The thunderbird snatched Grant’s arm in a reptilian talon, lifting him airborne. The sun shone through its wings, revealing bony structures. A broken-off arrow stuck out of the creature’s ribs, showing it had been a man eater for some time. The bird cocked its head and measured Grant with a slit-pupil gaze. Its beak clicked open and shut hungrily.
“No!” Grant shrieked, imagining that beak picking him apart the way it had Jack, Breckenridge and Webster.
Gunshots crashed from below, and Grant felt the thunderbird shudder as bullets slammed into its flesh.
Earth and sky switched places.
Grant’s stomach flip-flopped.
Sight became a spinning blur.
Crashing impact.
Bouncing off rubbery flesh.
Bitter mouthful of grass.
Crawling.
Paulson ran toward Grant and drew his revolver.
Wounded and grounded, the thunderbird still continued the hunt. It folded its wings and scurried after Grant. Six-inch talons perforated the soil. A cross between a roar and a squawk emitted from its throat, and its beak went before it like a knight’s lance.
“Look out!” Paulson cried and fired his Colt.
Blood burst from the thunderbird’s breast, and a third nostril appeared in its beak.
Grant tried to run, but his feet entangled. He screamed as the thunderbird lunged toward him like an egret going after a fish.
Paulson grabbed Grant by his collar and yanked.
The thunderbird stabbed the ground between Grant’s legs. Its beak clacked like a pair of two-by-fours slammed together.
Gun empty, Paulson drew the saber from Grant’s belt.
Giant chicken feet stomped on either side of Grant’s face. His vision was blocked as the bird clambered over him, and vile skin rubbed against his face. Amid the madness and the muffling, the creature screeched and went limp. Grant became soaked as the creature’s bowels let go.
Shrieking, Grant wrestled out from underneath the acrid wet and stink. Free, he snatched up handfuls of grass and rubbed his eyes and nose clear. He peeled off his jacket and flung it far from him.
The thunderbird was dead, Grant saw, and Paulson would soon be joining it. Paulson had managed to stab the saber through the creature’s throat, but it had put its beak through his chest. It stuck out of Paulson’s back, red with blood. Paulson’s eyes were half-lidded with the pain.
Grant saw there was nothing he could do for the man, so his gaze slid to the thunderbird. Part of him refused to accept it, but seeing was believing. He did one better than the farmer in the newspaper, and if he was a college professor, he’d be wiping egg from his face. To think, what academics called extinct, Indians called by name.
And then it fell into place for Grant. His opportunity for fame and fortune had finally, literally, dropped out of the sky.
What would a university pay for such a specimen? Better yet, what would regular people pay to see such a thing?
A vision of a signboard swam into Grant’s skull.
See Jonathon Grant’s Terrifying Thunderbird! $1!
Even the best stageshow couldn’t compete with that…
“You’ll never be able to carry it whole,” Paulson whispered. “Slow you down too much. Not good in this territory.”
Grant was taken aback at how Paulson had divined his thoughts.
“I’ll take my chances,” Grant said.
Paulson coughed, and blood wet his lips. “No, I don’t think you will…” Then he slumped forward, silent.
Grant grabbed Paulson’s canteen. The man would not need it anymore. He drank until his thirst was slacked. Then Grant grabbed the saber sticking out of the Thunderbird.
He had a lot of work to do…
Grant rode all day with the carcass of the thunderbird split among the horses of Paulson, Webster and Breckenridge. He pushed the animals as hard as he could, sometimes seeing ominous dust clouds on the horizon and crossing too many fresh Indian trails. It wouldn’t do to get killed now, not when he was on his way into the history books. Buttons cascaded through Grant’s mind. No petroglyph animals this time, just dollar signs.
Paulson’s words came back to Grant.
What does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul?
Grant rubbed his arm where the Thunderbird had snatched him. The flesh had turned an ugly purple. If one looked into the bruise long enough, it almost looked like it contained an answer to that question. Grant looked away before he could make it out. Maybe such questions would be relevant in the future, but not for a long, long time.
Eventually, Grant topped a hill and spotted sanctuary. The column of horse soldiers was long and formidable. Plus, such troopers were an eclectic bunch. Surely, a taxidermist was among their number…
Smiling, Grant sang a verse of his own from Gary Owen.
“In the fighting Seventh’s the place for me; it’s the cream of the cavalry; no other regiment can ever claim; its pride, honor, glory and undying fame…”
Finishing the song, Grant kicked his spurs, and Cerberus carried him into the midst of the Seventh Cavalry — as General George Armstrong Custer led them all toward Little Bighorn…
A Time of Blood
Kirsten Cross
A huge, sickly-yellow moon hung over Salisbury Plain. This was no glorious, golden ‘Hunter’s Moon’, resplendent in the heavens and, thanks to an optical illusion of cosmic proportions, apparently thousands of miles closer than it would be normally. This wasn’t a moon worthy of salutation by a bunch of druids pratting around in white sheets. This was a greasy yellow orb, producing a phosphorescent glow that made healthy plants look diseased and wasted, and trees on the skyline take on the appearance of twisted, deformed skeletons.
The Stones loomed on the horizon like silent sentinels — guardians of a landscape saturated in legend, death, war, and blood. At night, shadows clustered around the mighty Sarsen obelisks like the spectral fingers of long-dead ancestors who had raised them up thousands of years before, caressing the pits and ruts on the weathered surface. Stonehenge was a monument to man’s ingenuity, a testament to his ability to create something astonishing, and a demonstration of his fear of what terrible reprisals the Gods might rain down upon the land and tribe if homage wasn’t forthcoming, usually in the form of blood sacrifices.
Many theories had been bandied about concerning the Stones.
They were a temple.
A meeting place.
A shrine for the dead.
A celebration of the solstices.
The truth? Nobody really knew. So the new age brigade and the ‘Druids’ laid claim to the place, sanitising it and diluting its majesty with drumming, chanting and a shit-load of hugging and love-ins. They conveniently airbrushed out the bloodier facet of the Stones’ past in this hippy-trippy interpretation. A brutal, savage past. Just like the unforgiving landscape, these Stones didn’t care if you sang to them, drummed at their feet or laid out the entrails and still-beating heart of a human sacrifice on the ground to please the Gods. They were stone. They were immortal — reminders of a time of blood.
Sergeant Mick Jones of Her Majesty’s own arse-kicking bastards, 2Para, stared at them and sniffed, singularly unimpressed. Lumps of rock. Admittedly, bloody big lumps of rock, but nevertheless, just lumps of rock. But there was something odd about them, even from this distance. He frowned and muttered to himself quietly. “Ya know? I swear them buggers look bigger in the dark.”
“Yeah. That’s what he says about his cock.” Snorts of laughter in the darkness were followed by a sharp rebut.
Mick rounded on the nearest crouched figure and snarled. “Cox, shut your damn mouth and keep your eyes open!”