Brookes stared down at the passing wilderness. He sat in a helicopter as they passed over the green fields of a European landscape. He had his assault rifle at his side. His squad of five in the helicopter with him. They were going to land in thirty.
Most of his squad-mates were doing busy work. Checking their equipment, counting their ammo rounds. Making sure their body armor was strapped tight.
Brookes looked over their agenda and the data on the town they were invading. The town had nothing of value to the gods. It was mostly filled with older people, families. Not fighters.
It was going to be a massacre, and he would be one of the soldiers participating in it. He had to steel his mind. He was going to kill people today. On the order of the gods. Just point and shoot. There was a reason the gods would want these people gone. There had to be.
Patrick stared out the door on the opposite side of the helicopter. Brookes maneuvered over to him. “Are you afraid?”
“Afraid of what?” Patrick asked.
“You know. Battle, war, killing, dying and shit.”
“If what Queen said was true, then I don’t have to worry much about dying.”
“But she said we could still die. What about your kids, your wife? You’re the only one of us who has somebody to go back to.”
“That means I’ll just have to work harder not to die.” Patrick sighed. “I regret telling you about my family, Brookes. If I die, I die.”
“But we’ve never been in anything like this before. We were ordered to kill.”
“Better than the shit we were doing. I joined for a reason.”
“And what reason is that Patrick?”
Patrick shrugged, “We all have our own reasons. If you keep asking me, I’m going to throw you out of the helicopter.”
“Damn, man, I’m just trying to make some small talk. Nice to have you as a squad-mate.”
Brookes sat back in his seat. He checked his watch. Twenty-five minutes until drop. Patrick did nothing to cure his nerves. Brookes worried about him. Seemed like Patrick was looking forward to what they we’re about to do. He had a wife and kids and yet he looked forward to killing families just like his.
It bothered him, but they all joined God’s Hand for a reason. Patrick’s was probably so he could satisfy the need for action inside of him, and Brookes so he could escape his home. They had to do what they had to do to survive.
Nobody else spoke in the helicopter. They all had to steel themselves. They were soldiers. They were soldiers for the gods. The god’s will was the soldier’s way.
The helicopter landed in a clearing in a wooded area. They were ordered to release their safeties and advanced toward the town. As they went into the woods, Brookes glanced back at the helicopter lifting off. He had studied the map of the operation; it was simple. Several units were dropped off in a circular pattern around the town and were going to move inward.
He saw a shimmer in the air as the helicopter left. It disappeared quickly and he thought nothing of it.
“Move forward!” the squad leader yelled.
They moved through the thicket for five minutes before they met other groups of soldiers on both sides of them. They stopped.
“Into formation, side by side,” the squad leader commanded in a whisper. They must be close. They moved into a single file line side by side, so nobody could get through.
The general walked up next to them. “Move forward.”
They moved forward and stepped out of the trees. “Halt!” the general said. In front of them was Saint Paul. A house with an open backyard was directly in front of Brookes. Houses filled his line of sight. They were breaching a small suburb.
Soldiers stepped out of the trees in a single file line stretching as far as Brookes could see. They must be encircling the town.
“Make sure your safeties are off, boys. Fire on anybody in front of you. I don’t care who it is. If they’re one of us, then they’ll survive.” The general raised his hand.
Patrick turned to Brookes. “No hesitation.”
Gunshots were heard in the air.
A man stepped out of the back door of the house in front of Brookes. “We have to get—” he paused.
His body jerked uncontrollably as dozens of bullets lay into him, and he dropped to the ground, dead. The bullets stopped and sounds of guns reloading echoed in the air.
“Forward,” the general yelled. Everyone moved forward. Brookes approached the house. Beside him soldiers went around the sides of houses and into the other homes. Gunshots and screams rang through the air. Brookes made it to the door, Patrick beside him.
He swung the door open and walked through. An old man stood in front of him. “Now—”
A hole burst in his head and he fell dead. Patrick moved next to him and motioned to the stairs. Brookes moved slowly up them, gun ready, not taking his eye off his sights. There were two doors, one of them open. Brookes looked inside and the window looking out was broken.
He ran to it and saw a woman running down the street away from him. She was limping hard as the fall from the window had appeared to have broke her leg.
Brookes pointed his rifle at her back. She was an innocent-looking woman. He couldn’t hesitate; he just had to pull the... He closed his eyes and clicked the trigger and a bang rang out. He opened his eyes and the woman lay on the ground with a bullet in her back. Twitching.
He fired again and again. Blood pooled from her body and ran into a nearby gutter. He didn’t want her to suffer.
“All clear!” he yelled.
It was easy. Just aim and pull the trigger. Don’t think, don’t do a thing. Just pull the trigger and move on. It was the only way he could stomach the massacre that was coming.
He ran down the stairs and out of the house. The attack was in full effect. Hundreds of gunshots rang out, soldiers moved from house to house. Operating with a killer efficiency, with a feeling of invincibility. Gun shots came from Brookes’ left and a bullet bounced off his leg.
There were soldiers held up in a house a block away. Several townsmen were barricaded inside. Brookes and a few nearby soldiers fired towards them, the bullets ripping through the wood panels and into the men inside.
That was stupid, they must have known that the bullets could go through it, Brookes thought. But his thought was answered when he heard screaming from his right.
It was a diversion. Twenty women and children were running down the street, away from the town. Brookes wondered if he should run for them. Shoot them before they got too far. But he didn’t raise his weapon. He already felt like he had taken enough lives. They were out of his range.
His general walked up to him and called a few soldiers. “What are you doing, sergeant?”
“They’re too far away,” Brookes answered.
“Not anymore.”
The group ran into an invisible wall and some fell to the ground.
“Move forward,” the general said. Brookes and a few other soldiers moved forward until the group was within shooting range.
The women and children banged against an invisible wall, clawing their nails bloody to get away. But cries rang out when they figured it was useless.
“Raise your weapons!” the general said. They raised their weapons.
The women and children screamed, “Please! Nooo!”
“Fire!”
They were lit up, bullets ripped through them. Brookes fired with his eyes closed. So maybe he wouldn’t see which ones he killed. As he opened his eyes, he could see blood and guts staining the invisible wall.
The women and children’s bodies were piled against it. He had his eyes closed but he could still feel which lives he had ended. A woman’s dead eyes stared right into his soul. He did this. This was his fault.
“This is the wrath of the gods, men,” the general said. “We have a mission to finish.”
The rest of the day and night was a blur.
* * *
Brookes sat on a street curb; he was ti
red and covered in all sorts of bodily fluids. Killing was a messy business. He smelled and was sweaty. He tasted blood in his mouth.
At close range, bullets caused blood to splatter farther than he would’ve expected. He stared at the bent barrel of his assault rifle. He fired it so much in a short period of time that the heat caused the barrel to warp. It was useless now.
He threw it on the ground and pulled out his pistol. He hadn’t even used the pistol yet. This whole event was a blur to him. All the screaming faces blurred into one.
But he did remember two distinct things. When he was running to breach another house, the one next to him exploded.
He had braced himself as he went down. After the flames settled, he got up and heard moaning. Debris and body parts were all around him. Not of the civilians they were supposed to kill, but of soldiers like him.
He heard a voice, “Brookes.” He walked over to it and found his squad leader laying on the ground with a piece of wood piercing his gut diagonally.
His leader tried to get his words out but died before he had a chance. Queen was right, they weren’t invincible, but Brookes had barely seen enough gun fights to know what could kill a Touched or not. Most civilians were killed before they could resist.
Later, he learned that a resident had set off his gas and lit it aflame as soldiers breached his house. Four died in the explosion.
The other event he had remembered was the largest loss of God’s Hand life in the operation. They were closing in on the town hall. A helicopter was providing air support from above. The wall the gods had put down only rose forty feet into the air to let the helicopters in.
As they were advancing up a street, the helicopter was hit with an anti-air round and crashed into four houses. Houses that had soldiers in them. More died when the explosion from the helicopter sent shrapnel flying into their ranks. Brookes and Patrick were lucky, but their squad wasn’t. After the accident, Brookes and Patrick were the only members left in the squad.
After the crash, they closed in on the town hall. The residents who were able to escape their homes holed up in the place.
Brookes, Patrick and the general were the first ones to make it to the building. The general ordered the rest of the soldiers to take out the anti-air guns as they were causing more problems than expected. The general surprised Brookes by fighting right beside him.
They approached the front door. Brookes could hear crying and talking inside.
“Breach the door,” the general commanded. Patrick planted explosive on the door and they took cover. The doors exploded out and Brookes ran in.
There were over a hundred men, women and children huddled up together. In the corner of the room were men and women in business clothes. The mayoral staff.
A man approached them.
“Stop where you are,” the general commanded. Brookes and Patrick still had their guns trained on them all. There were too many. Brookes moved his gun sight from person to person.
“I’m the mayor of this town and I just want to ask you why you are doing this to us?” the mayor asked.
“You went against the laws of Ifor.”
“What laws have we broken!?”
“The paying of tariffs and purchase of weapons.”
Brookes looked at the general. He would’ve sworn he told them it was because they worshiped a false god or something. Brookes looked into the mayor’s eyes. He saw ultimate fear. Did the general lie?
“Purchasing weapons is not illegal! We were sold them by Queen. To protect us from people like you! The taxes were getting too high, we prayed to He and his blessings never came!” the mayor yelled.
“We are the hammers of god, accept our justice.”
“Wait! Please! Not the children!”
“Ready your weapons.”
Brookes, Patrick, and the general raised their guns. Pointing at everybody at once. Brookes remembered from the briefing report that they were blocking the only exit or entrance into the building. Brookes unfocused his eyes. He didn’t want to see what he was about to do. He didn’t want to think.
“Please! Gods forgive us! What have we done to forsake them? We praised him but he never came!” the mayor pleaded mercy.
But no mercy was given.
“Fire.”
* * *
Brookes stared into his hands as he sat on the curb. He would never be able to wash away all this blood.
Patrick walked up to him. “Get up, we’ve been ordered to kill any survivors and bring any children to the edge of town.”
The entire morning, soldiers searched and searched for survivors of the previous night’s raid. There were only a few. A group of soldiers stood over a pile of bodies. They were done searching.
“Did you hear?” one of them asked.
“Hear what?”
“Queen is ordering the children killed. Chris found one near the town hall and was told to kill the girl by Queen.”
“What?” the soldier, Will, glanced at the pile of dead bodies next to him. A pair of eyes stared back at him. Under the pile was a twelve year old black boy, still alive, his parents and family dead.
The soldier saw him but decided to ignore him.
Queen appeared out of nowhere beside the soldiers. “Are you done searching?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” they replied in unison.
“Are you sure, I don’t want a living soul left after we’re done here.”
“Um, yes, ma’am.”
Queen glared at them. “Do you want to give up your life for the boy?” She looked at Will.
“I don’t know what you—”
“Yes or no?”
Will looked to his comrades around him, they all looked away from him.
“…I…I…” Will stuttered.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Queen walked over to Will and tapped him on the head. Will’s eyes flashed white and he fell dead.
She turned to the pile. “What’s your name?”
The boy answered, “Ezekiel.”
Queen laughed. “Fitting. I suggest you run Ezekiel, that man just gave his life for yours.”
The boy pushed his way out of the bodies and ran for the woods. The soldiers raised their guns at Ezekiel.
“Stop. I gave a promise to your comrade here or do you think that a contract of death is nonsense?” Queen said with indifference.
They lowered their weapons. Ezekiel ran with all his might.
“Any survivors, adults or children, are to be killed. I just gave this town my last saving grace,” Queen said.
* * *
Brookes prowled around the town for survivors. There weren’t many alive. Most bodies were left where they died. He only had to cap a woman and man he found in a gutter. The gutter was already filled with blood and if they hadn’t moved, then he would’ve missed them. It was their mistake and he had a job to do.
He searched for hours to no avail. He was about to turn back around and go to his base camp but he heard someone sneeze and a shush while he was searching a house.
It came from under a rug. He looked at a man’s body next to it. He must have covered the hole they were hiding in. Smart.
Brookes moved the rug and there was a door in the floor. Brookes opened it and stepped down into a basement filled with food and camping equipment. Directly in front of him was a mother and her daughter.
The mother had her back to him, covering up her daughter. But she did a bad job as Brookes could see the daughter’s wide brown eyes staring right at him. He raised his pistol.
He hesitated. He thought the first real thought he had all day. They didn’t have to die. What had the daughter done to the gods except to get born into a family who the gods didn’t like?
They could run. They could wait a few days before leaving and could escape. He could simply tell them to wait here and he could place the rug back over the door and leave. And nobody would suspect a thing.
He was tired of killing, the screams, the blood.
“Shoot them,” a voice said beside him. Queen appeared next to him. Brookes didn’t respond, he just stared at the mother and daughter.
“Why haven’t you killed them yet? I thought you had some promise.” She rubbed his face with gloved hands. “Don’t disappoint me.”
He stopped his thoughts and just fired. Unloading his entire clip into them. As the gunshots died out, Brookes dropped his gun. The mother and daughter were unrecognizable. That was the day that Brookes’ innocence died. The day that he’d lost his soul.
“I always found you attractive.” The blood on his face floated into the air. Queen stuck out her tongue and swallowed the blood. “Give your soul to me and I will give you something greater than any human could ever imagine.”
“Yes, Queen.” He couldn’t argue, he didn’t contemplate his decision. He couldn’t with a god. They ruled over him and he was theirs to do with whatever they wanted.
“Close your eyes and come with me.”
He closed his eyes and Queen grabbed his hand with what felt like a cloth and pulled him somewhere. They walked forward, but Brookes didn’t step into the bodies of the family he just murdered, nor did he run into a wall.
They walked for five minutes in silence. He didn’t want to say the wrong thing to a god nor did he want to speak at all. He was tired.
“Open,” Queen whispered in his ear.
Brookes opened up his eyes. “Whoa.” He stood above the clouds, above humanity itself. Hundreds of mountains peaked through the clouds.
Under his feet was golden marble. He turned around and there stood a pool of enormous size and behind it a golden villa. It looked like a small castle but still a castle nevertheless. The sky beyond was the bluest Brookes had ever seen. Small bottles sat near the pool.
Queen bent over and took off her gloves and dipped her hand in the water. “Strip down and wash here.”
Brookes looked around. Did she want him to strip here?
“Go on now, I don’t have all day.” The gloves she had worn caught fire and disappeared into nothing.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 210