“No, no, no…” He was
saying it on repeat now, under his breath while he sprinted out of small town
nowhere, and saw other people break from their own hiding spots while this
sudden attack commenced, unfurling with a sudden vengeance of hell and
brimstone.
Alex slammed into a brick wall, chest heaving, gun
shaking in his hands, and saw two human men bolt down the street past him, heavier
artillery opening up on the incoming wave of silver coated bodies in the
distance, and Alex got his balls together enough to peek around the edge, saw
at least twenty of the bastards tearing up the broken sidewalk, fanning out in
the street and stopped hesitating.
Not today. He wasn’t about to go out like this. He heaved
three breaths, gathered himself and darted towards a large semi that had seen
better days, hobbled on flat tires in the intersection and ran for hell and
high-water for it.
Blasts of blue and pure white fire shot overhead, and too
late did he see the flash of red-gold armor incoming from the front, dived and
hit the ground in a roll under the semi’s undercarriage, almost ate dirt and
concrete in his scramble to tear himself upwards off the ground and wrapped up
into the greasy blackened framework just in time to see those two men, now
caught in the cross hairs, annihilated in the crossfire.
From
one minute to the next they stopped in their own scramble, got hit with those
pulser blasts, and parts of their bodies just evaporated at contact; one died
instantly, and the other went down screaming while half his face and one entire
arm just was consumed in blue light and ate away his flesh like some acid wash
of nightmare.
Alex
was officially stranded, pulled himself up higher and flattened, limbs shaking
with the exertion of it and saw the passage of feet pounding past. He waited
for a minute and heard that buzzy whomping sound of blasts going off where he
had just been, the shouts and alien voices screaming at each other in foreign
languages, and when he was sure, they had left that section of the street,
dropped, rolled the other way, and hit the ground low and fast, ran past the
man half sprawled in the intersection who was now in full seizure, eyes melting
back into his head, and just kept going.
This shit had nothing to do with him and the dumb
factions that were getting involved with this so called war of good vs. evil
was beyond idiocy to him. It was all just religious fanaticism and insanity,
and frankly, he had seen both these sides in action, and not a single one of
these fucking people seemed particularly great or Godly.
They looked like men, but they sure as fuck were not, and
this bleed out into this reality was causing havoc and made a lot of people try
to explain it as some God Devil shit.
It wasn’t that and Alex just kept moving, backpack
jingling with every step, and didn’t bother to keep his gun out. If he was
caught, as those two dudes had just found out, he’d be dead, and the gun power
these people wielded were on another level of extraordinary.
He almost cleared the last building, stopped to look
around at the very open road, and in the distance the rolling hills for old
cattle herds was just wide open, almost savannahs at this point of deep
untended snow frosted grasses, and beyond that was the thick line of forest and
that’s where he wanted to be.
Fuck. It was a long run.
He sucked in a breath and went low and just made a break
for it and hoped to God they were all moving the other direction. These people
were fast, could jump fifteen feet in the fucking air and forward more than
that; he had seen them land in front of people from building tops, and tear a
man’s head from his shoulders with bare hands.
At this point he had seen a lot, all things that made him
want a whole lot of nothing from anyone. Even the times he had seen their camps,
in mild peaceful repose and in between bouts of fighting? Needless to say
bloodlust and lust in general seemed to be an issue, and their camps were
nightmare fodder.
The last group he had been with had gambled, despite his
screaming protests, and decided to approach the so-called, “Good guys”, in
their camp, and he had opted to stay the fuck in the shadows, and watched these
very pristine looking great god damn people at a safe distance, take out the
men and pull women in groups and tents, and that had been enough for Alex.
So, yeah, he wasn’t gambling on this good natured
bullshit, and ran for his fucking life across the grass, low and fast, heart
hammering, and could still hear those guns firing off.
M. Lane
