SNAFU: Resurrection

by Dirk Patton

  “That was easy.” Mason didn’t like surprises. His compliment was just as much a query.

  “Never even turned on his security.”

  Mason nodded and felt a flash of irritation. On the one hand, laziness made their job easier. On the other, that sort of security system was a very expensive addition. Not using it was foolish and meant there might be something unexpected ahead. Like the truck. They had no idea who the 4x4 belonged to; only that Thayer likely had nothing to do with it.

  “Be cautious. I don’t like surprises.”

  All of them nodded their affirmative. He needn’t have worried and he knew it. Most of the guys had been with him since the beginning, unlike the one he’d already removed from the equation. Well, Haskell was a pro, but he’d be erased soon enough. He couldn’t forgive getting screwed over by Coleman. It wasn’t in his nature to forgive.

  The house was empty, quiet as a tomb. The notion brought a quick flash of a smile to Mason’s face. Silent was the best sort of structure to enter.

  A few quick hand gestures was all it took to send everyone on their way, sorting through the rooms as quickly and efficiently as they could. Mason headed for the den and was happy to see that the door to the room was not only unlocked, but open. Still, part of him felt uneasy, first the security system was off and now the man’s personal home office door was unsecured. Was it sloppiness? Or was there more to it?

  He hadn’t survived for years by ignoring his instincts and at the moment they were saying there just might be some serious shit rolling his way. He checked Thayer’s office before closing the door. He wouldn’t be caught off guard.

  Three seconds after he’d walked away from the room, the door opened behind him.

  It wasn’t one shape that came through, but several. The house was dark, but his eyes had long since adjusted. The shapes were human, but they were wrong on a level that sent every bell and whistle in his mind screaming.

  “We’ve got company!” He let out the call even as be backpedalled and drew his 9mm. The first burst of three shots caught the closest of the shapes in the chest and sent it staggering back into the rest of the group. The body jerked once for every perfectly delivered shot, and Mason knew the bastard was going down, and probably taking a couple more down with him that would buy him more time to shoot.

  That was the way it was supposed to work in the real world. Instead, the first one came back up with a bellowing hiss, and charged, dropping lower to the ground and moving on all fours. The ones behind his human target were already up and coming for him.

  There was no panic. Mason was a trained killer and he’d learned long ago to suppress the sort of fear that would cripple him. Instead he focused the heightened senses offered by adrenaline, used the bump in his reflexes to his advantage and prepared to eliminate his enemies.

  That all sounded perfect in his head, right up until the time he saw the dead man’s face. The jaw bulged and the mouth opened –a mouth full of razor-edged teeth. He could see well enough to know the thing in front of him was not a man at all, but something far, far worse.

  Panic saved his life in that moment. He jumped back with a shriek and the thing coming for him missed as it tried to bite through his face.

  The next few rounds from his pistol were entirely handled on autopilot. Muscle memory took over and let him blow new holes in the creature. Open wounds bloomed across the chest, the neck the face and the head above the left eye. The nightmare fell down and did not get back up.

  There was no time to celebrate as another of the things lunged toward him, mouth open in a screech that bared impossible teeth. Do enough damage and they fell. That was what he’d taken away from the fight. He opened fire, blowing half of the chest of the thing away. He pulled the trigger twice more before he realized his gun was empty. He dropped the clip and slammed another magazine home.

  Haskell stepped into the room and did exactly what he should have done. He took aim and fired at the next in line. The thing spun as the bullet tore through its left arm. Then it slither-ran toward Haskell at high speed. He tried to compensate, tried to recover from the unexpected shock, but he was not fast enough. Haskell let out a short scream as the thing landed on top of him and drove him to the ground.

  There was no time to worry about Haskell after that, because another of the things was moving toward him. It moved in impossible ways. The very notion hurt Mason's head. The human body has physical limits, but the thing bobbed and weaved even as it walked, and no human torso could move that way, not even the most adept contortionist could manage it.

  A perverse sort of anger bloomed in Mason’s chest. The fear was still there, but his mind was outraged by the notion of the laws of physics being so casually shoved aside.

  “You need to back off!” He roared the words and fired at the next of the things, refusing to accept they were human any longer, and refusing to accept the possibility they were anything else at the same time. Mason’s heart was hammering as hard as it ever had, but his hands were still steady.

  From behind him he heard the sounds of Muller and Hicks coming his way. They were wise enough to announce themselves.

  Haskell let out a loud, wet scream and fired his weapon wildly. Mason had no choice but to step back and look.

  Sometimes looking only makes it worse. The man-shaped thing tore away Haskell’s scalp and a large portion of his skull in the same move. Blood and other fluids spewed across the area and Mason shivered even as he took aim and fired round after round into the thing on top of Haskell.

  A moment is all it takes, really. That, and a simple mistake in perception and Mason’s life changed forever. The mistake was merely that he thought he’d killed the first of the nightmares to come his way when he’d blown out most of its chest.

  While he was putting holes in the thing that killed Haskell, the first creature he’d blown to pieces took a massive chunk out of his left thigh.

  He screamed.

  He was still screaming when one of the other shapes jumped past him and by the sounds of things, attacked Muller.

  Then Muller was screaming, too.

  The thing on his thigh clawed its way up his chest, biting and tearing as it pulled itself higher.

  He had time to wonder why Hicks wasn't screaming before the darkness tore away pieces of his consciousness.

  * * *

  While Carl kept Thayer busy talking, Griffin turned and moved away from the support wall and into the gloom. Time to take advantage of the shadows that dominated the chamber. Truthfully, Griffin didn't much like the idea of going too far into the huge space, knowing what could be waiting there.

  Griffin's night vision was better than most. Once he reached a point where he could no longer see Carl, he moved forward, keeping parallel with the support wall, hoping he could spot Thayer before the fat man could see him.

  Griffin paused as he heard sounds of distant gunfire. Someone else was in the house above. No way of knowing if they were friend or foe, and he couldn't worry about it now.

  Thayer must have heard it too, because Griffin saw some motion off to his right. Griffin had fed a fresh magazine into the Beretta before leaving cover and now he brought the weapon up and started toward where he judged Thayer too be. He spotted the man at the same moment that Thayer saw him coming. Thayer tried to swing the .45 up, but Griffin had the advantage of already being ready. He put two rounds into Thayer's leg.

  The fat man screamed and fell as his leg gave away. He lost his grip on the .45 as he clutched at his injured limb. Griffin sighted on Thayer's head. If he tried to regain the semi-auto, Griffin would finish him.

  But Thayer wasn't going for the gun. His attention seemed focused elsewhere. Griffin could hear him mumbling to himself. Then, his hands moved away from his leg and he got up. Shit. Had he healed himself?

  “You've ruined it,” Thayer said. “You're making me use too much of my power.” He looked up and Griffin saw that his eyes had begun to glow with a pale green luminescence.


  The hell with that. Griffin fired and saw a jagged hole appear in Thayer's forehead. The man staggered, but he was still coming.

  Griffin said, “Carl, we got a situation here!”

  Carl leaned out from behind the support wall and saw the shambling form of Henry Thayer. He said, “Jesus, this just gets better and better.”

  Both men began firing. Thayer's massive bulk jerked and twitched with each bullet strike, but he stubbornly refused to fall.

  Griffin sensed motion to his left and spared a glance to see that several of Thayer's minions were slithering from the recesses in the walls. He ignored them. Thayer was puppeteer. Drop him and the puppets would fall too. At least he hoped so.

  “I warned you, goddamn it,” Carl said. He took careful aim and Griffin saw one of Thayer's knees explode.

  That made the fat man go to one knee. It also made him tilt forward so that Griffin could see the top of his skull. He put two rounds into it. Thayer fell face down, his body still twitching.

  Griffin turned immediately, prepared to line up on the closest ghoul. But the closest and the farthest and all the little ghouls in between were on the ground as well. Finally, something had worked out.

  * * *

  Thayer was dead, or at least he should have been with the damage he and Wade had delivered to him. By all rights he was a goner. The man certainly wasn't in a fighting mood anymore and Carl was glad of that.

  Still, Thayer moved. He sat up, blood running from the wounds in his head and from every other spot where they’d managed to put a bullet into his heavyset body.

  Thayer’s face was a distorted mask, warped by pain and something worse.

  He was afraid, genuinely terrified, but Carl didn’t think he was scared of dying.

  No. This was something worse.

  From the farthest reaches of Thayer’s personal chamber of terrors, a shape lumbered toward them. It was a corpse, but so far gone that little remained aside from blackened flesh stuck to bones. The eyes of the thing were as dark as midnight, far darker than the mummified remains.

  Thayer looked at the shape and his eyes bulged with terror.

  Carl understood why.

  It wasn’t the corpse. That was bad, but, frankly, he and Wade had seen far worse in recent months. The dead walking happened enough that the apparition should have seemed almost commonplace. That was the sort of thought that made Carl twitchy enough, but there was a presence hidden within the dead thing, something that loomed ponderously, until its energies filled the entire room with an oppressive pressure, like he was swimming underwater, though the air was still perfectly breathable, if a bit rancid.

  Had he ever felt anything like this before? Of course he had, once upon a time when the head of the Blackbourne Clan had torn a hole in reality and tried to unleash a god upon the world.

  He did not have to guess. This was Nsnigoth, the thing Thayer worshipped, the very thing supposed to make him a god. He cast his eyes toward Wade for only a moment, to make certain he was not alone in what he felt. Wade’s face spoke all that he needed to hear. His best friend’s expression was an open book, a study in fear. He knew without benefit of a mirror that his own expression was close to identical. He could feel the hairs on his arms and neck standing on end.

  The dead thing spoke with a dark god's voice and it was not a thing meant to be heard by sane people. The words were uttered in a language long dead on the planet. But Carl heard them translated in his mind and cringed at each and every syllable. Someone whimpered. It might have been him or Wade or possibly the both of them, he could not say.

  You have called my name countless times and summoned me to see your sacrifices. You have failed me this night. There will be no reaping of souls, though I shall take what you have. You have done battle in my name and fallen before your enemies. Let them see your fate. Let them know your misery and remember the cost of disappointing Nsnigoth.

  Even as the rotted remains moved forward, a greenish light burned within the bones, a pallid, sickly color that spread like flames across flash paper until the whole body of the thing was ablaze. The light grew in intensity and Carl wondered if the fiery essence might somehow be contagious, diseased or radioactive. He backed away from it, turning his eyes from the thing as it reached for Thayer.

  Around the room, in niches carved for the sole purpose of holding cadavers tortured into a mockery of life, the bodies of Thayer’s victims took on the same glow and began to burn. A thick, acrid smoke burst from each of the bodies and Carl turned, dragging himself away from the light that called to him, that wanted him to see Thayer’s final fate.

  Wade still stared, eyes wide, and Carl grabbed his arm and shook him.

  In an instant Wade recovered and shook himself. “Carl? What the hell…?” His voice sounded strained, hoarse as if he had been yelling when he had not. It wasn't Wade’s vocal chords, it was the air, the insane, growing pressure in the underground fortress.

  “Don’t know! Don’t care! Run!” His own voice carried the same unnatural tone of strain.

  Wade didn’t have to be told twice. He moved for the door, eyes alert and his movements as precise and ready as ever. Carl envied him his calm – he was pretty sure he was going to piss himself.

  Behind them the room bloomed with a green fire that burned as cold as an arctic blast.

  Thayer screamed, a long, lingering wail of fear, sorrow and pain. He was still screaming when Carl pounded up the stairs, following his best friend.

  If he thought escaping the catacomb would make the world better, he was wrong. The house was on fire as well, burning with the same hellish illumination.

  Several bodies raged with the unnatural flames and a few more were pinned by them. Carl shoved for the back door and pushed past a separate duo. One man locked in position, a silent scream marring his burning face, while another of the dead things burned across him. Fingers locked on the man’s flak vest and melted though the material. The head of the thing on top of him had been blown away, and whoever the poor bastard had been, he’d died trying to escape the thing he’d already killed.

  Carl moved toward Wade’s truck, coughing as the fumes from the fire tried to find their way into his lungs. The thought of those burning corpses tainting the inside of his body was enough to make him hold his breath, lest whatever had been done to them might somehow be contagious.

  Neither of the considered waiting around. Even the most civic minded parts of Carl’s mind refused that notion. They had to get away. They had to escape the thing that had spoken to Thayer.

  Wade Griffin was the bravest man he knew, but he was just as determined to get away as Carl himself.

  “They'll call me back here, Wade.” His voice sounded normal again, his mind was starting to feel normal again, too. “Once someone spots the fire.”

  Wade nodded, his face set like stone. “I know. Should take some time though, the place being so far out of town.”

  “I’ll have to come back. It’s my job.” Sometimes that fact weighed on him like a boulder across his chest.

  Wade nodded and drove on. Like as not he wanted to lead foot it out of there, God knew Carl wanted him to, but Wade was wiser than that. No point in drawing attention to themselves in case anyone was around.

  Slow and steady got the job done, even when you wanted to run like all of the demons in Hell were on your ass. Sadly, they both knew more about that than they wanted.

  “When they call you, I’ll come along for the ride.”

  Carl nodded and stared out the windshield, while behind them the Thayer house and all of its secrets burned, the flames moving slowly to the natural colors one expected to see.

  “I wonder who those guys in the house were.”

  Wade looked his way. “One of them was Avery Mason.”

  “No shit?”

  “None. The others were probably his crew. Looks like two of our problems got solved tonight. We can let Major Thorne know she won't have to worry about Mason anymore. I guess Thaye
r's big house did make him look like a good target.”

  Carl nodded again, just for the moment content to let the silence hide the sound of Thayer’s screams in his mind. Thayer’s screams, and the laughter of a mad thing with the powers of a god.

  Thanks for reading SNAFU: Resurrection.

  We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we did putting it together.

  Please consider leaving us a review if (and anywhere) you see fit. Any and all reviews are gratefully accepted.

  If you have any questions, or want to quote from the book, please contact us at any time.

  I would ask please, if you DO review online, send a link to Geoff via editor@cohesionpress.com or via our Facebook page messaging system. If you review for a magazine or paper, let us know and we’ll buy it.

  Thank you.

  + + +

  Geoff Brown - Director, Cohesion Press.

  Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum

  Beechworth, Australia

  Amanda J Spedding - Editor-in-chief, Cohesion Press

  Sydney, Australia

  Matthew Summers - Editor, Cohesion Press

  Sydney, Australia

  Table of Contents

  The Shadows of Teutoburg

  The Deicide Machine

  Stains

  Ragnarok

  How Zeke Got Religion at 20,000 Feet

  Danny

  Conviction

  Failure to Extract

  Hunter

  The Crust

  Call Up the Dead