by Paul A. Rice
Ken stood there with Jane by his side, pistol held in trembling hands, trying to make sense of what had happened. He saw pieces of the attackers, arms, legs…a fillet of something red and horrible fell down from the roof of the barn, the lump of quivering flesh landing in the dust with a sullen plop. As he let his eyes roam in a dazed sight-seeing tour of the farmyard, Ken noticed pieces of torn flesh scattered in every direction. He felt the grit and smoke beneath his eyelids – his eyeballs seemed to creak as they moved. He let them drift across to where his comrades lay in shocked stupor.
Red was sitting up and cursing, that’s what Ken guessed as he couldn’t hear a thing, but he saw the irate expression on the big man’s face, saw his lips forming the words: ‘God…Mutha…bastards…I’m gonna…’ He was spitting gravel, blood, and anger. Red rolled onto his front, hoisted himself up and then stayed there kneeling on all fours, shaking that enormous head and looking like he’d just had a good dose of sand to his ears.
Michael rolled to one side and then crawled to his knees, half-blinded, by the looks of things, eyes blinking, mouth open, kneeling there unsteadily with his pistol clenched tightly in both hands, wavering muzzle searching for some unseen target. Junior staggered across to him, helping each other the two of them limped back to what was left of the wall.
Tori lay flat on her back, limbs spread akimbo; she was, by the looks of things, out cold – dead to the world. Jane pushed past Ken, she looked at him and spoke, her words were still muted, the roaring in his ears still the master of any and all sounds in Ken’s head. However, he did know what she wanted – he nodded and Jane hurried across to Tori’s unconscious form.
Ken turned and staggered over to Red, seeing that the man was now sitting, he reached down and helped the giant to his feet. Together they turned back to the wall, back to their comrades and back to the battle.
They readied themselves for the end.
Only, it wasn’t their battle anymore.
The cavalry had arrived. But, instead of riding in gloriously-mounted upon white chargers, lances at the ready, bugles sounding, this motley crew of rescuers were mounted on a different type of beast all together. It was probably one of the most bizarre sights Ken had ever seen, and he’d seen a few of late.
A herd of fast-moving vehicles roared across the field, each one filled with all sorts of people. No, not just people – it was their neighbours, and all of them were armed to the teeth! Jack’s green truck must have had thirty of them in the back. They were all blazing away like crazy in a devastating broadside to the enemy’s flank. As his hearing began to return, Ken caught the rolling crackle which the distant fire-fight fetched to his still-ringing ears. He watched the flicker of the weapons, they looked like twinkling Christmas lights as their muzzles flashed in a never-ending chain of flame and sparks.
Other people came in pick-up trucks, kids standing and firing from the back, wives blasting from the side windows, family saloons filled with people, all of whom appeared to be carrying guns of every shape and size, bristling like porcupine quills as they protruded from the vehicles’ windows. Strange-looking dune buggies, twin-barrelled machineguns mounted on the rollover bars, flame and lead spitting from their muzzles, jolted over the grasslands of the farm, racing towards the outflanked enemy with engines roaring, passengers whooping and weapons hammering. Charging!
There were two motorcycles with sidecars, one pilot and two passengers rode on each of the ominous-looking vehicles. Both of the machines were stationary, and as he watched, Ken realised what had caused the awesome blast that had struck his position but a few seconds previously.
Mounted on the sidecars were what looked to be some kind of ray guns, they sported blued-steel barrels with long, fluted muzzles. With a brilliant flash of light, the weapon on the left discharged its load. A shimmering, green fireball raced away from the sidecar, its velocity almost too fast to follow. Ken was hardly able to believe his eyes as the missile jinked left and then, with almost unbelievable speed, plunged into a group of men who were trying to flee. The ensuing detonation was a large one; he saw the flash and heard the blast. The targeted crowd of men ceased to exist. Ken saw their severed limbs and pulped bodies flying into the air. He heard a whooping cry of victory from the direction of the sidecars, and as he turned back to them, he saw the second vehicle firing its cannon. The process was repeated, more green light and more flying corpses.
The remaining enemy were stupefied, nowhere to run, nowhere to go, no escape, no choice other than to die. And that they did – died by the dozen. All thoughts of attacking the farm were dismissed, the assault now nothing more than the disorganised flight of a fleeing rabble – the defence of the farm had been turned into a full-blown counterattack.
Twelve vehicles of differing shapes and sizes disgorged a swarm of people. The rescuers hurled themselves at the enemy, who, themselves, were now in total disarray. The dune buggies and sidecars laid down a withering fire upon them. The awful fireballs decimated their numbers. Lacerated bodies flew in chunks through the air. There had never been a good side, pretty or pleasant to watch, aesthetically pleasing, to any battle Ken had ever been in. But this took the level of destruction to another level altogether. He couldn’t remember the last time he had witnessed such total destruction. It was a gruesome sight, but he was unable to look away.
He stood there, waiting until it was done – no more screams and no more shots. All of the attackers were dead, of that he was sure. Those who were only wounded had been unmercifully despatched by the band of Hunters as they advanced beneath the sheets of covering fire provided by the heavier weapons. Ken heard the random popping sounds as they administered the coup de grâce to anyone found alive. Then he heard the victors cheering, whooping and laughing, in his mind he witnessed them clapping each other on the back, firing a few shots into the air, shaking hands and hugging each other.
In reality he heard only a deathly silence.
He turned to watch his wife and friends.
Jane was with Tori, Junior’s mother now conscious and sipping on a bottle of cold water. She looked fine, and apart from being a bit pale seemed to be all in one piece. The women had moved over to the sandbags. The crumbling remains of the wall gave them some meagre protection whilst they sat and shared the contents of the plastic bottle. The others were leaning dazedly against the remnants of their defences, staring dumbfounded at the distant group of victorious people who had arrived in the nick of time.
Ken felt all of the energy drain out of him, his legs buckled and he very nearly collapsed where he had been standing. Instead, he braced himself and limped across to join his shell-shocked friends. Even in his exhausted state, he still couldn’t quite believe what he had just witnessed. One moment it had looked as though they were done for, he’d even said his last words to Jane. And in the next, well…unbelievably, a crowd of farmers, shopkeepers, teachers and lawyers had turned up and pulled their arses out of the fire.
Oh yeah, and just for the hell of it, they’d fetched along their bloody kids!
Ken lowered himself to the ground and sat with his back against the wall, facing out towards the crowd of people who were climbing back into their vehicles. With clouds of dust snaking out behind them, their saviours were now heading at full-pelt toward the farmhouse. Ken sat, watched and wondered; his rifle propped up next to him, arms resting on top of his knees and hands hanging limply down against the top of his shins. He only just managed to curtail the overwhelming desire to shake his head and laugh.
Seeing his relaxed posture, the rest of the gang dragged their weary bodies across and joined him. By the time their welcome guests arrived, the six Hunters were all sitting in a line, rifles in hand, backs against the wall. The debris of battle was only thinly concealed by a slight haze left by the smoke of discharged weapons and explosives. It was a fitting posture and would have made a wonderful photograph. In black and white it would have seemed like a shot from the past. The Battle of Little Big Horn or, perhaps,
Rorke’s Drift…They spoke not a word as they sat with the smell of blood and smoke filling their noses with its reek, the sensation nearly as strong as was the loud ringing in their ears.
***
About an hour later, they found themselves gathered around the heavily-fortified veranda. Many of their friendly rescuers had been dispatched to remove the remains of their enemy. When Ken had looked questioningly at Jack, wondering what were they going to do with such a large amount of corpses, the man had shaken his head, told Ken not to concern himself, turned to his helpers and issued his curt instructions. ‘You know where, boys, same as the last time,’ Jack said. ‘Use the machine to pick ‘em up, then burn ‘em – burn ‘em all!’ Upon receiving those orders, some of the men had turned away and clambered back into their vehicles.
Feeling quite sickened, Ken had asked no more. Instead, he joined the rest of the party as they sat around in front of the house. He and the others were now in the depths of a deep trench of physical and mental weariness, all the adrenaline long departed. The taste of battle sat thickly in their mouths and their hands trembled slightly, whilst at the same time a terrible thirst raged in their parched throats. They were overcome with the desire to be close, not to lose sight of each other, not for one second.
Jack’s wife, Angie, saw this, and having been through a similar scenario herself, had made some more room on the patio. Then, like a mother goose, she fussed around them until they were all seated together. After that, she and some of the other women proceeded to ferry a near-constant stream of refreshments out to the Hunters as they sat in wild-eyed silence. The six of them sat around the wooden table, faces blackened, hands bleeding, looking at each other in awe.
After several jugs of lemonade, endless mugs of coffee and lashings of hot, sweet tea, they began to feel somewhat better, slightly more human. Michael even murmured something about being starving. Angie must have been waiting, for the words were hardly out of Michael’s mouth when she and her compatriots fetched a stack of freshly-made sandwiches and placed them in the centre of the table. In very short order the others realised that they, too, were starving. It was exactly what they needed. Before long their spirits were lifted and the sandwiches disappeared with a speed that was hard to believe.
They began to talk amongst themselves, each recounting some of the amazing things they had seen. Red’s son heaped praised onto Michael for his abilities with the sniper rifle, ‘You should’ve seen this guy…’ he said, wrapping a muscular arm around his cohort’s shoulder. ‘He was knocking ‘em down like those tin ducks at the fairground! Bang, bang, one, two, and down they went! I don’t think I saw you miss a Goddamned shot, Mikey – unbelievable!’
Michael looked up in embarrassment. ‘Yeah, well…you weren’t so bad yourself, Junior!’ he said, looking at the others. ‘He must’ve killed hundreds of them; did you see the pile of bodies over by the hedge?’ He shook his head and then, more quietly, said, ‘We made a good team, didn’t we – we did okay, Ken, huh?’ The smile was back, blue eyes beaming out from his filthy, blood-covered face. The wound on his neck had dried now; a thick crust of black blood had formed just below his jaw line. Some of it was spread across his cheeks and also on his forehead. He looked the essence of a young warrior.
Ken looked around the faces at the table and smiled. Taking a deep breath, he said, ‘Yeah, we did good, really good – what can I say? A major effort, I’m proud of you guys!’ He paused and then said, ‘But we were lucky, I reckon we were just about to get rolled over – they were on us!’ He shook his head and looked across to where Jack and some of the others were standing and talking. Ken looked at them and then back to his friends. ‘We can thank our lucky stars that this lot turned up when they did!’
The others nodded in agreement.
Jane spoke. ‘I’ve never seen anything so crazy in all of my life!’ she exclaimed. ‘I was so terrified, but at the same time I was so…so angry!’ she said, raising her eyebrows at the madness of it all.
Tori reached over and touched her hand. The young woman looked much perkier now; the colour was back in her face as she smiled and nodded in agreement. Looking up at her husband’s face, she said, ‘It’s always this way, the fear and the anger. But it’s the anger you must use. Anger drives away the fear, drives away the doubt!’ She reached over and placed her arm around Red’s waist. ‘You okay, honey?’ she asked.
He nodded and then grinned, saying: ‘I’m fine an’ dandy! You know somthang, to hell with all o’ this – I wouldn’t mind a cold beer, lots of cold beers!’ He raised his own eyebrows in such a comical way that the others had no choice but to laugh. The sound broke the grip of the recent horrors.
Ken rose to his feet and said, ‘Now, that is a bloody great idea! Everybody want one?’ Hearing a complete lack of negative replies, he headed for the kitchen.
And so, in what must have been the most bizarre session of evening aperitifs ever attended, they sat on the veranda amongst almost total carnage and swigged back bottle after bottle of ice-cold beer. Opening a fresh one, Ken looked around. The farmhouse and barn were riddled with bullet holes. How the two men up in the Nest hadn’t been hit was beyond him. The walls and sloping tin roof were doing a fine impression of a colander. He noticed needles of daylight shining from everywhere, the sun streaming onto the roof protruding like lasers through the myriad of holes that lay peppered across its surface.
Ken turned his gaze to stare at the farmyard. The same sight awaited him there. Fences drilled with hundreds of holes, the walls of the house were absolutely littered with perforations, the sandbag walls were blown to hell; the big crater, still oozing a slight mist, lay amongst smashed ammunition boxes. Empty shell-cases and body parts lay scattered across the forecourt, total chaos reigned, and yet here they all were, nursing nothing more serious than a couple of scratches and a large bucket filled with ice-cold beers.
A myriad of sensations flooded through his mind, none of which made any sense at all. ‘Crazy, that’s the word, C–R–A–Z–Y!’ he thought and laughed out loud. When the others looked at him in query, all Ken did was to point in the general area, using the neck of his latest bottled beer.
As their eyes followed his indication, focused upon the devastation, they too sat in silence for a short while as the realisation of what had occurred, and of how lucky they had been, dawned upon them.
Ken’s words snapped them away from the edge.
‘Well, here we all are then,’ he said, quietly. ‘All alive, all well, and all mostly in one piece – does anyone other than Mikey have any injuries?’
They looked down at themselves, as if to double-check they were actually unscathed. Seeing nothing more than a few splinter wounds, perhaps some slight cuts or maybe the odd abrasion, they looked at each other in amazement.
Junior summed it up for the whole group when, in a low voice, he said, ‘Unbelievable!’ All of them agreed with that sentiment.
Jane reached across, and with a handful of cold water from the ice bucket, splashed the blood away from Ken’s mouth and nose; he winked at her and dried his face with a sweat-covered sleeve.
Red raised his beer. ‘A toast, I’m raising my glass to Lady Luck, yeah, to Lady Luck, to George, and to all the others,’ he said, nodding at the last remaining members of the rescue team. Turning back to his fellow drinkers, Red murmured: ‘But, most of all I’m raising my glass to us!’ They agreed and the air was soon filled with the sound of chinking beer bottles.
The dark shadows of nightfall were now well on the way, so Junior lit a fire in the bullet-riddled brazier and they all huddled around its warmth. Soon after they were joined by a small group of their rescuers, and by the time night had fallen properly, an impromptu party was in full swing. The fire blazed and smoke from the barbeque filled the air with the delicious aroma of sizzling meats. More people came back from the town. Before long, Ken’s whole ‘crazy’ scene had somehow become even crazier, if it were possible.
Their merriment w
ashed away the memories of the recent past and, as was usual, the events of the last few weeks and of that day in particular, seemed almost not to have happened at all. Like a film clip from a movie watched long ago, the sights they had seen and the actions they had carried out, all of those terrible things, seemed to have happened to someone else. The memories simply departed like smoke from the fire, wafted away into the night air, hung under the moonlight for a while, and then magically disappeared as if they had never been there in the first place.
It was a fine night and in typical fashion the Hunters partied as hard as they had fought. At some time way past midnight, the final guests had eventually gone to bed, most spent the night sleeping in various places around the farmhouse. From the barn to the couch and almost anywhere in between, they crept drunkenly away to snatch a few hours of valuable sleep. None went home, though, not on that night they didn’t.
***
The Demon, on the other hand, was anything but peaceful. Peaceful would not have been the word chosen to describe the abject rage currently howling from its dripping mouth. Almost its entire force of foot-soldiers had been destroyed, over two hundred men gone, most of whom were now converted into nothing more than smouldering ashes. Lying incinerated inside a large, metal box. Sitting and smoking in the corner of some pathetic farmer’s field…the bastard would use those ashes to fertilize his fields…the bastard!
It howled with anger, clenching the hands of its host so tightly that blood flowed in ragged rivulets between its bony fingers, dripping like molten red lead onto the snow beneath its feet. The fury it felt was almost uncontrollable, hatred and despicable loathing for all things had always been the source of its own undoing. The knowledge of that, its own weakness, only served to fuel the fire of its resentment. It knew the reason behind the demise of its carefully-gathered army. Months spent cajoling them, wheedling promises, false smiles – all wasted by its own, dreadful impatience.
As soon as it had become aware of the resistance, the terrible strength of those who had dared stand before its army, the Dragon had once more allowed its petulant rage to wash away any chance of sensible action, all thoughts dismissed by a tide of black anger. It had screamed: ‘More men! Send more men… kill them, kill them all!’ Herding the men together and repeatedly pushing the button. With no plan, no cogent thoughts, only a burning black rage, it had sent wave after wave of its men into the darkness of an undeveloped transfer device.
