Busby had seen everything go down that morning. When the flash had hit them, he was standing behind the owner of the store, who was himself behind a window. The owner was stunned, Busby saw stars, but the lady owner was still sitting undisturbed reading nearby.

That had seen Gemma with the strange man. The girl from school who was always mean to everybody. Why did she know the guy who the comic shop owner had said was a ‘spook?’

He watched as a beam of white light had come straight down on top of the weird guy and Gemma, only for the man to bend the beam away from the ground at the last second, sending it off somewhere else in the sky.

Then the angels came down, and all that happened. The red demon girl had attacked the angels, and then the giant angel had chased her away. Andraeus had appeared, but had gone again. The barbershop was reduced to a pile of bricks. The strange man was still lying prostrate on the bench in front of it.

The owner was now in the back, packing his stuff to leave town. His wife was trying to tell him to chill, but he wasn’t listening. Among his collection of artifacts from the late ‘great’ comic book artist, Rob Liefeld, was the original Conan the Barbarian sword. It was a twenty pound behemoth of a prop. It wasn’t even sharpened. It was laying on top of the pile of belongings from the shop the couple were tending to depart with. Busby snatched the hilt of the sword and hefted it up onto his shoulder and took off out of the shop. He didn’t care if either of them had noticed him or not.

Outside, everything was in a state of alarm. Fog covered everything. He could hear sirens from emergency vehicles drawing nearer. He sprinted across sidewalks, streets, and greens until he arrived at his target. The final few feet of the way was just sticky dark red angel blood. The dead white chunks of them, as well as whole dead bodies, were lying all over the place.

The man on the bench was dressed in some kind of dark gilded pinstripe suit beneath a white lab coat. He wore jet black onyx spectacles, and his hair stood straight up, like he used a ridiculous amount of hairspray. He didn’t smell like hairspray.

Busby whispered to the man, “hey guy, you alive?”

A faint sound from his throat, accompanied by a slight movement of one of his hands confirmed that he was.

The man’s eyes snapped open, and Busby let out a cry of joy.

“My name’s Busby.”

The man wasn’t looking back at the young man, however. His eyes were fixated beyond him; high up.

Busby turned around and one of the blade-feathered choir of angels was perched on the steeple of the church, its throat vibrating. He looked on as it released a terrifying howl and swooped down from the top of the white tower straight at him.

Sadler raced back to town in his black pickup truck, ignoring speed limits. He checked himself in the vanity mirror to see if it had left a bruise when his father had slapped him in his attempt to deter him from leaving with the truck to save his friend. The man hit really hard, but it just hadn’t been hard enough this time.

He could deal with his father’s wrath later. Maybe he really would call Officer Fuckface as he vowed to do, and have him arrested for stealing the truck? He would rather live with that than the fear of leaving his friend in danger. What was the point in staying out of trouble if you could not help others do so as well? It was up to Sadler, and he alone, to determine who was worth protecting.

As he came down the hill into town, he was met by a bank of fog that encompassed as far out as the Palisades, almost enveloping even the High School. He slowed down as his truck entered the penumbra. Navigating by recognition of surroundings as he slowly trawled through the town square.

He spotted Andreaus’ car parked in front of her dad’s store. He didn’t know how to feel about it. She was probably safe inside. She was smart.

The lady owner of the Mat wasn’t too far away, lying unconscious in the passenger seat of her convertible, one hand still tucked inside of her purse. He hoped she was just unconscious, and likewise for everyone else around. He could see people moving around inside of some of the building’s windows, but they were apparently too afraid to come outside.

That was when he drove across a path of devastation like a tornado had passed through. There were no tornadoes on Mars, though. It seemed to have originated just around the block. Sadler drove into a very bad situation then.

Busby was in front of the corner barbershop’s absolute ruins, wielding a sword like his D&D character, the barbarian, Corin Landsharkrider. He was swinging the hefty blade at something in the misty above him. Sadler saw the angel come down out of the fog on its freakishly skinny white wings.

The thing’s jerky aerial movements made Sadler think of stop-motion animation. It was like a scary white puppet the size of an all-star basketball player. It landed in front of Busby, but had to give up ground as the far smaller teenager, holding the goliath barbarian sword like a baseball bat, swung through its space.

Sadler accelerated the pickup truck and hit the angel going thirty miles per hour, sending it flying off into the fog.

“Sadler!” Busby shouted.

“Get in the back, let’s get out of here.”

“Hold on, I have to get this guy, too.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Busby dropped the sword in the bed of the truck first, and then went back to the bench and scooped the doctor up in a fireman’s carry. Busby had been a lifeguard until he got fired for “stalking” Misty, so he knew how to do many life-saving maneuvers.

He dumped the doctor in the truck bed as gently as possible.

Several large white feathers came sailing out of the fog in front of the truck and embedded themselves in the hood.

“Oh, shit. It’s still alive.” Sadler reversed the truck, and attempted to do a U-turn, but the wheels spun out in the blood coating the street.

Busby took up the sword in one hand, and braced himself in place in the back. He was a tall and lanky guy, and he easily found purchase in the back of the Ford Ranger Pony.

The angel bounded out of the gloom and grappled the tailgate of the truck with its monstrous four-thumbed hands. The truck wasn’t going anywhere for the moment, but something happened when the angle pushed down on the truck: it gained traction.

Sadler accelerated the vehicle and the angel only barely managed to stay attached while using its wings to gain lift.

Busby, in the single instance where the truck was not producing momentum, gained his balance, and wielding Conan’s sword, hit the angel in the head, destroying its right eye in the process.

It shrieked so loudly Busby had to drop the sword to cover his ears, but it let go of the truck, too. They accelerated away, and the creature was soon gone in the fog.

Busby shifted around slightly as the truck wended its way through the foggy streets at entirely too high a rate of speed. Two lefts and they were across the park from the angel. Busby heard its scream over the sirens of two police cars that raced past them, apparently unconcerned by their own actions.

The angel, sans one eye, soared out of the fog over the park, overtop the police cars, knocking one of their klaxons off the top. Both cars screeched to a halt, but the angel sailed past them undeterred. It was mad, and it was only going after its selected prey.

The truck split the last veil of mist and was out in the open atmosphere again. Not long after, the angel broke out as well, and took to great altitude to survey and pursue like a bird of prey.

Inbound traffic was terrible, but outbound was literally only just Sadler in the truck. They had a long open stretch of blacktop ahead of them, and he gunned it.

He tried to keep track of the pursuer in the rearview mirror, but mostly only saw Busby trying to do the same, so armed with his giant sword. His friend turned around and knocked on the tiny window on the rear windshield. Sadler unlocked it, and pushed one of the panes aside. Busby pushed the other back, and poked his head through the window.

“That thing is way up high, but it’s following us for sure. Where are we going?”

Sadler said he didn’t know, because he was just trying to pick up as much speed as he could to get away.

Busby saw the entrance to the trailer park whizz past. They were headed north, out of town, to the national park.

The angel had reached the zenith of its rise right when the boys in the truck ran out of paved roads and were forced to navigate gravel instead. This affected the stability of their vehicle, and they had to slow down. When it saw this change in speed, it dove.

Busby shouted a warning as he saw the alien monster coming back down again.

Sadler picked up speed again, but it was too late.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Like a blur the angel swooped down, launching myriads bladed feathers directly across the path of their vehicle. He had three car lengths to decelerate sixty-miles per hour. He didn’t do so well, but he could have done way worse.

The feathers destroyed all four tires as they rolled across. There was no way to swerve, as the lane widths were barely wide enough to service two vehicles passing each other, and the spread of ‘caltrops’ was wide enough to cover the path from ditch to ditch.

Sadler could only fear that another such attack could kill Busby and the man in the back of the truck, so instead of stopping there, he rolled off road with a hard right and began blasting through the sparse treeline. He heard Busby shouting in pain as foliage whacked him, and in the rearview mirror he saw his friend duck down below the edge of the truck bed.

The truck rolled on through the woods, making only slight adjustments to the bearing, until it ran into a group of trees it just could not roll over. Sadler checked his position, and saw that he’d tunneled out the woods behind him to the road, but he could no longer see the gravel path they’d just departed.

He got out of the truck and pushed through the saplings to the bed, he tapped Busby on the shoulder to get his attention, and told him they needed to keep going.

Busby asked, “where?”

“We can find a place to hide, probably. It’s the woods.”

“Oh yeah,” said Busby.

Through the canopy of deciduous trees above they saw a shadow pass. It was the angel.

Busby surmounted himself with the unconscious weird doctor again, and the two young men began trekking through the trees, purposefully avoiding any place where the tops of the trees allowed for much space revealing the sky.

They heard the sound of something crashing through branches, and spotted the angel coming down nearby. It landed heavily, and immediately began thrashing through the topiary to reach them. There was nothing they could do but try to go faster, but that wasn’t much of an option.

They pushed ahead until the contour of the ground required them to just slide on their butts to climb down. They hit the bottom, but could still hear the worrisome violent sounds of the celestial emissary writhing its way above them in the trees.

Something was off about the ground below them. Sadler tested it with his foot. It was hollow and felt like wood. He began looking around for some kind of door, and sure enough, he saw one. It was a simple hatch, made out of a wooden frame, and constructed with hand-made dowels.

He flipped open the hatch and looked inside, only to see darkness. He shrugged and tumbled down into the dark. Busby lowered the doctor down into the hole in the ground, and then climbed in himself and shut the hatch. It smelled like earth, but of the kind that had been worked long ago. It wasn’t newly dug. Neither of them had any light, so it was almost pitch black.

The angle landed on top of the facade ground above them, causing the timber construction to shake. Sadler began looking for other ways to go, and he found one. A trench-like tunnel trailed away from one end of the shelter they were in.

He told Busby to follow him, and his friend complied, but protested that he would have to drag their protectee.

“Who dug all this?”

“No idea, man. Keep crawling.”

They could hear the heavy footfalls of the angel above them as it stamped the ground looking for them. It could sense where they were, but it could not precisely locate them.

The boys crawled out of the tightly spaced passage and tumbled into a larger area. A small ensconcement in the wall had a tiny beam of light visible inside of it. Sadler put his hand into the sconce and found that it was likely a fire pit, with a hand dug chimney overtop of it. The interior felt like hardened baked clay. Somebody had made this, and whoever it was knew what they were doing. This was DIY as all get out.

“There’s like a hole in the wall over here, it’s like a bed. I can feel sheets and a pillow.”

Somebody had been living here.

“Put that guy inside of it. There’s another tunnel past here.”

“Should we just ditch him?”

“He’ll be fine,” Sadler rapped on the ceiling, “more timbers above us.”

Busby said the bed hole was just all inside the ground.

The two of them shrugged the tall adult male into the sleeping space, tucking up his knees to make him fit.

Above them, the angel smote the ground in frustration, rattling the wooden ceiling. They could tell it was right above them, sniffing through the structure overhead. It was very close.

Busby finished with his share of the placement of their ward, and took the sword up in both hands.

He put the point to the ceiling, between two timbers.

He waited until the weight of the angel pressed down directly overhead, and thrust the blade upwards. The angel shrieked, and blood came down through the rafters. There was a thunderous roar, a massive impact above them, and suddenly dirt fell upon the boys. And suddenly daylight shone into their dwelling. In the gap formed by the missing timber, the angel looked down at them menacingly.

Sadler grabbed Busby and dragged him down the new tunnel he’d found, and together they proceeded with as much haste as possible while the ceiling behind them was torn from the ground by the wroth celestial creature.

They came to a dead end, but Sadler quickly realized it was another hatchway. He pushed on it, and it gave way, and he was exposed to the light again.

The two of them crawled out into the open again, and found themselves at the fullest extent of a natural ravine. All above them were wooden structures built from wood and rope, but neither of them felt like they had the time to analyze what exactly they were looking at. The sounds of the furious angel were still very nearby. Close enough to add urgency to what they did.

The very creature they feared pushed out of the underbrush at the lip of the ravine, and let loose with another of its overwhelming cries. Both boys nearly peed themselves trying to scramble away, so funneled by the terrain.

The angel dropped down into the cleft in the earth and pursued them directly again.

Sadler, in the lead, almost pushed his hand through a very deliberately made tripwire spanning the gap, but before he could warn Busby, his friend had accidentally triggered it himself.

There were the sounds of creaking wood and rope, and a log half the width of a man was tall came swinging down from above. Sadler ducked, and grabbed Busby and yanked his head down before the woodsome trapped took his fool head off.

They heard a loud ‘thwock’ and felt it when the angel got struck by the trap.

Quinton took his grandfather’s tomahawk from thirty generations in hand and leaped out of the tree.

He opened his throat and released a war cry that would have made his ancestors proud.

He called, “Diné Bikeh doo shił bééhózin!”

The young warrior was on top of the angel in a heartbeat, repeatedly striking its head with his deadly hatchet.

The weapon was over 1,000 years old, but it still had the killing power that had laid dormant within it for ten centuries.

The shaft splintered after a dozen blows, but by then the celestial agent had been mutilated beyond the capacity for reprisal. Its head had been totally demolished. It had no eyes.

Quinton let out another warcry, drawing a buck knife, and carved the angel’s body open.

“Yiyílí atiinii doo yee.”

He turned to look at the two kids from town cowering beneath him.

“Get your shit together, dudes.”

The dying angel called out with a final death cry, aimed at the sky above.

Quinton took the blade in his hand and finished it off with maximum brutality.

“What were you speaking?” Asked Sadler.

“Ancient Navajo. This thing was on my land. So are you.”

“Sorry, guy. It was chasing us.” Busby uttered.

“Oh, shit!” Said Sadler, realizing their savior was the weird kid from school.

Two more beings flitted over top the canopy, casting down their shadows.

“These beings come for war and I will answer them,” said Quinton.

Busby said, “Isn’t this the National Park?”

Quinton said, “The National Park starts two miles that way, man. This is Navajo land.”

Sadler knew Quinton Yazzie as an acquaintance. Just another face in the hall at school. He sometimes saw him at the truck stop restaurant when his family had eaten there. Why was the busboy from the place with the chicken wing buffet now standing before Sadler wielding a knife and the broken haft of an ancient ax he’d used to slay a monster?

Sadler saw the construction at the site again, and said, “Did you build all this, dude?”

Quinton confirmed this.

“How big is it?”

“Acres,” was all he said.

Quinton asked them where their man was.

Sadler assumed he was referring to the guy Busby had been carrying.

“He’s that way,” he pointed back to the tunnel.

Quinton said, “good,” and then sheathed his knife.

“We must hide and regroup. If a man is as wise as a serpent, he can afford to be as harmless as a dove. Let us tend to your friend.”

The trio crawled back through the dark tunnel out of the trap gauntlet, leaving the angel choking on its own blood.

Something hit the ground above them hard.

A bifurcated lance tore through the ceiling, and bright light flooded the tunnel. All three boys gasped. The lance had gigged Sadler through the ankle and he had begun screaming in pain.

Quinton was now separated from the boys and forced ahead in the tunnel.

He crawled ahead as they were left screaming behind him.

Their friend, the strange man, was lying in Quinton’s bed. He barely fit within it. He seemed to be awakened by the sounds of the nearby chaos. The boy had every intention of leaving them all behind, but a voice stopped him.

“They are Air Spirits.”

“What?”

“Those who pursue you. You are an Earth spirit, even on Mars. This is your land, is it not?”

“I hate living among traitors and thieves. I built this place for myself, and one day I will have enough money to just live out here by myself.”

The man in the dark said, “that is no longer possible. These beings will take this from you. All of it.”

“Why are you telling me this, stranger?”

He chuckled. “Because I smell the blood of an angel on you. To kill one without a Power Suit is amazing. You would be the most powerful warrior I have ever known.”

“I need to run away.”

“To where? This is your place of escape, isn’t it? They are already here. You are found.”

“Because they led them here.”

“They would have found you anyway.”

Quinton got angry, “I just want to kill those damn things!”

“I can make that happen, my friend.”

Busby was pulled out the hole in the ground after Sadler had been. The first boy wailed as the angel removed the smooth speartip from his foot. Sadler lay on the ground now, whimpering.

Busby thought about kicking at the angel. He wondered where his sword had gone?

Two angels seemed to be assessing their captured prey, but had not moved to kill either of them.

The ground shook. Birds flew out of the trees in alarm as they began to sway back and forth.

Another shock made the dirt tremble, and the sounds of dozens of handmade traps triggered–snapping of ropes, logs falling, and so on.

The angels looked around confused.

A green armored hand reached from the dirt and grabbed an angel by its foot. The creature looked down and shrieked as it was suddenly submerged to its waist in soil.

The Green Ranger armor exploded from the earth, its metallic plates shining in the light. Its design incorporated elements of wild animals into its motif, and numerous colored feathers hung from it.

It stomped the ground and the earth beneath the feet of the other angel erupted, sending it flying. The Green Ranger picked up a stick and it became surrounded by green energy. The object transformed into a massive hatchet, with a wicked curved blade.

With his mightiest warcry yet, the Green Ranger split the half-buried angle in half to the waist.

The other angel rose up from where it had been thrown, but the Ranger threw his Gatling Tomahawk the moment it did, nearly cutting the creature in twp.

He turned to look at the other two boys, and then specifically down at Sadler’s injury.

His faceplate slid back revealing Quinton.