It began like any other day. As his fellow workers secured their loads and assumed their position in the column, Pismire noted that his teammate, Isos, was struggling to maintain his grip as they held the supplies above them. Isos was always slow and a bit unsteady, but today he seemed even slower, and the delay was stalling the others who formed a line behind them. Eventually they began moving behind the team ahead in the column. It was the same serpentine route they’d traveled the past three days, with just enough hills to make his legs and shoulders ache.
But for all his complaints, he was still doing better than Isos. In fact, he wasn’t even sure Isos was going to make it home, for Pismire had to keep urging him onward and trying to keep him on the path as the two of them ducked and weaved through the undergrowth.
As they passed through a clearing, the heat of the day pressed upon them causing Isos to slow even more. The load bearers behind them grew impatient, and Pismire watched as two or three others bypassed them and continued along the trail. Once Isos had recovered enough to press on, they had just cleared an open area when Pismire felt the cooling shade of the overhead canopy of broad leaves. Surely, Isos would be all right now, for it wasn’t much further to their destination.
They were moving ahead smoothly once again and closing the distance on those who had passed them when an odd smell of something burning began drifting toward them from the front of the column. When the column came to a sudden halt, Pismire grew angry. Did Isos have to stop again? They would never get back at this rate. Releasing his grip, he peered around the load and saw that Isos was still in full grasp of his end. Yet the entire column had halted, and he heard what he thought was a scream up ahead.
When the column began to move again, the smell of burnt vegetation grew stronger. Moments later he and Isos had to maneuver off the pathway to bypass the smoking body of one of the carriers who, annoyed by their slowness, had passed them earlier. It was a horrific site – a mangled body with a haunting death stare. Meanwhile, other screams from up ahead pierced the undergrowth followed closely by smoke and the smell of death. But the column kept moving and Pismire and Isos pressed on.
The first thing Pismire noticed was the light – bright, white, and knifing through the canopy of leaves and limbs above him. It was followed quickly by a wave of heat – a heat like Pismire had never felt before. That’s when he saw Isos stagger and release his grip on their load. His teammate attempted to move but seemed frozen in place by the intense glow surrounding him.
Isos’s body began to shudder, then suddenly exploded, turning his fellow carrier into a smoking mass of charred legs and body. Pismire released the load and scrambled to hide under some broad, leafy canopy nearby. While staring at the crumpled, smoking mass that only seconds before shared his load, he watched as the searing circle of light moved methodically across the ground as if hunting him.
He pressed in closer to the stalk of the leafy vegetation that shielded him and stared in horror as the white-hot circle of light incinerated everything it touched. It paused momentarily near Isos’s charred, smoking remains, then moved only to set ablaze the load he had abandoned on the trail. The cloudy stench of burnt supplies swirled toward him as Pismire stood motionless in the shade of the leafy canopy.
When the light suddenly disappeared, Pismire thought perhaps he had been spared the fate of the others around him. The other workers in the column had scattered in all directions in the undergrowth, perhaps hiding from the deadly light as he. The smoky air hung heavy with the smell of scorched bodies and burned supplies, but at least the light was gone. Or so he thought.
Seconds later Pismire heard the leaf canopy over him begin to crackle, and when he looked up, he spotted on the broad leaf above him a tiny black circle. The odor of burning vegetation grew strong as the black circle gradually expanded in diameter. The leaf began to curl and snap until a narrow, white beam of light slowly tore through in an ever-widening circle. Before he could run, its paralyzing heat engulfed him.
His body began to shake and though he struggled to move, he felt his legs give way beneath him. With his body beginning to burn in the deathly brightness, he heard a booming sound from above. “Son, bring back my magnifying glass and stop burning those ants.”
Bio:
James D. Brewer is a retired US Army officer, writer, musician, and teacher who lives with his wife, Jan, in central Florida. A former professor at the US Military Academy and past editor of Armor magazine, he has over a forty-five-year writing career authored eight novels, three non-fiction books, numerous magazine articles and a two-act play. He currently teaches composition and rhetoric at a central Florida college. Brewer’s newest Gilded Age, three-volume Choctaw Parker Mystery/Adventure series is now available on Amazon.com