“Hurry up, you useless cretin,” snarled the Guv’nor.

“I’m trying,” said Joel, still carrying his brother over his shoulder.

As he had been for the majority of the march, the Guv’nor fired shots at Joel’s feet to try and speed him up. Again, Joel stumbled and fell to the floor in a heap with Gaz. In front of him he could barely see the rest of his squadron, so much had carrying Gaz hindered him. This time however, there was a groan.

“Thank God!” exclaimed Joel. “Are you ok?”

“Arghammmnm,” said Gaz. That was the best he could manage.

“Can you stand up? Are you hurt?”

Gaz tried to push himself to his feet, and with a bit of help from Joel he managed to keep his balance.

“Come on you idiots!” shouted the Guv’nor. “MARCH!”

Gaz stumbled forward, face first in the dust.

“We’re coming,” said Joel. “Just give us a minute and we’ll catch up.”

The Guv’nor was clearly irritated by the fact that Gaz had woken up. “Fine. But if you haven’t caught us up in twenty minutes, I’m coming back to shoot you.”

Joel knew they wouldn’t have caught up by then, but it was quite probable he’d have shot them by then anyway. And he was glad that the Guv’nor was no longer marching with them, they’d struggle to keep up with him in the best of health. He watched as the Guv’nor strode out into the distance, he’d have caught the troops up in no time at all.

“Gaz, are you ok?” Joel helped the stricken Gaz into a sitting position. Gaz nodded.

“I’ll live.”

Joel grabbed a bottle of water from his backpack, and Gaz drank from it with relish. A few seconds later he could speak normally once more.

“Yeah I’m fine. My head is killing me though.”

“I’m not surprised, that Igor kicked it hard.”

“I’m a bit dizzy, I must be concussed.”

They both knew it could have been far worse, so they weren’t too upset.

“Shall we try and catch them up?” Joel asked. “Or try and run away?”

“I’m not sure. What’s the crack?

“Well, if we try to catch them up, we might die. If we fail to escape, we will die.”

“I’m happy with either. We’ll continue to the top of that incline, and decide when we can see where we are.”

Joel nodded, it was a sensible idea. He hadn’t seen anywhere of interest so far, no towns, no woods, no nothing. It was just a big dusty expanse, nowhere to run to.

They reached the top of the little hill, and gasped. In the valley below they caught their first glance of the Ildor.

It didn’t look like much. It was probably about half the size of a man, pink and fluffy. It could probably have blended in quite well in a giant’s marshmallow shop, had it not been for the red eyes, huge fangs and razor-sharp claws on the end of every limb. The fact that it moved twice as quickly as Joel and Gaz could even see was the killer. Literally. It must have taken mere minutes for the 400 hundred members of their troop to die, whether being ripped to shreds by the almost comically bounding Ildor, or shot to death by a comrade’s inaccurate laser beam.

All of a sudden, Gaz was very glad that Igor had kicked him in the face.