A soldier?
The man, the solider, wearing all black military, combat gear, leaned forward.
The bird was no more than 30 or 40 yards from the roof.
Is that a gun? Or more like a rifle?
He looked back at Darryl and as he did, the young man immediately shook, even for a moment, ever so violently.
Abe could hear a faint pop, and soon his shirt felt wet….
Over Darryl’s shoulder he could see Roxanne looking over at them.
Roxanne screamed again.
Abe only had a moment, a second, a thought, to look down and see all that ketchup on his shirt.
Ketchup?
Darryl fell into Abe, eyes wide, shocked, and slowly slid down the old man until Abe had to step and give way, allowing the youngster to drop to the surface.
Roxanne screamed again.
Oh my God.
The bird! It’s not the DNA!
The chatter below in the driveways was more harried, hectic, but still obviously confused.
He needed to tell them.
Abe moved toward the edge of the roof while Roxanne, finally moving, bumped into him, and over to Darryl as the blood began to spread thick across her man’s chest.
The bird was close.
Another pop, not so faint. Abe hit the roof’s surface hard, his leg exploding in pain. He looked up and saw the armed soldier pulling the rifle back and gaze into the face of another man sitting next to him.
Smiling. Smiling.
Abe’s whole body convulsed in pain. He first fell face down and soon realized he scabbed up his hands pretty good. Turning himself over carefully, he looked down at his left leg. Blood was everywhere, bone from his tibia jutted out through the skin like a series of splinters off of dead wood.
The New World Order.
The fucking NWO found us.
He heard the growls from below get louder, more agitated. Abe presumed the smell of fresh blood didn’t help calm them down.
The scrats!
The NWO here!
OH MY GOD!
Roxanne screamed again and Abe looked over to see her cradling a still alive, but slowly fading, Darryl. He locked eyes with the dying man. Darryl smiled, looked up at the sky.
“Oops…”
A large thud got Abe’s attention and he turned his head right to see what really was a small, four-person helicopter land gingerly on the sturdy roof. Two soldiers climbed out of the back, fully armed, automatic rifles at the ready. Both aimed at the two prone, bleeding men.
Roxanne screamed again.
“Shut the fuck up!” The one with the name of London planted firmly on his name plate, said.
The other soldier moved toward Roxanne and drove the butt of the rifle into her face knocking her backwards. Both soldiers laughed. They laughed.
Abe struggled to turn to face them.
“She’s pregnant…please…” Abe coughed. Both soldiers turned toward him, London advanced forward. Abe could see the other two soldiers on the helicopter leave the cockpit. He could also feel the shift of the air from above.
Another dot.
More were coming.
“Did you say something, grandpa?” London snickered as he approached, automatic trained on Abe’s forehead. He looked over and saw the bleeding, dying body of Darryl.
“Did you have to shoot the appetizer in the chest, Donovan?! I mean seriously!”
The other soldier cleared his throat. “Sorry. I aimed for his shoulder. He moved.”
Abe kept himself upright on his left hand as he lifted himself further.
What the Hell.
“No he didn’t,” Abe whispered loudly.
London, not knowing what was said, but knew something had been, crept closer.
“Come again, Moses?”
“Your boy over there,” Abe nodded toward Donovan. “Is a lousy shot.”
“What the Hell?” Donovan moved away from the couple and over to Abe, rifle trained to kill. “Shut your fucking mouth. He moved.”
“He didn’t.” Abe spat at the ground. “You just suck.”
Donovan seethed and stepped forward, trigger finger ready. London stopped his progress with an arm across the other soldier’s chest.
“No dumb ass. You already may have ruined one of the appetizers over there,” London looked over at Darryl. “They only go for live ones.” He then looked over at Abe. “Like this one.”
It really happened so fast. Abe being grabbed by the collar and Donovan raising him to his one good foot while the other protested in agony. It really hurt. Abe enjoyed the pain. It meant he was still alive.
Not like those things on the bad side of the wall.
Of course that was about to change.
He could hear the panicked screams from below, the pops from guns above, the scampering, retreating footfalls of those on the good side.
And the growls.
The hungry moans for food. They kept getting louder. Closer. Donovan stopped at the edge of the roof and looked down at the bad side and smiled. He pulled Abe close to him and pointed at the older man. Dozens of scrats reached up hungrily, lustfully.
It was food.
It was survival.
I am now…food.
Abe saw the the other helicopter landed one roof over and more soldiers stepped out, shooting.
Killing.
“How can you do this,” his eyes met London’s standing only feet away.
London looked hard at Abe, neither emotion nor reaction of any kind bled through to his face.
“I don’t think about it really,” London admitted. “The real question is why shouldn’t I?”
“You can’t do this!”
“Can’t I?” London asked sounding almost serious. “Will you pay my bills? Will you keep my family alive if I don’t?” Pause. “That’s what I thought.”
Abe began to buckle at the knees. The pain was too much. Of course that would change soon, huh?
“We are human beings! You are a human being!” Abe pleaded, voice weakening.
London hesitated. He looked over the edge toward the scrats down below. He smiled. It was almost a smile of seeming irony. Was that a frown? Was the soldier sad? London spat at the creatures and looked back at Abe.
“Tell me…since when did being a human being,” he took a breath either for effect or just because. “Mean much for humanity anymore?”
Abe hesitated. Nothing more to say. Nothing left could be. He was going to die. Just like that.
London turned and looked toward the other two soldiers with them.
“Open the gates.”
Roxanne screamed again.
It was Abe’s turn to join her.
“And take that one,” pointing at Darryl. “He’s still breathing. Maybe they’ll accept one almost past the due date. You know how they like ‘em.”
“Warm to warm enough,” Donovan nodded.
Roxanne screamed again.
“And please offer her up as a main course already!” London added and walked away.
Abe looked at Donovan. The soldier looked ready to do whatever it was he would do next. But part of him, Abe hoped, was not enjoying this. Maybe somewhere, somehow, somebody would stop all this.
Somebody.
A scuffle.
Roxanne’s screams. Dragging of two sets of feet, one furiously fighting, the other submissive. Abe barely could catch it, but he saw Darryl’s body get tossed below — to the bad side — and it only took moments for so many of those scrats to get to him.
He was near death and too weak to scream.
His eyes said it all.
His eyes.
His eyes.
His eyes.
The pain he must be feeling. That I soon will be feeling.
Roxanne was next. She went down fast. She fell hard into the group of savages. She never stopped screaming. Well not at least until Abe saw the one bald scrat with a gash the size of a magazine in the side of his torso, grab her neck a
nd rip it out, disconnecting the head from body. She stopped screaming then even if the blood only flowed harder.
The poor baby…
It really happened so fast.
Donovan looking below, smiling — or was it a grimace — and looking over at Abe.
“I have my orders…”
That was before he gave that little, death, push.
Abe fell.
It took so long really.
Or was he just hoping it was taking so long? Maybe he just wanted things to take as long as possible just so they wouldn’t go as fast as they really should. As fast as they really did. By the time he hit the mass of rotting bodies below, Abe realized he wanted the sands to run out soon, fast.
Now!
Many would go into the shock at the sight of seeing their blown out lower leg get ripped off the rest of his body by what looked like a teenager with ferocious acne and half a face missing.
Shocking, really.
It really happened so fast.
Really it did.
The growls came louder. The wet sounds of his flesh being pulled off of his body, his bones, off of him, came quickly and rapidly.
It really happened so fast.
Really it did.
He could still faintly hear the screams from the good side, not so good anymore, as the soldiers were obviously readying to open the Heavenly Gates to those who weren’t busy eating him.
Or Darryl.
Or Roxanne.
Or the baby.
The Heavenly Gates…no longer.
Is that where I am now due? Or do I come back in a body, a host of Hell?
It really happened so fast.
Really it did.
Abe’s stomach was peeled open and he was dying because of a monster.
Problem was the monster wasn’t the one eating him. This one still possessed a pulse.
A pulse that with each beat there is death.
Now it was Abe’s turn to die.
It really happened so fast.
Really it did.
His liver.
Really. It did.
His intestines.
Really.
So fast…
So fast…
So fast…
His eyes.
Really it did?
Please…
A hand.
Reaching.
Fumbling.
It nervously grasped for the heavy padlock which long separated The Heavenly Gates from a dance with the undead and a false sense of security.
The gun pointed at the thin, obviously hungry, middle-aged man, didn’t help his need for calm. Rotted, decayed hands reached through the bars as the man struggled to get the key into the lock. One turn. One pull. One entry.
So many sentenced to death.
The man, a father, a husband – or at least he used to be – took one look back over his shoulder at the NWO soldier, rifle aimed steady, inches away from his impending death by teeth.
By chewing.
“Open the fucking lock,” the soldier demanded.
Clarity. Realization. Fear of his maker.
Whatever.
The man – at first bent over, hovering over the lock, hands from the bad side swiping through the gate, attempting to get to their next meal – stopped.
He stood. The man stood. Gun in his face, the man stood. Raising his left arm, keys in hand, directly in front of him.
Cling, cling.
The drop of the keys to the ground. A forlorn smile of knowing. Pride, whatever was left, remaining intact for those last seconds the man had left on this earth.
“You want to serve us up?” the man looked down at the keys, voice shaking. “You invite the guests then.”
Solider becomes unhappy.
Man doesn’t care. He even smiles, even if it’s only a little one.
“You coward,” he tells the soldier.
Explosion of a gunshot and the man falls backward into the gate. He can’t bounce forward as the searching hands grab a hold through the gate holding on to their next meal. Their reprieve from dying a death so delayed.
The man started to look down and saw the bullet hole in this left thigh, the blood flowing, and the sound of the scrats going into the frenzy associated with fresh kill.
That kill, is me. I am the trophy.
The soldier nudged him aside and approached the gate, bent down, and picked up the keys.
Not able to look at his leg anymore – at least two scrats grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back up against the bars – the man saw the NWO hellion walk, so close, so close, to the gate.
Why aren’t they reaching for him too? Why not him? Why just me?
Me…
The click, the turn, the tug, the snap.
In a moment the gates would open.
They were all going to die.
The man felt the need, the overflowing hunger of the scrats. Were those teeth against my back? They were trying to bite him through the bars, they could not wait.
Once the gates opened their sense of survival will be magnified.
We…are all going to die.
As the gate slowly swung open the man looked up, ahead, yards in the distance he could see. The soldiers held at least a dozen of The Heavenly Gates residents in a small, human circle. All of them wounded. Bullet holes in their legs, arms, lower torso. Rendered too weak to move, too defeated to run.
There were more of them, the occasional pop of a rifle told him some of those within The Heavenly Gates were going to go down with a fight.
Delaying the inevitable.
A woman screamed and as the gates were fully open, the rounded up cattle – his friends – began to panic at what they feared for months and now faced.
He saw her. She was only 22. Gorgeous even in a world such as this. The man liked her. A lot. He wanted to be with her until the end.
He would be. He saw her pushed into the other cattle, joining her fellow entrees. She was bleeding from her left arm. Crying.
God damn it.
The man felt the first set of teeth wrap itself around his upper left arm and leaned with the force of the pull. Released he fell back into place, smelled the blood, his blood. He heard the chewing of flesh. His flesh.
Then another. Another. Another. Fading away, the man, saw the scrats walk forward, stumble rapidly, and giddy-up, toward his friends, the cattle.
Her. God damn it.
As the blood left him and his life with it, the man looked toward the soldier, the one who opened one gate to release another. Scrats bumped into him, walked around him, groaned and reached out toward the cattle.
Why aren’t they…
The soldier. Untouched. He looked back at the man. The man’s neck half gone in the mouth of an old lady no more than five-feet tall. Her chewing splattered blood and human secretion back into the man’s face.
God damn it.
The soldier looked at him. Fading, the man saw him. Saw him watching. Expression completely blank like he’s done this before.
He probably has.
Screams. Plenty. His friends, the cattle. The scrats made their way over to them, trying to scramble past the soldiers keeping watch, penning them in.
Flesh torn away. Bodies being tossed about. Meals made of his friends.
Her.
God damn it.
The soldiers. The soldiers simply stood, watched, seemed to wait until all cattle were claimed, branded.
Eaten.
They moved away. They went on with their jobs.
Killing us.
Untouched.
Why? Why not, them?
If he had a few more moments the man would have maybe figured out why. He may not have cared. He simply watched her lose her brain, her scalp pulled back, to die.
He could think no more.
God damn it…
He is a soldier. A protector of the way. One of so many who defend the integrity of what it is now meant to be.
Sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, strong build. A modern day Nazi. But this is not a simple act of throwing one particular ethnicity, religion, race into an oven to watch them die.
No.
This man. This soldier. Is indiscriminate in his movements, unrelenting in his targeting of who will die.
As are his orders.
He must stand aside and watch those with so little die so badly. He must feed those of such small influence to the conduit of eliminating such a breed.
His eyes see a little boy, maybe 10-years-old, black, get split in two by three scrats fighting for a meal. The boy’s internal organs hit the pavement to feed more scavengers. His life machinery giving continuation to the dead, allowing them a little more of shelf a life.
The Indian woman only three feet in front of him. Dying slowly. Her eyes fixed on him. Waiting for him to help, knowing he won’t, his AK-47 only needed for her. People like her. Like her, full of bite marks, more to come, losing blood, dying. She is dying to come back as a vessel of global elimination or luckily eaten to the point of death with no chance of coming back.
The soldier silently prayed for her.
And the white, fat, man, whose greasy stomach was split open and used to feed at least four or five scrats. Rotting deaths given a reprieve.
He could actually see the change in the feeding monsters. Cuts healing if only so little. Skin patching up if only barely evident.
The dead continue to go on while the living joined them.
This soldier watched as he became one member of the earth’s worst killing machine. An army with a sole purpose of cleaning the slate and wiping it out.
Basically, they were hitting the restart button.
Even though he knew he was safe from these monsters he still flinched at the sight of one only inches away. He never felt confident of his place in the food chain as long as these ghouls, these casualties of war, made contact with him.
He would be safe. They guaranteed this.
It still didn’t make the soldier feel any better.
The screams slowly died out. The chewing of meat, loud, profound, and full of rejuvenation. Each bite a little quicker than the last. Silence at the dinner table. Except the chewing.
The chewing.
The chewing.
The black boy, eyes wide, head turning left and right. A wobble, a growl. No legs to carry him, one arm left to prop his ripped torso. His hunger was already here. He was one more obstacle. One more distraction.
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