Pulling the knife from the fire, he peeled aside his jacket with his dripping left hand to reveal the slobbering maw in his gut. He pinched the lips closed and brought the glowing orange blade to his belly, lining up the broad side with the pursed edges, and pressed the knife against it.
Richard screamed, a blood-curdling wail that ripped his throat on the way out. Tendrils of smoke wafted from the burning flesh, bringing with them the aroma of fried burgers. Buckling back forth, he forced his trembling right hand to steady the blade until it cooked the skin to the point that it stuck and he had to pry it away. The slanted gash looked like it had puckered, the upper strata a livid red, blood weeping from the sores formed where the knife had torn away. The union of flesh was sinewy and raw, branded by the hunting blade.
His screams carried on and on until he was able to pack a handful of snow atop the wound. Casting the knife aside, he doubled over, eyes pinched against the searing pain. Blood drained in lines from his mouth, dripping into the snow. Each breath brought a new level of agony.
“Get over here!” he shouted, gritting his teeth. “Now!”
He opened his bloodshot eyes and looked around the dying fire, waiting for any of them to crest the rocky slope.
“I said get over here!” His voice grew into a bellow of rage.
After a moment that allowed his anger to fester like his abdomen, a face peeked up over the rock. It was shielded by a ski mask with a furry hood drawn over it. The man’s eyes were impossibly wide, only latching onto Richard’s for a split second before looking away.
Richard tried to smile at him, but only succeeded in baring his bloody teeth.
“It’s time to go to war,” he said.
“You know, Richard,” the man said, climbing to the top of the hill, but keeping the fire between them. “Me and the guys…I mean, really the guys…they were thinking we might just head back to the city, you know?”
“The city. Really?” Richard lifted his rifle from the ground and rested it across his lap.
“Yeah.” The man rocked from one foot to the other. “This whole thing… It really hasn’t gone at all like we thought it would. We…I mean they were thinking we’d be better off just cutting our losses.”
“You know they’re laughing at us across the lake. They’re sitting there in that little cave talking about what a joke we are.”
“Me and the guys, we aren’t so worried about that. Let them, I say.” He chuckled nervously.
“I don’t think that’s the right decision, friend.”
“Well…we were hoping you’d come with us, but, um, we’re going to leave now regardless.”
Richard leaned back, sliding his left hand under the barrel of the rifle and his right over the stock until his index finger was beneath the trigger guard.
“It’s because I cut that kid’s eyes out, isn’t it?” Richard’s voice was cool and calm.
The man didn’t say anything for the longest time, as though surprised by Richard’s candor. He finally just shrugged.
“He stabbed me,” Richard said, lining up the barrel through the fire. “Surely you remember that.”
“We’re all in over our heads here. Man, things are just getting out of control so—”
There was a crack of rifle fire and the man flew in reverse, his heels dragging through the snow.
Richard rose and chambered another load, pressing his left hand over the bulging mass of tissue under his jacket, and limped over to where the man was sprawled on his back, both hands toying with a mess of blood above his right hip.
“J-Jesus, man. You…you shot me,” the man said, trying to kick at the snow in retreat.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Richard said, lowering the hot barrel to rest on the man’s forehead, the skin sizzling like bacon. He pulled the trigger again and the upper half of the man’s head exploded. “Not so much anymore though, I’m guessing.”
The roar of engines filled the air as the other men sped away from the island.
“Cowards,” Richard said, kicking the body for good measure. The man’s hands fell away from his hip to release an arterial spurt that spattered Richard’s boots. He paid it no mind as he dropped the rifle and exchanged it for the corpse’s shotgun. His limp growing more pronounced with every step, Richard descended the path toward his snowmobile.
He could see the tracks the others had laid, but there wasn’t even a hint of their taillights on the horizon. When he returned to the hotel, he would make them pay. Make them learn what he thought of traitors. The thought of marching them out through the gates when they spotted the creatures coming made him positively giddy.
His head swam from the loss of so much blood, his thoughts buoying in a discombobulated manner that left room for his singular will alone. Swinging his leg over the seat of the snowmobile, he plopped down, the jolt firing a spatter of blood past his lips and onto the windshield. He set the shotgun on his lap, where he could easily reach it when the time came, and cranked up the engine. His head lolled forward, but he righted it and managed to get the sled moving, speeding along the face of the island until he reached the southern end. Rounding the corner, he pushed the motor to its limits. It growled in protest, but launched forward toward the western shore. He didn’t care how loud he was now. They knew he was coming, but there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop him. They had no weapons, no cover. He imagined them huddled in fear in that stupid little cave and wondered how many he could fit into the expanding pattern of steel from his weapon. Their screams in his mind urged him faster, faster.
The flakes flew past to either side like stars as he rocketed through hyperspace. He rose and fell on the drifted snow, which launched him into the air to alight with an explosion of powder. Raising the gun, he tried to balance it atop the sloped windshield and against his shoulder so he could use the headlight as his sightline.
Blood leaked into his lap, the jostling reopening the deep hole, but he could always close it again. Nothing mattered now but vengeance. He didn’t even care about the boy anymore. They had all been a party to his humiliation. No one treated Richard Robinson that way. They would all know pain for what they had done, and he would go back to Salt Lake City and they would either accept his rule or face the same consequences. He was out of patience. No more psychology. No more manipulating people to achieve his goals. They would either give him what he wanted or they would die. Plain and simple. For all of the hoopla surrounding democracy and the misguided notion that the people had a say in their government, in the end it had proven to be their ultimate undoing. An iron-fisted rule would have saved the world. When those Middle Eastern sand jockeys had started poking their sticks at the American Empire, they should have just come down upon them with their giant heel. Then none of this would have happened. He had learned that lesson, and he would not make the same mistake. Not a chance. People were either with him or they were dead. Period.
The vague outline of the cliff rose from the skyline, wavering through the snow like a ship in the fog, only the entire mountain appeared to be on fire. Flames raced toward the clouds, the scent of burning wood finally reaching him on the gale. More smoke seemed to come from the beach, lingering around him in a haze.
With a loud crack, the front rudder bent upwards, launching the snowmobile into the air at an angle. The right runner landed first, his weight toppling it to the side and sending the whole works torpedoing into the accumulation.
Richard pried his right leg out from beneath the weight of the sled and pushed off on the ice on the lake, emerging from beneath the snow sputtering mouthfuls of bloody slush. The barrel of the shotgun poked out of the white mat to his right, the mangled runner to his left. The spring shock had snapped, leaving the short ski dangling uselessly. With a cough, the engine shuddered and died.
All he could think to do was to jerk the gun out of the snow and continue walking. Left hand fighting against the opening wound, shotgun in his right, he stumbled through the snow. Large white birds flapped a
t the furthest reaches of his peripheral vision, feathers clapping, before disappearing back into the storm, following him just out of sight.
At first he thought it was a mirage, but there appeared to be a wide silhouette ahead. No. There were two heads. Two bodies leaning against each other as they trudged toward land.
Richard smiled and brought his sloppy left hand to the pump of the gun to brace it, wedging the butt against his shoulder. Blood poured past the tattered edges of the cauterized wound, but he didn’t even notice, for his time had finally arrived.
Let the slaughter commence.
VII
The Great Salt Lake
THE TWO SNOWMOBILES STREAKED EASTWARD ACROSS THE FROZEN LAKE. Neither man looked at the other, only at the sheet of white ahead, praying to distance themselves from the island and the hell they had endured. That was how they were forced to rationalize it in their minds. Both had been willing participants in a situation that had escalated beyond the point of no return. They had been willing to attack their fellow survivors at Mormon Tears to save the boy from them, though neither had figured it would ever reach that extreme. Their adversaries had been unarmed and they had known that fact all along. All they would have needed to do was brandish their weapons and they would have had the boy back with them in no time. It had become a series of lines in the sand, faint at first and easily enough crossed without even noticing, but as those lines had become more clearly defined, the ramifications had become readily apparent.
People had died.
At the time, they had felt the power of righteousness even though they had essentially stood back and observed. It was staggering how much right and wrong actually looked alike in retrospect. Neither of the men had pulled the trigger that ended Gray’s life, but neither had they tried to stop it. To say that it had been beyond their control was a copout. Either could have interceded at that crucial juncture when violence had appeared imminent. Maybe at the time they hadn’t clearly recognized the signs, but looking back, they would have had to be blind to miss them. They had been strung along, taken down a path neither wanted to follow, of their own volition, without even knowing it. When Richard had cut out that kid’s eyes, it had been like waking from a dream into a nightmare. He had gone too far. They had gone too far. And now, rather than trying to right their wrong, they were running away. Like cowards.
Maybe that was too cut and dried. Richard wouldn’t have hesitated to kill either of them, as he had the man who had drawn the short straw and been designated to tell Richard of their plans to head back to Salt Lake City. They hadn’t seen the man die, though as soon as they heard the shots, they were on their snowmobiles and speeding across the lake. For all they knew, both men were gut-shot and bleeding to death by the fire, but they couldn’t bring themselves to turn around. Too many bad things had happened on that island and there were no signs of it relenting. They just needed to get back to the hotel with the others and prepare to fend off those creatures. Even that battle had lost its imperative in the face of all of the bloodshed they had witnessed. They had all lost their way…
The ground shook beneath them, causing the snowmobiles to lose traction momentarily, sliding as they sought purchase.
They had taken the ice for granted and both knew it. And now they were going to pay.
The storm had gathered its strength to cut them off from the rest of the world, the flakes clogging the air to the point that they could barely see the halos of light around the head and taillights of the speeder right beside them, though still they tried to watch the ground. Both expected chunks of ice to rise like jagged tombstones from the white as it fractured to reveal the lake, but the accumulation never wavered. Still the ground shuddered beneath them as though a giant stomped across the lake, its monstrous body hidden by the snow, or before the advance of a great army…
Neither even had the chance to ease off the gas. Black bodies materialized from the sheeting snow already within the range of the headlights, which only glinted from the metallic armor on the smooth scales, highlighting the tips of teeth and claws before they were upon them. A cresting tide of darkness crashed over them, cleaving them from their seats and into the snow so fast that by the time either felt the impact they were buried in the snow.
The snowmobiles continued on without them like missiles until they ran out of steam and were stampeded into the snow. Windshields were shattered and seats shredded, but neither man would ever know, as they were already collections of broken bones littering the bloodstained snow and dribbling down the chins of so many savage monsters.
War paused atop Thunder long enough to study the crimson snow angels before crunching the bones beneath his steed’s fiery hooves. He looked up to the horizon and kicked the beast in the exposed ribs with spurred heels, urging him to race directly ahead to where the island was a distant black mound peeking out of the blizzard.
The flames rose so high from War’s eyes that they scorched the armor over his face, a trail forming from Thunder’s heels like the tail of a comet. They could all feel what was coming. The final battle at long last was at hand. They would tear through the last of them, and their task would be complete. The planet would be purged of the taint of man and the process of rebuilding could begin anew. Only this time…this time the dominant species wouldn’t be cast in the Lord’s image, but in that of a new form entirely. Now was the time to seize their rule. They were the Lord’s children and rightful heirs to His throne. They were going to take what was theirs this time.
And they would never again relinquish it.
Thunder pounded up the face of the island, the ice on the smooth stone not even slowing it, and stood atop the highest knoll. The Swarm seethed over every inch of rock, covering the atoll like flies on a corpse. With the smell of charcoaled death lingering around them and fresh meat carried along the wind from the far shore, War sat high atop his stallion, consumed by its flames of desire. Hissing erupted all around him and he could positively feel their excitement. It was all his minions could do to await his command, knowing that the first of them to reach the island would be the last to enjoy human meat, and it was such a divine taste.
A fire several stories tall burned ahead, black smoke chasing away the snow. He couldn’t help smiling beneath his mask. So they thought themselves ready for what wouldn’t even qualify as a fight. A wall of fire was no deterrent to his Swarm. They would simply go around it, attacking from all sides at once. They would pour over the mountain from the west and launch a full frontal attack across the lake. The humans would barely have time to understand what was happening before they died.
Battle? It was going to be a massacre.
War raised his right fist. Thunder bucked onto its hind legs and stabbed the air with fiery front hooves. The hissing escalated to deafening levels, the earth quaking. He jerked his fist to either side and hundreds of black creatures sprinted away from the island to the north and south to sneak around the mountain and descend upon them from behind their pathetic flaming barricade. The vast majority remained, sensing that by the time the others reached their destination it would be all over. They would leap down onto the ice and barrel toward the shore.
Jerking his fist down, War bellowed a war cry that shook the heavens. The Swarm leapt down from the stone formations, hitting the ground at a sprint even on legs broken from the fall. The ground shuddered beneath their terrible rumbling advance.
The earth would soon taste the last drops of the spilled blood of its mortal plague.
VIII
Mormon Tears
NORMAN’S SHOULDERS BURNED WHITE HOT, HIS BREATHING NOW SO labored he could hardly move. He didn’t know how long he’d been chopping, only that he had nearly exhausted his reserves of energy. Fingers frozen around the hatchet, he no longer even felt its weight as he swung it, over and over, groaning with the exertion. The conversation with Phoenix that had led him out onto the ice with the ax had left the most important thing unspoken, but he had seen it in the boy’s eyes.
>
He wouldn’t be coming back.
The tears froze on his cheeks, his lashes so thick with ice that they scraped his eyes. There was a part of him that wanted to scream and run away, but he knew he had no choice but to accept it. There was a certain measure of calmness that came from that revelation, especially knowing that his life would be given in exchange for the prospect that the others might live. He was a military man after all, and such altruistic motives lent a measure of nobility to the art of war. While he had been in Iraq, there had been what they liked to call “civil unrest” at home. People screaming and protesting in the streets about the military’s involvement overseas, burning flags in effigy and filling the internet with all sorts of left wing propaganda designed to further some fat cat’s political agenda that they bought hook, line, and sinker. It didn’t matter though. It never did. He never expected a hero’s welcome and only hoped no one would spit in his face when he finally returned home. It was enough just knowing that he was willing to sacrifice himself for them if need be, for a concept greater than any one person and the very dream that gave them the ability to speak out in a matter that would have led to execution in more countries than not. It was about more than oil, more than anything even dirty Washington money could buy, more even than freedom.
They fought for hope.
Hope that one day there would be no need for an eight year-old Saudi child or his counterpart in Compton to carry an automatic rifle. His army, the army he joined fresh out of high school, had learned that providing hope for a thankless nation that criticized them while they drank their five dollar lattes had to be enough. It didn’t matter if back home they slashed the budget for veteran’s hospitals or cut their pensions, for if they could help save the world, if only for a single day, it would all be worthwhile. And even today, there was no way of knowing if his endeavors would be in vain or his life for naught, just so long as he had given his friends the hope for survival. He could hang his hat on that.
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