Chapter 9: A God of Chaos


"Life is going forth; death is returning home."

Lao-Tzu

Nick is held within the large tank as they battle more of the scorpions. A god must make a decision that will have grave consequences for our hero.


Western Desert 1942

Nick was shoved down next to the small fennec fox in the gray uniform near the feet of one of the humans. The inside of the tank was tight, but from the way the smaller fox was gaping, Nick figured it was far more advanced than the fennec fox had ever seen before. The tank's commander sat higher up on a platform where he could see out of a set of small slat windows, Nick knew his name was Sam. Below him was a human known as Terry and the human who was now holding the gun towards him was known simply as Matterson. Leroy must have been the driver, for he slipped into a separate small almost prone area of the tank.

The sounds of tiny legs scrapped outside as the small red scorpions engulfed the tank. After a short while, it became quiet. "Crank her up and let's get out of here!" Sam called into his helmet's intercom.

"Which way boss?" Terry asked as the tank began to rumble through the sand and stones.

The human above gave out a small curse as he peered around. Finally, he gave a curse as he carefully opened the hatch and after seeing it was scorpion free, he pulled himself up so he could better look around. "There are some trucks to the west of us!" he called out. "They don't seem to be moving but are sitting idle. Are those friends of yours Hans?"

The small fennec fox's name really wasn't Hans, but since none of the humans could pronounce his true name, they had nicknamed him that instead. "That would be our supply column," the small fox grudgingly answered.

"Then we go east!" the commander called out. Sam peered through his binoculars at the vehicles and then he saw something strange. There was a truck turned over in the sand and beside it looked like several red-stained white rocks. Overhead in the clear blue sky, vultures circled as if looking for something to eat and yet afraid to land. "Cancel that Leroy, we turn west." Even as he spoke, he loaded the large machine gun next to him with a belt of rounds and pulled back the bolt. "Head us towards those trucks."

"It might be a trap!" Leroy called back.

"Matterson, get that little guy up here!" Sam ordered. The human picked up the small fox and handed him to the tank's commander who set him on top of the turret. "How many soldiers are in this column?"

"About two hundred, why?"

"Why don't we see any of them around here, are they all as little as you are?"

"No, they should…" the fennec fox's answer trailed off as they drew closer to the overturned truck. "By all that is sacred, those are not stones but bones! They have stripped them clean of their fur and flesh."

More and more blood-stained bones appeared around the trucks and they could see the tracks left by the horde of scorpions that had passed by earlier. "They ate them alive," Sam softly said.

Two tanks similar to the ones who they had destroyed earlier were sitting on the road not moving with their gun aimed the wrong direction. "Our tanks are not sealed as well as this one," Hans sadly observed. "They must have gotten inside."

"Hey boss!" a call came over the intercom from Leroy. "Can the little guy tell us if their tanks use gas or diesel?"

Hans overheard the question and his large ears flicked. "We use petrol, why?"

"Gas," Sam relayed the answer. "Why?"

"We're burning up fuel and have only less than half of a tank left, you know how this beast loves to drink?" Leroy answered. "We can refill from one of those tankers."

"You think the fuel quality is good enough?" Sam called back.

"This puppy was made to drink anything you can feed her, even kerosene if needed," Leroy answered. "So whatever they are using, we should be able to burn it."

There was a strange sound, an odd rumbling or shuffling coming from beyond the empty trucks and something began moving in the sands behind the vehicles. A huge red scorpion crawled out of a pit it had dug and the unworldly beast was at least twice the size of the tank. "Christ, we've found the mother of all those crawling bastards!" Sam yelled.

The creature reared up with its pinchers clicking even as another horde of the small red scorpions billowed out from the pit below. Sam swung the large machine gun around and fired a burst into the large scorpion, which seemed to just shrug off the fifty caliber rounds. "Matterson, HEAT round! We need to drop whatever the hell that is!" he cried out.

"We already have a sabot round in the breach!" Terry radioed back.

"Just fire damn it!" the tank commander desperately yelled.

Nick felt the tank shake as its powerful cannon roared. "Holy shit!" Terry called out. "It punched a hole straight through that thing's head!" The spent casing fell to the floor under the fox.

On top of the turret, Hans watched as the solid depleted uranium armor round, nicknamed by the American tank crews as the "Silver Bullet", hit the large scorpion between its beady black eyes and he could momentary see though it before a green goo began to flow from the wound. The creature gave a scream as it shook and thrashed in pain. "Reload, HEAT round!" Sam commanded from next to him.

Matterson shoved Nick further down onto the bottom of the tank and ignored the fox's yipping when he stepped on the reddish-orange tail as he grabbed the next round from its cradle. He shoved the new round into the gun, before slamming the breach closed. "Loaded and locked!"

In its blind pain, the huge creature rose up and the HEAT round caught it in the chest, it burst into a green shower of the green thick goo when the round detonated. Even as it died, its progeny scurried across the sands and under the trucks between them and the tank. Sam brought his gun down and riddled the two fuel trucks with round after round, puncturing the tanks with the large bullets before the tracer rounds caught the spewing fuel ablaze. The liquidy flames spilled down upon the small scorpions and they died engulfed in a fiery infernal.

They salvaged what fuel they could from the vehicles, strapping jerry cans onto the tank's baskets. Within a few hours, the tank rumbled down the broken stone road southward and away from the scorpions of death. It was late afternoon when they found shelter near an old well, standing above it were the ruined remains of what appeared to be an ancient temple upon a ridge overlooking the small depression. "That is Set's Well," Hans said. "The water is both clean and sweet. You can send a crewmammal to watch the desert for miles around from the walls of the old temple."

"Terry, take us up the ridge, behind that old wall. I don't want to get caught down here," Sam commanded. He looked over towards two burned-out trucks and a few plies of rocks marking makeshift graves nearby. "What happened here?" he asked Hans.

"A skirmish between our soldiers and some of the allied raiders, nothing major," the small fox sighed. "Still enough have died for what amounts to nothing but another chunk of the desert. Animals have warred over this water for centuries, those warriors are now gone or are buried in the nearby sands but this well still remains."

The tank parked near the ruins and they pulled camouflaged netting over it to conceal it more from both the ground and air, the sun was setting in the west. "No fire, no lights," Sam commanded as he dug into a box. "MRE's for dinner boys."

Terry held up two olive drab green packets as he turned to the foxes. "You two can share an MRE, which do you want, the pork and rice or the meatballs?" he asked.

Nick looked at the smaller fox in confusion and then back towards the human before he asked. "First, what is an MRE and second, what is pork?"

"Meal Ready to Eat," Terry answered. "Each comes with an entrée, dessert, drink powder, and all sorts of goodies. They really aren't that bad, but they ain't your momma's home cooking. As for pork, it's meat from a pig. Don't tell me you've never had BBQ before?"

"You eat pigs?" the small fox exclaimed. His ears dropped down his back and he stood staring at the human in disbelief. "To eat the flesh of another animal is a sin against the gods! I have friends who are pigs!"

"Simmer down fox," Sam said as he tore his packet open. "Where we come from pigs are not so smart nor can they talk, they are just food."

"You don't eat foxes…do you?" Nick stammered out.

"No, but I did try to shoot a thieving fox trying to steal chickens back at the farm," Leroy laughed. "Missed him twice and he got away." Both foxes stared at him in disbelief.

"You eat fish?" Sam cut in. "Here is a packet with some tuna casserole. You really don't want the meatballs, trust me on that one."

Nick and Hans shared the packet of food, although they swapped the chocolate nut cake with Leroy for his applesauce. Both the foxes felt the food was too salty and the drink mix didn't taste anything like they would have called orange flavored. "This does taste better than the black bread and potato cricket stew we normally get in the field," Hans admitted.

After they finished their meal, Sam tossed them a blanket. "We're sleeping by the tank and if you two want to run off into the desert in the middle of the dark, feel free. I don't want to waste time or sleep keeping up with either or you, the war going on around here isn't our war."

Terry came and sat next to them. "Nick you said you were at Woodstock," he cautiously asked. "That can't be the Woodstock in 1969, foxes don't live more than five or so years and that was twenty years ago…at least where we come from."

Nick saw Sam approach and look down at them. "Look I was traveling with a friend and we got caught in some really weird time stuff and we landed in a place full of your kind," the fox answered. "I understood it was Woodstock, we had a similar event in my reality called Wolfstock, it also had the music and the drugs. As for my age, I'm thirty-three."

"Then my father wasn't nuts," Terry chuckled. "He said he came across a talking police fox who told him to get his act together and do something with his life."

"That must have been me," Nick admitted with a smile. "I kind of snapped at him in a rather verbal manner."

"He did what you said and started a small business," the human sighed. "He had a good life before the early Alzheimer's got him."

"What's Alzheimer's?" Nick asked.

"You slowly forget everything, including who you are and everyone you love," Terry sadly answered. "It's a sad way to live and one day die."

"The sun is now down so get some sleep," Sam ordered. "Terry, you take over the next shift from Leroy."

Just past two in the morning, the stars were shining above the well and the moon's light illuminated the darkness almost as if it was daylight. The desert god Set stared at the tank before him and the strange creatures that slept in its shadow. It was a machine of war unlike any he had encountered in all the centuries of walking these sands, but then again so were those scorpions.

The snake god walked past the sleeping creatures and saw two foxes huddled under a thin blanket. "Your kind I know," he hissed. His forked tongue tasted the scents around the two sleeping foxes. "You are a child of the desert," he said to the smaller fox. "But as for you, my little reddish-orange friend, you smell like something else. There is the faint smell of a rabbit on you and something more powerful."

Set drew back in surprise at what he smelled and the god of chaos gave a grim smile. "Anubis!" he called out towards the heavens. "Good cousin, come and see what I have found!"

Terry looked around in a start, he had been watching the desert with a pair of infrared binoculars and could have sworn he heard a faint voice, but there was no one around. Clutching his assault carbine tighter, he continued his sentry duties.

Far away in another time and space, the jackal god tilted his head when he heard his cousin's voice. Stepping away from the other animal gods, who were still arguing how to stop the new god of time, he walked away into the jungle to disappear. Moments later he reappeared in the ruins of one of his old temples, where he saw a large weapon of war parked.

"Ah, there you are, cousin!" Set hissed out with a sarcastic tone. "Look who I have found!" the serpent called out as the god stood above a slumbering red fox. "Smell him!"

"This better not be another one of your jokes!" the god of death snapped as he leaned forward and sniffed. The fox smelled like the rabbit that the false god Metron had arrived with and also that of the new god. Turning to the serpent god, he asked, "Could this be his father?"

"Perhaps, who truly knows?"

"Then we must take him to the other gods!"

"How, we don't have the power to transport him though reality?" Set protested and then he gave a sinister smile. "At least when he is in this form we can't."

"But his soul can travel," Anubis added. "He must die in this form."

"What is a mortal's body but a shell for its true self?" Set asked. "Upon his death, he will cast off this fleshy shell."

Anubis pondered what his cousin had said before he finally agreed with the serpent god. He drew his sickled shaped sword.

"Wait, cousin!" Set protested as he waved towards the ground. "Let me have some of the fun." A snake crawled from under a nearby rock and slithered across the rubble-strewn ground towards Nick's sleeping body. Raising its head, the deadly asp prepared to strike the slumbering fox with it poisonous fangs.