Chapter 6

Hell, we needed a break after that fight. I guess that we will have to call that one a draw instead of an outright victory, but I have the strongest feeling, to this day, that we barely escaped annihilation! Let's see what will happen, Voice, we need a second flamethrower. Can you get us one right away?

"Listen up, men. We almost didn't escape that monster, so I have asked for another flamethrower to replace an M1. Any of you guys willing to volunteer to work with Hank? Remember that we are not being shot at, so there is not the danger from that like we would have faced in Normandy." Two guys raised their hands, so I picked Joe Connolly, since he was the larger of the two volunteers. By the time we finished our cigarettes, the flamethrower had shown up.

"Hank, you and Joe spend a few minutes with your flamethrowers so that Joe can learn the basics. The rest of us will keep an eye out for monsters while you help Joe practice." The neat thing about these new flamethrowers was that there was not a whole lot to learn. Pulling the trigger started the wick and sent out the fuel. The flame was shooting out as long as you held down the trigger. When the trigger was released, the fuel stopped flowing and the wick went out. The wand tip was too hot to touch, but that was the only danger with the unit.

Hank spent the half hour showing Joe how to aim the flame to get the best result. Other than that, it was just a case of Joe getting used to the weight on his back and the range of the flame. Both were satisfied by the end of the half-hour. Would that our old Army training had been that easy!

We set out with a bit more confidence now that we had the extra firepower. Fuck you if you didn't like the pun! In only a few minutes, Chester shouted that we were under attack from a Stuka. That was my cue. I flipped my fire selector to full auto and my ammo choice to incendiary. The Stuka was still a little out of range when I started shooting, but I didn't mind wasting the ammunition. I put up a steady wall of fire and let the Stuka fly into it. God! What a sight when the monster flew into those incendiary shot. Its body and wings seemed to go off like a Fourth-of-July fireworks display. Its wings lasted only a few seconds under the rain of shot, and it crashed practically at my feet. I ran back far enough and Sam blew it to hell with one explosive round from the PIAT. That experience made us feel so much better that a lot of our old cockiness returned. I'm not so sure that was a good thing, but we did feel the better for it.

As we resumed our march, Chester said, "Sarge, do you think that I could have my BAR modified to be something like the PIAT or the shotgun? I really need a way to select the kind of ammo that I fire. We have not really had much use for the BAR lately, and I am feeling kind of left out."

"Dammit, Chester, you're right. I'll see what Voice has to say about that tonight. These monsters don't seem to be responsive to solid slugs, but I'll bet the BAR with explosive rounds would play hell with them. Just do what you can to get through today, and I'll give it a try when we get to the home cave this evening."

Chester was satisfied with that, and we continued our route march to the next objective, which was not a cave, this time.

The objective was a kind of pit with some sort of monster in the bottom. We weren't sure what to expect, so when we came to it, we were damned careful. I tossed a stone down into the pit and nothing happened, but a lot of sand gave way when the stone hit the wall of the pit. It looked to us like anything that fell into that pit was not going to climb out because the sand was just too loose. Whatever the monster was, it was hiding in the loose sand at the bottom of the pit. The strange odor coming from the pit must have been the bait the monster used to attract prey. Fortunately, the odor had no effect on any of us.

The pit was so large in diameter that we feared that the monster must be a giant. The center of the pit bottom was too far away for a hand grenade throw, so I had Sam put an explosive PIAT round into the pit. That got a reaction!

A gigantic monster that looked something like an antlion came boiling out of the sand and looked around for what had caused the disturbance. It was too far away for any weapon we had but the PIAT, BAR, and the M1s. The BAR and M1s didn't do much but aggravate the creature, but I had the men continue to shoot in hope of doing some good eventually. Meanwhile, Sam kept peppering the bug with incendiary rounds from the PIAT. The monster was so big that it was essentially unaffected by the bullets, but the flame from the incendiary PIAT rounds did seem to have some effect.

Here's where we had our first major disaster. Somehow, Harley got too close to the edge of the pit while shooting his M1, and the edge of the pit collapsed. He let out a yell as he began sliding down the pit wall. None of us could get to him in time to give him any help, and I shouted for everybody to stand back in case of another accident.

I figured that Harley could climb out of the pit once he stopped sliding, but the damned bug started throwing sand at Harley, and that made him slide even faster down the edge of the pit. Harley even tried to jam the muzzle of his M1 into the sand to stop his slide, but that did no good. Despite everything we could do, Harley eventually slid within reach of the Antlion.

That damned bug reached out with its mandibles and pinched Harley through the gut. Harley let out a mighty scream and stopped struggling. A few moments later, the Antlion gave a scream of its own and went into convulsions. It flipped and flopped around in the bottom of that pit for about two minutes, then it lay still. Sand poured down from the wall of the pit and buried both Harley and the Antlion. I guess that proved that Voice was correct about us being poison to the locals and vice versa. We stood at the edge of the pit and mourned Harley for some time, but we also reinforced our resolve to kill every one of the damned monsters we could find. I also resolved to kill Voice, slowly and painfully, at my first opportunity, even if it meant my own death!

Finally, we pulled ourselves together and resumed our march to the next objective. I hoped the next one was a little easier than this one. We had not gone very far when Chester sang out that there was a King Kong approaching from our left. It was still several hundred yards away, well out of range of anything but the BAR or M1, so there was no point in shooting just yet. However, Sam was going to engage it with the PIAT as soon as it got within extreme range, which was about 150 yards.

The King Kong was ambling along and in no hurry, so some of the men started waving their arms and taunting it in an effort to make it hurry up. We had gotten sloppy again, and I happened to look around just in time to see two more of the creatures approaching us from our rear at a rapid pace. By this time, they had gotten within range of even my shotgun. At my yell, everybody turned around and began shooting at the beasts.

Sam put an explosive PIAT round into the chest of one of the King Kongs, while the rest of us were shooting at the other one with everything we had. We couldn't kill it, but we did slow it down, and that gave Sam the time he needed to put a round into its chest. Two down and one to go.