On Black Wings

by Storm, Sylvia

  I wait.

  The ground shakes and I balance myself.

  I pull the bow back to its furthest extent.

  I wait and narrow my eyes.

  “Seraph,” Azrael says, “you may need to run if you strike the beast with that. And run fast.”

  The ground twenty yards in front of us explodes like a geyser of dirt and stone. It’s hard to see as the billowing cloud of dirt sails into the sky, and we’re covered by debris, rocks bouncing across the road around us.

  The worm shoots out of the ground, the unholy scream coming from deep withing it echoed by the screams of the hundreds of lost souls along its body. It’s loud at this distance, like a thousand lions’ roars.

  I wait, and let the glowing arrow go, a bright golden path cut through the air in its wake, dirt circling behind it in the air. The arrow strikes its side, and a strung together line of eight bodies explodes as the arrow slices them off the worm’s body. The worm screams so loud my ears ring, and it turns its body towards me and howls.

  I run before the mammoth beast surges forward and slams into the road where I stood seconds before. Car alarms sound, pavement buckles, and Azrael runs beside me.

  “You have its eye, now run!” Azrael screams at me, stumbling and running as the road is torn to pieces behind us by the giant approaching maw.

  “Warn Becks!” I scream back, running towards the security gate, my black wings feeling like a parachute slowing me down. Azrael nods, and laterals through the parking lot. I’m left by myself, running, holding my bow, and not having enough time to load and fire a second shot. I can hear the beast behind me chewing up pavement like a runaway bulldozer.

  Men stand in front of me.

  I wave my arms at the security gate we bluffed our way through, and the two soldiers at the gate run to a parked jeep. They floor the jeep, and start to pull away.

  “Wait! Wait!” I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, over the beast’s roars, and the jeep slows down for a moment. I spill into the back and scream. “Go!”

  In seconds, we are driving away from the inner gatehouse, and it is destroyed by the hellish worm’s gaping maw.

  “You got wings, girl?” One of the soldiers says from the passenger seat. “What the hell?” the driver looks back at the worm sliding along the road, helped along by the thousands of bodies helping pull it along the ground with their free arms. “Don’t look back Tom, just keep driving!”

  “Yes, these are my wings, I’m an angel, and that’s a creature of Hell.” I kneel in the back of the jeep and nock another arrow. “Don’t ask and keep driving straight!”

  “Turn coming up!” The driver yells, and I brace myself. We skid around a corner, and I slam into the side of the bed of the jeep before I right myself. We’re not much faster than the worm, and even at this distance, it is still pulling out of the ground by the parking lot. It cuts the corner where we turned, and starts gaining on us as we speed down the scrub-surrounded base road.

  “You sure you don’t want a gun, girl?” The soldier in the passenger seat says.

  I aim my next arrow at the beast and let it fly. The golden arrow cuts through the air, and punches a four-body wide hole straight through the beast in a massive explosion of light, sparks showering the road behind the worm.

  “This works better.”

  The worm screams again, and it surges towards us, gaining the distance to within a dozen yards. At this distance I can see straight down its gullet, a fiery red hellish maw of death. The holes I punched through the beast spew forth flame as it lurches and crawls behind us as fast as nothing I have ever seen.

  “Turn coming up! Right or left?” the driver says, his voice in a panic.

  I look forward. To the right is the base’s garrison, with row after row of barracks filled with soldiers. To the left is the storage area for munitions and fuel, along with a massive building-sized dome filled with what I assume is highly frozen rocket fuel.

  “Right!” I say, turning forward and holding onto the seats. My hair blows in the wind.

  I unfurl my wings and let them catch the air, and I can feel the pull on my body, my hands barely able to grip the seats. My wings spread wide and catch the wind.

  “Don’t follow me.” The jeep turns right and I let go, the soldiers stunned and pulling away from me.

  I’m flying.

  It feels incredible and natural, and I am flying like a bird. The ground zooms underneath me, and I find the wings take over, keeping me balanced and aloft. It is a beautiful feeling, and I am finally free of the ground, my wings carrying me on a cloud of air.

  I think left, and my wings take me there. The jeep with the soldiers pulls away, heading in the other direction, away from this madness. The death chases me.

  The fence I fly over reads ‘danger, high explosives’ before it is destroyed by the mammoth worm moments later.

  CHAPTER XLI:

  Don't Do This at Home

  The fuel tank is huge, a hundred feet tall, a giant sphere covered with pipes and catwalks, and it’s marked ‘Liquid Oxygen.’

  And I’m flying straight towards it.

  I turn back and the worm is still following me, stuck to the ground, snaking its way across the base like a giant centipede. It’s long, red, covered with human bodies, and it screams with the agony of souls condemned to Hell.

  I turn back, and correct my balance. The act of looking backwards has caused me to lose altitude, and I need to climb if I want to make it to the top of the tank. I flex my wings with a thought and flap them, gaining altitude, and I can’t help to smile a little. Flying, I can’t explain it, it’s a feeling of freedom and beauty that you’ll never understand until you try it. Being up here, even though the minions of Hell are trying to kill me, it’s just incredible.

  I look down and the tank curves up to meet me. There’s a ring-shaped catwalk on top of the sphere, and I aim for one side of the circle. Landing. It’s always the hardest part of flying, I know.

  The catwalk is under me in a flash, and I tilt up, letting my wings catch the air to slow me. I miss the catwalk entirely and begin flying off the opposite side of the sphere. On the plus side, I’m not going to slam my stomach into a guardrail at highway speeds. On the bad side, I’m dropping like a stone onto the tank’s curved surface and it’s rapidly dropping away from me.

  My first landing, and it’s going to suck.

  I slam into the tank on my back, the impact knocking the wind from me, and I tumble head-over-heels once as I roll down the surface of the tank. I’m trying to hold onto my bow, trying to stop, and I end up sliding down the tank’s rapidly curving surface faster and faster.

  My skin catches on the paint of the tank, catching and then letting go, and I curse this skimpy outfit. It feels like sliding down a sticky metal slide in shorts on a hot day, and it hurts.

  I’m so far down the tank I can’t see the surface anymore, it’s just ocean out there and hundreds of feet in the air. It’s a beautiful view if you’re about to die, or already dead like I am. The surface of the tank is freezing in the hot sun, and my legs are skidding along the sticky-feeling paint, and I’m sure I will get road-rash from this given my attire.

  I get my damn heels out in front of me, and they skid along the tank with barely no friction at all. Why, oh why couldn’t they design these fantasy outfits with sensible shoes? One of my heels catches a line of exposed rivets right before the edge and I come to a complete and violent stop. If I would have slid over the metal rivets I’m sure it would have taken a lot of skin off.

  My knees bend hard, and I’m lying flat on the tank, freezing my butt off, my black wings flat against the white metal surface like a splattered crow. My bow is tangled around my right arm, and it hangs and bounces off the metal as I’m breathing hard. There’s not much of a sphere left to get a foothold on, and I’m reminded of how much I hated geometry class in high school.

  On the balance, this was a terrible idea.

  Far in the distance, in t
he field of silos, two giant concrete doors open up, and I see the first steps of some type of missile launch being started. Smoke billows out of the giant hole in the ground, and sirens start to sound. It has to be our missile, and Becks must be starting the launch sequence now.

  Just a little longer.

  The entire tank shudders as I hear the screams of the dead from below me. Do I dare look? I sit up, my heel slipping on the rivet, and peer down the tank by sitting up and nearly leaning out over the edge. I don’t see anything, the curve of the tank blocks my-

  The human-covered worm shoots up from below and towers above me, it climbed up the tank on thousands of pairs of arms of the dead covering its body, holding onto pipes, catwalks, ladders, and any other handhold it could get a hold of on the tank’s surface. It’s gaping, flaming maw opens, and it crashes down towards me like a runaway truck.

  It stops about ten feet from me, the sulfur-like and hellish smell of its maw blowing against me like a giant heater. The bodies inside its mouth glow with hellish fire, and they grasp for me with burning limbs. It can’t make the last few feet to me because something down below is disturbing it’s balance and hold onto the tank. There aren’t enough handholds to keep its weight supported to snap at me from this angle.

  Geometry, it’s a bitch.

  I kick sideways, and curse my wings as I try to roll over. I’m face-down in feathers and it hurts bending my wing this much. I need to move, and I need to move now as the worm pulls more of its length up the tank to deliver a killing blow on me.

  The worm is moving upwards, most of its body straight up in the air as it climbs higher. Hundreds of bodies sewn into its skin reach and grasp for handholds, and it looks like it could snap down at any instant. I can’t run back up the tank, and I can’t stay here for much longer.

  I jump towards the worm, crossing the space in the air between us by gliding with my wings. I slam into the flesh-covered bottom of the worm.

  I end up in the grasp of dozens of skinless, dead bodies along the bottom of the worm. Fleshless hands grab onto every part of me, some pull on my wings, and I’m trapped against the screaming and foul-smelling underside of the beast, hanging hundreds of feet in the air off a highly explosive tank of rocket fuel. They howl and scream in my ears.

  As I said, it wasn’t the brightest plan I’ve had.

  I push hands off of me, only to have new ones replace them, and it feels like a mosh pit is trying to strangle me alive and tear me limb from limb. The worm’s head looks around for my high above, moving right to left.

  Nope, I’m not on the tank, big, dumb, and stupid.

  A missile rockets between me at the tank, coming from high in the air and screaming past like a burning lance of fire. I follow the missile down into the dunes, where it lands in the scrub and explodes in a giant fireball. A fighter jet zooms by the top of the tank, turning in the bright blue morning air, little smoke trails curling off its wings. It’s twin afterburners thunder as it comes around for another pass.

  Great, we got company.

  If that missile would have hit either me or the tank it would have vaporized me instantly. I start to wonder how far this whole ‘born of fire’ thing will go with modern chemistry around. A pair of hands clasps around my neck, and I feel my welcome on the underside of the worm start to wear itself out.

  I focus myself, calm my thoughts, my body getting pulled into the mass of skinless bodies holding onto me, tearing at my wings, strangling my throat, yanking my hair, and pulling me inside the beast.

  The fighter jet makes another pass, coming in, firing its guns at us. A hundred holes are punched through the beast, bodies flying from the monster, each gigantic machine-gun bullet shredding a body as it tears through flesh and hellish sinew. A dozen holes appear in the tank, punched straight into the metal, jets of freezing gas shooting out into the air at high pressure.

  I feel the chill from this distance, the bitter cold catching the air and turning it into ice. The limbs grabbing me pull, tear, and yank at my body, holding me against the worm and trying to tear me apart.

  I disappear.

  I open my eyes.

  I am on a dune, sea grass around me, and the wind blowing gently through my wings. The screams of a thousand souls echo in the distance. I step to the top of the dune, readying my bow, and pulling a golden arrow from my quiver.

  The beast hangs on the side of the fuel tank like a confused centipede, looking for it’s prey. It’s head spins around and it roars.

  I pull the bowstring back and level my arrow at the beast. I feel my anger seep into the arrow, flowing like pure hatred into the golden tip next to my eye. I clear my thoughts, letting the malice seep forth, my unholy soul and the weapon becoming one.

  Now, now is the time for hate.

  The fighter jet swoops in for another pass, firing its guns at the beast again, punching another dozen holes in the tank, liquid oxygen billowing forth in large white plumes. The jet clears and turns for another pass, and I level my arrow at point on the tank where the beast is holding onto. The worm spins, grasps onto the tank with its body, and begins to crawl down.

  “Monster, meet a pissed-off mother.”

  I let my arrow sail free, and I just hear the thwip of the string as the glowing arrow flies into the sky. It takes a while, one second, two, three, and I watch as the arrow climbs slightly, and then starts to fall.

  The worm starts to circle down, and my arrow sails for the middle of where his body curves and begins to come down the tank.

  Four seconds, five. The worm’s tail starts to move up the tank, and I fear that when my arrow hits, most of the worm will be away from the impact-

  The arrow hits, a glowing lance penetrating the thick metal of the liquid oxygen tank, sailing in one side of the metal and out the other. There’s a massive billowing white cloud of liquid oxygen as it jets out and comes into contact with the air, looking like a spraying aerosol of white smoke shooting out of the tank at super-high speed.

  The worm is lost in the jet of white smoke, most of its body frozen solid to the tank. A half-second later, a dull orange thump and flash ignites the cloud and it’s a beautiful, horrible sight. The orange fingers of fire swell and flash inside the breach, and then rapidly travel around the sphere in every direction. Like a squashed orange, the tank heaves, compresses, and explodes in a massive fireball.

  The flash hits me first, feeling like a wave of incredibly hot light, and I watch for a moment as the blinding orange fireball sails up towards the heavens. A half-second later, dune-by-dune, the shock-wave races towards me.

  I don’t have time to move, and every bone in my body is jarred loose by the blast, sending me sailing through the air and sliding along the beach. It’s so loud I can’t hear it, and my vision is blurred as I feel the sand pile up around my wings as I tumble to a stop, noticing the unconscious body of War about thirty feet away. I’m left stunned and deafened, watching a gigantic orange fireball sail into the sky away from me.

  Moments later, a long missile shoots up out of the ground, rockets into the bright blue sky, and beats the fireball into Heaven. My last few visions are of the billowing cloud of death blooming and petering out in the blue sky, and the beautiful missile sailing far, far away high above it. The missile’s smoke trail curves off in the wind, but the plume of its rocket motors are still as straight and true as an arrow shot towards the heart of darkness itself.

  The world gets to live today.

  CHAPTER XLII:

  I Am So Weak

  The sirens blare, and I pull myself from the sand. War still lies on the beach, not dead, but beaten for the time being. I’m reminded of the pictures of the bodies of soldiers strewn across beaches during wars when I see him, the billions of dead this beast caused, and the ocean full of tears he’s responsible for.

  I walk past him, praying the world forgets about this monster.

  I step up onto the dune, and the world has changed. The billowing towers of smoke from the missile
launch and the fuel tank going up hang over the base, and the trail of destruction from the worm scars the base like the scene of an airliner accident. Soldiers run everywhere, emergency vehicles race about, and military vehicles drive down the roads of the base in columns, ready for battle.

  I stumble off the beach, towards a pair of jeeps and an ambulance on a road nearby. Four soldiers level guns at me, and I walk towards them with my arms out and my wings folded, I’m too stunned and tired to care, and I’m not a threat.

  “On the ground!” One of the soldiers shouts.

  I kneel in the sand, and they move towards me, black rifles aimed at me.

  They stand around me, eyes scared, fingers on triggers, gun barrels pointing at my body. “Who are you? Why do you have wings?”

  “Wait!” A soldier from the road shouts, he’s one of the men from the gate that I rode in the jeep with. “She’s one of the good guys! She saved me and led that thing off!”

  The group around me looks back, stunned, and the gate guard with the gas mask around his neck runs up, lifts me to my feet, and hugs me. “My God, thank you.”

  “No problem,” I say, hugging him back, “happy to help.”

  “What are you, some sort of angel?” He smiles at me.

  “Yeah.” I nod. “I’m an angel.”

  I point back towards the beach. “There’s another one back there, on the sand, be careful, he’s a demon from Hell. Never look into his eyes, and make sure he doesn’t wake up. He’s the thing that fell out of the sky.”

  “How do we keep him from waking up?” The squad-leader next to me says.

  “Pray for peace.” I say, rubbing my face.

  The men scramble towards the beach, and the gate guard pulls me towards the road. The men around the ambulance spring to life, shouting. “We got wounded in the command center! Move!”

  A terrible feeling hits me, and I begin running. I run across the scrub, over the trail the worm left, towards the piles of broken and shattered cars in the command center parking lot. The gate guard runs behind me, but I’m running faster than him, my fears echoing through me like a certainty I can’t shake out of my head. I run past soldiers, past paramedics, past people sitting in groups around cars crying and in shock from the terrible things they saw.