I waited for an eternity as the giant came ever closer. Pa had lined up his shot based on where he thought the giant would be at the critical moment when it came in range.
The giant was coming, pounding, the earth shaking now with every stomping foot as it approached.
It was coming at a slight angle and we had this one shot, this one chance to get it right, one chance to see if the steel arrow pierced the armor, one second to see if the arrow hit something vital inside the giant or just slid through harmlessly.
And if it didn’t? If it didn’t we’d only have a second to regret it.
And then Pa’s arm dropped and for a split second I almost froze, but I didn’t. I pulled my lever and inside the valve body the valve’s globe turned a quarter turn and what had been a round surface holding the steam back was now a hole all the way through. The pressurized steam screamed into the bottom of the pipe where it began expanding at a rate too fast to comprehend, creating the pressure we needed against the sabot, forcing the sabot up and out of the barrel at over a thousand feet per second.
The sabot and flechette were on the way!
And right then everything became too blurry to be able to see. Pa had thought about the steam cloud that would envelop us as the steam left the barrel, but what neither of us had considered was that the grease we had so generously applied inside the barrel would become superheated and then combine with the steam to create a hot grease cloud.
The leather suits protected us from the heat, but the grease coated everything including our eye lenses. We couldn’t see.
We couldn’t see the arrow’s flight.
We couldn’t see if it hit the giant, and we couldn’t see if it had penetrated the armor.
It would have either hit or missed by the time we thought about it, so even though we both ripped our head gear off as fast as we could, it was too late to see anything except the giant still coming at us, not the least bit slowed. But where before it hadn’t seemed to take any notice of us, it now had that one eye completely focused on us, and it changed course slightly to come straight at us, accelerating up to a terrible rate of speed.
It was too fast, we couldn’t run. All we could do was stand and watch it coming for us.
It took ten steps, each step faster than the last until it was at a dead run. We had only a few seconds left and Pa was beginning to turn to say something to me when the giant stumbled just a little. We watched as it stumbled again, this time a little more. It still ran towards us, but it was slowing down.
And that’s when we both noticed that three feet of the steel arrow was protruding from the armor in the middle of its chest. We’d done it! We might not live to see the results, but we’d done it!
The giant came on, right at us with what looked like rage on its primitive features, stumbling and staggering and reaching out towards us. And then it fell, hitting the ground with its outstretched arms only yards away as it fell dead.
It hit the ground with so much force that the trailer was thrown on its side with Pa and me jumping clear at the last second to hit the ground and roll. The force of the giant’s fall kicked up a huge dust plume that surrounded us for several minutes and clung to our grease-coated leathers, leaving us spitting dirt and grease and dust – and mighty damn happy to still be alive.
From the great beast’s back the razor sharp arrow protruded several feet. It was a glorious sight – a sight that hundreds of people would come to see.
Word soon spread far and wide that a man had found a way to kill the giants, and people kept coming. We were offered enormous amounts of gold to sell the machine, so Pa sold it and we began making more of the machines and selling them at great prices. By the end of the year Pa said we had more gold than we could spend in ten life times and he was damn tired of building the machines. But he felt an obligation to help other people kill giants.
Our machines always worked, but often the people that used them didn’t do it right, and many died. Still, giants were being killed for the first time, and those were heady days. Commerce being what it is other people began imitating the design and building giant killer machines for lower prices. Pa was happy about that because it meant we could quit making the machines, and we did.
# # #
Six months after we had built the last machine we were sitting on the porch after dinner watching the sun go down. Ma said “It’s been too long since it rained, this drought is the worst I’ve ever seen. I’m tired of it.” She turned to Pa and looking him in the eye with determination continued, “Make it rain.”
Pa looked at her for a moment, kind of stunned. But then I could see the idea working its way through his mind.
I said “I’m going to the barn to work on an idea I have for floating the house and barn.” I had a hunch that we were going to have some flash-flooding pretty soon.
If you enjoyed this short story you might want to check out the highly acclaimed and best selling five novel series - also from this author - available from Amazon in kindle or paperback:
A Distant Eden
Adrian’s War
Eden’s Hammer
Eden’s Warriors
Eden’s War
Giants (A Distant Eden Book 6) Page 3