The weapons he gave us seemed like over kill for what we were after. We needed high powered rifles for a few caterpillars? There was more to this than we were told.
We were dropped in by plane, landing in the parking lot of the only Inn within the small town of Arbing; Rott am Inn. We all shuffled quickly out of the plane and it slowly lifted into the sky. Our only escape just left.
Luckily we had radios.
"Hey, Tim?!", John nearly screamed into the radio.
"OW! Not so loud, I can hear you fine." His voice was fuzzy but it was there. Our only way out of this place was talking to him, not that I didn't trust him. I just didn't trust the information we'd gotten from Patrick, and I suspected that the second we became a liability, these radios would suddenly stop.
What can I say, my trust is very limited.
My turn to talk, “Tim.”
"Yeah?"
"Do you think you could do me a favor and check what kind of information Patrick has on this place?"
"Don't trust him either? I've already started worming my way in to his more . . . sensitive files. When I learn anything, I’ll let you know."
"Thanks."
The town looked normal besides the lack of people, and the occasional large mass of webbing the size of an ice cream truck. As we made our way outside the inn’s parking lot we came across one and, like the scientist he is, Robby was the first person to go over and began examining the fibers.
"Wow, would you look at this thing?", he could barely contain his excitement, "What if they're man eating caterpillars? Then we'd have to watch where we sit because one of them might nibble their way up your a-"
"Hey guys?", I'm pretty sure that everyone was grateful for the interruption. Robby is like that; always turning everything he can in to a very disturbing image. It was one of his quirks. Nobody enjoyed it, but they didn't stop it either because then Robby wouldn't be Robby.
"Yeah?", John responded while we all helped Robby collect some samples of the webbing.
"Okay, I think I've figured out why he sent us in with the kind of firepower he did. Apparently his "friend" was actually a squadron of armed men. He'd sent them in to retrieve a sample and document the situation. Seems they had perfect radio contact until they started to take pictures of the caterpillar nests, which I presume is the large cocoon that you people are poking at."
Patrick was keeping information from us, which was to be expected, but just pissed me off. Right now we could be working toward our real goal when instead we're miles away from home looking at the nests of killer caterpillars. Still, Patrick knew more about this stuff than we did.
"With the amount of nests we've found, these are going to create hundreds of butterflies." John had opened a hole in the nest and was staring at the writhing caterpillars that filled its interior.
Looking in, Robby laughed, "These are aren't gonna be butterflies. They're gonna be moths. I recognize the type. I've never heard of them making nests this size though."
By the time we noticed that it had gotten unusually dark it was too late. What ever had blocked out the sun landed on the ground with a thump. A blast of wind sent us all flying in different directions all at once.
I felt the radio slip out of my hand as I smashed into the upstairs of the inn.
I tried to lift my head but decided to black out instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment