Mafiascum.net

He'd been caught stealing food from the supply stores. There was only one punishment for that in a time of war. It was implicit treason and must be treated as such. They brought him before the marshal of law, and without hesitating, he drew his finger across his throat in a slow gesture of mercy.

Mercy? Yes, mercy. To be killed was a small price to pay for stealing food in times like these.

Usually, they would quarantined him to a building in Lansdown's outskirts, but not inside. They would have tied him to the roof, while a lookout kept an eye on the horizon, and then cleared out back to the defensible fortress of the inner city, leaving the man as an easy piece of prey for the marauding invaders. And sometimes the screams could be heard for miles as the beasts played with their meal before they killed it.

But not today. The marshal had seen enough death in the recent surge in nightly attacks by the mythical beings, and for now he'd had his fill of carnage. So what he authorized for this man was a simple death. His conscience would be clean, or at least, clean, and at the same time, the people would get what they wanted. And above all, he would still be seen to be a fair and unbiased leader of the people of Lansdown.

They took the man, chained him to a post, and tied a black bag over his head. A man who himself wore a hood, but with eye holes (usually one of the deputies, but from time to time they would allow a citizen who had been wronged by the perpetrator to do the deed, under a guise of anonymity) stepped out of the marshal's quarters, and walked up to the bound and blinded prisoner.

Without ado, the captor pulled out a large-caliber revolver, put it to the man's head, and blew him to oblivion.

For what seemed like the twentieth time this week, the alarms sounded again. Their deafening blasts echoed mercilessly throughout the streets of Lansdown. And citizens answered the call to arms in haggard droves, as had become their nightly custom.

For hours they fought the beastly terror, death from the skies almost a taste on their lips. But though many were scorched, and though casualties were numerous, the people fought on. And the morning after the battle, the roll call was answered, in various tones of relative strength or pain, by every single voice.