The single shot might have slowed it a little, but the Warrior larva was still haring straight down the middle of the corridor.
“Stop it!” Drake yelled.
Later, he asked himself if the reason he hadn’t opened fire on it was not because of how quick the creature was, but because of what he’d seen. It was true that the Warrior larva had been moving at a blistering speed, but its appearance might have also been a factor.
The sight of its head was enough to make his heart miss several beats.
Will’s and Chester’s jaws dropped as they reacted in the same way.
Although its torso was amphibian, its head was something else entirely.
Something shocking.
The larva’s head was that of a human child — with distinct human features. Covered in off-white scales, the eyes, nose, and ears were perfectly formed, albeit the mouth was filled with shiny white spikes for teeth, and its tongue was at least a foot in length as it flicked out.
And worse still, when Sweeney winged it, the wail it emitted could have been that of a human infant.
As the Warrior larva bolted toward the main doors, one of the Old Guard had heard Drake’s warning and was moving rapidly to intercept it. He brought his shotgun up, but the larva simply sprang clean over his head.
“Crikey!” he shouted. The old soldier still had his instincts, though, and tried to take the shot as he tipped backward. He missed the creature completely, the light on the corridor ceiling exploding into a million pieces and showering him and the boys.
“Stop it!” Drake yelled again.
Then Mr. Rawls was the only obstacle in its path to freedom through the main doors.
Again the Warrior larva sprang.
The second member of the Old Guard tried to shoot it in midair, but he missed, too, the round shattering a vase on the reception desk.
Mr. Rawls had stepped back. The Warrior larva tried to alter its trajectory by rotating its tail, but it wasn’t enough. It slammed into Mr. Rawls, gripping his chest with its claws.
“Colonel! Shoot it!” Drake shouted, realizing that the larva was dangerously close to escaping.
But the New Germanian couldn’t open fire for fear of hurting Chester’s father.
Despite the weight of the Warrior larva on him, Mr. Rawls had managed to remain on his feet. He was staggering backward as if he was doing some form of bizarre limbo dance.
“Help! Help! Help!” he was jabbering as the larva bit down on his shoulder. Mr. Rawls screamed in shock and pain.
“Get it off him!” Chester cried, aiming his Sten but knowing there was no way he could use it.
Something flashed through the air.
The Warrior larva slid from Mr. Rawls, a knife embedded up to the hilt in its neck. As the creature flopped to the floor, its limbs were still moving, but only in a weak reflex action.
“Evil-looking thing,” one of the Old Guard muttered.
“Nice kill, Colonel,” Sweeney said. “I thought the Sticky bug was outta here.”
Colonel Bismarck went over to the Warrior larva. Placing a foot on the creature’s back, he yanked his knife out. “Ich war es nicht,” he said. He put the knife back into the scabbard on his belt, then glanced over at Mrs. Burrows. “It was Celia. She helped herself to my knife.”
“Mum!” Will exclaimed. “How did you do that? You can’t even see!”
Mrs. Burrows shrugged as Drake examined the creature, which was still twitching. “Better make sure it’s dead. Who knows what these things are capable of?” he said.
Much to everyone’s astonishment, the Colonel simply raised his boot and brought it down on the larva. There was the most ghastly crack of bone as its childlike head split open.
Will and Chester looked away.
Drake opened a channel to Parry on the radio. “Tell everyone that the mature Warrior bugs are fast and highly mobile. They can clear some height, too.”
Parry was shouting as he replied. “We already know that,” he said. There were yells and the sound of shotguns blasting in the background before Drake ended the connection.
Then Drake turned to Mrs. Burrows. “Can you get Jeff across the road and have that bite looked at?” he asked her. As she took him away, Will and Chester followed Drake and Sweeney to the end of the corridor, where they tried not to look at the dead Limiter on the floor, less one brain. The boys could hear the Old Guard on the other side of the doors beginning to work their way through the warehouse. They were killing anything that moved, the terrible screams coming thick and fast.
“Stay here and make sure nothing else gets out,” Drake ordered the boys as he and Sweeney prepared to enter.
“Don’t you want us to help?” Chester offered.
“No, the cleanup inside won’t be a pretty sight. I wouldn’t wish it on . . .” Drake trailed off as his radio bleeped. “Parry again,” he murmured, opening up the private frequency.
“When Jiggs was with you, he noticed something,” Parry shouted.
“Jiggs — with us?” Drake replied, frowning at Sweeney, who shook his head. “None of us saw him.”
“Well, he spotted a security camera in the corridor where you are,” Parry continued. “He says there’s a safe room up on the second. Check it out, will you?”
The exchange came to an end, and Drake addressed Sweeney. “Hold the position here, Sparks. I need to investigate this.”
Drake tore back down the corridor, the boys following so they could see what he was up to. Drake came to a stop outside the boardroom, where he peered up at a camera mounted just below the ceiling.
“Yes, there it is.” He turned to the reception area and addressed Colonel Bismarck. “Jiggs has located the security room a floor up,” he said. “If the system in this place has been left running, the footage could be very useful to us.”
Drake immediately went upstairs with the Colonel to investigate, leaving Will and Chester to relieve Sweeney by the warehouse doors.
“I may be coming back this way. Don’t blow my head off,” Sweeney said with a grin, then ducked inside the warehouse.
Now alone, the boys stood guard with their Stens, listening to a sound track from the darkest of nightmares. They heard piercing screams. It was incessant. As though babies and young children were being slaughtered by the thousands.
“I know they’re not human . . . but I’m so glad we’re not in there,” Chester whispered.
Will just nodded.
The air was thick with steam, and the only relief to the murky darkness was the occasional muzzle flash as weapons discharged.
The squad was working its way in from the corner, the men with infrared goggles checking under the beds on which a few desiccated human remains lay on blood-caked mattresses. The heat-detecting equipment the men were using was essential. The younger larvae were easy to miss as they slithered under animal carcasses or took refuge in any nook or cranny they could find.
But the mature larvae were the real problem.
“Heads!” one of the squad shouted when he caught heat traces on the metal crossbeams running just under the roof.
As lights raked where they were hiding, several Warrior larvae scattered. They used their newly developed limbs to full effect, darting along the beams while automatic fire peppered the roof space.
One of the larvae was hit, falling to the ground, where it writhed and screamed at ear-piercing volume until it was put out of its misery.
That was when the squad encountered their first Styx woman.
“Getting strong readings here,” one of the men warned on his approach to a pile of beds heaped in a mound so high that it was almost touching the roof. “Could be a nest.”
As the squad advanced, a young Warrior larva nosed out from the bottom of the pile. It was dispatched with a single shot from a handgun, bursting open with a splatter of lacteous fluid.
A second larva was spotted not far from the first.
A member of the Old Guard lined up his weapon on it.
>
But when someone yelled, “Good God! — watch it!” he didn’t take the shot.
She was poised at the very top of the mound of beds, her insect limbs vibrating together in a low hum. The Styx woman had crept out much as a spider emerges when prey lands on its web. Her bloated midriff and her sinew-thin arms and legs only added to this image.
“Back off from my children!” the Styx woman ordered, leering at the squad as fluid dribbled from her mouth.
With her arched, angry eyebrows and her black, swollen lips, her exaggerated feminine features were like some burlesque mask.
“Blimey, I swear that’s my ex-wife!” one of the Old Guard quipped, but nobody felt like laughing.
“Lower your weapons, men. I say again — lower your weapons,” the Styx female commanded the squad of Old Guard. There was such authority in her voice that before they knew it, a number of the veteran soldiers had actually begun to comply, responding to the training entrenched in them during their lengthy military careers.
“No! Hold to!” someone shouted, and for several beats, neither side made a move.
The Styx woman and the squad of Old Guard stood frozen in the moment.
Then, as the young Warrior larva began to slither back into its hiding place, the member of the Old Guard adjusted his aim on it.
With a banshee howl, the Styx woman flew at him. In less than the blink of an eye, she’d landed in front of him. Using both her arms and insect limbs, she wrenched the assault rifle from his grip.
She knew her weapons. In a blur, she’d flipped the HK MP53 around and was pointing it straight at his chest.
She began to pull the trigger.
But another man had acted with speed equal to hers.
Sweeney kicked the assault rifle, deflecting the burst away from the man’s chest. The rounds hit the floor, ripping holes in the concrete.
The Styx woman swore as she swiped at Sweeney’s face with her insect limbs, but he ducked low, avoiding them. And, as he came up again, he had the MP53 in his hands.
The Styx woman hadn’t expected that.
Now disarmed, she did the only thing she could. She seized hold of the man who’d been about to kill the Warrior larva, wrapping her arms and insect limbs around his body. She squeezed him hard, several of his ribs cracking at some volume. His feet were lifted from the ground as she swung him in front of her, shielding herself from the rest of the squad coming to the rescue.
There were just too many for her.
In all the darkness and confusion, shooting her wasn’t an option — they might hit the man in her grip. With Sweeney shouting directions, it took ten members of the squad to pry her loose.
As she strained and shrieked and hissed at them, they held her.
“Three . . . two . . . one!” Sweeney counted down, and they slung her back against the mound of beds. Then the whole squad opened up on her, the rapid rates of fire shredding her body.
As she died, the former major from the British Army screamed one last time.
When the sound of gunfire had finally petered out, Parry proclaimed “Echo” over the radio. Everyone withdrew from the factory grounds and formed a cordon in the road again.
There was a low rumble, as if something massive was being dragged along the ground. Fire began to lick the insides of the windows, and burst from the vents in the roofs like red spears.
“Incendiaries,” Drake said, carefully wrapping a sweater around a computer hard drive that he and the Colonel had retrieved from the security room. “Nothing will survive those temperatures. Which is the general idea.”
Whistles blew. “To the rallying point,” men shouted, and everyone moved en masse to the far end of the parking lot on the other side of the road.
They gathered around Parry, who was standing on a weapons crate with some sort of device in his hand. In addition to Eddie’s men, who kept to themselves in a small group, there must have been at least three hundred of the Old Guard there. Still wearing their masks, they stood in silence.
“I know this has probably been one of the oddest missions I’ve asked you on . . . and probably one of the most harrowing,” Parry said, throwing a glance over the road. “But I want to thank all of you for your professionalism. It’s been an impeccably executed op —”
Someone yelled, “Blowing your own trumpet again, Commander?” There were hoots of laughter, and the whole mood of the gathering was at once transformed. Some of the men were lighting cigars, while others took out hip flasks and began to hand them around.
Parry tried to get some order back into the proceedings, although he was smiling. “An impeccably executed operation, like the ones we used to mount back in the day. Some of you have taken your fair share of knocks, but I’m pleased to report that there hasn’t been a single fatality on our side.”
Everyone looked over to a Land Rover with its rear doors open. Although there were two men on stretchers inside it, there were another ten or so outside in the process of being treated, most having dressings applied to what were only minor injuries.
“There’s Dad. I’d better see how he is,” Chester said, spotting his father in the group behind the Land Rover. He rushed off, leaving Will by himself.
Parry continued, “And I call that a resounding success!”
The crowd echoed their agreement.
“Although the job is far from done and we’ve still got to root out the Styx here on the surface, today . . . , he said, taking a breath, “today we’ve diverted a catastrophe of global proportions.”
“It’s over. We really stopped the Phase,” Will whispered to himself. With everything that had happened in the last hour, he’d rather lost sight of what they’d just accomplished. “We’ve bloody done it.”
Parry was still talking. “. . . and I don’t think I’m the man to do this,” he said, holding up the device in his hand.
There were shouts of “Go on, Commander!” but he shook his head.
“No, I’d like my very old friend, who put his neck on the block for us today . . .”
There was a groan from the crowd.
“. . . to do the honors,” Parry went on. “Show yourself, Hoss!”
A tall man pretended to hide himself in the crowd.
“Come on — it’s not like you to be shy,” Parry teased.
Will watched as the man lumbered from the ranks, noticing how he had to swing himself around to look at his comrades on the way over to Parry.
The man took the device from Parry and held it high. “This is for all of us. And after dealing with those creepy crawlies in there, I’ll never complain about the pests on my allotment again!”
There was a roar from the crowd.
“Just a word of warning,” Parry said, managing to make himself heard as he scanned the crowd and found Will. “For those of you who haven’t seen much action, never look up when you’re this close to a major detonation. Now, go ahead, Hoss.”
Harry hit the button and there was an almighty explosion. Part of the roof of the main warehouse blew heavenward, fire belching from the opening. Engulfed by flames, the rest of the roof collapsed, followed by the walls, until very little of the structure was still standing.
Will found out why Parry had seen the need to warn him. After a few seconds, pieces of flaming debris began to drop not far from the parking lot, landing on the snow-covered ground and hissing away. But the Old Guard didn’t mind, cheering loudly and jumping aside to avoid them.
As someone nudged his back, Will spun around to find Elliott behind him.
“Hi there,” he said, happy to see her.
“Hi,” she said, but she seemed preoccupied and didn’t return his smile. For a moment her gaze crept to the far horizon, in the opposite direction to the burning ruins of the factory.
“Why did you want Stephanie with you?” Will asked, trying not to show that he minded.
“Because she’s one of us now. Someone’s got to show her the ropes,” Elliott replied distantly. “And because I
have this feeling . . .” She was rubbing the nape of her neck.
Before Will had the opportunity to ask what she meant, she announced, “Ah, here they come.”
Eddie and Stephanie were strolling over, and part of Will was sad. It was different now that all these other people were involved. It wasn’t just him, Elliott, and Chester, with Drake to lead them, up against the Styx.
Some of the Old Guard, fueled by whatever was in their flasks, were talking and joking boisterously among themselves. Others, their arms on each other’s shoulders, were singing what sounded like a victory hymn.
They met the tyrant’s brandished steel,
the lion’s gory mane;
Something dawned on Will. As tough as the last year had been for him, he realized that without the Rebecca twins and the Styx and the constant danger, he would never have the friends he had — the very best friends — friends he could count on however dire the situation.
And if the Styx were beaten and the threat removed, everything would change.
They bowed their heads the death to feel;
who follows in their train?
Perhaps they’d all go their separate ways, living lives completely apart from one another. Elliott had her father back now, and Chester his parents. As for Drake, he’d probably go off and find himself another cause to champion.
And what sort of life would Will lead once all this was over? Where exactly would he end up? Back in Highfield with his mother and her turbocharged nose? He couldn’t see how that would work out. Worse still, he’d have to start school again.
The prospect of returning to a normal life filled him with the darkest dread.
“My father’s going to give us a lift part of the way in the Humvees,” Elliott said, yawning. “I just want to get home to the Complex again.”
“Yes, home again,” Will said.