Free Future Winds by Kevin Laymon

Two men got impaled and bled out on the ground while their comrades dismantled the culprits with hailing energy beams, lasers, and railguns.
    Behind one of the fallen insects was one of the creatures Leon and Kaito had engaged in the cave just earlier in the day. It sprayed liquid all over three men as they fired at it, ripping it to pieces. The men were quick to clench their faces and fall to the ground screaming in agony as their skin bubbled and burned away.
    Abram bellowed out in the distance, a cry of bloodlust, as he swung his war hammer, collecting piles of dead insects. Despite his success, he was getting swarmed and overrun. Four of the locust jumped on him, wrestling him to the ground. He dropped his weapon and fought back with his massive fists, breaking them apart with his bare hands until three more joined in to help plunge the giant down under the ground.
    Leon killed dozens of the insects trying to make his way to any nearby comrade. A rookie soldier, young boy no older than twenty, was his closest fighting ally just a few yards away. Leon made his way to him, dropping enemies with accurate shots to their face, one after another. He reached the ally just as a locust poked the boy straight through the neck with a long, sharp blade. Leon dropped the bug, tearing its face, neck, and shoulders off in a hail of fire then looked down to the boy who clenched his neck as if he could stop the bleeding that gushed freely like a fountain and drowned him where he lay.
    While maintaining direct eye contact with the boy, Leon quickly raised one of his pistols over the kids face and fired twice. He figured the least he could do was give him a quick, painless death before he moved forward in the slaughter for survival.
    Tyler and Aries advanced the side flank gunning down one after another in a perfectly executed sequence, but they would never reach Leon in time.
    The bugs simply would not stop coming. As soon as one died, two more would emerge from the ground to take its place.
    His pistols were dangerously close to overheating. It wasn’t a matter of if it happened, but rather when. He glanced down to the heat index indicator on the side of his weapons. The meters had reached fully into the red hazard zone. He had no choice but to keep firing, gambling the risk of his firearms exploding in his hand outweighed the other option of allowing himself to get overwhelmed by the giant insects.
    He could feel the heat radiating off the weapons. His instincts begged him to call out to Scorpio, but the bot was gone and presumably dead. The pistols stung his fingers and began melting away his gloves as he continued to drop more of the locusts.
    Just as all seemed lost, surrounded by over a dozen of the things and his death inevitably drawing ever so near, a shot rang out crackling across the sky like lightning. In the smallest of nanoseconds, a path was fully cleared ahead of him. Nothing but smoldering mush lay on the ground, a clear and present runway for escape.
    The aftershock boom felt as though it blew Leon’s eardrums from his head. His entire face was ringing and in a slight daze, Leon saw Kaito was off in the distance, peaking his face up above the scope of his sniper rifle, barrel still smoking. He seemed to mouth the words ‘run’.
     
     
    ***
     
    Aisha slashed down one after another. She was mostly invisible to them, thus held an immeasurable tactical advantage. Her killing spree would get cut short by a large sack of a rotting larva, seemingly confused, as it witnessed its comrades falling to the ground, getting their ligaments ripped apart by some incomprehensible, invisible force. In panic it spewed acid in all directions before it.
    Pisces got engulfed in most of the spray and Aisha raised her hand to shield her face from what was left incoming through the air.
    The liquid covered her left hand and forearm. Very quickly her armor, her clothing, her skin and bone was eaten alive by this acid. She shrieked in pain as