by Paul A. Rice
Nearing the tank, he saw the enemy in the distance, they were about two hundred yards away – a perfect target. He laid the launcher across the wall and pulled out the golden eggs from his bandolier. After placing them in a long line along the wall, he flicked the launcher’s sight up and adjusted the range drum.
Very shortly afterwards, Ken began to have what he considered to be a turkey shoot. He and ‘Mister Blooper’ had a field-day.
Taking aim, he let loose with the first shot. The 40mm grenade sailed through the air, impacting right in the middle of the group of men who were heading for the gulley. The exploding anti-personnel round did nearly as much damage to them as did the terrible, mental shock of having high explosives lobbed onto them from an unknown position. About six of the men went down in the blast, whilst the remainder actually did run around like headless chickens. The second round blew another four of them off their feet – and that’s when the chaos really started.
The entire enemy force started firing at once. It was wildly inaccurate and mostly on full-automatic, but nonetheless, a lot of high-speed lead started heading toward the farmhouse. Bullets whizzed above, splitting the air with their ferocious crackle; the dull sound of weapons firing at them from a distance also reached Ken’s ears, heavy thumps slightly behind the noise of the cracks. More rounds passed overhead, lots of them. Some of the bullets started to hit more than just the surrounding air. Heavy, walloping noises, alongside screeching ricochets, started to fill their ears.
Then, as though they were facing a swarm of supersonic bees, the air began to fill with a vicious whipping noise. There were no sounds other than the sharp cracks of a repeatedly-breaking sound barrier as hundreds of high-velocity bullets whistled around them. Their sound conquered everything else. It seemed as though a wall of lead was pouring toward them.
Under such a torrent they, the Hunters, all of them, cowered.
It was at times like this when Ken’s knowledge and experience became the most valuable thing on the farm, more valuable than life itself. For without those hard-won talents, there would be no life remaining to be of any value. He screamed, with his voice, with his mind, and with his heart, Ken screamed at them: ‘Get your heads up, keep your heads up! It’s not accurate; they’re just blasting off, fire back, fire back! Kill them, kill them all!’
Leading by example, he immediately opened fire with the grenade launcher. Reloading like an automaton, firing, reloading, and firing again – hands blurring as he fired round after round. They leapt from the heavy muzzle of his smoking weapon, a veritable stream of golden death hurtled into the air, followed by some more, and then yet more. Ken kept firing the launcher until its fat barrel sizzled with heat.
Through the smoke, he watched as the shrapnel-filled eggs rained down onto the enemy massing in the gulley. The men disappeared in the blast of shattering, white-hot steel. His barrage literally hacked them in two. Several dozen of the enemy had manoeuvred up the little gulley – they too were doomed. The carefully-erected wire obstacles blocked their path and forced them to change direction. With no other choices open, they had to come back up and straight into the clutches of Ken’s ensnaring devices – the necklaces.
The men were now less than a hundred yards away and this time Ken had the pleasure of watching several of them being blown to pieces – they were shredded by the vicious ball bearings that the Claymore mines spat in arcs of sizzling steel. The enemy were chopped down by the mines, hacked from the face of the earth with the ease of a giant warrior, who just happened to be wielding a large sword of his own.
Mind soaring, ears shrieking, nose bleeding, Ken watched and smiled.
The first explosions initiated some of the other devices to which they were linked. Some of the grenades exploded ‘sympathetically’, the shock of their neighbours’ blast setting them off prematurely, whilst most of the others had the decency to wait their turn. Ken didn’t care either way – all he cared about was the fact that his handiwork was causing absolute devastation to the attacking force.
The necklaces detonated in a ripple of slicing steel, there was to be no mercy found in that stuttering chain of death. The attackers lay shattered beneath a heavy pall of grey and black smoke; it hung above the damp gulley and Ken heard the men scream as they lay beneath the cloak of its uncaring disguise. It would be the last attempt that any of the intruders made to come up that gulley.
Ken heard the machinegun and sniper rifle hard at work behind him, his ears were ringing again and he was hardly able to see. The sting of acrid smoke made his eyes water and his nose was running with hot blood. He wiped an arm across his face and bent to retrieve his rifle. The action saved his life – three of the more accurately-aimed bullets smashed into the side of the wall where his head had only just been. The noise of their shocking impact slammed into his ears, followed by a cloud of brick dust that covered his face and head.
Ken cursed, grabbed his weapons and headed for some better cover behind the sandbag emplacement next to Red. By the looks of things, Red was having the time of his life – he was moving from cover to cover and firing two or three rounds from each position. The man was like a lion as he prowled his perimeter.
It seemed as though he was having a very successful hunt.
‘Down ya go, bitch!’ he shrieked. ‘Who wants to be next? C’mon, ya muthafukas’ He was counting, every few seconds the huge man would say a number, a steady stream of growing numbers. ‘Twenty one…’ two rounds would be snapped off from his smoking weapon, ‘...twenty three!’
Ken knelt and watched. The sight was such an awesome one, so petrifying, that he couldn’t help himself. Red was mesmerising to watch. Like some devilish red ghost, he flitted from cover to cover, firing from here, reloading from there, moving, firing, and always counting. ‘Twenty six…’ Assault rifle banging away loudly, Red added to his awful tally. ‘Twenty seven…C’mon, gimme fifty, please lemme get to fifty…’ he implored. It was truly a sight to behold.
Ken turned away and grinned to himself, thinking: ‘If today is the day that I’m going to die, then that will be just about fine!’ The thought cheered him. To die amongst such company would indeed be a privilege. He raised himself up and shot two of the men who had started to inch nearer the house. Before the dying men had collapsed to the ground, he heard Red’s voice. ‘Thirty!’ Ken laughed loudly. It was starting to appear as though his red-haired partner’s numerical ambitions may actually be achievable.
For the next twenty minutes, the Hunters held their ground, their targets were cut down in waves – dozens of them littered the battlefield. The defenders of the farm fired their weapons as quickly as they were able to reload them; magazine after magazine and belt after belt of ammunition were discharged into the ranks of the Dark One’s footmen. A few of the enemy did manage to sneak around to the rear of the house, where the sound of exploding mines followed by the harsh chatter of Jane’s rifle brought a swift end to the intruders’ foolishness. Much as they had done with the gulley, they then gave the area a wide berth.
Tori began running between the house and the forward position where Red and Ken were fully occupied with repulsing the now more centralised attack. With bullets whipping past her, the tall woman ran back and forth, fetching full magazines and taking empty ones away. Ken shouted at her to get back inside – Tori simply grinned at him and carried on doing her hazardous re-supply duties.
In truth, her actions were of a great help as both men had begun to run dangerously low on ammunition. Junior and Michael were also into the final batch of their specialised bullets for the sniper rifle and the now-overheating machinegun. It wasn’t to be too long before they abandoned those empty weapons to come down and join Red and Ken, bringing their AK-47s with them. Eventually, the four men were standing shoulder-to-shoulder behind the sandbag wall, blazing away at the hordes of advancing enemy, who had now managed to advance much closer to the farm.
They, the enemy, appeared not to have any plan at all – their onl
y aim seemed to involve repeatedly throwing themselves against the sharp teeth of the Hunters’ defences, intent only upon getting into the farm. All attempts at outflanking the Hunters seemed to have been abandoned; there were no more incursions up the gulley or around to the rear of the house. All movement towards the distant hedgerow had also ceased. It was as though a great impatience had overcome the attackers. Single-minded, obstinate stupidity seemed to have become the order of the day.
It suited Ken just fine, he knew that the defence of the farmhouse was not really tenable at all, and if the enemy had been more skilled then it would have been a relatively easy task to capture it, and kill all those who defended it. He shook his head at the thought of how fragile their own position actually was, and of what a mess the advancing attackers were making of their assault. ‘Why are they so stupid?’ There was no answer to that question, and at the end of the day the enemy’s loss was the Hunters’ gain.
One or two of the strange-looking men actually managed to get close enough for their eyes to be seen – they glowed with a weird light. The attackers seemed to be almost detached, drugged, or maybe they were just plain crazy. It was of little relevance at the time. The nearer they managed to get, the more likely it was for them to be killed by a hail of bullets, or the terrible results caused by some of Ken’s final booby traps.
He waited until a large group of the men had bunched near the gap to his final wire obstacle, and then, hurriedly fastening some of the wires in to it, he used his battery pack. With a brilliant flash and a blast of thick, grey smoke, the mines erupted right in the midst of the enemy. There had been a silence after that, only low moans from the dying and the noise of the Hunters reloading their weapons had disturbed the shocking quiet.
‘Is everyone still in one piece – Jane, Tori?’ Ken asked, as he looked around.
The blur of battle was upon him again, things seemed to be slower, his surroundings almost lazy in the way they moved, colours were brighter, noises louder, everything seemed to have slowed down and he was filled with what could only be described as a supercharged calmness. He heard Jane’s shouted reply.
‘We’re fine, no movement at the back,’ she said. ‘Are you guys okay? There’s no ammunition left!’
Ken looked at the others, they all seemed to be in good order, hair damp with sweat, standing out at right-angles, faces almost completely blackened, looking like actors in some crazy stage-play, the residue of muzzle smoke, dust and sweat covering them like exaggerated make up. Michael had a long streak of blood on his neck. Ken shouted over, and when the boy looked up, he pointed to his neck. Michael fingered the wound, looked at his bloodied fingers in surprise and then shrugged.
‘Just a scratch, a bit of shrapnel from the tin roof, I guess?’ he shouted.
The boy smiled at Ken and then took hold of the full magazine which Junior passed him. Ken looked at their small pile of remaining ammunition, only fifteen full magazines remained – there was no more for the machinegun or sniper rifle. His grenade launcher was also empty, that surprised him as he couldn’t remember firing all of the rounds for it.
‘Nope, that’s it,’ he thought. ‘I guess we’ll have to think about getting out of here…’ A few hundred bullets and one or two hand grenades were all they had left. Ken started planning a withdrawal. ‘Yeah, we need to get to the truck and clear out… one more wave of ‘em and we’ll be done…’ He turned to warn the others of his plan. As he opened his mouth to speak, he heard the sound of Tori laughing followed by the noise of the truck’s engine bursting into life.
Knowing they had seen his plan, Ken turned to the others.
‘Once you get down to your last magazine,’ he said, ‘then leg it back to the house, everyone get to the truck and we’ll move back to the other gulley, there’s some more ammo back there, we can use it at the end.’ He wasn’t sure if he had actually spoken the words or if they had made their own way out of his head. All he saw was everyone else nod and shout words of acknowledgment.
Red threw him a bottle of water; Ken caught it one-handed and twisted the cap off with his teeth. He was gagging for a drink and the taste of battle coated his mouth with a thick fur of metallic-tasting saliva, blood and cordite. He washed them away with the cool water, lobbed the empty bottle over by the barn and turned to watch his front.
‘They’re back!’
Tori’s voice entered the minds of the Hunters and as one they looked towards the lake. They saw a shimmering black cloud appear in the air down by Mike’s Tree. Ken glanced down at his rifle, looked across at the others and nodded in determination. He shouted out: ‘Here we go, guys, here we go – make every shot count!’
Junior ran across and entered the barn once more. ‘I just wanna see what’s happening!’ he yelled, turned to wave at them, and then disappeared. Within three minutes the boy was back, and he didn’t appear to be too happy.
‘There are loads of them down by the tree!’ he said. ‘They’ve been fighting amongst themselves by the looks of it. There’s a big pile of bodies and that black stuff keeps on bringing more!’ He ran over and reassumed his position behind the cover provided by the sandbags. Resting his rifle on the top layer, Junior stood and waited with the rest of them for next wave of attackers.
It wasn’t to be a long wait.
When they came this time, the enemy were in a pack, like wild dogs drawn to the scent of a fresh kill, hyenas to the scent of a dying Wildebeest’s last death-throes. Ken watched them coming, skirting the corpses that lay in monument to the failure of their last attack.
‘Okay, here they come…’ he said. ‘Hold your fire; wait until they’re in the gap!’ He knelt behind the wall and readied himself. Ken knew that this was going to be over quickly, the thoughts of running back to the waiting truck now seemed like madness to him, there were too many of the advancing men, far too many and they were far too close… ‘Hold your fire!’ he screamed, and then ducked as the first wave of hot lead began to pelt them.
Then it began again – the madness, the fear, the anger, they all returned in that one second of blood and rage. With backs against the wall, nowhere to run, no tomorrows left, the Hunters roared at the onrushing pack, all six, for Jane and Tori had heard Ken’s thoughts. Sprinting from the house with rifles in hand, the two women had joined the men as they stood in a line and fought for their lives.
Time stopped for all of them, there was no time.
A terrifying howl filled their heads – a horrible sound of tearing metal. The noise whirled about them and its presence drove all other thoughts from their minds. The Darkness had arrived in person and he had fetched the hordes to do his bidding.
The sound of the Hunters’ rifles answered his wail, the bark of their discharge joined in with a chorus of their own; it was a song of repulsion, one that crackled like lightning, blue lightning. All thoughts of dying had deserted them; the sound of bullets thudding into the sandbags and crackling past their faces seemed to be no more dangerous than the minor inconvenience of avoiding a passing wasp.
When the enemy who were closest saw the anger, felt the blueness of their quarry’s rage, they stumbled and hesitated. For one tiny second, Ken and the others saw them falter, but it was only to be a temporary pause. The howling of the Demon reached a crescendo, a peak of screaming fear and angry hatred. With faces writhing in some awful robotic grimace, the attackers surged forward.
Ken knew then, without a doubt, that the Hunters were doomed. He turned and looked for Jane – she was right next to him, rifle booming and black hair flying in the maelstrom. She looked sideways at him and smiled; without pausing she fired another volley of rounds across the wall and then turned to him.
‘Just know that I love you,’ she yelled, over the noise of battle. I’ve always loved you, Kenny, always!’
He had no time to answer – three men were now only fifteen feet away. Ken emptied the remainder of his last magazine into them. They fell like shattered, porcelain mannequins, pieces flew off the
m. He grabbed Jane. Pulling her downwards, Ken took the pistol from its holster on her hip and handed it to her.
‘You save the last round for yourself,’ he said, green eyes flaming. ‘I’ll be doing the same; I’m not going with those bastards, not ever! I love you, babe, I’ve had the best damned time any man would have ever wished for…I love you!’ He leaned across and kissed her. As their lips met for that final time, a sudden, shocking explosion sent a blast wave of hot air and dust tearing over their position.
Whatever the enemy fired at them had obviously been powerful in the extreme. The noise of the blast was overwhelming and it reeked of burning electricity. Ken felt the compression on his chest and the blood pulse from his nose once again; the power of the explosion blasted him to his knees. Jane fell backwards with a gasp, air punched from her lungs. Ken swore and leapt to his feet, pistol clenched firmly in his hands. Jane staggered to her feet and stood swaying next to her husband. Wild-eyed, hearts filled with rage and fear, they prepared to meet their end.
The sight that lay before their shocked eyes was one to behold.
10
A Stitch in Time
A gaping hole lay in the ground directly in front of their final position. The place, in which only seconds before had seen a flood of enemy gathering, was now nothing more than a deep hole, there remained only a smoking crater, one of about ten feet in diameter and at least a couple deep. The force of the explosion had sent Red and the others flying across the courtyard. All of the men now lay in a half-circle about six feet away from the wall. A thin haze of green smoke lay across the whole position. Chunks of earth, lumps of wood and a thick coating of sand and dust, lay scattered over them.