To Bring the Rain Excerpt

And excerpt from my upcoming novella

...

As the silhouette drew closer I saw indeed that it was a human. He wore a dark blue uniform with two golden insignia contrasting sharply against the blues. A trickle of blood ran down his face and dripped on the ground in front of him. His eyes were wide and wild with terror.

The man charged forward towards us, bayonet mounted on his musket and both at the ready. Fear coursed through me like the harshest winds. What could drive a man that wild? What horrible things had he experienced to take his sanity? All sound around me ceased aside from the distant rolling gunfire and his heavy breathing. He lurched forward with the bayonet as a spear and stabbed towards us.

My trigger finger twitched and the recoil nearly took my breath. I sprang back quick enough to see that I had hit him. Those crazed, animalistic eyes focused squarely on me. I watched as the humanity slowly melted back into them. His mouth moved as if he had intended to speak, but the bullet had lodged itself inside of his neck. The only sounds he could emit was a wet gurgle and a pained wheezing as he attempted to breathe.

His fingers wrapped around the front of his neck, digging into the pierced flesh in a futile attempt to stymie the flow of the red liquid that now gushed onto the desert ground, staining the golden sands bright crimson.

An eternity seemed to pass as his eyes locked onto mine. The light in them fading slowly. Slowly. He fell to the ground face first, clutching onto his throat. As his chest touched the ground he seized violently and then stopped. It was too sudden of a stop. Surely he'd move again, right? I watched for him to move.

“Why'd you fire?” Ahiga demanded. But I couldn't hear him.

The only sound I could hear was the man's last breath catching in his pierced throat. I dropped my rifle and felt for my own neck. Was it okay? Did I get shot? No. No. There was no blood coming from me, then why did I see all this red? Why were my hands so damned bloody?

Suddenly the horizon was filled with them: the bounding silhouettes of a thousand animalistic men, fleeing the tempest of gunfire raging in the distance. All of them charging towards us. All of them then intending to leave us like that man.

I fumbled to pick up my rifle and to shoulder it once more. It fell, I picked it back up, it fell again. I picked it up again. There. Ready. Aimed. Bang. The recoil punched my arm. Pull the lever. Bang. Pull the lever. Bang. Lever. Bang. Lever. Bang. The pattern flowed through me like a practiced waltz. Lever. Bang. Lever. Bang. My gunfire percussive to that symphonic cacophony playing in the distance!

There was screaming all around. Who was screaming? Were the shadows? No. They were monsters, not humans. I couldn't kill another human. Monsters didn't scream. Only humans screamed. My head jolted forward as something hard and heavy thwacked the back of it. The screaming stopped as the world went black, but the feeling of blood on my hands stuck like glue. 

Author's Note

Updated