Death Knell
#13 of One Shots
As he fired his dual M-16 pistols sideways.
Death Knell
In a little valley between two sets of tall rolling hills, there was a little village untouched by time. The people who lived there still knew each other by name, still looked after others children as if they were their own, still worshiped the old Gods, still flew the hammer and sickle flag high, unabashedly, no matter how many other little villages untouched by time were razed to the ground with napalm.
Why that wasn't an option now, he'd never know. But it wasn't his to ask questions. It was his to get results.
He dared raise his head. Peered across the landscape with a pair of binoculars, hoping that the sun wouldn't glint off of them nor the olive drab helmet he wore. They were the hunters. Not the hunted. And now...
"Got 'im," the leopard whispered. "Lt Colonel Dac Nguyen... he's the bald skinny man sweeping the front porch. You see him?"
"I see him," the lion responded.
He too was wearing a helmet. But he was surveing the village not through binoculars, but through a scope mounted on a .50 caliber sniper rifle. Such a weapon didn't exist yet--officially--and that was part of what made them so deadly.
With a weapon like that, they could reach out and touch someone. Several someones, in fact, if they lined up just right. And that was why they called him 50. 50 Cal.
"Weapons free as far as I'm concerned," the leopard whispered. "It's all you, 50--hold up. Is that...?"
The leopard fiddled with the dial on his binoculars. Focused on a squat figure emerging from another structure across the way. That mustache, those glasses...
"That's Colonel Truoung," the leopard whispered. "Holy shit, it's Colonel Truoung. He's not a target, but you know what he did last week."
The leopard and the lion shared a significant glance.
"Fuck," the lion hissed. "The mission is clear... I have to target Nguyen first. But the second the bullet hits, the Colonel's going to run for cover--and I only have a single shot in the magazine."
That was a truism, the leopard though. The rifle 50 had selected for this mission was a break barrel, it only held one round at a time. By the time it was unloaded, and reloaded, Truoung would be long gone.
"I guess we both know what we have to do, I--Cal, what the Hell are you doing?" the leopard said.
The lion was digging around his bandolier for extra ammunition. When he found a spare round, he held it in his teeth and settled back down, cheek on his rifle.
"If this works," Cal said, "don't tell anyone. They won't believe you."
The leopard knew better than to ask. He simply settled back down to watch.
Wait for it. Wait for it. Wait for it.
There was a roar as Cal fired; the bullet rushed downrange toward its still unaware targets. As it traveled, though, Cal broke the barrel of his rifle, ejecting the spent round, and then spat the live round in his teeth into the barrel. He snapped the barrel of his rifle back into place, shouldered and fired again--
Nguyen went down. A second later, twenty feet away, so did Truoung. And then the village erupted in gunfire as a dozen AK-47s went off, all aimed at them.
"What the fuck--how the Hell?" was all the leopard could say as he dove for cover. He settled behind a tree and held his weapon at the ready, but there was no break in the gunfire.
"I don't even know," Cal said. "It doesn't seem physically possible."
"Of course it's physically possible," the leopard said. "It's just not probable--"
"Stop being boring and shoot!"
With a yell the leopard did as he was told. He leaned out of cover and sprayed his weapon in the direction of the village. It wasn't an ideal weapon for the situation... it was a variant of the M-16, cut down so much that it was a pistol. What was worse was that the village was built on level ground and the reocil of the gun made burst-fire ineffective.
"Rleatively speaking," the leopard yelled, over the incoming gunfire, "this is a most inadequate solution, ripe for optimization--"
"Will you shut up and shoot!"
Soemwhat demurely, the leopard dropped his magazine, slapped in a new one, and resumed fire. Still the bullets kept coming, still the enemy kept advancing. All seemed lost until a helicopter zoomed overhead, hovering, and then opened up with two miniguns.
Cal did quite an entertaining dance under the shower of the hot brass, the leopard observed. And that the chopper was using two miniguns instead of one meant that there was twice as much hot lead being directed at the enemy and now both Cal and the masked man in the door of the chopper were yelling at him, screaming something about stop staring and get in and--oh.
The leopard slung his M-16 pistol and shimmied up the rope ladder that had been lowered toward him. Once inside, he buckled himself into a seat and held fast.
The man in the door was a tiger, that much was obvious, a tall and somewhat lanky tiger cheering for joy as he fired burst after burst with a heavy machinegun. His identity was clear before he turned toward them, baring the double bar rank on his lapels.
"Fellas," he greeted them. "Nothin' like the smell of gunpowder in the morning. Booya!" he shouted, opening fire again.
"Howdy, Captain," the leopard said. "The mission this morning was most successful."
"Fucking YES!" the tiger said. Although it may have been because he had just decapitated a man taking aima t them with an RPG.
"Yes," the leopard sighed. He looked at Cal for support, but the lion had turned off and would remain off until the next period.
"Too bad about advanced placement," the leopard said. "You've opened the door for us, but we have to walk through it on your own--"
"Well, look at you, Mr. Golden Boy," the tiger said. "Fuck yes I opened the door, but no walking today. We've already done as much as we need to. The Hell with overachieving."
The leopard looked at the tiger. Looked at the lion. Looked at the door leading into empty nothingness, as the helicopter began to ascend. Then he jumped out of it without any further ado.
But, like a cat, he landed on his feet. Stood up, dusted himself off and with his weapon raised, began to jog off into the jungle, toward the enemy.
"Hey--HEY, get back here--and that's an order!"
The helicopter had descended and was now hovering a in clearing in the forest. It couldn't stay there for long, though, not with the bullets flying as they were. The Captain was pissed, more pissed than when the Class Six had run out of Green Label and was trying to pass off Double Black as almost as good.
"Yes, sir?" the leopard said.
And in the heat of the battle, machinegun at the ready, dressed to kill and armored up--the tiger cocked his head at him, tears in his eyes.
"Knelly, baby... what are you doing?"
"I have to know," the leopard said simply. "I can't stop now. Not until I get to the next level. I can't do it."
"And I can't convince you otherwise?" the tiger said.
The leopard paused. Then shook his head no.
The tiger nodded. Reached into a hidden compartment in the belly of the chopper and threw something to the leopard.
"Then, take this," he said. "And Godspeed!"
"But I thought you were an atheist," the leopard said, as the helicopter zoomed off. "And I already have one! And you can't hear me! So why am I yelling?"
A fetid swamp, a veritable cesspool of the worst forms of vermin known--and unknown--to science. In the practical primordial ooze there were worms and bacteria and HIV and AIDS and spent syringes, and shit and piss too, along with shards of the latest Nine Inch Nails CD.
And there were bubbles, too. Little bitty bubbles that collected at the surface, then popped audibly when the pressure became too great.
And then, all at once, he stood. Bare chested, guns extended, yelling "Bole so Nihal," he prepared to die and--
Nothing. No one was there. No enemies, no friends, no bullets, just silence and jungle and nothing.
He blinked. Rubbed the mud out of his eyes. Strode out of the mud, got on all fours to shake himself off, then marched on, quietly hoping that no one had seen the display.
The village was far behind him, by then. So many things were far behind him. The mother of the son he'd barely known and raised even less. His career, his multi-decade legacy that had affected and empowered so many... that was behind him too.
But maybe that was the nature of things. Maybe that was the nature of life... and the universe itself.
He started to run. More. More run. Faster run. Faster more run.
Now things were starting to make sense. Objectively, the universe didn't give a damn about him or what was behind him or what was in front of him or anything else. Objectively, his M-16 pistol was a machine, no more than that, a physical phenomenon that could be expressed with an equation.
But relatively... relatively, it all mattered. Because it mattered to him. And that... that was what mattered.
Because...
"It's all relative."
Faster. More. Moar run. Faster moar. Moar faster run. And then he came on a horde of them, backs turned, asses out. He'd literally caught them with their trousers down.
The leopard drew one M-16 pistol. Then the other. One in each hand, he aimed them--but the recoil would force the spray of the bullets upward.
Unless... unless...
He turned the pistols sideways.
He felt eternity well up within him. It was the universe itself who asked him, then, who he was.
And he smiled. Or smirked. Or smirk-iled, or snorked. Who cares? It didn't matter, except to him.
"I... am Death Knell," he said, as he fired his dual M-16 pistols sideways.