The battle scene was a mess that forced him to stop in his tracks to take it in. August wanted to help everyone at once and couldn’t decide where to go first. Slupman screamed again. The pillar he’d been using as cover had been obliterated, and he lay with an arm pinned beneath the rubble. He shot at anything that came near with his free hand and pistol.

The other pillars hadn’t fared any better. All four had crumbled. West now stood on the little shop's roof, not nearly as hidden as he’d been before. He shot at any bug that came close and helped Slupman whenever the area around the shop was clear. General Wolf and Colonel Belmont took cover behind the overturned van. Belmont was shouting something and trying to spring forward while the general held her back with a firm grip.

Rosek stood firm in the same place she’d been when August had run off. Twitching corpses piled around her, but the horde was overwhelming. Each blow or shot she delivered was desperate as the next dolo was there even before the current one was dealt with. The mech suit showed impressive resistance to the dolo charge, but it didn’t look like it could last much longer.

Sterling was thriving. He stood on top of an old car that had no wheels, spraying nearby dolo with green foam that sizzled through their hard carapace and slowed them immediately. A dolo charged the vehicle. Its twitchy legs burned as it ran through the puddle of foam. Sterling jumped as the beast crashed into the driver’s side door. He landed on a car that was moved half a foot and dented the roof in the process. The dolo was doused in foam before it could reverse to charge again.

August scanned the battlefield a few times, frozen with indecision. He’d decided on helping Slupman until the mech suit toppled in the edge of his limited peripherals. A dolo had caught her in the legs from one direction, while another had used the corpses of its kin as a ramp to crash into Rosek’s chest.

The creature stationed itself atop the fallen mech and rained a number of wild blows of its horn down upon the face shield. August dashed toward them. His leg hurt now. A few dolo caught his sent as he finally joined the battle. He disposed of them easily with the skybeam. The white beam from his rifle was enough to blow a massive chunk off the creatures, and he left a few crackling husks in his wake.

Rosek was already back on her feet by the time he got there. The suit never failed to impress August. He’d seen many in action during training, but to see it out in the field was something else. He understood now why his friend Manny had always wanted to build one so bad.

“What are you doing here?” Rosek shouted at him. Her barely visible face twisted in anger behind her cracked face shield. “Go help Slupman!”

August fired at a dolo that had been charging at her while she spoke. The creature erupted into a yellow mist as pieces of hard chitin rained down around them. Perfect shot. He nodded and ran off toward the shattered pillars. The sound of Rosek mowing down more dolo played like a melody behind him.

Slupman pointed the pistol at the rookie when he first saw him. He pulled it away immediately and swallowed hard. August blasted a few creatures in the vicinity and crouched beside the engineer to assess his situation. Not good. The rubble that pinned his arm was heavy. Massive blocks of concrete that would take two men to lift. Unless…

August pulled out his pistol and aimed at the slab on the engineer’s arm. Slupman’s eyes shot open. “Are you crazy?”

“I can’t lift it,” August said. “I’ve got to shatter it.”

“You’ll blow my arm off!”

“Maybe,” August smiled.

Slupman wasn’t in the mood for humor.

“I can tell your arms right here.” August tapped the end of his pistol barrel on the far left of the slab. “I’ll shoot right here, good?”

Slupman eyed the pistol, now tapping the far right of his prison. He wrinkled his face and nodded despite himself. He slammed his lids shut and turned away.

August glanced around to make sure there were no immediate threats, then fired the pistol. A small white beam pierced the concrete. The area around the puncture brightened and turned incandescent just as it blew apart.

Slupman’s arm came free, and it wasn’t long before he was wailing in agony.

“It’s been pinned under that thing for a while,” August said.

“No shit!” A line of drool dripped from Slupman’s pain-crazed mouth.

“Come on,” August lifted the engineer to his feet and supported him with a shoulder. “We’ve got to get you to Belmont.”

A few yards away from the gas pumps, a square of concrete brighter than the rest caught August’s attention. Three circles of nearly black concrete ran along the top of the lighter square. It must’ve been where the gas tank sat underground if it was anything like the fueling stations in the lower districts back home. A dolo charged onto it and looked around, desperate to gore something with its horn. August fired two beams into it from his pistol. The dolo didn’t fare much better than the concrete slab had.

They hobbled along at a slow pace. August’s skybeam was secure on his back. His free hand gripped the pistol, and his head swiveled as they moved through the thick of the action. Dalton West nailed anything that even looked their way, and the general started doing the same once he spotted them. Belmont beamed when she saw them. She must’ve been trying to go to Slupman when Wolf had been holding her back.

The medic couldn’t contain herself any longer. She shot from her cover and supported Slupman’s other shoulder when they were about a dozen feet from the van. “I’ll take it from here,” she said.

August nodded, let go of Slupman, who was still groaning in pain and holstered his pistol in favor of the skybeam. He looked to Rosek first. The mech’s pile of corpses was nearly as tall as her now. There weren’t many of them left. It looked like they were going to survive their first battle with nothing but an injured arm to worry about.

“Another wave!” West shouted from the roof.

August followed the old sniper’s gaze. He ran to where he could see around Rosek’s pile and saw what the sniper had seen. Another charge of about fifty dolo, the same rhino-type ones they were currently fighting, rushed their way.

“We won’t be able to handle them,” the general said. “My gun’s at less than half juice.”

August looked at the gauge on his skybeam. Sixty-five percent. Now sixty-six thanks to the blaring sun. It wouldn’t last long.

“I’ve got about two or three shots left, myself,” West called from the roof.

August remembered something. He dashed to Sterling, who’d switched to using his pistol. His leg screamed in pain now. August was going to ask why the exterminator had switched to the smaller weapon but noticed the tank on his back was half depleted. He approached the exterminator’s beat-up car, careful to avoid the puddles of foam that sizzled even on the concrete, and called his name.

“Leave me alone, rookie,” Sterling said, not even sparing him a glance.

“Is there any way to get the bugs to gather somewhere specific?” August asked despite Sterling’s temperament.

“What do you mean?”

“If we wanted all of them to group up right here where I stand, for example.”

“Yeah, we could do that,” Sterling said. “But I don’t know why you’d want to. It’s easier to deal with them when they’re isolated. Having them all in one spot like that…” He exhaled sharply. “They’d be able to run right through that shop. We should be thankful these bastards haven’t learned how to work together.”

“How could we do it?” August persisted.

Sterling sighed, impatient. “A drop of pheromones.”

“Do you have any?”

Sterling glared at him. “What are you up to?”

“If you have any, give them to me,” August said, trying hard to keep his voice calm and respectful while speaking to his superior. “There’s no time to explain.” There was enough time to explain his plan, but he feared that the colonel would reject it outright if he heard it.

Sterling reluctantly fished a small bottle from his belt similar to the ones in Belmont’s medic bag. He held it at arm's length.

“Toss it,” August said.

The second wave had already clashed with Rosek, and the ones that managed to get by her wouldn’t take long getting to the rest of the squad.

“Are you insane?” Sterling snapped. “If this thing drops, we’d attract every dolo outside the dome. We’d be raped, so, so violently, then eaten.”

August shuddered. “Fine,” he stepped over a puddle of sizzling foam, snatched the bottle, and made for the pillar that had trapped Slupman.

“Just one drop!” Sterling called after him.

August rushed to the pillar, spared two seconds to catch his breath and check on Rosek. She was overwhelmed. He couldn’t even see the mech suit through the mass of black and brown chitin and horns.

He popped the lid off the bottle, and an eerie silence came over the battlefield the moment he did. He looked up. Each dolo in the vicinity stared at him with glassy, lifeless eyes. His skin crawled. The dolo advanced. He overturned the bottle and waited for a drop to come. A plastic lid was fashioned over the bottle opening with only a hole the width of a hair from which the clear liquid inside could pour out from. A lonely bulb of liquid formed but clung to the bottle. The dolo were near. The droplet refused to let go.

“Get out of there, Ace!” The general shouted from his van.

His plan had to work. He smashed the bottle against the square of lighter concrete and ran back toward the rest of the squad. Sterling stood atop his dented car, pale as a ghost, his jaw slack and heavy.

“Go to Rosek!” August cried to the colonels and general.

“What are you thinking?” Sterling could barely produce a sound from his tight throat.

“Please, trust me!” August shouted again.

They listened. It was why the rookie had refused to share his plan. They couldn’t deny him now that it had been put in action. The general knew that indecision was worse than a bad decision many times, and at this point in the rookie’s plan, they might as well let him see it through.

August was fully aware of the consequences should his plan fail. He’d be dishonorably discharged and sent back home to drink in the abandoned mall garage with Manny and the boys. Or he’d be killed, depending on how bad it went.

Dalton West, his face as white as Sterling’s, hopped off the roof and joined the squad as they made their way toward Rosek, who stood alone amongst a graveyard of dolo. Belmont had been in the middle of installing a splint on Slupman’s arm. Her narrow eyes hid none of her displeasure of being interrupted mid-procedure.

August ran the other way, as fast as he could with the throbbing leg. He returned to Slupman’s pillar and waited for the crew to be at a safe distance. What is a safe distance? I’m going to get myself killed, aren’t I?

He watched the mess before him for a while. Over a hundred dolo conferred over the shards of the pheromone bottle, wrestleing and goring each other with horns and mandibles. Some raped others, while others masticated the nearest leg, they could find. One even chewed its own leg clean off. August’s stomach churned.

He looked around for a safe spot. The roof where West had been stationed was his only chance. He needed somewhere with lots of shelter and a good vantage point. He left the pillar. Not a single dolo looked his way. He sprinted for the makeshift stairway that had formed from all the rubble and climbed.

The entire town was visible from up there. Why did I have to go running around town like that before? West could have seen that we weren’t surrounded from up here. He let it slide. Even generals forgot things sometimes. Besides, he hadn’t thought of it either.

The view from the roof made the battlefield look like a madman’s painting. Here were busted vehicles, a ring of burning green foam around Sterling’s car, dolo blood and corpses all over, and the pile of rubble that had once been a functioning gas station.

He aimed the MoShun Skybeam assault rifle. He could barely see the lighter colored concrete beneath the mess of dolo that squirmed atop it, but he knew it was there. He pulled the trigger. A long, white beam zipped from the rifle and pierced one of the dolo closest to the middle and, hopefully, the concrete beneath it. August dove behind the foot-high wall and put his hands over his head, hoping to any god who might’ve been watching that he was far enough from the—

BOOM!

The explosion nearly ripped the bones from his skin. The little shop heaved and slumped forward immediately. He pushed himself against the short wall as hard as he could, knowing full well his life was in the hands of fate.

The building stopped moving. The sound was gone, though a terrible low rumble shook the earth for a while after. That’s when the chunks came. Meat, chitin, and concrete slabs precipitated down onto the slumped roof like hail from the depths of Helrim.

Some pieces of concrete fell through the roof. The ones that didn’t stay where they landed. The meat was different. A dozen slabs of moist, yellow flesh, coated in a viscous lubricant, slid toward him as if it were as hungry as its host had been before death.

The meat was only a few feet away when he finally risked getting up and moving out of the way. He stepped aside and watched as the meat slid and slapped against the little wall, leaving a trail of what looked like puss behind it.

The squad cheered when they saw him. He couldn’t help but smile stupidly when he saw them—a few with their arms in the air. He flinched when he saw the massive hole his plan had left near the pumps. There wasn’t a single sign of a dolo anywhere near the explosion. His plan had worked.

Perhaps now he’d finally get the respect he deserved. He spotted the swarm of flyers high above the squad just as they’d begun their descent.