Defender
Story by The 12 Sectors on SoFurry
Just a scene of Maverick (a new character of mine) I was inspired to write based off a song I heard.
“A horde! A horde is coming!" a shout permeates the small outpost.
An alarm sounds and many sets of trampling feet stomp the muddy ground to get to their posts.
Machine gunners, flamers, mortars, the last line of defense prepares while the stab troop takes the front, standing as a brick wall in front of the outpost.
Maverick sprints from his office, kicking up clumps of mud under his boots. Brown speckles against his black and blue scales. He bursts out into the front of the outpost and glares at the rotting corpses approaching under the dirty gray sky.
He throws his hand up, gesturing at at the dead. “Ch-!" he stops, a glimpse of white amongst the rot putting him in a choke hold. With a flick of his arm, he jerks a pair of binoculars out of his dense battle jacket and to his eyes.
A white dragon woman and her child stumble and scream as the horde threatens to swallow them up.
“HEEEELP!" a scream rips through the thick decaying air.
Maverick's eyes jump open and he stows his binoculars. “Survivors spotted! Save them! CHARGE!"
The squadron of battle-scarred survivors charge forward through the muck with their wrapped and crafted spears.
“Full speed! GO!" Maverick launches out past the small army, many knives, explosives, and even a rifle on his back clanking as he goes.
The squad yells and jogs along behind their leader.
Maverick halves the distance in seconds, reaching out his hand.
The mother dragon lets go of her daughter's hand, letting her trip and fall without looking back.
As if lightning had struck him, he stops for a moment with eyes and mouth wide open.
“No…"
He whips his rifle from his back and looks down its acog scope, whipping the rifle's twin barrels towards the woman. A moment of pressure rests on the trigger with the woman's head clear in sight.
She runs at the outpost, not even a glance at Maverick and his weapon.
“Ghrrr, no, NO!" he tosses the weapon aside and it jostles down against him in its strap. Strong feet propel him to the mother.
Reaching her, he sidesteps her and faces the horde instead. Its full, groaning, rotting, bloodthirsty might.
The child's screams pierce through the deads' moans.
Maverick's eyes widen and his teeth clench. “NO!" he grabs his rifle once more and takes aim.
With a synchronized BOOM, both barrels explode with huge rounds.
Two straight lines of zombies' heads explode, the carnage being uncountable. The sound of blood and rot splatting against the damp ground follows.
He can see her, that faint glimpse of innocent white in the sea of mindless rot.
“GhhrraaaHHHH!" he grabs two daggers from his belt and runs into the mass, taking the path his rifle had just cleared. He holds up both daggers on either side of him as if they're wings, slicing chunks of the deads' brains out as he thunders past them. His wrists burn with the burden, but he clenches his teeth and hardens them like hot steel quenched in cool water.
He keeps his eyes wide open despite the splotches of blood and fetid pus pelting him in the face.
For a moment, they clear, and he can see one grabbing the child's arm.
He lets out a rageful huff and pulls another knife from his belt, whipping it at the thing's head. It explodes on contact with it and splashes more of the cretin's guts on the ever-corrupted grounds.
It falls over onto the girl, truly dead.
Maverick grabs his gun again and meets the girl where she is, firring once, twice, thrice, spinning around and slaughtering them as they come. When the rifle clicks and no more bullets fly, he tosses the thing around in his hands and uses the whole gun as if it were a baseball bat. It slams the rotting in their heads so hard they fragment into several chunks.
“DIE!" he screams out and loses grip of his rifle, knocking several of the rotting over with the chunk of metal. With a snarl, he pulls a hand-made land-mine off his belt, priming it and tossing it over the crowd. It falls and lands face down, rocking the area with an explosion of guts and mud.
A new clearing appears amidst the explosive. Maverick kicks the dead rot off the little girl and scoops her up, bolting through the opening and holding his whole being around her.
“AAGH!" the rots scratch him as he passes them, some trying to grab and bite him. His hardened scales flake off with their rotted nails and his own fresh hot blood joins the mix of filth on the ground. “NHHGGG!" he bears their attacks and aims his shoulder forward, plowing through them and taking a plethora of deep scratches and wounds.
Soon, he erupts through the squishy wall of rots and barrels towards the outpost.
“Fire! FIRE! RETREAT AND FIRE!" he keeps his eyes shut tight and his arms shut tight around the girl, keeping her still through protective force.
Once they clear the field, a roar of gunfire from mounted turrets rip the horde apart.
The field floods with their blood.