The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Nine

Major Holloway dropped heavily onto his left side, rolling as he hit the sun-baked soil and ignoring the pain in his rib cage from the impact, and he fired three rounds at the bizarrely-dressed, tattered figure that leapt out at him from a rippling translucent portal floating in mid-air.  He swore acidly as he watched the bullets' trajectory, ripping into the front torso of the lanky, spindly creature and exiting out its back in puffs of sepia-colored dust.

 He heard the percussive echoes of multiple reports as the other soldiers of Broken Mirror released a fusillade of 5.56 x 45mm and 9mm rounds at the wild, marauding humanoids that popped in and out of visibility from the air where the team had gathered.  Men called to one another, shouting encouragement to their comrades and giving each other feedback on what, if any, reactions the creatures had in response to the withering gunfire.  Even under the tense and desperate conditions under which they'd suddenly found themselves, the men were working as professionals, staying tight and level-headed, and for that Holloway was grateful.  But the situation was worsening...

 There had to be over a dozen of those murderous things and they were all damn near impossible to stop.  Holloway didn't even think of the word "kill".  Instinct told him that somehow, incredibly, horrifyingly, these creatures were already dead.

 And they were fast, unbelievably so, moving so quickly they were often little more than shadowy blurs streaking through the twilight.

 The Major saw Tech-Sergeant Lukas Kruger go down under repeated hits from a four foot-long broadsword wielded by a seven foot tall man-beast in chain-mail armor and a form-fitting vest of bulky metal plating.  Kruger kept firing from his Detonics Combat Master .45 ACP pistol, hitting the man-beast twice in the chest while two other of his shots went wild, but the stomach and thigh wounds he'd received from that tremendous sword were too deep for him to sustain any kind of aggressive impetus.  The man was dying.  The bullet wounds to his attacker hadn't apparently done any damage at all.  He ducked and fell face first into the dirt as he dodged the next swing of the broadsword.  He scrambled over onto his back and put a bullet into his attacker’s face, blowing away part of its skull… The thing just kept coming.

 Private Mike Tortefaccio was howling like a wild animal, fear and rage and blood lust taking him over the edge into a berserker fury, as he battled a thickset armored bruiser who wielded what looked to be some alien variety of futuristic battle mace, a foot and a half long oval of dark metal studded by razor-sharp, hooked spikes at the end of a three foot long link of heavy chain.   The mace whistled audibly as it flew past Tortefaccio’s dodging form, traveling in small, intricate lethal arcs as its sinister wielder displayed his expert prowess with the weapon.  The Private screamed as a set of the spikes tore through the back of his trauma armor vest and ripped a quintet of deep and bloody gouges across his back.  He spun, dropped to one knee and fired off four rounds from his Ruger ATI CS-9 Compact 9mm handgun.  All four slugs smacked into his attacker.  The impact of the slugs jerked the creature backwards a few stumbling steps, but they didn’t create the kind of mortal wounds the soldier expected to see.  The thing didn’t bleed.

 Where in hell had all these monsters come from?  What the hell were they?

 “Over here!  Get behind me, Doc, get behind me!” Over the cacophony of the melee, Holloway heard the voice of Sergeant Salzmann.  Rolling again and scooting away from the monster that came at him, Holloway stole a quick glance over his shoulder and saw Dr. Veneralli back to back with Salzmann as they confronted a trio of advancing attackers.  Veneralli was gamely firing his automatic pistol, and even hitting his targets, but the effect was negligible on the creatures.  Salzmann had his H&K assault weapon on full-auto and was literally shredding the alien thing that came lunging towards him.