The Miskatonic Manuscript (Case Files of Matthew Hunter and Chantal Stevens Book 2) (27 page)

Matthew smiled and looked at the floor.

“That’s a lot of it. There’s more routine duty in the service than a lot of people realize … Henry. Always something to be cleaned and oiled. I take it you’re responsible for those big crossbows arranged around the perimeter?”

“My ballistae? Yes. A shame, isn’t it, all I managed to successfully bring them from Twentieth Century Earth were a few improvements in homicidal technology that date back to the Romans? Though Lord knows they’ve needed it. The arachnidae only visit us every few years, but when they do show up they just wreak havoc. Oh, in the storybooks the visitor from the future is supposed to show the primitive tribesmen how to build firearms and steel plate armor and steam engines and all kinds of modern wonders, I know. Wireless receivers, I suppose. But what you quickly realize is that every one of those technologies is built on a grasp of other, more basic, underlying technologies. Even showing them how to shape and fit pieces of wood and bone big enough to build my ballistae was quite an undertaking without steel axes, believe me.”

“The Pthang don’t seem to feel your presence here is of no value.”

“Well, I’ve done what little I could. Certainly produced as many great-grandchildren as I could!” the old man laughed until he wheezed, took a few moments to catch his breath. “I tried to show them how to weave textiles, but the Pthang don’t see much need for textiles, as you may have noticed. I did manage to invent the reed
mat, for what that’s worth, and a recurved bow, shooting a longer arrow.”

“These are not small things, grandfather,” Turok insisted.

The old man waved his hand dismissively. “And of course I always told them more people would eventually follow me from Earth One, from Providence, that it was important some of them, at least, learned and kept up some practice speaking English.”

Their reminiscing about old times on Earth One was quickly cut short as shouts were raised outside. It was Bidge, it turned out, who’d first raised the alarm. She’d taken her bow and gone scouting southwest toward a small river which Old Henry called the Annaquatucket, where the Pthang apparently took a quantity of shad during the spring runs. But when she came to an overlook she’d spotted a large number of thunder lizards moving along the north bank and toward the tree village in a considerable hurry.

Hearing her cries of alarm, the villagers set to work quickly but with a sense of organization that argued they’d been through this plenty of times. The smaller children made for the taller trees near the center of the village, climbing not just to the more spacious “first floor” of the tree houses but to the next higher level, more than 30 feet off the ground, where they’d presumably be safe from even the largest predators.

It appeared the medium-sized children assumed child protection duties there, along with the most thoroughly pregnant women, while all the men and the rest of the adult women and even the few teen-aged boys raced to man the six most heavily fortified positions around the perimeter, where Henry Annesley had positioned his giant crossbows. Evidently the bows were not kept wound to full torsion, since several sweating men now set to work ratcheting up the coiled-rope springs on these weapons, while the actual shooters — mostly women, Chantal noticed — traversed their weapons from side to side to make sure they were swiveling freely.

Matthew and Chantal joined the crew of fighters in the war turret on the southwest edge of the village — the direction from which
Bidge came running. Chantal was glad to see the Pthang had not fallen into the lazy habit of manning only that ballista on the side from which the alarm had come. Elevated walkways and rope ladders would allow them to shift their forces as necessary, and it was true this little southwest tree fort was now the most heavily manned, but none were abandoned. No attacker was going to be allowed to circle around and take them unawares from behind.

Bidge came pounding up — she had lost her fur vest somewhere and was completely naked, making it obvious to Chantal now why she wore the jacket in the first place, the garment evidently serving the function of a sports bra for the well-endowed Amazon. Looking over, she saw Matthew was fully enjoying Bidge’s running form. Bidge was last up the ladder; it was hurriedly pulled up behind her.

Now here came the fast-moving predatory thunder lizards, led by a large tyrannosaur, possibly the mate of the one Chantal had taken out earlier, in the clearing to the northeast. The woman handling their ballista waited till the closest beast was a lot closer than seemed reasonable, given that the creature’s head was high enough to reach in and grab any one of them.

Finally she let fly. Her six-foot arrow slashed through the side of the beast’s neck, not killing it instantly but starting a considerable hemorrhage of blood. The creature roared, its hot breath stinking of rotted meat, and turned its head sideways, lunging out and grabbing one of the defending spearmen by the arm. He yelled in turn, his comrades struck out with their spears, piercing the beast’s skin but not to enough depth to cause fatal wounds. The giant lizard drew back, the spearman’s arm still in its jaws, and he was pulled outside the guardrail, held back only by the grip of three of his fellows around his legs.

Chantal decided that was enough, waited for a clear shot, and put a 50-caliber round through the dinosaur’s eye. It went down, thrashing about quite impressively on the ground below. The three spearmen pulled their comrade back onto the platform, though his arm was bleeding profusely. The spearmen then hastily backed away from
Chantal, looking with considerable alarm at her smoking weapon. But at a shout from the operator of the ballista they went back to work quickly enough, re-winding her springs so she could prepare to launch another bolt.

To their left, the attacking dinosaurs were swarming past the tree fort on the southernmost edge of the village. There, it appeared one of the six-foot arrows had already been loosed without hitting its mark. Without the aid of Chantal’s repeating rifle the attacking monsters had more success there, pulling one of the defenders from his perch. He landed on the ground, stabbing upward bravely with his spear at his nearest attacker, though it was evident one of his legs was useless, possibly broken, making it unlikely he’d be able to run to shelter.

But then Chantal noticed something odd. Instead of following up for a kill, the big reptiles — the tyrannosaurs being followed by a couple of triceratops and other, smaller species she couldn’t name — seemed to be skirting the tree-village, swerving south to get around the obstacle and then continuing to run on toward the Bay, to the east.

“What’s going on, Matthew?” she shouted above the tumult. “Mixed species of animals don’t attack in waves like this. These animals don’t even act like they’re feeding.”

“They’re being driven, Chantal.”

“Driven by what?”

“Those,” he said, pointing back to the southwest.

Chantal blinked to clear her eyes. Although they were all silvery, some looked more bluish, while others tended to reflect light that looked a little more pink. At any rate, there were half a dozen of them, less than a mile to the southwest and closing, aircraft of some kind, but without visible wings or props.

“What the hell are those?”

“Aircraft.”

“Saucer-shaped aircraft?”

“That’s as good a description as any.”

“And did Grandpa Annesley have any gems of wisdom to share as to who’s
flying
these saucer-shaped aircraft?”

“Bugs.”

“Bugs?”

“Giant spiders, as near as I can make out. The aforementioned arachnidae.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Too many for the one rifle, I presume.”

“I can’t do anything against those suckers with a single-shot weapon. Where’s my other case?”

“The skis?”

“Yes, hand me the case with my skis.”

“Anything you say, babe.”

Chantal removed the canvas cover from her second shoulder weapon, taking a moment to fit the first warhead to the front of the four-foot, tubular launcher.

“Is that a bazooka?” Matthew asked.

“We call them rocket-propelled grenades, now, dear. But you’ve got to help me here, now — make sure there’s no one directly behind me when I fire.”

“Got it.”

“I’m serious, this thing puts out a five-foot tail of flame; keep them clear.”

She sighted on one of the approaching saucer ships, or tried to. Instead of moving in smooth arcs it seemed capable of an unreasonable amount of jinking.

One of the few Yanks who’d flown with the RAF in the Battle of Britain and lived to tell about it attributed his survival to his terrible flying form. Other pilots flew in graceful arcs and curves, he explained, so the German fighters knew just where to place their deflection shots so the Tommies would fly right into their streams of lead. But this guy shoved and slammed his stick and pedals, jinking around the sky like a spastic, with the result that no one could ever hit him.

Finally she fired — just as the saucer craft jinked, of course: a clean miss.

Behind her, a few shouts as the naked or nearly naked tree people finally got a convincing demonstration of why Matthew had been shooing them away from the area immediately behind Chantal and her launching tube.

“Damn!” She only had five rounds. Deliberately, now, she loaded a second round, steeled herself to wait till one of the alien craft — firing its own blistering heat rays, which seemed capable of setting fire to any part of the tree forts they hit — came even closer, and slowed enough that she wasn’t having to track it madly across the sky. Finally she clenched all her muscles, squeeezed …

And put the round directly through one of the ports on the side of the craft. Immediately there was a “crump” of flame inside, the saucer started to emit a gratifying cloud of brown-black smoke, tipped to the diagonal, and slid directly down to the ground, burying its rim several feet into the soft forest loam outside the border hedge. One of the arachnids, stunned and obviously wounded, crawled out and started to stagger around. She wondered how the heck any number of the big spiders could fit inside a saucer craft of that size, but then remembered how small a spider could look when it folded its legs.

Bidge and two of the male Pthang bravely threw out a ladder, each grabbed an eight-foot lance with a razor-sharp flint point, and scuttled down. They raced over and finished off the injured man-high spider with their flint-bladed lances, slicing away the long, defensive forelegs until they could drive their points home in its head and body. There was no wasted motion in their movements. They seemed to operate as a team from long practice. Bidge lacked the shoulder strength of her male companions but — tallest of the three — she was the one who exultantly danced inside to strike the first fatal blows, her sinewy form coated in a sheen of sweat from her exertions.

Chantal realized that — with Bidge herself so obviously unashamed — her nakedness was actually starting to seem natural. What were they supposed to wear for this kind of work, prom gowns?

Loathsome yellow stuff oozed out as the beast snapped its fangs on empty air a final time — missing Bidge by mere inches — before it collapsed and lay quivering on the ground.

The Pthang in the tree forts were using some of their precious water supply to douse the fires that had been started by the saucer’s heat rays. Here and there they tried to beat them out with their hands and arms, suffering painful burns that someone would have to deal with later. And here and there a Pthang defender was down, writhing, having been hit by the heat rays, directly.

Now the remaining saucers were landing, more than 100 yards out, and disgorging their eight-legged assault troops.

“Am I correct in assuming those bugs can climb trees?”

“Climb very fast,” confirmed Bidge, who herself had just climbed back into the tree-fort and now sat panting on the floor, between gulps of water from a leather bucket mounted on the guardrail. Her substantial breasts heaved as she fought to make up her oxygen deficit. “Eat many Pthang.”

“They
eat
you?”

“Eat many Pthang.”

“Jesus Christ.” Chantal set her grenade launcher aside, re-slung her .50-caliber, steadied it on the safety rail, and exploded a few approaching spider heads, but quickly admitted, “Matthew, there are too many for me, and I don’t have a lot of rounds left, anyway. The idea was to do a quick in-and-out here. Without resupply both these weapons are going to run out of fodder, real soon.”

Behind them, in the center of the village, century-old Henry Annesley had been carried out onto the porch of his tree dwelling on a litter. There, propped up on one elbow, he bestowed advice on his grandson Turok, the sturdy 60-year-old being officially in command. Turok gradually fed some support troops to the area under attack, but was cautious not to strip the rest of the outer defensive wall of tree forts completely.

Sure enough, here now came an attack by three more saucer craft from the northeast, almost due opposite the direction of the initial
attack. If the spiders had expected to find the Pthang had all been drawn away to the site of the first attack, leaving themselves defenseless to the rear, they were rudely awakened as two of the ballistae on the far side of the perimeter fired. One of the great six-foot shafts clanked harmlessly off the side of a saucer, but the other penetrated the side of a second craft and remained impaled there. The ship did not crash, but it did begin to behave erratically, apparently experiencing some difficulty maneuvering.

Back at the initial point of contact, things were not going well. Most of the available men were now engaged with the arachnidae at lance-point, having descended to the ground, where they formed a makeshift phalanx behind the hedge, presenting the attackers with a wall of spears rather than single fighters who could be easily outflanked and surrounded.

But because a few fighters were still tied up forming rudimentary bucket brigades to deal with the fires set in the wooden strongpoints by the heat rays of the arachnids’ saucer craft, the Pthang simply didn’t have the manpower to extend their line as far to either side as they needed to. The spiders started moving to the flanks, intending an envelopment. Chantal saw a number of the Pthang spearmen lifted by their own spears and tossed to the ground, from which they were slow to rise. The spiders were simply too large, too quick, and too numerous. As the spearman moved to the flanks to prevent being encircled this tended to break up the strength of their close-packed formations. Blood spurted as several of the spearmen were slashed across the arms or chests by the spiders’ serrated, razor-sharp forelegs. One was picked up and his head bitten off, the way a child would bite the head off a chocolate Easter bunny. The arachnid in question stood still for a moment, chewing thoughtfully. It seemed to be enjoying its crunchy treat.