'
'
The skeletons and carcasses flew by in a blur. The Winds lifted them up into the red sky, where each one disintegrated slowly, beautifully. The infinite plain had been swept clean of Death. Somewhere on the sweet- smelling Winds rang the gentle sound of pentatonic chimes.
The blood on His arms and hands caked and flaked away. His black gloves peeled off to reveal smooth, hard, cadaverously white skin.
A hand with long green fingernails reached around from behind me to slap a golden sickle into my grasp. I threw it forward with all my might.
It sailed on the Winds to ram into His chest, where it stuck and slipped down an inch. Out of the gap flew a thousand butterflies of every color imaginable.
'
,' He whimpered, crying tears that dissolved His hard face. '
'
He devolved. He became an ape, a reptile, a fish, a pile of bluegreen slop. From somewhere came His voice- astonished, but sad nonetheless. It was as if He had discovered something that had eluded Him for aeons. Something that He had discovered all too late.
'
' He mused. '
'
Behind me, far away, a woman laughed. Where the corpses once had lain, new things began to grow in abundance.
Amongst it all, the old grey man sat pining.
'Now whose brains have I got to pick?'
'There's always your own,' I said.
Just about then, the missile hit us and blew the world into a billion flinders.
26
The Endworld War
Everything exploded around me. I took a nosedive into a crater and buried my head in the mud.
Bullets cracked by overhead. Arrows flew back and forth. The lightning flash of a particle beam ionized the air a mile above the battle.
Someone tumbled into the hole to slide beside me. Mud covered Him from head to foot. One hand clutched a rifle. He grinned like a piano.
'We've almost got the sons of the Bitch now, eh, boy?'
He looked quite a few years younger than I. His calling me
grated a bit.
'Almost got whom?' I asked politely.
The blinding green light of a high-energy laser sizzled across the lip of the crater. I didn't like it here. I wondered why He did.
'The enemy, boy. We've almost conquered the enemy!'
A boulder tumbled over us to land out of sight with a loud thump. Crossbow bolts ricocheted off it. A buzzbomb
