Intensifying Problems

The squad went into the forest on foot. They soon passed the destroyed tank and again saw the massacred group of soldiers. C noticed that everyone was on edge, looking around and behind themselves every few minutes. C caught himself doing the same thing, as he now felt like he was being watched. The eerie tone made Fredrick and C stick close together. After a while, even the birds were silent, as if they also felt an odd presence in the area. C could not help but think of the destroyed tank, and his mind slowly turned towards the bodies of the soldiers.

"This is giving me a scary sense of deja vu." Fredrick warned, cutting C's train of thought.

"How so?" C asked.

"It's like the front of the hospital all over again."

"I had felt a similar feeling back in the city as well. That ended up with me being chased out of the city by aliens."

One of the soldiers took out a map of the area, and quickly put it away with a sigh. C worried that the action was a sign of a long walk, and now felt defenseless without a rifle.

"Are we heading in the right way?" Fredrick checked.

"We are." One of the soldiers said back with a low voice.

C noticed that the soldier was holding a compass, and was looking at it every now and then.

"You guys don't have a GPS or something of the sort?" C asked.

"Ever since the aliens attacked, we lost all connections to satellites. The only thing we have is local radio and broadcast transmissions."

The soldier explained rather swiftly.

The group slowly fell silent again as they continued along the dirt path through the dense forest. C tried to start up another conversation, but could not think of anything else to say. The silence and uneasiness continued on for what seemed like hours. C then felt a slight rumble in the ground, coming from from far away. C looked at the others, but they seemed oblivious to the strange vibration. C glanced back, and saw only the dense forest.

C listened to small details of the forest to take his mind off of the feeling of paranoia; he noticed the slight crunching of leaves underfoot, and heard the wind whisper through the trees. This put his mind at ease, until he heard the familiar sound of grinding wood. His head jolted back up, and he looked around in panic. The soldiers in the group noticed, and also started to look around. They were on guard for a while, until nothing approached.

"Are you okay, sir?" One of the soldiers asked, still shaking from the commotion.

"I just heard… something." C responded, "I think something is following us."

C and the rest of the group slowly began to walk again. C glanced over the group, and noticed that Fredrick seemed the most out of it. C wanted to say something, but the tone of the area made him think twice about it. C kept walking alongside the soldiers, until he noticed that they had abruptly stopped. He looked up, and saw another destroyed tank, standing motionless in a clearing. The soldiers went towards it to investigate, with C following them.

They investigated nearby area, which was littered with fallen trees. There were no bodies around the area, even inside the tank - which had a massive hole in its hull that was large enough for a person to walk into. C examined the scene and saw a dirt-trail perpendicular to the tank's tracks, which had ended several feet away from where the tank was.

"Something… threw it?" One of the soldiers asked, with a hint of disbelief in their voice.

Another soldier informed the base through radio about the situation, telling them in an excessive amount of detail on the breach in the tank's hull.

"This is- was squad Omega." The soldier explained to the others, "The base is now on high alert: they just dispatched this squad to our location less than half an hour ago."

The soldiers tried to figure out what had happened to the squad, and closely inspected the large hole on the tank.

"The edges of the hole look like they've been melted…" One of the soldiers observed.

"Guys, the tracks." Fredrick pointed out, "They came from… over there"

C looked at where Fredrick was motioning, and saw a line of fallen trees. C approached the broken trees, and saw that they formed what looked like a path for something large enough to walk over them.

"Should we investigate?" C asked, looking around at the rest of the group, "I think that whatever attacked the tank headed in that direction."

One of the soldiers quickly responded in a voice infected with worry, "I think that it's far too dangerous to go and fill in the blanks to that theory. It would be much safer to just continue along the path and reach the base as we planned."

"But if we find it, we could get an idea of what is attacking the area." C explained.

"We were sent out to collect information on the aliens, yes. But we draw the line between collecting information and self-termination. This thing tossed a tank through those trees. What do you think it can do to us?"

The group ventured closer towards the base, walking at a faster pace than before. The birds were still dead silent, and the only audible noise was the sound of clanking gear and the occasional footstep that was made louder by the dried leaves and branches that littered the forest floor. C focused intently on the sounds of the forest, trying to find any natural sound that would calm him down. As he focused, he heard a slight thump, which slowly became louder over time. 

C snapped out of his meditation, and listened in closely. The thumping slowly overwhelmed the sound of the soldiers' gears, and soon was unmistakable. C bumped into one of the soldiers, making them and the rest of the group stop. The rumble was made through the forest in a periodic fashion, and, with the absence of other noises, the soldiers finally identified it.

"Footsteps?" One of the soldiers quietly guessed.

The group quickly scattered into the loose foliage. The force of the footsteps started to shake the trees around them, and the sound resonated through the entire area. C listened carefully to the rumbling and tried to locate the source of it. He heard it coming from his left, from the area they were walking from, and noticed that it was slowly coming closer. As it became even louder, C noticed that the trees' leaves were rustling from a distance away. He looked up, and tried to gauge the distance between the floor and the lowest point of the leaves on the tree next to him, eventually estimating a height of over ten feet.

It took about a minute before the thumping was clearly identified to be from something that had a wide gait and was heavy enough to shake the ground every time it took a step, even with it being as far from the group as it was. It swiftly reached the area close to the group, and C held his breath, along with a couple others. A tree strained and fell nearby. C felt the shockwave, which was strong enough to also shake some leaves out of the trees above him. A massive leg came down to his left, and was placed just a few feet away from him.

Another leg swung past over C, and grounded itself almost five meters away, prompting him to slowly look up and witness a massive creature towering over them. The creature's head was held more than 15 meters above the ground and moved effortlessly through the tree branches, carrying a massive maw that protruded into three curved, tusk-like mandibles. The exteriors of each individual mandible were lined with spikes, and stuck out over three meters from the base of the mouth to their tips. Behind the mouth was a set of antennae-like rods that branched out from its body. The creature kept an awkward gait and eventually revealed that it only had three legs, like the other aliens that C saw in the city. Its rear leg uprooted from the earth, unsheathing the massive spikes that were assumed to be its pedal digits, and swung past the group. C looked at the soldiers, who silently gazed at the behemoth.

The creature passed by in mere moments, and by the time the group was able to speak, it was already vanishing into the distance. The group rejoined at the cleared area, which had the shrubs that grew in it trampled beyond recovery, and they almost immediately started to talk amongst themselves.

"The hell was that?"

"The thing pushed over a tree like it was nothin'!"

"How'd that thing walk? It only had three legs!"

"Hey, guys… Isn't it going towards the base?"

The group continued the commotion, even when the group leader tried to silence them.

"What do we do now? If it reaches the base-"

Through the noise, C felt his vision start to shake, until he realized that the floor around him was vibrating. The group fell silent, as they heard a malicious growl from down the road.

"Its coming back?" One of the soldiers said with a shaken voice.

The group scrambled back behind the bushes that lined the path. The creature's footsteps became louder, until C saw one of its feet from behind the foliage. The creature stopped on the path adjacent to where they were hiding.

The creature swayed its head around the area near where the soldiers were, its intentions made obvious once the antennae-like structures behind its jaws started to move erratically. It wandered around the trees, with each footstep causing the ground around it to shake violently, until it suddenly stopped in place again. The soldiers aimed their guns at the beast, as it slowly opened its massive maw.

The creature's head snapped down and grabbed a soldier by the strap of their backpack with the tip of its jaws. With a swift motion, it flung the soldier's powerless body through the air, hitting one of the trees with a audible snap. In that very moment, the other soldiers fired a barrage of shots at the creature's body while retreating to a distance away from the beast. The creature trudged past the hail of bullets,

ignoring the sparks that they created as they impacted its hide. Its head motioned erratically, until it locked onto another soldier. As it closed in at a terrifying speed, a grenade was lobbed past the creature. The ensuing explosion knocked over a few trees behind it, throwing off the creature's attention. The creature stormed towards the area of the explosion, going between C and the rest of the group.

C scurried past the creature, barely avoiding its legs, and caught up with the rest of the group. The soldiers had no choice but to retreat away from the creature, choosing to do so while it was occupied with the fallen trees. One of the soldiers pulled out their radio and tried to contact the base. After about five minutes of silence and about a kilometer of running most of the soldiers were expecting the worst. However, despite the lack of response from the nearby base, they decided to keep going in its direction to confirm its status.

The group approached the base at a much quicker pace than before. In record time, they reached the general area, having to wander for several minutes to make up for their sudden relocation.

"That's the base?"

C looked around, and a feeling of dread filled him again. The base was in ruins, with every single concrete building having its roof blasted open. There was no sign of people anywhere, not even a single body or dropped weapon. Oddly enough, most of the supplies remained untouched, unlike the devastated buildings that they were inside of, allowing the soldiers to scavenge all the working supplies. C also looked through the supplies, taking several cans of food.

"What happened here?" A soldier asked, "That thing shouldn't of made it here yet at the speed it was going."

The question remained unanswered, but the soldier went quickly back to looking through the supplies. After a while, Fredrick went to C with two rifles in hand.

"Here. We found a couple extras lying around."

"That's good." C said, realizing only in hindsight that he should have expected the gift, "Thanks a ton."

A few of the soldiers studied the damages sustained by the roof of the buildings.

"These were explosions. Pretty big ones, too." One soldier noted.

"Guess the base was attacked at the same time we were." Another soldier concluded.

"Explains why the base was abandoned in a hurry." The previous soldier pieced together.