by C. E. Martin
"Is that a woman?" Lee asked, unsure.
"Let me do the talking," Kenslir said, slinging his rifle behind his back. He began walking toward the front of the building. The old woman quietly watched him.
When he stepped out of the building, into the bright morning sun, the woman finally spoke. "What are you?" she croaked.
"This area is under quarantine," Kenslir answered. The stone soldiers now walked outside, slowly separating and circling cautiously around the old woman and keeping a healthy distance away from her.
"Why can't I see you?" the woman asked. At this distance, Kenslir could see her eyes were clouded with glaucoma. She was no longer relying on light to see the world around her.
"Is this all your work?" Kenslir asked, looking around.
The woman smiled, revealing a mouth with many teeth missing- and those that remained being stained brown and black. "Your men, they're cursed?"
"We prefer to think of it as a blessing," Kenslir said. "Ex Malo Bonum."
The old woman spat. "Good from evil? Is that what your Pope teaches these days?"
"I wouldn't know- I'm not Catholic," Kenslir said.
"No, but you reek of Christian."
"I hate to cut this swell conversation short," Kenslir said, "but I’m on a schedule here. Are you going to surrender or not?"
The old woman began laughing- almost uncontrollably. Her breath came in great wheezing gasps and she finally composed herself. "The Goddess would not like that."
The woman threw her arms up high, her staff over her head. The sky rumbled and cracked and turned very dark. All around the town, wind picked up, whipping dust and debris into the air.
"I'll ask once more," the old woman said, lowering her staff. "What are you?"
"You first."
The old woman frowned and a lightning bolt speared down out of the churning sky overhead. It struck Kenslir in the chest, igniting several of the grenades he still wore in his combat vest. The blast threw the Colonel off his feet, and sent him flying backwards into the warehouse.
All four stone soldiers snapped their M-60s up against their shoulders, ready to fire. The wind intensified just as quickly, forming a spiraling tower of dust and debris that masked the woman from sight. The TTVs flickered, the intense electromagnetic field of the sudden electrical storm overhead interfering with the LCD displays in the goggles.
Smith fired first- unleashing his M-60 into the spiraling cone of dust. The others joined in, careful to aim so they didn't strike their teammates on the other side of the swirling winds.
After several long seconds of sustained fire, the wind abruptly died out and the dust dropped back to the street. The woman was gone.
"Where’d she go?" Lee asked. He immediately opened his M-60 and began removing the empty ammo pack strapped to the side of it. The other men followed suit, each pulling a new ammo pack off their belts and attaching the large boxes of belted ammo to the machineguns.
Laughter echoed across the wide plaza- coming from the west. The men all turned, looking for the source of the laughter, but still reloading.
The laughter faded, then started anew, behind them. Then stone men turned around and slammed down the covers on the M-60s and cycled the bolts- their fresh ammo packs in place. No one could be seen, and again, the laughter faded away.
Something began to rise from the dirt of the ground- a white, bilious fog that defied all logic. It moved slowly, like a cloud, but was so dense it seemed to be made of thick smoke.
"Commander?" Eddie Cooper asked, a little worried.
The fog crept up to the stone soldiers' feet, wrapping around them. When they moved, they felt a resistance- very similar to the thick Florida mud they had been marching through only a day earlier.
"What is this stuff?" Lee asked, trying to kick at the fog. It continued to rise, forming a cone-like mound around him, creeping up his legs. He could barely move now.
Lawrence swiped at the fog surrounding him with the barrel of his M-60- it became caught in the seemingly -innocuous material, held fast. "What the-?"
The fog continued to rise, and the stone soldiers were fast approaching a panic. When the fog reached their waists, they dropped their rifles and struggled to free themselves- but it was as if they were held fast in tar. Their discarded machineguns were swallowed into the thick fog.
"Men of stone," the witch announced, stepping into view. The fog swirled around her feet, parting for her with no apparent difficulty. "Men of bone."
Smith struggled to reach his sidearm, but the fog was up to his elbows now and he was firmly held in its grasp.
"I have never seen your like before," the witch said. She seemed calm, sure of herself. She walked toward Cooper.
"Where are you from, gray one?" She ran a hand over Cooper's shirt and up his face. He jerked, trying to move away from her but could not. The strange white fog held him in an unbreakable grip.
"Did you really think the Goddess would let you win?" the old witch asked.
"That was the plan," Colonel Kenslir said loudly.
Two gunshots rang out and the old woman's chest, over her heart, exploded outwards, showering Cooper in a spray of her blood.
The witch's eyes went wide and she staggered backwards, turning slowly.
Colonel Kenslir stood just inside the warehouse, his left arm extended, his Desert Eagle in his hand. His vest and shirt were in tatters, blown off his gray and black chest from the blast. Half his face was cracked- a mix of burnt flesh and gray stone. His entire right arm hung by his side, mostly gray, with pink flesh showing beneath the cracks in his now-petrified skin.
The witch opened her mouth to say something, but instead collapsed to the ground. As she fell, the fog holding the men collapsed down as well, merging with the foot-thick layer covering the entire area.
The Colonel holstered his Desert Eagle and walked forward, the fog retreating like a living thing as he approached it. Small tendrils of white brushed against his feet, not able to move out of the way quick enough and flashed and sparked green.
As he approached the witch's body the fog was sinking back into the ground.
"I wondered what you were doing," Smith said, retrieving his M-60.
Cooper was wiping at his face, trying to get the blood from the witch off, but realized the flesh-eating bacteria in the air had already devoured it.
The men came together and stood over the witch's body.
"Why not shoot her in the head?" Lee asked.
"A witch's power is in her heart," Kenslir said. "Kill the heart, kill the witch."
The Colonel pulled out a canteen and began pouring water down his arm and chest. The water soaked into his petrified, burnt skin like it was a sponge.
"I thought that was vampires?" Lawrence asked.
"Works on them too." The Colonel's skin was smoothing out now- the stone flesh healing itself. In a few more moments it would turn back to flesh tones.
"So it was the witch, all this time?" Smith asked, surprised. “She made the bacteria?”
"Uh, guys," Cooper said, looking away from the men. He was looking around- all around them and the wide open area in front of the warehouse.
Scattered around the area, the piles of bones that had been workers were now moving- or rather, being moved. A thick, black sludge- like tar- was rising up out of the ground, coating the bones, carrying them back into the positions they had held in life.
The men looked to the witch- her bones too were moving- covered with the same thick, tar-like substance.
"Fascinating," Dr. King said over the TTVs. "The bacteria is behaving cooperatively."
The witch skeleton began to rise, tarry finger bones pushing off from the ground. She slowly made her way to one knee.
"Is this normal?" Lee asked, looking around at his fellow soldiers, confusion on his stone face.
Kenslir dropped the empty canteen he'd just poured over his head and pulled off the large tomahawk holstered on his left thigh. With his left arm, he sl
iced down with the weapon, splitting the witch skull in half and shattering her skeleton from neck to pelvis.
As the skeleton broke apart from the powerful blow, a wind seemed to erupt from it, blowing outwards in all directions, almost like an explosion.
"What the hell was that?" Cooper asked, alternating his gaze from the witch skeleton lying in a puddle of tarry goo to the skeletons now standing around the edges of the area, silently watching the men.
Kenslir switched his TTV to a satellite view- triggering a display for all the men. At the front of Gwasera, dozens of tar-wrapped skeletons were lurching along on their bony feet, marching out the gate.
"The bacteria's trying to escape!" Cooper declared.
The Colonel was reholstering his tomahawk and gave the men a puzzled look as his face turned back to flesh. "Don't just stand there. Go smash them."
The soldiers nodded and stepped out, shouldering their rifles again. Almost as one, they began firing- smashing the skulls of the tar-skeletons to dust.
The skeletons shuddered, but remained upright. They began marching toward the stone soldiers, arms outstretched, reaching.
The Colonel drew the submachine gun from his right thigh and fired a quick burst. A cut-down M-16 called an OA-93, the gun spat out a stream of 5.56mm rounds that removed the legs from two of the skeletons. Kenslir then sprinted to the closest and kicked it in the sternum- exploding it.
"Headshots aren't the answer," the Colonel said to the men. "Now go break some bones- I’ll take care of these."
Smith nodded and waved to the other soldiers, then sprinted south, toward the main gate. As the others fell into step behind him, Kenslir began firing quick bursts from his submachinegun, dropping the remaining skeletons nearby.
By the time the stone soldiers were out of sight, Kenslir had finished off the last of the skeletons. He walked to the closest one, holstering the OA-93. He crushed a boot down on a tarry back, shattering its spine and exploding its rib cage.
He looked over the area, noting the many legless, semi-broken skeletons trying to pull themselves along with their hands.
The Colonel frowned. "You can come out now. I know you're still here."
A small column of air spiraled up from the ground, the faintest of dirt devils, spinning in place like a miniature tornado. Wind howled, then formed words. "What are you?"
"That just kills you, doesn't it?" Kenslir asked. "You bastards are so arrogant- you think that because you're a few thousand years old you know everything."
"What are you!" the wind demanded again, louder.
"I'm just a man. A human- just like your mother was."
The wind howled with rage and the whirlwind approached the Colonel. He sidestepped and easily avoided it.
"Son of a Fallen and a whore," Kenslir taunted. "Half mortal, aren’t you?"
"You cannot defeat me!" the whirlwind declared- now taunting the Colonel.
"You sure about that?"
"You cannot touch the wind- you cannot hurt the air..."
"Maybe I don't have to," Kenslir said. He turned and walked up to the whirlwind, reaching for it. His fingertips trailed through the outer edges of the swirling dust and debris caught in the dust devil. Green light flashed and the whirlwind screamed and backed away quickly.
"You cannot catch me, mortal!"
"Maybe. Maybe not."
The Colonel turned and started to walk away.
"Where are you going, human?! Do you not wish to fight me?"
Kenslir stopped in the street and turned back to the whirlwind. "I know what you are. And I know that you're bound to that big rock in there. I can walk away- you can't."
"No!" the whirlwind raged. It swept toward Kenslir who stood still, watching it impassively.
"I will spread disease all over this continent! I will send it to the four corners of the world!" the whirlwind raged, inches from Kenslir. "I will wipe man from the face of the Earth."
"Keep dreaming, blowhard," Kenslir said, turning and walking away once more. "Oh, and maybe you ought to make peace with yourself. You're about to answer to a higher power."
With that, the Colonel turned and ran away.
***
The long column of bacteria-wrapped bones stretched out a half mile from the front gate of the boomtown. The stone soldiers had smashed into the stiffly marching skeletons like a furious storm. But not every skeleton broke the same. Some lost spines, some arms, some hip bones.
The trail of carnage left by this attack seethed and moved on the ground- bones were discarded and others picked back up, formed into new skeletons by thick, tar-like bacteria. These composite skeletons then rose up and staggered along after the hundreds of others walking away from Gwasera. The stone soldiers were barely making a dent in the skeleton army.
"This ain't working!" Cooper declared, smashing a skeleton to pieces with a punch.
"You got a better idea?" Tim Lawrence asked, slashing through another with his Bowie knife.
>>>STAND DOWN<<< scrolled across their TTVs and a flashing green arrow in the corner of their fields of view prompting the men to turn around.
The Colonel was approaching on foot, slowing to a jog. He stomped through the debris of skeletons covering the road, the odd bit of black goo flashing green as his bare feet ground it into the dirt.
"Sir?" Daniel Smith asked, shaking bacterial film off his knuckles.
"You guys don't want to miss this," Kenslir said. He half-turned and pointed back to the town, then up.
The TTVs began flashing warning triangles in the sky above. At least a dozen of them- that rapidly became red streaks as they homed in on Gwasera.
A dozen missiles flashed down out of the sky, engines roaring as the rocketed to earth at well over Mach 2. A bright flash erupted from beyond the town, where the warehouse had been- a series of explosions erupting in sequence almost as one.
A brilliant fireball bloomed into the sky- and a shockwave of heat radiated out from the town, moving Kenslir back a few inches and shattering most of the skeleton warriors on the road. In the aftermath of the town-flattening blast, a huge mushroom cloud rose up into the air.
"Holy shit," Robert Lee exclaimed.
"Thermobaric missiles," Kenslir said, turning to face the men. "Standard failsafe for missions like this. For all their bluster, most of these supernatural bastards can't take a little heat."
"Supernatural?" Smith said, puzzled. "The witch? I thought you killed her."
Kenslir smiled. "That witch was dead years ago. She was being puppeteered by an air elemental- or something very similar. Animated her body to fool the locals."
"Air Elemental?" Cooper was a little surprised to hear that. Even with all he'd seen and read about since his petrification, that seemed a little far fetched.
"How does a bomb kill something made out of air?" Lawrence asked. He was looking around at all the collapsed tar-skeletons laying on the road. They were like puppets with their strings cut- the bacteria that had survived the blast wave no longer animated them.
"Thermobaric weapons burn hot- very hot," the Colonel answered. "Hot enough to burn the air."
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Read more about the Stone Soldiers at www.StoneSoldiers.info!
The Stone Soldiers will return in July 2013 in Stone Soldiers: Sea of Monsters
READ THE NOVEL THAT STARTED THE SERIES!
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