Freaky Eatrs

The grass was long and supple beneath him. He wasn't doing anything, just lying on his back with his eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of the sun's rays beaming down on him. He could hear wind rustling in the trees and the nearby babbling of a brook. He felt he could lie there all day, perfectly content and safe.

A shadow passed over him, blocking out the light and warmth. A sudden fear descended upon him.

“Jesse?” he asked, then a hand clamped itself over his mouth and woke him up.

He groaned and opened his eyes, hearing a voice say, “Howard!” in a cautious, repeated whisper. He finally focused on the shape hunched over him. “Ben?” he asked, mumbling around the hand. “Is it my turn on watch already?”

His friend shook his head in warning, a scared look on his face and Howard realised for the first time just how much trouble they were in. He nodded to his friend, showing he understood, and the hand was removed. “How many?” he asked in a whisper.

“Too many,” was the almost silent reply as Ben turned and started slithering away through the wreckage, his foil suit just beginning to shine in the light of the rising sun. Howard followed, after taking the safety off the gun that had lain beside him as he slept.

The landscape through which they slipped couldn't have been more different from that of his dream. There were no plants here, no green, no life. Instead barren rock and the remains of crumbled buildings, splashed red with the pre-dawn glow. Dust coated everything, undisturbed apart from his passage. He spat out some that got in his mouth and continued on.

After as a few minutes they came to a small hollow. Here there was more dust on the bottom but ridges of rock rose all around it. There was also something of a roof, providing a little shelter. It was in this dark space that a boy crouched, fiddling away with the dials of a machine that emitted a faint green light.

Howard turned to Ben. “You woke him before me?” he said, trying to sound a little hurt.

Ben shook his head. “Isaac was the one on watch. He woke me but I didn't think it would be safe for him to wake you. You know, with your whole 'sleeping outside of camp' thing you've got going.”

“I can't sleep in here, it's too creepy.” Howard gestured towards the roof. “This was once someone's home. If I slept here I'd dream of their ghosts.” It wasn't the truth and Ben knew it but Howard didn't want to have the conversation again. There was no point, he and Ben had already gone over it too many times. Instead he crawled over to Isaac and the screen he was intently studying. “What's the situation?” he asked.

Isaac looked up, the light changing his eyes from their normal pale blue to green. “We're dead,” he said simply.

At first Howard was tempted to laugh it off. He turned to Ben to share the joke and the laughter died in his throat. Ben was nodding along and Howard was much more inclined to pay attention to him.

“What are we up against?” he asked.

No one answered him so he pushed Isaac out of the way and had a look at the machine himself. He just stared blankly at the screen for a second, unwilling to believe what he was seeing. “Shit,” he swore softly, only just under his breath.

Then he frowned. “Why is the image all fuzzy?”

Isaac shook his head. “I don't know. It's been like that all night. Maybe there's another patrol out there. I thought I heard something moving about during the night.”

Howard pondered on it for a moment then shook his head, not wanting false hope to enter his mind. “No,” he said. “We're the only ones supposed to be here. There's no help out there.

“We have to face them alone.”

“We could just hide and wait for them to go away,” Isaac suggested.

Howard glanced at Ben and shook his head. He and Ben had been going out on patrol together for several years and wore the scars to prove it. This was Isaac's first time and his fresh face was full of fear.

Ben looked pointedly at Howard then turned away to begin unpacking some cases that were stacked against one wall. Howard knew what it meant; he was the leader, he should sort it out.

He put one hand on Isaac's shoulder, who had gone back to the machine after Howard had turned away from it. “Look kid, we have to attack them. That's what us being here is all about. If we don't, someone else will have to. Better it be us then someone caught off-guard.”

Isaac didn't answer, just kept staring at the screen. Howard sighed.

“Ben, what's the chance of us surviving against this?”

Ben looked round, a machine gun in each hand. “Against a Reaper? Maybe one in a hundred? Against a Reaper, two Birds, a Crawler and a few Harvesters? None at all.”

“That's what I thought.” Howard turned back to Isaac. “You can sit this one out, kid. We'll need someone to get a report of this back to base anyway.”

He was just crawling over to get some ammo from Ben when Isaac spoke.

“I'm not a kid.”

“You're sixteen,” Ben pointed out.

“And you're nineteen. If you're fighting I am as well.”

Howard hesitated a moment then nodded. “Good man. Ben, give him the grenade launcher and the M-52. That should do it.”

Once they were suitable tooled up they left the cave, leaving the machine behind them. The place was a well known supply point. They'd left a message on the machine, so that anyone who found it would know their fate.

They had been creeping through the rubble for about ten minutes before they eventually saw the dot in the sky that they knew signalled their death. Ben took a quick look through some binoculars then grunted. He passed them over to Howard.

“That's how they managed to get a Reaper this far north,” he said.

Howard looked, a read-out on the binoculars telling him that the enemy were still a couple of kilometres away, though they were closing fast. He took in the sight, those bird-like contraptions, wide wings glistening with solar panels. Between them he could see the Reaper, curled up and inactive at the moment.

He cursed briefly and wondered if he should send Isaac back to report this after all. Reapers couldn't usually make this journey; it required too much energy from them. But if they were being transported like that they could travel as far as they wanted.

He decided against it. They machine was still recording everything and their commanders would be able to work out how it was done by the way the signatures of the Birds and the Reaper separated. This was to be his last stand, he was suddenly aware that he wanted everyone between himself and death as possible.

He was just wondering if Ben felt the same way when his friend spoke.

“So did Jesse ever say anything on how to deal with these things?”

Jesse. As always the name brought back so many memories, some sweet, many scary. To this day he didn't know whether he'd loved her or was just drawn into her wake, like a flagellant to a prophet of doom. He remembered when he'd first seen her, her red hair dripping with blood. It wasn't often she was in a better state. There were a few treasured moments stored in his mind; of when she was clean and as close to a normal human being as she got. He'd even got her to dance once, at one of the occasional balls that used to be held. She'd been glowing in a dress and, as he'd held her close to a slow waltz, he'd felt happy in a world full of possibilities.

Then he's made the mistake of trying to lean down and kiss her.

He'd woken up the next day to find his broken nose neatly set and Jesse sitting by his bed. She hadn't apologised and he hadn't tried again.

It was soon after that that she was gone.

“Howard?” Ben gently broke him out of his revelry. “Did she have anything to say?”

“Jackhammer rockets.” The memory of Jesse summoned anger to melt through the fear. Suddenly he only wanted the machines that oppressed them in little pieces. “She said a couple of those should do the job.”

“Right then.” Ben swung the launcher round from where it hung over his shoulder. “No time like the present.”

Howard removed the safety of his gun and nodded. Isaac just stared ahead, the grenade launcher held ready. Ben pulled his trigger then immediately started loading another rocket.

Howard ignored him, focusing instead on the path of the first. It curved though the air, looping in deceptively gentle spirals. Then it hit the Birds.

They must have sensed it coming because they dropped the Reaper just before it hit. They tried dodging but weren't fast enough. The rocket exploded just between them, shredding their wings and most of their bodies. They plummeted to the ground, leaking a dark, red, liquid.

He hadn't the time to watch them. The Reaper had survived and would be active in only a few minutes. Already the other robots had tracked the heat source of the rocket and were closing in.

They appeared suddenly from the maze of rubble, the Harvesters merely simple boxes with a head and a multitude of limbs, the Crawler a moving semi-sphere, bristling with guns.

“One each!” yelled Howard, overcome with battle lust and the memory of his once friend. “The Crawler's mine.”

He ran forward, finger pressed tightly on the trigger, spraying bullets at his target. Jesse had always said to move fast when fighting Crawlers. They had trouble tracking fast moving objects. He dodged to one side, Ben's next missile streaking past him and detonating against a Harvester, blowing it to pieces. The small part of his mind that wasn't being clouded red analysed this and caused him to frown. They didn't usually destroy Harvesters like that, it risked their cargo. But once the Reaper got airborne they were likely all dead and it was important to deprive their enemy of as much as possible.

Then there was no more thinking, no more analysis. There was just the Crawler in front of him and the gun in his hands.

He ducked behind cover, waited a moment, then dived forward in a roll which brought him to the base of the Crawler. He jumped, using the protruding gun muzzles to clamber to the top. The blue line about halfway up it flickered erratically as the robot tried to process his sudden disappearance. He didn't give it time, placing shot after shot into the blue plastic hub below his feet. It cracked, was blown away, revealing the metallic brain of his adversary. He didn't stop, kept firing till the light went out completely and he was left standing atop a dead hulk, like a child on a morbid climbing frame. He scrambled down and back to his comrades. Ben was still trying to load another rocket. Isaac was also loading more ammo, his Harvester a smoking wreck. Howard was pleased to see he hadn't frozen. He felt hopeful for the first time.

Then some sixth sense caused him to look back and he saw the Reaper rise into the air.

There was a certain deadly beauty to it. It was humanoid, with a big, bulky chest and a blocky head. Over one of it's shoulders Howard could see the protruding handle of the scythe that gave the Reaper it's name. It hovered in the air, supported by twin jets of power from the pack on it's back.

“See those, kid?” Ben asked Isaac, still trying to fit the rocket in. It seemed to have jammed and he swore rapidly before continuing. “Well those are the reason we don't see any this far north. Takes too much power.”

“I know,” Isaac replied, his hand tightening on his grenade launcher. Howard could hear the fear in his voice and didn't blame them. The Reaper was death and it didn't seem like Ben would have his weapon ready in time. Because time had just run out.

The Reaper had spotted them, turned in their direction and started to move forward with blinding speed.

The next few moments would remain embedded in Howard's mind for quite some time.

“Got it,” he heard Ben say, just as a rocket jetted upwards on an explosion of flame, heading directly for the Reaper. It sensed it while it was a metre away, shutting off it's jets and dropping a foot as the rocket sped through the area where it had been. It flew forward again, intent on it's target.

Just as the rocket curved in mid-air and hit it from behind.

The Reaper let loose a screech of what could almost be described as pain, falling heavily to the ground. This didn't stop it however, it was on it's feet and running with blinding speed in the direction the rocket had come from.

A jumble of wreckage fifty metres to his right.

Ben tried firing his rocket but the machine easily dodged, still heading in the same direction, drawing it's scythe from it's back as it ran. Howard sprinted forward too, knowing in his heart there was only one person who it could be.

With a flash of red hair and a shriek of laughter Jesse jumped into sight.

Howard knew that he couldn't do anything to help. The Reaper was already too close to shoot at, he would risk hitting her. So he could only watch and pray.

At it closed with her Jesse struck first. Her hand whipped forward and something a glittering silver flowed in an arc around it. It struck the Reapers chest, drawing a scar across the flawless metal. She was already flipping herself backwards out of sight when it swung it's weapon in retaliation. The Reaper leapt after her and they both disappeared from view.

Howard had to climb a mountain of rubble before he could them see again. They were in the small confines of a room, filled with dazzling mirrors that shone as bright as the suit he was wearing, almost blurring with the speed with which they struck against each other. The Reaper was faster but Jesse seemed able to anticipate all it's moves and use them against it. She managed to produce a small red shield from somewhere and was just deflecting a strike as he watched. Her other arm twirled in response and again the light streaked, giving the robot yet another scar to add to the others she had apparently already inflicted. But the Reaper had managed to wound her as well. Blood dripped from light scars on her arm and neck where she hadn't managed to completely dodge in time.

Howard could hear his companion's scramble their way up behind him but he couldn't turn away from the sight before him. They almost seem to be dancing, both managing to lightly hit the other a few times but nothing fatal. It seemed like they could go on for ever, both tireless, each given energy by their hate for the other.

Then came end-game.

Jesse moved abruptly and her weapon finally stopped moving long enough to become recognisable as it wrapped itself round the hilt of the scythe. It appeared to be a whip made of blades, each edged with some strange gold metal. It anchored itself firmed and Jesse twirled, guiding the scythe over her head. For the first time the Reaper seemed uncertain, it stumbled and Jesse struck. She leapt, landing firmly on the Reaper's weapon, forcing it to the ground and out of it's grip. It flailed backwards, blades sliding from it's fingers as it attempted to defend itself but Jesse didn't give it a moments pause to assimilate the new scenario. She bashed her shield into it's face then leapt after it, her whip pulling the scythe after her. She caught it by it's handle and swung it at it's former owner.

Isaac reached the top of the hill and fired into the room.

Time seemed to slow and Howard almost saw the grenade move through the air. Jesse had just decapitated the Reaper and it's head had started a slow tumble to the earth, the lights in it's eyes already fading. Howard couldn't see her face but knew what it would look like, the savage smile on her face, the gleam of triumph in her eyes.

Then the grenade reached her and exploded.

Howard was already running down the hill, his reflexes sharpened by years of combat. He hoped that she still lived, while knowing the chances of it happening were very slight. But if anyone, anyone at all, had any chance of surviving surely it would be her.

Dust had fountained into the air with the explosion and, coughing, he fought his way through it. He stumbled a bit as his feet met the Reaper's body, broken from battle and fire. His questing hand found a wall and he followed it along for a bit. Then a hint of red caught his eye and he hurried towards it, shouting her name, caring not for the grit that got into his throat.

It was her shield, battered but still whole. Behind it she was draped against the wall, her slightly frame twisted and still.

“Jesse!” he yelled. Then a crumbling sound reached his ears. Looking up he saw the descending rock that had fallen off the top of the wall seconds before it hit him.

Then there was only blackness.