The Valley of the Black Pig By Scott Crowder Published by r[E]volution Press at Smashwords Contents copyright © 2011 Scott Crowder / r[E]volution Press All rights reserved. Any reproduction, sale, or commercial use of this book without express written permission of the author is strictly forbidden. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are inventions of the author. Any resemblance to actual events or people, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover image was found on the internet and I make no claim of ownership to it. If it’s yours and you’d like it removed, please contact me at zombieapocalypse [at] earthlink [dot] net. Smashwords Edition License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work. The Valley of the Black Pig Scott Crowder The sniper pulls the synthetic stock of his rifle close to his cheek and sets his crosshairs on the head of the Iraqi man with the little girl on his shoulders. It’ll have to be a headshot. A wounding shot may still give the man time to detonate his explosives, and a shot to his torso might set off the bomb anyway. The sniper will kill the little girl too with this headshot; he knows this as surely as he knows why whippoorwills cry in the dark: they cry because they can. There is no more time, though; he cannot hesitate and he cannot let the girl pull any harder on his heartstrings than she already has. Not like he did with the little boy. He breathes in deeply, lets the breath out gently and squeezes the trigger. The Iraqi crumples almost serenely to the ground as the .338 Lapua Magnum round splits his head in two. The little girl is sent flying in a horrible cartwheel, blood spraying in the arc of her tumble. The sniper lost his ear plugs to the concussion of the first bomb, but his ears are still ringing from the gunshot, and he doesn’t hear her scream. * * * Even before the smoke from the first insurgent’s bomb has cleared, even before its thunder has left his head, he straightens the chair from which he’d been blasted and sits back down in it amid the wreckage of the abandoned house. Shame flushes his cheeks scarlet; a moment ago he’d seen, through the Leupold scope on his rifle, the tell-tale signs of a bomb beneath a man’s dishdasha; curling wires pushing at the white fabric of the ankle-length garment from beneath, the blocky outlines of the explosives themselves. He’d also seen a child sitting on the insurgent’s shoulders, though, and he’d hesitated because of it. He’d let the little boy’s dirty face give him pause, just time enough for the insurgent to detonate the bomb, and now God alone knew how many people lay dead outside in the courtyard. The boy, it seemed, had done his job. Subhan'Allah. Glorious, indeed, is Allah. Once seated in the chair again, he pulls the butt of the M24 sniper rifle close against his shoulder. He peers through the scope out the empty window casing at the people running in panic outside, already beginning to dig through rubble for loved ones. The wailing of the bereaved cuts cleanly through the smoke. Soon he sees the pixilated black and blue uniforms of Iraqi police as they make their way into the courtyard. As the smoke drifts away into the alleys of Baghdad, other people willing to help look for survivors drift in. Now is the time to be most vigilant, the sniper knows. The first bomb was detonated to cause damage, sure, but also to draw more people to the scene. Another suicide bomber may be lurking nearby, waiting to set off his bomb, as well. The children are there, of course, to tug at heartstrings, riding on shoulders, in the backseats of cars rigged with explosives; sacrificed to throw Coalition forces off guard, and at the thought of dead children the sniper thinks of his own daughter, dead these last two years, sacrificed to satisfy leukemia’s hunger. Why?, Carrie had asked in those last few days before her death, sick and drained in her hospital bed, listening at her window to a whippoorwill cry in the darkness of an Alabama morning. Why does he cry like that, Daddy? He hadn’t answered her then because the answer had eluded him, and his wife Claire had glared at him ferociously, as if his ignorance was a physical blow aimed at her and her daughter both. Claire had left him soon after Carrie’s passing, leaving behind everything but some clothes and memories, keeping nothing but her silence. He’d figured it out since then, had come up with the answer his daughter had asked him for. The whippoorwill cries, he might tell his little girl if he could go back and do it again, because he can. By now, of course, the answer doesn’t do him a goddamn bit of good. The sniper peers through the Leupold scope at the people beginning to fill the courtyard, and as he moves the barrel of the gun around slowly he catches a glimpse of another man with a child on his shoulders, a girl this time. The same blocky outlines of a poorly constructed bomb beneath his dishdasha, the same look of zealous determination on his face. The sniper fixes his crosshairs on the bridge of the Iraqi’s nose and glances for one instant at the face of the little girl he is almost certainly about to kill. Allahu akbar, he thinks in her language. Praise be to God. Praise be to God that heartstrings, these days, are a hell of a lot harder to pull than triggers.