Free Monsters Win Wars: A Novella by Edward Punales Page A

sense of complete and utter defeat to take him,
and accept this fate.
    He thought about Emily. He worried about what
would happen to her. But she was smart. She’d be okay.
    “This way!” said a voice coming from the next
room.
    Henry tried to stand up, but his weak arms
wouldn’t move. He looked at his hands and saw how pale they were.
He felt dizzy and lightheaded. The blood from his stomach poured
freely onto his pants, and down the staircase. His dazed mind
watched the small, dark red waterfalls flow down the steps, until
they reached the bottom, where they formed a miniature lake of
red.
    More military boots could be heard echoing
through the house. Henry rested his head in bloody hands. He
suddenly felt very tired. The rifle he’d been holding seemed too
heavy to carry. His eyelids felt heavy as well.
    With what little strength he had, he pushed
the rifle off his body, and relaxed on the stairwell. Years of
stress, worries, ambitions, hopes, and dreams for the future of the
solar system flashed in his mind. He comforted himself with two
inarguable facts; first, that no revolution could be stopped
because of the death of just one man, even if it was the leader.
Second, he could safely say that when those totalitarian pricks
sent their thugs to kill him, that he’d taken some of them down
with him. That was all he could ask for.
    The soldiers came through the entrance and
spotted him on the staircase. He stared out at them with blank,
half-closed eyes. The blood that freely flowed from his stomach
made them relax, and lower their guard. One of troops with sergeant
stripes on his sleeves bought a radio to his lips.
    “Command, we have Patrick,” the sergeant
said. “Repeat, we have Patrick.”
    “Copy,” The radio responded. “Is the house
clear of tangos?”
    “Affirmative. We’ve-”
    “Over there!” one of the troops shouted, as
he pointed to something at the top of the stairs. The others
looked, and immediately began to fire upward. Henry watched as
something quick and agile leaped from above, onto the one of the
soldiers. A sound of cloth and flesh being ripped was drowned out
by a sharp scream. By the time the others turned to see what had
happened, the thing that was quick and agile had vanished.
    The attacked soldier’s body’s lay on the
ground, perfectly still. A large vertical gash ran from neck to
navel. Red and pink organs oozed out, and fell onto the floor. They
looked up at his head, and saw that his throat had been slit from
ear to ear.
    “What the hell was that?” The sergeant said,
and he turned to look around the room. The other men followed suit,
pointing their rifles in every conceivable direction. They’d
completely forgotten about Henry, who still sat on the stairs,
losing consciousness as he too began to search for this mysterious
attacker.
    “Sergeant what’s going on?” the radio
asked.
    “We’re under attack.” The sergeant answered,
the barrel of his rifle still desperately searching for a
target.
    A flash of something small and black darted
into the room from an unseen location, and pounced on the sergeant.
It’d left as quickly as it had come, leaving in its wake another
bloody mess.
    From his perch slumped on the staircase,
Henry’s watched through receding consciousness as the soldiers were
taken down. Bullets were sprayed all over the parlor room, machine
gun fire drowned out the screams, and the smell of blood permeated
the air. He couldn’t tell if it was the work of one assassin or a
small team, but whomever or whatever it was, it worked fast. Within
thirty tense seconds, there was but one lone solider left.
    He stood among the bodies of his comrades,
his machine gun shaking in his hands. The sound of gun fire had
stopped, leaving only the sound of his heavy breathing. Nervous
eyes under a black military helmet darted about the room, searching
for that which had killed his comrades, and would likely kill him.
Behind him he heard a hissing sound, and spun