Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

A tall, heavy-duty tripod.

Suddenly, he realized that the belts of the large caliber rounds the soldier had wrapped around his torso weren’t just for show.

Throwing off the last layer, the General revealed an M2 Browning, a belt-fed heavy machine gun—the tool of gods on Liberian battlefields. The boy knew that weapon very well; even though he had seen it used only once, he remembered the carnage it had caused. Back then it had been used against their brigade, and they had suffered heavy losses before someone finally managed to throw a grenade into the gunner’s nest. The boy couldn’t sleep for two nights after he had seen the man standing next to him turn from a living being into minced meat. But now he was so glad that tears welled up in his eyes. They were saved. He asked God for help, but it was the God of War—John Moses Browning—who was going to save him.

And whoever was holding it in his hands would become His priest, a representative of God on their sinful lands who would choose sacrifices to sate his deity’s hunger and spew his curses at heathens and infidels at the rate of one thousand two hundred syllables per minute.

He rushed toward his timely savior, ready to repent, to ask for forgiveness. To tell him that, in his heart of hearts, he never doubted him and he knew that he would solve all of his problems.

But he didn’t make it.

A creature dropped from the top, cutting them off from the light. As soon as it did, it swayed to the right, but unlike the other monsters before it, it didn’t leave their sight, only tried to dodge their shots. With horror, Desecrator realized that they were being cut off from the light and the majority of the troops. The sole lamp was lying on the ground, abandoned by its owner, its rays leaving sharp, disproportional shadows of their legs.

One of the soldiers from their group tried to make a break for it, rushing toward the light, but he didn’t make it far; two of the risen creatures leaped at him and, before the man managed to even stop his stride, they tore his arms off.

Desecrator almost squealed; his salvation was so close, but there was no way to get to it.

How many of them were there, in that small group? Fifteen people tops, counting the kids? How long would they last?

Another creature walked into the light. It used to be a woman; Desecrator could tell that from two skin sacks that were hanging from her chest. Perhaps when she was alive they had been her pride, but after her transformation they were just another grotesque detail of her visage.

She leaped at the soldier closest to her, but before she could land a finishing blow both of them blew up in an explosion of gore and bones. One of the General’s officers had finally managed to throw a grenade. They finally finished their preparation and were ready to show the entire Keep of the Giants what Hell truly was.

The machine gun started chirping, throwing lead at its wielder’s enemies, each bullet exploding from its long restrained fury and anger and bursting out of the barrel toward its target with speed greater than sound. Each one of them—death, whether to the living or the undead. Concrete and final, from which there was no return. The ancient mystical Blood of the Giants had nothing on modern human ingenuity—the result of a millennia-long quest to find the most destructive ways to kill their kin.

Each fifth bullet in the cartridge belt was a tracer, blazing through the air in one short fiery streak to lead its four invisible brothers, and their combined procession illuminated the cave to the very roots of the upside-down forests above. Whenever the General pointed the cannon the ground would rise in small puffs and flesh would burst under the unstoppable onslaught. Durable and hardy as they were, the creatures simply couldn’t resist it, the unnatural binds that ran through their bodies and held them together being torn apart. Each bullet left a hole one could put his hand through, and each second thirty such holes appeared on the battlefield.

It was the General’s one gambit, his literal secret weapon that he had been betting on for the entirety of their quest. And his bet had paid off.

“Yes!!” one of the surrounded soldiers jumped to his feet, throwing his hands up in the air victoriously.

A moment later his silhouette, lit up by the lights above the generator, became porous, and light burst through him. The soldier was dead before he fell to the ground, his bodily functions shutting down before his brain even recorded what had happened.

The semi-visible iron ray of death travelled further without any delay, onto its next target. It quickly found it, making one of the beast’s heads burst like a melon, but not before cutting through another soldier’s body.

With horror, Desecrator realized that the General didn’t care if any of his soldiers were in the line of fire. He had his ten or fifteen soldiers that he needed with him, as well as the might of the machine gun. As long as he could end the fight once and for all, everyone else was just casualties of war.

“No, he can’t” Desecrator gasped as the bullets swirled around him. “He can’t give up on us! He wouldn’t!”

His mind was hysterically racing for answers, refusing to let the reality in, pushing it out, pretending that it wasn’t there. He could not accept things at face value, he could not admit that the other boys were right and the General didn’t need them, didn’t see them as warriors but only as tools. He could not cope with the fact that, for the last six years, he hadn’t been groomed to become one of the General’s battlefield pals as he had thought.

A moment later a grenade burst some twenty feet away from him, its deafening blast rolling over the boy, making him tumble and fall to the ground. His head was ringing – both from the aching pain in his ears and the questions buzzing inside.

And in despair, his mind managed to come up with an interpretation that fit. An interpretation of that monster’s actions that he could live with.

He got up from the floor and started running away from the man. Bullets were wheezing past him, but the boy took the fact that none of them hit him as a confirmation of his and the General’s unspoken pact.

“I got it, General!” the boy cried out as he charged into the darkness. “I won’t get in your way! I’ll lure some of them off! We’ll meet at the surface, right?”

The man didn’t pay his screams any more attention than he did to any other yells for help, but Desecrator, in his newfound confidence in the man, understood why; he was too busy cutting their enemies out. He didn’t have time for pleasantries, especially when, as Desecrator was sure, he knew that he and the boy understood each other without any words.

Locking eyes with one of the beasts that lurked at the threshold of light, he screamed at it: “Hey you! Follow me if you can!”

He could outrun it, he was sure. He had done so in the past once, and he was sure that he could do that again. He didn’t look back to see if any of the monsters had followed him, but as he ran the boy began laughing.

He had finally done something brave. The others wouldn’t be able to deny it.

The moment things started to go south, Puppy Slayer threw the construction off his shoulder, turned around, and started running away—just as the captain had advised him to do a few hours before in the tunnels. It was easy advice to follow; he didn’t think about what the captain had told him the night before, about being on his own. He didn’t think about any of the dangers that could lurk just beyond his field of sight, or that the others might need him. His only priority at that moment was escaping the most imminent danger, and frankly, he would do the same even without the captain’s advice.