Primitive War

by Ethan Pettus

He dragged himself through the soil and climbed to his feet, whimpering like a beaten dog.

Of course I know him, he's me

The first man to die was taken at night. Kendrick had awoken to find his friend Maynard missing in action. All he could find left of his squad-mate was a few ragged bits of skin and a trail of blood leading deeper into the wilderness. It happened to another man the following night, and again the night after that.

It was heavily distorted, but Kendrick could clearly see the outline of the animal’s body. It was taller than a man, with a straight tail and muscular limbs. The creature raised its long snout, sniffing the air. The hooked claws flicked in anticipation. The creature’s jaws parted into a toothy, rumbling snarl. It was only ten feet away.

It knew that he had nowhere left to run.

This was not the war he knew.

He was a handsome

FA--

young man who seemed to be 24 going on 55.

Escape could only be found through death.

Disgusting freak scum shit

Worthless fucking murderer goddamned monster goddamned godless heathen

“Sounds like you’re getting off on stroking your ego,” Logan grumbled. “I’ll give your mama somethin’ to stroke,” Eli replied.

“I read your file,” Jericho said in a rumbling baritone. “You look like even more of a degenerate in person. Let me hear that hick twang of yours; I could use a laugh.”

“Sir, I ain’t got no twang, sir.”

He began sharpening his machete while staring out at the darkness of the jungle beyond.

If this ain't me

“Leon, do you know why I’m sharpening this machete?” “So it can cut cleaner?” “So it doesn’t get stuck,” Xavier said. “I don’t like to hear an animal suffering.”

Hurt hurt me rat rat bastard retard kill hurt rat

My kind of Brainrot

“For all we know, they were killed by those…things out there before they could find us.”

With a deep breath, he stared into the fire and saw himself in the flames.

Whatever did that had to have been a herd of animals…really, really big animals…” Xavier frowned, lost in thought.

Each feather was the length of Leon’s forearm, with a thick stem.

There were numbers beside each concrete structure and a note at the very bottom. Res/Stat 1 – Defunct, Destroyed Res/Stat 2 – Defunct, Destroyed, Partial Evidence (Perimeter?) Res/Stat 3 – Defunct, Destroyed Res/Stat 4 –

As Ryan sank into the darkness, he thought of the last two lines from the journal and shivered. We lost Lewis last night. We’re being hunted.

He had been so lost in thought that he had failed to notice a perceptible shift in the atmosphere. The jungle was silent.

“The act of fighting…it’s a bit of a dance through the fields that lie between life and death, where your soul is high inside your own body, ready to escape at any moment. It’s a spiritual feeling, one more powerful than any I had ever known.”

“Elevated is one word for it. ‘High’ is another. The adrenaline rush of fighting…it’s addicting. I’ll be honest, I never felt more alive than when I was risking my life. But it doesn’t come without its price. Like any drug, it takes. It takes a little bit from you each time you become involved. Soon, you start questioning if you had always been this way, or if those pieces of you had been replaced with something else…”

“Morality is a gradient, infinite shades of light and darkness. You may drift through it, but even when you think you’re in the light, you’re still in the shadows. You don’t know who you’re hurting until the damage is done. Remember that.”

He was ready to kill, but he was not ready to die.

“I doubt we’re out of its territory. If anything, it probably has dominion over this entire valley. And if it does, that means it may still be tracking us. Hunting us, even.”

Subtle foreshadowing

“If I kill the tiger, can I keep its pelt?” Eli asked. “I always wanted a fur coat.” “No,” Ryan said. “And if I see you wearing fur, I’ll skin you alive.” “Jokes on you; my skin’s worthless,”

“Just shut up,” he said. “You’re acting like kids.” “We are kids, smart-ass,” Eli said. “I’m only 23.”

Aleksandr’s corpse was rapidly and painfully etched into Sergei’s mind as if by a dagger. Sergei gaped at Aleksandr’s mangled, mutilated body, draped in wet crimson sheets of fresh blood. His head hung limp at an odd angle, the neck broken and ragged, blood flowing from it like a faucet.

The creature’s body was outlined in stars; its body was the size of a wolf, with a thick coat of shining iridescent feathers, and a long snout filled with glistening fangs. It held onto the tree with a pair of wing-like forearms, and its long tail stood up straight like a flag.

They purred as they approached, their heads bobbing like herons as they moved. Their glowing eyes drifted through the darkness. A few of the creatures sniffed the tents, baring their teeth.

The behemoth pushed its snout through the canopy and into the clearing. Its blood-stained maw hovered high above the forest floor. Stripes of moonlight were painted across its leathery skin. The jaws were big enough to swallow a man whole, and the teeth were like serrated blades.

The father Tyrannosaurus Rex growled and took a step forward.

“Fucking dinosaurs!”

Further uphill, the T. rex was working its way around a final switchback towards them. It walked slowly, sniffing the air. Its muscular body was covered in deep green leather, with the black ringlets of a leopard covering its flank.

A shaggy coat of iridescent green feathers covered the behemoth’s back, wrapped around its throat in a mane, and created a sharp crest on the back of its skull. The huge head craned back and forth, its dark eyes scanning the forest floor.

Ryan looked over his shoulder and saw that the T. rex had reclaimed its bearings. It slid through the water like an enormous crocodile, water glittering on its feathers like crystal beads.

“You’re thinking of a triceratops, and no, Eli, it was a tyrannosaurus,” Gerald said. “Whatever. Either way, they’re gonna be bronto burgers,” Eli grunted. “Extinct.” “Corny,” Gerald laughed.

Amazing

A pair of pale-orange dinosaurs the size of ponies scuffled in front of the group. They fought viciously with domed skulls rimmed by thorny protuberances. One of the dinosaurs kicked the other with a strong leg, and the other pushed back with small grasping arms.

“Stygimolochs,”

The animal was a Deinonychus, a small pack-hunting dinosaur and a close relative of Velociraptor.

“Dude…what the fuck?”

Same TBH

The voices seethed malevolence.

Me too buddy, me too.

“You were attacked by a utahraptor,” Andrei said. “They’re a close relative of deinonychus and velociraptor, but much bigger. About ten feet tall, twenty feet long. They’re covered in feathers that they use as camouflage to hide in the undergrowth. Ambush predators.

“Why didn’t it just kill me?” Ryan asked. He felt dizzy. “They’re…unusual.” Andrei swept the hair from his eyes. “They disembowel their prey. Take the digestive track while their prey is still alive and leave it for dead. Sometimes they take the entire body, but they have a preference. I’m not sure why, and I haven’t made any further attempts to find out, either.

“Shut up,” Eli snapped. “You know how many fuckin’ lizard-birds we had to kill to get here?”

Gerald licked the blood from his knife and spat at the small carnivores. He was nearly delirious from the pain and rush of adrenaline, but he didn’t care. He would kill them with his bare hands if he had to, kill every goddamn animal in the valley if need be. He wasn’t scared of some overgrown chickens.

He was lost in the cold, hypnotic stare of the utahraptor’s amber tiger-eyes.