SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  “Two.” Colin said. “These things are weird.”

  “No commentary,” Nick ordered. “Mal, how we look?”

  “Some of the officers are headed back,” I said. “Block away.”

  The lone officer started toward the trio jogging out from the smoke.

  “Colin, be quick,” Nick said.

  “Just a few more seconds.”

  The policeman slowed as he met his companions. They spoke with wild-moving arms, pointing toward some unseen thing down the street. Two of them broke off and headed toward the vehicles.

  “Get out of there,” I said, my voice a whispered yell.

  Colin looked up from his camera. Quickly he zipped the bag and hurried away before the police noticed him.

  I blew a long breath, a wash of relief pouring down my body. “He’s out.”

  “All right,” Nick said. “Extract. Meet at the hotel.”

  * * *

  I sat on the bed, laptop before me. Scouring a map of the catacombs, I marked where the bodies were discovered and the best places we might gain access. Colin sat at the small table across the room working on his own computer. He hadn’t spoken much since he arrived, only transferring his photographs over and giving the occasional grunt as he scrolled through the images.

  The room door clicked and Nikoghos Tavitian stepped inside, his trimmed black beard framing his ear-to-ear smile. His olive knapsack rattled as he dropped it beside the door. He nodded to Colin. “Doctor,” and then to me, “Doctor.” With a flourish, he set a paper bag on the bed between us and withdrew a brown bundle. “Dinner is served.”

  Colin, who isn’t actually a doctor, having joined the Order before completing med school, never liked being called that. Nevertheless, Nick always addressed us that way when he was in good spirits, and terrifying an entire city appeared to have pleased the Armenian immensely.

  Nick underhand-tossed a bundle to me. “Good work, Malcolm.”

  I caught the crinkly roll, feeling the warm bread inside. “What the hell did you do?”

  “Distraction.” Nick removed his own sandwich. “Needed something big enough to get everyone out of there. Just a pair of flash bangs and a smoke grenade in an alley. No one was hurt. Though…” He chuckled. “I think one woman did shit herself.”

  “You realize this could wind up on world news?”

  He shrugged, his smile dimming. “Back page stuff. They’ll write it off as a bad prank.”

  Colin nodded to his monitor. “It’ll make the front page if police see what did this.”

  I stood and peered down at Colin’s screen. The image of a mottled purple corpse; its teeth and cheekbones gleamed out through ragged holes. Blood-caked lashes framed the pits where its eyes should have been.

  The image flipped to another – a girl with curly blonde hair. Her throat was torn out and grimy bite wounds covered her bare shoulders. Blue eye shadow crested the black pits of her empty sockets. I no longer wanted my sandwich.

  Nick took a bite of his. “So what do you think?” he asked around a mouthful.

  Colin unwrapped his own sandwich, unleashing the smell of fresh bread and meat, completely inappropriate for the horrible images. “Look to be cataphiles.”

  “Cataphiles?” Nick asked.

  “People who explore the catacombs,” I answered. “The old mines are strictly off limits, but people still go down there to explore, or party. Several even live down there. Three hundred kilometers of tunnels and chambers. Plenty of room for everyone.”

  Nick shrugged. “Not for them it seems. So, Mal, you’re the Librarian. What do you think got ‘em?”

  I looked back at the screen, this time a young black man with his face mostly chewed off, his grisly skull framed in jagged skin. “Ghouls. Archives show they’ve made their home down there several times before. Last known infestation was during the war.”

  Colin nodded. “I agree. Blood wasn’t drunk. Bite marks correspond.”

  “What else does it tell you?” Nick asked me.

  “There’s at least four of them, either ghouls or ghouls and their undead familiars.” I answered, resenting this thinly veiled pop quiz.

  “Why?”

  I looked away as the image changed to a close-up of the black man’s mouth. His tongue had been torn out. “Ghouls only attack if they outnumber the victims or if the victim is injured or ill.”

  “What about the eyes?” Colin asked.

  “What about them?” I asked.

  “They’re gone.”

  “Ghouls must have torn them out.”

  “I don’t think so.” Shaking his head, Colin scrolled to a close-up of the girl’s face. “You can’t pop an eye out without tearing the skin around it. At least not without tools. But the skin is unmarked. Same with all of them. It’s like they were sucked right out.”

  Nick leaned in over Colin’s shoulder. “What could do that?”

  Colin shrugged. “No clue. Something else? Took the eyes and left the rest for ghouls to eat, maybe?”

  They both looked to me.

  I studied the picture, and then the next. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t know?” Nick asked. “Your job is to know them.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t recall any demon that sucks the eyes out.”

  Colin gestured to my laptop still open on the bed. “Then search the records.”

  “Only ten percent of the Valducan Archives are digitized. I’d have to go back to the chateau and search the books.”

  “We don’t have time to go to HQ,” Nick said. “The authorities are going to be scouring the catacombs for whoever killed these people, which means they’ll probably get killed themselves. We have to eliminate the threat now. So think, Doctor.”

  A sharp spike of anger shot through my gut at Nick’s scolding. But he was right. I was the team’s Librarian. This was my job. Closing my eyes, I searched my memory for anything that targeted eyes and didn’t leave a mark. Even beyond the Archives, my experience as an anthropologist gave me a wide knowledge of folklore and supposedly mythical monsters, the main reason I was selected for the job. Other demons ate eyes. Wendigos loved eating them. But surgical removal? “I can’t think of anything.”

  Nick frowned, but only for a moment before his grin returned. “A holy weapon will destroy them, regardless.”

  “We’re in Paris,” Colin offered. “Maybe the eyes are French cuisine to ghouls.”

  We laughed as Nick pulled his duffel from the closet and dropped it on the bed. “We guess ghouls from the initial report. So, Mal, what harms ghouls?”

  “Obsidian,” I answered.

  “Good.” He withdrew a box of ammo from his bag and pulled out a round. “If things get hairy, these will drop one.” He held up a nine millimeter with a black-gem nose, prongs holding it in place like a goth girl’s engagement ring. “We don’t want to be shooting much down there,” he said, continuing his digging. “Yes, the glass tip will cut down on ricochets, but closed-quarter shooting is always dangerous. I ever tell you about that vampire nest we rooted out of the Moscow Metro?”

  “Every time you drink vodka,” Colin answered.

  Nick paused. “I do, don’t I?” He shook his head. “Don’t answer that.”

  “What about my sawed-off?” I asked. “I have some obsidian shells.”

  “You and that fucking sawed off,” he said. “Yes, it’ll work. No, don’t shoot it. The other problem with shooting down there will be report. Give us all some permanent hearing loss. We’ll need to run suppressed and even then, it’ll still be loud as hell.”

  “Then why bring guns?” Colin asked.

  “Cause I’d rather be deaf than dead,” I answered.

  Nick nodded in approval. “That’s my boy.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  “Three hundred klicks leaves a lot of room for them to hide. The sooner we begin the better. I say 2200 hours we go in. So rest up.”

  * * *

  The night was s
till and humid as Nick and I exited the van, gear in hand. My sacred charge, Hounacier, a bone-handled machete, hung at my waist. Nick’s holy nadziak, a Polish war pick named Ozkareen, clanged from the black plastic ring at his belt. Colin drove off the moment the door was closed, leaving us alone on the empty street.

  We stopped at a metal door set into the sidewalk and lit by a single light post orbited by moths. We heaved up the door and a caged screen beneath, revealing a landing four feet down and steel rungs descending into the darkness below.

  Nick drew a milky plastic tube from his vest pouch and cracked it in one hand. Orange light ignited within like liquid fire and he dropped it. The glow stick fell and fell, tumbling past more steel rungs until finally bouncing out of sight twenty meters below. He stabbed a finger downward and I swung my legs through the opening and dropped onto the landing. Nick handed me a heavy pack, which I set at my feet before moving to the rungs.

  I clicked the lamp affixed to my caving helmet, unleashing a beam of crimson light. With a final nod to Nick, I started the climb down. Dizzying patterns of multi-colored spray-paint and marker covered every inch of the walls. Symbols, names, professions of love, and illegible slogans scrawled in dozens of different languages all stating the unspoken truth – I was here before you.

  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.

  “I think this is good for tonight,” Nick said around a mouthful of cereal bar. His coating of chalky dust left his beard gray, giving him the appearance of a statue come to life. “We should head back. Continue tomorrow. I don’t want to stay down here.”

  “I completely agree,” Colin said. “But let’s find these bastards soon. I don’t want to spend all summer crawling around in this shit.”

  “Let’s hope the next hunt is somewhere warm and sunny,” I said, flipping off my tablet and returning it to its plastic bag.

  We headed back, Colin taking the lead. The journey felt longer than it should have, my perception of time warped by exhaustion and the impatience to breathe fresh air. While I frequently turned to check behind us, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling we were being followed. Unseen eyes watching us from the blackness. Once, I even stopped the others, convinced I’d seen a shadow move at the edge of my light, but there was nothing there.

  “You’re tired,” Nick said. “Just stay alert. Never assume it’s in your head.”

  The paranoia continued to mount until we finally crawled back up that painted shaft and out onto the streets and into sunlight.

  * * *

  16 July, 2009

  We headed down at 2100 hours from a new location, a locked and rusted gate along the Seine. This time I wore rubber waders and carried dry socks stuffed into bags. Three hours later, we reached the room we’d stopped at the night before.

  “Look here,” I said, shining my light onto the dusty floor. A bare footprint – its long toes resembling a hand with their length and positioning – marked the very center of one of our own old boot prints. “I knew I heard something behind us.”

  “They knew we were here,” Nick whispered, his hand moving to the war pick at his belt. “Biding their time for an opening. Stay sharp.”

  I sympathized with Theseus, hunting and being hunted b
y the Minotaur in Minos’ labyrinth. I sniffed, a faint and familiar smell tingling my nostrils.

  “Ammonia,” Colin said, reading my face.

  We continued on, searching the tunnels for any signs, that tickling at my nape that we were being watched now fueled and unstoppable. Three times we wheeled around, believing something behind us, but there never was.

  We’d rounded a corner when Colin, in the lead, brought up a clenched fist, telling us to stop. He motioned to his ear.

  Holding my breath, I listened. Only silence. I opened my mouth to whisper a question when a distinct grunt, like from some large rooting animal, echoed from the darkness ahead. Then the sounds of splashing water followed by another grunt.

  Nick looked back at me, his hand lowering to his war pick. I drew Hounacier and we moved forward, silent as we could.

  The passage sloped downward, turning twice before opening into a long, vaulted room, its floor completely submerged in milky-brown water. Nick’s bright torch reflected off the surface, throwing its shimmering glow across the ceiling.

  Another splash brought the light down onto a vaguely human shape twenty meters away at the far end, standing before an arched doorway. The ghoul’s eyes reflected the light from their deep sockets. Wild black hair crested its simian head and down its hunched back. Wet rags, the remains of whatever clothes the owner had worn when the demon had taken them, hung in shredded tatters, dripping on the landing on which the creature stood. The ghoul’s lips curled back as it growled, long and steady.

  Colin began swinging his sword beside him, the blade quickly gaining speed. He took a step forward.

  “Stop!” Nick hissed.

  Colin looked back, but kept Saighnean spinning.

  Nick nodded to the floor. “We have no idea how deep that is.”

  As if in answer, the ghoul let out a howl and slammed its fists into the floor.

  “He’s right,” I whispered. “It’s not coming at us.” I scanned the water, searching for any sign of a floor or movement beneath. I didn’t know if ghouls even needed air, but their undead familiars wouldn’t.