An Extract from this Month's Release: Raptor Reprisal
Raptor Reprisal
Written on October 17, 2015, for the March 6 entry of 366 Days of Flash Fiction, this steampunk piece takes us back to Tescher’s world, and the raptors.
The kangaroos startled, bounding high over spinifex tussocks and scattering like the red dust before a storm. Overhead the cockatoos took up the alarm, launching themselves into a wheeling, diving cloud of screeching white.
Below, the raptors exploded from cover, but they did not look like they were hunting; they looked like they were fleeing like everything else. We watched the ruckus from the cover of red granite boulders on top of a low hill.
“You see ’im?” Mandu asked, pointing with his chin, his eyes never leaving the head of the approaching dust cloud.
“Yeah. I see ’im” Tescher said, and reached for the rifle, only to have Mandu push the barrel down.
“Not yet.”
Tescher waited, watched as the raptors split and curved out from in front of the approaching steam carriage, running away in two great arcs to rejoin behind it.
“How can they not know?” he asked.
Mandu smiled.
“They seek only to enslave us black fellas,” he said, and slid back a little bit from the hill’s crest. “We’ll leave ’em for the raptors.”
“Don’t you want to know what they’re after?” Tescher asked.
Mandu shook his head.
“Just tol’ you,” he said. “They are after the tribe, the men for their mines and roads, the women and children… for other things.”
“But what if they’re not?”
Mandu looked at Tescher, then glanced back to the steam carriage, and shrugged.
“Too bad. Raptors already gottim.”
Tescher heard a horrified yell, followed by more startled cries and the sudden rumple crumble and shriek of steel. He didn’t need to look, but he did anyway. Even if he ran to intervene, there would be no one left to question. The raptors were feeding.
Cover art is by Jake at JCaleb Design, and links to 366 Days of Flash Fiction can be found on Books2 Read at: https://books2read.com/u/b6MrN0
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