Content
The Mountain
In the western extremities of the Himalayas stood a mountain most mysterious of all, even more than Kanchenjunga, or Shangri-La. The mountain, known to the terrified locals, was known as Ropturus Mountainus or Raptor Mountain to the Westerners. To give you an idea of how frightening this mountain was, the nearest locals were over 2490 miles away in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Although the Westerners had never heard of Raptor Mountain, the legend was still etched into the minds of the Nepalese.
In the time before Empires, such as the one in the Middle East and the one in India began. When the tribes prayed to the Moon and the Sun and worshipped the Dead. When human sacrifice dominated their lives the mountains were infested with strange reptiles modern humans call raptors. The raptors - or ‘shiwikes’ as the locals called them - roamed down into the green valleys and attacked at whim. The villagers were too terrified to retaliate, until one day, a brave man from the west dressed in metal plates came with his horde of men and eliminated all of the raptors, but severe concussion left him insane and he spouted babble about the raptors breathing fire and flying, thus the dragon legend was born in the west.
“Get up, you lazy dog!” screamed US sergeant Jeffersonn in to one of the Privates’ tents. “Get your butt into your suit and pack up!”
Private Frederick (or Fred, to his friends), groaned and checked his near-frozen watch—it was 4:30 am. He stretched up and gave a small yawn, cracking his joints, before he went through his specialised military warm-up. After pulling on his frozen clothes, Fred stumbled outside to meet the wintry dawn, eclipsed by the substantial sentinels of stone attacking the sky.
“Himalaya Expedition, day 23,” muttered Fred into his portable recorder. “No response from Alpha team yet, but still hoping.”
Fred was part of a Special Forces team sent out to retrieve a missing team of American specialists, sent out into the Kanchenjunga region to identify recent “kidnappings” around there. Two days into the mission and the team had failed to respond back to base camp so two forces from the American Embassy in Nepal were dispatched to locate the team. Yesterday Group “Alpha” had stopped communicating to Group “Beta”, but everyone wasn’t worried, probably just a communications malfunction.
Private Fred was lining up in parade position for routine inspection when it happened.
The Sergeant was storming along the line in his perpetual bad mood when the walkie-talkies burst into life; the scouts on the perimeter of the camp, 6 miles away, were screaming “Sir, sir, we’re under attack from these things and we...”
Static rumbled around the tents, and the Sergeant looked pale as everyone looked frantically into the distance for any black specks encircling the camp.
“Boys, I-I want to scout the camp and see if the scouts are okay, spl-split up!” stuttered the Sergeant.
The men were now truly terrified, as the Sergeant NEVER stuttered, but split off into the pairs. The wind whipped and snapped around the Stars and Stripes banners posted on the tents and the camp was eerily silent, save the cautious clicking of a gun. Fred was crouching as he walked, with his teammate Arthur, just ahead of him. As they approached the perimeter they became more and more nervous as they started twitching, expecting a gunshot to emanate at any point. Suddenly Arthur tripped over something half buried in the snow; it had scales emblazoned all over it.
“What the heck is this thing?” mumbled Arthur, he leaned over and poked it with his gun. Swiftly, a fully grown raptor burst out of the ground and latched its needle-like teeth onto Arthur’s face, tearing off a huge chunk in the process, Arthur fell down, screaming in pain as half his face was laid bare-flesh into the snow. Fred opened fire with his M4 onto the raptor but it nimbly hopped onto the tent and used it as a springboard to vault away from Fred. Then all mayhem broke loose as 106 submerged raptors exploded out of the snow against 35 soldiers. Fred, shaken but following his instincts rolled into the armoury tent and grabbed several weapons. A raptor stuck its head into the tent and Fred swivelled around and fired an RPG7 into the raptor’s face. Staggering out of his tent he examined the carnage surrounding him, but not for long as a raptor jumped on him and sliced his arm, but Fred shot the raptor’s face to pieces with his 9mm Glock. Fred grunted with the pain as he stumbled towards the standard emergency military helicopter that perched precariously over the cliff.
The raptors, now wary of escaping prey, swiftly left their fresh meals and raced towards the wounded Fred who was desperately fumbling with the safety catch on the door of the helicopter. Panicked Fred frantically smashed open the catch with the butt of his gun and scrambled, starting the rotor blades as the raptors unanimously slammed into the windscreen, cracks webbing the Plexiglas. Fred screamed at the console board as it was heating up which unfortunately meant the guns were offline. Finally the 25mm machine guns heated up and Fred sliced through the murderous raptors.
After the onslaught, Fred slumped back and smiled as the rescue team screamed into the camp. He was safe. At last.
