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They sat outside the Rover and crunched away on the nut bars John passed out. The noon sun beat down on them, but the breeze made it a whole lot better than being pressed in the SUV like sardines. Martha passed around water bottles as Sherlock poked at the soil samples John had brought back with him. They had a nice little circle set up, and everyone got comfortable.
“So, hey. John.” Sally plopped down next to him.
“Yeah?”
“You promised us stories.”
“Oh, yeah!” Molly perked up. “Stories!”
John groaned a bit, just for show. “Really?”
“Yeah! Tell us a story, John!”
He looked around; Tim and Porter were taking the watch for the break. Sherlock’s eyes were locked on him now instead of the Petri dish. Sarah and Greg also watched him. He sighed. “Okay. Yeah, a story. What would you like to hear?”
“Um, well...there was an incident that was mentioned in the video we watched.” Molly’s lips curled up into a smile. “Something about a camel spider?”
Everyone burst out laughing at the way the colour drained from John’s face. “Oh, no. Not that. Anything but that.”
“No, we want to hear it!” Sarah patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. We won’t tell a soul.”
John shook his head. “Yeah, no. I’m not - “
“Please?”
“Oh, you people sound like a crowd of first years. Ok, fine. You win.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Just don’t get too distracted, yeah?”
There was a chorus of “Yes” and head nods.
“Alright. So, camel spiders. Probably the scariest thing you’ll encounter in Afghanistan, right up there with land mines and pregnant camels.”
Sherlock interrupted. “You will tell me that story.”
“Yes. Yes, in all due time. Now, hush.” John smirked. “So...camel spiders. Ok. These buggers are huge. Dinner plate huge. They can eat big things. And they like to...wake you up. Just before dawn. Usually by sitting on your chest and waving their arms at your face. I have never heard grown men scream like little girls until I went there. If it’s not happening to you, it’s hilarious. When it happens to you, you think you are about to die.” He took a swig from his water bottle. “So Hammond, Hunter and I were wandering around Gibraltar one hot day, and we saw one of these spiders on the ground, just scuttling away, trying to find some shade. It must have been spooked out of its sleeping spot by one of the heavy trucks.” He waved his hand. “Whatever. Anyway, Hunter got this brilliant and utterly cracked idea to grab the fucking thing and put it on someone, that someone being Captain Potter. Now, Potter is one of those big ‘oh, I’m not afraid of any-fuckin’-thing’ arseholes, and he had been picking on one of his contemporaries for being spooked by a scorpion one night. Hunter wanted to pay him back a bit. I really didn’t think it would work, and figured it would most likely get him, and us, into a whole lot of hot water. But I really wanted to see Potter’s reaction, so like an idiot, I went with it.” A grin grew on his face as he relished the memory. “So Hunter captures the beast with his helmet and a plastic cup, and I swear to God, this thing was bigger than the ruddy cup! Huge fucking spider...thing.”
Over by the front wheel well, Sherlock suppressed a shudder. He knew what camel spiders looked like; granted, they weren’t actual spiders, but still. Egads.
“Hammond volunteered to keep the captain busy, and of course since Hunter captured the thing...I had to actually deliver it to the target.” He hid his own shudder at the memory. “I wanted to do it as quickly as I could; I really, really, really don’t like those things. At. All.” Sarah and Molly nodded. “So Hammond jogged over to where Potter was standing by a Jackal and engaged him in some dumb conversation about women in Milan or some shit like that, and all I had to do was saunter over like I owned the damned place and slip the spider onto his pack, then walk away like nothing happened.”
“What happened?” Greg seemed very interested in the story, even more than the women. John’s grin grew even more.
“Well, Potter didn’t notice at all. Hammond ended the conversation, and just like that, we were all hidden behind one of the tanker trucks to watch the action. Unfortunately, the whole plan of Potter taking off his pack and discovering the spider didn’t happen. What actually happened was a whole lot better.” This time, the memory made him giggle. “So there’s this big bastard, an Engineer by the name of Harris. This guy is a good 2 meters tall and nothing but muscle. He walks past Potter just as the camel spider decides it’s a good idea to climb on top of the captain’s helmet.”
“Oh, I can see where this is going.” Greg muttered, a wide smile on his face. John nodded. Sherlock just stared.
“Oh, yeah. Harris is absolutely terrified of spiders, any spider. Camel spiders? He’ll kill them on sight. Well, he saw this spider on Potter’s helmet, and pretty much lost his fuckin’ mind. Potter didn’t even see it coming. Harris pulled out this giant bloody monkey wrench and took a good whack at the thing on the captain’s helmet, nearly braining him in the process!” Now John was holding his sides, and he could barely talk, he was laughing so hard. “Oh, God, it was brilliant! Harris just lets out this high pitched screech of a battle cry and just swings as hard as he could! I don’t remember being so glad that combat helmets were true feats of engineering. And of course the hulking bastard missed, and the spider damn near dove over the lip of the helmet, right into Potter’s face. Oh. My. God.” He couldn’t breathe. His sides hurt so bad, but he couldn’t stop laughing. “The noise he made should be used as a deterrent for insurgents. We just about died laughing, I swear. Hunter makes this sort of honking snort when he laughs, and that just kept setting Hammond and I off even more, because it was like he was a pissed off mute swan! And of course my stupid fucking giggle, and Hammond just...he has a silent laugh, so he looks like a retarded seal when he laughs, and oh my fucking God, it was priceless!”
By now, everyone else was laughing too, even Sherlock, who had one hand pressed to his mouth to muffle the...snorting. Oh, God, he was snorting! John’s giggles rose in pitch, and now he really couldn’t breath.
“Okay, okay, guys. Calm down, or the zombies are going to hear us!” Sally was the only one who was halfway quiet, really, and she waved her hands in an effort to get everyone’s attention. “Shhh!” It took a couple minutes, but the group quieted. John took a few moments to try to regain some lung function, and nodded his head.
“After that incident, there weren’t many times that Potter would willingly talk to anyone from my squad, and he wouldn’t go anywhere near Harris. But that’s not the worst part, even. A couple weeks later, we’re on an overnight watch, just Hammond and I, on the outer perimeter of the forward operating base. We’d settled in for the night, convinced it would be a quiet one, just a ordinary night out in the wild. We flipped for the first watch, and I got to sleep first, which never happened. I took advantage right away.” John shivered as the breeze picked up. The sun just started to dip beneath the concrete horizon of the city, and the air began to cool a bit. “I’m not sure how long I was asleep, but I wake up to an unholy screech from Hammond. Now, it would have been better if it was louder...” He had to stop for a second as a rash of giggles erupted from his chest. “...louder than hell, but it was just this...keening...I really thought that he’d eaten a cashew or seen the Devil himself or something like that. I poke him, and he’s frozen solid. He’s not moving, save for a tremble. I ask him what happened, and he whispers, ‘It’s...it’s on me. It’s fucking on me Watson save me it’s fucking in my fucking shirt fuck...’ I thought he was talking about the blasted scorpions who search for heat at night; they like to crawl into your boots, your trousers, your body armour, anywhere they feel is safe. So I tell him to calm down, and he’s shaking his head. ‘No no no, it’s not, I’m not calming down, it’s crawling in my oh God - ‘ Poor Hammond. Poor, poor Hammond. He’s trying not to panic, but suddenly the keening coming from him halts, and he gives a full body jerk, like he just got electrocuted. In the most mortified and quiet voice I have ever heard, he hissed, ‘It’s in my pants.’”
Greg spat out his water and started laughing. “You’re kidding.”
John gasped for air as his silent giggles shook his body. “No. No I am not. I still wasn't sure what it was, I’m just hoping to any deity who wanted to listen that it was not a scorpion. A sting...there...would be horrendous. Now, it’s hilarious, but out there, in the middle of the night...not so much. I told him to try to get out of his trousers and pants without making many movements, but he just couldn’t move. Nothing I said would get him to move. And as I’m talking to him, he’s giving me a play-by-play commentary- ‘Watson, it’s got its...things on my fucking sack. It’s touching my jewels. Oh my God, Watson save me.’ in such a forlorn whisper that I really felt sorry for him. Finally, I just took them off for him, while he kept an eye on the surrounding, and I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the oddest thing ever; undressing someone in the middle of a warzone is not the same as undressing someone in the bedroom, I’ll say that much.” He smiled. “Sure enough, a smaller camel spider had made its way into his pants. I carefully picked it off his arse and threw it as far as I could away from our position. Thankfully, that was the only experience we had of that nature. I’m pretty sure he would have had a coronary if it would have happened again.”
“Did you personally have any experiences with one, or was the package the only one?” Sherlock asked, his face a perfect mask of innocence.
“What package?” Molly tipped her head back and finished the rest of the water.
“Ah, I - “
“Before all of this happened, quite a while ago in fact, John received a package from his friends in Afghanistan, and right on top was a beautiful specimen of solifugae daesiidae, dead of course. I do have to say that the noise John made was possibly the loudest and highest scream I have ever heard a man make.”
John chuckled nervously as everyone else laughed at him. “You’ve never been over there, Sherlock. You could have made an decibel experiment out of the screams.”
Sherlock’s eyes lit up, and John’s chuckles turned into another fit of laughter, even as his face turned a bright red. “No, we are not going there, and you are not doing the experiment on me.”
“Porter?”
“Oh, God no. He might actually shoot you.”
“Oh.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you my own experience with one.” He rubbed the back of his neck and smiled, his laughter gone. “It was my first tour, actually. The biggest spider I’d ever seen before then was a jumping spider. I was asleep in my cot one night, no problems save for the jets going over all night long. It was a pretty solid four hours of sleep, too. The sergeant came in to rouse us, and I opened my eyes, moved to roll over, and looked at my chest to find the biggest goddamned spider I have ever seen sitting there eating a blasted lizard. I’m pretty sure my head exploded. I know my heart did. Surprisingly, I didn’t scream.” John’s eyes turned thoughtful for a moment. “I remember thinking, ‘I think it can sense fear’, and I just froze and whimpered.”
“Really? Whimpered.” Greg had a grin on his face again. John shook his head in dismay.
“Yes. Whimpered. I didn’t want to move, because it was eating. Then I realized the lizard was still alive. That’s when I screamed.”
Everyone started laughing again, and then Porter came around the back of the Rover. “I shot one once with a shotgun. It was fun.”
Sherlock and Sally stared at the man.
John smiled. “Oh yeah?”
Porter nodded. “Yes. Very fun. Just lifted the shotgun, sighted in the bugger, and pulled the trigger.” He stopped, and his eyes glinted in the dying sunlight. “But then it wasn’t so fun when the fuckin’ thing started crawling away.”
“Oh my God.” Sherlock groaned.
“Go on. Pull the other one!” Greg snarked.
“You are kidding. It didn’t die?” Molly’s eyes widened.
“It did not die. And we just backed away and crossed the road to get away from it.”
John dropped his head back against the side panel of the Rover. “I’ve shot one with a three-round burst from my carbine. That didn’t work, either.”
“Didn’t some dumb shit from The Shetlands actually fire a grenade at one?”
John’s brows furrowed as everyone else muttered in disbelief. “No. No! That was not the Shetlands, but the Irish. And it wasn’t that he fired one at it, he was rolling a grenade out to remove some insurgents from a spot he wanted, and it landed right next to a spider, and it didn’t go off right away. The spider actually reached out and pushed the grenade away, and then it went off.”
“You have got to be kidding, now.” Greg threw a rock at John. “That can’t happen.”
“I don’t know. That might just be a story, but I’ve seen them kill lizards and move rocks. Not huge rocks, but smaller ones. Still a feat for a ruddy insect.”
“They aren’t actually true spiders, John.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that they are ten different shades of fuckin’ scary.”