THUNDERBIRDS
BY JAI
Shrieking, its cry cracks the wind and splits the sky. With a whiplash wing — sweep once, twice, and then again, she gains a hundred feet or more with confident ease. “Damn that’s a big bird,” the miserly old man speaks. “The biggest man, you got no clue!” the kid awes. Thunder shudders the foundations of the mountain, lightning ignites the surface of the seas, a million midnight fires in a single minute. Another keening siren from sharpened beak and piqued tongue, their ears bleed at its beckon.
WAH-WHOOSH-WAH WHOOSH-WAH-WHOOSH, and it is upon its intended prey. Faster than a speeding train, even faster than the doomed aero plane. As fire and thunder havoc together with hail the size of bowling balls, knocking people like pins in strikes and spares, their crushed melancholy issues from dead-eye stares.
KAH-REEK-KA-POW, an engine and its fuel explode, as the Thunderbird rips open its prey. Intelligent beyond measure, removing all possible escape. SKAH-REECH-KA-BOOM, the second engine ignites in visceral explosive display.
“Oh shit, they're done for, no hope, no hope!” the wiry old veteran declares. “Duh, man where you been at all these years Pops?” from the kid. Another mind-splintering screech lets out as sure sustenance is attained. The tail section deftly removed, a well-practiced surgery which ensures the harvest is not burned beyond its usefulness.
“Oh man I can't watch this again,” the hunched old man intones, unable to look away as mind boggles with such surreal action. “Yeah man, the chickens come home to roost ain’t she?” from a wisdom the kid should not have.
A mile-long reaching, screeching, window-shattering caw roils out at the Thunderbirds victory, bringing home the cherry-red, goo-filled, food tube for its brood. A clutch of three that the impromptu science researchers old and new, have been observing for the past weeks, hidden as if that were possible, from the deadly terror which clearly cares nothing for the earthbound scuttling things below. They are tasked to learn and to share all they can, about the end of the worlds and the horrors of the air. In an epoch where reality has gone mad and the dominion of man is but an old wives’ tale, one question remains unanswered. Is calamity the result of the Thunderbird or is the Thunderbird a result of calamity?
“Men will never fly again,” the old geezer laments while the young apprentice clears her throat and hastily exclaims, “Why would they want to?” | JM