SNAFU: Hunters

The heat of the summer night quickly vanished, the temperature dropping with each rung downward. The sweat on my neck grew colder, bringing a chill. Colin’s whispered voice sounded above me as he returned, the van now safely parked. I looked up to see his silhouette pull the door shut, sealing us in with a metallic thud.

The shaft around me opened up, revealing a long passage, the floor peppered with cigarette butts, spent batteries, empty wrappers, and burnt matchsticks. Nick’s glowsitck burned at my feet, casting its light across the graffiti-etched walls. I shone my light either way up the passage, seeing only a short way down each before the darkness swallowed the red beam. Dust rained down from my companions’ descent and I stepped aside. I brushed the grit from my face, a pointless endeavor, I knew, as there would soon be so much more to wipe over the next few hours.

Nick was grinning as he reached the bottom, his white teeth glowing red in my light. “Reminds me of Moscow,” he said with approval.

Colin’s voice echoed from above. “Reminds me of a carnival house into hell.”

I glanced over at the giant pentagram spray painted beside me, its disproportionate goat’s head leering out from the inverted star. I knew that Colin, the ever-devout Irish Catholic, was going to hate this hunt.

He reached the bottom and curled his lip at the painted symbol.

“Welcome to hell,” Nick said. I wasn’t sure if he was merely being dramatic, or translating the French words scrawled above the goat’s image.

Colin snorted and touched Saighnean, the holy anthropomorphic Celtic sword at his waist. “Fuck this place.”

“Which way?” Nick asked, turning to me. Joviality was gone. Only the cold steel seriousness of a Valducan knight remained. He was a different man when he hunted.

I pointed down the eastern passage. “Bodies were found that way.”

Nick drew his torch, clicked on a bright red beam, and started down, taking point.

We followed the winding tunnel past small chambers littered with spent candles and empty beer cans. One room was still lit with burning candles, but there were no other signs of the occupants. The air was still, completely unmoving, and when we did stop, the absolute silence was more unsettling than I cared to admit. More than once, the low passages forced us to crawl like worms to continue and I was grateful for the helmet as I banged my head into the rock above.

After two hours, the smell of decay tickled my nose. We turned into a small room. Dark splatters, almost black in our red lights, marred the pale limestone walls. Dried, bloody mud covered the floor, broken and dusty under booted footprints. The stink of ammonia prickled my nose somewhere deep below the stench of dried blood and spilt intestines.

“Here we are,” I said. Taking a moment, I removed my water bottle and washed the dirt from my mouth with a healthy swallow. My left hand burned from the numerous nicks and scrapes, and I wished I’d worn a glove on it. But the warding eye tattooed on my palm would be useless if covered and taking the time to remove a glove might not be an option if I needed it. The tattoo, one of several on my body, was a gift from Hounacier, a blessed medal to commemorate a special kill.

Nick walked into the center of the dried stains and looked around, searching the ceiling and walls for some hidden secret.

“Wish we could have seen what it looked like,” Colin said. He ran a gloved finger around one of the sharp holes left by tripod feet dotting the cracked floor, remnants from where the workers had recorded the gruesome scene before moving the bodies.

“So, Malcolm,” Nick said, his headlamp’s light falling on me. “Where to?”

I removed my tablet and winced as the screen came on, shining in my eyes like a floodlight. My night vision, previously preserved by the crimson lights, was gone in a painful cinching of pupils. Through slitted eyes I studied the catacomb map and highlighted the path we’d covered. I pointed to an arched doorway. “That will lead us to a lower level. My guess is the nest is deep.”

“All right,” he said. “You be sure to keep track of where we are. I don’t want to get lost.”

I flipped off the tablet and stored it away. “Follow me.”

We headed down the passage, gradually sloping deeper beneath the Earth. Once we had to climb down a near vertical stretch until reaching an arched passage. Standing water filled many of the halls, forcing us to wade thigh-deep through it to continue and leaving us cold and wet. I imagined unseen hands grabbing us from below the murky surface, yanking us down to be drowned and eaten. I wanted to rush, but the threat of unseen pits hidden beneath the water forced us to move slow. More than once I felt what I was sure to be a bone crack under my boot.

Eventually we stopped in a room with benches hewn from the stone walls and I checked the map. Five hours, and we’d barely begun to cover the catacomb’s length.