My New Novella

Men, women and children ran screaming through the streets. The women were staring in terror at the sun, shrieking indiscernible cries of torment while they shepherded children into their homes. The uniformed men unslung their assault rifles but couldn’t bring themselves to fire. Instead they threw down their weapons, ran to their houses, and cowered between their wives and children.

A small dark spot in the sun grew larger, advancing quickly until a silhouetted figure began to form. The shadows of wings sprouted from the black profile and began to swing in monstrous thrusts that produced a deep resonating thump.

The shadow developed into the shape of a man.

The few soldiers remaining in the streets fell to their knees and began praying desperately to Allah, hoping for salvation from this angel of the apocalypse. Some picked up the fallen rifles of their comrades, closed their eyes and in a fit of utter terror, fired bursts of bullets wildly into the air. But the winged demon came closer, clutching a giant metal ball in its claws. Some men cried out in desperation, and turned the weapons on themselves.

***

Luke was shitting himself. Bullets whistled past his ears as he descended into view. He had to fight hard to stay in the air with the weight of the bomb grasped in his arms pulling him back to Earth. The zing of a close bullet prompted him to summon the remaining strength he had, and in a dim-witted attempt at self-preservation, he strained the bomb up to cover his face.

He peeked around the bomb and searched ahead to see the large building, almost a mile away, near the main square of the village. The target was a disused factory – now a headquarters for a terrorist sect bent on the elimination and repulsion of any American presence in Iraq. The uniformed men below were soldiers of the Iraqi Armed Forces, opposed to the radical extremists – allies to America.

Another bullet fizzed past Luke’s hip, tearing a hole in his desert-camouflaged cargo pants. He screamed and tore his eyes away from the target, searching for the source of the bullets.

He saw a number of scattered soldiers on the ground. Some men were kneeling quietly in a frighteningly bizarre exercise, and several were shooting up at him after apparently executing a number of their comrades.

To Luke, they were all psychopaths.

Another piece of lead shot through Luke’s left wing, sending a plume of white feathers into the air. Luke howled, “I’m hit! I’m hit!” into the tiny microphone secured to his collar. He turned his head away, unable to bear the sight of his grotesque, disfiguring wound. It became all the more difficult to stay airborne. He dropped his metal shield of ordnance, threw his arms in front of his face and turned to the south, flying for the horizon as fast as he could. He shut his eyes and prayed that God would save him from the insane anarchists below. After a few moments, there was a deafening explosion and the bullets stopped searching for him.

Luke began to cry. The only sounds that could be heard were his heaving sobs, and the thumping of his wings.