CHAPTER SEVEN

Stay calm. Stay calm. Don't panic.

Sans told his heavily beating heart to quiet down, the words of his Lieutenant replaying over and over in his mind. Perhaps if he heard them enough he would actually abide by those words. For now, he was trying hard to convince himself not to panic, and trying equally hard just to drown out the sounds of his own beating heart from his ears.

He could feel sweat dripping down his forehead, sending a chill to his bones despite the heat. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end, he had goose bumps on his arms and he swallowed against the trembling he could feel in his hands.

The words 'don't panic' seemed to be the tag line over the last two weeks for Sans and his unit. There had been sheer chaos, as Sans had heard, across the country. Quietly, as panic-free as possible the country's military units were deploying to every state that had reported incidents of the alien animals. Tensions ran high from every installation across the map as a secret war started up, all while avoiding the public's eye and mass panic.

Sans' flashlight flickered in the darkness all around him. The air was still, the men around him barely made a sound. Neither a breath of air nor a shuffle of boot could be heard in the lightless void around the teams. Despite the record heat for the first Friday in July, there was a chill in the air that dove deep into the bones and hearts of Sans' unit.

He could not keep his mind focused on only one thing, though he tried hard to concentrate solidly on the darkness, trying to see through it. He had seen the satanic monsters which they now hunted; he knew their black hides would be difficult to see in the pitch darkness. The hunt had changed dramatically from just five days earlier, Sans thought.

Then, his unit and several others were deployed to hunt down and capture the murderous worm-like hatchlings that had viciously emerged from the chests of the people they had parasitized.

The groups of officers, some still covered in the blood of their comrades, set out high on emotion to find the horrid little monsters. The men took to the woods, searched the Virginia base, and scoured the falling darkness for the three foot long, razor sharp toothed nightmarish monsters.

What they had found instead as the evening hours fell over the surreal surroundings, was an entirely new abomination, the likes of which no man could have ever imagined in the peaceful mountainsides. The giant black creatures they had encountered caught the men completely unprepared.

While four men, Sans and three others from his group, found their way out of the dark woods that night, over twenty more were not seen again. There was no telling for sure how many of the monstrous creatures had been in the woods that night, but simultaneously on the base, three of the animals had killed more men with greatest speed and efficiency and less losses than the highest trained most elite army ever imagined.

As the morning light had broken through the sky following the attack, many men were still sick with fear as the ranks were pulled together for evaluation of what had taken place. It had taken the entire night for shaken crews to clean up the mess of dead infantry. Fifty two in total had met their deaths within the security of the base that night, and according to many officers in the early hours of the morning, the animal attack had lasted questionably five minutes.

Heads were low that morning, hearts were sunk and the base was still and quiet as they listened to their lieutenant's briefing. The men waited while their commander conversed on the telephone quietly and quickly then returned to the men in front of him. What secrets the man had learned on the telephone he did not share with the rest of the troops. He continued his briefing, continued to piece together a moment by moment take of the night, and then dismissed the men.

By that afternoon, Sans and Lyle had felt like they were gearing up for war, and rightly so, they each thought to themselves as they slung a gun around their shoulders and packed extra ammunition into their belts.

"What about Melinda and Tyler?" Lyle whispered softly to Sans as they mingled in the lines before the weapons master.

Sans dropped his eyes to the ground, saying nothing.

"We're gonna go find them, right? All those people that went into the woods." Lyle asked again.

Again, Louis, eyes still dropped, acted as though he could not hear.

"Louis?" Davis prompted again, taking hold of his arm. "Louis?"

"I don't know what's gonna happen, alright?" He said solemnly.

It was not up to him of course, to make a choice about going into the woods to find missing officers. While if it were he would have done it in an instant to try to find his friends. Had he known that they would not emerge from the woods that night, he would have gone back in for them, he thought.

His mind could not leave Melinda behind, despite another part of him recognizing how foolish it would have been to run off into the darkness, into those creatures' paths to find his friends. He too would have disappeared for certain.

As the two strode off with their new armaments, sans glanced off into the woods beyond the base, thinking about the monsters that lurked beyond the tree line. Perhaps they were headed back into the woods to find the creatures and their comrades.

He swallowed deeply, thinking back again to the traumas of the night before. So many officers now lay in an overstuffed morgue because of only three animals that had entered into the open spaces of the large base. The woods that Sans eyed warily in the afternoon light played to the creatures.

The trees provided shelter and camouflage in the darkness and from what he had seen he knew how agile the creatures were. They could leap from tree to tree and run faster than anything he had ever met before, faster than a cheetah no doubt. To enter the forest to find the missing would be suicide.

Apparently the lieutenant knew that, Sans figured as he listened to his orders that came down from the commander of the base. There would be no rescue, no reconnaissance. Those in the woods were lost. His heart dropped as he thought of what the final moments were like for his friends, Melinda and Tyler. He hoped they died quickly at least, painlessly. He knew they were dead. He took a moment to mourn while he nearly ignored the orders being given.

There would be increased training drills. There would be increased guards on duty at all times, there were many new rules that had been prompted by the attacks from the animals of the night.

Throughout the next few days the men followed their orders. They drilled harder, longer, more intently than ever before. They always walked in at least pairs or small groups. The exercise field was no longer in use. No one dared to step beyond the ends of the pavement for silent fear of striding too close to the woods. No drills took place in the forest, and no mention of the animals from any senior officer was given.

Not until the past Thursday. Just around thirteen hundred, the men on guard on the base, every man on site, in every building, every unit all clamored to televisions and computers anywhere they could find one. One person howled out loudly to anyone that would hear him speak about the egg field being shown on television.

The video sparked fear and tension and strong desires of retaliation from many of the men. The base lit up with the men talking of striking, bombing, killing the eggs now, quickly, before it was too late. While the men, and indeed nearly everyone else across the country knew little about the creatures, they were all beginning to understand the life cycle of the animals now.

Regardless of where the creatures originated from, whether they were indeed some laboratory creation for global terrorism, or actually truly were creatures from outer space, as some suspected, they were here, and they have proven to be utterly fatal time and time again for nearly two solid weeks.

Something had to be done, Sans thought, and he agreed with others around him as he watched the video, that the egg field should be destroyed. Already in the two minute long video, they could see at least four people succumb to the hatchlings.

The men knew beyond a doubt that the drunken college buddies they watched fall would be dead soon, in fact, they were probably already dead. Sans let his mind drift back to Coolbaugh, wondering if the same had happened to her. Where there eggs in the woods beyond the base, too? Was there an egg field just a few miles away? Would the animals hatch out and hunt the troops down in the base?

The nightmarish black adult form of the horrible species had not produced another attack. In fact, for the last few days and nights, the woods were entirely too silent. There was no evil shrieking from the creatures to be heard, but also no birds chirping, not even crickets dared make a peep in the dusk hours anymore.

The dead silence frightened the men in the aftermath of the animal attack. It made Sans feel like the enemy beyond the tree line was silently creating an attack plan, plotting total destruction of all things living. It was ridiculous, he knew, but still, he wanted his share of the creatures' annihilation. He was ready to jump on the wagon to head south and obliterate that mine field of eggs.

But there would be no egg assault for these men. Less than two hours after the video aired, the base was still in an uproar, as too, Sans imagined, and was the rest of the human world. Many people hovered together in anxious groups, above and beyond ready to be called upon to tear down the animals, while some officers sank into lulls quietly in their rooms, fearful of what war might come.

It would be war, too. Senior officers took to their headquarters, occasionally the passing troop outside could hear a telephone ring on the inside and get quickly answered.

"They're probably talking to D.C." Lyle assumed as Sans and he and several others sat on a small wall behind the headquarters, and casually eavesdropped as best they could.

"I just wanna know if they're sending us out to South Carolina or what?" another officer said bitterly, sucking back on a cigarette.

"Prolly not," Sans muttered quietly.

The men looked at him and he shrugged, staring at his feet. "They'll have other units for that."

"Well, we've got to do something," Lyle said.

"Hell yeah, Bro," another man agreed quickly. "These things are everywhere. I got off the phone with my girl back in Atlanta. She said since that tape played, the city's goin' nuts. Cops are tryin' to keep the peace an all, but she's too afraid to go outside."

"People are gonna panic," another in the small group said.

"Sounds like they already are," Lyle whispered, eyes flickering towards a window in the headquarters as a phone rang again.

"Hey, Lewis," someone said, nudging him slightly.

He lifted his eyes, "Yeah?"

"I heard the only ones...the only ones that came back from the woods was you and some guys in your squad."

"Yeah," he said after a brief pause. "So?"

"So..." the officer repeated. "How'd you manage to get back?"

The small group of men fell quiet and waited with great anticipation of the answer. Lewis sat a while. He sighed and shook his head, horrific memories that he just wanted to forget came running back into his mind in leaps and bounds, and a fading image of Melinda played into his brain. He lowered his again, staring at the ground below his feet and gripping a cigarette for himself.

"We ran."

The door to the headquarters came bursting open and the four men outside it jumped to their feet with a startled look upon their faces. They watched a small group of officers stride hastily across the base and split apart, heading into different buildings.

Sans walked idly into the main area, watching the troops, all armed, watch the senior staff as they strode off. In a short while the siren rang out. It was the cue to gather for orders in the courtyard. With great promptness the men started piling in to await orders, excited about the opportunity to take down the egg field.

As orders were given, many men were disappointed. Their destination would not be the egg field in South Carolina that was already, not even three hours later, being reported across the radio stations around the base, as a hoax. They, instead, were being sent north, to organize with more divisions. Their destination was Philadelphia and they were to disembark as ordered immediately.

So now, here they were. Sans glanced around, looking at the flashlights in the shaky hands of the officers to the side and in front of him while the lights bounced off his head from the men behind him. They were not informed, as they were being deployed, about why they were coming or what to expect. All the men were told was what vehicles to get on and what city they were headed for. They had begun to depart by seventeen hundred.

When Sans arrived in Philadelphia at almost zero hour, he was too anxious to sleep. Quietly he wandered around the military set up. The place they were at, even though it was the middle of the night, felt like a ghost town. The transport he rode in on had come through the highway at first, then veered off onto back roads. Using the shelter of the night, the vehicles navigated the city streets as nonchalantly as possible and were directed through a cordoned off street by local police.

The van moved through the alleyways, and Sans glanced out into the night. The place seemed still, hardly a light was on, everything nearby had been evacuated. Chills ran down his spine as he stepped out of the vehicle in the middle of the street, just before a makeshift command center in the back of a van. He glanced around at the Philadelphia streets. The place was empty.

Lyle stepped out immediately after him and also glanced around.

"What the hell?" he said as he looked to the buildings all around.

Some of the places were businesses, all with closed signs in the window. Even the twenty four hour gas station just at the end of the block was dark and empty. One parked car sat quietly down another street. The flashing of police lights could be seen bouncing off the buildings in all directions.

"It looks deserted." Sans said as he watched red and blue flashing lights shine through windows of hastily emptied buildings.

"What in the hell is going on around here?" Lyle said again.

The two men glanced at one another then departed through the mob of military vehicles and soon found the infantry. There were easily three hundred men piled into the streets, all mingling quietly, looking nearly as confused Sans and the rest of the men were.

Beyond the men Sans eyed a large, unlit building, just about a block and half away. The massive building loomed in the darkness and as Sans watched it, he felt as though he was back at his own base, staring at the infirmary complex, when the seven men who had been host to the giant black monster's pupae were quietly locked behind those gray walls. The ominous building sent shivers through his body. Sans glanced sideways at an unlit sign above one of the buildings entrances.

Mercy Hospital

The large lettering was not turned on to glow red for the emergency entrance. Just like the rest of the blocks all around the hospital, it seemed that the power was cut off. The men fell quiet and stared at highly tense attention as a heavy faced General marched to the head of the group.

"Let me fill you all in on what I can." He started plainly.

He spoke in a loud whisper as he paced through the crowded officers. He did not use a microphone or a megaphone to amplify his voice. The stage was set for an attack and it was being kept as quiet as possible.

"Some of you may have seen this place on the news a few days ago. Several men went missing inside the building on Tuesday. This included at least four medical staff, and eight city cops that were all sent to investigate. There is a layout of the building over there," he pointed to a folding table under a halogen bulb along side the command van with an officer waiting nearby.

"You are, each man, to look, listen and learn the layout. That lieutenant will show you where some of you will be entering from. Others will be entering from a different access location. You are not interested in the building, folks, but rather what's below it."

The attentive group of officers swayed slightly at the man's words, but no one spoke or murmured a single sound. They waited quietly for their commander to continue.

"There are old, long closed tunnels below the building. We believe that some of these….. creatures..." he glanced off to the lieutenant at the table. "Briggs, what are you people calling them now?"

The lieutenant, Briggs, stuck his chin high into the air and took a deep breath, "Bugs, Sir."

He called the words loud and clear. The word stung deep into Sans mind. It suited the animals, he supposed.

"Right, then," the General said, turning about to stride through the lines again.

"Well, we believe that these bugs have built a God damned bug hive in the old train tunnels. According to local law enforcement there's been several hundred missing persons reports here in the last seven days. We have to assume that those people are below ground. Your orders are to find any living souls and bring them back. Find any bugs, and blow them to pieces. Understood?"

The troops gave a unanimous and loud, "Yes, Sir!"

"Good, gentlemen."

The units were organized, the maps were studied, and extra ammunition was handed out. The small army was pulled together and ready for action in no time. One unit was deployed West and headed off down the block.

Another was deployed East and Sans and a large squadron were deployed through the emergency entrance of the hospital, immediately to the North, while another group of soldiers waited as back up in the common area.

Sans and his group quickly jogged up the street to the hospital, forced the sliding glass doors open entered through the emergency room and quickly descended a vacant stairwell, their steps echoing loudly as the men wasted no time in arriving at their destination, a janitorial supply room at the end of the hallway on the lowest level of the building.

As Sans trotted along with the men in his group, he clenched his jaws and kept his eyes wide. They were soon deploying soldiers down the shaft behind the hole in the wall at the back of the room. Three at a time, men slid quickly and quietly down ropes while other units were entering the vacant train tunnels through various manholes on adjacent streets.

Sans had felt like he had been down in the tunnels for hours as he strode quietly and carefully along with the soldiers around him. He glanced at his wristwatch and discovered that he had indeed been searching the seemingly endless maze of tunnels for just over two hours.

He could feel that though the anxiety and tension was still rampant amongst the soldiers, the cause of the emotions had changed in the time they had been there.

At first, all were eager to dive, confident that they could destroy an entire nest of the nasty bugs. Sans wondered if any of them had actually even seen the full grown bugs, but he somehow doubted it.

Somewhere along the way the men had at least been informed of the creature's existence, and quite possibly they had even been described to the men, but Sans saw them, with his own eyes.

He had stared into the metallic jaws of one of the creatures as it crept closer and closer to his small group of armed men. In its presence he felt like a helpless child.

The thing was much taller than any human being. It walked halfway upright, but ran flat out on all fours with lightening fast speed and agility. Its huge tail was crowned with long barbs and even its back had long sharp spinous processes that shot upright from its shiny black bullet proof hide.

Now, as the men searched the empty tunnels, the air amongst them had changed to frustration and loss. There were no missing people to be found, no bugs, and no call for a large military attack. Sans was just as disappointed as the officer that called into the radio sounded when their leader signaled the group to a halt.

There were two radio bearers in the front and rear of the large pack of soldiers to help ensure that communication was never lost. From time to team the three teams would check in with one another and with the outside base. Sans, stuck somewhere in the middle of the pack could strain his ears to hear what the other teams were reporting.

After two hours searching the dark tunnels who knew how far below ground, the group halted and a radio bearer in the lead of the pack called back to home, reporting that they had still found nothing and requested an update, as previously directed, to whether they should keep searching or call off the troops. As directed, the other two teams called in their positions at the timed intervals and Sans and all the others listened to the their calls too.

It seemed that the other teams had found nothing either, and one team sounded as though they had gone so far and so deep it seemed they were lost in the tunnels.

The General communicated a little more to all the team leads, then ordered the troops back. Morning was coming soon and the General seemed eager to be sure his troops and all military vehicles were out of the area come dawn light.

Sans imagined he knew why. The streets above had been evacuated and local police were on guard well away from the military set up, to keep prying eyes out of the way.

This was to be a quiet project, one that would not prick the media's ears, one that would not cause the public to notice what was going on, and not cause a panic.

The feelings of anxiety and mounting panic in Lewis and many others in the group was obviously quelling and as the group turned back to retrace their steps on their close to two hour return to the surface, it was obvious that many of the men were utterly disappointed at their wasted mission.

The men all turned around and started back, still watching the walls around them as though they might spring to life any minute. They moved quietly and as swiftly as they could in the dark tunnels, shining their bright lights all around.

Every fifteen minutes as directed, the units would fall to a stop and check in with the other units and the outside base. The first check in on the return trip revealed just as Sans suspected, nothing. The other units reported no change in scenery as they traced their steps back to their entrances, and the outside base acknowledged their lack of findings.

Another fifteen minutes went by and the group came to a halt again. It was frustrating enough that they had turned up nothing in their hunt, but to constantly stop, was getting tedious and holding the men up from reaching their destination. They had been underground long enough and many of the men were just restless to see the sky again and get out of the smelly, stale tunnels.

"Alpha One to Base." The team lead said into the radio.

"Alpha One to Base." He repeated when there no response.

"Alpha One to Beta One, are you on the line?" He asked from another team.

"Beta One here, yep, we're here. Can't get through to base on our channel, man." The voice inside the radio said.

"Alpha One to Delta Squad.:"

"Delta here. Can't get through to Command either. Got lots of static on our channel."

"Switch to channel seven," the team lead said the radio controller. The officer prompts flicked a switch on the side of the unit and the tunnel filled a heavy static sound.

"Alpha One to Base... Hello?"

Static.

Tension suddenly revisited the group. Sans could feel his heart begin to race. He swore that in the darkness out of the corner of his eye he saw something move. He glanced quickly sideways at the empty wall to his left and kept his ears tuned in to the lead's attempts at reaching the ground.

He tried again, and again, switched channels and tried once more.

"There must be some interference." He whispered loudly enough that mostly everyone had heard him. "We must have gone too deep in these tunnels. There's probably too much concrete around us or something."

He tried the other teams again and for a few moments the three team leads bounced back and forth to each other, all confused as to why they could not reach the base many dozens of feet above their heads, so they decided to continue forth with their exit from the tunnels.

The men started off again and suddenly the radio burst to life.

"Hello!" A very rattled voice shouted over the radio unit.

"Base? This is Alpha Squad, what's going on up there?"

"Emergency!" The voice shouted.

All the men in the tunnel seemed to grow even more quiet, they held their breaths and strained to listen closer. They could hear gunfire in the background behind the frantic voice over the line.

"Emerg...JESUS!"

There was a loud crashing sound and the line went dead. The startled group of officers started silently at one another for a moment before the team lead pulled himself together.

Suddenly, from somewhere deep inside the dark tunnels, a loud hissing shriek sliced up through the air. Twenty or so men gasped, jumped, and every flashlight available pointed down the tunnels from which they had just came.

The leader of the group swallowed, listened with still breath, hands shaking, then yelled confidently and loudly.

"Alright, alright, let's get up there! MOVE PEOPLE!"

The men bolted down the long black tunnels, their lights bouncing around chaotically as they ran. Their nervous heartbeats were almost as loud as the sounds of their feet striking the old concrete ground. The quietness that they utilized so well as they descended into the tunnel shafts was now gone, and the beating of their feet on the ground echoed in the empty chambers.

Several men questioned aloud as they ran as to what might have happened above ground, but Sans knew the answer. His heart throbbed feverishly in his chest.

He was sure that the people above were getting slaughtered by the same evil black monsters that had wiped out over four dozen men in and around his base five days earlier. The creatures were menaces. Demons. He knew what was happening on the level of the world right now, the animals were spreading and they were unstoppable.

The radio sparked to life again, barely audible over the sounds of the unit's steel toed boots slamming the hard ground, but the team lead called out loudly through the tunnel for all to stop.

The men halted and their ears quickly filled in the quiet tunnels with the sounds of more screams from the radio unit.

"My God," someone whispered near Sans.

"OH GOD!" A voice squealed through the radio.

"Who is this?!" The team leader called into the unit.

"Beta, Delta? Someone there! Base? Who is this? What's going on?"

The radio crackled and fizzed for a moment, then clicked back into life once again and the sounds of multiple guns firing rang out through the dark misty air.

"This is Beta unit! Jesus! We're under attack! Oh God, there's a fucking SWARM!"

He shouted over the gunfire. The button to the radio must have still been clamped down tightly in his grip as the man screaming gagged and fell silent. As the gunfire stopped broadcasting through the radio, a horrible shriek rose up through the air once more.

Louis fell back into the wall, lowering his wide eyes to the ground. He shook his head and tightened his eyebrows.

"They can't be stopped," he whispered. Every head near him turned with surprise to him.

The team leader looked over at Lewis, sweat blistering on his forehead, his eyes glazed with a definite deer-in-the-headlight look.

"They can…" he said shakily.

Sans shook his head, but did not respond.

"Our base got attacked by the things," Lyle voiced from the crowd, all heads now turned to him. "The...the...damned things...they're...they're like... eight or nine feet tall, they're huge."

"Eight or nine feet?" A young officer questioned, readjusting her glasses, "I thought they were bugs? W hat kind of bug is eight feet tall?"

"You didn't really think you needed heavy weapons to kill cockroaches, did you?" Somone snapped.

Sans' heart was pounding in his chest. He knew the Beta team, and probably everyone above ground had been killed. Suddenly the very ground below their feet, the walls of the tunnels all round the men, and the chipped archaic roof above their heads began to tremble. Just as quickly as it started, it had stopped. The men looked all around, half expecting the walls to tumble down upon them, but whatever had happened seemed to have ceased and the tunnels seemed to have been able to hold up to it.

"What...?" The team lead started to say, but he was interrupted by the sound of another voice from the radio.

"Hello?" A frightened sounding officer called out.

Reaching for the radio, the Alpha Team lead tried to adjust to what his ears had just heard.

"Yes...This...This is Alpha team, who is this?"

"Ulm... Delta here, Mitch, what in the hell is going on, man?"

He paused for a moment, glancing back at Sans, eyeing his suspiciously.

"I'm...I'm...not...sure..."

He licked his lips and shifted his feet, "We're heading back up..."

"Yeah, we are too...trying to get there quick..."

"Look, just... just watch out, alright?" He said nervously into the radio, still eyeing Sans.

When he ended communication, he walked back over to Lewis.

"You've seen them before?" He asked, eyes bouncing from Private Sans to Private Lyle.

"Yea. I saw one," Sans said flatly. "It killed three people in my team of seven. A small group, them killed over fifty men in our base on Sunday night."

"What?" rang out through several shocked voices in the crowd.

Someone came over to the team lead, whispering, "If a small group of them killed that many, and there's a swarm of them here..."

"Enough." The officer was cut off.

The words were true enough; there was no need to finish the sentence. The men were wide eyed with fear and adrenaline, eager to evacuate the confines of the tunnel.

"Let's...let's get to the top and see what's up from there. Let's just go, quick and easy."

The men moved out promptly and quickly, racing once again faster than their own hearts were pounding.

They reached the ropes they had used to climb down through the hospital and quickly and athletically, the trained men scaled the wall back up into the janitor room. Once all officers had reached the basement floor the men took off as a group, exiting out the coroner van's loading bay just off the morgue.

Sans was glad that he was out on the street. The hot summer air hit his face welcomely. In the darkness of the pits below the city, he felt he might never see the world above again. The streets outside were just as still and quiet as the tunnels from which they had emerged.

The men quickly filtered down the sidewalk and around the corner towards the make shift base crammed into the street a block and a half from the hospital.

The lights of the police cars still bounced off the vacated buildings all around the streets and alleyways. As he jogged by, Sans could see wooden blockades set up to keep traffic out. He did not see any police officer standing around or sitting in their vehicles. He glanced ahead of the conglomeration of military vehicles. The headlights from the vehicles offered light onto the otherwise dark streets.

As the group got closer, they pulled up to a stunned halt.

"There's no one here!" Someone gasped from the crowd.

Sans and Lyle squeezed through to the front of the line and stared with terrified awe at the street in front of them. There were guns and depleted ammunition rounds scattered all throughout the street along with small pools of slime that oddly resembled drool.

What few tables and papers and equipment that was being utilized for this exercise were strewn everywhere. Bullet holes were riveted nearly every vehicle and most of the surrounding buildings. Blood covered the streets, spattered the vehicles, and pooled up in some places, but there was not a body in sight.

"Split up," the team lead said the awe struck men around him. "See if you can find anyone dead or alive, check those cop cars too. Let's search buildings that aren't locked."

The men quickly did as ordered. Sans and Lyle jogged off through the military units headed for a police vehicle at the end of an alleyway. As they drew near, they slowed approached the car, both men expecting one of a monster to leap out at them at any second. They inspected the vehicle and the street beyond it and found not a soul in sight.

"OVER HERE!" Someone called and all the men scrambled toward the sound of the calling voice.

Sans and Lyle ran back down the alleyway, crossed the street, and followed to where the group was convening in front of a van parked on an adjacent street.

The men stared silently to the ground. Louis only glanced at it. He peeled his eyes away quickly and immediately scanned the street, the building tops, looking through every shop window, into every dark crevice, staring to see around all corners if he could. The other men just gaped in wide eyed wonder at the monstrous corpse that lay tattered on the ground before them.

"My God, this is a bug?" Someone emphasized as he knelt down closer to it.

"What's that smell?"

"Smells like sulfur or something."

"Don't touch it!"

Sans turned to see who might be touching the monstrous thing. One brave soldier bent down, stretching his arm towards the grotesque black monster.

"It's okay, the thing's dead. It's riddled with bullet holes," he said. "Look at its head... that is its head, right?"

He indicated to the long tubular curved skull that had been punctured so many times with semi automatic weaponry it was almost undefinable as the thing's head. Reaching down, he grabbed hold of the creature's arm and attempted to move the carcass.

"Jeez it weighs a ton!"

"Look, just leave it alone."

"What is...?" the officer started, reaching down, he put his fingertips to the side of the animal that was laying on the ground. He attempted to trace the outline of the large hole that the creature appeared to be laying in, but as he reached his hand down to investigate he jumped back screaming a blood curdling yell.

The men round him shouted and sprung into action.

"Oh my God!"

Two men wrestled the hysterical yelling officer to the ground while others attempted to take their jackets and wrap the man's hand. Sans watched with fright as the man's fingertips began to disappear right before his eyes. The skin and bone was dissolving into nothing while the man cried in agony. A sizzling sound was still audible even over the man's screams.

"What the hell is going on!" Someone called from the street.

Sans jumped and looked down the road. The other unit, the only one left, apparently, had joined with them on the surface, hearing the screaming they were running at full speed towards the sounds.

It took a long while to quiet the injured man. Several officers had carried him off to the medic van, given him medication and sedative and wrapped his hand. By the time they had done this, the officer's first two fingers and part of his hand below the knuckle had decayed away.

"The God damned thing's got acid for blood," someone decided as a large group of astounded men stared at the horrible black animal.

Sans sat quietly on a street corner watching the men look at the dead animal and eyeing others as they continued to search for the missing command and back up squads and police officers.

"Where did they all go?"

"The General said he thought maybe the missing people were taken underground."

"We searched the underground! There was nothing there!" An angry officer yelled as he waved his weapon.

"Well, the Beta Squad sure as hell found something didn't they! They haven't come back have they!"

"How the hell could these things wipe out that many people?"

"Where did they take them?"

The men discussed every detail as the morning light broke through. Local police began to show up, asking the very same questions of their fellow officers who had not reported in. The Alpha team's lead got on the phone to contact superiors and inform them of what has transpired while other men were left to discuss the possibilities.

"We should go back in." Someone suggested

"What!" Another gasped.

"Are you crazy? There's less than half of what we started out as! We have no idea what we're up against."

"Well," yet another added, "at least we know they can be killed."

"If there were enough of them to wipe out two hundred men, how in the hell do you think we're going fare?"

"I think we should wait for reinforcements, and this time, more of them." Sans added.

"No way, I don't think we should go back down there at all, not with more, not with less. Just blow these things up! Drop a bomb on 'em." One officer argued.

"Where do we drop it?"

"He's right," Sans said, standing up from the curbside. "The whole point of us going in there was because we have no idea where those things are. There probably is a nest of them, and a big one I'd guess at that, and we needed to find it. Beta team, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. We don't know, so we still don't know where they are, but they sure as hell know where we are, and they know exactly how to strike us."

The men looked around an evaluated the site.

"What do you mean they know how to strike us?"

Sans shook his head.

"When they attacked the base, they killed fifty two men and they split. Not one of them died, but they also didn't take any of our men. Here," he continued, "they took out the surface while we are all in the tombs below! And they took every single body. They took out Beta team in a swarm! Thirty people in that team. They outnumbered them above and below. The things... I tell ya, it's like they...they...can think... they can plot what they want and how to do it."

"They didn't attack our groups because they were busy with the other two units," someone else added.

"Yeah," Sans agreed. "Take out some, get the rest later. We were all split up in different directions. There were enough of 'em that they had time to haul off the bodies."

"What d'ya s'pose they want with the bodies?" Someone asked.

Sans eyes drifted. He knew exactly what they wanted with the bodies. He had seen that already too. It was making perfect sense. They were, despite how horrific, fearsome, and deadly, simply animals, and the primary instinct of any animal was essentially the same.

"To breed," he said.

He looked at the crowd around him. "There's an egg field here, just like the one that came out on that damned video yesterday."

"They...they...said that was a prank," a young man in the crowd offered.

Sans raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, to keep the public calm. To cover their asses. 'Course they'd say it's a prank, makes perfect sense, you know. What would the public do if they found out about all this?"

"There'd be total panic."

"That's why we did this in the middle of the night. They evacuated the public, threw some bullshit story on the news about the hospital getting shut down cause of some lawsuit." Sans went on steamily.

"Wait, wait," another camouflaged soldier interrupted. "Wait, the people...when they get…. impregnated or whatever...they're alive right?"

Sans shrugged. He did not know, but he speculated.

"I guess so. The guys on my base were alive. They all got up, ate lunch...they were tired, but they walked around, I saw one guy jogging. Before they…. they died. All of 'em." His eyes grew glossy as they drifted into a deep recess, "They all died."

"But there' a chance, then..." the solider said, looking around at the vacant vehicles and empty streets. "There's a shot that all of those people they took are alive."

"Yeah, for now, right, but they'll all die. They're doomed to die. If they have one of those little fucking worm things in them, they're as good as dead." Another officer whispered morbidly.

"But, there's still a team down there! All our people," the man argued, pointing through the deserted streets. "We need to find them. We could probably save them."

Sans looked around at the two shaken teams that had emerged from the depths below, at the police officers who stared quietly in wide eyed disbelief.

"I don't think we can help them."

"So, what do we then?" Someone asked Sans.

Lewis blinked. He noticed that all eyes had fallen upon him and Lyle. He did not stop to even think about it, but amongst all the people standing on the street at that moment, they had the most experience with the bugs, however limited. He took a step back and thought quietly for a moment, looking around.

"We need to wait to see what HQ says."

The men muttered amongst themselves, unhappy with Sans' choice. As they fretted, the Alpha team lead came trotting over to the group. The morning sun was just rising over the tops of the buildings and as more police officers arrived, local law enforcement gathered into their own group, proceeding with orders given to them from their superiors to be sure that no one enters the cordoned off area.

Sans overheard something about a no fly zone enforced, and the shaky officer warily headed off to their assigned stations.

"All right guys," the Alpha team leader said clearly as the groups around him began to gather. "Here's what the sups say to do. We need to wait here, secure the topside, and await backup. They're sending us reinforcements. I think we're going down the hole again to find the missing units."

Satisfied with that approach, many men nodded their approval and fidgeted where they stood. Sans quietly squeezed his eyes shut. He could feel his heart race again. He knew, somehow, deep down, that it was pointless and suicidal to head into the deep.