EYEHEARTZOMBIES

Jonas was beside him, cracking a soldier’s skull with the butt of his rifle. The lightly-armored man crumbled to the ground and twitched twice. Blum stepped over the body and followed behind his leader. He still hadn’t gotten a kill, mostly staying behind the more experienced soldiers. He heard some yells coming from the other end of the skirmish and looked over, barely able to make out Silas standing over another dead Republican.

Blum hefted his rifle, one of the few Light-confiscated weapons they’d had left at camp, given to him by Silas with the words “I want to make this easy on you.” Easy or not, he still hadn’t managed to pull the trigger. He was such a Light-spawned sissy. He narrowed his eyes against the sudden glare of another flash grenade. Two soldiers were left in the party they had ambushed. One was currently trying to deal with — or run away from — two of the other Legion fighters. The other was skulking back into the darkness of the woods. Blum followed after putting a hand on Jonas’ shoulder.

The trees waited in the dark of the night, ready to stop an unwary wanderer with reaching branches and skull-cracking trunks. With afterglow from the flashbang still trailing in his eyes, Blum had to move carefully. He followed, almost step-for-step, the soldier’s white armor. He blinked a few times and the light trails dissipated further. The soldier had stopped.

Blum waited in the shadows. The Light soldier turned from side to side, hearing branches that never cracked. He was spooked. These woods didn’t belong to man any more. None of the world did.

The soldier stayed where he was. Blum squatted down to a kneeling position, pulling his rifle up to his shoulder. It’d be like hunting, almost. Just a steady shot, over and done with quick as can be. He flicked the safety off of the rifle with his thumb and raised the barrel. The scope wasn’t illuminated, but it had a bit of night-vision built in. Those damned Light fools couldn’t do anything for themselves. They had to have machines do it. He turned his head and ducked it down to the level of the rifle scope.

The soldier’s white armor, slightly luminescent already in the dim night, glowed like a flash bang in the scope. Blum could see the panicked look on the man’s face. He was alone in the world. No friends or family or fellow soldiers to guide him through these woods. Blackness all around, so he couldn’t even see the nature that was there. A growl from further off in the forest tickled his ear and he turned, whipshot-quick, toward it.

He never heard the twigs crumbling behind him. A shape shot out of the blackness, snatched the man up and ran off into the forest. Blum yelled in surprise and fired a shot off in panic. The beam of light streaked through the trees, illuminating its path, and, briefly, the creature that had taken Blum’s quarry.

Large, scaly, with a tail half again its own length. Blum had never seen such a creature before, but had heard rumors they existed. He turned and ran, not wanting to become a second course for the creature. He had to get back to Jonas and Silas and the rest of them.

Had to get back and tell them that dragons had come.