The Brimstone Method

The Brimstone Method - Part 4

I looked back at the hatch and aimed the gun, waiting for the first white creature to show its ugly face. As soon as it popped up I snapped a bullet directly into its jaws. The teeth shattered and the viscous pink contents of its head splattered out behind it.

The body dropped downwards, no doubt to be consumed in a frenzy like a piece of sushi by some of its bloodthirsty, cannibalistic brethren. Its replacement immediately appeared in the hatch, pulling itself up, followed by another, and another. They advanced on me, snarling, howling, grinning, baring all their teeth, triumphant almost, as if they knew I had nowhere to go except the fucking minefield.

I raised the gun again. I pulled the trigger again and again like I was playing Call of fucking Duty, but I had run out of bullets and luck, and all I got was an impotent click. I threw the gun at one of them. It bounced off, just a paperweight now. I had nothing else on me except the fucking microwave beef dinner, somehow still stuck into my waistband. I laughed and frisbee'd it away, preparing to jump off the roof and run.

The square dinner plate sized slab of uncooked, chemically manufactured food hit the ground and must have landed directly on one of the mines. It went up in a huge geyser of earth, really close to the edge of the building. I was getting used to the noise by now, but I still ducked instinctively as the whole building shook from the blast, covering my head from the heat and dirt, feeling shrapnel whizzing past my ear. Then another one went off and I fell to my knees, my arms over my head. The creatures screamed - in what, fear? I don't know.

Then another one went, and another, domino-ing in a series of mighty explosions that deafened me to this day. The building began to list to one side like the fucking Titanic. The creatures screamed and scrambled for safety, some over the side, some back down the hatch.

The ground started to cave in. The building had been partially built over the creature's underground nest, and the ground was now taking a real hammering.

Another explosion rocked us even more and the whole structure started to go over. The creatures and I all slid over to one side, piling up against the concrete lip. The mines hadn't finished making themselves heard and were still going off, sending so much earth into the sky that visibility had dropped to zero. The building was now leaning way over as the concrete crumbled and now I was worried that instead of being eaten to death I was going to be tipped into the minefield. In fact, as it pitched over even further and began to sink into the hole where the nest had been I realised that was definitely what was about to happen.

For a fraction of a second, I saw a break in the dense cloud of earth and without thinking I fucking jumped, just as the whole place went over behind me. I landed on the side of the huge hole where the creatures lovely single bed basement flat had once been and I scrambled over the edge and leapt again, and again, from crater to crater. I was knocked left and right, the heat from every explosion was burning the flesh from my body and shrapnel was spinning through the air and gouging my flesh to ribbons worse than any monster, I was blind and suffocating from the clouds of earth, but I kept leaping and running regardless. The details of the next few seconds were a blur but something in that primeval lizard part of my brain told me to stop pushing my luck and on landing the fifth or sixth time I rolled up and curled up in a ball tighter than a baby's clenched fist. I waited for death, literally - my eyes squeezed shut, my body ready, finally, to accept my punishment for getting those guys killed five years earlier. 

They were cunts for sure, but nobody deserves to be pureed and painted on a warehouse wall.