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  DESERT SWARM

  After his superior officers are killed in action, Corporal Josiah Key assumes command of the 3rd Battalion, Marine Raiders. In the tiny village of Shabhut, Yemen, while trying to put the blast on ISIS forces, an even deadlier enemy emerges: ancient, unreasoning creatures who tear into both U.S. troops and terrorists without mercy, leaving brutally dismembered corpses in their wake.

  They are known as the Idmonarchne Brasieri, giant prehistoric spiders roused from millennia-long slumber by power-mad terrorists. These aptly-named ‘Arachnosaurs’ are hungry. They’re angry. And they have declared war against all of humanity . . . whose days might just be numbered unless Key and his unit can stop them.

  ARACHNOSAUR

  Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

  ARACHNOSAUR

  A Team Cerberus Thriller

  Richard Jeffries

  LYRICAL UNDERGROUND

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Lyrical Underground books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2017 by Richard Jeffries

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  First Electronic Edition: December 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0500-7

  eISBN-10: 1-5161-0500-1

  First Print Edition: December 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0502-1

  ISBN-10: 1-5161-0502-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground.

  Dante Alighieri

  You gotta watch your fuckin’ step.

  Josiah Key

  Prologue

  Poised majestically beneath a blazing midday sun, the spotted beast stood half as high as the tall tree, its four spindly legs holding a long and graceful neck directly below the clustered branches. There, its elongated horse-like mouth pulled leaves from those strong limbs, causing the great arms to spring a little with each bite. Sometimes, leaves dropped to the ground. The animal’s flat-topped teeth ground the foliage to pulp while the eyes looked ahead at the next bite. The large, flared nostrils handled security for the prehistoric creature, never resting, sniffing for predators—the great cats and wolves, and also the pack-hunters who came from distant caves in the cliff and walked upright and carried pointed sticks that flew through the air with fatal precision.

  Other beasts stood with the largest one, ten in the herd. The adults chewed their meals from other trees, not bothering to spit out the grubs and insects that also feasted on the leaves. Now and then a guttural sound would warn one animal not to impinge on the branch of another. If that failed, a head would be lowered and the antlers waggled at the intruder. Invariably, the animals would part and resume their feast as if nothing had happened.

  The younger, smaller beasts fed on the fallen leaves or on the less-tasty grasses that were nearly knee-high. Stirred by the cool gentle wind, which also ruffled the short but bristled coat of the mammals, the grasses told the herd which way to move so that the scent of the killers would reach them long before disemboweling claws or crippling teeth did—or those sharpened weapons wielded by the two-legged pack-hunters, their tips dark and painfully hard from the fire-tempering they were given.

  Not far away, a river flowed from hills covered with thick layers of ice. It was a new and vital river cutting a new channel, fed by the melting glaciers, and it brought minerals that enriched the plains and allowed the herd to prosper, along with those who fed off them.

  The waters also nourished the roots of the trees and those creatures that lived underground, nested among them.

  * * * *

  Clad in the spotted skins of the very animals they were hunting, their feet covered in viscera that had been pounded into a cushiony softness, three burly men watched the herd from behind boulders that had been left by the retreating ice. By gestures with hands and head, and by rudimentary language—a humming, hissing mss for the target, and a blowing, popping expression of puh to signal the attack—the trio had been successful in hunting mss as well as other big, open targets. As long as the prey did not get much of a head start, the hurled spears could outrace them, wound them so that the men could run forward and gut them with teeth they had wrested from the huge skull of a frightful thing. There were not so many killers like that still alive here. The ice had chased them to the south before living memory and there was still a strong chill in the air so those hunters had not yet returned. The new flowering of the landscape had brought the creatures that fed on plants, however; they were increasingly plentiful. These bipedal hunters, who could retreat to caves for warmth, came with them. Even now, their women and children waited in the cliff-face. The opening had been covered with mist when they left with the rising sun. Now, behind them, it was just a jagged black smudge in the face of a slope.

  The men were on the ground, crawling closer but circling round and round so the shifting winds would not carry their scents to the herd. It was especially hard on the knees, which were bleeding; another smell to deal with, as if their matted hair and lice-infested armpits and groins and sweat-coated backs were not enough. Insects buzzed around them, some stirred by their passage, others drawn by their rank odor and blood. The men blew at the pesky pssts, named after the sounds they made, and shook their heads to unseat those that landed, but remained focused on their targets.

  Mss…puh, whispered one of the men through the tangled whiskers of his beard. He pointed his spear. This creature, the biggest.

  The others grunted in a mix of sounds that blended assent with excitement. One covered his mouth as the mss looked in their direction, sniffing. The three men stopped and remained perfectly still. They heard thumping in their chests and the sound the grasses made when the wind moved over them and the growling of the waters as they raced past them. But they themselves uttered no sound.

  And then the shriek of a mss at the far end of the herd brought them all to sudden attention. Alert but as yet unafraid, they looked that way, squinting and shielding their eyes from the high sun. So did the other members of the herd, some jerking as if to run but then waiting to make sure there was danger. It could be just a hole in the ground that had swallowed a hoof, or a bite from something that writhed or flew.

  Then the creature that had cried out did so again, a far horrible cry that drove its muzzle straight up and wide and had it screaming into the leaves. Its body shook from side to side in jerky moves. The m
en had seen that kind of movement before, when beasts were caught in the thick, gooey, black pits that pulled food to its death and sometimes spit up furry little dead things.

  But there were no such pits here. The men watched and then started as something new was added to the giant’s convulsions: sprays of red that shot so far and high and wide the trees and its neighbors were covered with it.

  The mss went down with a solid thump and now the other animals fled but they did not get far. Not quite as one, but close enough: the beasts were moving, then they stopped as if they were stuck, and then they went down in a rain of shrieks and blood.

  The men looked from one to another, hooting and huffing and trying to decide what to do. There was easy meat out there, but there was also whatever was pulling them down.

  One of the men crept forward very cautiously, looking, listening, sniffing, trying to peer through the thick, moving grasses.

  Something came charging toward him. It was a mass of black with spots of blood and what looked like too-many moving limbs and teeth, all of them, and it, growing larger by the moment. The man didn’t decide to turn and run, he just did it. And on his feet, not his knees, though he never got fully upright. There was a severe burning pain in his ankles and just below his knees, which didn’t last long since his ankles and lower legs suddenly vanished. He fell on his face, his hands spread before him, and he began to scream into the cool earth as his legs disappeared up to the hips. The skin itself didn’t vanish: it flew up in the air in tiny pieces, like bits of rock from a volcano, streams and beads of blood arcing behind it like lava. He was shuddering violently, then, no longer entirely conscious of being pulled apart and eaten still-alive like the mss and, now, like his two companions.

  Splats of falling skin and viscera lightly accented the screams that raced through the field like the roaring river. And then, very quickly, there was only the river.

  Dismembered bodies of mss and men pulsated in the grasses, the dark soil soaking blood and bile as warm-blooded life passed from the plain. The insects, however, did not return to the grasses or alight on the carcasses.

  Not yet.

  Below them, things still moved, still tore into flesh, still snipped at sinew and bone until the marrow bled out. Things moved around and over the remains, clicking noises rising as they found soft tissue and eyes and aggressively tore back skin that kept them from their morsels. Before the sun had moved too much farther, nothing resembling either of the evolved species remained. It was just a mass of gore that would soon feed the insects and brave little rodents and the seeds that fell from the new, flowering plants that spotted the land.

  By the time the sun set, the grasses were once again moving as before, the landscape was quiet, and the killers, having fed, had returned to their nest beneath the ground.

  Chapter 1

  Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Goodman’s head exploded with such force, and so near Josiah Key’s face, that a piece of the commanding officer’s helmet smacked the corporal’s forehead. It knocked Key unconscious, despite his own strapped-on flack helmet.

  Key had no idea how long he was out. It could’ve been a second, it could’ve been an eternity. He might even be dead, he couldn’t be absolutely sure. What he woke up to certainly seemed like perdition; hell a la Yemen. Sergeant Morton Daniels’ contorted face filled his vision, bellowing at him. Then Joe noticed that all around the mans’ swarthy, mottled, sweaty head was a halo of fire.

  Goodman’s brain and body started moving the moment consciousness touched him. Grabbing a fistful of Daniels’ curly, black, naturally greasy hair, Key dragged himself up while moving the other man’s head out of his field of vision.

  Key immediately regretted it. His waking ears and opened eyes were immediately filled by the sound and sight of all-encompassing enemy fire.

  At once, releasing the hair of his companion, Goodman’s M249 Squad Automatic Weapon was up, seeking targets at the same moment Daniels’s M240 machine gun was doing the same in the opposite direction.

  Key started barking as soon as he found his voice. “What the hell happ—”

  But as usual with the sarge, he was already answering just as loudly.“One sec, nothing, next sec, shit-storm!”

  Key could now see that. The dead corporal had warned them things could always get messy as soon as they left base, but not this messy. This messy challenged even Key’s well-developed imagination.

  “Take cover!” he bellowed, his M249 SAW finding nothing but ricochets, reports, and detonations to target. Where the hell was the enemy?

  “Copy that!” Daniels yelled back. “Any suggestions where?”

  Trust Sarge D to crack wise even in a firestorm. Key remembered that was one of the reasons he’d gravitated toward the man in basic, despite his rep of having a bite far worse than his bark. But, strangely, that was just about all Key could remember. As if God was scrunching the edges of his brain, his memories started dissipating like popping soap bubbles.

  “Find a friggin’ hole and fall into it!” he yelled, getting increasing anxious and annoyed in equal measure.

  He felt Morty’s huge, rough hand grabbing his arm, and the next thing he knew they were both flat on their backs in a shallow divot created by a tank tread. It was hardly enough to give them cover, but it would have to do.

  One question, he thought. Where’s the fucking tank? Then God started rubbing petroleum jelly around the edges of his eyes as well.

  Key tried to focus at the way the front of his boots poked up against the divot’s lip, expecting to see his toes blown off at any second. But it didn’t take more than another second for him to realize what was happening to him.

  “Shit,” he said over the whomping going on all around them. “I’ve been conked.”

  “What?” Daniels complained as a tree limb shattered above them, scratching their faces with jagged bark. “Not again!”

  Yeah, that’s right, Key managed to recall. That’s where he had heard the “conked” term before. The base doc had said it when he had diagnosed Key’s previous, original, concussion. And doc had given him the self-diagnostic list then, too.

  “Symptoms check.” Key grunted miserably. “I’m nauseous.”

  “You’re nauseous!” Daniels snapped. “I’m nauseous! Anybody’d be nauseous in this shit!”

  There was a vicious whine just above them, and Key could feel a wave of heat make a line from his forehead to his crotch. The thing causing it just missed them before continuing on to smash through an already crumbling wall fifty feet beyond.

  FGM-148 Javelin, Joe automatically assumed. Nice that some hard-won memories defied even concussions. But whether the anti-tank missile was fired by the good or the bad guys was anybody’s guess.

  “Headache, dizzy, ringing in my ears,” Key continued, trying to stave off total amnesia.

  “Okay, okay!” Daniels grumbled. “You oughta know. What do you want from me?”

  “Memory loss growing, need your help.”

  “Christ, Joe.” The honest concern in Daniels voice was music above the cacophony. “Do you even know you’re Joe?”

  “Yeah,” Key answered, struggling to be present, feeling stronger already.

  “Tell me.”

  “We’re 3rd Battalion, Marine Raiders, M Company, eighty-five strong.”

  “Not anymore,” Daniels reported with his usual lack of empathy. “Heavy defensive fire. Surprisingly heavy.”

  That comment let Key know the attack must’ve been seventh level of hell heavy. Daniels prided himself on taking the worst in stride. “What are we down to?”

  “Last time I could check, less than fifty. Sergeant major shot to hell. Lieutenant colonel just blew up in your face.”

  Key gritted his teeth, then hazarded a quick look around. He returned to his prone position with his cracked skull thankfully still just cracked. But he could still n
ot distinguish enemy from friendly fire. Worse, he couldn’t find any human source of the shit-storm. “Where is everybody?”

  “Damned if I know,” Daniels said.

  “Where’s comm?”

  “No live communication for a coupla minutes now.”

  “What? So who’s commander now?

  “Near as I can tell, you,” Daniels said. Then he added sarcastically, “God help us.”

  Key ignored the comment, but couldn’t disagree. Finally made it to chief with a nice new concussion as a reward. Even so, he still could remember that his rep was “Joe Cool.” According to Daniels, he never lost it. No time to start now.

  First things first, he heard the father inside him instruct.

  “Where are we?” he yelled at Daniels in a tone that broached no sarcasm.

  “Outside of Shabhut,” Daniels spat back, then couldn’t help elaborating. “Well-fucking named. A more miserably shabby mound of huts I’ve never seen.” Then, when Key didn’t answer, he felt compelled to add, “Outside of Aden, inside of Yemen!”

  Joe remembered where that was. Good sign. “What are we doing here?”

  “Orders. Code C3,” Daniels reported, then added with just a tinge of doubt, “Do you at least know what that is?”

  Clean the town.

  “Yeah, I know what that is,” Joe answered, struggling to keep misery out of his voice. “But the town seems to be cleaning us.”

  Key twisted in place, looking in every direction for a sign of anything or anyone who could help. He saw nothing but smoke, dust, and strafing. But, above the wining, sizzling bullet noises, he heard a growing, grinding, thundering sound just as the ground beneath him began to shake.

  The tank? He both wondered and hoped. Had to be a tank. If so, had to be our side. Enemy didn’t have…!

  “Fuckaduck!” Daniels bellowed at the same moment the sarge’s huge paw dragged Key up. “ASS!”

  Within seconds of reaching his feet, Key knew Daniels wasn’t referring to their butts, or even suggesting in his usual subtle way that they move theirs. He was using the age-old term for “asset”—one with a lot of firepower.