York:

A Fight for survival:

Chapter two

Lieutenant Ralph Harris awoke, coughing. He sat up and coughed into his hand. He opened his eyes, for the first time hearing the staccato bursts of gunfire from all around. He felt grubby and ached all over. He got up and, when he saw the collapsed attic around him, he remembered what had happened. His Hawk had punched a hole in this attic, started to flip over onto the other side of the house and dropped Harris into the hole. Around him there were the remains of the house, spread across the road. Harris pushed a few bricks and roof tiles off of himself and started to pick himself up. As his arms braced him to get up a pain shot up from his hand and he fell back down.

Harris examined the hand, he couldn't move his two small fingers, his pinkie and ring. He got up, careful not to put any pressure on it and examined his left hand again, like a doctor, probing where it hurt. He found that there were three breaks, two in the bone leading up his palm to the pinkie and one in the actual ring finger. He considered himself lucky, the whole house had collapsed around him yet he had escaped barely hurt, the remains of the roof protecting him from any falling debris. A breeze picked up and his back suddenly burnt with pain. Harris fell back to his knees and sucked in a deep breath. Harris clenched his teeth together and pulled his shirt and jacket off. Or at east what remained of them.

Both were torn to shred at the back and the shirt had blood all around the torn fabric. Harris felt a lump in his throat, he must have been dragged along the rough floor and road, his back must be torn to shreds like his shirt and jacket. Thank God he had worn the jacket, Harris thought, without it his back would have been even worse. Harris limped out of the attic, he had to find someone, anyone to help him. The whole city looked deserted, where was everyone. York must have already been taken he thought, God whoever they were fighting must have gotten the jump on everyone for York to have been taken and for the states not even know about it. A flicker of doubt crossed his mind, unless the government had known. No, he thought, it was suicide landing into enemy held territory without artillery support, the Brits must have been here, everyone knew that we were to meet up with them. Then why had the soldiers fast roped in, Harris wondered. Oh shut up Harris thought, it doesn't matter now, all I have to do is find some of our men and I'll be fine.

Harris looked around, his eyes tearing at the pain from his back, he needed a weapon, just in case. He had a magnum in the Hawk, but where's the Hawk now. He wiped his eyes and stumbled towards a dead enemy soldier, one of his arms was taken off. When Harris got closer he saw that the head was almost taken off and that it was a huge man, with strange skin, it must be some sort of new camouflage technology, I mean did you see that spider-tank. He looked at his face and staggered back, his arms going up into an instinctive defensive posture. It was no man, it was some sort of beastly creature. Harris took a breath, walked slowly back up to the thing and seized it's gun. He awkwardly reversed it on it and forced himself to look at the thing. It had six golden eyes and a huge mouth which gaped open revealing all of the teeth. Its head was bigger then a normal mans and shaped more oblong. Harris bent down and touched the creature and found that it's skin was leathery, rough and hard and the thing was hot. Harris limped away from the creature and examined the gun. It had wires coming out of it and there were two holes on the end of it. There were also two triggers.

Harris looked around and started limping down a smaller street, towards the gunfire.