The grotesque head stared down from the top of the huge champaign fountain set in the middle of the banquet table. It’s gruesome grin, with huge tusks sparkling, was as austere in death as it had been in life. The tainted liquid, pink with blood, spewed into the air to come cascading down over the scaled features in gurgling streams. Red reptilian eyes, fixed open in death, glared at the door to the room.

* * *

They had encountered no resistance. Bodies littered the landscape surrounding the stronghold. Some were stacked neatly in piles by unseen, unknown hands. Others lay where they had fallen. There was no tell-tale signs of battle, no struggle. Many of the bodies still had their undrawn weapons with them.

Except for the buzzing of insects feasting on decapitated heads, whose bodies were missing, no other sound had come from the fortress. The corpses that had been examined showed no indication as to the cause of their deaths. Foreboding hung in the cooling air like a malevolent spirit.

As the Special Ops Force searched the long stone corridors of the keep, the soft clicking of their rapier like toe-claws and the whisper of scales rubbing, echoed off the walls in a morbid cadence, casting an eerie pall over the soldiers. The dead were everywhere. Again, some were laid out in stacks five and six deep, yards wide and some lay where they had died.

From inside his Has-Mat covering, a young corporal groaned. At the other two bunkers, the bodies had been removed before they had arrived, though by whom was an unknown. Here, the sight of so much death was overwhelming. A one word question repeated itself over and over in his mind ... “Why?”. These frontier garrisons were here to keep the peace between combative neighbors ... nothing more. Peacekeepers and defenders of the law ... under attack ... “Why?”

A huge stone door turned silently on it’s axis with the slight touch of the Captain’s hand. For a second, his head turned to the side, his shoulders slumping, at the sight within the banquet hall. The head glaring down at him from atop the fountain belonged to his nest mate ... his brother ... the Governor General of all the outlaying territories.

Bodies of those who had graced the elegant dining table, along with food preparers and wait staff, were stacked neatly along the side of the room ... all, that is except for the decapitated body of the Captain’s brother. There was no food on the table, no flowers ... though the huge vases that would have held them, were there. Not a scrap ... a crumb ... nothing to stand as evidence that a meal had been in progress.

“Captain,” a voice called from the doorway to the kitchen, “you’re not going to believe this.” Swiftly the Captain crossed the room to peer into the room. It was completely devoid of food stuffs. The trash cans had been up-ended across the floor, picked clean of peels, rinds and any other discarded food. Refrigerator and freezer doors stood gaping open ... completely empty.

A low whistle brought the Captain back to the banquet hall. Two of his soldiers flanked a window, pointing out to the distant field. A huge creature, with a large bulbous head, two spindly legs and four stick-like arms, had just yanked the head off a corpse, tossing it away. Then it turned the body upside down in the air and was drinking the blood that flowed from the severed neck.

“Chindi!” Those demons that looked upon everything as a food source! In fascinated horror, the Captain watched as the devil started eating the body, clothes and all. Grabbing a weapon from one of the soldiers, he raised it to his shoulder, aimed and fired. With a satisfied snarl, he watched the chest of the Chindi explode.

Almost instantly, from every direction, waves of horrifically bright light bombarded the rooms of the fortress. Slowly, all those who had seen the light sank to the floor, their electrical brain circuitry disrupted. They were dead before their bodies had completed their downward fall. Once again, all was silent.

To Be Continued....