Before he could finish, Adira was up and sprinting in a zigzag to the nest. She leaped in.

Andy nudged Matt. “Bit of a risk taker, huh?”

“Goddamnit.” Abrams got to his feet, sprinting. Hartogg came in fast from the right.

They arrived at the same time, with Matt, Andy and Tania in fast behind them. They stood looking down into the small depression. Adira walked around the next, kicking over some scraps of clothing, weapons, ammunition, and a dusty pair of field glasses.

“Nothing.” She looked hard at the SEAL.

“What did you see, Hartogg?” Abrams said, frowning.

“Corner-eye movement.” He shrugged. “Bit like…a lump, or something. Thought it was…” He stopped, and then shook his head. “Where are they, then?”

Abrams looked back at where Adira stood holstering her gun. There were no bodies. He slowly turned to scan the landscape.

Hartogg jogged to the second sniper nest, and called back to the group. “Empty as well – all gone.”

Abrams lifted his field glasses. “Someone’s out there – must have snuck in and recovered the bodies from right under our noses.”

Adira shook her head, also turning slowly to look out at the desert. “I do not think this. There were a dozen bodies. If there were enough men to carry that many away, there were enough to ambush us. They would leave the bodies and try and kill us.”

“Well, they didn’t just walk away,” Abrams said quietly.

Adira kicked at a pile of clothing. A football-sized creature scuttled free, its claw-like legs moving quickly.

“Shitza.” She pointed her gun at it.

“What the fuck is that?” Andy said, his face twisted in horror.

The thing was like a giant slater bug with armor-plated segments and way too many legs. It stopped its bid for freedom and instead seemed to stick to the ground. It started to sink into it, shuddering and twisting, and just before it disappeared into the soil, an eye opened on its back – not a chitinous bulb, or multi-faceted lens, but instead a brown eye, a human eye, with pupil and white around it.

In another second, there was just a lump in the soil. Adira used her boot to kick at the small mound – the thing had already sunk below the top layer.

“Was that…was that some sort of gross scarab? They’re carnivorous, aren’t they?” Andy said, his voice high.

“Yes and no.” Matt came down into the small depression and kneeled by the hole Adira had just made. He picked up a discarded blade and started to dig into the soil: it struck nothing solid, but when he pulled the blade back it was coated in black goo. He sniffed it and then flicked it off. “They’re flesh eaters, but the biggest can only grow to about five inches, I think; that thing was a foot long and had about ten legs. It looked like some sort of deformed aberration. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Matt turned, his mind leaping back to the Syrian doctor and his unsettling texts. “Perhaps no one has seen it before. Remember Albadi’s quote? ‘The other vermin of the dark deep would rise, the lice upon’ or something.”