I was expecting A C-130, just like the other times. So imagine my surprise when two black hawks flew over the horizon. Everyone else except Kazamir and Snow was smiling and nodding. Kazamir ran over to Alexei and tried to hide behind him. Snow was shooting worried and confused looks at the rest of us. Alexei dealt with Kazamir by wrapping an arm around his neck and giving him a noogie (Urban Dictionary: noogie) while explaining that those things weren’t going to hurt him. Walter sidled over to Snow and more calmly explained that those things were tamed beasts from my homeland.

We all watched with excitement as the Blackhawks grew larger and larger. Most of us took this moment to sit down and enjoy the view of the black helicopters cutting across the red and orange evening sky.

It took a solid 5-10 minutes for the choppers to get close enough for us to see the black boxes hanging from multiple pieces of rope attached to the underside of the helicopters. Another five minutes passed before the helicopters were circling around the little hilltop clearing. The roar from the engines blasted our ears, and the wind from the rotor wash buffeted us along with the wave of dust and small rocks it carried.

Then one after another, the helicopters came in low, dropped the cases off, then banked away into the darkening skies. I gave a quick salute toward the rapidly fading black silhouettes.

____________________________________________________________________________

Same time, but a time zone away…

Lord General Calliope of Pennington overlooked an empty field, he could see the firelight from his army’s hundreds of campfires casting its light onto the ground before him. But his mere presence cast a larger long shadow across the dark landscape. The only other source of light came from across the field where a large camp of Orks led by the Khan of Khans Joseph Franz, the young.

Calliope remembered the old Ork king Thiemo the bloodhound. Calliope recalled the stories of how Thiemo got that honorific. According to rumor, in the early days of his reign, several high-ranking chiefs and shamans attempted to force Thiemo out of power. The young king raised a force of loyal followers and won a decisive battle against the treacherous men’s forces.

Unfortunately, several of the high-ranking leaders of the rebellion had escaped. Thiemo spent several years hunting them down. When he would find one of them, he would strip them, cut their wrists and set them loose. He would take 10 minutes to himself, after which he would hunt them down. None ever survived these hunts, thus granting him the title of Bloodhound.

Calliope wondered what this new king had in store for him. He let a small smile spread across his face as he excitedly anticipated the oncoming battle. Calliope turned away from the distant campfire light of his enemies. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, and he would have to be well-rested to be useful.

That night Lord General Calliope of Pennington went to sleep with a smile on his face and a hand on his weapon.

____________________________________________________________________________

Harly’s POV:

An hour later, back at camp…

The low twang of an electric guitar rang out from a radio set fresh out of the drop. It was quickly followed by a set of drums. The music occasionally had the fire crackling added as an extra unintended instrument. The singer, a young man, probably around 20, started his performance. His young male voice was mournful but turned hopeful as the song continued. I listened to this song while staring into the flames that were keeping me warm. I imagined the flames spreading over a village much like Kazamir’s as those monsters watched on with pride.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

This went on for a few seconds until Alexei came over and tapped me on the shoulder. Earlier, while we were unpacking, Xavier made a good point about trying to clean up before putting on their new uniforms. I didn’t have any problems with them trying; they just had to stay in fire teams or with a battle buddy.

So while Kazamir, Xavier, and Snow went down to the stream and awkwardly began to wash up. The rest of us finished unpacking everything and laid out their uniforms and gear. I grabbed up all three of their weapons and gave them a once-over. Of course, Snow’s M1014 black finish was dully shining in the firelight. The boys upstairs really knew their stuff because they kitted this shotgun out with an EOTech, a spiked breacher muzzle break, and even loops on the side for extra shotgun shells.

Kazamir’s rifle was the same as Alexei’s, which is to say, “Fucken awesome.” his AK-101 had all of the stock furniture replaced with after-market Zenitco furniture, and attached to that was an EOTech with a 3X magnifier along with a peq-15 laser light module.

Last but not least, Xavier got himself an MP5SD. On this gun, the boys upstairs had attached a scope rail mount and put a delta point reflex sight on it. Growing up on Call of Duty 4, I had a fondness for the MP5. So I played around with it for a bit while I waited for them to get back. But after a good 5 to 10 minutes of just fucking around with it, I got sort of bored and just put it with the rest of the guns.

In an odd sort of way, it made me feel at home. But then my weapon safety paranoia kicked in, so I quickly checked all the safeties on the firearms. They were on, of course, but you can never be too safe.

Alexei tapped me on the shoulder again. This time I looked up at him, and he acknowledged that he got my attention by starting to talk.

“Someone’s on the radio, and they're asking for you.”

I sighed, got up, and walked into the cave where the strictly military radio awaited me. I could feel the warmth from the fire leave me as I left it behind. As I swept into the room, I spotted the microphone and earpiece laying on top of the radio with a half-eaten MRE off to one side. I picked up the earpiece and got settled in.

Fifteen minutes later, I walked out of the cave with mixed thoughts running through my head. Jones congratulated the gang and me for all our hard work. But he went on about how all of this talking wasn’t working out for either of them, so instead of chatting, he would leave sticky notes or info briefs on the radio.

When I opened the tarp covering to the outside, what I saw was good. Alexei was showing Kasamir how to operate all of the new bells and whistles on his new AK, Mc’cullen was having a laugh while explaining to Snow how to use her new shotgun to effectively blow open doors and people or creatures, and Walter, who was a german and had an interest in things that go boom was helping Xavier understand his new piece of hardware, as well as taking his time to ogle and play with it.

I walked over to both Bunden and Les and whispered for them to follow me into the cave so I could brief them. All three of us got up and trudged into the cave. After replacing the tarp covering, I turned around and started speaking.

“Alright, both of us have heard what happened to Bunden while we were gone. While I was talking to the big man upstairs, he told us that we couldn’t get out of finishing the job. So while we can’t just not do it, I was thinking, what if we just level the place with an A-10 gun run, then shoot the fuck out of anyone who climbs out of the rubble.”

“That doesn’t sound like all that bad of a plan, but we could bring up the vehicles and level the place without using the gun run.”

Les half-heartedly suggested. I waved off the suggestion.

“Have you seen the terrain around here? We were lucky to get the vehicles here without them getting stuck. If it started to rain while we were en route, we would probably lose most, if not all, of our vehicles to mud.”

Those words were met with a moment of silence. Not at all, because we were about to go fight a necromancer with untold dark magical powers. But because all of us were dead tired of fucking walking everywhere.

“Bunden, you want to add anything here?”

“Just that I would suggest extra ammo. When dealing with the undead, you can never have too much ammo.”

“Good, one more thing. I don’t want to do an exhaustive search for this HVT(high-value target) of theirs. Don’t say anything to Snow about this.”

Both men nodded.

“Great, well, let’s get a good night's sleep for the assault tomorrow.”