The Airship

 The Colonel was not a fearful man. He was unafraid as a lion of God is unafraid for those who are guided by fear are the lamb to be shepherded, not the shepherds to command. The Colonel has murdered seventy Indians on the frontier west of the civilized Mississippi, twenty-seven with his own worn knife. The Colonel has tracked slaves across oozing Louisiana muck and up into crimson Alabama dirt knowing only through the smell of salt and piss that he is on the right path of his prey. The Colonel was a man without fear, a man of zeal for his civilization and his kind— or so he thinks. So he thought. 

His horse is panting, sweating mess, it’s barrel chest heaving in agony. The man atop is no better, disheveled and frail, his uniform nothing but tattered glories. The horse screams, truly screams. It has no words to plead, no mercies to beg but the meaning is obvious. Stop. Rest. Please. 

But the man will not stop. He scorns his mounts sides again, knows the wetness soaking his boots is steaming blood. 

The Colonel two hours ago stood in front his Gray Legion. The fiercest fighters of a new, hot blooded nation eager to defend its cornerstone with bullet and blood and blade. They had sang songs and prayed aloud up through the valley passage unafraid of cannon volley, so loud that at the time he had been certain it was the cause of a surprising lack of animals; everything had run! And like the vanished deer, quick as the evaporated swallow, so too would the Union men flee. When they’d reached the meadow all that had been was tall, still grass. The Colonel had smiled with the glorious southern sun to his back. 

There is no smiling now. Just grimness. Just terror. Just the horse beneath, bucking and whining as if it were as new to riding as a Dakota mustang. Thrusting, thrashing, legs thrown up behind and in front like it might take off, take him away from everything— or throw him off and leave him to the terror. The tall serene grass is inferno. Ablaze in dantean vision. Smoke rises into oily dark smears and stings the eyes, worsening the metallic salting of coppery blood over war-wafted winds. Few voices remain. They sing no song, consecrate no prayers. Their only harmony is the discord of death and annihilation rising and falling. 

The Devil is behind. The Shadow. The Terror. A flying thing, behemoth and black as night, a terrible onyx mountain thrown up into the air. A terrible insult the celestial truth that only birds and angels may thrive in the air. It’s malevolence radiates like grasping fingers at the Colonels nape, and he screams with primordial terror, gnashing the horse. His cry for “Faster!” is tiny beneath that gargantuan assailant. 

The Airship is coming. White fire yawls behind its breadth and the sun dims against its otherworldly brightness, the world deafened and disoriented by that awful oncoming blast. Everything is white. Everything is a painful, agonizing ringing. When it came up over the battlefield in the near-victorious noon it brought unearthly judgement, the Colonel and his men watching in terror as pale light swept cannons and men and horses into total incineration. This was evil, this was unnatural— and it was real. 

The Airship is coming. And after this battlefield, it will visit many more. Many, many more. 

The Colonel once thought himself a man without fear, a lion amongst sheep to be herded and brought to heel. Now, he thinks nothing at all.