Read Dark Victory - eARC for Free Online Page B

claws in my direction. I look right up and pull the trigger.
    BLAM!
    I’m used to the recoil but the punch in my shoulder still makes me gasp, and before I can breathe again, there’s a smaller POP! and a gray-white cloud appears in front of the Creeper, drifts right up against the main arthropod. Training kicks in and I snap the bolt back, ejecting the spent shell, grab another 50 mm round from my bandolier, and the Creeper is still moving.
    Still moving right at me.
    I push the side of the round against my leg, rotate the base so I can get that first setting, and put the round in and—
    Miss the open chamber.
    Round drops to the ground.
    I stare up and look and feel for the round with my free hand and—
    The Creeper stops moving.
    The claws shake, tremble, and then sag.
    The main arthropod vibrates as well.
    I take a deep, satisfying breath, get up, legs woozy.
    One of its six legs starts shaking and shaking, like the machinery and electronics inside of the exoskeleton has gone crazy. Something I’ve seen before and which always fills me with a sharp and fierce feeling of joy. I lower my Colt, kneel down and retrieve the fallen round. Other legs of the Creeper are now shaking, trembling, and the whole main structure is swaying back and forth, then forward and back, and then side-to-side again.
    A high-pitched whining noise pops out of the Creeper and then it drops forward, into the dirt and slope, and slides towards me a few yards. A few more quivers of the legs and that’s it.
    The exoskeleton is still. The Creeper inside is dead.
    There’s a brief, hard stink of burnt cinnamon. A passing breeze thins it out. Flames and sparks continue to flicker and fly from the burning trees and debris from the destroyed home. I put the dropped round back into my bandolier, stroll up to the dead Creeper. From the light of the burning fires I make out the exoskeleton pretty well, seeing marks and discolorations along the joints and legs that means this one is fairly old, which improves my mood even more. Nice to know I’ve snuffed out one of their vets. From the mid-section of the main arthropod, some green and brown goo is oozing out. That’s the section where the breathing membrane is located.
    I whisper, “Nice shooting, Tex,” and step closer. Above and below the breathing membrane are articulated joints for the main arthropod. Another Creeper weakness, but one desperately hard to exploit. There’s a gap between the joints where a careful, disciplined and very, very skilled sniper could send in a depleted uranium round and kill a Creeper. During the frantic early years of the war, sometimes those snipers were the only ones bringing the war home to the invaders, and I don’t think a single one of them has ever bought a drink or meal for him or herself since then.
    I met a sniper like that two years back, at the Battle of the Merrimack Valley, where a number of Creepers were moving from a base in Connecticut and where I earned my first Purple Heart. The sniper was a heavy-set guy named Woods with a beard down his chest and wearing blue jeans and a dirty fatigue jacket. He was clearly out of uniform, but no one bothered him. His spotter was his plump wife, who quietly told him range and windage with the aid of a spotting scope and her experience. In the space of an afternoon, he had nailed four of the Creepers. Each time he sent a round downrange, he and his wife would pick up and race to another hiding spot, just in case a Creeper or one of the killer stealth sats was tracking him. All he said to us admirers as he packed up his Model 300 Remington long rifle when the day was done was, “Well, we sure did God’s work today, fellas, didn’t we.”
    I walk over to the burning wreckage of the home, shake my head. Looks like a nice little place. Near a stream bank for fishing and fresh water. Lots of ice in the winter to store and trade with some of the farms and local stores. Maybe a field nearby for some crops in the spring.