SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

The moment the girl stepped out of the shadows Cade knew there was something wrong. His gut clenched, his skin crawled, and he could practically hear the screams of a thousand lost souls roaring in the back of his mind that she did not belong here, that her very presence was an abomination against nature itself.

She might look human, but Cade knew she was the farthest thing from it.

His gun came up, his finger already on the trigger, and from the corner of his eye he could see Riley and Olsen raising their weapons as well.

Trouble was, Duncan was in the way.

The sergeant had taken several steps forward the moment the girl-thing had come into sight and now he stood directly in Cade’s line of fire. If Cade pulled the trigger now, there was no way he could hit the creature without hitting Duncan in the process. But he couldn’t afford to let the creature escape either.

They had only one chance...

“Down!” Cade yelled, in his best command voice, hoping and praying that all the months of practicing to respond to commands delivered in that tone would bring about the unquestioning response that he so desperately needed.

Hoping and waiting to see for certain were at opposite ends of the spectrum however.

Cade didn’t hesitate another moment but opened fire.

* * *

Duncan heard Cade’s shout at the exact moment that the ‘defenseless’ girl in front of him lashed out at his throat with a hand that had suddenly grown claws several inches long. It was only his well-honed instincts for preservation that saw Duncan throw himself sideways out of the vile creature’s reach and, thankfully, out of Cade’s line of fire at the same time.

The roar of the knight commander’s weapon echoed in the cavernous space but Duncan was still able to hear the demon’s hiss of fury when it realized it had missed. He felt its claws slash through the space where he’d been kneeling a half-instant before and knew he wouldn’t have survived the blow had it landed the way the demon intended. He scrambled backward, trying to put as much distance between himself and the thing as possible, knowing as he did what came next.

The demon paused and roared at him, a sound that would have frozen him in place not three months before, but he’d come a long way in a short time. Since joining Echo he’d faced down spectres, revenants, even a cabal of necromancers with anger management issues; they’d all perished but he was still around. And major demon or not, he had every intention of surviving this one, too.

He heard Riley shout something over the din of battle and while he couldn’t make out exactly what was said he had a pretty good idea. He didn’t take the time to look, just threw himself flat and covered his head with his hands.

It was a good thing he did, too, for the jet of flame that shot out of Riley’s flamethrower passed mere inches over his head as it sought out its intended target. As if on cue, Olsen chose that moment to join the fray as well and soon it wasn’t one but two plumes of fire burning the spot where the demon had stood seconds before. Not to be outdone, Cade kept his finger on the trigger of his HK, sending a blistering stream of gunfire at the same location.

As Duncan slithered across the floor and out of the line of fire, he was confident that nothing could have lived through such an inferno.

He was wrong.

Cade gave the signal and the men stopped their attack, only to find the spot where the demon had been standing empty of any sign of the creature. If they hadn’t known any better, the evidence would have suggested that it hadn’t ever been there at all.

Into the stunned silence, a guttural voice spoke.

“Fools! Did you think me so easily defeated?”

As one the men looked up to find the girl-demon clinging to the ceiling of the cavern on her hands and feet like a spider with her neck twisted around 180 degrees so that she could look down upon them with ease. She had also grown three times her normal size, making her almost as large as Riley. Though her face had not undergone any obvious physical changes beyond the change in size, the evil that had consumed her was now plain to see in the nuances of her expression. As it hung there the demon seemed to flicker in and out of view, as if not entirely on this plane of existence, but that didn’t stop it from gloating at them.

And that voice...

“Your petty efforts would be considered nothing but simple amusements in the arenas of Hell. My drones have taken that festering warren of vermin beyond the trees and soon we shall spread beyond its borders, descending upon the rest of your people until they remember precisely why we were cast into the pit!”

That was as much as Duncan could take. Without waiting for orders he raised his flamethrower, sent a momentary prayer skyward that it hadn’t been damaged during his activities moments before, and then sent a stream of flaming liquid upward.