The Heroes Of Palo Verde

I hear a phone buzz as I look up to see Blake frown at his phone. He stands up and walks out the door, jerking his head at me to follow. I stand up and follow. When we got outside the room he said in a dark whisper: “They found one.”

“Found what?” I ask, hoping it isn't what I think it is.

“A dragon.” He stated as his voice quavered. My stomach twisted, nobody has seen one in hundreds of years.

“Ones been spotted off the coast of San Diego, headed inland towards Phoenix,'' he stated in a weak tone.

“We need to get back to the chapter house now!”

I didn't question the command, I just started running for the jeep as Blake followed. We weren’t too far from where the dragon was headed and neither was the chapter house and a whole lot of trained soldiers who were trained for this purpose in mind. Although a dragon hadn't been seen in a hundred and fifty years we knew they were still out there, just waiting to attack and plunder the cities of the world. And that is just what this one had in mind, they have an eye for shiny things. We got to the car; I jumped in and Blake slammed on the gas. As the chapter house came into view I thought about all my brothers I had trained with; our time had come: we were going to fight a dragon, a giant fire breathing lizard. We pulled up to the briefing room and I opened the door to see a room full of my comrades, I walked over to an open chair and sat down.

“We have a target headed in our direction approximately 2 hours west of here. So we have about an hour and a half to prepare. This meeting is dismissed. Everyone to their stations,” he commanded.

Then the room was filled with the sound of chairs scraping on the floor as everyone got up, saluted, and marched out of the room. A group of nine other soldiers and I marched toward the wall around the camp where we would take watch. We watched for hours and nothing, until around 11:00pm the sky turned orange and the smell of smoke filled the air. The city was on fire!

“Fire, fire!” someone screamed.

The camp fell into what looked like chaos, men running in every direction

grabbing M4s, machine guns, and a few RPGs. Groups of men were loading into SUVs. I climbed in one myself and we raced toward the city right as the car in front of us was torn off the ground and lifted into the ember filled sky. We entered the city, and men poured out of the vehicles guns blazing. A dark shape streaked across the sky swooping down and landing right on top of the cars.

“Get out of here, Vipers, before I kill you all,” he growled, his voice shaking the ground.

“We're not going anywhere,” shouted the commander. Then the beast spit flames everywhere, men shrieked in pain as the dragon’s fire turned them to ashes. The remaining few fled for safety toward the museum behind us. As the dragon pursued, he smashed through the wall, but we were ready: we fired the RPGs in his direction and they exploded on impact. He roared with pain but didn’t stop, neither did we, we had a sniper on the upper terrace. The RPG rounds had knocked off some of his chest armor and then Blake took his shot, the beast roared and collapsed

“You win this time, Vipers, but there are more of us out there.” he growled with his dying breath, flames still spilling out of his mouth as he went limp. The survivors piled into the remaining vehicles. We would have a team come clean up the mess later. Many of my brothers had died that night, but they will be known as the heroes of Palo Verde.