The Missile 2
Copyright© 2025 by Zen Master
Chapter 8: Big Bad John
By the time we were ready to leave the grove, we’d decided to call it a grove since the trees were widely spaced as if purposely planted that far apart, we had no idea which direction we’d come from. I could still tell where we needed to go, though. We headed that way, and once we were clear of the trees we could see another grove in that direction. I was pretty sure that that grove was where we needed to be.
I guess Eric had run out of useful things to teach us, because we were talking about the Boss, and he referred to it as “Big John”. Somebody asked what he meant. “I don’t like calling it the ‘Boss’. He ain’t MY boss! But, he’s big and dangerous, so I’m gonna call him Big John. It’s from an old song, I think Johnny Cash, but I’m not sure. It’s like early Rap, the singer isn’t singing, he’s just talking in time with the music. ‘Ever’ morning at the mine you could see him arrive, he stood six foot four and weighed 245.’”
Margie took it from there. “‘Kinda broad at the shoulder and narrow at the hip, everybody knew... ‘“ and Eric joined in “‘ ... you didn’t give no lip to Big John.’”
They stopped singing, and Eric told us “You’ll have to listen to it yourselves. I’m sure it’s on the ‘net somewhere. Anyway, nobody is unkillable, and the song ends with his death. And before we can get out of here today, Big John is going down. We’ve come up with a lot of ways to do it. I can cut its head off. Sam can smash its head. Margie can fry its brain. The staffers can break all its legs. It’ll just depend on how it turns out.”
We ran into two more groups out in the grass before we got to the second grove. One had three, the other had five. None of them gave us any real trouble. We’d figured this one out. Sure, they could kill us if we fucked up, but ... Don’t fuck up.
One on one was no problem for me or Eric, although my shield was starting to get a little battered. Maybe if they got a chance to gang up on us, but we didn’t let that happen. We had enough people to keep them all at least occupied, and Matt got one on his own. I think it was turning to try to eat George, and Matt shoved his staff up against its head and blasted it. We knew it was all him, too, because after the fight was over he could store some of its legs. Assuming that we had correctly figured out what the rules were...
After both fights, we each collected a few legs from every centipede that would let us. Margie also collected some more silver from their guts, saying that it was staying at about 4 per critter.
Why were we collecting all these legs? Well, those paws I brought back last Sunday had caused a stir. The PRA had immediately offered $10K for each one, with the stated intention of handing them out to different research teams. Other research teams had promptly outbid them so that THEY could have them. It had gotten out of hand fast, and that was even after someone had offered to buy one at the press conference and my Dad had publicly said ‘no’.
I had made a new email folder for all the offers I’d gotten to buy one. Or all of them. I’d been sharing them with the team as well as with Jim Milton. The scientists wanted to study them and crazy rich people wanted to own them, but I only had four. I could certainly make a lot of money off them if I wanted, but four wasn’t going to meet the market. If we could bring more back, well, the price per item might go down, but we’d be selling a lot more items so it would probably end up getting us more money in the long run.
The PRA had given Eric a list of things to do on this training run. One of them was to see if everyone could bring trophies back. And, if we could, to bring back as many trophies from as many separate opponents as we could. We could keep selling them as long as we were Diving. Sell four for $20K each? That was $80K. Or sell a hundred for $3K each? That was $300K!
Yeah, selling a hundred for $3K each got us a LOT more money. And, it spread the wealth around, too. Instead of me getting $80K and no one else getting anything, every Hunter could bring back a half-dozen trophies and sell them to anyone for whatever he could get. We were supposed to find out if it worked, and how it worked. If we had time, you know, between killing monsters and fleeing in terror from monsters. So, for this run, we were taking a few off each centipede and saving the ones that we could in our inventory.
According to our count, we had killed 20 Giant Centipedes. Supposedly there were four more plus Big John. Or thereabouts, the 25 was an average. And, it wasn’t necessary that we find and kill every one. People had been doing these Dives for over a year now, and several times a team had come out saying “Well, we saw two more in the distance, but we were tired and hungry and had two wounded, so when we killed the boss and the two stairways opened up, we climbed the stairs to come home. Screw those last two, ya know?”
We found four. Three ‘normal’ sized Giant Centipedes plus Big John. Big John’s father might have been a Blue Whale. That first one had scared me when it reared up, but I was okay after that. By now, we all knew a half-dozen different ways to kill them. This one, though, this one was HUGE! It was about four feet high, maybe five, even with all feet on the ground.
They were all milling about smartly in the grove like they were guarding it, winding around between the trees the way an automated lawnmower goes around bushes. They didn’t seem agitated, but it was going to be harder to attack them as a group when they were all constantly turning in different directions.
We all looked at them from the edge of the grass for a minute, then Eric told Margie to watch our backs and for Cindy to take a look so she’d know what we were up against, too. After that, we retreated back into the grassland, meadow, or prairie, whatever it was.
Eric said we could do it, but we were gonna hafta be smart about it. First off, it may well take all of us working together to take out ‘Big John’. That meant that we couldn’t afford to split our attention between it and the three smaller ones. That, in turn, meant that we HAD to take out the smaller three first. We had to make sure that there wasn’t going to be anything sneaking up behind us while we ganged up on Big John.
Then he asked us for our take on the situation, whether we agreed with that or saw it differently. I agreed with him, and I told him that. I didn’t see how to take out Grampaw, but, sure, we should take out the three smaller ones first. If we could, without getting him on our backs. That was how our last Dive had ended up, and we got lucky on that one.
Everybody else pretty much said the same thing. Yeah, sure, do those three first, then step back and have another planning session for Big John.
We ended up with Step One: Have Cindy climb a tree. That way she should be safe from the centipedes. She should be able to keep an eye out for others showing up without having to worry about her own skin.
Naturally, if the centipedes took that as fresh food that couldn’t escape and proved that they COULD climb a tree, she was to climb out to the end of a branch that wasn’t too high up. Hopefully it would sag down near the ground. She could drop down to the ground again and run off while we tried to kill whichever one(s) were climbing the tree.
If they ignored her, the rest of us were going to split up into three fire-teams. Eric was going to work alone. He had no good defense against them but he could take one out by itself and it was dangerous for any of us to get in his way when he swung that axe. As long as none of them came up on him while he was busy, he’d be fine.
Next, Margie could kill one with one shot but had no defenses, and George had his shield but his sword wasn’t that great against these things. Eric wanted them to work together, George to ‘aggro’ one and get its attention while Margie fried its brain. If it grabbed his shield with its pincers, that was an opportunity to stab it through the roof of its mouth.
Last, Matt and I had the same problem. My mace worked but not well, but I also had my shield, while Matt’s fire blast was about as strong as my mace. If I could get one’s attention we could take turns beating on its head and blasting it until it gave up.
We all had to get in and get out again, though. Big John was going to be coming up, so we only had a few seconds to get the job done before we had to run. If we had to try three times to finish one off, well, we could jump in, work it over, and jump out again, wait until Big John had gone somewhere else, and try again.
If Big John decided to follow us out into the grassland, well, that meant it was safe for the rest of the team to follow behind HIM and start from the other end. Cut a section off, cut some legs off, whatever we could do would cut down on its mobility. If worse came to worst, we’d eventually end up with a centipede’s head the size of an elephant’s head that was harmless because it had no legs or body. Just, don’t walk into its mouth.
We took a short break then, getting a snack and some water, and when we were ready Cindy ‘Blessed’ us. We dropped our packs and ran in, and tried to guard a tree while Cindy climbed up it. Once she was far enough up to be safe from them rearing, we backed off to see what would happen.
One of the centipedes changed his patrol to simply circling around that tree. Well, okay!
I got in its face and tried to bash its pincers. It wasn’t a good bash, but at least I didn’t get caught. While it was paying attention to me, Margie stuck her staff up against its head and fried it. We all backed away and let it die. Cool! One down...
Now, do we do the same thing again, partway around the grove, with another one? Cindy voted for ‘no’, as she wasn’t sure how many times she could climb up a tree fast enough to avoid getting eaten. Run away? She could do that, she could still run fast, but she wasn’t looking forward to climbing another tree faster than one of the centipedes could rear up and strike.
Still, it was one down, two to go. George moved to help Eric with one and I got both mages for the other one, with Cindy calling out status on Grampaw.
Being bait is no fun. I got too close and it got one of its pincers behind my shield. All I could do was store my shield and, with its pincers closing around air, I could reach over the two of them and bash its head as hard as I could. The blow may have cracked its skull, but it didn’t do anything else that I saw.
Both Matt and Margie shoved their staffs against its head and fried it. That might have been overkill, but we had to get in and out fast. I didn’t see what Eric and George did, but when we got behind our centipede’s body and looked back, Grampaw was closing on them while they hid behind a third dead centipede.
Oh. Well, in that case ... I ran out and started smashing legs on one side, one after another from that last one on up. I got five before it started to turn around and go after me.
We’d talked about it. Grampaw was the last one, and Cindy was supposed to be looking around in case he wasn’t the last one. I ran behind the nearest tree and waited for him to choose a side to go around. I was assuming that, once it got its head far enough past the tree, it would be faster for it to continue on, turning around the tree, than to back up. I wasn’t sure a centipede could back up!
Whichever side he chose, I was going to wait until he had committed and his head was past the tree so trying to turn fast would simply run into the tree, and then run down beside his body on the other side of the tree, smashing legs as fast as I could.