SNAFU: Hunters

“Don’t interrupt. It’s rude.” Crowley looked my way for a moment as he admonished me, but there was no venom in his words. They were merely spoken. “The thing to remember, and I mean this, is that sooner or later somebody always thinks they can work out summoning something to their advantage. They can’t. What’s happening now, is someone on the Nazi Party thinks they can use whatever they’ve summoned. They might be able to for a while, but it won’t last.”

I thought long and hard about what he’d said. He wasn't talking down to me, exactly, but he was simplifying and I was all right with that. I had a lot on my mind and I really couldn’t devote as much to him as I should have.

“Want to say that in plain English?”

“Son, I don’t know how much plainer I can get.” He looked my way. “Okay. Someone’s trying to summon a demon from Hell. That’s a good analogy. And that someone wants to control the demon. It isn’t going to work. Near as I can tell, the demon already got away.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because if the demon was still under whoever’s command, the damned Germans wouldn’t be looking all over the countryside trying to find it.”

“But the markings on the tank…”

“The markings are supposed to offer protection. Whoever summed the demon wants to stay safe. That’s why I’m going after the tank.”

“You can’t take on four tanks by yourself.”

“You’ve been dumb enough to stay with me, so I’m not really by myself.” He actually managed to sound amused instead of insulted.

* * *

The morning brought snowfall.

It was a wet, hard snow and even the treads from the tanks were hidden away. Despite that Crowley seemed cheery enough.

“Why are you smiling? We lost their trail.”

“Because if we have to stop, so do they. The snow’s going to slow them down, and that means we can get closer.”

“It still doesn’t mean we can do much to them.”

Crowley shook his head. “You’re still thinking about fighting them as if we were ever planning to go in with guns blazing. That’s not going to happen and it never was.”

“Well, I never said…” I let my voice fade off. He was right. That was exactly what I was thinking. It was what I was trained for.

“We’re dealing with necromancy and dark magic. That means there is no time to play fair.” Crowley looked at me for a long time, and I felt like he was sorting through whether or not to tell me things he had kept to himself. “You get to stay back here for now. I need to look over where the tanks should be and I need to decide how to handle them.”

I thought about arguing. In the end I just nodded instead.

Two minutes after he headed in the direction of the tanks – I was guessing about that, because I couldn’t have told you where they were on a bet – I followed him. I told myself I wasn't going to leave a man to fight on his own, but the truth was that he’d got my curiosity boiling and I wanted to know more than I already did about the things he was talking about.

* * *

The snow was hellish. I mean that. If I could have figured out which way was back I would have taken it. What had started as a heavy snow in the night became a full on blizzard. The sun was somewhere above me, but all I could see were thick, fat flakes of snow falling from the heavens. And trees. I normally found those before I ran into them.

The worst part, I think, was the way the snow danced. It was charming when I was at home and there was a heavy snow. But back then I knew where I was and I had the lights of the house and a hundred familiar landmarks. Here I was in the middle of the woods, possibly even a forest proper – and if you don’t know the difference, I pray you find out under better circumstances – and all I could see were the shapes the snow took on as it twisted and whirled in the currents of a wind I barely felt.

The silence was another thing. I heard no noises worth noting, save an occasional sigh of the wind.

From time to time I’d stop and try to listen for something more, but all I ever got was the low, whispered sigh and the shivers as the cold sank deeper into me.

That continued on through the day and well past the time the sun set. In the complete darkness I had no choice but to stop. I settled myself under a natural shelter, several branches that crossed over each other and left me an area of relative calm. The snow still fell and tipped and tapped the canopy above, but there was still no wind and the silence lulled me for a while.

I wrapped up as best I could and tried to think warm thoughts. I couldn’t make a decent fire, but I tried for a while before giving up.

Eventually, I slept.