At night, a lawless posse of U.S. immigration agents aggressively patrolled the Arizona border. The lucky migrants they captured were sent back to Mexico naked and raped. The unlucky ones were left to rot in the desert beneath the unforgiving gaze of buzzards and coyotes. 

These border agents weren’t out in the desert all by themselves, however. They were accompanied by a cluster of prehistoric centipedes. The creatures—originally from the Carboniferous Period—were eight feet long and covered in impenetrable armor. The native people in the area called them the “Thing That Creeps on Many Feet.” 

Using recombinant DNA, gene splicing and other advanced techniques, a group of renegade scientists had resurrected the long-extinct Arthropleura to provide inexpensive border defense. Quick question: was this really an inexpensive option??

The experimental program was financed by a shadow organization with the blessing of the president himself. According to author J. Rocky Colavito, the plan was to release the creatures into the environment where they would hunt anyone attempting to enter the country through its southern border. Researchers claimed that the creatures could be programmed to attack only certain racial groups. Once the Arthropleura passed their trial test in the desert, they would then patrol all sides of the continent, protecting “legitimate” Americans from invasion.

But, of course, the crazy plan went sideways fairly quickly. The prehistoric arthropods became resistant to the scientists’ controls, and pretty soon they were attacking everything in sight, including a herd of 50 longhorn bulls worth half a million dollars. That ain’t nothin’. 

Stopping the monster invasion turned into a full-on intervention featuring a crush of unlikely characters, most prominently a veterinarian named Brutus Gowdry, a transgender helicopter pilot named Callie “Chopper” Culver, a lab technician with a Steve Ditko-like name called Mr. Blank, a forensic pathologist named Connie Santiago, and a decidedly non-evil character named El Malignu. They were a scrappy bunch, that’s for sure. 

As the novel progresses, we discover that the Arthropleura weren’t the only monsters birthed in the laboratory. The scientists also created an unbelievable batch of complementary chimeras—“the stuff of nightmares,” said one character with a shiver. One such monster was a raptor-pterodactyle hybrid called the quetzoraptor. It had claws that could slice open a reinforced steel door and a beak that could penetrate concrete. 

During the final battle, the group breaks into the underground laboratory where all the mutant beasts were created. It was a bad place, they all agreed. Even the original scientists referred to the subterranean research facility as the “The Seventh Circle.” The novel’s endgame unfolds in this underground hellhole. 

Arthropleura Attack! starts strong with a promising mix of xenophobia and xenozoia. While it never quite reaches its implied potential, it features a handful of demented and profane moments that readers have come to expect (and enjoy) from a novel by Colavito. Next up: Engorgeasaurus Sex. 

[ Arthropleura Attack! / By J. Rocky Colavito / First Printing: August 2025 / ISBN: 9798296048844 ]