SNAFU: Hunters

We marched on, following them as best we could until reaching bare stone. We stopped in a cathedral-like chamber with four other exits. After checking the map, I selected one. Nick left a fresh stick on the floor as Colin and I built a line of empty cans across the passage entrance.

We made it twenty meters down the hall before coming to a chamber with a dusty folding chair resting in the middle before a framed photograph affixed to the wall.

“That’s just creepy,” Colin whispered.

I nodded, about to move toward it, when a distant sound of falling cans came from behind.

We spun and headed back. Heart thudding, I crept closer to the room, seeing the spilt can-wall cast in red and orange light. I reached it first and looked around the cathedral seeing nothing.

Nick’s bright lights swept the room then froze on a lone figure standing before the far wall, with its back to us.

“Bonjour?” I said, stepping closer. My fingers tightened on Hounacier’s horn grip as the figure shuffled but didn’t turn. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, only a human in dust-caked clothes. “Turn around!” I ordered, raising my holy machete.

The figure didn’t move.

Nick stepped up beside me. “Don’t get any closer.”

Just then, the figure turned toward us. The flesh along the left side of its face was gone. Its single milky eye locked onto us and a hissing growl came from its shredded mouth.

More hissing sounded to the right. I turned, bringing my headlamp’s beam on two more staggering corpses coming from another passage. Each only had one eye.

“Behind us!” Colin yelled, his voice booming in the stone chamber.

A trio of ghouls scurried out from another tunnel, moving on all fours like long-armed monkeys.

“Circle up!” Nick ordered. He swung his nadziak at the half-faced creature coming toward us, though it was still a good seven feet away. Yanking the weapon back mid-swing like a cracking whip, a shockwave of compressed air shot like a cone from the war pick’s tip. The cone struck the creature’s shoulder with a loud thop, and blew a hole through it like a high-powered rifle. The creature reeled around, its arm coming free at the motion and landing several feet behind it. Nick lunged forward and slammed the pick into the zombie’s chest – heart shot – before it could recover. It fell dead to the ground.

Colin stepped beside me, eyes on the circling ghouls, and swinging Saighnean before him in a figure-eight. The blade moved faster and faster, gaining momentum until it was nothing but a whirring blur.

“Mal, take the minions,” Nick shouted. “Colin, the demons.”

Hounacier in hand, I threw my left palm forward toward the closing zombies. The tattoo’s warding eye stretched wide, feeling as if the flesh might rip. The zombies froze their advance, their growling hisses rising even above the sound of Colin’s swinging sword. Seizing the opening, I lunged, driving the machete’s blade at creature’s heart. It brought an arm up, deflecting the blade so that it plunged into the right side of its chest and missed the target. Unfazed, the creature grabbed my forearm.

I screamed. The bones in my arm bent, threatening to crack under the creature’s inhuman grip. Desperately, I tore Hounacier free from the rotting corpse and swung, burying the blade into the zombie’s skull but to no effect.

Nick moved past me in a blur and buried Ozkareen in the creatures back. Its chest exploded as the pick came through, showering me with rotted gore. “Go for the heart!” he shouted.

A pair of ghouls charged Colin.

One moved as if to lunge, but dashed to the side at the last moment. The other one leapt toward him, claws raised. Colin brought his blurring sword up as it reached him. The ghoul’s arms diced apart, the blows striking so fast they seemed simultaneous. Shrieking, the demon fell, blood spurting from its twin stumps. Colin rammed the blade down into its head.

Golden yellow fire ignited along the slain demon’s skin and from the severed pieces scattered about the room.

The last zombie was coming for me. With my wrist still aching from its near break, I lifted my warding palm, freezing the creature again, then rammed Hounacier up under its ribs and into its dead heart. The zombie fell, nearly yanking me off balance with the sudden weight coming down on the impaling blade.

Yellow firelight danced along the walls. I wrenched Hounacier’s blade free in time to see Nick swing Ozkareen in that whip-like fashion, launching another cone of air at a ghoul. The beast dropped to the floor, dodging it. The cone blasted past, dissipating after ten feet.

The demon leaped toward Nick, but he spun out of the way of a slashing claw.

I ran toward it, bringing my warding palm up. The ghoul turned to face me but then froze, shielded its eyes from the displayed tattoo.

Before it could recover, a conical shockwave struck it on the neck, blasting its head nearly off. Golden demon fire sprayed into the wall and the ghoul’s corpse fell, its soul burning away.