Base Defense (1)
“Move! Move! Move!”
Carlos.
Cole.
And Hartwell.
Three pairs of combat boots hammered down the corridor.
A rolling thunder of gunfire from Passage Two was more than enough to wake the entire base.
By the time the Rangers arrived, the armory entrance was already crowded—James and Curtis fully geared, Sarah and I still snatching weapons off the racks.
Angela cracked open the infirmary door and hovered at the edge of the chaos, wringing her hands, unable to force her way into the rush. Even so, a heavy bag packed with emergency kits already hung at her side.
“Spiders! To the plaza—now!”
Those who had finished arming moved out on James’s order, clearing the space. The Rangers stepped in and yanked ballistic helmets and vests from a rack improvised out of a few iron bars.
Buckles snapped. Velcro tore shut.
Seconds later, three fully kitted soldiers burst from the armory.
A door crashed off its hinges. Gunfire roared.
“This is a goddamn mess!”
Every pull of a trigger punched a slug clean through thick black carapace. Fluids burst outward like green water balloons.
“Ssshhhk—!”
“Why the hell did they all show up at once?!”
“Questions later!”
Four of us with shotguns cut the swarm down and carved out breathing room. Only then could the Rangers plant their boots in a plaza slick with green.
“What the hell is all this…”
“Spider swarm. Damn it—everything was fine until now, and then out of nowhere—!”
I kicked the corpses aside and checked the fallen iron doors. Every one of them was dented and crumpled, stamped by heavy forelegs.
“Matthew—check the turret status. Now!”
“Y-yes.”
The man who had come out late with his wife bolted into the room marked Security.
Mouse clicks rattled a few times.
“Cameras show nothing. Something’s covering the lenses.”
“…Shit.”
The doors on Passages One and Three had been smashed open long ago. The door on Passage Two still stood solid.
Empty triggers kept clicking—click, click, click, click—over and over.
Everyone swallowed hard.
Boots scuffed as the Rangers took position just left of Passage Two’s door while every muzzle stayed locked on the intact frame. Curtis moved to the right and took the handle.
“On three, open it.”
“Got it.”
“…Three!”
On the short signal, the Rangers shoved through with tactical lights burning, pushing hard toward the turret bay.
No cover. Nothing but open space and the gun.
Three bright beams cut the dark.
“Ssshk. Ssshhk…”
Thick green fluid. Black shards. Concrete rubble everywhere. Walls beaten ragged as if by a hammer. Insect limbs hanging in place. A Giant Spider dragging itself across the floor with its body half gone, then collapsing for good.
Massive casings—two hundred rounds’ worth—clinked and rolled underfoot. The barrel, once little more than a lump of steel, glowed red and steamed.
“…Hah.”
Carlos and Hartwell at the point lowered their muzzles and let out dry laughs.
Bodies split, burst, crushed, torn. Counting them would have been a waste of time—the place was pure slaughter.
“Sssiiii…”
The last one twitched a limb, gurgled green blood from its mouth, and went still.
Only then did the turret stop pulling the trigger.
Beeps dwindled into a long dying tone. While Carlos yanked the cable, Hartwell and Cole pushed a little farther to check the corridor beyond.
“Ah, hell…”
“Looks like there were a lot of them.”
The green trail ran thick and heavy. Severed legs weren’t exactly scarce either.
Simultaneous assaults down Passages One, Two, and Three.
“We’re clear for now!”
Every eye swung to one person—the man who always had an answer for the “anomalies.”
“There wasn’t a spider nest nearby. Did we miss one?”
“…Doubt it. If we had, we would’ve known spiders were in Passages One and Three already. What we ran into was that oversized cat.”
“But you’ve met spiders before.”
“Obviously. Five-five-six wouldn’t punch through, so Cole had to put every last one of them down. Up close, seven-six-two did the job.”
We set out a few folding chairs in the wrecked plaza and tried to untangle the mess in our heads.
A mass spider migration. Thank God we’d installed the turret when we did—otherwise…
“Do you have any idea what caused it… at all?”
In front of the whole group, Angela raised her hand carefully. Too many eyes still made her nervous; she dropped her gaze to the floor almost at once.
“I’ve got a few.”
It wasn’t the kind of event that triggered once a settlement hit a certain size. Concrete Under barely had trigger events at all. Diversifying enhanced mutants after opening the lab, maybe—but something like this usually meant…
“A territorial fight might have started nearby.”
“Territorial fight?”
“Spider colonies going to war over ground. Or some other mutant species pushing in. Or… other insects claiming the area.”
“Animal Kingdom, huh.”
“Pretty much.”
An ecosystem, people used to call it. Same as human wars—the monsters declared hostilities, fought, and tore into each other.
“You’ve all heard of ant wars, bee wars.”
Complicated looks all around. Once again, the careful raised hand belonged to Angela. I was about to nod and keep talking when she spoke first.
“…Some people say war is the one uniquely cruel thing humans do, but the truth is… war is natural. Completely natural.”
“Didn’t expect that coming out of your mouth.”
There was an edge in Sarah’s voice, but under it sat pure surprise—as if she truly hadn’t seen it coming.
Honestly, neither had I. Probably everyone except the newest Rangers felt the same.
“…I used to believe that was exactly why humans had to work harder than anyone to avoid war. Not anymore.”
Her shoulders wanted to curl in, but Angela straightened them, eyes reddened. A breath hitched with a half-sob, then the words kept coming.
“War, negotiation, diplomacy, efforts to avoid collision… all of it shows up in nature. Study an ant’s life and you drop the idea that humans are uniquely cruel—or uniquely clever. For example… where territories of different ant species meet, they send soldier ants out to hold a ‘border.’”
“For real?”
“There’s even a kind of ‘alliance’ where different species share a nest. I could go on, but what we’re dealing with here is spiders. Spiders that should be solitary, moving in a swarm.”
“In a way, these spiders behave a lot like ants.”
A queen that laid the eggs. Workers that ranged out for prey. And above all, soldiers that defended the colony.
I picked up from Angela’s explanation without a break—and faces around the circle went hard.
“Soldier spiders.”
“Workers focus on incapacitation. Soldiers spit digestive fluid.”
“….”
“Strong acid.”
Sighs broke out on all sides.
“Still… you’re not about to say there’s no solution, are you? Not you.”
“Of course not.”
I pointed at the spiders piled to one side.
“In a way, we got lucky. Everything we saw this time was a worker.”
“If it hadn’t been, someone would’ve already melted?”
“…That said, spitting the fluid hurts them badly too—they don’t last long after. They usually prefer to disable prey with slow, long strands of silk.”
“Doesn’t change the fact they’re dangerous bastards.”
“Right.”
I dragged one corpse over and rapped the carapace—thunk, thunk.
Without slugs you couldn’t crack it. Without better penetration than five-five-six, you couldn’t kill them.
“This shell can stand up to that digestive fluid. I’m going to make armor out of it. Now that we know mass spider raids are a thing.”
“Those corpses were pretty heavy.”
“Still better than dissolving in acid, right?”
The bodies in Passage Two would have to be scrapped, but the ones we’d dropped ourselves could be processed. The butchering was going to need more than a couple of hands.
“Angela.”
“Y-you called for me…?”
“I did. The dissection and research talk from before—you remember?”
She nodded.
“Today’s the first breakdown. Strip the meat and the carapace, record organ placement, that kind of thing.”
Last time she’d taken it with a halfhearted face. Today was different.
“All right.”
She stood like it was simply the job that needed doing and took her place beside the spider corpses. There wasn’t a flicker of hesitation in the way her boots stepped through the slick fluids.
“Sarah.”
“Help with the armor, I’m guessing?”
“Yeah. We’ll strip carapace together, then you and I do some of the processing.”
Sarah nodded too. The fluids still disgusted her, though—she grimaced every time her sole slipped in the mess.
“Rangers, keep watching the approach routes. Curtis, James—I need you on turret maintenance.”
The Rangers nodded at once. Curtis and James shook their heads.
“Why… not?”
“That unmanned turret—fifty-cal isn’t going to hold up.”
“…Ammo?”
“Ammo’s part of it, but the real problem is durability. We’ve got one box left. And this barrel’s scrap.”
“It dumped all two hundred rounds straight through. Overheated the barrel. This isn’t a modern swap-out model—once it runs this hot, you can’t just change it in the field.”
“Spare barrels we can slap on right now—”
“We’ve got one. And it’s the last.”
So running an auto-turret full-time had been a stretch after all. Then again—what would have happened without it?
“So we convert it back to manned? But then—we won’t have enough people for the other passages in the meantime.”
“Mmm.”
Worried sounds rose from more than one mouth. Then Curtis’s lined lips moved.
“…Set mounts so we can post a machine gun on all three passages—no, every passage. And put a cart nearby so we can move the gun fast.”
“Rotate it depending on which way they come. Not bad… but we’re going to be busy.”
“Not like we’ve got another option—unless you people dig up another miracle.”
Which meant tripods in the remaining passages too. Ammo: one two-hundred-round box left. Barrel: no more swaps.
“For now, we’ll put barricades and mounts on all four passages.”
“Semi-auto should keep the overheat manageable. And… these folks are going to need one of your special shotguns each.”
Outside the original crew, counting the Newman family, five people still had no shotgun. And if the spiders came again in numbers like this, even those shotguns wouldn’t hold forever.
“Rangers—once the machine-gun work’s done, there’s something I need you to find.”
“Hm?”
I needed automatic shotguns. The kind I could build right now.
“What kind of…”
“A Russian assault rifle. An AK-47. Think you can manage it?”
“…On American soil?”
“On American soil.”