SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

Cade wasn’t about to take any chances. He turned to Riley, told him to keep his eye on the creature, and then marched over to the SUV. Reaching into the backseat he grabbed his sword case and flipped it open. Inside, nestled on a bed of black silk, sat the sword he’d been given at his investiture ceremony when he’d become a Templar. The blade had been forged by the Order’s swordsmiths and consecrated at a special Mass before it had come into his hands. It had served him well through the years; it would do the same tonight.

Cade walked back over to the where the other three men stood, their weapons pointed at the monster’s corpse. Despite losing a limb and taking a bullet through the skull, the body was still twitching spasmodically. Cade approached cautiously; if it was still moving, it was still a source of potential danger. When Cade was within reach he struck out with his blade and slashed through the thing’s strangely elongated neck, severing the head.

Rather than turning away, Cade watched and waited some more.

For a long moment nothing happened.

“What are you looking...” Duncan began to say, but Cade cut him off with a raised finger and a quiet, “Shhh.”

The severed head twitched.

Duncan recoiled in surprise but Cade had been waiting for that very thing. He gripped his sword in both hands, blade pointed downward, and as the head moved a second time he brought his hands up over his head, preparing to strike.

“Be ready,” he whispered to the others.

No sooner had the words left his lips than something shot out of the gaping hole in the back of the corpse’s skull. Cade struck instantly, driving his sword downward as fast as he could, piercing the many-legged thing’s chitinous exoskeleton and pinning it to the ground.

“Now!” he yelled, as the blood-and-brain-splattered insectoid-looking creature twitched about, trying to free itself.

Riley’s Mossberg boomed again, blasting the thing to kingdom come.

When it was over, Olsen stepped forward and nudged one of the pieces of exoskeleton with his foot.

“Is that...?”

Cade was nodding grimly before Nick had even finished the sentence. “Yeah, it is,” he said, as he wiped the gore off the end of his blade and then redrew his pistol. “We need to get off the street; the noise is going to attract more of them.”

But it was already too late.

Figures were emerging from the shadows all around them, each and every one a new and different grotesquerie as the demons inhabiting the once-human forms reworked the flesh they’d stolen to suit their individual needs. Tentacles instead of arms. Multiple sets of legs instead of the usual single pair. Eyes and mouths and drooling snouts replaced the villagers’ once-tranquil features. In many cases there appeared to be no rhyme or reason for the changes aside from the need to pervert the original form and design, exactly what Cade expected from anything that crawled up out of the infernal realms.

A glance told him that his team was outnumbered by at least four to one. If they didn’t get out of there quickly, they were going to be in serious trouble. Seeing that none of the demons had reached the vehicle yet, Cade made his choice.

“Start withdrawing back to the SUV,” he told the others, even as he lifted his pistol and began firing.

CHAPTER TWO

Most of the supernatural creatures the Order regularly fought against were split into a hierarchy of classes based on their difficulty to kill. The demons Cade and company were facing now were no different. The Order might classify this particular breed as a minor variety, since they could be affected by ordinary firearms and regular melee weapons, but that didn’t mean that defeating them was a walk in the park. They were still demons, after all, and Cade kept that foremost in his mind as he pulled the trigger of his Mark 23 three times in rapid succession, putting all three bullets into a circle the size of a half-dollar in the center of the nearest demon’s face, dropping it in mid-stride.

By the time Cade turned to take up another target, his companions had joined the fray. The staccato chatter of the MP5s being used by Olsen and Duncan was punctuated repeatedly by the boom of Riley’s Mossberg and it was music to Cade’s ears as the demons before them were cut down one after another. In minutes the street around them was filled with the dead and dying. The demons were fast, yes, but the combined firepower of the Templars was enough to temporarily keep the creatures from closing the distance.

And that was all Cade was hoping for.

He checked to be sure the way was clear and then turned, shouting to his men as he did so.

“Back to the SUV! Move, move, move!”

They piled into the vehicle with Cade and Riley in front and the other two in back. Duncan was still pulling his door shut when Cade threw the truck into drive and stomped on the accelerator. The tires spun for a moment in the snow before catching hold and then they were off, bouncing over the body in the middle of the road and racing off down the street.