SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

Duncan glanced down at Cade’s still-damp boots and was tempted to ask how he’d discovered the thing’s hiding place, but then reason reasserted itself and he let the moment pass.

Sometimes, it’s better not knowing. Especially when the Knight Commander was involved.

“Conserve the flame throwers until we get to our destination; we’re going to need them more than anything else at that point and we don’t want to run out of fuel before we get there. As before, use your swords if possible, your guns if necessary. Understood?”

After receiving a chorus of nods, Cade took point, a fully loaded HK MP5 in hand. Behind him came Duncan and Olsen, with Riley taking up the rear. Father Nils attempted to follow, but Riley gave the priest a stern look and that was the end of that. Duncan didn’t blame him; he wouldn’t want to tangle with the master sergeant either.

The knight commander led them through the tunnel – cold, damp and decidedly uninteresting, Duncan noted, but free of demons, thank God – and out into the cemetery proper. It was still snowing, though not as heavily as it had been the night before, and the wind whipped through the gravestones with an eerie sound. Duncan did his best to ignore it his nerves were jangled enough as it was from what they’d been through already.

In addition to the flamethrowers, Father Nils had supplied them all with miniature headlamps of the type worn by the rescue crews who worked the ski slopes above Durbandorf during the year. The lights were small but powerful and should do quite nicely in the absence of their usual gear. Flipping on his lamp, Duncan followed in Olsen’s wake as they got underway.

They reached the tree line without incident and continued forward, slipping between the ancient trunks like wraiths. It was half-past nine in the morning but it felt like early evening; so dense was the cloud cover that very little light was getting through. Something about the darkness felt unnatural and Duncan had little doubt that the daylight was being held back in no small part by their infernal adversary.

Whatever the enemy has in store for this part of the world, it can’t be good.

No sooner had the thought passed through Duncan’s mind than Cade stopped abruptly and sank to one knee, a closed fist raised in warning.

* * *

As the others sank down behind him just as they’d been trained to do, Cade stared across the clearing at the spot where he’d seen his dead wife just seconds before. She’d only been there for a moment, but he was certain he’d seen her. She’d been standing amidst the trees, pointing at a spot between the trunks in the distance, and had looked back at him with an odd expression on her ravaged face.

He was staring off in that direction, trying to pierce the gloom brought on by the overhanging branches when a twig snapped somewhere out in the darkness.

It could have been a deer.

Or maybe a fox.

But he knew better.

“Hide yourselves! Quickly!” he hissed at the others urgently, afraid to raise his voice above a whisper.

Another glance that way showed several indistinct figures moving through the trees in their direction. Cade didn’t think they’d been seen, but it wouldn’t be long...

He scrambled to follow his own orders.

* * *

The thing that had once been Malcolm Heigler, the local butcher, and which was now a butcher in an entirely different sense of the word, followed the rest of his brethren as they made their way back through the trees toward the town of Durbandorf. Human vermin were still hiding there, somewhere, and it was Heigler’s job, along with that of the others, to root them out.

Heigler didn’t exactly think in those terms – he didn’t exactly think at all anymore – but the instinctual imperatives that he was following as part of the new creature he had become demanded it just the same, and he was happy to comply.

The group was roughly halfway across the clearing when something tugged at Heigler’s awareness. He paused, letting the others stumble,slither,lope, and walk around him, and then he glanced around.

Something didn’t feel right...

The clearing appeared deserted, the snow undisturbed except where his brethren had crossed it, and the thing that had been Durandorf’s butcher decided he had been mistaken. He turned and hustled after his brethren, eager not to be left behind.

* * *

In the creature’s wake, a moment passed.

Two.

Then three.

Suddenly the empty silence of the clearing was broken as a patch of snow near the base of several trees shifted and then rose, revealing the four men who had lain there for the last several minutes, pressed against the freezing surface with a half-a-foot of snow hastily thrown over themselves for camouflage.