Operation: Sahara

-Banks-

Banks watched Davies flee into the city then directed the others.

“Back to the temple entrance,” he said. “Let’s see if we can keep their attention off Davies to give him enough time to get free.”

They stood in a line, retreating step by step and firing until they reached the temple entrance.

“Stand firm here, lads,” he shouted. “Give them hell.”

The entranceway rang with gunfire. Bits of leg, fragments of black pincer and chunks of shell flew as the bullets ravaged the clambering beasts. A sliver as sharp as any piece of glass tore a path along Banks’ cheek and blood flew. That enraged the attacking beetles even more and they pressed forward, a solid wall now floor to ceiling of scrambling, wailing frenzy. Wiggo had to step back to reload and the consequent press of the beast’s attack was enough to force the three men back a step, then another. It wasn’t going to be too long until they were forced back into the temple itself.

And once there we’ll be overrun in seconds.

When it came his turn to step back to reload, he reached instead for one of the four L109A1 grenades he carried in his jacket.

“Fire in the hole,” he shouted, pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade into the mass of the beasts.

“Leg it, to the stairs,” he shouted. He deliberately slowed his own escape to allow Wiggo and Wilkins to get away first, and almost didn’t get enough distance between himself and the bang, feeling the force of it at his back and the thunder of it in his ears. Ahead of him, Wiggo reached the foot of the stairs and turned. He had one of his grenades in hand.

“To me, Cap,” the sergeant shouted and as soon as Banks reached the bottom step the grenade was lobbed over his head back towards the entranceway.

The three men were already on the stairs heading up when it went off with a bang that rang through the temple.

They went up two dozen steps before Banks chanced a look back. The entranceway swarmed with the beasts. Many had paused to feast on the remains of their dead that the grenades had blasted into a mess of broken shell and black ichor but others had already entered the temple and were coming forward towards the stairway.

“Do we stand, Cap?” Wiggo asked.

“Nope. You read how that worked out for the other squad back then. Leg it, all the way up. Somebody got out of this mess once before. If he did it, so can we.”

Banks stopped again on the first main landing some forty feet above the temple floor, a floor that was now almost totally covered by beetles in a wide variety of sizes from no bigger than a small dog to monsters the size of pickup trucks. He saw them swarming around the dead bodies, both modern and old. They did not disturb the dead, moving through and around them almost as if in reverence to the huge statue that towered over them. Banks said a silent prayer against the desecration he was about to perform, took out two more of his grenades, pulled the pins and lobbed them down onto the valley floor. They landed directly at the base of the statue, under the head of one of the biggest of the beetles.

The resultant blast shook the temple and left a stunned silence in its wake. The big beetle that had been there was gone, bits of it strewn all across the floor, the bodies and other beetles, who had stopped droning and had turned their attention on the great black statue.

A loud crack, loud as any of their gunshots, rang out, then another as the statue wobbled to its right, appeared to right itself, then toppled, face down with a crash, directly on top of several of the bodies, squashing several more of the beetles in the process as the statue fell apart into half a dozen pieces. Another second of silence followed, then as one, the beetles took up their high, wailing drone again and the attention of every beast on the temple floor, in the entranceway and on the stairs below them turned to gaze directly at Banks.

“Give that man a coconut,” Wiggo said. “Well done, Cap. You definitely got their attention. Now what?”

Banks didn’t answer, just motioned that they should keep heading up. The swarm was heading for the stairs at their back as he went up the steps two at a time. This time he didn’t look back, afraid to see what the beetles might be doing to the dead now that the idol had fallen.

They stopped on another high landing, a hundred feet above the temple floor, and more than halfway to the top. Beneath them the beetles reached the first landing and came on fast, scuttling and crawling over each other in their frenzy.

This time Wiggo and Wilkins did the honors, each of them lobbing a grenade down into the squirming mass. The blast, then resultant pause as the beetles scavenged their own dead, gave the three men enough time to gain several more paces on the chasing pack.

Banks was trying not to think of the fate of the last squad to take on this flight, or to wonder at each landing which of the Victorian soldiers might have chosen it as their last stand to protect their brethren. He focussed his mind on the stairs ahead, two at a time, no farther thought than the next step. It was a few seconds before he realised they were slowing; young Wilkins was in the lead, and had developed a limping gait, taking the stairs like a careful old man.

“It’s the old wound, Sarge,” he heard the private say to Wiggo. “Still gives me gip on stairs; I’m fine on the flat, but this is a right bugger.”

“Dinna fash, lad,” Wiggo said. “We’ve got your back. Get on up. We’re right behind you.”

Inadvertently or not, Wiggo had echoed the words from the earlier story, and Banks felt a chill up his spine as he joined the sergeant in turning on the next landing and looking down on the advancing horde below.

“Don’t worry, Cap,” Wiggo said. “Naebody’s getting dead here today.”

“I wish I had your confidence.”

“Nah, you wish you had my tadger; go on, admit it.”

Wiggo already had another grenade at the ready.

“I’ve got four more after this one,” he said.

“I’ve got one left that I’d rather hold for an emergency,” Banks replied.

“Fucking hell, Cap? If this isnae an emergency I’d hate to see what is.”

The beetles were only twenty steps below, three abreast and packed tight on the stairs. Wiggo’s grenade took out the front rank and Banks’ rifle fire shot the front legs away from those that tried to follow, creating a temporary barrier where the pair of them were able to stand firm and take out any beetle that managed to scramble over.

The rearguard action had to be abandoned when a huge specimen barreled forward, its bulk sweeping the debris of the dead beasts off the stairs and down to the temple floor. Banks took out its legs, hoping to drop it in place as a new barrier, but the beast had enough life left in it to stagger aside before toppling off and falling away, clearing the path for the horde behind to launch a fresh attack.

Banks turned to see that Wilkins was almost at the top of the staircase above them.

“Last one up gets the beers in,” he said and was off and running before Wiggo could react.

The beetles’ drone rose in intensity; with their quarry in plain sight, they came up the stairs, a seething black train of fury.