When Given a Lemon

Part 15

My team never found anything, even the second day with Merryl tracking for us.

Luckily it wasn't only us looking.

By midday, a day and a half after the first two had been discovered, all but one of the missing three had been located. Both had been holed up inside of a tiny fissure of rock making up the wall inside the pass. It was close to the beginning of it, on our side where the giant bugs hadn't previously been spotted.

Someone had found the faint trail of blood and was able to follow it right to them. At the opening, the red droplets became intermixed with a darker colored liquid as well as another, heavier spotted blood trail that led away from the rock face further into the pass before they found a dead bug riddled with stab wounds.

The soldiers were both conscious, though barely, with their sharp sword and spear points aimed out of the opening in the fissure to stop anything getting in.

I heard that it took a fair amount of time to coax them into climbing out of the rock into the open, terror in their eyes showing they didn't believe that the bugs had truly fled.

The third was found a few hours later by another team. They had climbed up inside of a dense and prickly limbed tree with one of those giant bugs caught in the branches only a short distance below her.

What I learned about this one made my skin crawl. It not only had the armor playing and fur, but also was adorned with wings! Long and sharp like a beetle’s. Its wing was broken and snagged on the unforgiving boughs, locking it in place, but it still tried to snap and bite at her every time she shifted above it.

When they pulled her free from the tree, the carcass of the slain bug dragged a short distance away, she was barely responsive, shivering uncontrollably, holding her side where dark fluid, pink innards, and white pus was held in by her frozen fingers.

Hours later we were all back at the officers’ tents, trying to stomp the warmth back into our feet until we were released to go to our areas where the fires had already been lit.

That night Merryl recounted the current conditions of the rescued soldiers that Obert was still treating.

The last of which I had seen for myself since our team had been closeby when she was found. The call rang out through the woods and everyone in the area answered it. The bug they cut down from the tree was even bigger than the others we had fought. Not in body, which was much the same as the rest, but in wing, which spanned over twice its length; long and narrow, only adding to the thing's vicious appearance.

A horror that was sure to haunt my dreams for the next several nights.

The mere thought of those things flying was horrific and I would be lying if I said I didn't spend the entire walk back crouched low to the ground and looking upward. Now worried that an attack could come from literally any direction!

While Obert, the other medic staff, and often Merryl, were busy tending to the patients, the rest of us started a new training schedule that rotated between doing daily tasks and scouting the perimeters and beyond for any new sign of the bugs. Every day we were kept busy from beginning to end, taking advantage of the nicer, albeit still too cold, days.

Though I doubt the weather was a consideration of theirs.

My only regret was that we hadn’t buried those terrible bug carcasses back when we killed them.

A week had passed since we encountered those strange and terrible giant bugs while trying to retrieve the soldier's remains. Those bigs that only seem to be getting worse each time we encounter them.