SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  The ghoul roared and hopped, but didn’t advance.

  “Just keep at it, asshole,” Nick said. He dropped his holy weapon into his belt loop and drew his pistol. The black suppressor made it look like a cannon.

  The ghoul slapped at the water and took a step forward, obviously unconcerned by the gun.

  The shot cracked through the room, louder than I would have expected. The round caught the demon in the thigh. It howled, stumbling back, blood pouring down its leg. Nick fired again, this time blasting a hole in the wall behind it.

  The ghoul scrambled back through the doorway. The obsidian-tipped slugs couldn’t harm the demonic spirit, but they’d definitely kill the possessed body. It leaped for cover as Nick’s third shot rang out.

  We stood there for a solid minute, listening.

  “Cheap trap,” Nick said, holstering his pistol. “Lure us into some sunken pit. Let us drown and eat us.” He turned to me. “Is there a way around?”

  Giving the water a wary glance, I stepped back into the passage before sheathing my machete and opening the map. “Yes. Take us about an hour.”

  We headed back and circled our way around, eventually making it back to the flooded chamber from the other side. The ghoul’s blood still spattered the ground, but didn’t lead us far before ending at another submerged hallway with no way around.

  After nine laborious hours, we returned to the surface, tired, bruised, and frustrated.

  * * *

  17, July 2009

  “We’ll get them tonight,” Nick promised as we started down the manhole on our third night. “I promise.”

  “You said that last night,” I said.

  “But tonight they’ll get aggressive. Their trap didn’t work, so they’ll make their move. We just have to beat them to it.”

  “If you’re wrong,” Colin said, his voice echoing up from below. “You owe me a drink.”

  Metal and concrete grinded above as Nick slid the manhole cover into place. It thudded, pinching off the light from above. “Deal.”

  The ladder ended in a circular brick chamber. Shards of broken bottles gleamed from a mound piled along one side. Three arched doorways led from the room. Above one, stenciled in metallic paint, read Dante’s immortal line, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, the words framed with winged skulls.

  “All right, Doctor,” Nick said as he reached the bottom. “Which way?”

  I nodded to Dante’s door, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here,” and we headed through. We followed the passage past several antechambers, each decorated in its own style. In one, a support pillar had been carved into that of a long-haired maiden, a rotted green blanket wrapped over her shoulders like a cape, and a hundred empty tea light cups laid out on the floor before her. I took comfort that none of those candles were burning.

  The passage continued on, shrinking lower and lower until we had to crawl. Nick cracked another glow stick and hurled it ahead. It skittered and fell into a room at the far side. “Is there another way around?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not unless we doubled back three kilometers. That should empty into the hall we want.”

  He shined his light onto the ceiling, revealing a wide crack running the length. One good bump might easily bury us forever.

  “Stay low,” he said, and continued forward.

  Something moved past the light ahead, casting a shadow. Icy fear shot down my spine. There was no way to draw our weapons and fight in this tiny space, and whoever crawled into that room would be open to attack, helpless.

  Scratching came from ahead, like fingernails desperately trying to dig their way through a chalkboard.

  “Back!” Nick whispered through clenched teeth. “Back! Back! Back!”

  We scrambled backwards. Colin cursed as my heel nearly took him in the eye, but I dared not slow lest Nick’s back-scrambling boots hit me. Heart pounding, sweat ran down my face and into my eyes. Finally, my feet made it back to the opening of this death trap and I nearly screamed as hands gripped me from behind, yanking my belt.

  “Gotcha,” Colin said pulling me out.

  I rolled onto my knees and helped pull Nick from the hole.

  I peered down the empty tunnel, seeing an orange glow the far side, but nothing more. “Did you see it?”

  Panting, Nick shook his head. “No. But, it… growled.”

  “Shit.” I looked back down the shaft. “You think it’s waiting?”

  He blew a long breath. “Possible. If it is, whoever sticks their head out of the passage first is a dead man.”

  “What if we go close to the edge and pushed each other through at the end?” Colin asked.

  “Not willing to risk that. Not if there’s another way.”

  “Three kilometers,” I said.

  “Then we need to hustle.” Nick cracked another stick and dropped it on this side of the shaft. “Keep your eyes and ears open. They’re hunting us now.”

  Taking point, I led us back down the passage, past the cloaked maiden, and into another hall. Steps led down into gray water, leaving narrow ledges on either side. Straddling the flooded passage, our backs against the arched ceiling we moved on, our red-hued reflections staring up at us.

  Twice we stopped and listened for sounds behind us, but heard nothing. Each time we dropped another glow stick so that we might see any pursuers following us past that point. After two hours, I turned down a passage and saw an orange glow ahead. Cautious, we drew our weapons and crept forward.

  The glow stick rested on the floor, nine inches beneath the square passage in the wall. Hounacier ready, I removed a telescoping inspection mirror from my belt and held it out, making sure the tunnel was vacant, then peered through. Fifteen meters down, I could see the light of Nick’s second stick. “Clear.”

  “Look at this,” Colin said, kneeling beside me.

  More bare footprints, like those from the previous night, marred the dusty floor. They crisscrossed back and forth across the side entrance.

  “At least two,” Colin said.

  “And one in shoes,” I added, nodding to a set of sneaker tracks mixed in with the other prints.

  “Which way?” Nick asked.

  I motioned ahead.

  “So let’s find ‘em.”

  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.

  Colin began swinging Saighnean in another unstopping pattern, its speed quickly accelerating into a blur. The final ghoul raced toward the nearest exit but I ran around to meet it, Hounacier raised and warding palm out.

  Without looking at the tattoo, it lurched to the side, but too late before Colin was on it. Spectral flames erupted as the ghoul seemed to come apart into four pieces. Colin grinned as he pulled the sword out from a hunk of burning torso where the blade had finally stopped.

  “Looks like you were right, Nick.” I turned to see the Armenian standing, pick raised at his side. A figure stood in the passage before him – fat, vaguely feminine, and naked, reminiscent of a Paleolithic Venus. It had no face at all, only a smooth blankness.

  Nick stepped closer, nearing the range for Ozkareen’s shock missile.

  A vertical slit opened along the creatures face like a lipless mouth. The crack lengthened, stretching down its body, between its sagging breasts, and splitting its hanging gut. Then the demon unfolded like a flower and Nick screamed.

  Thousands of eyeballs filled the inside like the seeds of a pomegranate. They rolled and moved in swirling patterns, set to some unheard music. A honey-like aroma flooded the chamber, but beneath that, lurked the eye-watering ammonia stink. Nick’s screams ceased. His raised arm lowered and fell limp to his side. Ozkareen slipped from his grip and clanked to the floor.

  The demon moved closer. Slender tendrils, rooted at the mass’ center, wriggled toward him.

  “No!” I charged toward it, and raised my warding eye before me, thrusting it over Nick’s shoulder.

  The rolling eyes all zeroed in on my palm and then seemed to boil along the flower’s surface. The demon flew off like a swimming jellyfish, slinging dust as it surged away into the darkness, tendrils trailing behind it.

  Nick’s head lolled. I caught him as he stumbled forward and vomited. Colin stepped in and helped me move him to a sitting position, my eyes never leaving the dark passage through which the demon had fled.

  Nick feebly reached for Ozkareen lying in the dust.

  “Here,” I said handing it to him. “Are you all right?”

  Still panting, Nick nodded. “What… was that?”

  “I don’t know. I–”

  “You’re the fucking Librarian,” Colin snapped.

  Setting my jaw, I pulled off my pack and opened my tablet. He was right, this was my job. They’d killed the demons, while I’d only killed a mindless servant. I scrolled through the record. While the tell-tale smell and resemblance to the Venus were certainly noteworthy, the sheet of eyes reminded me of something I’d read before, something I thought I’d never encounter.

  Nick crawled to his feet and stood behind me. Whether real or imagined, I could feel his mounting impatience. It was getting away.

  “Here,” I said, clicking a file. A crude image of a Japanese screen peppered with eyes filled the top of the page.

  “What is it?” Colin asked without taking his gaze from the passage. His free hand touched his chest, surely feeling the rosary beneath his shirt.

  I licked my lips, reviewing the scant description. “A mokumokuren.”

  “Mokuwhat?”

  “Mokumokuren,” I repeated. “Extremely rare. Thought to be extinct. Last one reported in Turkey 1892. No mention of stealing eyes, but said to… entrance its prey with hypnotic patterns of eyes. Lives in dark places, moves in aquatic fashion, and it can strangle you with its hundred tentacles.”

  “Lovely.”

  “What hurts it?” Nick asked, peering closer.

  “Pure quartz.”

  He grunted. “I don’t have that.”

  “I have one shell.” I clicked off my screen. “Mixed load, but quartz is in it.”

  “Just one?” Colin asked.

  “Better than nothing,” Nick said. “Load it and let’s get after that thing.”

  Quickly, I stored my tablet away and withdrew a lumpy, rolled bundle. I unfurled it, revealing a rainbow assortment of hand-loaded shotgun shells. Moving my fingers along the rows I removed a white plastic shell with a red and black band. I clicked open my Remington and switched it out with one of the obsidian loads before putting the bundle away. “Ready.”

  Nick held out his hand and I gave over the sawed-off. The yellow light flooding the room had begun to wane as the slain ghouls returned to their once human forms. The honey aroma had faded, but the cat-piss stink seemed to have gotten worse. Nick took point, with me behind him, Hounacier in hand.

  We moved slow, checking each chamber and crevice before going on. The passage wound its way deeper, angling sharply before leveling out. Fueled with paranoia, my heart pounded and sweat beaded my gritty face despite the cold, unmoving air.

  Nick moved toward a pit-like vault, but I touched his
arm.

  He turned toward me and I pointed down at a low crevice in the wall by his feet. The limestone dust before it was rippled like miniature wind-swept dunes.

  Instantly, he moved past to the other side, his holy weapon raised. I drew my mirror and angled it at the hole. A tunnel, no more than eighteen inches high and two feet wide, extended into darkness.

  I nodded to Colin beside me and he lowered his torch, shining the crimson beam along the tight passage. It extended a little over a meter before opening into another chamber. Relaying this to my partners, I crawled onto the smooth floor.

  Nick cracked one of his last glow sticks, filling our tunnel with brilliant orange light then he hurled it down the shaft before me.

  The stick ricocheted off the tight walls, finally bouncing to a stop just a few feet inside the room. The chamber appeared small, but I couldn’t see much from my limited view. I extended the mirror’s handle to its full length and stretched my arm as far as I could to get a better look.

  It wasn’t long enough to reach and I had to crawl a little inside, my arm out before me. Rotating the mirror, I saw no exits. I pushed it out a little further for a better view. Black whip-like strands shot down from the ceiling, wrapping around my mirror and ripping it from my grip.

  I cried out in surprise, banging my head as I tried to scramble back. More tendrils fluttered along the top edges of my tunnel, reaching blindly. A palpable waft of sweet nectar filled the passage. Colin seized my belt and dragged me back out.

  They didn’t have to ask what I’d seen.

  “Exits?” Nick mouthed.

  I shook my head, panting, then pointed upward. “On the ceiling.”

  “What do we do?” Colin whispered, his mouth so close I could feel his breath on my ear.

  “If we try to crawl in we’re dead before we can make it,” I replied, looking back down the now empty hole.

  Nick crouched beside me, silent as he studied the shaft. He shook his head steadily, seeming to run through our few options.

  I licked my dusty lips. “I have an idea.”

  Nick gave me a look and I pulled off my pack and lay on my back. I drew Hounacier. “Give me my gun. Push me through. Fast.”