SNAFU: Hunters

“Fine. Try to keep up.”

A moment later he was cutting back across the field he’d stormed to get to the Nazis in the first place. He didn’t quite run but it was close. I did my best to keep up.

We moved hard and fast and I managed to keep pace, but I’d be lying if I said it was easy. Truth of the matter is, I think Crowley actually slowed to let me keep up with him but I can’t prove that. It was just a feeling. I think that maybe he cold have run as fast as a Jeep moves if he wanted to.

That copse of trees was the first obstacle. I saw several dead German soldiers in that cluster of trees. Most of them had expressions or horror on their faces. All of them were broken in ways that made no sense to me. I don’t think I had but a few seconds to look at them as we were going past. I know Crowley never gave them a second glance. I also know that image of their bodies has haunted me for decades.

Past the trees were more fields, most of them burnt out and blown apart. Crowley moved through them at a trot and I had no choice but to follow.

We kept that pace until we ran into a small town that had been utterly destroyed by the war. I can’t say for sure who destroyed it, but I like to tell myself it was the Nazis and that we could never have done any such thing.

I said it was a small town, but I think that’s wrong. There were a lot of buildings, or rather there were remains from a lot of buildings. Mostly there were shattered pieces of walls and foundations and the burnt-out husks of what had likely been homes and churches and a few communal structures.

The only thing that had not been destroyed was a cemetery at the edge of what had been the town. Headstones rose from the ground, a crop of remembrance to those who had passed before.

When we got close, Crowley raised a hand and beckoned for me to slow, to approach with caution. Not a word was spoken then, but I listened anyway.

The ruined town had unsettled me. I had seen combat. But mostly we’d managed to avoid civilized spots and stayed to the countryside. It was safer, you see. The remains had jarred me. All I could think as I passed through them was that there had been people there once. There had been families and they’d had lives and lived them as best they could and now all of that was gone. Either they were dead or the Germans had taken them. I did not know which, but I suspected the former.

The cemetery was worse. There was a feeling of menace there. The fine hairs on my neck rose as we approached and my skin felt almost feverish. There was something here. Something bad.

I said the cemetery was untouched and that was a lie. When we got closer I saw the truth of the matter. Each headstone had been marked. It wasn't a big thing, but it was there. Someone had cut each marker with a rune. Crowley stopped and studied the first one and then moved on. The same mark on each piece, two jagged s marks, like stylized lightning. I remembered that symbol on the lapels of the of the black-garbed Germans – the symbol of the SS. But a stroke mark cut through each of those symbols.

“What do they mean?” I asked Crowley, fully expecting no answer.

“Either it’s a sign that someone doesn’t like the Nazis or it’s a name. Hard to say.”

“A name?”

He sighed. “A name. A sigil representing that name. Or, someone doesn’t like the Nazis.”

“What kind of name?”

“If I knew that, sweet pea, I’d have told you.” I contemplated the fact that he’d just called me ‘sweet pea’ but decided to let it go. Crowley scared the hell out of me.

Maybe it was my fault. Maybe if I hadn’t distracted him, Crowley would have noticed the one mark that was different. It was almost the same but three small dots had been added into the broken SS symbol and Crowley had been looking at me as he passed it.

As soon as he moved past, the symbol glowed, and the air thrummed; a single low note vibrated across the whole cemetery and Crowley looked around, frowning.

My sense of unease increased and my stomach turned and lurched. My mouth watered and I thought for certain I would vomit all over my shoes.

I never got the chance. Instead the ground quaked under me and I fell on my ass in the dirt as the headstones bucked and threw themselves to the sides. Something was moving under the ground and it pushed everything above it around with ease.

The earth shrugged and then let out a moan of pain. I was there when my daughters were born, and when my son struggled before dying in the process of being born. I heard the sounds my wife made. They weren't all that dissimilar to the sounds the ground offered up as it split and gave birth to a hellish thing.

I do not know about life after death. I'd certainly thought about it before. When you are swimming in bloodied waters and bullets are hammering the people around you and slashing the waves, the afterlife kind of becomes a thing you consider about as often as you blink.