Desperate battle in the forsaken world

Ras at Tin,Alexandria.

Raza straightened his crisp UN peacekeeping uniform one last time as he approached the cafe where he was to meet Alessa. A small boutique florist caught his eye and he paused, eyeing the colorful array of blooms. An elderly woman tended to the flowers with a warm smile.

"A dozen red roses, please," Raza requested in his most charming voice. The old florist gave him a knowing look as she gathered the velvety stems.

"For someone special, I take it?" she inquired with a sly grin. Raza felt his cheeks flush slightly.

"You could say that," he replied, trying to feign nonchalance. "Actually, do you perhaps have a flower or two that conveys 'You're so beautiful it makes me nervous and forget how to speak properly?'"

The florist chuckled heartily. "I think these roses will get the point across just fine, young man."

Raza thanked her and made his way to the cafe, roses in hand, heart pounding. He spotted Alessa at a patio table, her raven hair shining in the sunlight. She rose with a radiant smile as he approached. 'Damnit, I really should double my sun screen getting near her. Her shine raised the temperature double. Or is it my nervousness making me sweat.'

"Dr. Mirhad," Raza managed, extending the roses. "For you, my..."

He trailed off, his brain failing him as he was enveloped in her beauty and the floral scent. Alessa quirked one perfectly arched eyebrow in amusement.

"Your what, Captain?" she prompted teasingly.

Raza scrambled for his wits. "My...my Bedouin princess? No, no that's no good. You're more like a sphinx - gorgeous yet mysterious, guarding secrets of the ages."

Alessa laughed delightfully. "Well, you can certainly try to unravel my mysteries over coffee."

They sat, and Raza worked up his confidence. "You know Alessa, I've been stationed all around the world - from the scorching deserts to the frostbitten tundra. Yet never have I encountered a mirage quite as dazzling as you."

"Is that so?" She gave him a playful look over the rim of her cup. "Well, you'd better be careful not to get lost in this 'mirage' then."

"On the contrary," Raza grinned roguishly. "I very much intend to become hopelessly, deliriously lost in you."

Alessa's musical laughter rang out again at his shameless flirting. Raza beamed, emboldened by her receptiveness. He knew he had to seize this moment.

"Alessa...there is something I must confess..."

...........

The cave's darkness seemed to swallow Captain Raza's unit whole as they pressed deeper, hunted by the unnatural hybrid creatures that had been terrorizing them. The night vision kept their sight sharp, but did nothing to prepare them for the nightmarish forms lurking ahead.

A blood-curdling screech echoed through the cavern as the first twisted abomination lunged - part human, part bear, all cruel hunger and rage. Raza's troops opened fire without hesitation, but the heavy gunfire seemed to barely slow the creature. It smashed through their ranks, ripping one man apart with ease.

"Fall back! Focus fire on the joints and skulls!" Raza barked, squeezing the trigger of his M4 in controlled bursts. Captain Loman hurled a grenade, the blast briefly illuminating the horror - a muscular torso topped by the snarling, deformed visage of a grizzly, arms ending in hooked claws slick with blood.

More shapes began emerging from the gloom, each one more grotesque than the last. The soldiers moved as one cohesive unit, concentrating fire on each target. Joma emptied an entire magazine into the skull of a jackal-headed beast, its jaws still gnashing until the back of its head was pulverized.

Bodies were thrashing everywhere in the chaos. Something slashed Captain Loman across the back, his body armor barely holding. He spun and fired until the feathered monstrosity fell. A ghastly, half-formed goat monster barreled through, goring three soldiers on its twisted horns before Raza put it down in a hail of high caliber rounds. Jaya, Patt and Chong meet their ends in front of him. His fellow countryman is doing an international duty that does not even relate to their country and meet their end. Is there any worth in it? Who knows where they are, is it far from home? Are they even on Earth? Or is this hell? It sure looks like hell if you consider the monstrous beings they are fighting.

"IN THE NAME OF GOD THE ALMIGHTY, I SEEK YOUR PROTECTION FROM EVIL AND HARM!!" Loman screams his lungs out and calls upon God to help them in their endeavor.

Shadows upon shadows mauling the member of the troop. From every flash of gunshot Reza saw one by one his men fall to the monsters. Each flash and each life forfeited. He can't even tell from the scream of agony or the roar of beasts anymore since everything seems too horrible to process. His brain almost went into save mode and only his instinctual reaction moved his pained muscle pointing the barrel of his weapon toward anything non human that moved. Miraculously aim sharply where it hurts the most.

Really Loman? Will God send help to us just because you scream desperately for His help? Will an angel suddenly descend from heaven and save us? Reza doesn't even know why this disobedient and blasphemy taught appear even in this time or crisis. He is dead sure that he can't even remember his name right now due to how fast his brain has to overclocked to process and act to survive.

The cavern reeked of death, the cloying stench of spilled blood and torn flesh overwhelming. Raza's entire vision had devolved into a hellish blur of snapping jaws, slashing claws, and the agonized screams of his men being butchered by the unnatural hybrids.

He pulled the trigger of his assault rifle again and again until it clicked empty, the hulking tiger-beast barely flinching from the impacts across its mutated hide. Dropping the useless weapon, Raza drew his desert eagle sidearm as the creature's gaping maw descended.

'This is it. I knew it. This is my end. Goodbye world and hello death' That would be Reza's entry in his current tweeter post about his subconscious mind microblogging his final moment in this world.

White-hot pain lanced through him as the hybrid's fangs punched into his shoulder, the force of its bite nearly ripping his arm from its socket. Raza howled, veins bulging, as he jammed the barrel of the Desert Eagle up under the creature's jaw and squeezed the trigger.

"GYAAAAAAAAAAAA!" His scream emptied his lung and his finger emptied the gun.

Thunder crashed through the confined space as heavy rounds detonated in a sequence of wet, pulpy blasts within the hybrid's skull. Raza could feel shards of bone and cerebral matter raining down as he emptied the magazine. The monster's crazed yellow eyes finally dimmed, its immense weight crashing down and pinning Raza as the life fled its ruined body.

He could feel jagged bone protrusions grating against his back as he feebly shoved the hybrid's twitching corpse away. Fire coursed through every nerve, agony radiating from the ravaged ruin of his legs - chewed down to bloody stumps of mangled meat and shattered bone.

'I swear I saw soul flew out the abomination corpse' Raza almost lost his sanity as his brain kept on making useless remarks here and there.

"URRGGG, LOO.."

Raza tried to call out to Loman but only a wet, gurgling rattle escaped his blood-flecked lips. He could taste his own mortality flooding his mouth, each feeble breath feeling like shards of glass scoring his lungs.

Through the crescendo of ringing in his ears, he heard Loman's hoarse shouts as another horror bore down on him - a misshapen amalgam of human and bison. Its spiral horns grazed past Loman's head as he desperately backpedaled, drove the bayonet of his rifle into the soft hollow of its malformed eye socket.

An unholy bleating screech tore through the cavern, reverberating in Raza's very bones, as the blinded creature reared back. Loman kept firing, again and again, until the abomination finally collapsed in a twitching, leaking heap atop the piled corpses of their former brothers.

Deafening silence smothered the chamber once more, thick and suffocating.

Loman limped over, boots squelching through runnels of viscera, and fell to his knees beside Raza. His face was a mask of anguish as he saw the extent of his friend's horrific wounds. Ragged strips of flesh hung in tatters around Raza's ruined legs, exposing pale gleams of bone amidst the ruin.

"Oh god...oh god Raza, just hang on..." Loman rasped hoarsely, voice trembling. He ripped a compression bandage from his medkit and attempted to stem the pulsing flow of Raza's lifeblood.

Raza could only lie there, teeth gritted against the crescendos of pain crashing through him. He reached up with a feeble, shaking hand to grip Loman's wrist, giving him a slight nod and facsimile of a pained smile. 

'I bet my smile look great right now' Raza sanity taking a head dived into the abyss again.

They had survived this waking nightmare against all odds, emerging as the sole survivors of their unit. Raza could only hope the evac team would reach them in time...but he knew its prospects were grim. Hell, its not even possible. They don't even know what hellhole they were in. 

"Just...hang in there, brother," Loman murmured, voice thick. "We're gonna get out of this hellhole..." Raza shakes his head while giving his best smile to his brother. So much thing to say but he can't even breathe correctly. Let alone his brains could even work right now. His thoughts were either visualizing People wearing plushies costume dancing to the rainbows or Rick Rolls meme plays in repeat.

"Say after me Raza, I pledge my faith to God and his rightful messenger.. Say it goddamit..I PLEDGE MY FAITH TO GOD AND HIS…" Loman tries to save Raza's faith and send him toward the grace of God.

The words rang hollow, even to his own ears. But it was all he could offer his dying friend amidst the surrounding visions of splayed viscera and shattered bodies. For now, all they could do was endure...and pray the nightmare was finally over.