Warlock

plane broke across the reeds, a blacker circle against the velveteen darkness of the sky, blotting out stars as it swept by. Its almost imperceptible noise set the nerves on edge, though the ears barely heard it.
        
        “Perhaps they didn't see,” Crowler whispered. His voice seemed to carry abnormally far.
        
        “They did,” Mace said.
        
        Five hundred feet away, the oval craft rose, circled, and started back toward them. Suddenly, the night was split open by the thundering sound of a mallet striking a wooden block, again and again, over and over in such close succession that the noise was almost like a drummer's music-except it was ugly and unrhythmic.
        
        “Gunshots!” Shaker Sandow said. He had never heard a gun fired in his life. But having seen a few of the instruments which had survived the Blank, he felt certain that this was just what one of them would sound like.
        
        In front of them, the earth geysered upward under the impact of the slugs. The whine of ricochets which bounced off the flat stones was like the swarming of angry insects on all sides of them. The men farthest from the bamboo turned to make for that scanty cover, and they were struck down so swiftly that only a few of them even had time to manage a scream before embracing death. Blood showered up from them like a fine mist of water, spattered across the faces of men nearby.
        
        The others, moving almost instinctually, without conscious thought, fell to the ground and rolled into the concealing stand of bamboo. They came quickly to their knees and skittered forward, taking the brunt of the reeds on their faces. Blood sprang up on their cheeks, ran from their foreheads into their eyes, blinding them. When it was impossible to move any farther without collapsing with fatigue, they rolled into the gulleyed earth and clung to the stones there, praying to whatever gods they had renounced on the mountains only days earlier.
        
        Bullets cut through the reedy growths, but the bamboo was hardy enough and deflected the shells sufficiently to rule out any accuracy on the part of the gunner. Canes were severed by slugs, rattled down between their fellows with hollow, musical sounds and were still.
        
        There was only the hum of the aircraft.
        
        And the smell of earth.
        
        And fear.
        
        The pilot of the ancient craft was not finished, however, and he came back a second time, moving low, snapping forty rounds into the edge of the bamboo field, making the reeds sway in his backwash of air. Then he climbed upward and hovered. The sound of his engines was low, but audible as he waited for survivors to stumble stupidly into the open land beyond the woody grass.
        
        Shaker Sandow looked around him and there was not another man anywhere nearby. Visibility was no more than six feet about him, but at least no one else seemed sheltered in that radius. Just as well, too. The closer they were, the more deadly a single burst of fire might prove to be.
        
        The night seemed unnaturally quiet, as if all the world were dead, even the wind. The only sound was the ever-present background drone of the silver aircraft.
        
        But as he waited for the attack to be renewed, he realized that the silence was a false picture. It only seemed silent here, because he had been concentrating all of his attention on the enemy vehicle, listening intently for its approach. There were other sounds: dying sounds, wounded sounds. To his left, someone was choking on his own blood. The twisted way his words worked up his shattered throat was evidence that the pilot was soon to have taken another victim. To his right, the sounds of two men talking quietly came to him. One of them was wounded; he could tell that much by the anguished tone of voice, just below the level of a squeal of pain. The other seemed to be trying to help his damaged friend. He could not make out the words, though. Ahead, someone was whimpering in pain and terror.
        
        Suddenly, he wondered about Gregor and Mace. Were they dead? Or dying? He was fairly certain that they were not among those who had been killed before reaching the perimeter of the bamboo field. But once they had reached concealment, had they been struck down?
        
        “Mace!” he called out, his voice sounding older and more useless