Joseph D'Lacey - Snake Eyes

Johnson smiled.

Reaching one of the trucks, he tapped on the window. The driver rolled it down and grinned at him through broken teeth.

“Ello, Sarge. You look like you could use a cup of tea and a biscuit. They’re setting up a mess tent for your lads just over there.”

The driver pointed. Mud-covered infantrymen were already walking towards the activity. Gas stoves heated huge aluminum kettles of water. The smell of smoked bacon frying over flames was the sweetest smell on the battlefield. Johnson wasn’t hungry.

“I’d like to get as far away from here as possible. Any chance of a lift?”

“Sure, but I’m not going anywhere special. Just across the border into tier three. That do you?”

“Sounds great.”

Johnson walked to the other side of the truck and climbed in. As they bumped along the ruts and slithered in the wet mud, Johnson hugged his arms around himself.

“Mind if I turn the heater on?” He asked.

“It’s on full blast already.”

“I’m freezing.”

“Probably a bit of shock, Sarge. Here, wrap this around you.”

The driver tossed him an old great coat and he covered as much of himself as he could.

“Been a bloody awful war, so far,” said the driver. “Think it’s nearly over?”

Johnson tried to answer but couldn’t speak. His lungs had stopped working. He looked at his hands and saw that they were beginning to look misty. Holding them up to the light he realised he could see right through them. He clutched his chest and then put a hand to his neck. He found no pulse.

“You all right, Sarge? You look a bit pale.”

The crushing feeling of breathlessness increased but Johnson managed fight it a little longer.

“Get me to tier three,” he whispered.

The driver pulled the truck off the road and onto the slick grass beside, bringing it to a sliding halt. He turned to his stricken, battle weary passenger.

“Can’t do that just yet, Sarge. I’ve got a message for you. Hold on.”

He fished a crumpled note from his crisp fatigues.

“It’s from Angelina Weaver. She made me write it down because I’ve got such a terrible memory.” The driver tapped his head, grinned and unfolded the grimy paper. “Ah yes,” he said, squinting in the gathering daylight. “She said to tell you: No more tiers, I’ll love you forever .’”

Robert Johnson closed his eyes.

There isn’t much meat on a demon.

Not that you’d ever want to eat one. Unless circumstances warranted it, you understand. Or if, say, you just really, really felt like it—one should live and let live, after all. But trust me, they are skinny and beyond that, if the Ledger is to be believed, it’s clear they weren’t designed to be predated (or scavenged), especially as they are themselves quaternary in any food chain.

It’s a well-documented fact that humans thrive best on primary and secondary food sources. In other words, vegetation and herbivores. During drought or famine, survival dictates these rules be bent but that doesn’t make snake meat tasty or tiger steaks healthy.

Demon flesh is a definite no-no.

Cogitate, if you will: primary blade of grass eaten by secondary cow eaten by tertiary human whose misery, fear and/ or heart and liver are eaten by quaternary demon. For a human, eating a demon would qualify the human doing it as quinary in the food chain. As well as making him very ill. If a demon ate another demon, it too would become a quinary source of food (as well as being classed a cannibal).

According to the Ledger, it’s not uncommon for demons to eat each other, so by that logic, if a human was, by chance, to eat a cannibalistic demon he or she could then be considered the senary participant in the food chain.

The food chain’s a lot longer than people think.

There are a few umpteenary beings, as I understand it; the kind of creatures that eat entire planets and ecosystems, but if you ask me that’s gluttony.

Anyway, the point is this: demon meat is about as healthy as a skunk dung soufflé.

It was a clear-sky day when Puff Wiggery and Blini Rickett’s work was interrupted. The untouchable above us was a silvery blue dome beyond which all the stars were asleep. There were no clouds and that was a bad sign. Long before noon, it would be too hot to work and the already waterless crops would droop still further as they struggled to survive. The heat increased daily and it was hard on us all.

Blini Rickett and Puff Wiggery shared a smallholding— most of us had our own crops and stock back then because we had so little in the way of money—on which they’d each built a home for their wives and children. Their plan had been to pool resources to create surplus crops they could sell, but their partnership never bore the kind of fruits they hoped for.

My property, tiny by comparison but more fruitful owing to intelligent planting and maintenance, bordered theirs and I spent happy hours watching them toil, sweat and debate farm management. On that particular morning, the sun already drawing beads of moisture on my forehead, I sat on my porch sipping a cool cup of goat’s milk from the cellar and casting an occasional glance their way so as not to miss any entertainment.

I saw the shape in the sky and what it became long before they did. It appeared first as streaks of pure white cloud high above us. I waited and hoped for the cloud to swirl and grow darker; we all needed rain. It soon became clear however, that this was no rain cloud. The streaks took on a shape, parts of them becoming familiar to me. Here an unfolded wing, here a curving femur, there a rudimentary tail. I’d cloud-watched a thousand hours away as a boy, pushing my imagination farther and farther into unknown territory, but this was different. I didn’t have to try to form an image from those vapours; they took the unmistakable shape of a demon.

The cloud gained mass and definition. The demon was on its back; its doglike hindquarters drawn up to its belly and its tail flailing upwards between its legs. Its wings were unfurled; the delicate structure of hollow bones that spread them open was easy to see, as were the bones of its legs and crooked arms. Because it was on its back though, the wings were controlled by the wind, not the other way around.

It looked like the cloud demon was falling.

As soon as I had the thought, the cloud turned red. There was a brief dimming of the sun, a welcome chill that was gone before I could appreciate it, and the red cloud became solid. The demon hurtled earthward. Realising I was witnessing possibly the most interesting event of the year, I stood up still holding my goat’s milk and would have shouted to Rickett and Wiggery if I hadn’t been enjoying the anticipation of the looks on their faces when the thing hit the ground. It was headed straight for them.

Instead I watched the demon fall. It was strange, the cloud had been huge in the sky and very high up, but now, as the creature neared us, it got smaller. Gauging its size under such illogical circumstances was impossible. It trailed the faintest wake of steam or smoke and the air around us took on an odour of noxious defilement.

Rickett and Wiggery were arguing as usual when the plummeting creature struck earth. It hit with such force that the ground jumped. As I heard the hiss and ear flattening whump of the impact, I spilt a little goat’s milk and cursed. A wave of dust rolled outward from the crash site and through it I saw Rickett and Wiggery trying to stand up; the air blast had thrown them back several strides. Their faces were dark with dust, their eyes wide and white by contrast. They blinked and coughed and held their ribs. The wind had gone from their chests and for once they weren’t haranguing each other. I took my drink with me as I stepped out of the back gate and strode over to the crater.