“I broke the fangs of the wicked
snatching the victims from their teeth.”
-Job 29:17
Caan, usually cool, even in the worst scramble along the cube iron, snarled and walked out into the meadow besides Drexler, loading his snub nose 0.38 Smith and Wesson with a quick loader. Bronson was reloading his antique Colt 0.45 from his belt, expertly, one smooth round at a time.
Bradshaw set aside his fowling piece and hefted both Zulu spears that had been assigned, with invective, by Bobby, to Jim and Joe. Sean was by Drexler’s side. The five stallions thundered down on them as Brenner came up next to Sean, fingering his knife, dressed like a Hollywood Indian in a lion cloth but wearing Mars utility boots.
‘What a fix,’ he thought. ‘Those two pallets of MREs, we didn’t have the means to haul them. No proper rucksaks, harness. Best case they were just a food store we would be inclined to defend against all of this experimental mayhem. This is a clinical trial.’
The sounds of their two pistols firing bestowed upon the moonlit meadow, with its hooves pounding, a semblance of order that calmed him.
Like that, the horses were on them. One was transfixed behind the shoulder by a spear hurled by Terry that dropped it under the hooves of another. The mean little paint went straight for Brenner. It was as if the hijacked brains of the animals went for the smartest, most well-rounded man. The priority placed on taking out Heston had been obvious.
Sean spiked the paint in the head and stabbed it in the neck as Brenner stabbed it in the chest and grabbed its mane. The body of a large horse crashing behind him threatened his focus as he pulled down on the hawk spiked into that crazy horse’s head. It stumbled towards him, causing him to sprawl to keep from being pinned. A black stallion ran over Brenner, hitting the man in the head with its sleek shoulder.
A spear transfixed that stallion’s neck, its attempt at a vocal complaint terribly muffled by that steel. It reared too, its near hoof pawing at him, a hoof which soon dangled uselessly as he cleaved it with the tomahawk. The beast rolled towards him, possessed of some alien, un-animal like will to crush him with its dying fall.
He sprawled back and around to the left to the assistance of Bronson and Caan. Caan calmly aimed his pistol from one knee, plugging a quarter horse in the ear and dropping it as he was kicked in the back by another stallion of the same breed. Bronson shot that one between the eyes, dropping it on Caan.
‘There are more horses,’ he realized numbly.
To Sean’s left, the last horse snorted. A crushing sound brought a cry of anguish form a small female voice. Drex was there—he never worried about Drex. Sean and Bradshaw rushed to haul the sixth horse off of Caan who was snarling, “Horses, horse women—fuck westerns!”
‘Where is Saxon?’
Caan was battered, coming to his feet, tossing his empty pistol aside in disgust. Drexler was standing over the Appaloosa and the girl who lie on her back, his shield and hammer down by his thighs, the girl looking up at him with some crazed hypnotic glare.
Bronson raised his pistol to shoot her in the head and Sean waved him off, bounded past Drex, knelt as she hissed, cupped the back of her pretty head in his left hand, and tore that platinum foil curse from the shaved left side of her head. She swooned, like the boy had, entering some tranquilized state.
“I’ll be damned,” snarled Bronson.
Caan was limping, picking up his empty gun, looking at Brenner, who was gone. “By the tree,” Sean ordered, assuming that old ponderosa was becoming their tomb.
Looking up at Drexler Sean could see the man shaking his head, emerging from a foggy daze, “Woah, Bro—my Dude, was at the beach with this girl sipping umbrella drinks…”
“What?”
“She got into my head—told me I was her stallion; we were married…”
That brought laughter from them all, except for Saxon.
“Where is Saxon?” Sean demanded of them all.
Sean stood and hefted the girl, and ordered, “Bronson, Caan, reload the black powder weapons, on the double, before this nightmare grows more fangs.”
Sean carried the woman over to where Terry placed Brenner, alongside Chuck and Jim, the boy asleep between their dead, their two small improvised sacks of MREs the only sign of Mars left. He decided then, as he set her at the base of a smaller ponderosa, then returned for the boy and set them together, that a means of survival was at hand.
Drexler was returning to stand by him, looking down at the boy and young woman. “We don’t have a shovel to bury our dead, Glass. Marines don’t leave our dead.”
“Neither do we. The machines cannot get over here. Whatever else wants us can come and get it. Let’s light a fire and cook up some horse steaks.”
Sean returned to pick up his hawk and Brenner’s knife to set to the task of cutting meat. Drexler stopped him with his left hand, his shield now on his back, “Glass, this is too much too soon. We made footfall with a target on our backs.”
Bronson added, “And a price on our heads. We worked for some bad people up there, who are testing our replacements on us, down here. I say we kill as many as possible.”
Sean agreed, “No more narrative pause.”
Terry put in, “But let’s not forget our conscience. Look at these kids, they look worn out, like they had not slept—don’t look hurt at all except the shaved burns on their heads.”
They all nodded in agreement, Charles and James still cleaning and loading the black powder rifles. As Sean belted his hawk and sheathed his knife, turning Brenner’s blade with some sadness, he was poised to ask about Saxon. Then he saw Saxon break from behind two junipers into the meadow fifty yards to the south, a harried look on his face and a sheen of sweat on his back. Dressed like a gladiator John hustled to them, sword and shield to hand. He nodded to the stacked stone mountain above them, to his right and their left.
Drex was himself again, more sober, somber, “Report?”
“Sarge, heard something up on the mountain over the horse’s hooves, as if being awakened. The timing was no coincidence. I don’t know what they are. But they’re big. A boulder slammed into a ponderosa next to me, and it cracked.”
“Not a machine?” asked Sean.
“Living—I could smell them, they talked to each other.”
Bronson handed Sean a loaded musket as he took the other one from Caan and handed that man his sword, “I bet that’s why we’re here, whatever’s comin’ down the mountain. We were herded here.”
Caan agreed, “This is no accident.”
Drexler nodded to the girl and boy, “Behind a tree, back left. The rest of us, pick a tree.”
Then came a crashing that woke the two kids as if from a spell, sitting plank upright with eyes astart. A stone, as large as a horse, crashed through the tops of two junipers and thudded in the meadow sticking in the dry ground. Sean shouldered the rifle, picked both kids up by their arm pits, and ran back north to the largest tree in the meadow’s edge. Sitting them down there he said, with a chill that recalled a weird sense of another man’s life, “You two be still. If we don’t come for you, if it’s something else, stay under cover, run, and head west.”
The girl sobbed, seemingly less like a woman now. The boy said sleepily, “Are you the new daddy?”
He patted the little fellow on the head, noted that the moon was high above, illuminating the meadow, and double timed back along the wood-line, the utility boots on his feet, reminding him that this was all a terrible game, their outfits all mismatched by their Mars boots.
Returning to Drexler, he hissed, “This was a prepared battle-space. We survive this, we need to exfil.”
“Rodger that,” hissed Drex, as log tumbled out into the meadow like a thrown stick, “Bro, this is Real Bad…”
This is the last open posting of MRE.
To be concluded in:
Okay, So This IS Really Bad!
MRE: Footfall Pyreon #12
and
Really, Sarge, it Gets Worse?
MRE: Footfall Pyreon #13
