Pandora's Wake, Part 7

Time seemed to slow down for Ember. The night descended into a chaos of screaming, running nomads and gunfire. Muzzles flashes and tracer rounds combined to create a ghastly strobe effect as dark forms, only partially visible, raced from the tree line into the withering gunfire, only to burst apart in a shower of bone and gore. Yet despite the carnage, the things kept coming. Half a dozen must have died already. Ember couldn't see them clearly but they seemed like some kind of large canine.



In front of her, Ronan and Dmitri broke off from the stretcher party and turned to face the tree line and the attacking monsters. Two other nomads, Dr Almandinger and the Irishman, Shamus Harper, took up the stretcher and ran for the safety of the airport bus.



"They're inside the perimeter!" Joanas's voice called over the radio.

"Shit!" Ember snapped out of her stupor and readied the crossbow she carried in a sling across her back and took Knut's elbow in her left hand,

"We have to get to one of the vehicles!"



* * * * *



The nightmarish apparition that lunged out of the darkness reminded Dimitri of a large dog that some one had flayed alive. The monster had no fur, and if it had skin at all then Dimitri couldn't see it. A crimson ichor covered the entirety of its body, dripping off it in oozing, gory globules. Its muzzle was split by a mouth filled with savage fangs and canine teeth. From strange, blister like structures above the creature's front shoulders grew long, thrashing, tentacles. The sight was enough to all but turn Dimitri's stomach.



All this, Dimitri observed in a fraction of a second as the abomination landed on the road just feet from him. The creature seemed to sag down onto its haunches, preparing to spring forward, its savage maw snarling at the terrified man.



Dimitri raised his pistol and fired, just as the creature leapt at him.



His first round grazed the monster's foreleg, sending a slurry of crimson ichor into the chill night air, and then it was upon him. The sudden, crashing impact sent Dimitri sprawling to the ground, pinned beneath the monster. Where the red ichor which covered the creature touched his flesh it stung, burning him uncomfortably. Teeth snapped together only centimetres from his face as he struggled to bring his pistol up, but one of the flailing tentacles caught about his wrist, pushing it away. Swearing under his breath Dimitri thrashed beneath the beast, desperately trying to free himself as death seemed moments away. A second creature joined the fight, fastening its teeth into Dimitri's leg and sending shock waves of pain lancing up it. Screaming, Dmitri fought to free himself from the first assailant as the second began to worry at his leg, ripping chunks of bloody flesh from the wound.



Without warning the head of the first creature disintegrated, showering Dimitri in blood, gore, bone and the painful, stinging red ichor that coated the creature. Struggling to free his arm from the tentacle of the now dead alien monstrosity, Dimitri kicked out at the second assailant. Three shots rang out from Ronan's rifle, shattering the body of the second monster just as he had blown apart the skull of the first in an attempt to rescue Dimitri.

"You okay?" Ronan called as he leant down to try and help Dimitri disentangle himself from the bodies of the two dead alien dog-things.

"My leg's badly torn up, I don't think I'm going to be able to stand.". As he spoke, pain lanced up through his thigh.

Nodding, Ronan assessed the situation, “I can carry you” he said in a tone that would brook no argument.

“Look out Ronan!” Embers voice was barely audible over the din of battle, certainly Ronan hadn't heard it, but Dimitir had. Twisting his head around his eyes widene4d as he saw the dog-thing on the boot of the damaged car, about to spring. He raised his pistol for a shot as one of Ember's crossbow bolts thudded into the monster's side, eliciting a yelp. Its flailing tentacles wrapped themselves about Ronan and picked him off his feet, hauling him backwards through the air.

Cursing, Dimitir tried in vain to get a clear shot, but couldn't be sure he wouldn't hit Ronan instead. A sudden weight landed on his chest, claws scrabbling into him. He screamed and tried to fight off the new assailant that had landed on him. Fangs sank into his neck and he could feel a hot wash of liquid burst forth, down over his neck and chest.

“Shit!” he thought as his throat tore loose in the creature's mouth. Realising he was dying, Dmitri managed to bring up his pistol and fire three rounds into the creature's head, point blank. As his vision fogged the last thing he saw was the skull of the creature that had killed him burst apart.



* * * * *

Ember braced her cross bow on the car door and fired again. This time her shot went wild, over the head of the monstrous thing attacking Ronan. Cursing, she re-loaded and took aim again. By now the creature and Ronan seemed locked in a life or death wrestling match. He had managed to somehow jam the stock of his rifle into the creature's jaws and was trying to twist it to break the animal's neck. For its part, the dog-thing had its tentacles wrapped about Ronan and was squeezing, trying, so Ember assumed, to make him break his death grip on the rifle. Powerless to help, Ember watched for a clear shot as the two struggled. If she fired now she risked hitting Ronan.



As she watched, Shamus came out of nowhere. Leaping through the air with what looked like an entrenching tool, he brought it down on the creature attacking Ronan. The sharp edge bit into the creature's neck, and Shamus's full weight came down with it, almost severing the head. The creature's jaws flopped open limply and Ronan retrieved his rifle, as he and Shamus tore at the creature's tentacles, which were still locked around Ronan.



Ember breathed a sigh of relief, the stretcher party must have reached the safety of the airport bus with Jacob, and Shamus, seeing his fellow Irishman in trouble had come rushing back just in time. Remembering that a battle still raged all about them, Ember tore her eyes form the sight of the two Irishmen wrestling the dead monstrosity off Ronan and turned her attention back to Dmitri.

“Oh no” she muttered softly, “God no. Not Dimiti!” Her eyes began to tear up at the sight of her friend lying dead in the road. His throat was torn out and the shattered remains of the creature that had killed him slumped across his body. There was a rapidly spreading pool of blood spilling across the tarmac around him, man and monster's life-blood mingling in death.



Ember's fingers were numb with the shock, her eyes filled with tears. They had all lost so much since the Other-Verse burst through from whatever nightmare dimension it belonged to, and washed away human civilisation. So many millions were dead. Almost everyone Ember had ever known, but it didn't seem to get any easier. Here, in a cold, Swiss night, the sight of Dmitri lying dead in the road, his flesh already turned almost white from blood loss, Ember found her grief growing into something new, anger. A fury boiled up inside her as she loosed the crossbow bolt she had loaded on the next dog-monster she saw and loaded it again. Load and shoot, load and shoot, she worked furiously, sending quarrel after quarrel into the night, screaming an incoherent battle cry that gave vent to all her rage. She lost track of how long she fought, loading and shooting until she had no more quarrels to shoot.



Slinging the crossbow into the car she slammed the door shut, drew her knife and strode into the midst of the chaos, snarling almost as savagely as the alien dog-monsters.

* * * * *



Mathias Farrel pumped his shotgun again and pulled the trigger as the hell-hound bounded up the length of the vehicle he had been stood on during most of the battle. Spent shotgun cartridges littered the roof of the car and the road around him. Nothing happened. The former policemen cursed under his breath. The shotgun was empty again, now of all times. He dropped flat to the car roof, letting go of the shotgun and drawing his police issue handgun as the creature leapt for him. Taken by surprise by its prey's sudden collapse, it leapt over him as he fired three rounds into its body at close range. Gobbets of the red gore that clung to the creature’s outer surfaces fell onto his uniform and fizzed slightly where they touched, leaving the material blackened and burned. The creature hit the ground behind the car with a heavy thump and Officer Farrel sprang to his knees, spinning round to get a look at its broken body where it lay gasping and flailing on the tarmac. He fired twice more into its body and the monster fell silent.



* * * * *



Ronan clambered to his feet, finally free of the tentacles of the dead dog-monster. Reloading his rifle, he turned to look for the next threat. With Shamus standing at his back, the two Irishmen surveyed the scene. Among the chaos were the bodies of more than a dozen of the alien monsters, maybe as many as two dozen. The roar of gunfire had fallen to just an occasional rapport,

“You see any more mate?” Shamus asked loudly,

“Nup!” Ronan confirmed, although he kept a sharp look out. He had seen Dmitri's but couldn't afford to dwell on it now. Ember was kneeling by the dead man, her face and hands covered in blood, a large, bloodied knife hanging limply from her hands as she wept. She could do his grieving for him, Ronan decided, that way he could pretend he had dealt with it.



* * * * *



“The survivors are fleeing through the trees to the north, looks like they have had enough, Over” Joanas called into the radio as he surveyed the trees through his night-sight goggles

“For now. They may be back, Over” Mathais Farrel's voice came back.

“Agreed. Looks like we are leaving the damaged car where it is, retrieve what you can, get our wounded and dead rounded up and then we go. Over” Knut's voice now.

There was a pause as everyone took a moment to come to terms with what had happened. On the road several nomads vomited the last of their adrenalin onto the tarmac as the orders spread.



“Farrel here. What do we do with our dead?... Over” he asked over the radio. Joanas could see him now, standing over the body of a downed nomad. Others had gathered around the body as well. From here, Joanas couldn't tell who the dead man was, but the others looked like Ember and the two Irishmen. He cursed silently, there were so few of them that every loss seemed like a personal affront to him now.

The radio was silent for what seemed like an age before Knut answered.

“Put them in the bus. We'll have to move the children out of there though, and find them a car to ride in till we get to Bex. Over”

Another pause,

“Affirmative. Over” Farrels voice seemed tired, forlorn.

“Who...” Knut's voice cracked a little and he paused, “Who didn't make it? Over”

“Dmitri.” The former policeman's voice answered, “Dmitri is dead. We have a few wounded, nothing else too serious though. Over!”



“Understood. Out” Two words, but Knut's tone held a gravity to it that left no-one who heard it any doubt that the old man had taken the news very hard.