The moment Mult stepped back into the woods, she knew what had happened.
The grass was bent.
The branches had been snapped.
And the ground – so soft and spongy from last night’s rain – had been pulverized, torn, and stomped by feet bigger than she was.
She swore – silently, as per mission protocol – unholstered her longgun, checked her surroundings, waited for five minutes, and began a stealthy approach (for all the good any of it would do her).
Ten minutes of patient scuttling through the undergrowth later her bunker did not come into view because it was squashed underneath ten tons of bleeding flesh and bone, which had until the last hour or so belonged to a very large and healthy specimen of Lee’s Greater Chatterback. Its slackened mouth, removed spine, and dangling limbs gave it a look of surprise even in death, possibly prompted by the way its entire carapace had been scooped out and all of its organs placed in it.
Mult wasn’t surprised herself, but she was annoyed.
***
The bunker door was accessible after only a few minutes of machete-work, mercifully. The second time she’d had to blow some hi-incendiaries on the corpse and let the embers settle until the door was cool enough to touch. Then she’d had to re-camouflage it and ugh ugh ugh. Sleep was an important resource and a vexing limit for her; she’d resented that timewaster for days.
She’d stopped resenting it this morning, actually. It had been a good night. A little light reconnaissance had turned into a little light bushwhacking with the smoothness of an oily breakfast, five separate shots and five bodies bang bang bang bang… bang. And then the last one had made a foolish and brave dive for her squad leader’s communications equipment, and hadn’t lived long enough to be embarrassed at not noticing her first shot had blown through it and into his chest.
A good night. A nice relaxing walk home. And then she got back and for the third time that month her hidey hole had become an open air abattoir.
***
Mult’s grandmother had raised her with a simple set of basic skeptical tools for life, and they had served her well for almost forty years.
If shit happens once, shit happens.
If shit happens twice, sometimes that’s just how it is.
If shit happens three times someone is fucking with you.
And that was all well and good and had allowed her to kill many people that had attempted to kill her very successfully, but it had never before been applied to… a whatsit. A thingy. Damnit, she’d never been very good at macrofauna. A uhh. An uhm.
Mult opened up a half-eaten ration and popped her fieldguide, searching by footprint.
Ah, there it was, page…ninety.
A Bosian Anvil. About sixteen feet tall and sixty feet long (eighty with its forelimbs extended fully) and one of only two animals on the planet listed as ‘dangerous to armoured vehicles.’ You could kill them with long-distance precision strikes from the air or low orbit, slow them down with concentrated artillery fire, and sensible infantry tactics was to scatter and hope it ate the least important person.
There was no advice on what to do if one of them turned your hiding place into a garbage can.
She’d have to get rid of the corpse again. God. It was tempting to try and use it as camouflage, but the scavengers would come and make things difficult, and ugh ugh ugh ugh.
She’d do that.
Tomorrow.
It was too late and it was getting dark; the fire would be noticeable, and her legs were killing her. So this was a tactical decision. Right. Not lazy. Right. Tactical.
Tomorrow.
Then Mult passed out, lulled to sleep by the siren songs of chores postponed and wilfully ignorant bliss.
***
She awoke instantly and knew that it was just after four, it was still dark outside, she had to piss, and someone had just rapped something metal against the bunker’s main exit hatch.
“Fuck,” she said aloud in clear breach of mission protocol and immediately wished she hadn’t because the banging stopped immediately.
Well, she might as well screw up every way possible at once and get it over with. Of course that damned carcass had attracted attention; she just hadn’t thought anyone who noticed it would’ve been crazy enough to approach it.
Of course, she had been killing foraging parties, so maybe they were just that hungry.
“Fuck,” she said aloud, because why not and she felt like it. “Fuck.”
At least while she was busy swearing her body had made itself useful, loading up her field kit and emptying her bladder. She clipped together a few things and slapped together a few more and planted four or five packages around her room and one on the door.
They probably wouldn’t set it off unless they were REALLY stupid, but at least she wouldn’t be leaving any useful evidence, and the shockwaves should crush the escape tunnel’s entrance oh right she should probably use it before that happened. Could be painful otherwise.
***
The bunker’s main exit was a solid metal door, designed to hold the enemy’s attention as much as their progress.
The escape tunnel was a scummy dirt-and-mud tube writhing unknowable yards through the soil, just deep enough that it wouldn’t collapse when stepped on unless the thing stepping on it was a Bosian Anvil, in which case Mult ended up pawing her way into a blockage of sloppy earth.
She poked it with her machete. Nope. Solid. Probably collapsed it all the way upstream.
Well, only one way out. How deep had she dug this again? Best not think about it, it won’t help.
She stabbed up. And up. And clawed, too. Grasp and slash and shove and pack down the earth behind her.
There was a deep THUD and she felt as if someone had squeezed her entire body and then let ho. Oh, there went the mines. And probably her air source.
Slash and grab, slash and grab, slash and grab and dig and delve and someone screamed because she’d just carved into her foot from underneath.
“Shh,” said Mult, grabbing the ankle with one hand and stabbing up farther. “it,” she concluded her thought, as she saw seven people turn to look directly at her.
Blood was on her face, but it wasn’t in her eyes. They’d shipped their longguns (thought she’d blown herself up or run for it? maybe). It was almost light on the horizon, and there was no rain.
Those were all very good things but she was probably going to die. Her body didn’t know that yet though, so it violently yanked her longgun out and started shooting.
One, two, which was very good considering how much mud coated her weapon inside and out. But then the only ones left were smart and lucky and they were in cover and she was half in a mud puddle and half behind a wheezing corpse.
Oh well.
The ground didn’t shake, which was why the Bosian Anvil came as a surprise.
It shouldn’t have been, because Mult knew enough basic biology to be aware that any loud noises from a creature that size just walking around meant it was also probably going to break its feet under its own weight.
But she’d seen a lot of movies, and it was amazing how a bad idea could stick with you.
Those were the thoughts she had as she saw two long, long paws come out of the trees, pick up a woman each, and shake them hard enough to snap something important loose.
“Shit,” she said. And then again “shit” for rhythm.
It was bigger than the statistics had made her think it was.
It was also looking directly at her, which made sense because the three remaining soldiers had enacted sensible infantry tactics when confronted with a Bosian Anvil.
Damnit. She’d just read that chapter, and it seemed unfair. Normally her body would’ve taken care of this sort of thing on its own but it was still stuck in a collapsed hole and didn’t want to leave.
The Anvil stepped forwards, gills fluttering, feathers quivering, and it plucked her out of the ground like a carrot and set her down again with all of her limbs and then it picked up the two people she’d shot and started making snuffly noises like a sleeping dog the size of a freight train as it ate them, one after another.
Then it tore the (gun-bitten, explosive-battered) corpse of the Chatterback in half and offered half to her.
***
Sixteen years later the war was over the forest was back to being a national park and Professor Mult had finally managed to have the army fieldguide updated to include the courtship behaviours of the Bosian Anvil, which included leaving carcasses out in the woods for your beloved.
Because even if shit happens and that’s the way it is, some things are nice to know ahead of time.