A Dinosaur Is A Man's Best Friend:: "The Enemy Comes in Dream"

“This is who we are,” said the man in the bandana,

who stood next to him on the grassy hill. “And this, fellow paladin, is what we

do. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Williams watched as the steeples of a church

burned and collapsed, then focused on a woman carrying a child from the

wreckage.

The stranger continued: “Don’t look to us for the

method of carnage—fire is of the Other’s design. We

only use it as a means to an end. But watch now as I show you what will happen when

we descend upon your Barley—and what mercy to expect from us when we finally do.

And tell me if it would not be better to simply turn

around now, while you still can, and ignore the Call completely.”

Williams squinted through the smoke as a

motorcycle burst into view and bore down upon the woman, its headlight creating

a halo, its rider brandishing a sword. Then, before he could so much as cry out

a warning, the rider struck, beheading the woman in one fell swoop before

continuing on with a rumble and leaving the child abandoned in her arms.

And then Williams was

turning to the mysterious figure with the intent of killing him with his bare

hands, but froze when he saw that the man was no longer there: that he had been

replaced with something else, something about 9-feet-tall and covered with kinky

hair, with a goat’s head and six golden eyes, which vanished as he blinked—awakening

with a start—and heard Sheila say, with desperation in her voice: “Will, It’s

Ank. And he’s gone.”