No Escape

Below you will find my 100-word (actually, 99-word) response to this week's Flash Friday Fiction, brought to us as usual by MadisonWoods. You can visit her site and read all the other stories at http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/flash-fiction/pathways/

No Escape

We call them “wasps”. This is because of the low buzz that drones from their bodies, but they are much worse than an irritating insect. When they sting, they almost always destroy more than one house or car. They circle endlessly over our mud-walled huts, using electronic and infrared devices to seek out those whom someone has identified as a “terrorist” for small sums of silver. If we use the old pathways through the forest, we can sometimes travel without detection, but that is getting harder to do. No one is safe. How can we fight a non-human enemy.

The Heist

This week's 100-word Friday Fictioneer prompt can be found at
http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/flash-fiction/vertigo/

The Heist

Sirens wailed in pursuit as he raced through the streets, tires screaming in protest at his haste because he had never expected Agents to be waiting for him, but it didn’t take long to lose them and soon he pulled into The Park and, snatching the precious valise and slinging it over his shoulder, he leapt from the car and sprinted to the ball field searching for the rope ladder he knew was waiting to take him away, but when he finally reached the hatch his heart stopped because something was horribly wrong.

This wasn't the MetLife blimp he had ordered!

Desolation

http://madisonwoods.wordpress.com/flash-fiction/desolation/
This week's 100-word Friday Flash Fiction
Photo credit belongs to Douglas McIlroy
(Actually, I wrote two this week, and both are one hundred words ... I guess I liked the prompt)

In The Lab

He straightened his tie, brushing stray wisps of fluff from his lab coat. He hated the fact he always had to tinker with the models at the last minute to make them work correctly. Damn! Someday, Federation funding would be adequate so he could do things right, instead of improvising. But there was no more time for whining. They were here, silently filing into the Observation Quarters. He cleared his throat against the deafening silence. "Gentlemen. We believe this is how tectonics work on this Blue Planet." He pressed the small button on his console, and gears began to grind.

Omens

Perhaps they should have heeded the omen on the desolate mountain pass before descending into the land of whiteskins. Altan shivered at the quiet. It was wrong. Their ponies shied at a rattling wind as they rode through fields grown wild from neglect. Shriveled fruit hung from branches. No tracks or prints marked the unkempt road. They crossed an empty bridge, coming upon clusters of wooden huts. No fires. No lights. The dark land was empty. Then, the crumbling ruins of a village. Human bones littered the ground near the largest stone building.

They must have come here to die.