Brimstone Nights

Written by WhitePaw :: [Wednesday, 11 January 2006 14:12] Last updated by :: [Wednesday, 19 December 2012 14:48]

Brimstone Nights

 

by Whitepaw

 

 

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WRITTEN FOR SGI WORKSHOP 2.2

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(Written and best read to Tool's "Triad", but any stormy heavy metal will do.)

 

Rain sloshed through the cobblestone alley on stampedes of wind. Rats and fauna slithered through the underclutter. Ragged crows on the stone battlements glared deaf as the Koran wailed via loudspeaker from a nearby minaret to the clashing of the storm's lightning and thunder in the pitch of blackest Arabian night.

 

She walked slowly. Rain-soaked hair, cape, and skirt galloped on gusts like horses through whitewater. Red diamond 'S' rose and fell smooth like a blacksmith's hammer on the rolling of her chest at the fall of her feet.

 

She awoke the mole guard at the gate with a start, appearing motionless nose-to-nose in a flash of lightning from black as he fumbled for his rifle.

 

The heavy oaken gate splintered to her finger flick, shrapneling into the courtyard. She licked rain from her lips in the commotion as they scrambled in three languages for their guns and places behind sandbags, women, and children.

 

She caught a sniper's bullet as it zinged over her shoulder from behind. "No." She whispered into her headset. "Stay back."

 

The crack, zing, and ping of bullets seemed to leap like swarms mosquitoes from the mud courtyard into the river of rain. Hail fell.

 

A halo of rain, the white fleas of hail, and the lead-orange sparks of skidding bullets covered her as she strode like a swan to the courtyard's center, inhaling the humid, gunsmoked air, RPG's like snowballs off her.

 

Clenched fists and chest – she blew into the palisade. Bodies, guns, sandbags, shell casings, timbers, mud, straw, and water slammed into the sky in a fifty-foot wavestrike against the ancient stone outer walls of the compound, all caught framewise in the strobe of the gathering storm's lightning. She blew the inner buildings into the sky all the way around the compound.

 

Rhreana screamed and held her straw doll tight as the tornado swept them all into the air. She'd been screaming since the shooting started and this tornado wasn't an improvement. Arms reached from the tumbling chaos all around her and took her gently into a warm embrace. She felt the wet sand of solid ground beneath her toes one moment, then in a wink the devil woman was gone, leaving the small girl nauseated and sobbing in a bewildered crowd of the local townsfolk in the narrow streets of the old city.

 

The wirebrush and olive-drab terrorists drug Susan with them down the narrow, sandy tunnel for what seemed like forever. Turning the last corner and hearing the rain at the exit was a relief to her starved and beaten body. The men were unusually rough with her, obviously perturbed as they beat a hasty retreat. She'd learned not to cry, as it only made them worse as she shivered in the cold.

 

They broke into the open night again and froze as a timber fell from the sky nearly shaving their leader as it jawlined into the mud at his feet. He fell on his rear to see the woman in red and blues perched atop the post glaring down upon him.

 

A scramble ensued. One blink of lightning later they had regrouped, guns at her, knife to Susan's throat, the gasoline drums they'd kept at the tunnel's entrance kicked over and glugging gasoline into the mud, lit cigarette lighter at the ready.

 

"Alaaahh!" The lighter dropped.

 

The woman pumped her pecs. The shockwave blew them all back on their asses and the lighter out before it chinned against the cave wall behind them.

 

Her stilettos stabbed into the gasoline-soaked mud as she raised her fist. "Deathwish?"

 

Lightning lanced from the sky through her, in a moment skittering down her arm, over her curves, around her legs like white hot barbed wire, and into the –

 

Mike adjusted his night-vision goggles. Lightning played heck with his eyes tonight. The old stone compound on the mountainside dated back centuries and held a commanding view of the village below where his squad had taken up positions. Normally they'd airstrike the begeebez out of it and ask dumb later, but this far into "ain't supposed to be" Blacksheep were it – and not enough for stone that heavy.

 

Kara'd spoke up, claimed she had some crazy plan. Two weeks on an hour of sleep will make anything sound good – especially when she stripped from her fatigues into that little … it was Halloween anyway. Halloween's in February, right? A little bait and snipe sounded fun. Thoughts didn't always straight lineup nope this far in.

 

Damn she was hot. He'd figured her for a butch grunt girl up until then. First time he'd seen her hair down. Built? Like Bizmark! Grunt?

 

Not exactly.

 

The way she'd stapled that poor doorman by his rifle to the stone wall … door must have been rigged – and the compound a major ammo depot … Damn that Kara! It's going to take three platoons to pull flecks of her remains out of –

 

Townspeople bewildered and screaming lined up out of nowhere in a blink all down the main alley. Mike's jaw just dropped.

 

"Here." Kara jumped in with a redhead woman in tow. "Found her in the back. Can we keep her?" A mushroom cloud of flame and soot rolled off the back of the hill.

 

"Alright, huddle!" The commander barked out as Kara slipped her rapier legs back into her fatigues and folded up her red satin cape. "Stories straight soldiers, let's hear it!"

 

"Um Kara – " Mike was hushed.

 

"We blew the gate and detonated stores." Kara dictated. "Mike found the civilian in ambush of escape routes. Civilians unharmed due to local holiday."

 

The commander nodded. "Right. Let's break and roll people!"

 

"Well go on, soldier!" Kara clamped on her pith helmet and swung her ass around to a bewildered Mike.

 

"What?"

 

"Spank it!" She giggled. "Know you want to."

 

The commander chuckled to Mike as he swung his gear on. "Welcome to Brimstone Company, sergeant."

 

A crumpled loudspeaker swung sparking by its wire in the rain.