Free After the Fall by William Meikle Page A

But when Sammy turned off the engine, and the dust settled, they looked out onto a desert scene.
    It’s nighttime. How long were we in that bloody thing?
    A moan from the back seats reminded him that he did not have time for rumination. He looked round.
    Greg Chalmers had an egg sized bruise on his forehead, Jimmy Scott was rubbing a mashed, bloody nose, and Ewan McLeod held one arm in the crook of another, inspecting it for breakage.
    Dick Jones had got the worst of it. He’d been the only one without a seatbelt. He lay draped over the rearmost seat, bent at an angle that immediately told Rogers that his neck was broken. The dull lifeless stare only confirmed it.
    He had no time to grieve. That would come later. For now, the living was what mattered.
    “Sammy. Can this thing go anywhere?”
    The little man took his hands off the wheel and shook his head.
    “It’s totally buggered this time Sarge. It’s Shank’s pony for us.”
    About what I thought.
    Rogers tapped at the control on his ear-piece, expecting to hear the familiar crackle and hum. All he got was dead air.
    “Try the comm ,” he said to Sammy Brown.
    Sammy shook his head. 
    “Ahead of you there, Sarge. It’s dead. And look at this.”
    He pointed at the dashboard GPS system. It showed only a blank green screen.
    “It looks like all comms are down. Probably a result of that… whatever it was.”
    Rogers nodded.
    “OK Tool up lads. Time to be going.”
    “What about Dick?” McLeod asked from the back.
    “Leave him,” Rogers said softly. “We’ll be back for him later. First we need to get the lie of the land.”
    He led the squad out into the desert night.
     
    ~-o0O0o-~
     
    The first thing he was aware of was the quiet. The only sound was the ping of metal as the Hummer engine cooled.
    The sky overhead was filled with stars, the Milky Way stretched across from horizon to horizon. Rogers got his bearings and turned to look west, towards Baghdad.  The lights of the city should have been clearly visible, lending a dim red glow to the skyline. But not tonight. The western horizon was as dark as any other part of the sky.
    Sammy saw him looking.
    “Could that storm that hit us have knocked out the power when it was at it?”
    Rogers nodded, but he had a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach.
    The stars are not right.
    He wasn’t about to tell the squad, but something was off -- way off. Several well- known marker stars were not where he’d expect them to be. And he clearly remembered a crescent moon the night before, but a full smiling face had just risen off to his east.
    I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.
    That feeling was confirmed by a new sound in the night – the dull thwup of wings beating.
    Vulture?
    An accompanying shriek put a lie to that idea. It sounded like nothing less than a man in mortal agony, and came from back where they had left the Hummer.
    “Dick. He’s still alive,” McLeod shouted, and broke into a run before anyone could stop him.
    Rogers looked around the other men. They were all staring at him, waiting on an order. He sighed.
    “Well don’t just stand there. Get after him.”
     
    ~-o0O0o-~
     
    They arrived back at the Hummer only seconds behind McLeod and at first Rogers did not understand what he was looking at.
    A tall figure loomed over the Hummer, darker than the night itself. There was something misshapen about it, as if its back were hunched. It bent over the body of Dick Jones who lay half-in, half-out of the vehicle. His head lay at an alarming angle to his body, lolling like a broken doll. That wasn’t the worst. The squaddie’s mouth opened and he screamed, the sound running across the desert like the wind.
    McLeod raised his weapon.
    “Put him down you bastard.”
    The dark figure turned.
    Rogers forgot to breathe. The hump opened out into a pair of wings, so large that he could no longer see the Hummer behind them. Red eyes flared in a face that was no more than a deep pool of