Nature Hike

[MyLittleHellhound]

Captain Arnolf Bracken watched Thornwood burn. Great black plumes of oily smoke covered the sun, bathing the ocean of wheat fields around the settlement in darkness. The air smelled of cordite, sweat, and burnt flesh. The city sat in the valley like some cowering beast, pounded into submission by the huge artillery pieces that the Empire had brought to the peaceful land. Each gun weighed 40 tonnes and packed enough explosives in each shell to crack the foundations of a nuclear bunker. However, today they were loaded with shrapnel and napalm.

 

The 1st Legion's Task Force of the Viridi Lupus was packed in a dozen modified Humvees that trundled single file on a well-worn dirt road. Skeletons, mostly of animals, littered the roadside and created a ditch of dirty white bones. They crunched as the Humvees rolled over them, crushed into powder by the heavy trucks. Outriding Jeeps raced through the grass, their gunners alert for any flanking threat. Slowly, the convoy moved into the city.

 

The soldiers of the Viridi Lupus were covered head to toe in dark green battle plate, and despite the sweltering heat of the flames none showed any discomfort. They were utterly silent even as the smell of the city hit them like a hammer. The convoy passed the first landmark- a once beautiful arch dedicated to some historical event. Now however, it was blackened from the fires and part of it had collapsed onto the road. Arnolf, sitting in the third Humvee, searched for any signs of life from the city, but there were none to be had.

 

"Anything so far?"

 

"No bodies to be found, no contacts," the lead Humvee reported, pushing aside a twisted wreck that had once been an eco-car.

 

"Wait. Contact in the windows to the right. 3 o'clock. It's gone," the operator voxed. 

 

The smoke flowed thickly, as if an invisible hand had swirled it around the convoy. The powerful headlights barely penetrated the gloom, and only the back lights of the next car could be seen. 

 

"All forces, high alert. Prepare to bring justice to these-" Arnolf started to say.

 

"Shit! Look out for that-" the lead Humvee's transmission cut out with a wash of static.

 

The lead Humvee swerved sharply, tires kicking up a shower of plaster and crushed rock. The highrise to the right collapsed on itself with a scream of tortured metal, and a cloud of dust battered the Humvee from side to side. The driver cursed and tried to regain control of the wheel, but all he could see was a white cloud of dust. He had no time to react before the ground opened up beneath the Humvee and swallowed it whole, the back tires spinning uselessly before they too disappeared in a shower of gravel.  

 

"Lead? Humvee 1? Do you copy?" Arnolf tapped his vox several times. 

 

"Humvee 1 is gone! Humvee 2 taking the-"

 

"Contacts on the ground."

 

"Contacts on the rooftops."

 

"Task Force, engage!" Arnolf yelled.

 

Turrets blazed death at the dozens of contacts appearing on the scanners, shapes barely discernible in the smoke. They fell out of the windows, burst through walls, crawled out of the ground. It was like poking a termite nest, only the Task Force was inside. 

 

"Identify! Identify!" someone screamed.

 

The convoy ground to a halt as they were swarmed, the shapes crawling over the hoods and under the tires, everywhere they could get. Windows were smashed in and hands, human hands reached in to grab at the soldiers. 

 

"1st Legion Task Force requesting assistance! Unknown hostiles in Thornwood, we're being attacked!" Arnolf screamed.

 

He kicked the door open against the press of bodies, firing at a man with golden yellow eyes. The bullets tore through the man's dirty, studded jerkin but they seemed to have little effect. Around him, the Humvees lay stranded in a sea of human bodies. 

 

"They're dead! They're fucking dead!" 

 

The first of the Humvees were overwhelmed then, dead hands reaching up to tear a man out of the gunner's seat as he fired wildly and ripping him to shreds on the ground. Blood soaked into the ground. 

 

"Fall back!" Arnolf yelled, smashing the head of a woman in, "Fall back!"

 

The men abandoned the Humvees only to find themselves in a roiling tide of teeth and hands. A dozen went down in the first seconds, unable to fire their weapons in such close quarters. Screams rent the air and the smell of fresh blood sent the enemy into a frenzy. Arnolf raced past a soldier as he grappled with one of them, and it threw him against a window so hard the soldier's head split open like a ripe fruit. 

 

This was madness.

 

"Do not fall back. That's an order!" a deep voice ordered.

 

"Sir. We will all die here if we do not!" Arnolf dodged a clumsy swipe and kicked the thing with a dusty boot. 

 

"The Task Force is tainted. We cannot let you spread it to the troops."

 

"Sir we will-"

 

The vox cut out entirely.

 

The first shell impacted a Humvee, throwing Arnolf back into the gravel and obliterating the car entirely in a ball of shrapnel and fire. The concussive force rippled through the undead and broke every window in a 2 block radius that was still intact. 

 

"Get up! Get up!" Arnolf staggered over to one of his men, hauling him up.

 

The soldier wasn't alive. Half of his face and helmet had been shredded to a gory mess, while his other half was untouched. Steaming pieces of meat and organs rained down from the sky as Arnolf spent the last round in his automatic rifle's magazine, opting to spear the nearest undead with his bayonet. Shells rained down upon the Task Force, and another three Humvees exploded into burning slag. The undead tide closed in, ever hungry. Everywhere Arnolf looked, he saw the worst. Men holding their intestines in their hands, or screaming for their mothers, or trying to drag themselves away as a dead man reached towards them. He saw rifles abandoned, still full, and men who sat and sobbed as death embraced them with open arms.

 

They say a soldier never hears the shell that kills him. 

[PHD Flopper]

You should definitely write more

[Ehjookayted]

Excellent. It's amazing how far you've come as a writer man. Keep writing!

[Jolteon]

Very impressed! Great to have a fantastic writer return to grace us with his presence! You've grown a lot since your last stories I read here

 

-Jolteon