Paulson grabbed Grant by his collar and yanked.
The thunderbird stabbed the ground between Grant’s legs. Its beak clacked like a pair of two-by-fours slammed together.
Gun empty, Paulson drew the saber from Grant’s belt.
Giant chicken feet stomped on either side of Grant’s face. His vision was blocked as the bird clambered over him, and vile skin rubbed against his face. Amid the madness and the muffling, the creature screeched and went limp. Grant became soaked as the creature’s bowels let go.
Shrieking, Grant wrestled out from underneath the acrid wet and stink. Free, he snatched up handfuls of grass and rubbed his eyes and nose clear. He peeled off his jacket and flung it far from him.
The thunderbird was dead, Grant saw, and Paulson would soon be joining it. Paulson had managed to stab the saber through the creature’s throat, but it had put its beak through his chest. It stuck out of Paulson’s back, red with blood. Paulson’s eyes were half-lidded with the pain.
Grant saw there was nothing he could do for the man, so his gaze slid to the thunderbird. Part of him refused to accept it, but seeing was believing. He did one better than the farmer in the newspaper, and if he was a college professor, he’d be wiping egg from his face. To think, what academics called extinct, Indians called by name.
And then it fell into place for Grant. His opportunity for fame and fortune had finally, literally, dropped out of the sky.
What would a university pay for such a specimen? Better yet, what would regular people pay to see such a thing?
A vision of a signboard swam into Grant’s skull.
See Jonathon Grant’s Terrifying Thunderbird! $1!
Even the best stageshow couldn’t compete with that…
“You’ll never be able to carry it whole,” Paulson whispered. “Slow you down too much. Not good in this territory.”
Grant was taken aback at how Paulson had divined his thoughts.
“I’ll take my chances,” Grant said.
Paulson coughed, and blood wet his lips. “No, I don’t think you will…” Then he slumped forward, silent.
Grant grabbed Paulson’s canteen. The man would not need it anymore. He drank until his thirst was slacked. Then Grant grabbed the saber sticking out of the Thunderbird.
He had a lot of work to do…
* * *
Grant rode all day with the carcass of the thunderbird split among the horses of Paulson, Webster and Breckenridge. He pushed the animals as hard as he could, sometimes seeing ominous dust clouds on the horizon and crossing too many fresh Indian trails. It wouldn’t do to get killed now, not when he was on his way into the history books. Buttons cascaded through Grant’s mind. No petroglyph animals this time, just dollar signs.
Paulson’s words came back to Grant.
What does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul?
Grant rubbed his arm where the Thunderbird had snatched him. The flesh had turned an ugly purple. If one looked into the bruise long enough, it almost looked like it contained an answer to that question. Grant looked away before he could make it out. Maybe such questions would be relevant in the future, but not for a long, long time.
Eventually, Grant topped a hill and spotted sanctuary. The column of horse soldiers was long and formidable. Plus, such troopers were an eclectic bunch. Surely, a taxidermist was among their number…
Smiling, Grant sang a verse of his own from Gary Owen.
“In the fighting Seventh’s the place for me; it’s the cream of the cavalry; no other regiment can ever claim; its pride, honor, glory and undying fame…”
Finishing the song, Grant kicked his spurs, and Cerberus carried him into the midst of the Seventh Cavalry – as General George Armstrong Custer led them all toward Little Bighorn…
A Time of Blood
Kirsten Cross
A huge, sickly-yellow moon hung over Salisbury Plain. This was no glorious, golden ‘Hunter’s Moon’, resplendent in the heavens and, thanks to an optical illusion of cosmic proportions, apparently thousands of miles closer than it would be normally. This wasn’t a moon worthy of salutation by a bunch of druids pratting around in white sheets. This was a greasy yellow orb, producing a phosphorescent glow that made healthy plants look diseased and wasted, and trees on the skyline take on the appearance of twisted, deformed skeletons.
The Stones loomed on the horizon like silent sentinels – guardians of a landscape saturated in legend, death, war, and blood. At night, shadows clustered around the mighty Sarsen obelisks like the spectral fingers of long-dead ancestors who had raised them up thousands of years before, caressing the pits and ruts on the weathered surface. Stonehenge was a monument to man’s ingenuity, a testament to his ability to create something astonishing, and a demonstration of his fear of what terrible reprisals the Gods might rain down upon the land and tribe if homage wasn’t forthcoming, usually in the form of blood sacrifices.
Many theories had been bandied about concerning the Stones.
They were a temple.
A meeting place.
A shrine for the dead.
A celebration of the solstices.
The truth? Nobody really knew. So the new age brigade and the ‘Druids’ laid claim to the place, sanitising it and diluting its majesty with drumming, chanting and a shit-load of hugging and love-ins. They conveniently airbrushed out the bloodier facet of the Stones’ past in this hippy-trippy interpretation. A brutal, savage past. Just like the unforgiving landscape, these Stones didn’t care if you sang to them, drummed at their feet or laid out the entrails and still-beating heart of a human sacrifice on the ground to please the Gods. They were stone. They were immortal – reminders of a time of blood.
Sergeant Mick Jones of Her Majesty’s own arse-kicking bastards, 2Para, stared at them and sniffed, singularly unimpressed. Lumps of rock. Admittedly, bloody big lumps of rock, but nevertheless, just lumps of rock. But there was something odd about them, even from this distance. He frowned and muttered to himself quietly. “Ya know? I swear them buggers look bigger in the dark.”
“Yeah. That’s what he says about his cock.” Snorts of laughter in the darkness were followed by a sharp rebut.
Mick rounded on the nearest crouched figure and snarled. “Cox, shut your damn mouth and keep your eyes open!”
“Oh, lighten up, for Christ’s sake! It’s an exercise, Sarge! Seriously, how the holy hell did you actually manage to get through the obstacle course during basic with that stick jammed up your arse?”
“Daft bastard wants to be a Rupert, don’t ya, sweetheart? Trouble is, he couldn’t make the cut at Sandhurst.”
“Fuck off, Jonno.”
“That true then, Sarge?”
“Bollocks.”
“So that’s a yes, then?”
“Go fuck yourself!”
Gary Cox giggled. “Is that an order, sir? Because I know for a fact there’s a steaming hot little redhead in the pub we passed about half an hour ago. Just want to make sure I keep my pecker up for Queen and country, sah!” Cox ripped off a salute and the rest of the unit chuckled.
Mick Jones glowered at the gloomy hump he presumed was Private Gary Cox. “You know who’s playing the enemy, Cox? Those mad fuckers from Hereford. They’d probably take great delight in relieving you of your pecker and presenting it to Brenda as a trophy! I promise you son, they don’t know the meaning of the words down time.”
“Nor do you, you uptight twat.” The muttered comment came out of the darkness.
“Go fuck yourself with a cactus or something, Armstrong!”
Jones could practically hear Phil Armstrong’s eyes rolling in the dark, and wasn’t in the least surprised when the college-educated twat started getting all pedantic. “Cacti, you ignoramus. And cacti are not indigenous to Wiltshire. I could try go fucking myself with a stick of rhubarb or summat, if that would make you feel better about life in general?”
“Actually, you know Phil, as much as it pains me to say, he
was correct. Cactus is the singular of cacti. Theoretically, you’d only need one cactus to go fuck yourself, not several.”
“How much rhubarb would you need?”
“Wait, what? What is wrong with you people?” Jones now had to get a particularly unpleasant mental image involving rhubarb out of his mind’s eye.
“A whole fucking crumble’s worth, mate. Goes limp quickly, see?” Jonno giggled like a schoolgirl.
“Just like Jonesy.” Cox’s reply was predictably caustic.
“Fuck off, Cox. And seriously? You’re weird, Jonno.”
“I’m not the one comparing rhubarb and cacti as sex toys. Now that’s weird.”
Jones lost his shit. “For the love of fuck will you lot belt up! Eyes open, mouths shut!”
An uneasy silence descended over the Unit. In the privacy of the darkness, Mick Jones glowered at the crouched figures, waiting for one of the smart-mouthed bastards to start up again. They were a bloody disgrace to the uniform. This wasn’t his first time out on the Plain leading a unit of wet-behind-the-ears rookies, but it was crystal that these little bastards had bugger-all respect for him or for the situation they were in. These weren’t serious soldiers. These were fuck-abouts. Why the hell they hadn’t joined the Territorials instead of the regulars, he’d never know.
Salisbury Plain could be a weird old place. You could get mazed out here. Turned around. The official term was ‘royally fucked up’.
The huge open sky could feel like it was pressing down on you, crushing the life out of your body and the air out of your lungs. The way the wind howled around the Stones sounded like children crying. The massive slabs seemed to tower three times higher at night, and there were rumours that the closer you got to the Stones, the more likely it was that your equipment would start going haywire. You needed to stay sharp. Alert. Focused.
Mick felt alienated.
Alone.
Angry.
So bloody angry.
This wasn’t how things were supposed to have been. He had wanted to follow his dad into the Paras ever since he was a nipper. Now he was here, and determined to do the memory of his dad proud. His old man had copped a bullet in Belfast just two days before the withdrawal. Dumb luck shot for the IRA bastard pulling the trigger. Shit out of luck for his dad. That had brought it home to him. This wasn’t a fuck-about job for numbnuts. People died. This was a job for professionals. And this bunch of pillocks were making a mockery of everything he believed in.
The anger frothed in his brain, setting his heart pounding and his teeth on edge. Just at the limit of his senses, he could almost hear his dad’s voice whispering: “They’re laughing at you, son. At me. At the Regiment…”
Anger. So much anger. Choking, vomit-inducing anger.
A boiling, churning rage that turned his guts into knots and made his throat tighten. An anger so utterly consuming it made him want to let loose a primal scream, tear his clothes from his body and bludgeon every one of those pathetic dick-cheeses who had the bloody nerve to call themselves his ‘oppos’ to death with his bare hands.
It was the same kind of anger he’d felt when he’d walked into a pock-marked mud-brick building in Helmund and found it littered with the bodies of dead children. All girls. The local schoolteacher had had the audacity to teach little girls to read. The Taliban had disagreed with that policy. They didn’t make particularly good school governors. And they’d disagreed by using AK47s on the helpless children and their teachers. They’d spared the boys.
Jones had felt his heart break as he listened to the tortured wailing of children, terrified and alone. Vomit on the floor, shit and piss everywhere. They’d got the all clear to go in after an ATO had dealt with an IED strapped to the doorframe. Finally, they’d managed to get the little boys out, but it was too late for the eleven girls. A pile of bodies lay in a lake of blood. But then, a tiny, filthy finger had twitched, causing three fully-grown and battle-hardened men to jump out of their skins. They’d scrabbled to dig the child out from underneath the bodies of the dead, but as Jones had scooped her up in his arms, she’d gasped a final death rattle and fallen limp in his arms. That rasping, final breath had echoed in Jones’ mind for months afterwards.
That was an understandable trigger for that eyeball-aching rage that descended. But why was the flippancy of a few newbies causing him to feel the same way? Was it because they were belittling the seriousness of what was out there? Or had he brought some of the war back home with him?
Now it seemed the little girl’s death rattle was surrounding him on Salisbury Plain, as if the ghost of that child had followed him thousands of miles from that sad little grave in Helmund Province.
He looked up again at the Stones. They seemed to shimmer, resonating that gasping, rasping noise of a dying child’s last breath back at him, but intensifying and amplifying it a thousand-fold.
Briefly he tried to get back control. For a split second he knew that he was having the mother of all flashbacks. No. Not now. Not fucking now! He was on night manoeuvres with those nutjobs from Hereford after them, babysitting a bunch of newbies who didn’t know their arses from their elbows. Not fucking now, for Christ’s sake! Not now! He needed to focus. Jones shook his head, trying to clear the fog of the flashback; getting the images of dead children out of his mind. These little shits might be newbies, but the last thing they needed was their UC going fruitloops on them in the middle of a night exercise.
But every time he looked at the Stones, the rage seemed to intensify. He stared at them, mesmerised. They filled his world with a white-hot fury that flooded his brain with adrenaline. He could hear the blood pounding in his ears. The confusion of images started to thin out and his focus turned to Gary Cox.
His smirking face.
His smart-arse one liners.
His total disrespect for the chain of command.
Mick’s consciousness started to shift. He couldn’t focus on the mission. All he could think about was what he’d like to do to that son of a bitch.
A resonant hum seemed to be punching and pulsating through his skull, making his brain vibrate, and sending savage images cascading through his mind. Images that were so real, so foul, so gloriously violent…
A pile of bodies, contorted and soaked in blood. That strange pulsating movement underneath the surface of the skin as the maggots started to do their work. His detached consciousness walked through the carnage, seeing through unfamiliar eyes. A sense of hunger filled him – a five thousand-year-old hunger that demanded to be sated…
He would stand up. He’d walk over to Cox, as silent and as unfeeling as the Sarsen Stones that stood silently on the skyline. He’d stand over him, examining his victim, savouring the rising smell of fear and uncertainty that tainted the air like acrid smoke. He’d reach down, slicing the cloth of Cox’s jacket aside with his knife. Clawing his fingers, he’d force them through the soft, yielding skin, sinking through flesh, pushing aside the other organs – they could be spread at the feet of the stones later for the ravens to dine upon.
He’d ignore the screaming, the frantic and futile grabs by his victim at his wrist as his hand sunk deeper into the man’s chest. He’d feel the pulsating, throbbing heart, pumping furiously, as if it knew it was about to be torn from the warm safety of the body.
His fingers would close around the pump and slowly, agonisingly slowly, he would tear out Cox’s beating heart and hold it up, blood dripping between his fingers, paying no attention to the pathetic bastard’s pleas for mercy and blood-frothed gurgles as he died.
He’d lick the still warm heart, letting the blood and fluid coat his tongue, savouring its deliciousness, He’d take a bite and swallow, letting the hot lump of tissue slide down his throat, the coppery flavour filling his mouth, giving him strength, vigour, power.
Then he would crush what was left of the organ between his fingers, amused by the sheer fragility of the soft muscle tissue as he turned what was the most precious of all organs into a useless m
ush of bloody pulp.
The images were so real.
Was he actually doing it?
Or was it some kind of horrific, waking nightmare?
No. Not horrific.
Sensual.
Powerful.
God, the rush of power he would feel would be unlike anything he’d ever experienced! He was getting a feeling of sexual arousal as the images in his mind became more and more vile. He could feel a pressure building behind his eyeballs and screwed his lids tight shut, fearful that they’d pop out like a couple of ping-pong balls shot out of a Thai whore’s fanny…
“Movement! On the left!” Jonno let out a hoarse whisper.
Mick’s eyes snapped open and he swivelled around. Cox was still very much alive, his beating heart still firmly ensconced in his chest. Mick battled as hard as he could not to puke like a drunken teenager, swallowing back the mouthful of vomit that threatened to spew out.
What the fuck just happened?
He fought back against his body’s gag reflex and tried desperately to snap himself back into the here and now. Sweat poured down the back of his neck, even though the wind was icy cold and the temperature was nudging the ‘brass monkey’ zone.
Barrack-room banter was instantly forgotten. Any second now a couple of flash-bangs followed by a beating of epic proportions would descend on their heads like a huge, painful pile of SAS-shaped crap. The Hereford crew had a tendency to forget they were on ‘exercise’ and go in hard and fast. Not surprising, really. It’s what they were trained to do. Trouble was, sometimes they forgot that the ordinary squaddies from 2Para were on the same damn side as they were.
Jones and his team took the exercise seriously, but in all honesty, with deployment to the Falklands just a few weeks away now, how relevant was a night exercise on Salisbury Plain to their training? Sure, the Plain had the same kind of unfeeling, unkind and windswept remoteness that the islands of the South Atlantic had, but was there one single penguin within a thirty-mile radius to their present position? Was there fuck.
SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror Page 30