Finish the Story Contest - WEEK #21

My long awaited return has thus arrived. This is such an awesome adventure to partake. I hope we find many more, who dare to get their ink flowing. Thank you to all involved in this adventure.

The Border

In the scant shadow of the guardhouse, a greenhorn Border Legionnaire was waiting for the end of his first watch shift, gasping for the heat.

Below him, there was the stretch of sandy desert that the XIX Floating Fortress patrolled incessantly, moving back and forth in the sky like a surreal and phlegmatic cetacean, with the low and incessant buzz of the managems that powered it.

Behind the line of Fortresses, the Lands of Man ideally began. In that marginal strip, there were meager pastures and stretches of scrubby bushes, attacked for miles and miles by a fine sand, like yellowish talcum powder, that made the desert gain extension every year.

"This year the wind has put so much sand down," the marshal told him, biting a gray mustache, one of the last days before the Duty Beginning ceremony. "And behind the sand, the Those arrive".

He was glad he no longer had just a stunner to defend him from the Those, like the guardians of the border in former times, before the Legions. Once, it was thought to direct the Those into reserves to prevent them from doing too much damage with their insatiable hunger, but then they started to run away, to strip the flesh off every head of cattle, to waste fields and orchards, to devour even the people... and more and more came from the desert.

He had been among the first in his draft class in combat and shooting exercises, but in his heart he was afraid of when he would found himself in front of a real That, and not an illusory image created by the trainers. It took him months to get used to the slouching and snappy movements of those lean and black illusions, all teeth, which he found horrifying.

During that first day of service, however, only an armored convoy had passed, transporting ordered and dull clusters of goleminers to the mysterious and vital mines of managems, on the other side of the desert. The Those did not find goleminers edible, luckily.

The Horn of Danger snatched him cruelly from his thoughts. Intruders in the fortress! How did they get in? How did they pass under our noses?

He grabbed the heavy terminator and ran down the spiral staircase, toward his team's collection point, his heart in his throat.

A scraping noise from a corridor to his right made him stop. Pointing the terminator in the dark, with a trembling grip, he shouted "Who goes there?!?"

The Those came out, completely different from the illusions of the trainers...

..........................
His eyes bulged as they adjusted to the darkness. The Those were half hunched and approaching closer. The scraping noise was their claws being dragged across the walls. He aimed the terminator at them, ready to pull the trigger.
He almost felt like he was in a state of shock. The Those were more humanlike, than what they had been told. They had the same body as him, but long oozing claws, and glowing orange eyes. Then he saw the tongue coming out of one.

Just as he started backing up, to give more distance, he'd heard screaming coming from his right. Then he saw flashes of light. He aimed his terminator at the Those and fired when they started running at him. He fired at will while half running backwards. Then he saw dozens of citizens running towards him. They were dropping like flies, and the Those ran to them and started devouring them. He watched in horror as the flesh were being pulled off. Some were still alive and screaming. Then he saw his fellow Legionnaires.

He gunned down the Those, while attempting to make his way to his team. "What the hell are you guys doing? Why are you chasing them into a trap?"

One of the other guards yelled, "If you want to keep these Those contained, you will help us. It is for mankind's own survival."

"This isn't right! This isn't right!" Then he aimed his terminator and started gunning down the Those. As he ran forward, a woman beckoned him to save her son. Just as a Those jumped at her, she pushed a little boy at him. He grabbed the boy and swung him onto his back. "Hold on to me tight!"

He ran, and gunned his way to the other end of the tunnel. He wished he could block out all the screams. Especially from the Those. They had a cat-like sound when they were torn to shreds by the terminator. Outside the opening, he spotted a hover jet. With all his might, he gave a mighty leap and grabbed it. Soon as he boarded it, he flew off to the ship, with the kid on his back. He reached around and pulled the boy off. But the kid grabbed tight to his chest, not wanted to let go.
"Little man, you are going to have to let loose of me so I can get us to safety." He sat the boy next to him, and flew off to...