*
The eight of them just stood there, staring at each other. The jungle was silent except for the natural noises of the insects and small creatures that lived here. The man or thing in the cage was no longer screaming, but Sarge, who was closest, could hear its slow, raspy breathing. He backed away, aware now that all eyes were upon him, and cast his gaze into the sky.
“Flying?” he said.
“I’ll go,” Ed Walls said with a salute. Then he was climbing the lookout tower, and his brother Pete was right behind him.
As they climbed, Sarge snapped a few orders and the other men got themselves hidden behind cages, with guns aimed at the road out of the village. The jungle was too thick to permit a band of the enemy silently, unless they used the road. And Sarge would be ready for them.
“I don’t like this,” Nero said at Sarge’s side. “If they took out Smith, they must know he warned us. Coming in now would be suicide.”
Sarge simply grunted, then said, “Gooks’re idiots, and insane.”
They waited. The sun was low in the sky now, hidden by the jungle. A few sharp but weak rays of light penetrated. Oliver put his head inside one such ray and closed his eyes against the warmth.
“Nothing!” called out Pete.
“Let’s hope they’re deaf,” Sarge muttered.
“I don’t see no planes or nothing!” called Ed. “Nothing’s…”
He stopped as Pete grabbed his shoulder and pointed out into the jungle, but high, their height. Seeing this, Sarge trained his eye once more on the road out of the village, for that was the direction the Private had indicated.
He was about to bark an order for the boys to come down when Ed yanked his rifle and started firing, firing way out over the treetops. Two shots. Then he locked the weapon on automatic and unleashed hell. His brother copied his actions.
“Fucking idiots!” Sarge yelled up. “Get down here, now.”
Ed threw down his weapon suddenly and barged past his brother. He started climbing down the ladder so quickly that he missed his footing a number of times.
Everyone was up and racing to the Sarge’s cage, eyes cast upwards. Oliver tripped and fell. Davidson and Carter bumped into each other and started arguing. Sarge silenced them with a cry. And then it happened.
At first it seemed as if a black cloud were passing over the hole in the canopy high above, but it moved too fast, was too low. And broken up, as if it were a flock of birds, instead. But if so then these birds were big, as big as men.
The flock passed right over the lookout tower and with a scream was gone. But so was Pete Walls. Snatched in a flash, it seemed. His weapon tumbled to the ground. The men stared at it as if seeing an alien artefact.
“What the hell just happened here?” Private Carter asked. He was a big black man with a shaved head and an M-16 rifle, but right about now he shivered with fear and looked pathetic.
“Help me!”
All heads turned to the sky. Ed Walls was scrambling down the ladder, his head turned to the right. Before their very eyes, the squad saw him slip and fall, a yelp in his throat. But before he’d dropped more than a few feet, something big and black, like a giant bat, shot across the aperture they stared through and literally swiped off his head. The headless body thumped to the ground, spraying blood from torn arteries. The head was nowhere.
“Monsters, I fucking told you!” Jake snapped.
“Shuttup, they’ll hear us!” Davidson screeched.
“Don’t tell me to be quiet, you little shit. I hope they take you next!”
“Bollocks, Davidson said with a grin.
“Both of you, shuttup,” Sarge said. “Nero, you wanna go check that tower out?”
“Yes please,” Nero said with heavy sarcasm. Sarge glared at him. That answer had been as good as saying no to a superior officer. But Sarge just shrugged.
“Fair enough, but you won’t live forever.”
“Just till the end of this day will suffice.”
Sarge laughed, then went swiftly back into boss-mode. “Anyone willing to guess what we just saw?”
All eyes turned slowly to the cage they were gathered closest to. The one with an occupant. Then they backed off, guns raised.
“That’s one of them,” Nero said. “That beast in there.”
“It’s a vampire,” Jake said in a low voice. “Real as day.”
“Day’s gonna be over soon.” Sarge looked angry. “Forget fucking fantasies. Gooks have been playing around with chemicals ‘n shit, that’s all. Some fucking big-assed eagles, that’s all. Vivisection.”
“Eagles? Here?”
Sarge glared at Nero. “We leave, now. Stand back.”
When they saw what Sarge was planning, the squad raced out of the way. Then Sarge let go with his own weapon. The noise of gunfire was deafening, but over it Nero was sure he could hear the screams of the thing in the cage as both were shredded by bullets. Soon the noise was over and the cage, and a good portion of the jungle beyond, lay in shattered ruins.
But from this smouldering pile of wood there emerged a hand, then an arm, and the squad opened fire as one. But the beast was not dead. It screamed an inhuman wail as its clothing and flesh was blasted off its bones. It crawled and crawled, trying to escape, but the squad followed it, ever firing. Soon one man ran out of ammo, another dropped his weapon and covered his ears, two more simply felt their vibrating arms go numb and dropped to their knees. And then it was all over.
The beast was in pieces and very dead, but it held the men in total fear. Disrobed, it lay for all to see, bathed in a ray of fading sunlight.
It had been seven feet tall at least, before they’d cut off its legs and feet and head with gunfire. Brilliant white flesh around thick, impossibly thick, bones, which poked out against the skin in places no human’s would have. A thick, long neck… and that inhuman head with black veins standing out on its bald crown. The feet and hands were like the claws of a lizard. The thing was humanoid, but it certainly was not human. Not any longer.
Jake was staring into the sky after his gun. He was mumbling things about Pete and Ed Walls, and how in keeping with the vampire legend they would return to eat their comrades. Davidson told him to shut up.
“Look!” Nero was standing over the smoking carcass. Using the barrel of his rifle, he picked something out of the carnage.
One handcuff with a bullet-shattered chain, covered in blood. As he lifted it, one of the beast’s hands fell away.
“They must have had it handcuffed. Captured it. Maybe these things killed everyone off, or scared them away.”
“Yeah,” Jake said, coming closer. His eyes were wild. He was losing it. “Maybe they came to rescue this one, and we just killed it.”
“Everybody shut the hell up. Get ready, we’re humping out of here. We’ll keep to the thickness of the jungle, and that should stop those mad birds from attacking us.”
“Mad birds?” Nero snapped. He pointed his gun at the dead beast. “Look at this thing, Sarge. Look. It isn’t a fucking bird.”
“You’re one syllable away from a serious headache, Black. Can it, now.”
“Hey, hey, they’re coming back!” Davidson squawked.
Eyes went skyward. Sure enough, the black cloud was there again, wheeling in the sky, just like birds. But even Sarge didn’t believe the bird explanation now.
Then the mass dived like swallows and was lost behind the jungle. But from the direction of the road the squad heard noises. Noises like creatures crashing through the jungle.
“Kill everything that comes,” Sarge said.
They aimed their guns at the road and waited.