Guardian - Prologue

Little time left now, I thought.
I heeded no warning I had been given. I didn’t care. They couldn’t hurt me. Not really. So I would take their bullets and their fire, and turn it into something positive. It kept me human. Well, as human as someone like me could be.
The explosions were audible then. Loud roars and booming reverberations all down the bridge of the small ship were felt even through the swaying of the current. Gunfire painting the skies among the smoke and overcast clouds shone an ominous purple like the swelling of a bruise. It was all too easy. I knew exactly what I would do. I would move in, separate, and have my way with my enemies. It was simple enough and implausible to think of failing.
The front man began to turn the door crank.
I sucked in the cool, briny air, filling my dormant lungs.
The crank began to spin wildly on its own.
The smell of war filled me to the brim, blood wafting in the air, practically visible to my eyes.
Everything stopped and fell silent, my comrade humans about me frozen in mid-stride. Faces of terror staring out to the destroyed beach where the cannons stood with smoke in a still coil barreling from the ends. Hundreds of men were cast about, dead and fighting, all in one big bowl.
The door fell open with a loud thud as it splashed through the shallow beach into the sand. Instantly a barrage of bullets pummeled our exposed front. Men shouted and screamed as the frontline was instantly obliterated, torn to shreds in seconds. The latter group including myself, charged over the dead and onto the beach.
The sand was squishy and soaked as thoroughly with blood as it was the sea. Every step sucked down my heavy boots with my rifle on my back still unloaded. I jogged behind the others then as an explosion wreaked havoc on them, paced myself.
Through it and out, no witnesses.
I leaped through the explosion, seeming to take minutes to dissipate, and landed in the trench on the other side, unscathed. I barreled through the five foot deep walkway, head down and gun in my right hand only. I waited patiently, knowing it would be enough to fulfill my hunger. This was just. My attack would be much quicker than bullets causing them shock then bleeding them dry.
I saw the first.
I heaved my rifle at him in a single swipe, the barrel puncturing through his chest with the sound of a shovel slicing through wet dirt. He fell and was passed as I continued to the other larger groups. I fell upon them, silently, and within the time they had to take a breath all were gone. I took this time to feed upon one, still trying to squirm away, lifting him off his feet and holding him to my face, his eyes wide with terror reflected my face.
I paused. A hesitating moment of anxiety. I had never seen myself this way before. As a monster. I knew what I was and who I wanted to be, but the two never seemed to collide. My face was gaunt, high jutting cheekbones stretched across a pale white face, smooth as marble with the most breathtaking features any human would die for. And I did. But it was how they were twisted into a fiercesome demonic scowl like those painted on centuries old canvas.
I took a deep breath of the man’s open wounds then took him.
I tossed him limply aside and climbed up the trench to the battle. All around me were the dead, the beach a deep scarlet with fleshy mounds I knew were bodies scattered about like heaps of trash. A low cliff of maybe twenty feet stood to the north, several ‘pillboxes’ I’d heard them called atop them. I saw the men within firing their machine guns in a constant drone. I spun around to face them and in one movement, with a flick, unsheathed my knife and sent it whistling through the air and into the man on the right. It sunk in with a thump just as he fell over the front and descended down the cliff face.
The explosions grew in consistency and the proximity of each round to the other grew smaller and smaller. They were becoming desperate.
A small platoon of my comrades moved so slowly it seemed across the beach firing at the men on the cliff. I saw past them, more and more of them swarming like ants crawling up the shoe of a toddler. I watched, unphased as the bullets ricocheted off of my stone chest with a zing.
I was too enthralled with this. This march of man. I saw them with emotion I had long forgotten them capable of. Stunned and silent I watched in awe. They moved quickly but still too slow for my liking, a constant pressure up the beach. When one fell another took his place, filling in the gaps like cement in a crack. Their fury and rage were tangible and hung in the air like the rank scent of death and fire. All around the destruction were flickering globs of inferno, dancing wildly in the cold wind.
They swept over the battlefield in an indefinite stride of victory, knowing the battle was won. I stopped down to find the body of someone too far destroyed to be recognized and ripped my dog tags from my neck. I stared at them, feeling their smooth cold surface. Too cold. I tossed them down beside the corpse and in the blink of an eye was atop the cliff, running far from this place to find somewhere I should exist.