With an awful metallic groan, g iant metal gates opened up beneath them, and countless tons of red and white sludge leeched out of the holes and down the surface of the dam, oozing down to merge with the fiery river. The thunder of  slow moving  organic material was punctuated with the occasional shriek, as a convergence of vultures descended from overhead in watchful circles.

“Impressive, “ said  woman one . “Is that the last of them?”

Man two nodded, slid his arm casually around  her . “There were a lot of them. Difficult to fathom how it is they were endangered.”

“I think the Boss uses the term rather loosely,” she replied, removing his arm. “Any species he's not particularly fond of. Point is, We'll always find them, wherever they are. Rivers, cities, mountains, or even construct barriers like this one. It's not in our charter to  give a damn .” She paused, as the others smiled at her pun.

“Perhaps,“ man three said, his fathomless black eyes scanning the carnage below, “but they were enormously resourceful, don't you think? A lot like us. The physical resemblances were rather unnerving, if you ask me.”

The others nodded solemnly.

“I don't like this place,” woman two said. She swung herself down onto the platform, her stout legs poking perilously out over the edge. “We've had more elegant disposal methods elsewhere.”

A piercing scream, almost certainly human, bounced off the canyon walls.

“They make an enormous amount of noise,” Man one said, grimacing. “Nasty business, this.”

“It's what we do. Besides, it was no worse than the other vertebrates,” woman one said. “I seem to recall the whales making quite a racket.”

Man two shivered, pulling his jacket closer around his shoulders. “You would too, you'd had your insides turned out. The Boss doesn't flinch when it comes to the aesthetics of the job. Whatever it takes to get the work done.”

Man four—tallest of the six by far—stood apart from them, mirrored sunglasses wrapped tightly to his head, saying nothing.  He reached into his coat, pulled out an engraved pen, then a folded piece of parchment.  He opened the note and checked off the final box on a list contained within.   

Man ( Homo Sapiens)

The note caught fire, and they all watched as it combusted, blistering the skin of man four's hand. When it finished burning, he grinned at the five of them, a death's head smile rife with black rot gaps and yellowed enamel teeth.

“All done, then,” man one said. “Vultures and locusts in the air. Who does that leave to roam terra firma?”

In answer, man four gagged, opened his mouth and reached down his throat with charred fingers, pulling out a large brown insect nearly two inches long, a pair of wiggling antennae protruding from its head, its back covered in split scale armor. Man four dropped it to the ground, where they watched it crawl rapidly to the edge of the precipice, unfold its tiny wings, then fly down into the depths.

Man two rolled his eyes. “Always the  cock roach, Mammon . ”

“He's proven to be a hardy little  bugger ,” man three said, “ a nd certain not to go extinct.”

Woman two nodded and pointed skyward. “Sheer genius that the Creator himself won't notice unless there's no living thing left on his precious planet.”

Man one went pale, as did the others. Mammon put a blackened finger to his lips and shook his head.

Woman two cringed, bowed her head, mumbled her apologies.

The six turned around to look at the vast crimson lake behind the dam, mountains of sinew and bone jutting upwards as torrents of blood eddied around them and emptied onto the surface of the boiling rivers below. Vultures landed on these sinister outcroppings, their barren heads bobbing up and down as their beaks tore into the decomposed flesh of skulls and torsos. On the horizon, a black, buzzing carpet blocked out the sun, a pestilence heading towards the feast of all feasts, stripping any remaining vestiges of life from the now barren land.

A distant rumble of thunder cracked the air, reverberating off the canyon walls.

“That's not ours at all,” said man two, his hands suddenly trembling, reaching into his pockets for a cigarette. “Someone's heard us.”

Man one pulled the device from his pocket once more, placed the transmitter close to his mouth. “Lucifer,” he whispered, clearing his throat and looking nervously at the sky. “Boss, we're all finished.  The almighty is coming. Get us out of here. Now ! ”