The First Ones Page 22
The hunters followed Stephen’s gaze upward and one of the men even weakly screamed in surprise at the horrid sight. Hastily they all switched their rifle’s safeties to the “fire” position and shouted for him to run, but Stephen couldn’t move.
He recognized the creature from the stories told around the fire by his tribe’s elders, and he was too shocked and frightened to move. Eyes wide and with the breath locked in his chest, he just stood there with his .44 Smith aimed at the strange figure’s head.
Slowly the figure looked away from Stephen, turning its head to look around the forest, before returning its cold unearthly glare back onto the man below it. The thing reached behind its back and a bow appeared in one hand as its eye sockets suddenly began to glow with an eerie red light. Fear exploded through Stephen, erupting as a scream that ignited his body into action. He fired his weapon, over and over as he sent all six rounds toward the figure. Each bullet exploded with a puff of smoke, or perhaps a plume of dust, as it burst through the figure’s chest, but the only response from the figure was to drop a few feet in the air each time its body was wrenched by a bullet’s impact. It did not fall all the way to the ground, instead, the desiccated head lifted its glare to Stephen, the eye sockets now glowing even brighter with that eerie red incandescence. It was now close enough to him that Stephen could see the details of the thing’s dead featureless face shift into a mask of rage, as the thing opened its mouth to let out an inhuman and unearthly sound.
The sound of the revolver clicking in dry fire in his hand finally penetrated Stephen’s fear addled brain and he instantly turned and ran. The figure did not pursue, instead it simply watched as Stephen sprinted back to toward his clients, and all four of them hurried back into the protection of the forest. The figure hovered patiently until the quartet had completely disappeared into the trees, then it turned and beckoned with the arm holding the bow to something behind it. Out of the shadows two more figures sprinted forward, each a creature similar to the one hovering, and were on the chase after the hunters and their guide.
###