the direction of their sirens. Fact was, he wasn’t present. Judging by the state of the cockpit, he was taken by force. By what, Thomas wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

For better or worse, the answer presented itself.

As the other vehicle circled around to leave, Thomas took his seat and pulled the door shut, only to open it once again. Another sound cycled through the forest. This was not distant, but near—and getting nearer. They did not originate from the east, but instead from the north.

Olsen, behind the driver’s seat of his vehicle, hit the brakes and rolled down his window. He heard it too. He put the vehicle in park and stepped out. The same thought coursed through both men’s minds.

It was the same whirring sound they had heard when inspecting Katherine Rayne’s truck.

“Back in your vehicle,” Thomas said. “Go. Get out of here—” He looked to the sky, his jaw clamping shut.

The answer to these strange happenings was now before his very eyes. An impossible sight, yet as real as the breath he breathed. Winged insects, each one the size of an adult human male, arose from the canopy. Large wings protruded from their black, segmented bodies. Six long legs stretched outward, their large, pointed abdomens quivering. Sickle-shaped stingers, twelve inches in length, emerged from their ends. Large, pointed heads with red beady eyes gazed down at the officers below.

Lex looked up through the passenger window. “Holy God.”

Sergeant Olsen, usually professional and composed, was immediately stricken by panic.

“What the hell are those things?!”

The answer was ridiculous, but true nonetheless. They were being stalked by a swarm of giant hornets. First, only three hovered above them. Three more showed up. Then four more. Next thing they knew, there were over a dozen and counting.

“Get out of here!” Thomas shouted.

His voice sparked some sense in the Sergeant, who got back in his seat and floored the accelerator.

Several bugs descended on the moving vehicle, two of them crashing down on the hood. Big red eyes stared through the windshield, sparking terror from those on the other side. Forelegs scratched the glass. Meanwhile, other insects dropped onto the roof of the SUV, immediately jabbing it with their stingers.

Giant insects with primitive killer instincts, they were unaware that the SUV was nonliving. The humans inside, however, were ripe for the taking.

Blinded by the hornets, Olsen slammed on the brakes. The bugs clung tight to the hood, their hooked claws digging into the metal. Forelegs hit the glass, scarring it with long white scratches. After enough hits, cracks took form.

“Gun it!” Lex shouted.

“I can’t,” Olsen said. “I can’t see a damn thing… Hey, what are you doing?!”

Lex hoisted himself over the center console and stomped on the accelerator, sandwiching Olsen’s foot in the process. The SUV shot forward, the Sergeant attempting to correct its course. He cut the wheel too far, putting them directly into a tree.

The impact shook the hornets from the hood. They lifted off, their wings in a constant blur of motion. One of them backed several feet away, then raced at the windshield. The weakened glass burst into numerous shards which rained into the cab.

The hornet stuck the first half of its body through the windshield. There was a loud scream, accompanied by a drumming sound as arms and legs battered the inside of the vehicle. A writhing Deputy Lex was pulled through the windshield, dragged over the hood, and dropped onto the grass. On his hands and knees, he simultaneously attempted to yank his sidearm from its holster while crawling away.

Two forelegs pinned him to the earth. The banana-shaped stinger emerged from the abdomen. Lex reared his head back and yelled, his muscles spasming as the stinger injected several milliliters of venom into him.

Thomas had his pistol out, ready to blast the insect, only to get bombarded by several other members of the swarm. They gathered outside his vehicle, their claws raking against the roof, hood, and glass. Trapped inside the SUV, he did the only thing he could do. He pressed his pistol to the driver’s side window and put several rounds into the insect on the other side.

The hornet reeled backward, yellow blood spurting from the holes in its face and thorax.

Thomas looked in Lex’s direction, just in time to see his limp body being carried into the sky. His captor turned north, quickly disappearing into the forest.

Another hornet obstructed his view, eager to reach through the shattered glass. Thomas emptied his pistol into the monster, dropping it next to its brethren. Multiple other bugs gathered around him, smacking against the windshield.

CRACK!

CRACK!

CRACK!

SMASH!!!

Thomas covered his face, his arm absorbing the impact of glass shards. He uncovered his eyes, seeing two hornets on the hood, ready to drag him out to share Lex’s fate.

Thinking fast, he improvised. On his passenger seat was the fire extinguisher used by Lex to douse the trees. Thomas grabbed it and hit the bugs with a chemical spray. The hornets immediately backed off, one of them falling onto the ground before taking to the sky.

He pointed the nozzle to the left and hit one that tried to get through his window. The bug reeled backward, flailing its legs in a frenzied display. Buzzing wings skidded its body several yards along the ground before finally taking it skyward.

Seeing a window of opportunity, Thomas got out of the vehicle and opened the trunk. Inside was a shotgun case containing a Mossberg 590. As he removed the loaded weapon from its case, several pistol shots echoed from Olsen’s vehicle. The Sergeant pushed his door open and attempted to make a run for it, firing repeatedly at the winged bodies that hovered above him. Adrenaline hindered his accuracy, resulting in him landing only one grazing hit.

The slide locked back, the Sergeant backpedaled into the woods while frantically grabbing at his spare magazines.

One of the bugs closed in, its body vertical, abdomen pointing at its victim.

Thomas pumped the shotgun, closed within a four-yard distance, and fired. The spread-shot knocked the bug out of the air, its damaged body twisting and bending on the ground.

He pumped the shotgun and unloaded into the swarm, whose attention was now on him. Even as another one of their numbers was blasted out of the sky, they moved in without fear.

Olsen reloaded his pistol and opened fire, nicking another one of the bugs. The hornet jerked, feeling the bullet grazing its thorax. It turned around, and like a homing missile, it shot straight at Olsen.

The Sergeant turned to run, only to be grabbed by the hornet and lifted into the sky. It flew in a tight circle, its prey writhing in its grasp. It set down near the helicopter, flattening Olsen against the charred earth. He arched backward and yelled as the stinger plunged between two ribs. Toxins flooded his system, bringing his struggle to an end.

It lifted him again, this time heading north, while its brethren swarmed the last remaining human.

Outnumbered, Thomas retreated to his vehicle. It was an insufficient shelter, but it was the only one available. He dove into the backseat and slammed the door behind him.

Giant bugs threw themselves against the vehicle with zero concern for their own well-being.

Thomas cringed, his not-so-safe haven vibrating from each hit and scratch. The ceiling dented inward. The wide windows shattered. The Deputy grabbed some shells from an ammo box and loaded them into the shotgun.

Stingers punched through the ceiling, dripping purple venom. Thomas crouched as low as he could, keeping out of reach. More holes took form, the hornets relentless in their efforts to slay the SUV and its inhabitant.

As Thomas hunkered down, he caught a glimpse of several more hornets arriving over the tree line. There were more bugs than he had bullets.

He heard the tires pop and the engine clink and clang. The bugs were thorough in the slaughter of this machine. In their world, anything that moved or made a sound was considered living. With the SUV now dead, their focus was strictly on the man inside.

Thomas had experienced more than his fair share of close calls, most of which were from human enemies, almost all of whom were oversees. Each time, he and his fellow soldiers were able to shoot their way out of a situation themselves, call in air support, or make an escape. None of those options presented themselves here.

Never in his wildest dreams did he ever imagine it would be giant hornets that brought him to his doom. At this point, there was nothing else to do but make a last stand.

Thomas gave a brief, affectionate look to his wedding ring.

Guess I’ll be seeing you shortly, Leslie.

He put the shotgun to the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. The pellets cut through the ceiling, striking one of the hornets. Again and again, he fired, ignoring the ringing in his ears. One of the bugs hit the roof and rolled over the hood, thrashing its legs as death took hold.

Its companions did not relent in their attack. They closed on the vehicle, widening the overhead breach. Thomas squeezed the trigger, hearing that dreadful click.

Two clawed legs lunged at him, snagging his shirt. Thomas was hoisted from the seat with ease. The bug stood on its four hind legs, angling its stinger toward him. His attempts to outmuscle the bug were futile.

Its face was directly in front of his, as though the bug deliberately meant to look him in the eye before impaling him.

Certain death did not spark fear in the Deputy, but a flood of anger. The thought of being killed by a big bug was outrageous. Ludicrous. Perhaps it was personal ego or just basic human psychology, but he viewed insects as beneath him. Getting killed by one sparked a rage he didn’t know he had.

Thomas put his right foot out, blocking the bug’s abdomen from getting any closer. Balling a fist, he struck it in the face. The bug tilted its head back and forth, caught off guard by the strange impact. It shifted its gaze back to the human.

“Want another, huh? Eager to get your head knocked off?”

SPLAT!

Thomas saw a dull streak of color pass through the hornet’s neck, then heard the crack of a sniper rifle. Its head fell free, the limp body dropping the Deputy. He caught his balance and leapt back inside the vehicle.

The other bugs elevated, their attention no longer on Thomas, but the strange entity that intruded on their hunt.

Helicopter rotors spun overhead, pushing a downward draft onto the combat zone. Large diesel engines roared, preceding the arrival of numerous military-grade armored vehicles. They emerged from the forest, each one deploying numerous men covered head-to-toe in tactical gear.

Armed to the teeth, they immediately opened fire on the insects.

The bugs branched out, intent on combating this enemy force. Many of their numbers spiraled from the sky as high-caliber bullets punched through their bodies.

Thomas remained hunkered down behind his patrol vehicle, monitoring the situation while reloading his shotgun. These men were without a doubt government funded. Their uniforms, while consistent with military standards, were next level in gear and tech. He watched closely as a few of them dashed toward his vehicle, blasting away with M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles. Above their American flag patches was an insignia. Three stripes ran at a forty-five-degree angle, appearing like claw marks. Black letters on its top formed the name of the organization.

G.O.R.E. SECTOR.

“Fan out. Renee, make sure you blast any bugs that try and make an escape. Archer, you’re the eagle eye. Call out strays and pick them off. I want a fireteam by the police chopper and another on the south side. Fan them out. Watch yourselves…”

“Captain Coltrane, we’ve got more incoming from the north.”

Thomas watched the leader of the group, a man of forty, blasting at insects while communicating with his platoon. Over six feet in height, quick on his feet, and precise with his aim. No doubt, he was a man of immense military experience, demonstrated by his calm and quick decision making while under duress.

The man named Captain Coltrane took down a hornet before responding to whoever was on the frequency.

“How many more, Howard?”

“A bunch, by the looks of it.”

The next voice to come through the radio was female, with a hint of snark. “Too many to be stragglers from the nest we just destroyed. Looks like there’s a second hive somewhere out here.”

“I guess we woke the neighbors,” Coltrane said.

“Either way, you’ve got incoming,” the man named Howard said.

“This is Archer. Visual confirmation. Over two-dozen bogeys coming in from our two o’clock. Laying down suppressing fire.”

Thomas looked at the gunships. Two of them resembled Apache helicopters, equipped with all the usual armaments. The main gunship was a real sight to behold. If an F-35 and a Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey had a baby, it would look like this. It operated with transverse rotors, one on each side like dragonfly wings, and aft thrusters for fast travel. It was equipped with forward and aft machine guns, as well as door guns on its starboard side.

There was a man harnessed near the opening. Oddly enough, he was not utilizing the machine turret, but instead was looking down the scope of a high-powered sniper rifle.

He let off numerous shots, the crack of his rifle dulled by the intense buzzing of wings. More hornets joined the party, separated by several yards, dividing their enemies’ attention.

Miniguns located on the gunship’s forward section shredded several of them, sending bits of shell, blood, and wings descending on the combat zone. Several others converged on the ship, forcing the pilot to ascend.

“Aw, hell. Hang on, Archer.”

The other gunships followed, their door gunners attempting to repel the numerous hornets.

Several bugs descended into the combat zone, driving the ground units apart. The men kept their cool, ducking and weaving in order to avoid the clutches of these bugs. Gunners on the armored trucks unloaded into the canopy where a few more hornets emerged.

One of them yelled out as he was pulled from his turret by one of the six-legged hostiles. The stinger pierced the small of his back, taking him out of the fight permanently.

A few men retreated near Thomas’ SUV, their combined gunfire punching holes in one of the bugs. It dropped from the sky, followed by two of its brethren who nosedived at the soldiers.

Curse words and rifle shots filled the air as the men evaded their attackers. One was knocked to the ground and mounted by the insect, its abdomen quivering, ready to do its work.

A shotgun blast from Thomas knocked the bastard off its target. The soldier sprang to his feet, instinctively putting a few extra shots into the bug before checking himself.

Thomas emerged from cover, just in time to witness another commando get taken down. Unfortunately, this one was hit by the stinger and neutralized, his stiff body smacking face-first into the ground. He hit the bug in the face with a shotgun blast, peppering the surrounding earth with bits of exoskeleton, eyes, and brain.

A battle between species continued, the humans gradually getting the upper hand. Technology and perseverance trumped sheer instinct and aggression.

Thomas looked to the sky, where a group of six hornets converged. In the blink of an eye, they all popped like balloons as a stream of bullets passed through them. The gunship came into view, its pilot chasing down a few other bugs. Miniguns blasted away, reducing one to black confetti.

“Oh, yeah!”

“Renee, don’t get too cocky now,” Coltrane said.

“The hell you talking about, Captain? That’s why you hired me!” Proving her point, the pilot, Renee, gunned down another bug.

Thomas looked to the south, seeing a swarm of hornets grouping on one of the Apache helicopters. The bird spun in mid-air, bits of bug splattering after getting caught in the rotors. Body parts jammed against the swash plates and mast. The machine lost altitude, the crew preparing for a crash landing. In true World War Two kamikaze form, one of the hornets charged the cockpit at full speed, smashing through the glass.

The chopper smashed down thirty feet east of Air One’s wreckage, sending rotors flying through the combat area. G.O.R.E. Sector commandos ducked for cover, dodging shrapnel. The bugs, undeterred by the crash, took advantage of the situation. They each homed in on a target, tackling them to the ground and stinging them.

Agonizing cries mixed with gunfire.

Captain Coltrane led a group of soldiers to a gathering of hornets, which were in the process of stinging a three-man fireteam to death. Rifle fire penetrated their shells and perforated internal organs. Medical teams moved in to collect the dead and injured. As they did, Coltrane and his team provided cover.

“Don’t lose your heads, gentlemen,” he said into his helmet mic. “We’re winning by attrition. Keep hitting them. The more we kill, the weaker their colony is—WHOA!”

Coltrane was tackled to the ground by a tenacious hornet, its wings buzzing as it angled its abdomen for a sting. His fellow soldiers turned to help, only to be forced back by advancing bugs.

The Captain rolled onto his back and put the muzzle of his rifle to the insect’s face.

BANG!

The shot split its head. He pushed its body off of him, only to be assaulted by another.

“Oh, hell!”

He squeezed the trigger, only to find out his weapon had run empty at the worst possible time. He pushed against the ground, shifting his body up several inches. The stinger came down, plunging into the earth where his groin had been a split-second earlier.

Coltrane drew his side arm and put several holes in the bug. It reeled backward, kicking its legs. Coltrane sat up and shot it a few more times for good measure.

Another bug darted over him, its legs smacking his arms and helmet. Once again, he was flat on the ground. His hand was empty, the gun knocked from its grip.

“That’s not good.”

No sooner did those words come out than the hornet returned. It hovered over him, descending with its stinger poised to strike.

Thomas had fired his last shotgun shell when he saw the Captain on the ground. He had moments at best before that stinger entered his abdomen. The Army Ranger within him activated like a computer program. He did not know who this Coltrane was, but he wasn’t willing to stand around and leave a fellow soldier in harm’s way.

Between him and Coltrane was a fallen G.O.R.E. Sector commando, lying next to an M27 rifle. Thomas sprinted, snatched the weapon off the ground, shouldered it, and fired a three-round burst.

Coltrane juddered, surprised and relieved to see the bug knocked to the side. He looked to his right, seeing the Deputy Sheriff advancing. An even better surprise for him was seeing Thomas’ swift shooting skills on full display. The weapon was one with his body, putting bullets wherever he pointed it. In a fluid motion, he killed the hornets that swarmed Coltrane’s fireteam, saving them from a violent death.

The grin on Coltrane’s face shifted as he looked to the sky above the Deputy. He pushed his mic toward his lips.

“Archer, lend a hand to the Deputy, will ya?”

A moment later, three sniper blasts echoed from the gunship. Three bodies dropped behind Thomas, their wings twitching as death took hold.

Thomas looked at the dying bugs, then at the Captain, then at the impressive sniper several yards above him.

G.O.R.E. Sector continued its assault. More bodies dropped from the sky. The sound of buzzing wings gradually diminished, the insect force overwhelmed by their technologically advanced opponents.

Coltrane rose to his feet and reloaded his rifle, standing side by side with Thomas as they picked off the few remaining hornets.

“Last one’s mine!” Renee said. She angled the gunship toward the final insect, which hovered over the trail on the west side of the clearing.

Thomas and Coltrane had already taken aim. Bullets from both their rifles diced the hornet’s body, its three segments separating as it plummeted to Earth.

“Hey! You jerks stole my kill!”

Coltrane cocked a smile. “Can’t hog them all, Renee.”

“If you say so, Captain.”

The squad formed a perimeter, the gunship and remaining Apache branching out. Between them, a smaller object buzzed in the sky. Thomas immediately took notice of its size, which was comparable to that of the hornets. He pointed his weapon up, only for Coltrane to gently push it down.

“Not a bug,” he said, before speaking into his mic. “Howard. What do you see from up there? We clear?”

“Yep. They’re all gone. We’re clear.”

“Whew!” Coltrane wiped his brow and looked at Thomas. He sported another grin and gestured at the surrounding combat zone. “Another day at the office.”

CHAPTER 5

It was not long before several more vehicles and personnel flooded the area. The dead and injured were loaded onto medevac choppers and shipped off to some destination unknown to Thomas. The Deputy stood aside, suppressing the many, many, questions that piled up in his mind. Reflecting on his own experience, he knew it was better to remain quiet for now. This operation was obviously hush-hush, government funded, and above the paygrade of simple county deputy sheriffs.

With that in mind, he chose to carefully observe as this highly equipped military force secured the bodies of the dead hornets. Many were placed in plastic bags, which were then sealed and put into trucks.

Captain Coltrane was in the middle of the operation. He turned around as a personnel carrier arrived. Two individuals stepped out, one man and one woman. The woman was a redhead, her attire suggesting she was some kind of field operative. She wore a black long-sleeve shirt tucked into a pair of tactical pants with side pockets. Though not an infantrywoman, she was still armed with what appeared to be a P226 MK25 nine-millimeter.

The man was taller, wearing a thin brown beard on his face. As he approached Coltrane, he glanced in Thomas’ direction, seeming a tad timid upon making eye contact. He, too, wore a standard-issue sidearm on his right thigh. Unlike the soldiers, his primary weapon appeared to be that tablet he was carrying.

Probably a scientific consultant and a tech guy.

Thomas looked up in search of that drone he had seen earlier. It wasn’t there, having darted somewhere into the forest. He remained leaning against the SUV, the soldiers not seeming to notice his existence as they combed through the area.

“Charity. Howard. Glad to see you’ve finally joined us,” Coltrane said with a smile. “Did you at least do me the curtesy of bringing a cup of coffee?”

The woman, Charity, rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Last thing you need is a buzz, Captain. Especially considering what we’re dealing with out here.”

Thomas could not help but turn his eyes to one of the medevac helicopters as it departed to the southeast. These individuals seemed rather unfazed by the cost they recently paid, indicating casualties were an occupational hazard in their line of work.

Even more interestingly, they did not seem surprised whatsoever at the fact that giant-freaking-hornets were lurking in the forest.

There was only one logical conclusion: this was not their first rodeo.

“Howard, were you able to track the stragglers back to their nest?” Coltrane asked.

The man named Howard faced the tablet screen to the Captain. “I had my surveillance drone following them, but I must’ve gotten a little too close. As you can see, we made it a couple miles north, then…” The screen went fuzzy.

“Howard, ya suck at tracking bugs, you know that?” Coltrane said.

“Oh, ha-ha. Says the guy who thought we should draw them out with a boatload of honey,” Howard replied.

Coltrane snickered. “You can blame Charity for that one. She’s the one who said in our briefing that they might be giant bees.”

“Always redirecting, aren’t ya, Captain?” Charity said. “Of course, I would love to know where you think we’d get enough honey to attract a swarm of six-foot insects. And by the way, I said they might be hornets, wasps, or bees.”

“Well, now we know,” Coltrane said. A serious tone encompassed his voice. “Better yet, we know there was more than one nest. If they were heading due-north, they weren’t part of that other hive we destroyed. There’s another, and we need to find it, and bomb the hell out of it. These things have already claimed a number of lives. If their numbers grow, they could move south and invade that town in…” He looked at Charity. “How long do you estimate, Doc?”

She shrugged. “Judging by their growth rate and how quickly their numbers grew, I’d say maybe a day or two at most.”

“I’ll send more drones out,” Howard said. “Since we might be out here a little longer than expected, we might need a better place for basecamp. Somewhere with a little more space. Even my tech gets interference in these hills.”

“The resort?” Charity suggested.

Coltrane pulled a paper map from his vest and laid it out on the hood of a truck. “I’d like to be a little closer to the combat zone, if possible. If these things decide to venture north instead of south, that could open up a whole new set of problems.”

Thomas stepped away from his SUV. “Crown Rock.”

The three G.O.R.E. Sector personnel looked at him.

“Beg your pardon?”

Thomas approached and put his finger on the map. “We’re here, just a tad south of Stone Tower. Go northeast for about a mile, and you’ll find Crown Rock. You’ll find a large rock structure surrounded by relatively even ground with sparse tree growth.”

“Hmm.” Coltrane tilted his mic to his lips. “Renee?”

“Yeah, Boss.”

“There’s an area a little over a klick from our position. Crown Rock. Recon that area, then escort our units there once you’ve confirmed its all clear.”

“Roger that, Captain. Still bug hunting?”

“Looks like it.”

“That’s why they pay us the big bucks.”

“Right?” Coltrane chuckled and tilted his mic away. “How cute. She thinks we make good pay.”

“Beats Air Force earnings,” Charity said. She looked at Thomas. “So, Captain? Making new friends out here?”

“Hey, right now, I like him more than you,” Coltrane replied. He faced the Deputy. “Sir, I failed to offer my thanks for saving my ass.” He extended his hand. Thomas barely noticed it, his attention on the sky.

“What about the people those things took?”

Coltrane lowered his hand and cleared his throat. “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for them. The hornet’s venom is fatal, sir.”

“Once you’re stung, the venom immediately shuts down the victim’s organs. The heart stops in less than thirty seconds,” Charity explained. At that point, she realized there were two police SUVs. “Oh, you lost a partner?”

“Two of them,” Thomas said.

She nodded. “My condolences.”

“Condolences don’t cut it,” Thomas said. He waved at the surrounding vehicles and personnel. “What the hell is all of this? What is G.O.R.E. Sector? Who are you guys? Obviously you knew of these insects. You didn’t think to alert the civilians in the area? Would’ve helped out Mr. Netty and the people at his resort.”

“We first detected them about a day ago,” Coltrane explained. “They were farther east, with some scouts terrorizing some farmland. The reports made their way over to us and I led a reconnaissance team out here. Once we confirmed what the threat was, I ordered a containment unit mobilized and sent an alert to all nearby law enforcement agencies. By then, it was already too late for those people, I’m sorry to say.”

“The fireworks I heard farther east,” Thomas said. “That was you guys hitting the first nest?”

“Correct,” Coltrane said. “You do raise a good point, though. Excuse me one moment.” The Captain stepped toward a group of soldiers gathered near a Humvee. “Lieutenant Belanger?”

The Lieutenant stood in position of attention. “Yes, Captain?”

“I want you to form a defense unit near the town of Telegraph,” Coltrane said. “Keep the armor and heavy weapons out of sight, but stay within a short range of the town. We need a defense in case we can’t get those bugs in time.”

“Aye-aye, Captain.” The Lieutenant saluted, then ordered several men to follow him to a personnel carrier.

Coltrane returned to the Deputy.

“Out of sight, huh? Obviously G.O.R.E. Sector is some secret government program,” Thomas said. “You guys specialize in monster hunting? Or are big hornets becoming a new American pest issue?”

Coltrane broke eye contact, an awkward smile consuming his face. That in itself explained a lot. Thomas’ suspicion that this organization was hush-hush proved correct.

“If we said yes, would you believe us?” Coltrane said.

Thomas shrugged. “Like I really have a choice.” He stepped away from the truck and approached the department helicopter wreck. “By the way, did your study of those bugs reveal any chemical agents they carry?”

A bewildered Charity smirked, unsure if the deputy was playing some kind of joke. “Umm, they use pheromones to communicate with other members of their colony.”

“Not what I mean,” Thomas said. He pointed to the burn mark on the helicopter. “Do they secrete an acidic substance?”

The group approached and inspected the hull.

Coltrane raised an eyebrow. “Haven’t seen this anywhere else.”

“Could be nothing,” Charity said. “Could be a burn mark from when it crashed.”

“No,” Howard said. “The fire would have to come from the sun to do that kind of damage. The Deputy is right. It’s some kind of corrosive substance.”

“Charity, I need you to do an inspection of one of the bodies,” Coltrane said. “See if they produce anything like this.”

“I’d find out fast if I were you,” Thomas said. “See these scratch marks? Those hornets were big, but not this big. Maybe they have different ranks in their systems. Like scouts, warriors, then a higher class of warriors. Praetorians, maybe? Or maybe the queen herself.”

“Yeah, Deputy,” Charity said, her dismissiveness not subtle at all. “Trust us, we’re on top of this.”

“Charity,” Coltrane said. His tone was enough to make her stow her attitude.

His attention went to one of the soldiers who approached from an armored vehicle.

“Sir, the General’s on the line.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in a couple minutes,” Coltrane said. He faced Thomas. “Listen, sir…” He looked at the Deputy’s nameplate. “Rodney. What’s the T stand for?”

“Thomas. Feel free to use it.”

“Well, Thomas, I’m sorry you got mixed up in this, and I’m doubly sorry we didn’t discover these bugs sooner,” Coltrane said. “That said, I have to suggest you head back to town. We’ll be in touch with your sheriff to explain what happened to your partners, God rest their souls.”

Thomas smirked. “Gotta come up with a cover story, right?”

“Eh.” Coltrane tilted his head and made a tight-lipped smile, the kind someone made when trying to figure out how to articulate something they weren’t technically supposed to disclose. “Let’s just say, the world isn’t yet ready for the truth.”

Thomas looked at the downed chopper and the surrounding carnage. Clearing out all of the dead hornet bodies was a day’s work in itself.

“At this rate, it might not matter.” He approached Sergeant Olsen’s SUV. He collected the Mossberg shotgun from the trunk and a box of ammo. After putting the weapon in the passenger seat, he popped the hood and checked the engine. The front bumper was crumpled, but the engine itself appeared to be okay for the most part. Enough for him to limp back to town.

Without saying another word, he started the engine and drove off.

Charity crossed her arms, watching the SUV take off. Its muffler was cracked, resulting in a loud revving sound as Thomas steered away.

“You’re not even gonna make him sign the forms?” she said to Coltrane. “He saw the bugs. Saw us. If he goes to the press…”

“He won’t,” Coltrane said.

“How can you be sure?” Howard asked. “Yeah, he helped in the firefight. Doesn’t mean he won’t go public.”

“Guys… why do you think I hired the two of you?” Coltrane said.

Charity smirked. “Because you needed someone who was actually smart to watch your back. Doesn’t explain why you hired Howard, though.”

“You’re funny. Really funny.” Howard mocked laughter. “I doubt that’s the answer he was looking for.”

“Yes, yes,” Charity said. “You’re a good judge of character, Captain. Hope your judgement is on point with that guy. We probably should’ve offered him an escort back to town.”

Coltrane shook his head. “He would’ve refused. I’m confident he’ll be alright. Besides…”

He looked to the second SUV wreckage. The vehicle had been pummeled by the bugs, making the Deputy’s survival all the more impressive. Not too far from it was the spot where one of his men had gone down. The supplies had been taken off of him by the medics and placed in a metal bin. Inside was the man’s sidearm, spare magazines, grenades, and wires to connect his radio to his headset. No radio.

“…I’m not sure he’s heading to town.”

He walked to the Humvee to take his call from the General.

CHAPTER 6

It was true. It was all true.

Monsters were real.

Thomas headed west, the radio he had taken off of the deceased soldier rocking in the passenger seat. The radio chatter was minimal, with pilots stating positions and speed. It appeared that G.O.R.E. Sector was taking his advice on making their new base camp near Crown Rock. It was looking to be a long night for them. There was a lot of ground to cover and the hornets had plenty of places to hide.

Wind came through the broken windshield, assaulting his senses. A pair of sunglasses in the center console were put to good use. Lex often rode in Vehicle Four and had a bad habit of leaving personal belongings in it.

Thomas’ mind was still reeling from the recent encounter. He knew the situation was strange when he first found the road maintenance vehicles. The markings on the trees, the roof of the truck, the upper levels of Mr. Netty’s house and cottages—all of it suggested something unusual. Thomas had pieced together his findings with the reports of strange sightings that circulated through the internet for the last few years.

Regardless of those suspicions, nothing could have prepared Thomas Rodney for the reality of giant man-eating hornets. Even now, as he made distance from the battle zone, he wondered if he had entered an alternate reality.

Their presence, as well as the existence of G.O.R.E. Sector, confirmed the validity of the numerous monster sightings that had been flooding the internet for some time now. In every instance, the government was quick to respond to each situation, despite how seemingly absurd each one appeared to be. To be fair, Thomas could not blame the general public for doubting the validity of the reports. They were about giant monsters, for heaven’s sake.

Based on his experience, Thomas surmised there were two possible reasons for the government to keep news of these monsters out of the public eye. One: the creatures were the result of some kind of government experimentation gone awry, and they did not want the public aware of their screwup. Two: the creatures had evolved naturally, and the authorities were simply trying to prevent a nationwide panic.

Or a combination of both.

So many thoughts and questions fought for supremacy in the forefront of his mind. Where did the monsters come from? It was hard to believe they had been turning up for years. Sure, government conspiracies were sometimes long lasting, but these creatures were highly destructive. They often targeted public places. Such a thing would be difficult to keep under wraps for too long.

Naturally, he thought of the first reports, which occurred around three years ago. What changed in the world at that time? Had there been some kind of lab leak? Were these creatures natural? If so, why hadn’t they appeared before? Were they hiding, maybe subterranean, and were brought to the surface by some kind of cataclysmic event?

He quickly brushed that theory aside. It didn’t make sense. The reports indicated airborne, terrestrial, and deep-sea life. In addition, they had supposedly been appearing all over the globe. It did not make sense to think so many different species just happened to appear all at once.

Only one variable made some degree of sense.

The Ecclesiastes Intergalactic Meteor Storm. Originally, it was a simple meteor shower that drew a little too close to Earth. It came from somewhere outside the solar system, having traveled God knows how many thousands of lightyears. The meteorites were relatively small, leaving the public unconcerned about large-scale damage. What people did not expect was the explosive events that occurred when the meteorites came through the atmosphere. They exploded like bombs, releasing what appeared to be a dust storm of particles, which spread over the individual locations where they landed.

Though the planet had been peppered by these little explosions, hardly any damage was done. The populated areas that were hit were quickly evacuated and secured. As time went by, there did not appear to be any devastating effects of this strange dust storm that encompassed the impact areas. Scientists immediately went to work, coming up with numerous theories about the meteorites and whether they were carrying some kind of unknown substance. Many stated the dust was just debris from the rocks after they had exploded.

The event occurred roughly a year before the first monster sightings. It was a coincidence that did not sit right with the Deputy.

There’s got to be a connection.

After following the trail west for a few miles, he took a left to head south on Marcene Street. He deliberately avoided Younkin Road. Driving past Mr. Netty’s property and the vacant vehicles was not something he was in the mood to see. Besides that, he wanted to take an alternate route in case he found anyone else in the forest. Anyone present would need to be warned to evacuate.

He completed the left turn, idly listening to the chatter on the G.O.R.E. Sector radio. Occasionally, he heard Coltrane’s voice giving standard instructions. He recognized a few other voices, such as the pilot Renee. Whoever she was, she was a hell of a flyer. Though he did not know her personally, Thomas knew an adrenaline junkie when he saw one. Often, they made the best pilots… as long as they didn’t get themselves killed.

Then there was that sniper fella, whose name Thomas did not catch. Regardless, he was a crack shot. Even the sharpshooters Thomas served with in the Army would struggle to pull such precise shots from a moving aircraft. Coltrane was no amateur either. It was evident that the guy was used to commanding large units in high-stress situations. Either he was an adrenaline junkie as well, or he was so used to this job, it was second nature.

Not everyone in this unit were combat soldiers. Those two people, Howard and Charity, struck Thomas as scientist types. He could not judge their combat abilities on the one meeting alone. Perhaps they were responsible for researching the type of threats they were facing. Charity, in particular, seemed to be some kind of biologist, judging by the way she spoke. Howard seemed more techno-savvy, possibly developing equipment for the frontline guys to track and kill the biological threats.

One thing was clear: Whatever this organization was, they hired the absolute best.

Still, nothing could have prepared him for the sight of giant bugs. Two of his fellow deputies had been killed, their last moments spent in indescribable terror. Neither man deserved what happened to them. Neither were married or had kids, but that did not diminish the tragedy of their demise. Thomas did not consider them good friends. Just co-workers he got along well with. Their loss hit hard regardless, partially because it was so unexpected. And because Thomas felt he could have done more to save them.

His police radio crackled, breaking his train of thought.

“Unit One to Two. What’s your twenty?”

Thomas pressed his transmitter. “This is Six. They’re gone, sir.”

“What?”

“Sergeant Olsen and Deputy Lex are down. Levi too. I could tell you why, but I should probably direct you to the feds. They’ll probably give you whatever official story to run with.”

There was a period of silence. He could picture the Sheriff in a state of shock. He had served as sheriff for eight years, and in the department overall for twenty-five. There had been a handful of shootings, but he had never lost an officer in action. At the same time, the Sheriff knew there was something going on that was higher than his paygrade. Thus, he would never know the true reason for the deaths of his men. Not unless Thomas told him, of course. Such an action would probably land the former Army Ranger in Gitmo. He was already pushing his luck by taking the radio off the dead G.O.R.E. Sector commando.

Not that Thomas cared at this point. He had nothing at this point. Most of his time was spent on the job, aimlessly patrolling the thick forest. Being home brought him nothing but emptiness. Or, maybe, he carried the emptiness around with him.

He looked at his wedding ring.

“Okay, Deputy Rodney. Are you alright?”

“Just dandy.”

“Are you on your way back to the station?”

An all-too-familiar droning sound reached his ears. Thomas hit the brakes, cracked the window, and listened. Oh, shit.

The whirring sound was coming from somewhere to the west. He stopped the vehicle and listened intently, shotgun in his lap. The source of the noise appeared to be descending, but not in his direction.

In need of a better view, he stepped out of the vehicle and looked westward, shotgun shouldered.

There only seemed to be a couple of bugs out there, one near the ground level, the other still in the sky. As he listened, the bugs seemed to trade positions, the one ascending and flying north while the other one descended. A minute later, that bug took to the sky again.

This time, Thomas managed to catch a brief glimpse of it. Sure enough, it was a hornet, with a limp deer clutched in its legs. Flesh-eaters, they were out gathering food for their hive.

It came as no surprise they were hunting in this region. The entire area was loaded with wildlife. Deer, black bears, mountain lions, and all kinds of critters. The birds had probably evacuated the area, sensing the new danger. Everything else did not have the luxury of wings, making migration slower. Others probably sought shelter in their dens, only to be dug out by the hornets and stung.

An idea came to mind. G.O.R.E. Sector was searching east of this area. They would probably branch west at some point, but it was a wide area to cover, even with the use of drones. If he could track those bugs, he could save a lot of time.

He got in his SUV and drove off.

“Deputy? Deputy, come in.”

“I’m here, Sheriff.”

“What’s going on? Are you on your way back to the station?”

Thomas watched the road. He came across a trail on the right. Maple Wood Jeep Trail. A quarter mile west of this crossing, it bent to the northwest, where it continued for another few miles. Right to the usual hunting grounds.

He made the turn.

“Got something I need to do first, Sheriff.”

“Deputy, I don’t know what’s going on out there, but you have to return now. If anything happens to you, we cannot come out and help.”

“Understood, Sheriff. There’s just one favor I’d like to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m in Vehicle Four. Track its GPS.”

“I just told you. If you get in trouble out there, we won’t be able to assist you until we get the all clear from the feds.”

Thomas continued on, paying attention to the natural landmarks he had grown familiar with.

“That’s not why I’m asking.”

CHAPTER 7

After a mile of traveling northeast, Thomas arrived at a wide circular area of gravel road. It served as both a roundabout and a parking area for those who wanted to see the common grazing area on foot. It wasn’t an official park, but it was generally treated as such. Birdwatchers came out at all times of year, and hikers made use of the picnic tables in the area.

Thomas stopped his vehicle and stared in stunned silence. On the lefthand side of the roundabout, a Jeep had been turned on its side. A section of fencing separating the roundabout from the forest had been smashed, a single sandal lying in the middle of the ruins.

He stepped out of the vehicle and inspected the nearby area, shotgun in hand.

The items indicated two occupants were once inside the Jeep. Various hygiene products, some water, snacks, insect spray, and a woman’s purse were piled on the passenger side door.

At the edge of the fence where the trail continued on, a bike lay on its side, the handlebars bent, the chain broken. There was no mystery as to what had happened to these people. The bugs were on a vendetta to capture as much prey as possible. If they functioned the same as normal colonies, there was a queen who was in constant need of sustenance.

In this very moment, more giant hornets were being born. Before long, they would join in the rampage, bringing death and destruction to the entire county. Maybe even the state. If left unchecked, they would proliferate out of control.

It was now when Thomas felt a new appreciation for G.O.R.E. Sector. If the hornet colonies had recently appeared, then the relatively quick response deserved credit.

Thomas reconsidered his course of action. Maybe it was best to leave it up to Coltrane and his crew. This was their profession, not his.

You’re not a soldier anymore, Tommy boy. You’re a small-town deputy who spends his days watching the trees.

He chose to walk a little farther. The next sight swiftly put an end to the internal debate.

The area around the park had been completely ravaged. Acres of trees had been shredded, their limbs fallen, the leaves littering the earth. Below were signs of various skirmishes. Deer prints, less than twelve hours old, went in all directions. Some were fawns and yearlings, tracked down and captured alongside their parents.

He used to bring Leslie out here in her final months while she still had the energy to walk. The togetherness and the tranquility of the forest eased her pain better than any medication. Everyday when he was off work, they could come here, walk the trails, admire the sights, and even feed the deer.

Thomas could never repay this forest for the peace it brought to Leslie in her final days. Her ashes were spread here, making her one with the forest.

Now, the hornets had decimated this sacred place.

This wretched sight did more than spark anger in Thomas’ heart. It served as an example of how far the bugs were branching out. In twenty-four hours, they would be invading nearby counties. Telegraph would be next, for sure. Even if an evacuation was ordered, the bugs would invade faster than the people would escape. Especially the proud folk of Telegraph, most of whom had a general distrust of the government. Many would refuse to leave their homes at first. By the time they finally chose to comply, it would be too late.

The buzzing of wings deep within the forest made the Deputy crouch. With the shotgun muzzle pointed up, he watched the canopy. The hornets were somewhere to the northeast, swooping down to ground level in pursuit of prey. There was a sound of struggle, then an ascending of those wings, which then traveled north to wherever that nest was.

For the most part, the bugs were traveling within the canopy. G.O.R.E.’s reconnaissance drones were patrolling high altitudes with intent to spot a scout and follow it back to the nest. If the bugs were flying within the trees, Coltrane’s crew would have a hard time spotting them.

With that in mind, Thomas decided to follow through with his plan.

***

It was not a plan Thomas was proud of, but considering the gravity of the situation, he believed it was justified. Hunt a deer to use as bait, plant the GPS on it, and lure the hornets to the bait to be carried back to their nest. All without getting himself killed, of course.

He had hunted during deer and bear seasons, and had gotten a pretty good grasp on their various grazing habitats. There was a small pond that served as a common watering hole. Generally, hunters were discouraged from shooting around this area, for it was unofficially considered a reserve. Though not bound by law, the majority of people honored this request, including Thomas.

Sometimes, while on patrol, he would stop near here and simply watch the critters living their lives. There was a sense of peace observing the simplicities of wildlife. These creatures did not worry about politics, bills, or sports. They did not waste their lives on social media, fighting over dumb things. They did not have to concern themselves with government overreach or lack of action. It was just day-to-day survival. Find food, make offspring, and avoid predators. It was a hard life, but one they were all built for.

Out on patrol was the only time he visited this place nowadays.

Thomas used the tool kit in the trunk to remove the SUV’s GPS from the dashboard. The department really made sure their deputies could not remove these things easily. Not that anyone cared to do such a thing, but policy was sometimes based on conjecture and not fact.

The next thing he did was locate the best hiding place for his vehicle. He made use of the shredded vegetation, laying it over the SUV like a blanket. Next, he sprayed it with the fire extinguisher in hopes the chemical scent would deter any insects from inspecting it.

Next, he took the shotgun and moved toward the pond area, keeping low and quiet. He did not see much movement. Either the bugs had thoroughly combed through this area already, or everything was scared off by the SUV’s roaring muffler.

Thomas did not give up. The art of hunting required patience, after all.

After waiting for several minutes, he decided to push farther west. The bugs could not have wiped out all life in this area already. If they had the numbers to do that, then the world was really in trouble.

The hunt extended for another hour. Not one deer, racoon, coyote, or fox appeared. Even the squirrels and rabbits seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. Every additional minute spent out here gave new weight to the growing situation.

Everything was gone. The more Thomas thought about it, he realized he had not seen a single living thing since he started driving the north half of Ramsey County. He was off to a late start. The day shift had been remarkably busier than usual, with a few out-of-towners starting street brawls at a local restaurant and a hotel. In one instance, a knife was reportedly pulled, resulting in an all-units call from Dispatch. Much of the day was spent interviewing witnesses and interrogating suspects. It wasn’t until a quarter after two, forty-five minutes before shift change, that Thomas began his usual patrol of the woods.

In hindsight, he wondered if that saved his life. With more hindsight, he wondered if it was all by design.

Were those troublemakers undercover operatives sent by G.O.R.E. Sector to keep us in town and out of danger?

The answer would have to wait.

Thomas moved to the nearest tree and crouched. He could hear the bugs nearby, moving through the trees. There were several pairs of wings, indicating a small swarm.

Oh great. Maybe this wasn’t such a wise idea after all.

Unlike before, the hornets were moving more clumsily, crashing through the canopy, snapping small branches, which then fell to the ground. He could hear one of the bugs plummeting to the ground, the frequency of its wing motion gravely depleted.

Only when it landed did Thomas get a visual. It was on its side, thrashing its wings and legs, its abdomen twitching every which way. He wondered if it was merely an inept member of the colony who smacked against a tree limb and knocked itself out.

That theory lasted a few moments before Thomas discarded it. The others were thrashing about in the trees. He caught a few glimpses of their black bodies weaving between the massive obstacles. They traveled with no sense of destination. Some even circled back, swerving nonstop, flying high and low like an aircraft evading an enemy missile that had locked on to it.

During this observation, Thomas picked up a new droning sound. Immediately, he knew this was different. The hornets’ wing motion produced what was essentially an exaggerated sound a fly made when it buzzed too close to one’s ear. This, however, sounded like the engine of a heavy machine. It was deeper. Bigger.

Leaves and sticks rained down on the fallen hornet, preceding the arrival of an even more terrifying sight.

It was a dark yellow in color, with a few black stripes on its abdomen. Its eyes were demon red, its antennae long and narrow, the abdomen large and thick. The stinger at its end was curved and thick, resembling a human rib bone. Its body was twice the size of the hornet’s, its legs larger in proportion, the feet on their ends sickle-shaped.

“For Heaven’s sake,” Thomas muttered. “First, giant hornets. Now a damn, monster wasp!”

The hornet thrashed about, desperately trying to ram its stinger into the attacker’s thorax. Using its long black forelegs to pin its prey down, the enormous wasp angled itself away from the stinger. It angled its own abdomen into position. The sharp organ plunged into the hornet’s thorax, injecting deadly toxins which immediately shut down its nervous system. The hornet stiffened, its final moments spent in a futile effort to escape.

Victorious, the wasp secured the smaller bug in its legs and took to the sky. Thomas followed its trajectory. It moved north, quickly disappearing into the forest.

He swiftly turned his attention to the other chaos taking place above him. There were more hornets and wasps, engaging in a dogfight like fighter planes in World War Two.

All the while, he made sure to record the event with his phone. It was not for shallow reasons such as posting to social media, but to have the footage available for G.O.R.E. Sector. His gut warned him they were not aware of the wasp colony, and that providing them with this video would spare him any doubt or speculation from the crew. They were professionals, but he detected a bit of a superiority complex, particularly from Charity.

Branches crackled as another hornet plummeted. It was already stiff as it landed, having been stung during aerial combat. The wasp that had slain the bug began a descent, ready to collect its prize. It dropped within twenty feet, only to bank right in a hurry. Two other hornets threw themselves at the larger insect, intent on overpowering it.

Thomas’ gaze alternated between the dead hornet and the battle taking place in the trees. He could hear more buzzing coming from the north, both from hornets and wasps. It was clear the latter was hunting the former. From what Thomas witnessed, the wasps were far superior, not only in their size and strength, but in their speed and ferocity.

He flinched as one of the hornets was rammed against a tree and stung. The wasp released the dying bug as soon as the venom was injected, leaving it to plummet and die while it resumed fighting with the other hornets in the area. It sought out another target, closed the distance, and grabbed it with its long legs. The stinger did its job, putting an end to the struggle. With the hornet dying in its arms, the wasp turned north and vanished.

Thomas wasn’t sure which was stranger: the existence of giant winged insects, or the fact he was fascinated rather than flat out terrified. The fear was present, but it was suppressed by discipline and attention to detail. The hornets, who had ravaged so much of the countryside, were just one link in a larger food chain.

That thought brought his attention to the dead hornet lying nearby. The wasp that had slain it was still in combat. It had killed one of the hornets and was busy with the last. At the moment, it was the only wasp present. It wouldn’t be alone for long. Buzzing wings from the north signified the approach of additional brethren.

Thomas had moments to carry out the makeshift idea that took form in his mind. Cursing himself for potentially serving himself on a silver platter, he ran to the dead wasp. His first thought was to use his pocketknife to make an incision. That idea was scrapped, as time was not on his side. The other wasps were almost here, the one above in the process of killing the final hornet. It would take too long to carve out a proper wound.

Fortunately, the wasp had already done the job for him.

He rolled the dead bug over to locate the sting wound. It was on the hornet’s abdomen, leaking yellow blood. Adrenaline shook his hands as he fumbled to get the GPS out of his pocket. He stuffed the small device into the wound, stuffed some leaves into it to make sure it wouldn’t fall out, then turned and ran.

Thomas looked over his shoulder as one of the wasps dove to collect the dead bug. He kept going, passing the pond, ultimately finding his SUV. He got in the vehicle and waited, hoping for the buzzing sound to disappear.

Nope. It got louder instead.

“Great.”

They either saw him running or heard his vibrations. Thomas turned to dig through the items on the passenger seat. Among them was the can of bug spray he had taken from the overturned Jeep. Though the wasps were not the usual yellow jackets, they were still bugs. He could only hope the spray would mask his scent at the very least.

He took a deep breath, then filled the air with its contents. Between that and the fire extinguisher spray, the SUV was practically a petri dish of chemicals.

With his shotgun aimed at the sticks and leaves barrier where his windshield used to be, Thomas waited. A pair of wasps circled the vicinity in search of the critter.

His heart threatened to leap into his throat as one of them inched close to the left window. Teeth clenched and beads of sweat took form. Slowly, he angled the shotgun muzzle to the window.

Make up your mind, bug.

A gust of air swept over the vehicle as the wasp took to the sky. Uninterested in the vehicle, it and its partner flew northwest, joining the rest of their squadron in their journey to their hive.

The sound of wings vanished. Never more than now had Thomas appreciated the sound of silence.

He stepped out of the vehicle and smacked the vegetation off of it. As the chemicals aired out, he dug out his phone and checked the footage. The wasps were front and center, killing their prey, doing the world a favor, while also setting themselves up to be the new alpha predators.

He raised his speaker mic to his lips. “Unit Six to One.”

“Thank God. What’s going on? Why are you still out there?”

“Track my GPS,” Thomas said, ignoring the question. “You have a read on it?”

“Uh, yeah. The computer shows it going northwest. How fast are you driving?”

“Keep an eye on it. Let me know where it ends up.” Thomas clipped the mic and reached for the G.O.R.E. radio. “Ramsey County Police Department calling G.O.R.E. Sector. Captain Coltrane, you there?”

A minute passed, during which Thomas suspected he was being ignored.

“Coltrane here. I was wondering when you’d make use of that stolen radio.”

Thomas cracked a smile. He liked this guy already.

“You’ll be glad I did. Are you at Crown Rock?”

“Why do you ask, Deputy? You should be back in town by now.” There was sarcasm in his voice, giving Thomas some insight into the Captain’s personality. Coltrane already knew Thomas was up to something, and let him go anyway. It could have meant the guy was a dick who didn’t care if the Deputy got himself killed. Or, he had faith that Thomas would produce a result. He suspected it was the latter.

“I decided to take a stroll through the woods. You’ll be glad I did. I have intel that you might find invaluable.”

CHAPTER 8

Night had fallen.

Thomas stood aside, allowing the G.O.R.E. Sector response team to observe the data he presented. While they looked over the G.P.S. location and the iPhone footage, he observed the layout of the basecamp.

Large turrets had been set up on the perimeter. Big machines, resembling World War Two anti-aircraft guns, pointed skyward. A radar technician had his eyes on his monitor, carefully watching for any incoming threat. Numerous Humvees and military Jeeps patrolled the nearby area. A barracks tent was set up on the south, mostly unoccupied, for all units were on alert. They were not dealing with an opponent who slept at night.

“Well, would you look at that,” Coltrane said.

Even Charity was impressed. Moreover, she was fascinated with the events playing out on the five-inch screen. She played it back multiple times, freezing to get a better look at the new enemy.

“Wasps,” she said. “Like yellow jackets, only way worse. They must have evolved around the same time as the hornets. If this video is any indication of anything, they’re mean sons of bitches.”

“And we didn’t even know they were here…” Coltrane glanced at Thomas Rodney, who was standing a few feet away, arms crossed. “Until now.”

Howard cleared his throat. “I was gonna have my drones check that location… oh, screw it.” There was no point in saving face. The group shared a moment of humiliation. They had the most advanced technology in the world at their disposal, yet some small-town cop with a basic GPS and an iPhone was the one who discovered the wasps and the location of their nest.

The signal was coming from an area six miles northwest of their present location. Satellite imaging showed it to be on the east side of a mountain.

“That’s Hocking Hill,” Thomas said. “It’s a rocky area. Not as many trees as here.”

“I doubt their nest is hanging from a branch like you see in cartoons,” Charity said. “It’s probably dug deep into the side of the mountain.”

“I’ll redirect my surveillance drones to that location,” Howard said.

They looked to the sky as the transverse rotor gunship passed overhead. It set down on the eastmost side of camp, its pilot and crew stepping out while ground units began refueling.

The pilot approached the Captain. A six-foot-four individual with a black goatee, a stern look, and a large sniper rifle followed her.

“Checked every inch of this place for three miles,” the pilot said. “There’s a few hornet scouts out that way. No wasps.”

“They probably guard the nest at night,” Charity said. “At least that gives us time to devote our resources into finding the second hornet nest.”

“Did you try following them, Renee?” Coltrane asked.

The pilot shook her head. “Negative. They came at us. Had to blast ‘em away. What about Dr. Robotnik’s drones?”

“The bugs go after them. It seems they have an anger management problem. Kinda like someone I know,” Howard replied, elbowing the sniper’s arm. He was met with a piercing glare. Howard shrugged. “Totally disproved my point there, huh Archer?”

The pilot looked in Thomas’ direction. “What’s the tin star doing here?”

“He’s helping us out,” Coltrane said. “There’s another team at play. Take a look at this.” He played the video for him and Renee.

The pilot made a grossed-out expression. “Yuck. More bugs? I’m about ready to spray down this entire forest.”

“We have the location,” Coltrane said. “First, we need to find the other nest. I want to hit them back-to-back.”

“If we hit the wasp nest too early, we could potentially drive the hornets out of the area,” Charity said. “If my theory is correct, it’s gonna take a hell of a bombardment to destroy them. We already know what it takes to bring down the hornet nest. Once we find it, it’ll be lights out.”

A Jeep with a large machine-gun mount in the back arrived at the check-in station. All eyes turned as the barrier lifted, letting the vehicle into the camp. In the passenger seat was a man in his mid-sixties, wearing Army-style utilities. He was an individual who took great care of himself physically, his biceps on par with the Army Rangers Thomas once served with. He had a greying mustache and a cigar in his mouth.

He was greeted with a salute from Coltrane as he stepped out of the Jeep.

“General.”

“Captain.” Saluting back, he glanced briefly at the Deputy before approaching the desk setup. “It seems this one is messier than usual.”

“Wish it wasn’t the case, sir,” Coltrane said. “Seems there was more than one nest.”

“Worse than that,” Charity said. “More than one species.”

The General scoffed. “Car GPS, huh? That’s clever. And ballsy. Mr. Tate, what’s going on with the tracking process?”

“They keep attacking our drones, sir,” Howard replied. “Infrared scanning is failing to pick them up. They mostly move within the trees. Every time we get a visual, we either lose ‘em right away, or they come after us and force us to kill them.”

“Can’t plant a tag on them,” the sniper said. “Tried that. Doesn’t help when they come after the ship with intent on having you for lunch.”

“Why not use one of your drones to tag the bugs?” Thomas said. Everyone turned to look at him. Thomas suspected he would be met with a tsunami of ego. After all, what did a lowly deputy know, as opposed to these professionals?

“What do you think, Mr. Tate?” the General asked.

Howard gave it some thought. “It’s possible. It’ll take some creative flying, but I think I can pull it off. The drones have arms. If I can engage one of the hornets head on, I can use the arms to plant a tag. I have an adhesive on hand that should do the trick.” He scratched the back of his head, the smirk on his face indicating he was chastising himself for not thinking of this idea before.

“We can use our plan of creating pheromones to draw some of them out,” Charity said. “Give Howard and I a couple hours and we can have it synthesized.”

“Do it,” the General said. He turned to face the Deputy. “So, Captain. This the cowboy you were telling me about?”

“Yes sir, that’s him,” Coltrane said.

The General smiled. “Lieutenant Thomas Rodney. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I must say, you’re a rare breed. Could’ve gotten yourself killed pulling that stunt.”

Thomas tilted his head at the referral of his military rank.

“Yeah, we took the liberty of looking up your files,” Coltrane said, reading his mind. He walked to another station and returned with a tan folder.

“I had a chance to read the digital version on my way over,” the General said. “Thomas C. Rodney. Joined the United States Army at age eighteen. Recruited into Special Forces three years later. Two Silver Stars, four Purple Hearts, and the Legion of Merit. Served two tours in Afghanistan, two in Iraq, conducted counterterrorism operations in Egypt, Somalia, and in various places in Asia. Expert in explosives, weapons, and tactics. Led training operations in Japan and the Philippines for local military bases. Black belt in both Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Goju-Ryu Karate. Left the service after fifteen years. Entered the police academy and joined the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department.”

The sniper scoffed. “Fifteen? Couldn’t hold out for five more years, Deputy?”

Thomas returned fire with a vicious stare. “It’s probably in the file.”

Coltrane was clenching his teeth. “Please forgive Archer. Sometimes he has a tendency for a premature discharge… with words, I mean.”

“Hey, at least you got words out of him,” Renee said.

“I’m sorry about your wife,” the General said. “I admire that. You left the service to take care of her after her cancer diagnosis. You’re a loyal man, Lieutenant. The kind this world needs more of, in my opinion.”

“Seems like the world needs a lot more than loyalty,” Thomas replied. He gestured at all of the equipment, aircraft, and weapons. “Well, General, Captain… you guys know everything there is about me. Since I’m here, how ‘bout I learn a little something about you? What the hell is G.O.R.E. Sector?”

Coltrane faced the General, seeking his approval.

“He’s seen this much already,” the General said. “I suppose, since he’s generously assisted our operation, the least we can do is satisfy his curiosity. Not like the whole world isn’t going to know about this soon enough.”

“No, I suppose not,” Coltrane said. He waved Thomas over to a computer desk under a tent. “Lieutenant, let me formally introduce you to G.O.R.E. Sector. Giant Organism Reconnaissance and Extermination. Considering what you’ve witnessed today, it’s probably easy to assume what it is we do.”

“You hunt monsters,” Thomas said. It was more a statement than a question.

“All across the globe, various mutations have sprung up. All of them deadly.” He tilted his head at the General. “This is General Austin Kilmore. He oversees all of G.O.R.E. Sector’s operations. He’s the man we call if we need a few additional toys. Jets, tanks, Navy ships, an artillery strike, you name it.”

“Congress doesn’t give you problems?” Thomas asked.

General Kilmore shook his head. “I’m very persuasive.”

There was no doubt in Thomas’ mind he was telling the truth. The General did not seem to be the type with patience for the folly of politics. He probably made it clear to the government, ‘provide what we need, or life on Earth may never be the same ever again.’

It was a point proven by the actions of the wasp and hornet colonies.

Coltrane brought up a series of files on his computer. The first one was a satellite image of some eel-like creature with an enormous head, lined with curved fangs. It was on the deck of a Navy aircraft carrier, its body riddled with artillery wounds. Its head was enormous, disproportionate to its body. Huge black eyes stared back, seemingly watching Thomas from the other side of the monitor.

The next image was some kind of mantis creature in an Asian rainforest. The footage was from a body cam, displaying soldiers engaging the vicious beast. After that, Coltrane played a ten-second clip of a humanoid creature. Thomas took notice of the winter setting—the Himalayas.

“You’re telling me Yetis exist?”

Coltrane reached down to play the next clip. “They do now.” He clicked on the next file, which showed the aftermath of some sort of attack on a village in South America. “They’ve been springing up for years now. All around the globe. Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, the Arctic, South America… everywhere. Air, land, and sea. Types of creatures you can imagine and many you can’t imagine. They all share one common trait: they’re dangerous.”

“I imagine they share a similar origin,” Thomas said. “Let me guess. The Ecclesiastes Meteor storm?”

Charity joined the conversation. “We’ve obtained mineral samples from the exploded ore. They were hollow, almost like grenades. Except, instead of shrapnel, they were filled with particles. Almost like a pollen. Except, instead of triggering allergies, they act as a mutagen. When they find a host, they compromise the DNA and corrupt the chromosomes.”

“Fabulous. A Chernobyl-style alien invasion,” Thomas said. “So, this is what you guys do for a living. Travel the world and hunt monsters, huh?”

“There are worse ways to earn a paycheck,” Charity said.

“Sure. Unless you end up in a monster’s gullet,” Thomas retorted.

Charity did not appreciate the humor in that. She turned away, stopping long enough to make her next point.

“We work to prevent that from happening. Not just for ourselves, but everyone. I reckon you can appreciate that fact.”

Thomas suspected there was personal history behind that statement, given her sudden shift in attitude.

“What about you, Captain?” Thomas said. “I take it you’re the leader of a special reconnaissance team?”

“Raptor Pack,” the Captain said. “We’re a five-person team. Our objective is to investigate possible mutant activity, confirm the threat, and destroy it. Sometimes we’re able to do it ourselves, but often we need General Kilmore to provide us with the good stuff. A lot of these monsters don’t die easily. To get the job done, sometimes things need to go boom.”

“Speaking of the team…” General Kilmore held his hand toward Charity and Howard. “Obviously, you’ve met Dr. Charity Black and Dr. Howard Tate.”

The latter casually gave a two-finger salute.

“Dr. Tate is our engineer and chemist, having earned PhDs in both,” Kilmore continued. “Prior to working for us, he served in the Navy, where he worked on developing stealth technology for our submarines, new tech for deep-sea missions, instant sealant for warships in case of a breach resulting from, say, a torpedo blast.”

“Or a monster claw?” Thomas said.

“You’re catching on,” Coltrane said. “Our objectives often require us to improvise on the spot. Howard’s understanding of engineering and chemistry are second-to-none. When you’re battling the unknown, you sometimes need to invent new tools to get the job done.”

Thomas was impressed. Howard was close to his age. To obtain two doctorates in addition to his vast work history, he undoubtedly had a brilliant mind. Unlike the stereotypical scientist, he did not seem to be socially awkward. In fact, his appearance suggested he spent as much time in the gym as the lab.

“Dr. Black is our biologist-slash-botanist-slash-oceanographer-slash-geologist-slash… whatever the hell else she is an expert in,” General Kilmore said. “Basically, whenever I have a science question, I defer to her. She supervised numerous research projects during her Air Force service. After the Ecclesiastes Meteor Storm, she was recruited into G.O.R.E. Sector.”

Thomas nodded. Her role in the group was pretty self-explanatory. It would be foolish to do battle with biological organisms without a biologist in your team.

“You guys as good with a gun as you are with schoolbooks?” he asked.

“I’ve outshot my fair share of Army doughboys,” Charity said.

Thomas looked at his midsection. “You saying something there, Doctor?”

She shrugged. “Of course not. You were in the Army. I don’t need to insult you any further. That’d just be cruel.”

That got a laugh from the former lieutenant. He turned his eyes to the pilot, Renee, and the sniper.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Renee and Archer.”

“I’d say you’re psychic, but I’m smart enough to know you stole a radio from one of our guys,” Renee said.

“Raptor Pack needs a pilot,” General Kilmore explained. “Fortunately, Ensign Renee Larson is efficient with all kinds of vehicles, not only aircraft. If it’s mobile, she can operate it. I assure you of that.”

“She’s taken our team skyward, underwater, across long landscapes, even underground in one case,” Coltrane said.

“Just waiting for an excuse to go into space,” Renee said, stylishly repositioning her shades with her finger.

“Give it time, Ensign,” Kilmore said.

The sniper fella barely paid attention to the conversation. He was in the middle of reading a magazine while chewing on some jerky.

“That giddy, expressive fella is Sergeant Ray Archer,” Kilmore said, his voice loaded with sarcasm. “Don’t let his flamboyant personality fool you. He’s a crack shot with any rifle. Basically, he hits what he points it at.”

“No debate there,” Thomas said. “I learned that firsthand. Kept me from becoming hornet lunch. Thanks for that, Sergeant.”

“Mmhmm.” Archer bit on another piece of jerky, his eyes never leaving the page.

“Eh…” Coltrane took a seat at the desk. “Don’t mind him too much. He’s as reliable as they come. He’s just… not very personable. Doesn’t like to get emotionally attached to anyone he works with.”

“I see.” Thomas did not judge. He had known plenty of those types, and every one of them had their own reason. “I can’t blame him. I imagine this job has a significant casualty rate.”

“We do our best to keep it down,” Coltrane said. “It’s part of the risk we all assume. We’re saving the world from monsters. Sometimes, the monsters land a few killing blows before we bring them down.”

“Make no mistake, Lieutenant,” General Kilmore said. “No matter how dire the situation, no matter the odds, G.O.R.E. Sector always comes out on top. Hence, we’ve hired the absolute best of the best.”

Thomas gave the crew a look of admiration. Today had been a hell of a strange day. First, he did battle against monster bugs. Next, he met a team whose job was to hunt monsters. He was in the damn Twilight Zone.

“Best of the best, huh?” He tilted his head at Charity. “Then why’d you hire someone out of the Chair Force?”

The group looked at Charity, taking great delight at the cantankerous look on her face. Finally, a smile took form.

She was the first to laugh, which quickly infected the rest of the crew, save for the quiet Archer, who still had his eyes on his magazine.

“Alright, smart ass,” Charity said. “I see how it is.”

“So do I,” Thomas replied.

It was the start of a beautiful friendship.

CHAPTER 9

“This is my little bird. I have five of them left. Hopefully, one of them can mark one of the hornets, or else we’ll have to come up with something else,” Howard explained.

The engineer had noticed Thomas standing with Captain Coltrane, watching as the drones were prepped. Four feet in body length, with six long, jointed legs, they all resembled large insects.

Appropriate for this mission, I suppose, Thomas thought. He took notice of the control module at Howard’s workstation. It was essentially a large laptop connected to a bar with several control sticks.

“You’re able to control all five of them from that one device?” Thomas asked.

“I’m good at multitasking,” Howard said. “When you’re out in the field without immediate backup, you need to be.”

To demonstrate this, he went to the control station and tapped a few keys, activating all five drones. From there, he made all five drones stand on their legs. Their forearms elevated, holding pincer claws in front of them, their pose now making them appear more like crabs than bugs. Under Howard’s control, they each grabbed ahold of a tracker tag.

The tags were smooth and flat, resembling simple bookmarks. Thomas did not pretend to be an expert in technology. It had advanced so quickly during his lifetime. He still remembered when flip phones were a big deal. Now, it seemed like something as simple as a piece of plastic contained some kind of advanced tech.

“Those’ll stick to the hornets?” he asked.

“Correct.” When all of the drones had a tag, Howard tapped another set of keys. Fans, located on the left and right sides of each drone, spun. They ascended several yards into the air, then raced northeast, quickly disappearing into the night.

The engineer watched the night-vision image on his monitor. Each drone was equipped with a forward and aft camera.

General Kilmore approached. “I see the bots are in flight.”

“They are Long-range Aerial Reconnaissance Drones… sir.” Howard cleared his throat.

Thomas looked to Coltrane, the look on his face conveying his unspoken question. A little dramatic, isn’t he?

The Captain smirked and led him away from the workstation. “He’s, uh, a little protective of his machines. This job doesn’t allow for much of a social life. He takes a liking to his inventions and doesn’t like when they’re damaged or…” he chuckled, “…disrespected.”

“Let me guess,” Thomas said, “he considers ‘bot’ to be derogatory.”

Coltrane nodded and smiled. He fully acknowledged Howard’s somewhat eccentric qualities, yet, Thomas could tell he wouldn’t have it any other way.

General Kilmore’s voice echoed across the basecamp. “Renee! You’re up. If Howard’s plan works, I want someone in the air to get visual confirmation of the nest. Specifically, someone who can survive a pissed-off swarm of giant hornets.”

“You got it, General.”

Thomas and Coltrane watched Renee and Archer hustle past them to where the special gunship was docked. During the night, Thomas learned the vehicle had been given the designation Falcon-One-Four, sometimes simply referred to as the Falcon.

Before long, they heard the whining of the engines and felt the downdraft from its rotors as the gunship elevated.

“Wanna ride, Deputy?” she said through the speaker.

Thomas shook his head. “Nah. I’m good.”

“Aw.”

She pointed the gunship northwest and took off, gracing those below with another gust of wind.

Thomas spat, ridding himself of the taste of dust that entered his mouth.

“Something tells me she did that on purpose,” he said.

“She’s got a sense of humor,” Coltrane muttered. He sneezed. “Blech! Maybe too much of one.”

The two of them walked across the basecamp.

“How many soldiers work under G.O.R.E. Sector?” Thomas asked.

“As many as we can recruit,” Coltrane answered. “There’s Lieutenant, Belanger, who leads support units for Raptor Pack. You saw him earlier by your police helicopter. It depends on the situation, but they’re usually on standby, sometimes in a military base or a Naval ship, waiting for Raptor Pack to give the word.”

“Is secrecy that big an issue?”

“Eh.” Coltrane tilted his head back and forth while searching for the politest way to answer that. “Let’s just say it’s what our government insists.”

As they went, they neared the lab tent. The entrance was open, granting access to the scientist inspecting one of the dead hornets. Charity Black glanced over at the two men, acknowledged them with a half-smile and nod, then returned to her work.

In the past several hours, she and Howard had successfully synthesized a pheromone spray for the drones. The payload was installed into a compartment on their underbellies, which would be deployed once the robots arrived at an appropriate location.

“I would’ve thought she’d take the opportunity to get some shut eye,” Thomas said.

“She’s…” Coltrane thought about being careful with his words. “Might be insensitive for me to say ‘obsessed’. I’ll stick with ‘dedicated’.”

Thomas stopped and gave another look at her tent. In his experience, there were three general reasons people devoted themselves entirely to their work. Some were obsessed with money. The team already made it clear they weren’t rich. Others had absolutely no personal lives, and worked because they had nothing else to do. That may be true for someone like Archer, but Charity did not strike him as anti-social, which left him with the third and most likely reason: Failure. In many cases, in first responder and military professions, that failure revolved around a tragic loss.

He thought of their exchange from earlier in the night.

“So, this is what you guys do for a living? Travel the world and hunt monsters, huh?”

“There are worse ways to earn a paycheck,” Charity said.

“Sure. Unless you end up in a monster’s gullet,” Thomas retorted.

Charity did not appreciate the humor in that. She turned away, stopping long enough to make her next point.

“We work to prevent that from happening. Not just for ourselves, but everyone. I reckon you can appreciate that fact.”

Thomas resumed walking with the Captain. “Did you guys lose somebody?”

“We always lose people,” Coltrane said. “You saw it yourself during the firefight with the hornets.”

“No, I mean, has Raptor Pack lost somebody?”

Understanding what the Deputy meant, Coltrane stopped and stuck his hands in his pockets. It wasn’t a subject he was eager to broach.

“Yes. While I’ll say it was a tremendous loss for the entire team, it was a monumental loss for Charity.”

The gravity of his words hit Thomas hard. “A loved one?”

“Her husband,” Coltrane said. “His name was Steven. Like her, he was a brilliant scientist.” He looked away and sighed, debating on whether or not to keep going with the details. Having already stated this much, he figured he may as well tell the rest of the story. “He was our first ever casualty. It was in the early days of G.O.R.E. Sector. We weren’t much more than a small research unit at that point. We had only been on two missions, both of which were low level in comparison to what was to come.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t prepared for the magnitude of the threat. At first, we were investigating strange invertebrates—sea worms, to put it simply. As it turned out, they weren’t the only thing in that area. Our vessel came under attack from a massive crustacean. It had swimmerets like a shrimp, which were powerful enough to push its bulky mass with incredible speed.”

He sighed again. “Steven was gone before we knew it. It happened right in front of Charity.”

“Poor thing. That’s terrible,” Thomas said. Now, he fully understood what drove the biologist in that tent behind him. “She blames herself? It sounds like the creature came out of nowhere.”

“Kilmore had offered Naval assistance, but she declined, stating we had the situation under control. Later on, she realized the worms were parasites that fed from pores in the big creature’s shell. So, yeah, she blames herself.”

Thomas exhaled sharply and paced. The truth carried a heavy weight. It was still baffling to know without a shadow of a doubt monsters roamed the planet. He could only imagine how many lives Raptor Pack had saved. For all he knew, they had saved the damn planet many times over.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

“I imagine you’ve lost your fair share of buddies in the service,” Coltrane said.

Thomas nodded. “Too many.”

“That’s one of the key things to remember,” Coltrane added. “In this line of work, death is a high probability. I’ve had more than my fair share of close calls. Jesus, I had one earlier when you saved my ass. The point is, I must accept that, in all likelihood, my ticket is gonna get punched sooner rather than later. And you know what? I fully accept that. As long as I don’t go out like a wuss, I’ll gladly accept my fate when it comes. It’s my crew who I worry about. Charity, Howard, Renee, and Archer—they’ve all had my back. As long as I keep them safe, I can sleep at night. Them, and all of the innocents we are trying to protect.”

Thomas said nothing. He didn’t need to. Coltrane knew he understood perfectly. Both of them were men forged by years of combat and brotherhood. That common ground forged an immediate bond between the two men.

“Every mutation is malevolent?”

“Yes,” Coltrane said. “Every single one of them. The magnitude of each threat varies with the mutation. Some only pose a risk to a small town or village. Others, like the insects we’re currently battling, could eventually wipe out the human race and become the dominant species on the planet. Not one is benevolent. At least, we’ve never encountered one that was.”

That statement confirmed Thomas’ suspicions. Once the meteor storm hit, the world had changed. Maybe it was the universe’s way of responding to mankind’s hubris. War, pollution, government injustice, threats of nuclear conflict, and the inaction of those who knew it was wrong.

Or, maybe it was just bad luck. Then again, it was hard to tell. Thomas found it hard to imagine those meteors crossing the vastness of the universe, only to land on Earth by luck.

“Play ball!”

They turned to the sound of Howard’s voice. The chemist-slash-engineer was busy with his controls, maneuvering his five drones against what was most likely a horde of killer hornets.

General Kilmore was already standing nearby. He was courteous enough to remain far enough back so he did not hover over Howard’s shoulder, while still witnessing the events on the monitor.

Charity emerged from her tent, joining Thomas and Coltrane as they ran to the workstation. “‘Bout damn time.”

Howard looked over his shoulder at her. “The hell you talking about? The drones took off only a little while ago! I’m right on schedule.”

“I’m with him on this one,” General Kilmore said.

“Okay, fine,” Charity said. “Just don’t trust him on a Starbucks run. He’ll screw up your order.”

“I didn’t screw up the order,” Howard complained, all while maneuvering the drones. “I was on the way back, had to hit the brakes to avoid hitting a deer, and SPLAT! Hence, your order was all over my center console.”

“Hence, you screwed up my order,” Charity said, drawing chuckles from those standing nearby.

“I’ll side with the Chair Force Doctor,” Thomas said. “Most people prefer their coffee in a cup. Not on the floor pad of a car.”

Howard responded with an exasperated sigh. “I can see the Army Lieutenant is already feeling right at home.” He zipped his lips and focused on the task at hand.

On the screen was a haze of action. Bugs zipped by each of the drones, abdomens cocked, ready to destroy the metallic intruders.

Howard leaned in, feverishly maneuvering the five drones all at once. He looked at monitor five, right as a bug came into view. He tried to position the drone to plant the tag, only to see the screen go fuzzy.

“Dang it!”

“For godsake, Howard. Let me handle one of those,” Charity said.

“Nadda! You’d screw it up.”

Charity pointed at the fuzzy screen. “Right. ‘Cause you’re doing such a bang-up job.”

“I’m just getting warmed up…” Right as Howard spoke, another screen went fuzzy. He bit his tongue, feeling everyone’s eyes boring into him. “As I was saying…”

He resumed the mission, trying and failing to lock onto the moving targets. The hornets had responded viciously to the pheromone signal. Driven by instinct, they attacked the small squadron of drones.

“Gosh, they’re out in full force,” Thomas said.

“They probably think it’s a rival colony of bugs,” Charity replied. “I imagine they’re already on edge after encountering that wasp colony.”

Howard leaned forward, his eyes inches from the screen as he worked the control sticks.

“Come on, you bastards. I just need one of you to hold still for just a second…” Another monitor went fuzzy. “Oh, come on!”

A second later, a fourth drone was caught by the hornets. The team stood in silence, Charity with her arms crossed, juggling the numerous insults that had taken form in her head.

“Not a word,” Howard said, reading her mind.

Thomas turned his eyes to the General. “Thought you hired the best of the best?”

Howard sat up. “Oh…” He shook his head, jaw tensed, brow furrowed. “Yeah! Watch this.”

He put the last drone into a nosedive, angling it up before it hit the ground. Immediately, he circled back, putting the forest floor in view of the camera. One of the hornets was on its side, kicking its legs. It had pursued the drone and had run smack into a tree when it tried to chase it.

Dodging attacks from other hornets, Howard landed the machine on the stunned insect. The claw pressed the tag onto the abdomen, where it remained after the claw parted.

Howard threw a fist in the air. “Bullseye!” His newfound enthusiasm fizzled after witnessing the angry hornet right itself and seize the drone with its legs. A split-second later, the final monitor went fuzzy. He leaned back in his seat with a deflated expression on his face. “Aw.”

“You’ll build new ones, Howard,” Coltrane said, turning to speak into his radio. “Nest to Falcon-One-Four, you got a read on that tracker?”

“Got it on my monitor,” Renee replied.

Charity waved at the Captain, who tossed her the radio.

“Renee, maintain a safe distance. The pheromone will keep them in that area for several more minutes.”

***

“Anything you say, Doctor.”

Renee kept a distance of two miles, watching the blip on the satellite screen on her dashboard. She hummed a few tunes and waited, trying not to watch the monitor the entire time. Patience was not her virtue. She enjoyed flying straight into the action.

Archer was by the door gun, flipping through a cigar magazine without a care in the world.

“Anything good in there?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Mm.”

Renee faced forward. It was about as much conversation as she expected to get out of him. There was only one way to get Archer to communicate, and that was to engage in a firefight. First time she flew on mission with him, he was practically mute. Then the action started, and all of a sudden, he called out bogey positions. By that time, she was more caught off guard by the sound of his voice than the existence of mutant monsters.

Finally, the tracker started to move.

She watched the little blip on the monitor. It was heading north at a steady pace. There was no deviation from its course, suggesting the insect was traveling to a specific location.

After three miles, it came to a stop, where it remained for the next several minutes. Renee took the time to study the layout of the region on the map. It was an area with high elevation, highly obscured with large trees.

“I think our buddy went home.”

“Falcon-One-Four, proceed with caution,” Coltrane said.

“Okey-dokey. Hey, just so you know, Archer says he’s buying everyone cigars once we’ve completed this mission.” She looked back at the sniper, who did not even bat an eye.

“Yeah, uh-huh,” Charity said. “I’m totally sure he said that.”

“I’ll try those Punch Gran Puro Nicaraguan cigars you have on hand, Ray,” Howard said. As expected, Archer said nothing. “Alright, fine. But you’re not getting any of my Louis XIII.”

Renee accelerated, taking the Falcon northwest.

As they drew closer to the destination, Ray Archer tossed the magazine aside and got into position. Scanners on the ship alerted them to a few bogeys in the vicinity.

Renee clicked a few switches, prepping the camera units on the forward and aft sections of the hull. She increased her altitude by a few hundred feet.

As she closed within a few hundred yards of the blip, her scans alerted her to numerous objects ascending from the trees. With infrared unable to detect the creatures, and their black bodies practically being invisible to the naked eye, Renee resorted to the digital transmitter on her headset.

She put her goggles over her eyes, the feed from the computer showing the digital broadcast of what the scanners saw. To the human eye, they were white pixilated objects moving against the night. There were dozens of them, all moving in her direction.

Hornets.

She fired flares into the swarm. The sudden heat and light caused the bugs to disperse, giving her just enough time to pass over the area. The cameras flashed, illuminating the world below like lightning in a thunderstorm.

The swarm gathered and came after the Falcon.

Archer was already on the door gun. He had his own helmet set on, providing him a wireless link to the ship’s computer. Seeing the horde through his goggles, he hit them with his minigun.

Digital pixels dropped into the forest, confirming the deaths of multiple bugs. He resumed punishment while Renee gained distance. After a mile, the other swarm members gave up.

“That was a lot of bugs, Captain,” she said. “I think we’ve found that second hive.”

***

The images were transmitted to the computer, showing the forest as though taken in broad daylight. Howard clicked on the third photo, enlarging it.

“There it is.”

Thomas leaned in, his jaw dropping. The hive was tightly weaved inside a grove of trees. It was football-shaped, absolutely enormous in size, nearly reaching a third of the height of these hundred-fifty-foot trees.

“It’s bigger than the other one,” Charity said. “Given the size of the population, it won’t be long before a new queen is born.”

“I know that area,” Thomas said. “There’s an area half a mile southeast of there with high elevation. Forest fire cleared out some of the larger trees about two years ago.”

“That’ll give us an area to observe the airstrike and replenish the gunships when they’re done,” Coltrane said. “After that’ll we’ll take care of the wasps.”

General Kilmore was immediately on his radio.

Everyone got up and started packing. “Attention all units, target has been located. Pack everything up. We’re moving, people.”

CHAPTER 10

It was nearing five a.m. when G.O.R.E. Sector had the hornet nest surrounded. Thomas, being an unofficial member of the team, was required to remain by Captain Coltrane’s side. Given the range of the hornet swarm, they did not want to send him away and risk him getting intercepted. Alas, he was handed an M27 Infantry Assault Rifle and stationed with the command unit on the hill.

As Thomas had stated, last year’s fire had cleared out much of the larger vegetation. The trees in a five-acre stretch had to be cleared out, something that angered the Deputy at the time. It was the result of negligence, nothing more, nothing less. An inept group of campers could not handle a campfire. Fortunately, first responders were able to get choppers out to the area before the fire really got out of control. Plus, God had a little hand in it, dumping some heavy rain that evening.

A year later, this area now served as a command post while this secret military organization worked to rid the world of massive pests.

From here, he could see various other units getting into position at various locations around the hive. Anti-aircraft machine-gun units were placed on top of large vehicles, each one surrounded by multiple armed soldiers. It was a mission where boots on the ground were highly necessary. Once that hive was breached, a world of bugs would be unleashed onto the forest. Each one would have to be tracked and killed; a task that would prove too difficult for the gunships given the topography.

Coltrane and General Kilmore stood side by side, watching the large object in the center of the forest. The initial rays of sunshine were beginning to stretch across the eastern horizon, allowing for improved visibility.

“Damn, that thing’s big,” Coltrane said.

“You expected otherwise?” Kilmore replied.

“No, but it worries me,” Coltrane said. “God only knows how many of those things are cooped up in there. If they reproduce as fast as Charity says they do, then all the ones we killed have probably been replaced. Thank God we found it now, because in a couple of days, they probably would have given birth to a new queen.”

“That’s probably what happened with the first nest we found,” Charity said. “It probably spawned from this one. I believe this is the original giant hornet hive.”

“Well, gentlemen, and lady,” Thomas said, grinning at Charity. “I suggest you see to it this hornet hive is the first and also the last.”

“Couldn’t have said it any better myself.” General Kilmore lowered his glasses and lifted his radio. “Falcon.”

“Yeah, boss.”

“Hit the nest with a single missile strike. Dr. Black informs me that the Queen will let out a chemical distress signal which will immediately be detected by every hornet for miles. They’ll flock to the location to defend her. Did I articulate that correctly, Dr. Black?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alrighty. One measly little missile strike, coming up.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed, Renee,” Coltrane said. “You’ll get to shoot the appropriate amount of missiles at it in just a few minutes.”

“I suppose I can wait.”

“Trust me, you’ll have plenty of things to do to kill the time,” Charity said. She had her own set of binoculars. A few hornets were already patrolling the air around the hive.

The Falcon passed overhead, gracing the command unit with a gust of wind. Renee brought the ship within three-hundred yards of the hive and fired the missile. It struck the roof of the structure, sending large chunks of resin flying through the air.

Immediately, several hornets took to the sky. Renee chopped several of them down with her forward machine guns before veering to starboard. The bugs that pursued her were intercepted by the ground crews on the east side, who hit them with a volley of heavy machine gun fire.

“What do you see, Archer?” Renee said.

Ray Archer, who was with the rest of Raptor Pack on the hill, watched the hive through his sniper scope.

“They’re assembling. Looks like most of them are gathering near the breach.”

“They’re using their bodies to protect the Queen,” Charity said. She went silent as the sound of buzzing wings reached her ears.

All eyes went to the sky as several hornets raced to the call of their queen. They came from all directions, some of them carrying dead prey in their clutches. While most of them went straight for the hive, a few took notice of the pesky group of humans on the hill below.

Thomas was the first to tilt his rifle muzzle skyward. “Eyes up.”

One of the bugs committed to attacking, only to be met with a bullet spray. The Deputy shifted his aim and took down another, deflating its cylinder-shaped thorax. The bugs plummeted, dead before they touched the ground.

Charity picked up a weapon and joined the fray. A three-round burst from her rifle popped a hornet’s abdomen like a balloon, sending blood and organs raining down, preceding its fall.

She took notice of a smirk on Thomas’ face. “Yes, jackass. Even us Air Force lackies can shoot.”

“Oh, I knew you could shoot,” he replied. “I just wasn’t sure if you could hit your target.”

The statement was met by mock laughter.

A shotgun blast from Howard Tate sent another bug freefalling to its death. He pumped the weapon and shot another one before glancing at his teammates.

“Can we hold off on the… gun muzzle measuring, and focus on not getting eaten by these things?”

Thomas answered by shooting a bug that was approaching the engineer from behind.

General Kilmore calmly set a thermos of hot coffee down and picked up his own rifle. As swift as he was back in his prime infantry days, he popped off shots, taking down bug after bug.

“Move over just a hair, sir,” Coltrane said.

Seeing the Captain pointing past him, Kilmore scooted over. Coltrane fired a few shots, neutralizing a few incoming hornets.

Archer got the last shot. Still in prone position to watch the hive through his sniper scope, he pulled his Desert Eagle from its holster and pointed it skyward. Five shots punched through the hornet hovering above him. He didn’t so much as flinch as its corpse landed beside him. Holstering his weapon, he pushed the dead bug away with his foot, then returned to observing the nest.

Thomas reloaded his weapon and pointed it down, doing his best to suppress another chuckle. By now, he was growing used to the presence of mutant hornets. This oddball group known as Raptor Pack, on the other hand? They were an interesting band of characters to say the least.

They waited a few more minutes for any remaining hornets to return to the nest. Charity peered through her binoculars, watching the bugs cover the hive in a tight swarm.

“I think that’s all of them,” she said. “If there are any stragglers, they’ll be few enough in number that they’ll either die on their own or be tracked down by us.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Coltrane said.

The General shared the same sentiment. He placed his rifle down and brought his radio to his lips.

“Eagle Squadron, you read?”

“Eagle One, waiting on your command, General.”

“Link up with Falcon-One-Four and hit the nest with everything you’ve got.”

“Eagle One copies.”

“A falcon leading some eagles. The superior team reigns supreme,” Renee proudly said.

“Eagle One to Falcon-One-Four, just remember Atlanta lost thirty-two to six last time they played.”

“Yeah? Well… they lost to the Chiefs, so there!”

“Hey, at least they made it to the Super Bowl.”

“At least they’ve WON a Super Bowl,” Eagle Two added. “Can Atlanta say that?”

“Aw, shut up!” Renee said. “And follow my lead.”

Kilmore glanced to the south where the aircraft were coming from. “Ground Units, fire flares.”

The east and west ground forces launched a series of hot flares at the hive, further agitating the bugs.

The Falcon passed over Raptor Pack again, this time with a squadron of six fighter jets behind it.

“Falcon-One-Four, FOX Two.”

“Eagle One, FOX Two.”

“Eagle Two, FOX Two.”

The rest of the squadron followed, locking onto the heat signature and firing multiple AIM-9X Sidewinders.

In the blink of an eye, the hive was engulfed in a massive fireball. A shockwave rippled through the forest, shaking the trees. Pieces of resin and insect body parts hurled across the sky like meteorite fragments, trailing black smoke.

Each member of Raptor Pack peered at the dwindling fireball. The smoke cleared, revealing what appeared to be brown egg fragments scattered across a barren region. The trees had fallen, the earth layered with the corpses of countless hornets.

Ray Archer, using his impeccable sniper skills, picked off the few stragglers who buzzed over their fallen fortress. Their bodies joined the mass grave. In the center was a large, monstrous shape, over five-times the size of all the others.

Hundreds of bugs had used their bodies as cover to protect their mother. Their devotion, along with the thick hive shell they had weaved, managed to protect her from the fiery grip of death. It was a futile effort. The Queen was on her back, completely stunned, severely injured, and vulnerable.

Thomas took a look through some binoculars, grimacing at her bloated form.

“Good lord.”

“Getting queasy, Lieutenant?” Charity said.

He snorted. “Only when I see someone eat pineapple on pizza.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I guess we’ll find ourselves in agreement there.”

They turned to the sound of Howard clearing his throat. He was biting his lip, pretending not to have overheard their exchange as he watched the blast zone. The facade only lasted a few moments, for he could not ignore their inquisitive stares.

“What? So, I happen to like it. That a crime?”

“Should be,” Thomas said.

Coltrane chuckled. “Be nice, boys and girls.” He clicked his radio transmitter. “Falcon, you’re up again. Wrap it up. We’ve got some wasps to exterminate.”

“Copy that.”

The Falcon circled back, locked onto the Queen, and blew her apart with two well-placed missiles. Legs, wings, abdomen, guts, antennae, and an enormous head shot from the blast area.

The Queen and her nest had been destroyed.

Coltrane blew a sigh of relief. “Thank God that’s over.”

Thomas watched the aftermath. Those hornets, who had killed his fellow officers and other people he knew, had been destroyed. Their reign of terror was at a definitive end. Now, all that remained was the wasp hive.

“Well done, everyone. That went pretty damn smoothly,” General Kilmore said. “All units mount up. Head to Site C for what I hope is the final stage of this operation.”

“Be nice if it was the final operation,” Thomas said.

“That it would, but we know better,” Coltrane said. “There’s always something else out there. That’s why we exist—to be ready for it.”

They packed up and boarded the trucks. It was time to kill some wasps.

CHAPTER 11

As G.O.R.E. Sector surrounded Hocking Hills, the sun had fully emerged, its rays bringing out the forest’s vibrant green colors. The dense, rocky hill where the wasps had formed their colony had been turned a murky brown, the surface covered with a hardened resin.

Raptor Pack arrived at the monitoring outpost a third of a mile away. Located on a ridge overlooking the forest in-between it and Hocking Hills, it provided good line of sight for Raptor Pack to observe the operation.

The personnel truck pulled to the side, the General and Captain marching directly at the soldiers assigned to monitor the nest during the night.

“Any update?” General Kilmore asked.

“See for yourself, sir,” the soldier said. Northeast was the nest, a large slope of formerly beautiful land, now corrupted by the insect’s filth. Taking to the sky directly above it were several warrior bugs.

“Dr. Black was right. They function primarily during the day.”

Charity approached from the second truck. “Not just that, but they know we’re here.” She lifted her own set of binoculars to her eyes and gazed at the nest. “Jesus, that’s even larger than I thought.”

Thomas stepped beside her and observed the target. Unlike the hornet nest, which was shaped more like a traditional hive, this one was dome-shaped, built directly into the earth.

“It’s a little bigger than the hornet nest,” he said. “That being said, I don’t see the problem. Your aircraft should make short work of it.”

“The problem is that their nest goes far into the ground,” Charity said.

“Wait… like ants?” Thomas asked.

“Kinda, sorta,” she said. “It’s a little less complex. Ants make a series of tunnels. The wasps will make a simpler layout, more of an open space with shelves and deposits for food, larvae, the Queen’s chamber, and so forth.”

“Do we know how far it goes?” Coltrane asked.

“That’s what we’re about to find out,” Charity said. She returned to the truck and set up a folding desk table. She placed her laptop on it and got it running. “Captain, I’m ready for that underground sonar.”

Coltrane looked to the sky with his radio in hand. “Falcon. You’re up for Phase One.”

Just as she did with the hornet nest, Renee took her aircraft toward the hive. Forward machine guns struck down the few hornets that patrolled overhead, their bodies dancing in midair before descending.

“Dang! These bad boys can take a little more punishment.”

She steered the aircraft over the nest and deployed a package, which landed atop the dome. More wasps emerged, sensing the threat above. Renee veered to the east, repelling some of her pursuers with aft guns.

Thomas watched through his binoculars, seeing each bug thrash in midair as it absorbed several hits before dying.

“They’re much tougher than the hornets,” he said. “Their exoskeletons can take more of a beating before cracking. I don’t like it.”

“What’s to like?” Howard said. He stepped in front of Charity’s computer and synced it with the device Renee had deployed. “Scanner’s a go. Let’s get a look at how deep this sucker goes—holy sh—”

Charity looked at the screen. “Wow.”

The others approached, each of them flabbergasted by the digital recreation of the hive’s interior.

“How deep is that, Doctor?” Kilmore asked.

“Almost a thousand feet,” she replied.

“There must be a ton of those things cooped up in there,” Coltrane said.

“That, or the Queen is insanely big,” Charity said. “Or worse—both.”

Coltrane turned to face Kilmore. “Sir, I recommend chopper units for this one.

With his radio in hand, General Kilmore returned to the ridge. He gave another look at the hive and nodded in agreement.

“Falcon-One-Four, join Alpha Squadron. Alpha-One, bring your units in ASAP. Bravo Squadron, remain on standby. Ground units, get in place right now. I want turrets manned. We need to exterminate this hive now. Don’t let a single one get away. Eagle Squadron, maintain a flight perimeter of one-point-five miles. Make sure no civilian aircraft venture toward this area.”

“Eagle One copies. Maintaining a perimeter of one-point-five miles.”

“West Unit to Raptor Pack, we’re in place.”

“East Unit is en route. We’ll be in position in five.”

“Make it sooner,” Coltrane said. He looked over his shoulder as ground vehicles arrived at the ridge. Humvees carrying fifty-caliber machine guns parked all around the outpost, waiting to engage any insects that flew in their direction.

Thomas’ gut pinged something awful. He had seen what those wasps could do. Now more than ever, he felt lucky to have gotten out of the reserve area alive. Seeing the warriors take the punishment from Renee’s gunship taught him one thing: he did not want to engage them in a firefight. If heavy-machine guns required multiple direct hits to kill them, then ground units would have a really tough time.

“With a little bit of luck, most, if not all of them, will die in the missile strike,” Coltrane said.

Thomas gave a slight nod. It seemed the Captain had a knack for reading his mind. That, or he was experiencing the same nervous feeling.

“Have any of your other cases been this bad?” Thomas asked.

“There have been a few that potentially would have resulted in major disasters,” Coltrane said. “Fortunately, we caught them early. I will say, this one is one of the most drastic. Three hives, all formed in a short amount of time. Had we arrived later, we’d be dealing with six, ten, twenty, maybe a hundred hives.”

“The meteor shower was years ago,” Thomas said. “How did they suddenly just appear?”

“They weren’t exposed to the particles until recently,” Charity said. “The particle is like a dormant parasite. It lies in wait until a host comes within range. In this case, some Ecclesiastes particles had been dispersed in the forest, where they waited until the two insect species accidentally exposed themselves to it.”

“That simple?” Thomas exhaled heavily. “Three little specks of space dust did all this? What about any other particles lingering out here? How can we find them?”

“We can’t,” Howard said. “They’re almost impossible to find. ‘Needle in a haystack’ doesn’t do it justice. You see how big this forest is? The particles are scattered. Individual grains, practically as large as a cell, have been dispersed all over the planet. The only samples we have are from the rocks we’ve recovered from the meteor storm. At this point, the only way to know whether an area’s been infected is for a mutation to show up.” He gestured at the hive.

“That’s why G.O.R.E. Sector exists,” Coltrane said. “Look at it this way, boys and girls. We’ve got job security for life.”

“East Unit is in place. Ready to go.”

“Copy that,” Kilmore said. “Air units, you are a-go.”

As he spoke, the activity over the hive increased drastically. What had started as a few stray drones had now increased to two dozen. They buzzed in tight circles, forming a blockade between the dome and the intruders. Several others scurried atop the nest on their six legs, ready to join their comrades above in aerial combat.

Engines reverberated from the southeast. Led by the Falcon, a squadron of Apache helicopters approached the strike zone.

Howard put on a headset and typed a few keys on the computer. “The device is emitting a radio frequency for the missiles to lock on to. The birds can fire when ready.”

“General Kilmore to Falcon. Ball’s in your court. Fire when ready.”

“Closing within three-hundred yards,” Renee said. “All choppers, expand to a forty-meter spread. Watch out for them wasps.”

The bugs kept a tight formation, clearly aware of both the choppers and the human ground units that had appeared around their hive. Renee, being well aware she had seconds before they would attack, initiated the strike.

“Falcon-One-Four, FOX Three.”

The Falcon and the six Apache helicopters commenced firing. Hellfire missiles soared through the blockade and struck the dome. The bugs guarding the entrance never knew what hit them, each one reduced to a series of scalding hot body parts which trailed smoke as they soared into the surrounding forest. Those flying directly over the explosion went into disarray, a few of them collapsing from the concussive force.

General Kilmore did not so much as flinch as he watched the dome collapse into the chasm the insects had created. “Hit it again.”

Renee was the first to fire. Angling her ship at a forty-five-degree angle, she sent another pair of hellfire missiles soaring into the gap in the side of the mountain.

A plume of hot smoke and ash rose from the cavity, the hive now taking on the appearance of an active volcano.

The Apache units added to the punishment, each missile striking with a resounding boom. The smoke cloud thickened and widened, pushed farther to the sky by a pool of hot flames.

To everyone’s surprise, the wasps that survived the explosion did not go after the choppers. Instead, they raced into the nest like paramedics. Some of their colony emerged with larvae in tow. Renee was quick to blast them out of the sky with her machine guns and ace piloting skills.

The members of Raptor Pack continued watching from the ridge, their hearts racing as they witnessed the apocalyptic imagery. It had been a minute since the blasting stopped, and still they could feel the tremors of some kind of disastrous occurrence taking place under the ground.

“Odd they didn’t attack,” Thomas said.

“They’re bugs,” Howard said. “They’re deadly, but they’re not adept to fighting an enemy with explosive weapons.”

“No, Thomas is right,” Charity said. “Doesn’t matter how futile the attack, the creatures are programmed to go after threats.”

“We saw some try to evacuate the larvae,” Coltrane said. “Maybe the damage to the nest trumps fighting attackers.”

“That, or…” Charity gulped, feeling another tremor sweep under her feet.

They watched as more smoke billowed from the crater. Bits of earth spat from the edges. A tremendous droning sound filled the sky like a massive engine had come to life under the earth.

In that moment, G.O.R.E. Sector’s illusion of victory was shattered.

“Oh, hell. Falcon-One-Four to all units, we’ve got movement. Lots of movement. BIG movement!”

As she spoke, a horde of bugs tore from the crater. Dozens of them, protected by the shelves and deposits within the colony, rose a hundred feet over the nest. There, they maintained position, just long enough for the most important member of their colony to make her exit.

She rose from the ashes like a winged devil. Her mass was beyond the expectations of even Dr. Charity Black. She was over a hundred feet in body length, her wingspan doubling that. They unfolded from her back, resembling those of a dragonfly when fully outstretched. Her complexion was darker than her young, appearing more red than yellow, as were her enormous eyes. Her abdomen was narrower and more angular than the worker and warrior members. Black antennae twitched, detecting the various vibrations and odors surrounding her devastated nest.

The only thing rivaling her astonishing sight was the apparent lack of injuries. Over a dozen missiles had been fired into the nest, some of which had to have hit her, considering how large she was. Yet, aside from some mild scorch marks on her exoskeleton, she hardly suffered a scratch.

Nevertheless, she was angry.

Thomas lowered his binoculars. He didn’t need them anymore. The thing stood on the side of the mountain, legs outstretched, wings starting to vibrate.

“Oh, dear God,” Charity muttered.

Even Archer seemed mildly perplexed, lifting his gaze from his sniper scope for a wide view of the beast.

“Don’t let it go,” Kilmore said. “Hit it!”

Hydra 70 rockets launched from the Falcon and exploded over the Queen’s carapace. The bug leaned to her right, absorbing the impacts.

“Um, guys?! She’s built like a tank!”

She hit the bug with several more rockets. Their combined force did little more than scar her exoskeleton. And irritate her and her colony.

It was now that the warriors went on the attack.

The choppers broke formation, their gunners unleashing streams of bullets at the attackers. Without regard for their own safety, the wasps converged on the metal targets, some absorbing the hits while others closed the distance.

Within seconds, a full-on dogfight commenced, the battle radius expanding over the perimeter ground units.

“Can’t get a shot without hitting our own guys,” one unit reported.

Thomas’ jaw tightened, for he was helpless to do anything but watch as the disaster unfolded. A few hundred feet ahead of him, two wasps clung onto one of the Apache helicopters. Their stingers penetrated the engine, immediately slowing the rotors to a stop. The chopper banked left and right, the pilot desperately attempting to shake the bugs loose, only to lose complete control. It dropped, crashing hard against the hillside.

Archer centered his crosshairs on one of the bugs, which was perched atop the wreckage. A squeeze of the trigger put a fifty-caliber bullet through its eye, exploding its brain. The other bug took notice of its comrade’s sudden death. Before it could identify the attacker, Archer successfully killed it in the exact same way, saving the lives of the chopper’s pilot and crew.

Shadows swept the group as massive bodies zigzagged overhead. Choppers ascended and banked in multiple directions, trying to evade the clutches of the insects while at the same time avoiding friendly fire in the chaos.

Ground units on the east side commenced firing. Anti-aircraft bullets shredded numerous wasps, while simultaneously drawing the attention of several others.

“Look out, guys! They’re making a run—AHHHHH!!” Static took the place of the soldier’s transmission. Static, and numerous screams coming from that location.

Another helicopter spiraled to a crashing end, its rotors breaking into numerous shards. The wasps who bested it hovered several yards high, ready to dig out the helpless crew and feast on them.

Machine gun fire put an end to their plans. The Falcon cruised over the freshly killed bugs and ascended, gunning down another bug in the process.

“General, sir?” Archer said. He was still looking through his sniper scope, which was pointed at the Queen and the nest. “It looks like our troubles are only just beginning.”

Kilmore and the others turned their glasses at the nest, just in time to see multiple other wasps emerge.

“We blasted the hell out of that nest! How the hell could so many have survived?” he exclaimed.

“Simple,” Charity said. “They have a good mommy. She protected them under her bulk.”

The bugs took to the sky and joined the fight. Four of them zeroed in on Renee’s ship, keeping pace as she maneuvered around other wasps and choppers. She fired her rear guns, striking one of them. Repeated bursts of gunfire failed to hit the other three, which were gradually closing in.

“Hey. One of you boys mind helping a girl out. Got a few jerks on my six.”

“Chopper Three-Nine, I gotcha.”

One of the Apaches moved into firing position and sprayed machine-gun bullets at the little squad of bugs. The one in the lead took the brunt of the hits, its body spitting yellow blood as it fell.

The other two broke formation, their attention now on the Apache. The pilot reversed the gunship, angling it to starboard for the door gunner to hit the bugs. To their surprise, the wasps did not attempt to grab ahold of the chopper. Instead, they stopped at a distance of twenty feet, positioning their bodies vertically while angling their abdomens at the chopper.

“A little far away, are ya?” the pilot said.

His next transmission was one of sheer terror. A projectile was fired, not from the gunner, but from pores in the wasps’ abdomens. Green fluid splattered the rotors and the hull, immediately producing hot smoke.

“Dear Lord…” As he watched the horror unfold, Thomas’ mind flashed to Levi’s helicopter. The mystery of the corrosive burn marks on the hull had been solved. The pilot had not encountered hornets, but these acid spitting wasps!

The chopper’s engines gave out, the rotor gears dissolving and breaking away. Down it went, smashing violently against a tree.

One after another, the disaster escalated. More choppers were hit by acid spray, which in turn sent them to their doom.

“They shoot acid!” Renee reported. “All units, don’t let them get too close. I repeat, the bugs shoot acid.”

“I didn’t see it. Is it strong enough to burn through the hull, though?” another pilot asked. His question was immediately answered. “Son of a bitch! We’ve been doused. There’s smoke everywhere… engines are failing… We are going down!”

The transmission was punctuated by a thunderous crash. The armaments detonated, claiming the aircraft and the lives inside.

By now, there were over fifty wasps in the air. Many of them went after the ground units on the west and east side. Rifle fire joined the pandemonium, the screams of soldiers and crashing equipment rapidly escalating. Humvees were flipped onto their side, the bugs jabbing the hulls with their stingers. Turret gunners were hit with acid, their final squeals high-pitched until the sweet release of death spared them from the agony.

“Bravo Squadron is on approach. Hang in there, guys. We’re about to even the odds.”

From the southeast came a second squadron of Apache helicopters, armed to the teeth with hellfire missiles, Hydra 70 rockets, miniguns, and pilots with bad attitudes.

“First thing’s first,” Kilmore said. “The Queen is still stationary. We can’t let her escape. Focus your fire on her.”

The monster insect perked up, her wings outstretched and paddling like boat oars. Gradually, their rate of motion increased, producing large gusts of wind and a deep droning sound.

“I think she heard you, General,” Thomas said.

Hurricane-force winds surged in all directions as those massive wings buzzed at full force, lifting the Queen off the mountainside. Many of her offspring hovered around her, like planets orbiting a sun. This sun was a red supergiant, ready to flare its rage onto the world.

She turned to face the puny helicopters.

“Bravo Squadron, she’s about to hit you with acid,” Coltrane said. “Don’t get too close.”

“Bravo Leader here. We copy, Raptor Pack. All choppers, halt. Space out to seventy meters and hold a distance of one-fifty. Falcon-One-Four, mind hitting the bitch with flares?”

“Sure thing… wait…”

Raptor Pack could see it too. The Queen’s underbelly was lined with strange, tooth-like structures. She turned her body to face the chopper farthest on her left. That motion was the closest thing to a warning Bravo Squadron would get. Like machine gun bullets, those teeth shot from her abdomen.

“What the—Bravo Two is hit. We are going down!”

In one smooth motion, the Queen turned and worked her way down the line, hitting the choppers with a spray of those projectile teeth. All six choppers were hit, their hulls deeply penetrated, their engines shot to hell.

One by one, they hit the ground with explosive impacts, as though synchronized by the wasp.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

The vibrant green forest was now a lake of fire straight out of hell. The remaining choppers of Alpha Squadron were quickly overpowered by the warrior wasps. Doused with acid spray, they dropped from the sky, some in pieces before they even touched the earth.

One of them spun out of control, smashing less than thirty yards from Raptor Pack’s position.

“Echo Squadron, this is General Kilmore. Engage. I repeat, engage. The Queen is airborne…” He paused as another squall threatened to knock him off his feet. The Queen proceeded south. “She is now going southbound.”

“Straight towards Telegraph,” Thomas added. “We need to stop her. If she makes it all the way to…”

That all-too-familiar sound of buzzing wings was now directly over his position.

His eyes and rifle pointed up. Several wasps, each one the size of a draft horse, descended on the camp.

Soldiers scrambled, the machine gunners quick to engage the attackers. Fifty caliber machine guns greeted the hornets, cracking their tough exoskeletons and rupturing the organs underneath.

Thomas and the members of Raptor Pack joined in, each one moving in separate directions as the bugs swarmed the ridge area. One of the machine gunners yelled out as he was lifted off the mount and carried into the sky.

Archer tilted his sniper rifle at the escaping bug, his aim once again proving impeccable. The fifty-caliber round struck the wasp right in the neck, punching through the soft tissue covering the joint. The soldier fell from its grasp, breaking a few bones during his landing. Nothing he wouldn’t heal from. It certainly beat death.

He shot another wasp out of the sky, then another. Sensing a presence above him, he sprang to his feet and ran. Two wasps sprayed green acid, which splattered the ground where the sniper had been moments prior.

They turned to follow him, only to be cut down by Thomas and Coltrane’s combined efforts. The bugs shuddered with each bullet hit, their bodies absorbing all thirty rounds of each magazine before dying.

Thomas attempted to reload, only to see a shadow encompass him. He ducked and rolled, dodging the clutches of a wasp’s legs by inches.

Coltrane slammed a fresh magazine home and put several bullets into the relatively soft flesh that made up the wasp’s eyes. It hit the ground between the two men, its legs and wings thrashing. The Captain put the muzzle of his rifle to its mouth.

“Snack on this.”

Bang!

Right away, the Captain pivoted to his left. The General and a few other soldiers were crouching near a Humvee, defending themselves against numerous wasps. Acid corroded the hull and popped the tires. The machine gunner was yanked, stung, and tossed to the ground. The bugs were not interested in capturing the men for food. This was war. Only the best species would win.

“Renee? You’re still up there, right?”

“Sure am.”

“Mind lending the General a hand? I’d do it myself, but it might take me a while.”

“Just a sec…”

The Falcon blasted a few wasps out of the sky, clearing a path for it to line up with the Humvee. Taking careful aim, she concentrated her gunfire on the bugs on top of the vehicle, splintering their bodies.

With the help of Coltrane and Thomas, the General and his men were able to fight off the other bugs.

More came in, now converging near the Falcon.

“Oh, hell.” Renee ascended, but not before several bugs successfully clung to her rocket pods.

“The acid…” Thomas said, watching the bugs begin to spray the pods. He grabbed Coltrane’s radio. “Renee. They’re hitting the pods with acid. You’ve got seconds before your remaining rockets detonate.”

“Not cool!” Without hesitation, she fired her remaining rockets into the forest. The rocket pods deteriorated and broke off, the wasps losing their grasp. One of them charged the Falcon, colliding headfirst into one of its forward guns.

The gunship went into a tailspin.

“Oh crap. Oh crap.”

Renee managed to steer it over the ridge without the underside smacking into any of the vehicles or personnel. She tried to gain altitude, only for another wasp to collide into her like a meteor.

Down went the Falcon, its pilot managing to veer it away from the ground units. The aircraft skidded against the ground, settling fifty yards west of Raptor Pack’s position. With its engines stalled, the Falcon was reduced to an expensive tin can, soon to be doused by multiple gallons of acid.

Seeing the extraordinary gunship taken down, Thomas Rodney felt a new cloud come over him. It was not one from a physical enemy, but from the mystical force of despair. Minutes ago, it seemed they were so close to winning. In the blink of an eye, everything went from good to bad, then from bad to worse. It only took minutes for the operation to come apart. Multiple men were down, the Queen free to roam at her leisure. Not even advanced weaponry could stop her.

That fact was illustrated by the events taking place a thousand feet in the air. Echo Squad had engaged, landing two missiles on the Queen’s hide. The force of the blast knocked her back, stalling her escape.

The jets passed her, circling back after gaining several hundred meters of distance.

“She’s still in the air. Big bad bug doesn’t go down easy,” Echo One said. “Alright, let’s put her out of her misery. Echo One, FOX—I’ve been hit!”

A horizontal shower of projectiles put rigid spurs into all six members of Echo Squadron. Spewing smoke, the jets plummeted, their pilots managing to eject before an explosive crash could claim their lives.

Triumphant, the Queen drifted over the fiery aftermath. The humans’ air support had been obliterated. Now, it was time to travel south in search of a new location to carve out a nest. And seek new prey.

Many of her brood joined her, the others remaining behind to finish off the measly ground forces.

CHAPTER 12

“On your left!” Coltrane shouted.

Thomas barely heard him through the sound of his own voice. “On your right!”

The two men aimed over the other’s head, simultaneously rescuing one another from two wasps that descended from different directions.

As Coltrane reloaded, he looked to the south. “Queen’s moving toward town.”

“What can we do? All your aircraft are down,” Thomas said.

Both men glanced at the surrounding chaos. Several bugs were converging on the downed Falcon. They moved from the cockpit to the fuselage, tracking Renee’s movements as she looked for an escape. Charity and Howard were in the middle of taking refuge underneath a Humvee, its top having been pecked by wasp stingers.

Archer was on foot, stalling his pursuers with blasts from his sniper rifle. It was a temporary solution, which became moot once the mag ran empty. With the bugs closing in and nowhere to run to, he made a desperate leap over the ridge, sailing directly towards the nearest tree. He landed in the thick branches, which temporarily provided a barrier between him and the wasps. Pistol shots to the face successfully drove them back. Unfortunately, it was only the start of another temporary solution.

In all cases, the bugs were not using their acid spray. One wasp had positioned its abdomen for an acid attack, only to spit tiny droplets. At that moment, it became clear that they had used up their supply in combat with the choppers. However, it was only a minor inconvenience for the bugs. Their enemies were cornered and doomed to suffer a violent death.

A crashing sound made Thomas and Coltrane turn in General Kilmore’s direction. More bugs had converged on his Humvee, forcing one of the soldiers to make a getaway attempt. It was successful in evading being coated with white-hot acid—mostly successful. The corrosive fluid caught the rear tires, flattening them. Other bugs rammed the vehicle like kamikaze jets, knocking it onto its side.

The Humvee rolled down a small hill, ultimately settling at the base of a tree.

“We’ll worry about the Queen later. All we can do now is help these guys,” Coltrane said. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, suppressing any fright and anxiety building within him. Even with many lives lost and thousands more at stake, and his own in dire risk, he focused on the job at hand.

They went to the Humvee first. Three wasps were scurrying around it, attempting to pry open the doors and pull the occupants out. As far as the men could see, the General and his men were unconscious. Helpless. Unless they acted fast.

Thomas and Coltrane charged the bugs, concentrating their fire on the one near the front passenger door. The wasp shuddered from the repeated hits to its face, ultimately rolling onto its side. Its brethren turned toward the attackers and took to the sky.

It was something Coltrane had planned for. He yanked a grenade from his vest, let the lever spring free, then waited for a count of three before throwing it. The explosive detonated in midair, directly between the two bugs. A concussive blast knocked them from the sky, their stunned bodies now easy targets for the duo.

“Check on the General,” Coltrane said. “I’ll cover you.”

Thomas raced to the passenger door. General Kilmore was gritting his teeth, just now waking up after hitting his head on the dashboard.

“General?! It’s Lieutenant Rodney. Are you alright?”

Kilmore groaned and leaned his head back. “I’m good. If we get out of this, I’m gonna start investing in the companies that make Raid, Hot Shot, and Spectracide.”

Thomas snickered. “Same here, sir.” He checked on the other soldiers, finding no severe injuries.

“Go,” Kilmore said. “I’ll take care of them.”

“Come on,” Coltrane said. “We need to help the others!”

The Deputy sprinted to catch up with him. Together, they ran west toward the Humvee. Several bugs were pulling the vehicle apart. The biologist and engineer were crouched underneath it, covering their heads with their hands, waiting for the inevitable. Fifty meters beyond them was the Falcon, getting clawed to hell by the ravenous bugs.

They focused on the small group assaulting the Humvee. One of the bugs had propped itself against the driver’s side, tilting the vehicle to the right. Both men shot it in the head, foiling its efforts.

Its companions turned toward the new threat, each one taking to the sky. It was exactly what Coltrane had hoped for. He pulled another grenade from his vest and put a finger through the pin.

“Time to work on my pitch…”

As he spoke, he noticed a pair of shadows encompass him.

Thomas saw it too. He pivoted with his rifle aimed high. Two bugs descended, one coming at him, the other coming at Coltrane. In that split-second, he squeezed the trigger. A mixture of skill and good luck saved his life. The bug directly above him took several rounds through the mouth and eyes. Its dead body struck Thomas as it came down, knocking him to the ground.

From there, he took in the dreaded sound of pain and shock. Lying on his back, he looked in Coltrane’s direction. The Captain was arched backwards, arms out, the bug directly behind him. Protruding from his abdomen was the tip of its stinger.

Thomas emptied the rest of his magazine into the wasp’s head. It reeled backward, its stinger yanking free of its victim. Thomas charged at the insect, pressed his rifle muzzle to its eye, and rid the world of its life.

He turned toward the Humvee, seeing the three wasps ready to commence their assault.

Coltrane, having collapsed belly-down, pushed himself to his knees. The grenade was still in his grasp, though only for a couple more seconds. He had pulled the pin, counted to three, then tossed it into the group. The blast stunned the three insects, knocking them to the ground.

His strength gone, the Captain fell backward. Thomas slid to his aid, catching him before he could hit his head against the ground.

“Hang in there, Captain. You’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Coltrane groaned, sounding more annoyed than scared or in pain. “Nah, Lieutenant. My time’s up.” He coughed, then gave one last look at all his team members. He grabbed Thomas by the collar and looked him square in the eye. “It’s your turn now. Thomas… save them. Save my team. Save the world.”

As the words left his mouth, his life left his body. Passionate eyes turned blank, the tight grip on Thomas’ collar now loose.

Thomas gently lowered his new friend into a dignified resting position and closed his eyelids. Coltrane’s fight was over. To the very end, he had dedicated his life to preserving the safety of humankind. Thomas had only known him for a day, yet he already felt like a brother.

There was no time to mourn. A promise was made and was on the verge of being broken. Raptor Pack, G.O.R.E. Sector, and the world at large was in trouble. Fifteen hours ago, Thomas would have never guessed that a seemingly average missing persons report would have escalated into a war against giant monsters. But it had, and now the fate of everything rested on his shoulders.

Picking up his assault rifle, his eyes caught a glimpse of his ring finger. Thomas Rodney, a man robbed of purpose, had found it again.

He took Coltrane’s spare magazines and two grenades, then charged to action. The three bugs were stunned, courtesy of the Captain’s last action. One of them was on its feet, steadily regaining its senses. The first thing it saw was the muzzle flash of Thomas’ rifle, then the blackness of death.

Thomas put several rounds through the eyes of the second bug. The beast screeched and slashed with its forelegs in the agonizing moments before succumbing to its injuries. In that time, Thomas focused on the third one. It was on its feet, lashing at him with its forelegs like a cat. Its claw struck his rifle, slapping it from his grasp.

Instinctively, he drew his sidearm and emptied half the magazine into its face. Several of those rounds ruptured the insect’s left eye. The sudden flare of nerves and loss of senses made the creature fall forward. Wings flapped and legs thrashed, the abdomen twirling with its stinger exposed.

Thomas holstered the pistol and pulled the pin from one of his grenades. He charged the bug, stuffed the metal ball into the cavity where its eye had been, then ran as fast as he could. The bug reared back, angered by this strange action. It fluttered its wings, lifted itself into the air… and burst into a hundred pieces.

Charity and Howard peeked from under the battered Humvee as bug fragments rained down.

“Damn…” the biologist muttered.

Thomas looked to the ridge. Two other bugs were trying to make their way into the tree branches where Archer was hung up. He had run out of pistol ammo, his sniper rifle lost in the jump.

Gauging the distance, Thomas utilized Coltrane’s last grenade. Carefully timing his throw, he chucked the explosive behind the bugs. His throw was on point, the grenade bursting ten feet behind the wasps. Close enough to stun them, far enough for Archer to remain relatively unharmed. Their bodies blocked any shrapnel that came his way before collapsing.

The sniper propped himself on one of the branches and made eye contact with Thomas. A slight nod conveyed all that needed to be said.

Thomas turned around and raced to the Falcon, passing Charity and Howard on the way. “Help Archer. I’ll get Renee.”

He found his rifle and made his way to the gunship. The Falcon looked like hell, its hull crumpled and dented in various areas. There were four bugs gathered near it, prodding the hull with their stingers. The fuselage doors were crumpled after taking repeated strikes from the attackers, who were eager to get to the fresh meat inside.

All at once, they moved away as one of them angled its body into a vertical pose, its abdomen angled toward the gunship.

Thomas felt his blood race. He knew exactly what was about to happen. In the minutes that passed, the wasp’s body must have replenished some of its acid supply.

Renee had held out this long, but there was no chance in hell she would survive once the ship was doused in acid. Thomas knew there wasn’t enough ammo to kill the bug before it sprayed.

Coltrane’s voice echoed in his mind. “Our objectives often require us to improvise on the spot.”

Thomas cursed himself for the crazy tactic he was about to implement. He ran at the wasp from behind and leaped onto its back. With an iron grip, he pulled at its antennae. The bug screeched from the abrupt blazing of its senses. Like reins on a horse, its antennae were pulled to the right.

The wasp turned with the motion, its acid payload now jettisoning on two of its companions. Having received a taste of their own medicine, they writhed in a bout of madness. Exoskeletons dissolved like tissue paper in water, spilling their insides onto the ground.

Renee pried the fuselage door open just in time to see the bugs succumb to their injuries. An even more shocking sight, even in her line of work, was that of Thomas riding the wasp like a bucking bronco.

“Hey!” he said, pointing at the fourth wasp. It had taken to the air with intent to attack. “You mind? I’m a little busy…”

“Right!” Renee mounted the door gun and pointed it at the insect. A steady stream of bullets knocked it out of the sky. Renee continued the punishment, shredding the wasp’s body while it writhed on the ground.

Thomas, still clinging to the last bug with one hand, pressed his pistol to its neck. He fired all remaining rounds at point blank, forming a small hole in the exoskeleton.

“Hey, Renee? You don’t happen to have a grenade on hand, do ya?”

She hurried into the Falcon and reemerged with one in hand. She tossed it to Thomas, who pulled the pin and stuffed it into the wound. He bailed, somersaulting to his feet before sprinting.

The wasp, free of the human, took to the sky. After ascending ten feet, it popped like a balloon.

Renee grimaced, having been splattered by bug guts.

“Fabulous.”

Thomas dusted himself off and skimmed the surrounding area with his eyes. Charity and Howard were firing rifles at the bottom of the ridge where Archer’s attackers had fallen. With the bugs dead, the sniper was safe to climb down the tree and make his way back to the top of the ridge.

Gunfire from the east and west units had ceased. Radio chatter confirmed that at least some of those solders were still alive.

As far as Thomas could see, the bugs were dead. The only ones that were still alive were in the air, heading for town.

“We’re not done yet.”

CHAPTER 13

It was a crushing moment for the members of G.O.R.E. Sector, especially for Raptor Pack. They stood over the body of Captain Jacob Coltrane, lost in silence. Their leader, who had fought tooth and nail with them to the very end, had been slain.

General Kilmore placed a jacket over the Captain’s head. He put his ankles together and saluted. It was the only tribute he could afford to give at this moment.

“Get it together, Raptor Pack. The fight’s not over.”

“Do we know the Queen’s location?” Thomas asked.

“Three miles south of here,” Kilmore replied. “Moving at a leisurely pace.”

“She probably can’t fly very fast due to her size,” Charity said. “Once she established a nest, she probably wasn’t intending to ever leave.”

“Charlie Unit to Raptor Pack.”

Kilmore took the call. “Go ahead, Charlie Unit.”

“We’ve arrived at Telegraph. We’re initiating an evacuation. Deterrence units are being set up as we speak.”

“Copy that,” Kilmore said.

“Not that it matters,” Renee said. “She took down all of our air support. She’ll reach the town before reinforcements can arrive, and breeze right through the defenses. Even if additional air support did arrive, it won’t do much good. Our weapons can’t penetrate her armor.”

Thomas crossed his arms and glared at the pilot. “Seriously?” He waited for all eyes to turn to him. “This is what you default to? Get your asses kicked a little, and all of a sudden, you indulge in defeatism? All the while, many lives hang in the balance. Not on my watch. Not to mention, you’re wrong about something—the Queen did not take down all of our air support.”

He pointed his thumb back to the Falcon.

“Are the engines still functional?” Kilmore asked.

“The engines? Yes,” Renee said. “The weapons? No. Aside from the port door gun and the aft machine guns, but I’ve got no explosives. Nothing that’ll hurt the Queen.”

“Who says we need you to hurt it?” Thomas said. “Can you at least get her attention? Steer her away from the town. Back to this general area.”

Renee thought for a moment. “As long as I have a reliable door gunner.” She pointed her elbow at Archer.

“I can do better than that,” he said. He lifted a special magazine for his sniper rifle. “Explosive-tipped rounds. Won’t penetrate her armor, but they’ll allow us to piss her off from a distance.”

“Get to it,” Thomas said.

The pilot and sniper raced to the Falcon. Howard started to pace, sighing heavily as he tried to think.

“Luring her away from town is good and all, but we’re still left with the predicament of having nothing useful to fight her with,” he said.

“Yeah we do,” Thomas said. Charity and Howard perked up with heightened interest. “Their acid. Their exoskeletons did not stand a chance against it.”

“They’re susceptible to their own acid?” Kilmore asked.

“Just ask the two dead bugs over by the Falcon,” Thomas replied.

“Makes sense,” Charity said. “Their internal storage system is designed to withstand the acid, but not their exoskeleton. They’ve evolved to go to war with similar species, so it makes sense the acid can eat through their own armor.”

“That’s great and all, but how the hell are we going to replicate it in such a short time?” Howard said. “Even if we harvested every ounce of acid from all these dead bugs, I’ve got nothing that can store the acid to be delivered as a payload. Anything we put it in, it’ll eat right through. I’m good at my job, but I can’t develop something that strong on this short of notice. Even if I could, there’s the issue of getting past the army of warriors guarding the Queen.”

Thomas stepped away. He wasn’t willing to accept there was no solution. There was always a solution. They just needed to find it.

He took a few steps down the hill near where the General’s Humvee had crashed. Focusing on the peaceful serenity of the forest, he relaxed his mind.

Could use a little help here, Leslie. Any advice?

Something on the ground caught his eye. A line of ants were moving to inspect one of the wasp carcasses. The sight took his mind back to the little war he and Deputy Lex witnessed at Mr. Netty’s resort. Two colonies of ants were in a clash, neither wanting to share the spoils of the abandoned picnic.

“Not sure how they know who’s who,” Lex said. “They all look alike.”

Thomas remembered the answer.

He turned around. “We won’t need to get past them. We’ll use them.”

“Beg your pardon?” Charity said. “You mean… use the warriors to kill the Queen?”

“Exactly right.”

She shrugged. “The only way we can even hope to pull that off is with chemical signals. Somehow make them think she’s part of a different colony…” All of a sudden, she realized what Thomas was getting at. “Oh…”

“You still have those hornet bodies. Can the two of you synthesize more of the pheromone?”

“Absolutely,” Howard said.

“Dr. Tate, how are your drones?” Thomas asked. “The ones you used to attract the hornets this morning. Are they all damaged beyond repair, or…?”

“I can patch a few of them up,” Howard said. “Our supplies are in a truck, stationed a half-mile from here.” He looked at the surrounding carnage and scoffed. “They were the smart ones.”

General Kilmore was already on his radio. “Charlie-Two-Five, this is General Kilmore. You read?”

“Yes sir, General. I’m listening.”

“I need all of Raptor Pack’s supplies shipped to the ridge, stat. Floor the pedal, young man. We’re in a hurry.”

“Yes, sir. We’re on our way now.”

Kilmore lowered his radio and placed a fresh cigar between his teeth. He and the team took a moment of silence, admiring their fallen leader. Only now, their spirit was revived. Coltrane’s death would not be in vain.

“Let’s get to work,” Kilmore said. “Remember, no matter the odds, G.O.R.E. Sector always comes out on top.”

CHAPTER 14

Vertical shaft thrusters kicked up thick clouds of dirt as Renee elevated the Falcon. Its engines were clunky, the hull looking like a Texas stop sign, but it wasn’t out of the fight just yet.

Rising above the canopy, she aimed the gunship southwards. She gave one quick glance at the ridge below. The entire hillside was alive with soldiers giving aid to the wounded. To the northwest and northeast, she could see the other teams scrambling in the aftermath of the battle. This, by far, was the deadliest conflict in the history of G.O.R.E. Sector so far.

Renee was no stranger to losing people, but today hit the hardest. It served as a reminder of why they did this job. Coexistence with the Ecclesiastes mutations was impossible. Each and every one of them was a bloodthirsty predator which would leave a trail of death and destruction in its wake. Unless G.O.R.E. Sector got in the way.

“Falcon-One-Four, this is Kilmore. There’s been an update to the plan. While you’re up there, try not to kill too many of the smaller wasps.”

Renee could not help but chuckle. “Okay, General. I’m assuming there’s a good reason for this, aside from thinking this mission wasn’t hard enough as it is.”

“There’s that. But no, we’re gonna use them to kill the Queen. Catch up with her and bring her back to this area. And hurry up, because she’s getting close to Telegraph.”

“Sorry. Had a bit of tinkering to do first before liftoff. She’s barely holding together. Feels like I’m flying a roller coaster. Engines are shaky, we’ve got wind coming in, and worst of all—my Ray-Bans are scratched. Damn bugs.”

This time, it was Thomas Rodney’s voice on the radio. “What’s the matter, Ms. Larson? When I first saw you, you were cracking jokes and making maneuvers only an idiot would do. An idiot, or a pro. Now, it sounds like you’re quaking in your shorts. Should I call the Navy or Coast Guard? Maybe the local crop duster?”

Renee cracked a smile. “You have a hell of a way of motivating people, Deputy.” She looked back at her gunner. “Hope you’re strapped in, Archer, because we’re exceeding the speed limit.” As usual, the sniper did not offer a response. Renee shrugged. “Whatever. Let’s go.”

She gunned the aft thrusters, speeding the Falcon to Mach two. The engines protested but did their jobs.

***

The people at Telegraph were in disarray. One minute, it was a typical Thursday morning. It was a beautiful morning with a yellow sunrise bringing out the best colors of the town gardens, the streets, and the forest background. The early birds were getting up to go to work or enjoy walks through town. There was the usual delicious aromas from the bakeries and breakfast cafés.

All of a sudden, Army trucks were rolling in. Massive oversized-load carriers delivered massive anti-aircraft guns to the north side of town, where they were immediately set up for operation.

Lieutenant Wayne Belanger made use of his bullhorn, instructing the townsfolk to get in their personal vehicles and follow an escort south. Having worked in G.O.R.E. Sector’s military support units since its inception, he knew the day would come when the secret would be revealed. The people were already flustered from the distant sounds of artillery. Normally, some cover story would have been provided. But, with the situation escalating, the world was about to have its first true look at its new reality, and the fighting force formed to combat it.

Smartphones were out, almost everyone in town filming the strange influx of soldiers and weapons. Questions filled the air. Traffic was jammed, with several people performing U-turns to return home. There was no shortage of accidents and jams in the various streets. Tempers were quick to rise, especially as slumbering townsfolk were awoken by the chaos.

Lieutenant Belanger was on the line with the local mayor and county sheriff. They, too, were flustered. They were aware there was a major military operation taking place in the forest. To their knowledge, it was a domestic paramilitary group who were being hunted by an elite force. They did not expect to get a morning briefing about giant wasps.

“Yeah, it sounds crazy, but it’s the truth,” Belanger said. He was walking near the blockade, supervising the setup of the fifty-caliber machine guns and the 2K22 Tunguska. Soldiers with Javelin missiles waited, ready to fire at the target. Behind him, the chaos was unfolding. As was to be expected with an out-of-the-blue evacuation such as this, nothing went smoothly. Had G.O.R.E. Sector had its way, the secret would have been out long ago, which would have allowed for an evacuation immediately upon discovery of the insects. But, the federal government, being run by obviously very bright individuals, wanted to keep it on the downlow.

“We’re doing everything we can. But if these people remain here, it’ll be a slaughter,” he continued.

“Sir!”

Belanger lowered his phone and turned to his sergeant. “Got incoming?”

“Two thousand meters north-northeast. Coming straight at us,” the sergeant replied. “It’s the big one.”

Belanger spoke into his phone once more. “Gotta go, Sheriff. It’s party time.” He ended the call and joined the Sergeant by the Tunguska. “As soon as it’s in range, I want Javelin units to blast that thing out of the sky. Raptor Pack says it’s a tough bastard. Fortunately, we specialize in tough bastards.”

“Do they have a plan to kill it?” the Sergeant asked.

“They’re working on something,” Belanger replied. “Hopefully it works because…” He stopped and listened. There was a droning sound in the air, rapidly getting closer. “Is it here already?”

The soldiers heard it too.

“Still holding at two-thousand meters,” the radar tech said.

Belanger aimed a pair of binoculars to the sky. “I think I can see it. But I don’t…” In that moment, he realized the droning sound was not coming from the Queen, but from his left and right. It wasn’t a single sound, but numerous. He looked to the east and the west, seeing numerous ‘dots’ in the sky rapidly growing larger. Her brood had broken away from the Queen for a preemptive strike. “Eyes up!”

Machine guns and assault rifles pointed skyward, meeting the threat head-on. The wasps arrived with murderous force. Swooping like hawks, they seized ground troops and lifted them in the air, where they were stung or simply dropped.

Panic struck the civilians who congregated on the north side of town. Many of the hornets flew past the defense line and weaved between the buildings, quickly identifying over a thousand potential meals to gift to their Queen and the new larvae she would give birth to.

Windows smashed as they collided with buildings. They smashed into cars and flew through thick crowds, quickly rounding up as many as they could. Others tracked humans to their homes. With a quick inspection of the roofs and walls, the bugs knew they would easily dig the prey out. The material would be no match for their acid spray.

There was no joy. No sense of triumph. The only satisfaction was the enactment of their purpose: to serve the hive and allow their Queen to proliferate their colony. Today, they undertook that task with excellent results. They had wandered into a luxurious environment with a rigid ground. Below that ground was soft earth which the bugs would easily excavate.

Hundreds of iPhones captured videos of the bugs, the mayhem they caused, and the efforts of Belanger’s forces of repelling them. The Lieutenant was not so much concerned with the secret, but simply saving as many people as he could.

A small group of wasps moved in on one of the Humvees on the right end of the line.

“Heads up, gentlemen! Abandon the gun. Move!”

The soldiers took his words to heart. They abandoned the post right as it was doused and melted to the ground by green acid.

Another machine gunner turned the weapon at the group. Fifty-caliber rounds turned one of the bugs inside out, the other two going opposite directions. Others circled around, hitting the other vehicles with their acid spray.

Belanger emptied his Carbine into one of them, cursing once his magazine ran dry. Even after thirty rounds, the wasp was still alive, rolling about on the ground. A few more shots from a fresh magazine finished the job.

“On your six, sir!” the Sergeant yelled.

The Lieutenant ducked, feeling the tips of a wasp graze his helmet. The bug, which had attempted to sneak up behind him, moved to the north with intent to circle back.

“Not cool.” He shot at the offending insect. He managed to clip its wings, resulting in a pitiful plummet.

One of the gunners turned a fifty-cal at the thing and carved it open, quickly turning the muzzle back to the sky. The soldier turned the barrel to fire into the path of another wasp, only to squint at the large shape approaching from the north.

“Uh… Lieutenant?!”

Belanger saw it too. “Oh, that’s not good…”

Having sent her pawns to put the enemy force in disarray, the Queen moved in. Her warriors separated from the kill zone, clearing the path for their mother to do her worst.

Belanger watched as she positioned her body vertically. “That’s really not good…”

From her abdomen came over fifty projectile barbs. Sparks flew from the Tunguska and the other vehicles that had survived the initial acid attack. Soldiers ran in various directions, a few of them collapsing after being run through by the projectiles.

For the second time, a razor-sharp object grazed his helmet. Belanger fell on his back, momentarily paralyzed by shock. He took a breath and identified all of the events taking place around him in an effort to regain his senses.

Son of a gun. I’m alive.

He looked straight up, seeing one of the wasps descending on him.

…for the moment.

Eager to live beyond the moment, he fired at the wasp. Driven back, the insect retreated several yards. Belanger sat up, put the bug’s head in his crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

He swallowed.

The angry wasp turned around and positioned itself vertically. Pores on its underside opened up.

Belanger gritted his teeth and awaited the painful end.

BOOM!

He was on his back again, knocked down by the shock of seeing the wasp explode seemingly out of nowhere.

“Hang on, fellas. Falcon-One-Four here. Sorry we’re late.”

The gunship hovered at four-hundred feet. Harnessed to the door gun was Ray Archer with his eye pressed to his sniper scope. Explosive-tipped rounds struck the Queen’s abdomen, drawing loud screeches from her and her brood.

She turned herself around, taking another hit to the face. If she wasn’t pissed off before, she definitely was now. Renee Larson knew this; a fact demonstrated by the way she turned the Falcon north and retreated.

In a matter of seconds, all of the Queen’s brood came to her aid. Their interest in the town had subsided in favor of chasing down this new challenger.

Lieutenant Belanger rose to his feet and gave a brief inspection of the aftermath. As bad as it was, he was grateful it wasn’t worse. Most of his men were still alive and the townspeople had another chance for survival.

“Thanks, Renee.”

***

“Don’t mention it.”

The plan was working perfectly. The Queen was right behind her. The engines were still holding on, allowing the Falcon to outpace the bug while still keeping in sight of the enemy. She did not want to get too far away and risk the bugs losing interest. In which case, they would return to Telegraph.

She switched feeds to connect with Raptor Pack. “Your toys better be ready, guys. I’m bringing the party to you.”

CHAPTER 15

“Her idea of a party is a lot different than mine,” Charity said. Kneeled by one of the hornet carcasses delivered by the supply trucks, she extracted fatty acids from the creature’s hindgut, venom glands, and abdominal glands. The mixture was added into a synthesizing machine, where they would be mixed with methanol to produce a pheromone.

In another synthesizing machine, more pheromone was being made from scratch, using a combination of hexanoic acid, octanoic acid, and decanoic acid.

Thomas Rodney approached the worksite and observed the large, pyramid-shaped machines. At their base were hoses which connected to cannisters which would be reattached to Howard’s drones.

“You sure this’ll be enough to fool the bugs?”

Charity extracted the needle and moved to the first machine. “Only one way to find out.”

He nodded. “Touché.” Returning to Howard’s station, he was pleased to see the engineer was fast with his hands, reassembling the damaged drones with welding equipment, new screws and joints, and in one case, duct tape.

“Not the prettiest maintenance job I’ve ever done,” Howard muttered.

“As long as those things can get the job done, I don’t care how ugly they are,” Thomas said.

He moved to the highest point on the ridge and looked to the south. The Falcon was not yet in sight. In a few minutes, that would change, at which point they would know whether they had saved the town or simply bought the citizens a few extra minutes of life.

“Well, well, well,” General Kilmore said. He stepped away from one of the personnel carriers with a grin on his face. “The cat’s out of the bag. There’s multiple video and photo postings all over social media. Bugs attacking the town, soldiers fighting them, hysteria about monsters. It’s already starting to reach the major news stations.”

“I reckon you just got off the horn with some government liaison?” Thomas said.

Kilmore nodded. “The feds are having their little meltdown. They don’t want the public to know.”

Thomas thought about that for a moment. It seemed strange that the federal government would be so uptight about the public’s awareness of mutations caused by an intergalactic storm. He didn’t buy into the nonsense about them wanting people to feel safe. Only one possibility made any sense at all.

“The jerks were hoping to weaponize the samples obtained during your missions,” he said.

Kilmore scowled, breaking eye contact. “Yep.”

“That figures. I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about that?”

Kilmore shook his head. “Nope. I’m in charge of containment. I have no say over what happens with the findings.” He walked to the ridge and looked at the charred remains of the hornet nest in the distance. “There’s only so much I can do, Lieutenant. I, for one, do want people to be safe. It’s what I factored in when I recruited my team. Not just Raptor Pack, but everyone in G.O.R.E. Sector. The support units, gunship pilots, everyone.” He sighed. “Now that the world is getting wind of this, people are going to be scared. Frankly, they have every right to feel that way.”

Thomas stood beside the General, looking at the same devastation. To the east and west of the hive, he saw the movement of the other units. Men and women who paid the price battling against these horrible creatures. If given the chance, every one of them would do so again.

“How are you in front of a camera, sir?” he asked. The question got a chuckle from the General.

“Not very good. Doesn’t help that I have a face for radio. Why do you ask?”

“Because you need to tell the public what you just told me,” Thomas said. “Once in a while, a little truth goes a long way. You will tell the world about the mutations. Not only the wasps, but everything that has come before. Most importantly, you will tell the world about G.O.R.E. Sector, and how they’ve stopped every single one of these threats. G.O.R.E. Sector always comes out on top, remember? The reason you come out on top is because you’re comprised of red-blooded individuals who’ll fight to the very end. That’s what you’ll tell the public.”

Kilmore contemplated the idea. Congress and the senate would be displeased, to say the least. Whenever he made public appearances, they would try and get him to read scripted statements made by some out-of-touch college grad with no life experience.

Fortunately, he had no dreams of furthering his career. There was no ambition of becoming a senator, congressman, or president. His qualities were something that was sorely lacking in the world. Integrity and compassion. Protecting mankind from all enemies, foreign and domestic, human and monster, was his lifelong objective.

“You science nerds better be ready with whatever it is you’re doing! Because we’re a mile out. And these things have it in for me.”

Thomas lifted his radio. “Keep ‘em busy for just another couple of minutes, Renee.”

“A couple more minutes?!?! The heck are Charity and Howard doing? Playing Tic Tac Toe?”

“No, but that sounds fun,” Charity said. “What do you think, Howard? Wanna take a break and go for a game or two?”

“Yeah!” Howard replied. “I’m sure Renee will be fine.”

“Y’all suck, ya know that?!”

The two scientists laughed.

“We’re almost done,” Charity said. “Stay alive for just a little longer. Oh, and don’t let the bugs get away. And don’t kill too many of the small ones. And don’t let them eat us in the process.”

***

Renee stuck her tongue out. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask me to stop at a drive through while I’m at it.”

“You offering?” Charity said. “In that case, I’ll take an egg and cheese bagel.”

“Hashbrown and some breakfast sausages for me,” Thomas said.

“Bacon and cheese wrap with a side of French toast,” Howard added.

Even the General chimed in. “Get me a stack of pancakes with some sausage patties. Add some biscuits and gravy with that. Thanks.”

“We should have this ready when you get back,” Charity said.

Renee stared at the horizon, entertaining the idea of luring the wasps directly toward those idiots. She glimpsed back at Archer, half-expecting to see the usual disinterested look on his face. To her surprise, he appeared to be pondering.

“Hmm. A five-egg omelet with cheese and red peppers doesn’t sound all that bad,” he said. He plucked his radio from his vest. “If you guys manage to kill this thing, breakfast is on me.”

***

Thomas, Howard, Charity, and Kilmore were frozen in stunned silence. Ray Archer, a man who made a point to be socially disconnected from practically every living thing in existence, was offering to treat them to breakfast.

“How fast was Renee flying?” Howard said.

“She must’ve been whipping back and forth pretty hard,” Charity replied. “What do you think, General?”

Kilmore shrugged. “I think it’s been a very weird day. That being said, I’m not gonna say anything to risk him changing his mind.”

With that being said, Charity pressed her radio transmitter. “We’re almost done, Renee. Just hang in there.” She checked the status of the synthesizer. “I swear, the last stage takes the longest…”

CHAPTER 16

In the next minute, Renee spotted the high elevation which surrounded the wasp hive. On her ten o’clock was the ridge where her team was. The plan was already a gamble. If the wasps attacked her teammates, it was guaranteed to fail.

On the other hand, she could not draw them away too far. She needed to keep them within a reasonable distance, or else the group would not be able to conduct their plan.

The solution was simple. Keep the bugs moving in circles until Howard and Charity were ready to work their magic.

She turned thirty degrees to starboard, making distance from the ridge. With the Queen momentarily in view, Ray Archer took the opportunity to hit her with another explosive round. The impact was successful in angering the entire colony, who pursued the gunship with a murderous resolve.

The wasps followed the gunship, failing to close the distance, but undeterred thanks to the reminder of why they were pursuing in the first place.

Renee led them for two-thirds of a mile then gradually veered to port. Making sure the bugs were directly behind her, she added a few degrees to the bend, narrowing the width of the circle.

The Queen wasp and her brood remained on her tail, unknowingly flying on a redundant course to nowhere.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Renee said. “Keep following me. Come on, you’re not going to let one measly little ship get the better of you, are ya?”

One rotation was complete. Then two.

Renee smiled. The plan was working. All she needed to do was keep leading them in a circle for a short while longer.

The scanners beeped, alerting Renee to an update in the status of their pursuers.

“They’ve split up,” Archer warned.

In a pincer movement, several of the wasps broke off from their Queen, putting themselves on an intercept course with their target.

Seeing several ‘little’ dots moving in from the left, Renee turned to starboard, only to see several other wasps coming in from the opposite side. The only way to go was up.

Pulling on the yoke, she pointed the Falcon’s nose skyward. Below her, the two teams of insects met and ascended together. At ten-thousand feet, Renee angled the ship back once again, completing a vertical loop. The bugs, following her, attempted the same maneuver. Their numbers and tight grouping served as a disadvantage, as many of them bumped into each other, resulting in bugs falling out of the sky.

Flying straight down, Renee could see the green background that was the forest straight ahead of her.

“They’re still behind us,” Archer said. He was clinging to his harness with one hand and the barrel of his sniper rifle with the other. Wind surged through the open door and the breaches in the hull.

Renee kept her eyes on the forest. Five seconds ago, it looked to be a plain green background. Now, she could spot the individual trees that made up the topography. Five seconds later, she could see the individual branches on the top layer of the canopy.

She pulled up on the yoke, the Falcon grazing the tops of several trees as it leveled out. Behind her, several wasps plummeted into the forest. Those in the back of the line managed to turn without clumsily smashing into the trees. Those who had been in front of the line scampered within the branches in a pitiful effort to get airborne again.

The engines protested, their insides threatening to come apart. Loose scraps of hull broke off the underside. Alarms flashed regarding the hull integrity. The wind was wreaking havoc on the gunship at this high speed.

Renee looked up from the monitor at the obstacle in her path. Five hundred feet in front of her was the Queen. She straightened her body and positioned her abdomen for a projectile barb strike.

“Motherffff—”

She veered to port, zipping past the small stream of tooth-shaped objects. The Queen’s barbs, having missed their target, zoomed into the swarm of warrior bugs, impaling some of her own offspring.

The others did not question this event, for they did not know love, compassion, or fairness. They only knew of their purpose, something which had been downloaded upon their conception. Their mother could slaughter them intentionally, and they would not question it. As long as they knew she was their mother…

They resumed the chase alongside their Queen. This time, they branched off. Instead of a tight group, they were a vast swarm, each one ready to intercept the Falcon no matter which way it went.

Renee cursed under her breath. It was as though the bugs knew she didn’t want to outright escape. There was nowhere to go but straight, which would defeat the purpose of the mission.

After a moment of cursing under her breath, Renee shrugged. “Oh, what the hell?”

She turned the Falcon around and flew into the swarm. In the blink of an eye, she performed numerous evasive maneuvers, dodging bugs and acid projectiles.

She steered the ship upward, putting it in-between two wasps. At once, they sprayed their acid supply in a crossfire. And at once, they dropped out of the sky, their acid having missed the target and instead drenched each other.

At twelve-hundred feet, the ship was leveled yet again. Renee tilted it to the right, avoiding a head-on collision with an oncoming wasp. A moment later, she descended, passing underneath another one. It was like dodging asteroids in space.

As she pointed the nose downward, she saw an even larger asteroid field of bugs coming at her. She checked their spacing, looking for the best possible route through the swarm. Before she could come to a decision, the asteroid field moved to the side. A meteor shower took its place in the form of the Queen’s projectile barbs.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Each impact got a reaction out of her, as did the numerous alarms that blared from overhead. The engines were failing. The fan shafts would not engage. The thrusters were dying.

The Falcon was going down.

***

“Alright! We’re ready!” Charity said.

The drones were patched together and loaded with the cannisters. The ball was in Howard’s court now. He had his control station set up and ready to go. Using the same multi-joystick system as before, he started up the drones and directed them to the sky.

They wobbled in midair, their rotors threatening to quit at any moment.

“Dr. Tate?” The unease in General Kilmore’s voice got everyone’s attention. The General had his binoculars pointed northwest. Half a mile away, the Falcon was descending from the sky like a meteor. It was trailing smoke, having obviously taken a hit. Renee managed to put the gunship on a thirty-degree angle. Even from this distance, they could hear the vertical shaft thrusters kicking in to prevent a crash landing.

It skidded over the forest, then disappeared beneath the trees. A crashing sound punctuated its descent.

“Renee? Archer?” Thomas said into his radio. “Respond! Are you guys alive?!”

They watched as the swarm descended on the crash site. At the rear of the colony was the Queen, proudly landing atop several of the trees.

“Renee?” Thomas said again. “Archer? Please respond!”

Only static came through the radio.

Behind him, Charity clenched her fists. She was on the verge of cursing herself out for taking too long to prep the payload.

A new sense of optimism swept over them. Gunshots echoed from the area where the Falcon had gone down. Explosive rounds burst near the treetops, driving several bugs away.

There was a moment of quiet, in which Archer was reloading. More sniper shots warped the air, accompanied by the crackling sounds of an M1 Carbine. They were alive and in combat with the swarm.

“They won’t hold them off for long,” Thomas said. He ran to Howard’s workstation. The drones had already departed, halfway to their destination. “We need all three cannisters on that bug. You sure you can get them there without crashing?”

“Sure,” Howard said. He cleared his throat and wiped away a few beads of sweat from his forehead. On the monitor was the Queen, with at least four of her brood guarding her. “Okay, no. I, uh, I need one of you to take a joystick.”

Charity raised her eyebrows. “What’s this? The great Howard Tate is asking for assistance? I thought nobody was allowed to handle your babies?”

“Will you shut up and get to work?”

Charity laughed and took control of one of the drones. “Which screen is for my drone?”

“Number Two. Same number as the joystick, Doctor,” Howard retorted.

“Bite me.”

Howard rolled his eyes and glanced in Thomas’ direction. “See what I have to deal with every day?”

Thomas took a knee on the right side of the control panel. “Want me to take the third? I’ll understand which screen is assigned to my joystick.”

Howard snickered. “Alright, fine. Take Number Five. I’ll stick with Three.”

Together they sped the drones to the target.

The wasps, sensing the threat, moved to intercept. The three pilots maneuvered their drones, avoiding massive claws and stingers.

Thomas moved his drone to the right, putting himself near the Queen’s abdomen.

“Okay, what do I do?”

“Get right above her and press the big red button,” Howard said. “That’ll deploy the pheromone.”

“Big red button. So easy, a child can understand it,” Thomas said.

“You prefer something more complex?” Howard said.

“No. No I don’t.”
Thomas made contact with the Queen and put his fist on the button. The cannister jettisoned its contents all over her exoskeleton.

The warrior wasps ceased their pursuit of the other two drones. A new scent in the air left them in a state of confusion.

Howard and Charity successfully latched their drones onto the Queen’s head and thorax, thoroughly coating her body with hornet pheromone.

Detecting this bizarre scent herself, the Queen took to the sky, her huge wings knocking the three machines off of her body.

“Did it work?” Thomas asked.

“The only way to know is to wait and see,” Charity said. “And, maybe pray.”

***

The order to not kill the bugs was out the window as far as Archer and Renee were concerned. The pilot blasted through the busted windshield, repelling what felt like the hundredth wasp. Parts of the hull behind her were melting where the bugs had doused it with acid.

Archer was at the portside entrance, gradually reducing the swarm’s numbers with amazing head shots that only he could pull off. The door gun was gone, melted away by the wasps’ attempt to vaporize him. Smoke filled the interior of the ship. The stale smell of chemicals scarred the back of their throats.

Renee loaded a fresh mag, only to immediately empty it at another attacker. As usual, it took all thirty bullets to cause enough damage to kill the damn thing. With her last magazine spent, she tossed the weapon aside.

Tired and frustrated, she stared into the eyes of the next wasp that hovered in front of the cockpit. The pores on its underside opened like missile silos, ready to melt the flesh off her bones.

A gunshot in the confines of the cockpit made her ears ring. The wasp reeled backward and hit the ground. Flopping about, it attempted to right itself.

Renee turned to her right, seeing the smoking muzzle of Archer’s sniper rifle.

“Archer? What are you doing, man? Don’t worry about me. Save yourself.”

The sniper tilted his head as though in thought. Shrugging, he turned around and stepped out. “Okay.”

Eyes wide, Renee whipped to the side, frantically waving her arms.

“Hey! Wait! What are you doing?!”

Groaning, Archer returned to the cockpit. “The hell you mean ‘what am I doing’? I’m doing what you told me to do.”

“You seriously were gonna leave me here to get vaporized?” Renee squawked.

“You said to save myself and to not worry about saving you. What? Were you lying?”

“Hell yes, I was lying! Isn’t that what you’re supposed to say in these situations?! You’re supposed to make it sound like you care more about the other person than yourself. Then the other person says something like ‘no, I won’t leave you’ and it sounds all heroic and… aw, screw it. Get me out of this harness, will ya?!”

Pursing his lips, Archer pulled a knife from his belt and sliced through the harness.

The Falcon shook as the wasp flung itself onto the nose. Twitching its mandibles, it moved to the broken windshield. Behind it, several of its brethren appeared, positioning themselves to erode the gunship and its crew with acid.

Archer looked at the fuselage. Another wasp was crawling through the entrance, trapping them.

“Should’ve left your ass,” he muttered.

Renee shot him a scalding look. “Ya know? I liked you better when you didn’t talk much.”

They held their ground and awaited their fate with dignity.

All at once, the bugs stopped. Antennae twitching, they appeared to be frozen in place. No longer were they interested in the two humans in the gunship, but something else entirely.

The wasp at the windshield backed away and spread its wings, joining its colony as they took to the sky. The one in the fuselage did the same, granting them passage out of the crashed ship.

After making their way outside, they looked to the sky. The trees were alive with motion, as though a massive hurricane was blowing through this specific section of forest.

The Queen hissed violently, her body billowing smoke as her own brood swarmed her body. Acid and stingers forced their way through her thick exoskeleton.

No longer did the colony perceive her as their mother, but as the queen of an entirely different species. Following their instincts, they sought to destroy all rival colonies. Especially their queens.

The enormous insect attempted to take flight. Her wings, having been withered away by acid, only carried her a few meters before failing to sustain her weight.

A storm of leaves and branches rained down in her wake. A thunderous impact sent tremors sweeping through the ground like ripples in a pond. She was on her back now, kicking and hissing, confused as to why her own colony would turn on her.

The wasps did not let up. They converged on their Queen, spewing acid onto her belly, while others stung her through the eyes and joints. Overwhelmed by enflamed nerves and confusion, she retaliated in the only way she could. She slashed with all six legs. The superior size of her talons cleaved some of her attackers in two, their severed bodies rolling on the ground like bowling balls. The remaining barbs in her abdomen fired, skewering some of the wasps that hovered over her.

It did nothing to suppress the advantage in numbers. Those who clung to her body stung her repeatedly and sprayed any remaining acid they had. The Queen fluttered the stubby remains of her wings, doing little more than kicking up a few gusts of wind and dust.

Her exoskeleton dissolved, spilling blood and organs onto the soil. Some of the acid found its way to her neck joint, easily eating through the relatively soft material. Blood flowed from her throat in large rivers. She reared her head back, jaws parted as though to scream. The head kept tilting back, until the joint came apart.

Severed from her body, the Queen’s head rolled several feet away, ultimately ending up near the base of a tree.

Archer and Renee watched in stunned fascination. The plan had worked. Raptor Pack had actually managed to get the wasps to kill their own mother. Better yet, the attack resulted in many more of the warriors being killed, leaving less than ten remaining.

Even after completing the kill, the bugs continued grouping atop of her rapidly dissolving corpse, stinging repeatedly.

Archer loaded a magazine of explosive rounds in his sniper rifle.

“Might as well finish the job.” He took aim, starting with the bugs on the thorax and worked his way down.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Rapid explosions reduced the wasps to smoldering cinders. Those who were not immediately killed in the explosions were knocked to the ground by the concussions. Stunned, they were easy targets for Archer to finish off with a fifty-caliber magazine.

He lowered the rifle and breathed a sigh of relief. It was done.

Renee put a hand on his shoulder. It was an act of complimenting him and thanking him all at once. That, and giving herself something to lean on, for she was exhausted as hell.

“Thank God that’s over,” she muttered.

Archer nodded. “Yeah.”

“So? About that breakfast…”

Archer did the impossible. He cracked a smile. Without answering, he searched for his radio, which had been dropped during the crash.

***

The team watched from the ridge, all at once fascinated and full of angst after seeing the Queen go down. Their plan had worked. All they needed was a confirmation of her death.

More importantly, they were eager to know the status of their teammates. They heard the blasts from Archer’s rifle. Was he finishing off the colony or shooting in a last stand?

The answer came through the radio.

“Falcon One-Four.”

Thomas took a deep breath, savoring the moment with Charity, Howard, and General Kilmore. They shared hugs and high-fived each other. Renee and Archer were alive.

“We’re here,” Thomas said. “You guys all right?”

“Yeah, we’re alive. The wasps aren’t, though,” Renee said. “One of you guys mind bringing a truck over this way?”

Kilmore snapped his fingers at a pair of soldiers, who hastily rushed to one of the vehicles.

“On the way,” Thomas said.

“Hey, Deputy?” Renee said.

“Yeah?”

“How are the restaurants in town?”

He laughed. “They’re pretty good.”

General Kilmore switched channels on his radio to speak with Lieutenant Belanger. “Lieutenant? This is General Kilmore. Code Green.”

“Good to hear,” Belanger said. “Give my thanks to Raptor Pack. Sounds like they pulled off another miracle.”

General Kilmore turned to look at Thomas. “They did. With a little help.”

CHAPTER 17

In the week that followed, the event at the small town of Telegraph, Oregon, was all over every major news channel. As expected, there was major anxiety among the public, with many claiming humanity was at risk. Speculations and conspiracy theories arose, briefly throwing society into chaos.

An unexpected news conference put the world at ease. The testimony of General Austin Kilmore, broadcast on every major channel and every social media platform, gave the public something they rarely ever got. The truth. He gave details of all sightings leading up to the wasp invasion of Telegraph, the meteor storm that caused it, and explained the reality that more creatures would emerge again. In that statement, he emphasized two things: G.O.R.E. Sector would be there every time, and they always came out on top.

It was a move that brought much scrutiny from the federal government, not that Kilmore gave a damn. Spoiled idiots who talked a big game and manipulated the public into giving them a job did not frighten the General. Their threats to remove him from his role as head of G.O.R.E. Sector were nothing more than words. Though they would not admit it out loud, the suits in government knew few could handle this kind of job. A few other generals had already admitted they would have resorted to a nuclear strike to contain the situation—statements that were ‘accidentally’ leaked, sparking public demand for Kilmore to remain in charge of the special division.

***

Raptor Pack touched glasses. With whiskey provided by Dr. Howard Tate, they raised a toast in the honor of Captain Jacob Coltrane. It was the tradition of G.O.R.E. Sector after laying their fallen to rest. It was a busy week, for the cost of the recent extermination had been great.

Kilmore and the four team members put their shot glasses on a round table, surrounded by a picture of their Captain. The goodbye had been said. Like with Charity’s late husband, they knew the best way to honor Coltrane was to keep going. From now on, humanity would be threatened by deadly monsters. The dead would rest in peace knowing their teammates were still on the job.

“G.O.R.E. Sector will always be here,” General Kilmore said. “But without a team of specialists, it is little more than a standard military branch. Our soldiers are brave, but they need the expertise of people like you to defeat our enemies. Raptor Pack is essential to the success of our operations. But… as a train needs an engine, Raptor Pack needs a leader.”

He turned his eyes to Charity. She toyed with her shot glass for a moment, then shook her head.

“Not me.”

It was a response Kilmore was surprised to hear. “No? You’ve been on the team since its creation. You know how it runs…”

“I’m a scientist,” she said. “I get too wound up in the technical details that I sometimes miss the obvious. Same with Howard.”

The engineer perked up. “Hey!”

“It’s true,” Charity said. “You seriously expect to focus on your electronics and inventions while managing a team?”

Howard bit his lip, digging through his mind in search of a good retort. All he found was the realization Charity was correct. Saying nothing, he nodded.

The General looked at Renee. She immediately shook her head.

“Not me. I like my role as it is. I want to fly around—or drive around—and shoot stuff.” She pointed her thumb at Archer. “And don’t even think about offering the job to him! Not with his sparkling personality. Let him worry about killing stuff. Managing the team, though? That requires a different mindset altogether.”

“We’re all good in our roles,” Charity said. “But what we need—what Captain Coltrane was great at—is someone who is more than a badass. We need someone who can keep a cool head under pressure. Someone who can think outside the box and point out the obvious when we get bogged down in the details.”

“I agree,” Howard said. “Let’s face it. It wasn’t missiles, bullets, or technology that defeated the wasps. It was one man’s quick thinking. That’s what G.O.R.E. Sector needs.”

“Hear-hear,” Renee said.

Archer gave his usual thumbs up, then helped himself to another shot of whiskey.

General Kilmore read between the lines.

“So, that’s who you want to lead your team, huh?” The team members nodded unanimously. “Alright, then.”

CHAPTER 18

“There’s something you should know. The team name was not always Raptor Pack. It was originally Team Five. Teams One, Two, Three, and Four are no longer with us. It’s an unfortunate reality of the job in which you are undertaking. This is not the type of occupation where you come home at the end of each night and put your feet up. You will be on the go constantly. You will be at war constantly. There will be loss of life, constantly, and regrettably. As you’ve learned with the wasps, this line of work comes at a cost.

“Not all threats are the same. Some are fairly low-level, others are beyond catastrophic. All must be intercepted and destroyed. As long as the Earth keeps spinning, more mutations will arise. G.O.R.E. Sector exists to find and eradicate them, and protect the public, foreign and domestic. You, as the new Captain of the Raptor Pack reconnaissance team, are essential to obtaining that result.”

Dressed in his new uniform, Captain Thomas Rodney stood before the General, hands behind his back, heels touching. Above the American flag patch on his left arm was an insignia. Three stripes ran at a forty-five-degree angle, appearing like claw marks. Black letters on its top formed the name of the organization.

G.O.R.E. SECTOR.

He absorbed every word the General said. This was not a job offered casually. One of the most important responsibilities in existence was being given to him.

“Over time, you will likely lose people,” Kilmore continued. “Sadly, it’s a part of the trade we can’t avoid. But the Captain of Raptor Pack can bring that cost to a minimum. What say you, Captain Rodney?”

“Aye-aye, General.”

General Kilmore smiled. “Welcome to G.O.R.E. Sector.” He gestured to the door in the back of the room. Four individuals came through it and joined Thomas in the conference room. “I’d introduce you to your team, but it seems you’ve already met.”

Charity was the first to offer Thomas a hug. Renee was next. Howard and Archer, being the men that they were, settled for handshakes.

The engineer held his bottle of expensive whiskey and filled six shot glasses. It was a tradition held not only with honoring those lost, but in celebrating new gains.

Thomas and his team drank together and placed their glasses on the table.

Kilmore wasted no time. He reached behind the podium where he had given his speech, and pulled out a tan folder.

“Congratulations, Captain. Hope you enjoyed your little celebration. The job starts now.”

“Uh-oh,” Charity said. “New sighting, huh?”

The General nodded. “No rest for the weary.”

Thomas grinned and took the tan folder. “So. Where are we going?”

The End

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- 1 -

“This is bollocks, Sarge,” Mac said. “Why are we jumping in the dark? We’re out in the middle of nowhere; it’s not like anybody’s going to see us coming.”

Captain John Banks smiled. Mac was always the first to complain; you could set your watch by it. It was a small bit of normality on a night where the normal was too far away. They cruised in darkness at fifteen thousand feet, somewhere to the west of Baffin Island, silent running through the Canadian skies. Twelve hours ago, Banks was ready for a spot of leave, even had a ticket booked on a flight to Greece with wife and both kids excited, packed, and raring to go. Instead, he’d driven them to the airport to see them off, before reporting to base at the urgent request of the colonel. Now where he was headed was going to be a tad colder. At least he had his own handpicked men with him, but it had been the only choice he’d been given.

“There’s a Russian boat out there somewhere where she shouldn’t be, John,” the colonel had said back in Lossiemouth that afternoon. “And we think it’s in trouble, maybe big trouble if the sketchy report we have is to be believed. There might be something worth salvaging though, and it’d be nice to know what they were doing snooping about so deep in Canadian waters. It’s the usual deal for your team; get in quick, have a shufti, and report back. And don’t get dead in the process.”

So now Banks, his Sergeant Frank Hynd, and the small squad of four men he trusted more than anyone else in the world were out – in the middle of nowhere as Mac put it – getting ready to fall out of the sky into the cold black below.

All in all, I’d rather be in Greece.

“Coming up on drop point. Two minutes,” the pilot said over the tannoy.

“Okay, Sarge,” Banks said. “Line them up.”

Mac looked like he might grumble again, but Frank Hynd put a stop to that quick enough – one look from the sarge was usually enough. The other three; McCally, Nolan, and Briggs – Tom, Dick, and Harry as the sarge called them – lined up behind Banks as the rear of the plane opened up, showing roaring blackness beyond. Mac and Hynd lumbered forward, shoving the box of their gear ahead of them. Banks counted them down from five and they rolled the box out into the night.

Seconds later, all six of them flew free in the air, following it down.

*

This was Banks’ favorite part of any mission; the leap into the unknown, with butterflies in your belly and wind roaring all around you; it felt like freedom, even despite the bite of the cold and the frost forming at his lips and ears. In those early seconds, it scarcely felt like falling but more as if he skimmed, like a flat stone, across the rim of the world.

The rest of the men were merely darker shadows in the black but they’d done enough night jumps together to know they’d be in tight formation; and if any of them had a problem, it was too late for him to do much about it now.

He saw the chute of their gear box below him, counted to five, then pulled his own cord, following the other canopy down. It was a moonless night but also cloudless, the canopy of stars providing enough light for him to see the darker shadow of the island, their drop point, loom up below them. He looked over the shimmering waters of the bay to the north. If there was a Russian spy boat out there, it wasn’t showing any lights.

But that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

He stayed almost on top of the gear chute all the way and came in for a perfectly controlled landing twenty yards to the north of the box. He had plenty of time to gather up his chute before the wind could catch it again and drag it away, then made quickly for the box; despite its weight, it was being dragged, albeit slowly, across the rocks, its passage facilitated by the ice underfoot. Hynd landed nearby and hurried to help. By the time they’d got the gear chute disengaged and rolled up, the rest of the team were gathered around the box. All save one and Banks knew who that must be even before he checked the faces.

“Where’s Nolan?”

“I think I saw him drifting off west. You know Pat, sir,” Mac said. “Fucking useless at this jumping lark. Could be anywhere by now.”

Banks sighed.

“Okay, lads. Get kitted up before you freeze your balls off; five minutes, then we’ll go and look for our lost lamb.”

They were travelling light and fast so kitting up went smoothly; cold weather gear, lined and hooded parkas, balaclava hats, gloves and night vision glasses, each man with a flak jacket and webbing belt of ammo and a small backpack, a rifle and a knife. Banks knew they could all do a steady six miles an hour all night geared up in this terrain; he hoped to hell they didn’t have to.

“Mac – you’re on point, Briggs and McCally, you fetch Nolan’s gear – the stupid wanker is going to be an iced lollipop by the time we get to him and it’ll serve him right. Sarge – move them out.”

*

The ground was icy but rough underfoot, slippage kept to a minimum by the deep ridges and treads of their boots. Banks warmed up almost immediately inside the parka but knew better than to unzip it; it was a clear night in late spring, but they were above the Arctic Circle and he couldn’t afford to take any chances with the weather. He followed Mac as the Glaswegian led them quickly west toward where he said he’d last seen Nolan’s chute. They were heading toward the sea; Banks could see it ahead of them, the shimmer clear in his night vision goggles. He could only hope that the Irishman’s cack-handedness with a chute hadn’t brought him down in the water, for if that was the case, he might be dead already.

Nolan was alive and blue with cold by the time they found him a few minutes’ walk later, but he didn’t seem to notice it; all his attention was on the scene around him. He’d landed on a rocky shoreline, yards from the water. His chute still lay, opened out and spread, behind him, soaked, looking black and glossy in the night glasses. Despite the lack of color, Banks knew from bitter experience what blood looked like in the goggles, and there was a lot of it on the chute.

Far too much.

Banks went straight to his man, fearing the worst.

“Nolan, are you hurt, man?”

Nolan didn’t reply, even as Banks checked him out for a wound. But the blood wasn’t the Irishman’s and Bank’s noticed it soon enough when he looked at their feet; they both waded in wet slush that was also running red, and when he followed Nolan’s gaze along the shore, he quickly found the cause.

The beach had been home to a score or more of large basking mammals; walrus by the look of it given the size of the rib cages and the large ivory tusks he saw on the nearest body. They must have made an impressive sight hauled out on the shore, but now all of them were now little more than stripped carcasses. Gleaming bone and chunks of fat looked to be all that was left of the animals – that and the blood washing in and out with the small wavelets in the slush.

His team fell silent and still. Every man had his weapon in hand, and they’d taken position so that the squad as a whole had three-sixty warning of any attack.

“What the fuck, Sarge?” Mac said quietly.

Sergeant Hynd silenced the man with a finger to his lips and motioned that he would go south along the beach, sending Mac away to the north. Briggs and McCally got Nolan out of his chute and handed him his cold weather gear; Banks was glad to see that the Irishman was finally coming round from his shock.

“I missed the landing again, Cap,” he said as he got himself into his lined parka. “I fucked up. Sorry.”

Banks clapped the man on the back.

“Try to follow the rest of us. I’ve told you and told you, look below you, not at the view on the way down. You’ll live longer. But at least you stayed out of the water. And you’re still in one piece, that’s the main thing, unlike these poor beasties.”

Nolan’s eyes were still wide as he looked around.

“What could do this, Cap? Polar bear?”

“Maybe,” Banks replied, “if there were three or four of them. Maybe. Or, if they were closer to the water, I’m thinking a pod of orca might do this much damage.”

But it didn’t look like any kind of predator feeding Banks had ever seen. The carcasses looked like they’d been stripped and butchered rather than torn apart; it might be bears, but they’d have to be the tidiest bears he’d ever come across.

He put the thought away; whatever the cause of the carnage, it wasn’t why they were here – he couldn’t see how it had anything to do with their mission. Hynd and Mac returned from opposite ends of the small rocky beach.

“Anything?” Banks asked.

Hynd shook his head.

“Whatever did it, it was around this bit of the shore. And they must have left in the water. There’s no tracks, no blood or spoor over to the south.”

“Same the other way,” Mac said and repeated his earlier observation. “What the fuck, Sarge?”

Hynd spoke dryly.

“I know one thing, Mac. It wasn’t the fucking Russians; there’s no empty vodka bottles.”

Banks saw that the men were spooked by the extent of the slaughter around them; standing amid bloody ruin never did anybody any good, whether it was animal parts or human ones. He had to get the squad moving, before they all got the heebie-jeebies.

“Focus, lads,” he said. “We’re here for a boat full of Russian spies. If you see a polar bear, you have my permission to blow its nuts off, but we need to move and we need to move now. Nolan, you ready, son?”

The Irishman gave Banks the thumbs up.

“Okay, move out. Mac, you’re still on point; Sarge, you watch our backs. If we dropped where we should have, there’s an Inuit settlement two miles to the north; that’s our first stop.”

*

In the short briefing he’d had back at base before leaving, the colonel had told Banks they’d intercepted a garbled message from a remote settlement off Baffin Island, telling of a Russian boat in trouble in the bay to the north of them.

“The diplomatic boys have been on the phone all morning; we’ve asked for first crack at it and, subject to a few deal sweeteners to keep the politicos happy, you’ve got permission to go in for a look.

“We’ve got no idea how many Ruskies there are on board, or what degree of armaments they might or might not have, so sneaking up on them is the order of the day.

“The Canuck Air Force will be your backup,” his superior said. “You’ve got twenty-four hours after the drop to get a report back here; if you don’t, they’ll send in the heavy mob.”

It wasn’t a particularly strange mission; Banks and the squad had worked similar jobs with tighter deadlines in worse conditions but the torn and bloody walrus remains had set a chill in his spine. His normally reliable hunch told him things might not be as straightforward as either the colonel had implied, or he had hoped.

The men were thinking much the same. They kept up a stream of low-voiced chat, all of it about the bloody mess they’d left behind them on the shore. Nolan, in particular, talked incessantly about the scene he’d landed in.

“I thought I’d crash landed, died, and gone to Hell,” he said after describing his landing for the fourth time in as many minutes. “It was like a fecking horror film.”

“Away and shite, ya big girl’s blouse,” McCally replied. “I’ve seen worse in Inverness on a Saturday night.”

“Aye,” Nolan replied deadpan. “Your mother always was a messy eater.”

Briggs, McCally, and Nolan’s laughter carried clear across the cold night, earning them an admonishment from the sarge.

“Keep it down, lads,” Hynd said from their backs. “If the cap’s right, we’ll be coming up on the settlement soon.”

That was enough to get quiet and they walked in silence for another half a mile. The terrain was easy going, hard-packed snow only occasionally punctuated with icy rocks they easily navigated and they made good time. Banks brought the others to a stop when Mac signaled from ten yards ahead of them; trouble ahead.

Banks left Nolan, McCally, and Briggs at the rear while he and Sergeant Hynd quickly moved up to Mac’s position and joined him, lying flat on a frozen rocky outcrop, oblivious to the cold as they took in the scene below them.

An Inuit settlement sat around a sheltered bay at the foot of the slope below them – or rather, what was left of it sat there. The community had been made up of twenty or so buildings along the shoreline; six of those buildings were now little more than torn and shattered timber frames and many of the others showed signs of attack. Multiple smears, black in the night vision glasses but again all too obviously blood, showed on the track running along between the buildings and the water’s edge. Two small fishing boats sat moored in the tiny harbor, one of which was listing badly, holed at the port side; the other was almost completely sunk, only the wheel house showing above the water. Out in the bay, several hundred yards offshore, a larger boat sat at anchor; it was too dark to see any identification and there were no lights on the vessel itself.

“Our Russian pals?” Hynd asked in a whisper.

“I guess so,” Banks replied.

He turned his glasses up to full zoom and tried to make out more detail of the vessel but it was too far off in the night. He turned his attention to the harbor and checked the whole length of the settlement. There were no signs of any bodies.

But there’s an awful lot of blood.

When Mac spoke, neither he, nor Hynd had an answer for him.

“What the fuck, Sarge?”

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Table of Contents

- G.o.r.e Sector
- CHAPTER 1
- CHAPTER 2
- CHAPTER 3
- CHAPTER 4
- CHAPTER 5
- CHAPTER 6
- CHAPTER 7
- CHAPTER 8
- CHAPTER 9
- CHAPTER 10
- CHAPTER 11
- CHAPTER 12
- CHAPTER 13
- CHAPTER 14
- CHAPTER 15
- CHAPTER 16
- CHAPTER 17
- CHAPTER 18