James Smith - The Flock

Hundreds of tiny muscles throughout his legs and torso suddenly shifted. His mottled, striped feathering moved on their hard shafts, edged in dozens of different angles, blending with the grassland surroundings. The Scarlet suddenly became virtually invisible. He sped on, toward the human, from which it could now detect emotions equivalent to confusion.

And just a spark, perhaps, of fear.

Gant spoke into his radio. He had disdained it until then, not wishing to alert Holcomb. But now he felt the need to contact the others, to let them know what was happening. He began to speak quickly.

"Gant here. One of those…birds. It got Holcomb."

The fuzzy rasp of Grisham's hard voice replied. "Make sure he's dead. Wait there for us."

"I lost the bird, though. It. It's really big, Colonel. Bigger than we thought."

"Where is it?" Grisham asked.

Gant wished the others were already there. He peered this way and that down the barrel of his rifle, looking through the scope at the greenish landscape, looking for movement, for the bird. "I don't see it," he yelled.

"Where did it go, Gant?"

Gant was aiming the barrel of his rifle left and then right, scanning the horizon for something, movement of any kind. He was completely surprised to feel his gun torn from his grasp, to see it go cartwheeling away from him as something big and very heavy smashed into him. It was only at the last that he realized his right arm was also spinning through the air, trailing a stream of blood after it.

On their way toward their fellow soldier, the others listened to the voice coming to them over the small radios.

"Jesus," Gant's voice was shrill. "Jesus Christ, it killed me."

And then the forest was silent again. But for the mad screaming of the insects.

"Hold our position here," Grisham commanded. He could sense that his team did not like his decision. But they were good soldiers and would do what he told them to.

Redmond cleared his throat.

"Forget it," Grisham said. "We hold right here and wait."

The night was silent except for the constant background screech of the bugs. The crickets and cicadas nearby continued to chirp, which let them know that nothing was stalking them or creeping in on where they were hunkered down. They had formed a defensive circle, each man crouching low to the ground, allowing the sedges to offer cover and keep them from being good targets. Their scopes were up; each of them scanning his portion of the horizon for anything that might indicate an attack of any kind.

"You think he might be okay out there?" Redmond finally asked.

Damn, Grisham hated that kind of comment. It meant that Redmond was weak, that he was distracted. A distracted man was a very poor link in an otherwise sound chain. His first reaction was to turn and slap the utter pity out of him, but that could result in further disruptions. He bit down on his anger.

"We'll find out how Gant is just as soon as we ascertain that there's not a direct danger to ourselves."

"What about the initial target? What if he's getting away?" It was Watkins speaking now.

The colonel did not appreciate all of this speculation. He was beginning to realize he'd made a poor choice. Better he had brought along some purer soldier types and not these game hunters. Well. Live and learn. "Gant said that Holcomb was down. Dead, probably. I trust Gant's judgment. We'll check it out as soon as I decide we can move in."

Something rustled in the grasses to the north. That was the direction where Gant had been. Grisham left his post, where he had been watching the west, and he sighted down the barrel, seeing the world in yellow-green contrasts. There was nothing. Just sedges shifting in the slight wind blowing from their backs. "See anything, boys?" he asked.

"Nothing," both Watkins and Redmond told him.

"Joyner? You see something?"

"I…" The man hesitated, lowered his head, blinked, then looked back into his scope. "I thought I saw something."

"What? What was it?" Grisham asked impatiently.

"I don't know. Like the grass went all…I don't know, kind of misty for a second. But not now. Must have been something in my eyes." He jammed the stock of his rifle tight to his shoulder and continued to scan the field.

There was a rustling off to the north again.

"Damn," Joyner said. "Thought I saw that again. That blurry patch. Right in front of us."

"Where?" But before Joyner could answer Grisham, they heard a voice.

From out of the grasses, from where the slight rustling had come, there was that shrill screech they'd heard moments before.

"Jesus," it said. "Oh, Jesus. It."

"Gant," Watkins yelled. "It's Jim. He's trying to crawl this way." They could see the grass weaving as the man attempted to come to them.

"Je. Zuz." Silence. Rustle. "Oh." Silence. Crackle of dry grass. "Oh. Jesus. It. Killed."

Watkins suddenly stood and stepped toward his wounded comrade who he could not yet see, but who was crawling closer and closer. "Wait there, Jim. I'll be right with you." Without waiting for Grisham to give the order, he strode toward the wounded soldier.

"Oh. Oh, Jesus. Oh, JesusohJesusohJesusJesusJesus," said the Scarlet rogue, rearing to full height and cocking his gigantic talons for a killing slash. "It killed me," the bird mimicked perfectly. "It killed me." His claws came down, half a ton of impossibly muscled fiber powering the horny talons which went ripping through Watkins's chest, parting skin and tearing through bone and cartilage. Watkins was pinned to the earth, still standing, his thighbones jammed down into his shin bones and his entrails spilling out in a great warm gushing of blood and fluids. He wasn't dead in the split seconds as all of this took place, but when the Scarlet leaned in with a motion too quick to see, Watkins's head was snipped neatly off at the neck and he ceased to experience anything.

"Oh, Jesus," said the Scarlet rogue as he dashed in among the three men and kicked out at them before any could so much as move. Each went sailing through the air; rib cages protecting their guts, but small bones cracked and broken, muscles severely bruised. Guns went sailing away, scopes and all, leaving the three in the dark, which would have filled them with fear. But all of them fell to earth unconscious, a blackness filling their minds as they thudded to the ground fifteen, twenty feet from where they had stood.

"Jesus," said the Scarlet as he sprinted away, leaving these for the Flock, which was gaining fast. He could hear them coming out of the forest and on to the savanna. All of this blood would be too much for them to resist, he suspected.

In a second, he was gone.

Someone was coming. None of them said a thing. All three just lay where they were in the shallow gully and allowed themselves to be eaten by a few hundred gnats and mosquitoes. The urge to slap and to scratch was maddening, but to so much as twitch could mean detection, and that would also mean their deaths. So they just lay still and waited.

Ron could not tell how many were moving through the woods after them. One person, he figured, maybe two. No more than two, certainly.

Mary clutched the earth and put her ear to it. There were at least three men moving toward them. Possibly, there was a fourth.

Billy Crane gripped his twelve gauge but did not move. He lay next to it, the barrel extended out from him; he was ready to aim and fire it as soon as anyone came within range. There were only four men coming for them. And he realized that there should have been five. No fire team was complete without a fifth member. The other one must have stayed behind for some reason. To clear the buildings of evidence, he supposed. These guys were damned good, and he knew that they stood as much chance of surviving as three blind mice against a pack of wolves. But they would take a few with them. There was that, at least.