Huff Puff Pant
#1 of Predator, Prey, and Man-Made
Huff Puff Pant
Huff-puff, Pant-pant... Affff! Huff-huff-pant...
Silence, almost total silence... strange after so long without. All to be heard was the huffing and puffing and panting of his breath, the jangle and thump and swish of his equipment and clothes.
He could feel the light breeze blowing against him, it would have been refreshingly cool, he supposed, we he not already cold. He was cold, yes, cold and dirty and numb... and possessed of a dreamlike confidence, draped like a thin, silk veil over the mountain of his fear.
The confidence was there, best make use of it - He continued his slow loping run down the street.
He looks down, sees his boots before his eyes; left... right... left... right... left... he also sees the cracked, wet, muddy asphalt beneath them.
He looks to the right; across the street, the bombed out buildings, grim and sooty, look like nothing less than the great charred bones of some gargantuan beast.
Well, actually... they look like bombed out buildings. Same to his left, but closer.
He resigns himself to his fate, it feels, if he looks towards his destination... he looks forward; the pale, overcast early-morning sky at the end of the block, then... an empty expanse. A large area, roughly rectangular, its grayish-brown mud speckled with dead, grayish-brown trees... and dead, grayish-brown bushes. Beyond the lovely, lush parkland, more colorfully artsy architecture in the new war-torn style, painted the chic, modern charcoal-grey.
Hell. This must be the most fashionable city in the world.
The crown of the view; an enormous cement monstrosity sitting slap-bang in the middle of the muddy flats. It's been remodeled recently, it now resembles the apparently extremely popular fashion trend of the day - burn and hollow, bombed and shelled... very modern, very fashionable.
He finds his commentary mildly amusing... well; he would if he wasn't so numb.
Pant, pant, puff... huff, puff, damnitcrapshit, uhh, pant...
_ _ Approaching the end of the street, finally, he slows down to a jog... then a walk. He loves running, its healthy and good exercise... he changes his mind; he hates its guts out.
He stops before a cement traffic-barricade, its pockmarked visage denoting its recent participation as cover in a firefight. Considering the sheer number of the craters, both big and small, on and around the barricade, it must have been quite a lively fight. The building closest, to his left, is also riddled... the right - across the street -appears to be too. He looks down, crouching... besides the mud and grit there is another stain on the asphalt. Its dark, and... looking closer; congealed blood. Some of it spattered on the barricade as well...
But no bodies... so maybe it wasn't recent.
The craters aren't weather worn... so maybe not so long ago. Were the bodies recovered? Unlikely in this day and age, no one was possessed of the time or disposition to collect the fallen anymore. What would you do with them, bury them? Nature does a good enough job of that, besides... who wants to dig a big hole.
Eat them? Hah... well, maybe the enemy, sounds like something they might do. Obsessed with meat, the damn carnivores. Well phew to you ya fuzzy bastards, I eat meat too, so bite me... just not literally.
Well, then again, perhaps no one died, that would explain the lack of bodies. Looking down again, he sees the blood stain... its rather extensive; yeah... someone died
"Echo Four-Four, attend, over."
_ Awfushit..._ "Echo four-four present, Zion-oh-four-seven-conundrum, confirmed preface, over." He always fumbles his radio... always, because it always scares the hell out of him.
"Hello-seven-seven-six-seven-conqueror, preface confirmed, Echo Four-Four, this is 'shop-light' command, request position and sight confirmation, timer says your at point, over."
"Entertain, Echo-Four-Four is on point, complex eighty-eight-C is in sight," Peaking over the barricade, the large building in the park hasn't changed visibly... "Complex shows no movement, hostile or otherwise command, please advise, over."
"Echo-Four-Four, advise noted, proceed to targeting range with extreme caution, can-man confirms presence of tangos within complex, sight target when in range, will contact you when it's time to scurry, over."
Can-man... POW intelligence has information, I wonder who they interrogated for it... wait... no, I really don't wonder... don't wanna know... "Wilco command, will target when in range, expect lock on the hourly... don't forget to give me a head start, I don't much feel like being microwaved, 'shop-light', Echo-Four-Four over and out." With a sigh he placed the radio in its shoulder pouch, reached his arm back and over and tapped the head of the PTD [Personal-target-designator].
Sigh. He squirmed in the straps of his equipment and armor, readjusted the hang of his pack, hefted his rifle and rose as fast as one can with nearly sixty pounds of junk strapped to him. It had started drizzling... sideways... towards him. He immediately missed the semi-cover of the crumbling barricade. Fucking cold.
Stiff legs, so he started at a jog, bent back and low to the ground... off into the muddy expanse.
=====================================================================================
It had begun drizzling, outside of course.
It's been nearly two days now, with no sighting, fighting, or really anything happening at all. So to the pit with her pointless vigil, she was stiff from sitting in the same position for so long and was going to do something about it!
Slowly, creakily, she got to her feet an... an... and SNEEZED! To the pit with this dust, with this room, this building, this city, this damn war and the damn Northerners!
I don't even know why I'm here! She arched her back and raised her arms, bending back... What possible reason could this wasted piece of-the-pit 'city' be of any interest to ANYBODY! Twisting slowly to the left... right... she loved the sound of her crackling bones. I bet there isn't a reason, this is just a damned fuck-up, fucking fucked-up command, heads stuck up their tail-holes and tails tuck up their... Agh damnit! She twisted a bit too far, pulling on a sore muscle painfully.
She was hungry, but she knew she couldn't sate it, but that didn't stop the hunger. Damn rations... As she sat back down she heard one of her squad-mates shift in her sleep behind her. Lucky, lucky shits. Why do I always get first damn watch?
Sitting back down before her Kirrikur-Samphone 18.32 K12p Light Machine Gun, she turned back towards the view off the shattered balcony. It was quite an extensive view, a good lookout position, here on the twentieth floor. Survived three assaults here, minor ones obviously, no more than their own meager number attacking. That was two days ago, she supposed the Northerners had given up and gone another way, around them. She hoped her sisters-in-arms all around the city held the line... she didn't much fancy the idea of being surrounded.
Northerners were good at that... tricky bastards they were. Wholly unnatural too, no fur, no tail, funny little immobile ears, and flat faces, devoid of any proper muzzle, with just a little fleshy ridge for a nose. Oh yes, unnatural in every conceivable way; their males went to war and their females stayed home, they even had slightly more males than females apparently! Worst of all... they weren't prey, no... no matter what the politicians said, oh, she knew, she did; Humans [as they called themselves, the bastards] were predators... kind of, well... they ate meat and non-meat. Yuch.
Yet, they allied themselves with prey; they took the bullets for the prey. Instead of joining the rest of their meat eating and omnivorous kin, they took the prey in and sheltered them within their own borders. It's unsanitary! The bastards! They had always been weird like that though, from her history lessons she remembered humans were a somewhat bipolar race, made no sense whatsoever. Historically, they were as likely to lynch you as woo you.
Her mother told her, about the beginning; when the good, wonderful Lady Red-Ear inherited the throne. Beautiful she was. With right, proper ideas and motives, she knew what to do during that low-time. When her mother said they would reuse school-paper, by erasing oh-so-carefully the previous writing in order to save money. Couldn't afford any more paper at times, you know.
Yes, she knew what to do; the lady set about looking for the very source of the poverty, and... found it! The damn prey, hoarding away all the money, the little thieving wretches, working all together to cheat and steal away all the wealth from their betters, the predators, the carnivores. So the lady had some arrested, their secret leaders, and interrogated. She found the truth all right, they confessed; they were going to ruin the predators as revenge, they were going to take all the money and then build an army and kill and poison all of them. Revenge for the 'mistreatment' in past ages, ha! The natural order of things they call mistreatment. They are to be eaten, we are to eat... quite simple.
Her mother told her about what the lady did to remedy the situation; the lady, ever forgiving, only punished the treacherous prey instead of killing them like they deserved. She had them isolated, in the ghettos, kept them separate from their betters... for the safety of the public, can't have the disease ridden bastards contaminating everyone, now could we.
That wasn't good enough though, the prey refused to behave; they plotted to destroy the summer palace! When the lady was in! But the guardswomen found out about their plan. The lady apparently ordered the guards not to arrest them... until they were actually doing it, so that there could be incontrovertible evidence of their crimes. So they did, and when the High Council heard of this terrible news, the decision to enact necessary action was made, with unanimous support; The prey were too many, and too devious to remain as they were. Their population had to be drastically reduced to minimize the danger they posed, and those that remained had to be enslaved for their own good, to keep them in their place; submissive to their natural betters, predators over prey.
So the Queen Red-Ear did as the High Council recommended, submitting to their collective wisdom, and ordered it done... So it was, of course it was done as painlessly as possible, the righteous angels, the women of the royal army and police forces set about cleansing the Queen's vast dominion, keeping only the prey who submitted and were of use.
A huge number of the prey, though, managed to sneak out of the ghettos and get away from the guards... and where did this vile, diseased horde go? Why, north of course, to the Human Union who, at the time, were obsessed with their stuck-up "go away, we're neutral Isolationists [scum]" policy. They did the right thing, of course, and told the refugees to knock on someone else's door. Though they did give them some aid, the sympathizing asses.
The stupid prey, lazy and insubordinate as ever, gave up and the majority of them simply dropped where they were, in the now famous Ullen Valley, the sight of a major Union border crossing [at the time]. Inevitably, the Queen's troops caught up with them and started to go about their grim, but necessary, business.
Now here is where it all started... the Human Union border guards had called for support from their government, as they didn't have the personnel necessary to uproot the veritable city of louse-ridden refugees at their very gates. So Union had sent a regiment of locally based 'Citizen Guards' - something like a professional militia - to help remove the suffocating mass of the recently settled prey population from their valley. The 'guards' started pushing out the refugees and sending them on their way just as the Royal Troopers arrived and started doing away with them from the other side of the valley. The prey panicked, as their like to do [which is why they don't serve in combat functions] and overwhelmed the 'guard', who eventually gave up and stood their ground as the writhing mass of cowardly meat-balls ran by them - with the Troopers on their tails.
As the story goes... the Humans saw the Troopers sweeping in behind the prey like bloody angels, and mistook them for demons, as they were probably unaware of the situation as it really was. Perhaps they thought the Troopers would attack them, that makes sense... kind of, so I doubt it's what happened [I'm serious, I've met a human... they are insane, really!], whatever happened though; the human guards opened fire upon the incoming Troopers, and cut the poor unsuspecting souls to pieces!
She readjusted her grip on the LMG, and scratched her head, leaning back slightly. I'm so bored I'm going over history lessons in my head, and I thought I'd never want to go back to school... heh.
Anyhow, that's how things got the way they were now; The good Queen, outraged at this unprovoked slaughter, demanded restitution and an explanation, as she had right to do, and the Human Union - without a word in reply - accepted the exodus of refugees into their borders, under the terms of 'racial asylum'. This of course was too much indeed, and the Queen declared war on the much smaller Union. The Union, neighbored by other northerly states, which were predominantly human, managed to form an alliance with them. This alliance, called the Northern Allied Republics or NAR for short, called for the dissolution of the "slave state" and "barbaric monarchy" of Queen Red-Ear's more southerly empire.
So that's how it happened... I'm sitting here, aching and starving and wet, because some damned prey and some double-damned humans decided to turn on her wonderful country, which she loved dearly. It just made her so mad; at least reciting histories in her head passed the time though-
Her train of thought was cut off as she spotted out of the corner of her eye, a slight movement, gone as quick as it appeared, on the muddy terrain below.
**Anyway, sorry about the wonky formatting. Despite my best efforts [not exactly herculean in proportion, mind you] i couldnt get it the way i wanted it. hmmm... Anyway, i really do like to write and all, blahdy blahdy blah. However i have pretty much one source of feedback, and its biased since its a freind. So please tell me whther im doing fine, or should shoot myself or something :D... the criticisms are wanted much please. Oh, this is not my first story by the way, just the first one ive ever submitted anywhere... besides at school. I might continue with this story if there is a reaction, good or bad. As either kind helps, and thas what i need. Anyway, if you made it this far [without skimming] then thanks for reading :d [if you did skim then get back to the top MAGGOT!]