SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

“Oh that’s helpful,” Rook said. “It couldn’t be the Mongolian Fluffy Rainbow-Pooping Worm?” He dropped a magazine and slotted a fresh one into his SCAR, but then let the weapon hang. It wasn’t doing any damage to the giant ribbed creature. He’d wait until it closed the distance, and then he’d try his ‘Girls’ — a pair of IMI Desert Eagle Mark XIX Magnum .50 caliber semi-automatic pistols. He’d had several pairs over the years, some getting lost in different skirmishes. He hadn’t yet come across anything, no matter how big, that wouldn’t feel a few slugs from the handguns at close range.

“He has a point,” King said, perturbed. “How to kill it would be better than a name.”

“It’s a mythical cryptid. Supposed to be about four feet long,” Aleman said.

“Bigger,” Queen said. “Much bigger. Twelve-foot diameter. Forty feet long.”

King pulled free his KA-BAR knife, a 7-inch blade like Queen’s, and slid it into the boiling, formerly fur-covered sleeve of his environment suit’s fabric, slicing it open, then he dropped the smoking knife on the ground. He’d tried to cut away the burning part of the suit, but had failed. “Rook.”

It was all he had to say. As he flipped off the helmet and hood of the suit, breathing in the freezing air, Rook moved forward to grab the outer fabric of the suit in places where it hadn’t been coated in the creature’s deadly venom. He pulled the fabric taut as King disentangled himself from the outer garment, being sure to lean as far from the smoking side as possible.

Rook instantly saw King’s breath add a cloud of vapor to the already rising ribbon of steam from the cooking fur on the ruined suit.

“It’s supposed to be able to spit venom,” Aleman continued.

“Think we can confirm that one,” Rook said.

Queen fired a sustained burst with her SCAR as Bishop reloaded the machine gun. The creature had finished its wide loop and was homing in on the team, at their new location.

“We need a plan,” Queen urged.

“There’s nothing about how to kill them. No one has ever even had a confirmed sighting of one…” Aleman sounded frantic.

“Then give me some other intel,” King said, his teeth beginning to chatter. “How long do I have in just the wetsuit in temps like these?” He had shed the outer garment, now smoking on the ground like a dead animal on a charnel heap. He wore just the under-suit, which was a special gel-heated neoprene, and he had been able to salvage his boots and the furry gloves from the outer suit.

Rook thought he looked strange in white, fur-clad boots and gloves, but a black body suit and hood. Like some kind of snow bunny at the Winter games, but this one had an automatic rifle and was collecting the bomb-spikes for his spear gun from the pile of quickly discarded equipment.

“Your suit? Oh crap. Um…if you keep active, any part or your skin that’s exposed might be able to withstand frostbite for…around ten minutes. Maybe less.”

King turned to see the approaching worm was just a few yards away, and it was beginning to rise up in the air, like a cobra poised to strike.

6

“There!” King pointed the barrel of his SCAR and fired an unrestrained, fully automatic burst, holding down the trigger. “Under its neck.”

The others instantly saw what he was targeting. Just under the rim of the creature’s black mouth, which lacked teeth but had short one-foot-long wriggling tentacles, like insect feelers or kelp waving in an undersea current, was a small metal box affixed to the creature’s crimson skin. It looked to be the size of an old metal lunchbox, and King’s bullets pounded the can, pinging off of it. Then Bishop opened with a sustained burst from the 240, and the box, as well as the slick, wet-looking skin below it, disintegrated.

The giant worm dropped down from its attack position, its heft slamming into the ground and sending a shockwave underfoot. Then it turned and headed away from the building, and the surprised team.

“Control mechanism?” Queen asked.

“Possibly,” King said. “Blue, we need a pickup, ASAP.”

“They can’t, King.” Aleman’s voice was apologetic. “The chopper is still on the other side of the storm. It’s no longer blowing where you are, but it still stretches for forty miles. No way for them to get to you. You’ll have to hump it out to the LZ.”

“Knight?” King asked.

“Proceeding. We’ll catch up.”

Knowing he had to keep moving, and even then his time was limited, King made the decision. “Move out.”

The team picked up and headed toward the distant cloud that marked the edge of the storm, back the way they had come. The wind had stopped blowing in their location, but they could still see a far off wall of white and swirling brown. They double-timed it for the raging storm, keeping an eye on the receding worm, as it wandered aimlessly south and then west again, back from whence it had come.