By Kevin W. Lee.
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I stood on the top of a plateau surrounded by ocean as far as the eye could see. Unsure about where I was, I walked over to the edge of the plateau and looked down. It was a steep cliff that overlooked sharp jagged rocks which peeked their way out of the surf.
Realizing that there was no way off of the plateau, I walked back to it's center. Upon reaching there, I looked up into the sky. It had suddenly changed from a bright sunny blue, to a dark menacing black. Bats and crows swarmed through the air as the sun was blotted out of the sky. Fear rippled through as I stared out into that dark void. It was as black as night, only there were no stars out to light my way. It was almost as if they had all been extinguished at once.
I reached back for my rifle for comfort, but all I found strapped to my back was a long scythe covered in blood. Somehow, though, I knew it was my Helen's blood. In rage, I hurled it aside over the cliff and into the dark blue sea. But in doing so, some of the blood splashed upon my hands and soaked into my skin. Frantically, I tried to rub and wipe it off. My hands, though, remained stained. Falling to my knees, I searched my hands for an answer. A way to remove the red.
Suddenly, the plateau began to shake and quiver. A low rumbling sound echoed from the heart of the earth. As the trembling of the ground grew, so did the noise the tore from the earth. The clamor grew to deafening heights, when suddenly, with a tremendous roar, a huge figure emerged from the sea from the spot I had thrown my scythe. A stared down to the gigantic figure as it straightened up and dwarfed my plateau. The figure I saw was death itself.
He stood there before me with his deathly pallor and his maniacal grin. In his right hand he held my scythe, much larger though than it was when I first threw it into the ocean.
In his left hand, what he held made me cower in shame, weep with sadness, and glare with anger. There in his grip, he held dead Helen, covered in blood. What made it even worse, was that I was able to see her eyes. They were open and she was crying. Even in her death, she cried.
I climbed to my feet and screamed insanely with rage at the grinning death. I cursed and spat at the evil apparition and vowed on my very soul that I would pass through the seven gates of hell and hunt him down in his own realm if I had to to end this cruelty. I glared into his eyes and promised that.
But upon gazing into his eyes, my anger lessened. For a moment, the grin that blared down upon my was not a mocking grin, but, in a strange way was a grin of sadness. Deep in his eyes, I could see what could easily have been sorrow hidden there. Although my pain did not end, my fury did.
Slowly, with a great weariness that I had not noticed before, Death gazed to my far left, across the endless ocean to a grove of trees. With the great scythe that was mine, he pointed the trees. Then, with a powerful hurl, he threw it straight into the center of the grove.
A looked across the ocean to the scythe, then back at Death. He looked down at me as if saying, "There it is. It is yours to find now. Don't waste time, for there is but a precious little left."
Gazing back towards the grove, I began to run. Soon, my running became flying. And soon after that, the grove of trees became larger, and wider. As I got closer, the grove grew bigger and bigger as more trees seemed to materialize.
It was about the point that the trees looked like a forest that I noticed there was no way for me to slow down my approach. I seemed to be going faster and faster. Up in front of me, I could here shouts and noises that sounded like gunshots coming from the trees. They grew louder and louder as I speed towards the forest, almost as if they were cheering me on like a race or crying out in frustration and anger like a mob. Finally, the forest was right in front of me like a large concrete wall. And like a concrete wall, I smashed right into it.
Sitting up straight, I woke in a panic. I could feel the pounding of blood in my head. In my chest, my heart galloped as sweat evaporated into the winter night.
It was a clear night and shadows where thrown about by the luminous moon. The campfire had died down and all that was left was it's low burning embers. Off in the distance, cutting through the stillness of the night, I could here the reports of gunfire and frantic shouts.
I was looking around trying to figure out where the noise was coming from when I finally spotted Darren. It was strange. In the moonlight standing by that tree, it seemed almost as if he were somehow... changing. As I watched him, he seemed to get a fuzzy quality. He appeared to becoming more hunched in posture, and his shadow became more grotesque. Squinting at him in the darkness I said, "Darren?". He turned around and looked at me in the dark. He then approached my bedroll.
As he walked closer, I was able to see his features more clearly. I breathed a sigh of relief and noted that he was the same Darren that I had seen earlier when I was awake.
Hunching down next to me he asked in his gravely voice, "Is there something wrong Curtis?"
I nodded and looked in the direction of the gunfire. "Do you know who is making that noise?"
Darren looked down at me. "No. I don't. It's of no consequence." When I didn't lay back down he continued, "You look like shit. Go back to sleep."
Indeed. I felt like shit. For the last couple of days, my face was swollen and I had been suffering from a incapacitating fever. Apparently, the knife that I had been sliced with back at the bar fight was rather unclean and Darren did not have the means to fully treat me for disease.
I shook my head, noting the dizzy euphoric feeling of sickness, and stood up. My heart was still pounding in my chest and the visions from my dream were still fresh in my mind. Death had thrown the scythe into the forest full of noise. The noise was the same.
A dull ache assaulted my brain as I threw on my cold boots. Faintly, I heard Darren demanding, "Where do you think you are going?"
Turning my head around, I looked him in the eye. "I'm going to see what all the commotion is about. Where's my rifle?"
He looked at me with wide eyes, "Look here. You're in no condition to see what that's all about. You don't even have a gun!"
I whirled to face him fully. He was a little bit taller than me. "Where is my rifle?"
He returned my gaze and spoke slowly, "You have no rifle. You have no gun. When I dragged you out of the bar, all you had were the clothes that you are are wearing now. That's it."
I stared at him incredulously, my sickness momentarily forgotten. "You left my equipment back at the inn?!", I stared at him not quite knowing what to say, "All my gear? How could you do such a thing! That was Military Issue equipment! The best that human technology has been able to create. And you left it at the inn..."
As I glared up at him I noticed his eyes flash in the dim light. Returning my withering glare with one of his own he growled, "Yes... I did not know that you had any. Plus I had other concerns at the time... Like your health."
I stared angrily at him. In the distance, the shouting and gunfire were becoming louder. Whirling around, I muttered under my breath, "Shit." Not caring how sick I felt, or how dangerous it might be, I had to see what was going on and I was wasting my time with Darren. I began to move towards the noises in the distance.
I got about a few yards away from camp, when suddenly I heard a light thump next to my head. I turned to find an old dagger sticking out of the side of the tree I was standing next to. I turned around and looked back at camp. There was Darren.
We stood there looking at each other. Finally, he said, "At least take a knife."
I nodded and grasped the handle.
I don't know how long I had been moving towards the the gunfire, for in my condition it seemed like forever. I could feel my head burning up, and every step I took seemed to cause everything to spin. On top of that, my hearing was muffled, and my eyes were sore. Despite all these problems, I felt I had to go on and see what this was about.
I prowled in the shadows, moving from tree to tree. The knife that Darren had given me I held in my right hand. My boots made soft crunching noises as I moved through the snow. Suddenly, in the distance, I heard the pounding of moving feet crunching through fresh snow. I crouched down low and listened. They were really near and were approaching somewhere from my left.
Suddenly, the running stopped. I held my breath. Why did they stop? Carefully, I peaked around the tree that I was hiding behind. There was nobody there. Off in the distance, I heard the gunfire continuing, although not quite as constant as before. I waited a few moments, then crept out into the open. Where were they?
Quietly, I prowled to the next tree and looked about. There was nothing. It was too dark to tell if there were any tracks on the ground. I cursed to myself in the snow. What the heck was I doing here? A sane person wouldn't just run off into the woods with no weapons just because they had a strange dream.
I sat and leaned against a tree silently berating myself for my stupidity, when out of nowhere, a figure clothed in a dark body suit of some sort stepped out in front of me. In the darkness, I could not tell any extinct features, only that they carried a small box in one hand, and a thing that looked almost like a maglight in the other. Before I could do anything, this person flicks a switch on the maglight and a blade of light about 2 feet in length appears from it's end. A low hum emancipated from the maglight looking contraption.
Quickly, without warning, they flicked the lightblade towards me. I had barely enough sense to dodge to the side and out of the way. A burning sound hissed as the blade struck the tree I was standing in front of. As I rolled to my feet, I watched the tree begin to tilt as the blade tore a huge chunk out of it's base.
The figure deftly moved to the side of the falling tree trunk and was showered by snow. Realizing that I was not equipped to combat someone with that sort of weaponry, I backed off and gripped my dagger even though I doubted that it would do me much good. Off in the distance, the gunfire stopped.
The person in black climbed quickly on top of the fallen tree trunk. Poised there, it looked down upon me in the snow and attached the small box somehow to it's belt. Yelling what sounded like a strange war-cry, it leapt at me swinging it's energy saber. I rolled to the side again, but this time lashing out with my dagger in hopes of slowing this person down.
The dagger hit and gouged out a line in the body suit. Luckily, the black man's energy blade missed and buried itself in the ground. As I rolled to my feet, my equilibrium decided to stop functioning and I lost balance. I fell to the ground with my head whirling about me.
Recovering, the man attacked again by launching himself at me intending to pin me while I lay on the ground. Before, he was able to land on me fully, I balled up my feet and planted it in the center of his gut. I whoosh of air expelled from the man's mask as I propelled my feet outward and away from my body. The black clad person landed none too gracefully a few feet away from me.
I stood up with my dagger ready to kill, when suddenly sounds of machine-gun fire roared nearby and snow kicked up all around me. Breathing hard, I dove towards the nearest tree. What the hell?
Off in the distance I heard a voice cry out, "Where did the other one go?"
Someone responded, "I don't know. Cover the one on the ground. If they get up? Blast 'em. Be careful though, that one has the device."
I looked about me from behind the tree. I could see shadowy shapes prowling among the trees. Apparently, their eyesight was just as good as mine, and they did not see well in the shadows. I searched around me for some light cover to hide behind, but there were no bushes. Just trees, snow, and shadowy men.
Suddenly a shadowy figure, silhouetted by the moon, walked around the tree and bumped into me crouching in the dark. "What the...?!"
He didn't have time to say much as I slammed the dagger into his throat. Blood splattered all over the place as I cut cleanly through his neck and somehow lopped off his head. I did not realize I had struck that hard.
Close by, I heard someone yell, "What was that?"
"That was DuBoyce! He's down!"
"Shit..."
"Over here. He was over here!"
I cursed under my breath and fumbled with the body searching for some sort of weapon. He was carrying some sort of sub-machine gun. Placing my dagger in my old boot sheath, I tore the gun off of him and checked the clip. It was loaded.
As I crouched over the body, someone appeared from behind a tree off in the distance. He turned my direction and pointed. "You there! Get away from that body!"
I cursed and dashed behind another tree as the sound of bullets screamed through the forest. In the distance I heard, "Trigger! He's by you." At that moment, I saw Trigger rounding another tree. He was in Huntsman class body armor and carrying a Uzi. Hoping this thing was armed with Ramjet rounds or AP's, I fired a burst at him.
Sparks flew as the rounds hit home, and Trigger staggered back, slipping to the ground. Hearing some movement right behind me, I turned my head just in time to see a large Coalition Issue Vibro-Ax swinging towards my head.
Frantically, I ducked and the ax buried itself in to the large tree next to me. I could see the ax man faintly in the shadows. It was enough to see, though, that this bastard was a reject D-Bee with a disgusting pig snout. I retaliated his attack by smashing the butt of my carbine into his deformed nose. I heard a crunching sound, and dark liquid spurt out from his face.
Not waiting for another mad man to come attacking me, I took off running in the direction of the camp. Guns seemed to blaze all about me as I weaved in and out of the trees. I glanced over my shoulder to see if there were any following me. There was none that I could see.
I turned back around to find myself crashing straight into the back of some huge hulk who was bent over something. The man turned his head around and looked at me, "Wha...?"
As I looked into his face, swinging my gun to bare, he toppled to the ground in a cry of anguish. The man had been keeping the black clad guy pinned to the ground with a gun to his head when I ran into him. Apparently, my startling the hulk had given the black clad man time to angle himself away from the gun and hyperextend the guy's knee. I fired a couple of rounds mercilessly into the man on the ground to finish him off.
As I rounded upon the man in black again, I heard a blood curling scream of echo through the night. Both the black clad one and I turned to see where it came from. Another one sounded, this time much closer but definitely from a different source.
As I scanned the forest for the source of the cry, I felt a fist smash into the side of my face. I reeled from the blow and fell to the snow. That black bastard hit me! As I lay there on the ground, dazed both from the blow and a splitting headache, I heard the black clad man jogging away.
Suddenly, a voice cried out, "Stop! Do not run away. We are friends!" It was Darren.
I turned over rubbing my jaw. Maybe 12 feet away from me, the man in black stood. On the other side of him, I could see Darren standing there with both his palms extended in a gesture of peace. "We will not hurt you, sir. We were fated to meet," Darren continued.
The man in black turned and stared at Darren. He had his energy blade drawn again and was pointing it at Darren.
Darren spoke in his accented speech, "I have killed your enemies. You are among friends now."
The black clad person watched Darren silently. Finally, it spoke in a surprisingly feminine voice, "How do I know that you are a friend?"
Darren grinned in the darkness, "Because... I have killed off those who hunted you. And... were you my enemy, you would not be alive."
The black clad person held the energy blade in a defensive posture despite Darren's words.
Darren continued, "Like I said before, we were destined to meet you here. I am called Darren." He gestures back in the direction of the camp. "We have a small camp with provisions if you are hungry."
Moments passed, then finally, the black clad person reached up and removed the mask from their head. Long silvery hair fell from the mask down the black armored person's back. Tilting her head to the side as if to watch me out of the corner of my eye, she said, "My name is Lena."
I looked at Lena and I did not know what to say.
End of Part 3.
By Kevin W. Lee.
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