SUPERHUMAN NATURE #Excerpt by Brandon Overall #SciFi #AmReading

The guard behind him tried to hit Neil in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle, but he felt nothing from the blow.  Anger consumed him.  The guard had shot Sung in cold blood.  There was no arrest, no trial, and no judge.  He didn’t deserve any mercy, and Neil wasn’t going to give him any.

Neil lifted the guard off of the ground several feet and slammed him hard onto the pavement.  The distinct sound of snapping bones would have made anyone cringe, but Neil did not have enough humanity left to care.  The guard behind Neil yelled something, but he wasn’t paying any attention.  The guard was raised into the air again, and slammed down once more.  Every time Neil slammed the guard down, the bones disintegrated under the immense force.  The guard screamed in agony.

The guard behind Neil fired several shots from his AK-47 into Neil’s back, but his body reacted automatically to the threat.  The bullets bounced off of his back like nerf darts.  Neil was still too focused on the guard that he was repeatedly slamming into the ground to worry about the crushed projectiles falling to the ground behind him.

As the guard lay bleeding and broken on the ground, Neil walked up to him slowly.  He could see the fear and pain in his eyes.  He cried, knowing what was going to happen to him.  The guard behind Neil was still firing, but it didn’t distract Neil from what he was about to do.  He raised his foot above the guard’s head, and brought it down, again and again.  He was gurgling and blood poured out of his mouth.  He stopped crying.

Neil turned around to focus his attention on the guard that had been shooting him in the back.  At the sight of the gruesome execution before him, the guard dropped his rifle and sprinted away, trying to escape.  He didn’t get far.  Neil severed his Achilles tendon, and he tumbled face first into the ground.  He screamed as the tendon shot up into his body like a rubber band.  He was completely helpless, as his calf muscles were no longer attached to his foot.

The man desperately tried crawling away.  He was crying as he chanted something while inching forward, pulling his body along the road with his hands.  Neil didn’t have to speak Korean to know what a prayer sounded like.  As he approached the man, Neil’s shadow loomed over him, blocking the last sunlight he would ever feel.

Neil slowly and deliberately pulled on each limb of his body.  The muscles stretched, the tendons began to tear, and a soft pop could be heard as the joints at the shoulders and hips separated.  He shrieked with pain, but his suffering wasn’t over.  The skin connecting each limb stretched several inches without giving way.

Pools of blood began to form inside his body where the internal arteries were severed.  Finally, the skin couldn’t stretch any more, and it tore.  The pooled blood spilled out onto the ground.  With each beat of his struggling heart, a line of crimson shot out of each severed artery where a limb was supposed to be connected.  The beats became slower as the life drained from his body.  The screams turned into soft moans.  Finally, the noise stopped, and the blood stopped pouring.

Superhuman Nature is Brandon Overall's first novel. It was written and published during his first deployment to Afghanistan as a 2nd Lieutenant in late 2013.

Neil Hitchens was a senior ROTC Cadet in college. He was just weeks away from graduating and becoming an Officer in the United States Army, until a strange dream set off a chain of events that would twist his life into something he could have never prepared for.

In the days following his dream, several strange happenings occurred that he began to suspect were the result of his own actions. Before long, he discovered that he had the ability to control the world around him with his mind.

What started out as an unpredictable ability quickly evolved into an extraordinary power that had the capacity to change the world. It didn't take long for the government to find out what Neil could do.

They knew having such limitless potential on the side of the US Military could give them limitless political influence, and they would stop at nothing to get Neil to do their bidding. They would find out what happens when you back a dangerous animal into a corner.

Neil spent his whole life believing he would amount to greatness, but he never expected how greatness could corrupt even the most innocent of minds.

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Genre – Science Fiction

Rating – PG-13

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