“Zap him again.”

Yasmin reluctantly pushed the remote.  The little dog yelped, pawing at his collar.  He settled for a moment, then voiced a mournful whimper.

“I hate doing that.”  Yasmin’s thumb slipped off the remote.  She scanned the perimeter of the parking lot with her thermal optic.

“The worm’s gotta wiggle, or the fish won’t bite.”  Diego’s deadpan words were so low, Yasmin barely caught them.  The barrel of his heavy caliber rifle poked out of the firing slit in the wall of the steel shipping container they were using as a hide.

In the middle of the overgrown parking lot, Scout, a scruffy, eleven-pound terrier mix, sniffled at the wet air, ears twitching at every shift of the wind.  A long, fluorescent yellow tether ran to a steel eyelet bolted into the cracked asphalt.

Yasmin and Diego crouched shoulder-to-shoulder, surrounded by the smell of old diesel and wet ash.

“It just seems cruel.” Yasmin whispered, idly stroking the safety selector of her rifle.

“Cruel is what comes next,” Diego muttered.

“What’s taking so long?  One should have shown up by now,” Yasmin said after a long silence. 

“They’re getting wary.” Diego kept his aim on Scout.  “Last week, Team Dogwood lost two hunters.  Looked like the beetle didn’t take the bait. Spotted the hide somehow and killed the shooters inside.” 

“It didn’t see the bait?”

“Didn’t take the bait,” Diego reinforced grimly.

Scout froze. His wiry tail lowered, and his ears flattened. He didn’t bark. He backed up, cowed and trembling, until the yellow tether pulled taut. 

“Thermal bloom,” Yasmin gasped, body rigid. “Edge of the culvert. Low to the ground. Moving slow.” 

Diego shifted his reticle. Through the rifle’s scope, he watched a form crept out of the concrete drainage pipe. His mouth went dry as the beetle scuttled from the darkness of the culvert into the steely light.

Massive.  Tall as a man, long as a station wagon.  An arthropodic collage of spiky chitin armor and fleshy joints.  Clawed, mantis-like forearms stabbed the ground while fanged mandibles waggled, and a segmented abdomen swelled and contracted beneath a shield of tobacco-colored chitin. 

“Give the dog another zap,” Diego instructed, his finger grazing the cold curved metal of his trigger. “Make sure the beetle sees it.”  He aligned the crosshairs on the soft spot below the head.

The creature didn’t lunge. It eased fully into the open air, its segmented limbs scraping the asphalt while four bulbous eyes in the helmeted head swiveled to examine the space. It paused ten feet from the dog.  Scout, wide-eyed and cringing, bared his teeth silently.

“Kill it!” Yasmin hissed. 

“It’s full frontal, I don’t have a shot,” Diego murmured.

“C’mon… c’mon you parasitic bastard…” Yasmin growled.  “You butchering bastard… grab the dog… give us a shot…”. 

Smoothly, the beetle reached out one long, scythe-like forelimb, gently lifting  the tether.  With a slight, deliberate tug, it sliced through the nylon with its barbed edge.  The beetle stood still as Scout, sensing the leash go slack, shot away into a pile of wrecked cars.

Icy dread washed over Yasmin. “What the fuck—?  It just cut the leash—on purpose!” 

“It’s not taking the bait,” Diego breathed.

“What?  Diego, take the shot now!”

The beetle remained unmoving, mandibles twitching, sensor probes waving.

Waiting.

Looking through the scope, Diego hesitated. “No clean shot.”

Yasmin laid her barrel on the firing slit’s edge.  “Shit, open fire—kill it, now!” 

“Wait, I think it’s looking at—” but before Diego could finish, Yasmin fired.

Diego joined in the firing and in seconds the shipping container filled with choking blue-white clouds of gunsmoke, the shots rang like massive gong strikes.  Bullets deflected and ricocheted off the heavy jointed plates.  A thick yellowish ichor erupted from the few soft joints where the rounds found their marks.  The creature lurched and twisted, and when the head bobbed upward, Yasmin drew a bead on the fat rolls of the lightly protected throat and fired.

The beetle skittered sideways for a few staggering steps and crumpled to the ground.  Its limbs twitched madly and the thorax spasmodically drew the body into a death curl.

Yasmin and Diego yelled in triumph and high-fived fiercely, coughing in the smoke-filled container.

Suddenly a terrific bang! from outside the metal wall shocked them into silence.  Another concussive bang shook the container, followed by the horrifying sound of claws against steel.  Yasmin looked out the firing slot and stifled a scream.

The creature hadn’t been alone. 

Racing from the culvert were three more beetles. They joined three others that emerged from hiding along the far side of the parking lot.  The moment they had begun shooting, the beetles had rushed to the point of fire.

The truth hit Yasmin with perfect clarity as a yard-long saber-shaped forearm rent a wide hole in the metal wall.  Their gunshots had betrayed their position.

Team Dogwood.

The solitary creature that freed the dog hadn’t been the fish. 

It had been the bait.

They were the fish.

From beneath the axles of a rusted out car, Scout crouched and watched the six beetles carve their way into the shipping container.  His ears twitched and his little frame jerked at the shrieks of torn metal, at the screams, at the one or two loud gunshots.  The shrieking and screaming and shooting were over quickly, and the only sound was the chittering of the beetles as they emerged from the container with bloody trophies clenched in their forearms.

One beetle stopped, twisting its head as it noticed a twisted length of yellow nylon snaking under a car.  It scuttled over close to the heap of junked autos. 

Scout emitted an irrepressible whimper.

The beetle’s milky pale sensor stalks danced aimlessly in the air.  It let out a low, clicking hum, a sound that might resemble an eerie mockery of a laugh. 

Then it lunged up and over the wreckage and followed the others into the culverts, no longer interested in little dogs.