Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

Yank took a wide stance, took aim at the creature’s back, and fired. Five parabellum rounds hit and ricocheted off. He fired three at the Damascus-curved wings and the same thing happened. Fuck! How was he going to make the creature stop?

It twirled drunkenly. Laws was refusing to let go, his weight keeping it off-balance.

Yank almost laughed at the image of Laws hanging on to the monster’s chest like a baby in a harness. But the evil reality of the obsidian butterfly stilled any hilarity. It glared at him with white glowing eyes. Yank felt the gaze like a weight and wanted to run, jump away, do anything to be free from it. But he forced himself to hold fast.

Beneath the eyes was a proboscis. Even as he watched, a spiked tongue unrolled and found the back of Laws’s neck. The tongue rose as if it were its own creature, then dove, its spiked end embedding itself into Laws. The SEAL in turn flung out both of his arms, releasing the creature. Laws fell to his knees. His head tilted forward and rested against the abdomen of the creature as it sucked greedily from his spine.

Yank pulled a colored smoke grenade and tossed it toward the creature. Then he opened fire, aiming for the tongue. By some miracle he hit it. The obsidian butterfly screamed, pushed aside Laws, who still had a piece of tongue undulating from his neck like a giant leech, and stormed toward Yank.

The SEAL emptied his pistol, then turned and fled. He felt rather than heard the beating of its wings as it flung itself into the air after him. He threw himself to the earth and turned over. The creature passed above him, and as it did, a wing came down, the edge slicing his shoulder and leaving an inch-deep furrow.

As the creature landed a few feet away, Yank rolled to his feet and ran into the now billowing smoke. He loaded his 9mm as he ran, then skidded to a stop. He turned just in time to get the butterfly’s taloned feet in the chest. Instead of knocking him over, it grabbed him and pulled him up into the air.

The words OH MY GOD became the only ones he knew as he rose and rose toward the ceiling. He had no doubt that the creature would let him go, so he did the only thing he could think of. He shoved his pistol into his armor and grabbed one of its legs with his left hand. It felt like a chicken foot, only a hundred times the size. With his right hand, he reached down and pulled free his belt. He wrapped it several times around the leg, and made a simple knot.

Then he had an idea.

In the universe of ideas there are good ideas, bad ideas, insane ideas, wondrous ideas, ideas that can change the way people do things and think, and ideas that fall flat, their potential forever unknown. This was none of those. This was the singular sort of idea known as an IF YOU DO THIS YOU WILL FUCKING DIE, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? idea.

Yank pulled an M67 fragmentation grenade from his pouch. He glanced below him and saw that he was now about a hundred feet in the air. He wedged the grenade into the belt, then tugged a length of 550 cord from his cargo pocket and tied it around the bottom of the butterfly’s foot. Finally, he wrapped it several times around his right hand. As he reached up to pull the pin on the grenade, he felt the bird let him go. But he was still holding on. So with a moment to spare, he pulled the pin, then dropped.

The ground began to rush up to meet him. He reached the end if the cord and held on as it tightened; then his shoulder jerked free from its socket. He screamed, but the sound was obliterated by the grenade’s explosion. A wave of pressure shoved him to the cavern floor and all breath left him. Pain blossomed into a nuclear firestorm, and then all went black.

…someone was screaming.

Blackness.

…he recognized his own voice.

Blackness.

…he staggered to his feet.

Blackness.

…his back was afire with pain.

Blackness.

…the obsidian butterfly crashed to the cavern floor.

Blackness.

…someone was rifling through his vest. They pulled something free. Laws fell on top of him. Then came another explosion. Then more blackness.

Holmes watched it happen but thought it was all a dream. It had to be. No one would be so stupid as to leap onto a flying monster. But the idea must have been contagious, because another SEAL did it, too. Then the second SEAL, a young, scarred black kid whose name he knew he should remember, exploded a grenade in midair. Then, after the guy who dropped him onto the dead doggies threw himself onto the black kid, Holmes knew he needed to get involved.

SEALs were fucking up everywhere.

Holmes tried to stand, then staggered a little to his left. His left hand was mangled. The last two fingers so broken and twisted he couldn’t make a fist. He wondered how it had happened. He was in the water beside the dead beasts. They smelled of musk and offal. It made him gag as he pushed himself back to his feet. He wore body armor and UDTs. A scrap of neoprene was on each calf, as if he’d been wearing something else before he’d woken up a bruised and battered, semi-naked GI Joe.

Then a memory slammed into him like a sabot fired from the main gun of an M1 Abrams tank. Two SEALs, back-to-back, blind, bodies touching, four arms whirling with knives and pistols, inventing death in the face of unmatched odds. Pain. Glory. Screams. Growls.

He lurched forward and everything snapped into place. Glancing to his left, he spied the Aztec pyramid, men on top of it and men at the base, their attentions competing with what Yank and Laws were doing, as well as Walker, sniping at targets from his hide. Ramon using Senator Withers as a shield on top with two of the leprosos . Men were dead or dying all over the place, indicating that his SEALs had been busy while he’d been drooling in the Land of the Lotus Eaters.

Holmes snatched a length of rebar and staggered toward Laws, whose back was a mass of torn red meat. Getting down on one knee, he checked the two for breathing. Their pulses were strong. He spied the pistol stuck in Yank’s armor and dropped his metal club in exchange for a real weapon. He held it as steady as he could, sighting down the rail as he moved stiff-legged toward the once-terrible creature.

Where it had been tall and lean with beautiful slate-like wings, it was now a broken mass of sculpture. Its legs were completely gone, as was its left wing, which instead of shattering, had broken off and was stuck in the floor like a giant knife in frozen butter.

Automatic fire opened up from across the chamber. Holmes ducked behind the dead creature, waiting for the impacts, but they never came. He searched and saw hundreds of rounds chewing away the lip of the tunnel where Walker had his sniper site. There had to be a machine gun out there somewhere firing at Walker.

Two grenades arced free from Walker’s hide site and fell toward the source of the gunfire. Although Holmes couldn’t see them from his vantage, he could tell from both explosions that serious damage was done. Even men on the front of the pyramid went down. Holmes opened and closed his mouth, trying to clear his ears from the change in air pressure.

But then he saw another grenade arcing out… this one straight toward him. Holmes opened his mouth to scream, then saw the shape of the grenade. Still, he ducked. The canister grenade fell and rolled.

Good SEAL , Holmes thought. Walker was giving him some concealment to do something rather than stand stupidly in the middle of a battlefield. Holmes spun and moved. His vision swam with the movement.

The grenade began billowing red smoke.

He grabbed Laws and pulled the SEAL to his feet. He was alive and ambulatory, just barely conscious. Yank was moderately better. He was awake, but in incredible pain. That he still had his pouch meant that they might be able to make things better. Holmes dragged Yank upright. Holding on to the both of them, like a clumsy six-legged man, they tripped and fell toward the water. Just as they made it to the pile of dead ’cabra, the gunfire resumed, rounds sizzling into the water right next to them.