Kamcy

  There was a still, suffocating atmosphere inside the vehicle. Blood and gore dripped steadily onto the metal floor as the soldier, now very much dead, slowly slumped forward, his upper body folding unnaturally over his own p. Thick crimson pooled beneath him, seeping into the ridges of the vehicle flooring.

  Time seemed to slow in my perception as the reality of the situation settled into my mind.

  Without wasting a second, I rose abruptly to my feet. The seatbelt meant to restrain me snapped apart like fragile thread, the reinforced straps tearing under the sudden force of my movement as I stood.

  The sharp sound seemed to break everyone from their daze.

  The others reacted instantly. Weapons were grabbed. Seatbelts were unbuckled. Defensive positions were taken... well, as defensive as one could manage in a cramped armored personnel carrier packed with ten bodies and the lingering heat of fresh blood. We were akin to prey sealed inside a metal coffin, and something, or rather some things, out there were set on carving their way in.

  Then came the sudden sound of gunfire from outside.

  The sharp rattling of automatic rifles erupted through the hull. The interior of the vehicle grew tense immediately.

  I saw Khadija pull up her radio.

  “Team 1! Team 1! Captain, respond!”

  She sounded calm.

  But I could tell she wasn’t.

  There was strain beneath the surface. The ck of response from the captain and the continued gunfire outside made it worse. No one dared to look through any vision slit. No one wanted to be the next one impaled through steel like wet paper.

  “Team 2, we are under attack. If you can hear us, we need you to slow down and provide us with assistance!”

  The captain’s voice finally burst through the radio, accompanied by the now unmistakable sound of intense gunfire in the background. Screams, orders, and metallic ricochets.

  “Understood, Captain. Assistance incoming,” Khadija replied immediately.

  She turned sharply toward the two men in front.

  “You heard the captain.”

  Orezi and the driver both nodded.

  “Gunner, get up there! The rest of you, get yourselves together. We have a job to do!”

  Her voice grew steadier with each command.

  “Yes, ma!”

  The response was unified.

  The gunner moved immediately.

  He slung his rifle behind his back, grabbed the interior dder bolted beside the rear wall, and climbed upward toward the roof hatch. With practiced movement, he unlocked the internal safety tch and twisted the heavy locking wheel. The circur hatch lifted with a hydraulic hiss.

  Cold air rushed in.

  The mounted machine gun above was connected to a rotating turret system, its handles extending inward so the operator could stand partially exposed while controlling fire from the armored ring mount. The gunner pnted his boots against the footrests welded near the opening and pulled himself halfway up, his shoulders rising above the roofline.

  His hands wrapped around the grips of the mounted weapon.

  The instant he did, my senses fred violently.

  I raised my rifle.

  It was too te.

  “Aaaaaaaaaargh!!”

  The scream was cut short.

  There was a slicing sound. A thick, meaty severing noise.

  Then the lower half of the gunner dropped back into the vehicle.

  His torso had been cut cleanly at the waist.

  His legs and hips hit the floor with a wet sp, intestines spilling freely from the cavity above the pelvis. Loops of steaming viscera unraveled across the floor like grotesque ribbons. Blood gushed in rhythmic spurts, spttering against boots and armor. The exposed spinal column jutted out grotesquely from the severed stump, white bone gleaming through torn muscle.

  The upper half was dragged off the roof.

  Gone.

  The soldiers and Khadija immediately raised their guns upward, aiming at the hatch, but none dared climb up.

  The tension inside became so thick it felt suffocating.

  “Omo, which kind horror movie madness be dis?” Orezi’s voice came from the front, nervous and strained.

  He clutched his Z30 gun, his eyes darting around the interior roof like he expected cws to burst through at any second.

  His expectations were immediately met.

  CRASH.

  The vehicle shook violently as something massive smmed into it. The entire left side dented inward with a screech of tortured metal.

  Several soldiers immediately trained their rifles at the impact point and opened fire blindly.

  “Stop!” I roared.

  My voice, reinforced with àse, vibrated through the air like pressure.

  They stopped instantly.

  Even through their helmets, I could feel the questioning looks.

  I didn’t answer.

  Instead, I poured àse into my eyes.

  The world in my view changed.

  Reality fractured into cascading colors and yered frequencies. It was like looking through thermal vision and a kaleidoscope simultaneously, yet everything remained sharply distinguishable.

  The humans around me glowed in shades of blue, each with a slightly different frequency, like individual signatures.

  Beyond the metal hull.

  Red.

  So much red.

  “Team 2, we would really appreciate it if you back us up now. Things aren’t looking really good over here!”

  The captain’s voice returned, far more desperate this time.

  “Captain, we would love to, but we are under attack at the moment, sir!” Orezi grabbed his radio before Khadija could respond.

  There was another crash as something smmed into the left side.

  We stumbled right.

  Then another from the right.

  We stumbled left.

  The soldiers were seconds from firing again when I spoke.

  “Still hold.”

  They obeyed, though their breathing had grown uneven.

  Another crash, and the vehicle nearly tipped.

  There was another.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Dents had formed across the hull as if a giant were pounding us with a hammer. Panic surged through the confined space.

  Then it stopped.

  Silence.

  For a few seconds, nothing.

  Through my enhanced vision, I could see them.

  Dozens.

  Scores of them chasing behind us.

  My forehead grew cold with sweat.

  The soldiers around me were shaking, though grossly unaware of the scale of what surrounded us.

  If only they could see it.

  If only they knew that hell was converging from all sides.

  I considered escaping on my own. This could all be a simution after all. Everyone here could be nothing more than lines of code programmed to act human.

  Why go through unnecessary pain for people who were probably just constructs made to make the simution seem more real?

  I could let them die, use the chaos, and escape alone.

  I was certain I could survive.

  But that thought disgusted me. Just as much as this could be a simution, this could be real. This could be reality, and I was becoming more inclined to believe so the more time I used the àse around me.

  No, I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t just stand here and watch them get butchered either.

  “To the back.”

  They moved instantly, aiming at the rear doors.

  The next second, the back doors caved inward.

  Bck, chitinous cws punched through the metal like spears, tearing jagged holes wide enough to see darkness beyond.

  “Fire!”

  A hail of bullets erupted.

  A shriek of pain followed. There was the sound of something falling.

  Then the wet sound of flesh tearing.

  Without pause, another set of cws dug in. This time, the left door was ripped completely off its hinges and hurled aside.

  A head emerged.

  Upside down.

  It was the female insectoid caste.

  I was familiar with her kind.

  She opened her mouth and shrieked.

  The sound ripped through the interior like a physical force.

  Every soldier froze.

  Paralyzed.

  Muscles locked in pce.

  Fingers halted on triggers, like someone had clicked pause.

  The shriek ended, and she took advantage and leapt in.

  BANG!!

  Her skull ruptured.

  Her face contorted in confusion as bone fragments and brain matter sprayed backward against the interior wall.

  I didn’t stop firing.

  Rounds tore through her head and upper torso, shredding flesh until her body was blown back out of the vehicle.

  The paralysis shriek.

  I had prepared for it.

  After a year in their hellscape, I was prepared. I had learned to reinforce my ears with àse at the slightest distortion in air pressure.

  After all, I hunted her caste deliberately during my time there.

  We had history, and that history would never fade.

  I could feel two piercing gazes on my back.

  “You can ask,” I said calmly, rifle steady.

  There was a pause from the two of them in particur, a dozen questions in their minds.

  “You take charge,” Khadija ordered immediately, throwing all questions to the side.

  “Sure.”

  My senses fred again.

  I jerked my head sideways just as a bded tentacle whipped past where my neck had been.

  It reversed mid-air and came for me again.

  I reinforced my body with àse and dropped low.

  In one fluid motion, I swept a soldier off his feet, dragging him out of the attack’s path as the bde sliced through the wall beside him while he fell into a seated position.

  “Open fire!” I ordered as they fired blindly into the darkness.

  They heard bodies dropping occasionally, serving as assurance they hit something.

  Soon, the rumble of hundreds of feet became clearer.

  They knew now.

  We were being chased by the Swarm.

  I didn’t get to contempte long before the tentacle came again.

  I sidestepped as it stabbed into the floor where I had just stood.

  I fired at it. Flesh swelled and exploded, leaving twirling bits on the ground as the rest retracted into the darkness.

  Once more it shot forward again, faster.

  With little time to respond, I blocked with my rifle.

  The weapon shattered instantly, splintering in my hands.

  I stepped back, unclipped a grenade from a nearby soldier’s belt, pulled the pin, and wrapped the explosive around the retracting appendage.

  It vanished into the darkness.

  BOOM.

  The explosion lit up the night behind us.

  And in that brief, terrible illumination, we saw them.

  Over five hundred meters behind us stretched a mass of moving bodies. The Swarm ran in coordinated waves, their numbers easily in the hundreds. Various castes moved among them, keeping pace with military-grade vehicles designed specifically to outrun threats like them.

  The vehicles had been engineered with reinforced armor, torque-heavy engines, and elevated suspension systems to withstand harsh terrain and hostile encounters.

  And yet, the Swarm kept up effortlessly.

  It seemed we were in for the fight of our lives.