Authors note: Chapter ahoy, lads! I've been noticing that recently a BUNCH of people have stopped reading this story and while a bit discouraged at this, I'll still work on this story anyways, even if almost everyone loses interest except one person. Not a whole lot else except I'm going to dive into the new enemy in this chapter so sit back and enjoy, and as usual, please review to tell me what you think.
Chapter 14: Them
O-O-O
After the close call with the APC, The group arrived at the mountain side tunnel from the direction of the rushing APC, which still looked the same way that Wendy saw it earlier, although the only change was that she could see the tunnel inside was dark, which was strange since the tunnel lights should be on.
"The lights should be on here." Pointed out Wendy, squinting her eyes if she could see anything inside the darkness.
"Maybe the power ran out?" Guessed Soos.
"No way, those lights are meant to last for decades. Someone turned them off." Responded Wendy, as she grew even more suspicious about the tunnel. "Dipper, take out a gun. I don't like this."
Dipper complied with Wendy's order and took out his shotgun and pumped it, while he noticed that Mabel did not have a gun.
"Mabel." Called out Dipper to his sister, who turned to see her brother take out a pistol and throw it to her, catching it along with a pistol clip he threw as well. "Everyone should be armed."
Mabel frowned at the fact that she was holding a gun again, it reminded her about killing that CSF officer that started this whole ordeal, but she kept those thoughts to herself right now and turned off the safety, ready to defend her and everyone else in the group as she nodded to Dipper to say thanks.
"Keep close, move slowly, and check every corner possible." Ordered Wendy, as the group made the horses trot slowly inside the tunnel. "I have a bad feeling about this."
Before the group could be in the cover of the darkness of the tunnel, they could hear a faint whirring sound of engines from behind as the group turned around to see a forest green dropship heading their way in the distance, increasing more concern in the group for their safety.
"Shit! Military." Exclaimed Wendy, as the group turned back to advance further in the tunnel's darkness to avoid getting spotted. "Just fucking great."
"As if it couldn't get any worse." Commented Dipper.
The group slowly trotted their horses through the darkness, not being able to see much inside until Wendy used one free hand to take out flashlights while using the other hand to control the horse's reins, revealing the dark tunnel the same way she saw it before.
"Anything?" Asked Dipper quietly, wondering if there was anything off Wendy noticed in the tunnel.
"Nothing yet. Just keep looking." Answered Wendy, lighting the way with her flashlight.
The horses stuck close together, not going even a little bit further apart as they sped up a little so that the military behind wouldn't catch up, while lighting up dark corners of the long spacious tunnel to see nothing but empty and broken cars pushed aside, no sign of life to be found or heard, the only noises that could be heard were the slow trotting of hooves on concrete, and the tunnel seemed dead and empty, making the group paranoid of the vast silence.
"I'm scared." Said Mabel, getting more uncomfortable from the silence. "I'm really scared now."
"I don't think anyone is even here." Said Soos, hearing nothing from the tunnel. "It's not that bad."
"It's just that… it's creepy." Said Mabel as she checked her surroundings for anything creeping up on her. "I don't like it."
"We should just make the horses go faster to get away from the Slegs behind us." Suggested Soos.
"No way, Mabel's right. Something's off about this place." Argued Wendy. "I don't know what it is, but the last time I came through here was nothing like this."
"So what if some lights are off? Maybe this tunnel just had really shitty lights." Responded Lee, not buying into the fright factor.
"Forget it. We're going slow and steady and that's that." Said Wendy sternly, not wanting to argue further about the lights.
The group then stumbled upon a grizzly scene that made them stop in their tracks and stare in shock at what they saw, a convoy of three CSF transports, abandoned and damaged in every way possible, along with bullet casings and blood spread out in the ground.
"What the hell?" Said Nate, surprised at seeing a CSF convoy abandoned and damaged in the middle of the tunnel. "What happened here?"
"It looks like CSF got attacked here." Said Dipper lowly, feeling disturbed at seeing the large amounts of blood splattered all over the convoy's vicinity. "Goddamn."
The group was trotting past the vehicles, observing the old firefight and noticed very strange things about it, such as the claw marks on the transports and the fact that there were no bodies to be found. Soos and the twins were disturbed about the scene, while Nate, Lee, and Wendy were more frightful about the scene, making guesses as to who, or what, attacked the convoy.
"Soos. Go ahead to the last truck. See if there's anything ahead." Ordered Wendy, as Soos complied and made the horse trot forward ahead of the group.
"There should be bodies here." Pointed out Dipper, noticing a lack of bodies in the scene, while Wendy eyed a particular blood splatter in front.
Wendy's eyes opened wide in fear at the blood, it was not just red but green as well, a mixture of two different colors as if they were one, and she knew that there was only one kind of creature that had that kind of blood.
"Guys?" Said Soos, calling from ahead. "We found something."
The group hurried forward, making the horses trot ahead until they reached Soos and Mabel. Soos motioned his head next to the ground to show what looked like a mutilated corpse of a CSF Sleg, most of its flesh was torn apart, and the Sleg's guts were chewed and strewn across the ground, its face torn to shreds and chewed on so badly that part of its face was nothing but bone, and that was only the upper half of the Sleg's body, for the lower half was completely gone.
"Oh God." Said Dipper softly, shocked at the scene while Nate and Lee tried looking away, but Wendy just shook her head fearfully, now knowing for sure what did all this.
"Fuck. Not them." Said Wendy fearfully, and it didn't help that from the look of the corpse it looked like the Sleg died only a few hours ago.
"Them?" Asked Dipper, able to her Wendy's mumbling as she looked at Dipper fearfully.
"We need to get out of here." Said Wendy to the group, not wanting to stay in this tunnel any longer, making the horse trot fast ahead of the group who followed behind, and not noticing a small creature crawl on top of the truck and jump on Soos's horse saddle behind Mabel. "Hurry before-
"AHHHHHHHH!"
The whole group was alert now, turning behind to see Soos 's horse neigh wildly out of fear, but the panicked scream came from Mabel, who fell off the horse after something jumped on her head, and was now struggling to get something off her.
"MABEL!" Exclaimed Dipper, immediately getting off the horse with Wendy telling everyone to watch the horses, as she ran to Mabel's aid with Dipper.
"Get this thing off me!" Shouted Mabel for help, using both her hands to hold on to some kind of plump pale worm creature.
The creature was surprisingly strong for such a small thing, and it was hard to keep a grip on it because Mabel's hands kept slipping, the creature felt slippery and slimy which made it easier for it to get closer to Mabel's face and once it was close enough, several fleshy red tendrils came out of a slit like mouth and tried to latch onto her face, making Mabel disgusted and horrified at the sight of the tendrils all over her face, closing her eyes to prevent the tendrils from going inside them.
"Hold on!" Shouted Dipper, reaching his sister as he and Wendy grabbed onto the creature to pull it off Mabel.
The creature persisted however, and managed to get a few tendrils to open Mabel's mouth and struggled to go forward to enter inside the girl. Dipper and Wendy pulled as hard as they could to get the creature off, not making it easy for the two since the tendrils stuck on tightly to Mabel's face, with each tug from Dipper and Wendy making Mabel feel like her skin was about to come off. With one final pull, the creature came off of Mabel, and was thrown down hard on the concrete ground, as it screeched and tried to crawl away from the group, but Wendy managed to run up to the worm creature and stomp on it with her boot, making a squeamish squishing sound and died instantly from the forceful stomp, getting green blood and guts all over the ground and some on the bottom of Wendy's boot, who was disgusted at the sight as she scraped off the guts on the ground.
"Mabel? Are you okay?" Asked Dipper, concerned about Mabel's safety as he helped her get up from the ground.
"I'm fine." Answered Mabel, calming her brother down. "I just feel like throwing up breakfast."
Dipper picked up his shotgun and the pistol Mabel dropped, giving the pistol to Mabel while Wendy got her flashlight out to observe what she had just killed, the smashed remains of some kind of worm creature.
"Fuck." Cursed Wendy to herself, realizing that her fears came true. "Worms."
The group could then hear bloodcurdling screeches from the distance, silencing the group as they heard the screeches echo throughout the tunnel. Wendy pointed her flashlight at the direction of the noise, but then it began flickering on and off until the batteries burned out, leaving the group in the dark. This made Lee, who was ahead of the group to control the horse left behind by Wendy and Dipper, search his vest for a flare and light it up to illuminate the surrounding darkness, giving the group a small area of vision around them as they continued to hear bloodcurdling screeches, getting closer with each passing second.
Then Nate light up a flare he had in his vest, and tossed it at the direction to where they heard the screeches to get a better view of what was there, revealing a growling and ravenous horde of human and Sleg figures, all with pale skin and bloodstained clothing, drooling fresh blood and saliva, with more fresh blood dripping from their claws, as they kept staring at their new prey with bloodshot eyes, along with several of the worm creatures around them, having every intent to slaughter their potential victims in front.
"RUN!" Shouted Wendy, as they sprinted their way back from where they came from, with Mabel managing to get a ride from Soos on back of one horse while Nate picked up Dipper and Wendy reached the horse all the way in front with Lee, as they galloped on horseback away from the charging horde, who wanted nothing more than to slash them apart with their claws and consume their flesh, while the worms quickly kept pace with their horde of strange human and Sleg allies by shooting out their tendrils from their bodies and latching onto their charging horde's backs as carriers, or crawled above the tunnel walls and used their tendrils to latch onto the celling, and swung forward above the ground like vines to keep up with their horde and attack from above.
"What the fuck are those things!" Exclaimed Dipper, looking back from his horse to see the charging horde keeping up with them, while Nate could only answer that question in what he thought was fitting for them.
"Hell."
O-O-O
Meanwhile, a few minutes before the worm incident, the dropship that was heading toward the tunnel was getting close to its destination and was now slowing down and finding a good place to land.
"LZ is close now. ETA two minutes." Announced the pilot to the troops, using a speaker device implemented on the ship for everyone to hear.
"Gear up, men. We're getting close now." Ordered Vek to his team, who complied with his orders as they prepared whatever gear they had brought with them for their mission.
The announcement got Selick out of his thoughts as he checked his gear to make sure he had everything he needed, while everyone else finished what they were doing, such as Meeko managing to fix his mask or Brok finishing with loading his shotgun, everyone on the ship was prepared for whatever they had to do, except Selick.
He was prepared in the sense that he had all his gear checked out and was ready for the mission physically, but not mentally. He had all kinds of mixed feelings about what was happening, but most of all, he was scared, scared that he would die as soon as they landed, not knowing what to expect from touching down on the ground. Vek noticed Sleick's nervousness from across, the rookie's hands were shaking as he held on to his rifle, his pupils were dilating in his green eyes, and was breathing in and out to calm himself down. Although everyone was a soldier here, he couldn't help but feel sorry for Selick, he may have been a nervous rookie like so many others that Vek had saw before, but even though Selick never told Vek his age, he knew he was only a kid just by the smooth scales alone, so he felt pity for someone so young in the army.
"You alright, kid?" Asked Vek, getting Selick's attention as he nervously looked at Vek.
"Not really." Answered Selick, not looking forward to the mission at hand.
"Rookies always get nervous on their first combat mission." Said Vek, trying to encourage Selick. "I felt the same as you did on my first mission, hell, I almost shit my pants when I hit the ground."
Selick then chuckled at the response. "Really?"
"Really. Just stick with us and shiting your pants won't even cross your mind." Said Vek, smiling at the fact that he cheered up Selick, all you need is a little laugh to feel better in a situation like this, that's how the army was.
"What crosses my mind is that we can kill something." Said Brok, relived he didn't have to wait any longer. "It's been a while."
"We don't even know what we're going to kill. Command sent us out in a rush for this mission." Said Jorg, getting his combat pack that was colored in forest green camo from under his seat, which had the extra ammo for his team.
"Then we should hear from the Sargent soon." Said Zaz, as he began predicting when he would speak. "In fact, we'll get the briefing right about…now."
"Alright men! Listen up!" Exclaimed the Sargent by the troop bay door, getting his squad's attention to give a short briefing about their mission. "I know that we were originally assigned to search the region for the human fugitives from yesterday, but command gave us a new objective after receiving reports from CSF about losing one of their teams to unknown reasons."
The soldiers were not too thrilled about hearing about CSF. They never liked CSF ever since they were first founded, always taking orders from government officials higher up for their own selfish purposes instead of the sake of others, they saw them as nothing more than brainwashed drones that were more machine than Sleg, which in some ways is true.
"They said that they sent a team to investigate the disappearance of a convoy in a tunnel by the more mountainous areas of the region, but only the driver came back while the rest of the team was reported to be MIA." Continued the Sargent, peeking the interest of the soldiers even more. "The reports also say that the driver said he heard bloodcurdling screams along with the screams of his team before leaving the area, so we have reason to believe that there's only one kind of force that could do that, Gene Worms."
The soldiers then groaned or exclaimed, concerned about hearing the possibility of Gene worms.
"Fuck. Anything but worms." Said Zaz worryingly, while Selick just stayed silent, shaking his head out of hearing those two words.
Selick knew the basic concepts of these horrifying creatures. Before he was conscripted in the army, he learned about the Gene Worms briefly in his history and science classes in high school before getting pulled out for military service, he learned that the Gene Worms were old creatures that existed thousands of years ago and have always been a mortal enemy of Sleg kind, even his most ancient ancestors fought them with rocks and sticks, he learned about their impact in his people's history, with all of the mass chaos and destruction they could spread with just one of them, suddenly producing hundreds of thousands of worms at a time to decimate entire cities unprepared for the worms, and
Selick could still remember the image of a Gene Worm in his old biology textbook, they were ugly and frightful creatures, plump and slimy parasites with no eyes yet they could sense you, the worms could grow to be ten inches long, they had pale white flesh with short blood red insect like legs, four on each side of their body to use to crawl, they also had four short blood red spines across the top of their bodies, they had two inch mandible like pincers on the sides of their mouth, the mouth itself was nothing more than a horizontal slit that hid several crimson red tendrils that the worms would use for various purposes.
While Sleick never got too far into the lesson about the Gene worm's biology, he knew well enough from school and stories from military veterans about how dangerous these worms were.
"It's only a guess that it's Gene Worms, but it's a very likely one, and we all know how we feel about the worms, but we have orders to change our primary objective to searching for the possible worm infestation and rooting it out. However, that doesn't mean we don't stop looking for the fugitives as our primary objective either." Continued the Sargent. "CSF reports that the same fugitives we're searching for are near where we're going, so it's most likely that they went into the tunnel as well, which means we have two primary objectives to follow through. Any questions before we land?"
Meeko then raised his hand to ask a question, which the Sargent promptly pointed at to get his question. "With all due respect sir, why is command sending us to wipe out a possible Gene Worm infestation? Shouldn't they send in more specialized units like a quarantine team?"
"A Q-team was sent our way to provide back up, but we are under very strict orders by governor Xon to find the fugitives immediately, Xon is technically our supreme commander because of his position, so we don't get the luxury of waiting for back up under his command, so if we have to rush in, we rush in." Answered the Sargent, much to the dismay of his men. "Anything else?"
Zaz also raised his hand for question and began to speak. "I got one. Why is Xon such a baby bitch about these humans? They're just some poor bastards trying to live."
"We have our orders, private Zazubarr. Whether we like them or not, we have to follow them. You were briefed before about Xon's orders a few days ago, so save your criticism about Xon for later." Answered the Sargent, while Zaz was not satisfied with his answer.
The dropship eventually arrived by the tunnel, slowing down completely as it began slowly descend onto the clear road by the tunnel to unload its troops, while the pilot made another announcement.
"We are at the LZ. Landing in ETA thirty seconds." Announced the pilot.
"Get ready to move out!" Ordered the Sargent, putting on his combat mask while all the other soldiers did the same.
The soldiers put on their masks, cocked their guns and were ready to move out, standing up in double column formations inside, ready to go out in a few seconds. The large door ten opened downward, providing a way down to the ground as the dropship landed on the concrete of the road, and the Sargent moved out with all other soldiers outside, checking their perimeters with their loaded guns as they moved inside the tunnel, spreading out in two teams with Vek's team on the right while the Sargent's team on the left, turning on their night vision in their masks to see through the darkness while the dropship outside lifted off and left the soldiers to do their duty, cautiously and slowly advancing inside the dark tunnel.
"Okay, this place give me the creeps." Said Zaz, already not liking the dark tunnel.
"Aww. That's so cute. Do you want your blankie too?" Mocked Brok.
"I actually wouldn't mind because they're really comfy." Responded Zaz, somewhat agreeing with Brok. "But the point is that I don't like this place."
"I have to agree with Zaz on this, something is definitely off." Agreed Meeko, getting the same feeling. "CSF convoys don't just disappear."
"What do you think, boss?" Asked Zaz to Vek. "Rebels or worms?"
"Just keep moving and we'll find out." Answered Vek, as the Sleg soldiers kept moving forward. "But it's probably worms."
"It better be worms. The more of them dead, the better." Said Brok, eager to kill the worms. "Plus I like enemies that put up a fight."
"I hope it's nothing. Then we can just go back, and relax, and not kill things for once." Said Jorg, hoping that this whole search is null and void. "There's more to military life than shooting things."
"You're right. There's more to the military than shooting things." Agreed Brok. "There's also stabbing them and breaking bones with your bare hands, and you don't have to kill to do that."
"No, that's not what I-
Before Jorg could finish his sentence, the soldiers could hear a scream from ahead the tunnel, but it didn't sound as bloodcurdling as they thought. The soldiers stopped in their tracks and proceeded to move forward slowly just in case if it was a threat ahead.
"That didn't sound good." Commented Selick, worried that it was Gene Worms.
"Relax, rookie. That's not worms." Assured Zaz, losing worry about it being worms. "They sound a lot scarier than that."
"I think that was a person." Guessed Meeko. "But the scream sounded like it was… afraid."
"Afraid of what?" Asked Selick.
Then the soldiers could hear the bloodcurdling screeches that they did not want to hear, as they got ready to face their old foe.
"Afraid of that." Said Vek, now knowing that it truly was Gene Worms that possibly killed off the convoy along with the investigating CSF team.
"Move in! Now!" Ordered the Sargent, signaling his squad to run forward to deal with the Gene Worm threat.
As the soldiers moved in, they stopped when their Sargent signaled them to stop in place, as they took aim forward and could hear the clopping of horses coming towards them along with the bloodcurdling screeches. The Slegs then got into more defensive positions, using the cars around to set up covering positions and aimed their guns to whatever would come towards them. The Sargent told his troops to hold their fire and would open fire on his command, as they saw four horses galloping towards their positions, along with the fugitives that they were looking for on horseback.
"Sir, requesting permission to fire. Incoming targets are part of our main objective." Asked Vek, wanting to get this whole mission over with for the safety of his men.
"Negative. Both the fugitives and worms are our priority. Wait for the worms first and then open fire, we can take them all out at once." Answered the Sargent, as the soldiers held their fire much to their displeasure.
The bloodcurdling screeches got closer and closer until the soldiers could now see the charging horde of human, Sleg, and worms, which numbered in the dozens, possibly more than a hundred. While most of the Slegs were scared but still firm on their triggers, Selick could help himself but shake in fear, he's always heard the stories and seen images in his biology textbook of the Gene Worm hordes, even when he was a child he was told fairytales of the worms by his parents with brave knights slaying them, but he never thought he would see the horrifying beasts up close and believe those fairytales, as he prepared for a battle that he would never forget when the Sargent gave the order.
"OPEN FIRE!"
O-O-O
Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs, my Sleg characters, and the Gene Worms.