Chapter 3

Sorry about the delay but like I said in the post yesterday I just couldn’t make it happen do to all the moving. Messed with the site coding and got rid of the sidebar so it should be easier to read now. Still need to do a little more tweaking though.

Anyhow I did a few changes on this chapter after my final few edits and I think it will be interesting. I am sure I will have a few of the “Who & What” questions on the twitters in the next few days like last week.

Also there is a update to the Supporters section.

Hope y’all enjoy…

Chapter 3

Ezekiel’s eyes shot open as the ground beneath him rumbled and thunder echoed around him.  The sound caused him to quickly sit up. The cold buffalo bone grip of the Colt 45 greeted his hand as he pulled the weapon into readiness.  Beneath the thunder there had been something else, something he could just barely hear and it startled him. Looking around Ezekiel realized he had more to worry about than the thunder.

The glowing embers of his campfire had deteriorated into a pile of cold, dark ash. Sitting there, alone in the dark Ezekiel quickly realized that his horse was nowhere to be seen.  Ezekiel’s mind raced as he scanned the campsite for his horse but there was no sign of the animal.  For the past four years the horse had been the one thing that linked him to his previous life. Some would shrug it off as ‘just a horse’, but the two of them had an understanding. There was no reason the animal would have ventured off, even if it had not been tied to the tree before he lay down for the night.

Thunder continued to roll down the hillside, the ground beneath his boots seemed to tremble in response.  He could make out the familiar sound of fighting somewhere in the distance, nearly hidden by the thunder.

Though it had been years since the war had ended, it was sound that Ezekiel would never forget.  He knew the sound intimately, he’d been the cause of more fights than he could count in wartime.  The sound of carnage was something that a person could never forget once they had experienced it. A battle was being waged somewhere in the vicinity. With the lack of weapon fire it could only mean the most brutal of battles, flesh against flesh, was taking place.

Standing, Ezekiel continued to examine the tree line outside his camp in hopes of spotting his horse wandering about.   The thundering sky released its rain down upon him. The occasional droplets that had been falling since he awoke had quickly turned into a torrential downpour. As the rain fell hard upon him the disappearance of his faithful horse, something that should have been concerning, was washed away by something else.

An urge was building within Ezekiel as he turned to face the hill that lay to his right. There, at the top, was something pulling at him. It was a feeling he could not understand but it was also on that he could not resist. Before he had time to think, Ezekiel found himself walking quickly up the base of the hill while the rain pelted his cold skin. The sound of the fighting was pulling him to it.  It didn’t question the urgency that he felt about the fight.  With each step the ground became more treacherous than the last as rivers of water flowed swiftly down the hill.

Suddenly, Ezekiel lost his footing in the slippery mud and fell to his side before rapidly starting a slide back down the hill. In a desperate attempt to stop Ezekiel started flailing his hands and feet in a futile attempt to stop his descent. His rapid descent back down the hill was painfully stopped as his body slammed into a tree, causing him to grunt as the breath was driven from his lungs.

Pain shot into Ezekiel’s left shoulder as he collided with a tree which halted his descent. Lying in the mud against the tree, gasping for the air that had been expelled from his lungs, pain coursed through his body.  As if taking pity on him, the rain slowed to a thin trickle then came to a complete halt.

Slowly working his way to his feet as Ezekiel’s breathing became a little easier with each inhale of the cold night air. He pushed one foot in front of the other, pulling himself back up the hill.  All that mattered to him was to find out the source of the sounds.  There was only one way that this strange sensation was going to go away and Ezekiel knew that meant he must see what was going on for himself.

Upon cresting the hill Ezekiel was greeted by the sight of hundreds of trees standing like silent sentinels in the darkness before him. The dark line of trees merged with the clouds causing the horizon to appear black and bottomless. Periodically lightning from the retreating storm flashed briefly through the line of trees, illuminating the forest like a photographer’s flashpan before everything turned to black.

As he stumbled through the trees, it became clearer to Ezekiel that there was more than a vast, dark line of trees ahead of him as an opening appeared and the sounds of the fighting grew louder as he drew near.  The trees reminded Ezekiel of the defensive rows of armed men he’d faced in the war.  Lines after lines of soldiers facing off, waiting tensely for the command to begin fighting. The only difference between the trees and the warriors was that the trees were unarmed, making their defense easy to breach.

Once he’d passed the timberline, Ezekiel found his path lighted by the full moon that shone through the thinning canopy of limbs and leaves. Before him grass gave way to a cliff where the sounds of the fighting echoed up from the valley below.  Ezekiel knelt upon the ground and crawled quietly to a boulder that lay next to the cliff.  Its’ size offered him protection from being noticed and the ability to spy on what was taking place below him.  What he witnessed stunned him.

Moonlight reflected off the river that snaked around the bend before it passed out of view on Ezekiel’s left. Roughly one hundred feet from the river sat a small cabin. Smoke was pouring into the night sky from the cabins chimney.  Though still a considerable distance from it, Ezekiel could clearly see that people were inside the cabin. Outlines would periodically flash in through the windows as one of the occupants passed. The light of a lantern flickered inside the cabin producing a golden glow within. A cabin of this nature was not unusual; this was a river pass and the person inside most likely ferried people across the river when they came down the trail. The unusual part, the part that stunned Ezekiel was what was taking place outside the cabin and what those inside the cabin seemed oblivious to.

Spread out in the wide open land near the cabin at least one hundred men were fighting. All of them appeared to be engaged in hand to hand combat with what looked like swords or bayonets. From Ezekiel’s distance it was impossible for him to see the exact details of the fight though. Occasionally there was a random gunshot but it was evident that pistols were not the weapon of choice for this battle. Slowly Ezekiel realized there was something different about all of the men as he watched the bizarre battle.

The cloud cover slowly gave way to the full moon’s power, allowing it to bring the inhabitants of the valley into clear view. With this extra bit of light it became clear that most of the fighters were dressed differently than one another. This was unlike any military unit or posse that he had ever seen before.

The clothing of the combatants was the most obvious item that stuck out, most of them wore clothing that he had never seen before. One of the other things that troubled him as he watched, there appeared to be women fighting in the mob of people along with the men. There was one of these fighters that caught his attention as he watched.

This fighter was smaller than most of the men that were fighting and unlike the rest this one did not stand and fight with their opponents. Ezekiel watched as this fighter quickly darted in and out of the combatants with great skill and speed. From his vantage point Ezekiel almost had the feeling that the person he was watching was a woman. The graceful fluid movements seemed unlike any that a man of Ezekiel size could have made in a battle such as the one he watched. The figure struck out quickly with small knives, slicing the backs of legs causing her opponents to fall to the ground were they were quickly disposed of by the larger warriors.

The fierceness of the battle raging below returned him to the war years, when he had fought like the men and women in the valley below the cliff.  He watched a fighter sink a sword deep into the chest of another. He had done the same thing; the only chance for survival during those times was to kill any and everything in his path.  The dark memories of war came back to him in full force as he as the battle continued to rage before his eyes.

There was another disturbing discovery that came to light as he watched the battle enfold.  The bodies that had been lying about the ground when he’d first looked into the valley had disappeared.    He didn’t know whether these men and women had gotten up on their own power or if someone had dragged them out of the way. He had not seen either of these things happen but the one thing he did know for sure was that there had been more bodies around earlier than he was seeing now.  As he looked closer it appeared that some of the bodies lying on the ground were fading.

Minutes passed by while Ezekiel continued to observe the fighting before he realized that nobody had yet approached the cabin. The figures inside the cabin continued to move, however, they did not seem to notice the battle that was taking place just outside. A rifleman would have found the roof of the cabin a prime spot to use as a sniper post, had anyone bothered to approach the cabin.  There almost seemed to be an invisible barrier near the cabin that the warriors could or would not cross.

From the south side of the battlefield roughly thirty more fighters came crashing out of the tree line. Ezekiel crouched behind the protective boulder, transfixed while watching this new group head towards the fight near the river.

This new group of fighters was different from the ones that were currently on the battlefield. They were all clothed in similar flowing outfits but they did not act like normal men. Some ran like the wild men of the plains he had seen once before while the others had reverted to a strange animalistic type run that included the use of their hands.  The new group swarmed across the battlefield. The viciousness and speed of their attacks was apparent as they ripped into the original combatants like a pack of wild dogs.

Some of the fighters turned towards the newcomers with weapons that they seemed to produce out of nowhere.  Gunfire echoed through the valley as bullets flew towards the advancing hoard.  The bullets had little effect on the newcomers who methodically picked off certain fighters while passing over others.

Ezekiel presumed this pack of wild people knew who was on their side and who was not. How this was done he did not know since there were no discernable markings on the fighters that he could see from his vantage point. Two of the pack fell to the gunfire but the remaining wild men quickly engulfed the two soldiers that had fired at them.  Despite the cool air the rain left behind, sweat beaded on Ezekiel’s forehead as he watched them tear at the shooters like a pack of wild dogs. What those people were doing was unnatural and more savage than anything he had ever witnessed.

All of the attention that Ezekiel had focused on the attacking pack was quickly diverted as he noticed a figure in the sky that was flying in from behind the hoard. The figure passed over them so quickly Ezekiel scarcely had time to figure out why such a large bird would be flying so close to the fighting. Then the figure landed in the middle of the fighting.

He watched in disbelief as the man, at least it looked like a man, stood in the middle of a group of fighters. It was a giant of a man who towered over the other fighters by a good two feet. Every one of the fighters that surrounded the giant attempted to escape as he drew a sword that was easily six feet in length. With one fluid motion the giant swung his sword in a long arc which cleaved through the bodies surrounding him. The large wings attached to his back folded in on themselves as he slaughtered those around him.

Ezekiel lay stunned as he watched the slashed, dying bodies slowly fade from sight. The pack of wild men had continued tearing through the crowd while he watched. What he was seeing was impossible but there was no denying what was happening below him.

Suddenly the urge to flee started to rapidly flow like wildfire through Ezekiel’s veins forcing him to slowly back away from the cliff.   As he moved away from the boulder he’d used for cover, it came loose, teetering for a moment on the edge of the cliff before tumbling down into the valley below.  He knew the noise had revealed his presence. Now there was nothing he could do then flee. This was not his fight and he had no interest in joining it.

All around him the air thumped with a sound that he was unfamiliar with but it caused him to instinctively look above his head for the source. There, flying towards him was a man like the giant he had seen in the valley below. The ground thumped as this man landed in front of him as two huge wings spread out behind him. The man resembled one of the angels that Ezekiel had heard about in a sermon years ago but this being was unlike anything the pastor had ever mentioned. Moonlight illuminated down upon the brown wings that spread out behind the man as if they were helping him maintain balance.  A vast number of scars were visible on his bare chest with the largest of them starting at his left shoulder and traveled diagonally across his body, ending near the bottom of his stomach.   It was a jagged scar, shiny and pink from age.  A sleeve of metal armor engulfed his entire right arm and was connected to a piece of armor fastened to a neck guard that appeared to stretch behind his back. Gloved fingers grasped a straight sword that appeared to be just over 2 foot in length. Connected to his right arm was a small round shield that bore an insignia which Ezekiel could just barely make out.  The outstretched wings were captivating and Ezekiel was in awe of the man towering in front of him.

“You,” came the words from the warrior’s mouth, “are not supposed to be here.”

Ezekiel stood there stunned as the warrior spoke the words. Those few words that seemed to flow from the man’s mouth sounded different than anything he had ever heard before. There was a harmonic quality behind that voice, a deep harsh bass that manifested various tones in it. For a moment it almost sounded like there were multiple people talking all at once as the warrior spoke.

The thumping that Ezekiel had heard prior to the arrival if the warrior began again as another winged warrior landed nearby. This one was of Asian descent and wore a beard with long black hair flowing over his shoulders. His wings were brown with white stripes running diagonal on them and he wore an outfit made of red colored leather.  A long curved sword that was held in the man’s right hand glistened in the moonlight. The warrior looked over at the Asian who emitted a deep and powerful low growl. Almost immediately the two rushed at each other with swords drawn and clashed violently against one another.

Ezekiel scrambled to his feet as the two fighters turned their attention from him and ran off into the forest as fast as he could.   Without thinking, the Peacemaker had been removed from its holster and gripped firmly in his right hand as he ran for safety.  His feet hardly seemed to touch the ground while images of what he’d just seen raced through his mind.

Something unseen crashed through the brush from Ezekiel’s right, slamming full force into him, knocking the breath from his lungs once again as he fell to the ground.

One of the animalistic combatants he’d seen in the valley landed on top of him. There was evidence that it had been human at one time but now its face was wrinkled and drawn back on itself. Its jaws snapped at his neck as the deep blue eyes started down at him.

Ezekiel kept his eyes locked with the creatures as he struggled to keep it at bay.  Despite being slammed to the ground, he’d never lost his grip on the Peacemaker.  He managed to bring it up, hoping the creature might react.  There was no sign that the creature knew what the gun was capable of doing to him, not that any kind of humanity existed behind those eyes.  Centering the barrel on the creature’s forehead Ezekiel pulled the trigger.  The Peacekeeper roared.  Fire blared from the tip of the barrel and then everything in Ezekiel’s world went black.

Coming Next week….

A river and eerily familiar surroundings stand between Ezekiel and his destination.