SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  Except when he smiled. I can barely remember his face, I already said that, but, oh, my, I can remember that smile. His mouth didn’t grin. His lips peeled back into a feral wolf’s snarl that tried to hide inside a smile. His smile was bright and sunny and promised a hundred painful ways to die. I was still reeling from the vision of a hunting pack running across the sky, but I remember his smile standing out even then. I can look back and remember the bloodied shores of Normandy beach and the bodies that floated in the water as we tried to make our way first to shore and then, somehow, to safety, and I am chilled. I can remember the night I saw the Wild Hunt and I am humbled. I remember Crowley’s smile and I shiver. I guess that’s all I can say about that.

  I almost asked him if he had seen the hunt too, but I didn’t. In the end that damned smile of his scared me too much.

  There wasn’t much to say after that. We just walked on, moving as quietly as a dozen men can when walking down the road in the darkness of the night.

  The lights turned out to be an inn at the edge of a crossroads. I’d like to say we came upon a quiet scene but that would have been a lie.

  We came upon a scene of violence.

  Seems to me that one of the biggest problem with that war was the bullies. I don’t care what country they came from there were some folks just seemed to need to show how much in control they were, how much they could do and what they could get away with. Me? I was raised to believe we were supposed to help people, not hurt them.

  There was a gathering of people standing around the small inn at the crossroads where we’d seen lights. It was a small place, the sort that I guess has been around for just about forever. The road wasn’t much and the fields were ruined, but once upon a time there must have been crops and I reckon the inn had been new. I couldn’t tell you the name. I never did learn French when I was over there. Hell, according to most of my teachers I never even really learned English, but I suppose I caught enough of that one to get by.

  In any case, the inn was lit up by lanterns and there was a small gathering of people outside it, looking at what had been done. They shivered and I think it was more than the cold that chilled them.

  There were four bodies. They were situated together, their heads close enough that, if they’d been alive, they could have whispered to each other. Each pointed in a different direction on the compass, and each was naked. Someone had taken the time to carve their bodies with hundreds of runes. By the blood on the ground it had happened there and I’m guessing they were alive when it happened.

  All of us looked. Most of us stared and more than a couple of the guys crossed themselves. What was done to them was blasphemous.

  Crowley shook his head and said, “Flayed. They were still alive when it happened.” At odd intervals along their corpses strips of flesh had been peeled back, twisted over themselves several times, and then stuck back into the flesh of the people they’d been peeled from. I was grateful for the darkness. We couldn’t see the worst of the damage for the shadows.

  Crowley turned to one of the locals and started firing off questions in French. Not a one of us knew he spoke the language, because, of course, he never volunteered that knowledge.

  We all listened in, though I suspect most of them were as ignorant as me as to what was said.

  Crowley’s face was an open book. He was angry. He was disgusted.

  When he’d finished his interrogation he looked directly at the captain and shook his head. “Nazis. They came here yesterday morning and took over the inn. When the sun rose this morning they started working on the people here. The Innkeeper, his wife, his son and a girl who nobody here seems to know.” He gestured to the smallest of the corpses. I guess she was maybe eight or nine years of age. His voice was harsh, his expression was worse.

  “Why would they do anything like this?” The captain was as shocked as the rest of us. He stared at the bodies as he spoke and his eyes seemed incapable of drinking in the details. He looked, but I don’t think he saw much of anything. I was in the same boat. It was easier to look at Crowley than to deal with what we were seeing.

  Crowley didn’t much seem bothered. He squatted close to the bodies and started looking them over carefully. It only took me a few seconds to realize he was reading what was written on their bodies.

  “What does it say?”

  “It says, ‘shut the hell up so I can read this.’”

  I listened. I outranked the man, being as I’d made it all the way to corporal, but that didn’t matter.

  He studied the writings on the first body, even going so far as to lift the legs and arms to see if there was more written that might be hidden in the bloodied mud, when the young girl’s corpse sat straight up and looked right at him.

  The voice that came from her bloodied mouth never belonged to a child. It was low and deep and loud and spoke words I had never before heard. The sound of them chilled me almost a much as the source.

  I backed away, and I know most of the others did too. Several of the villagers got the right idea in my mind and ran for their homes. They had that advantage. My home was over an ocean away.

  Crowley spoke back, nearly spitting his answer.

  She yelled louder, until he could barely be heard. Her chest did not move. She took in no breaths. Her words came out of a mouth that offered no steam in the cold of the night, when every other person who’d spoke showed their heat with every uttered word.

  She came closer to Crowley and he stayed his ground, not looking worried about the approaching shape at all. He stood. I remember that. I also remember wondering why he wasn't screaming and running, because about half the squad broke ranks and started doing just that before the sarge called them back.

  The dead girl kept screaming, obscene noises that hurt me to hear and that made my stomach lurch. I don’t know what she said. I don’t know that I ever heard a language that could make a person sick, but she was doing it.

  Crowley started speaking in low tones, exactly soft enough that I couldn’t make out any words clearly, and with each word he spoke the dead girl staggered backward as if struck. She stopped speaking and turned to screaming instead, holding her arms in front of her face as if to ward off savage blows, and perhaps she was, because the flesh on her arms rippled, peeling away from her bones, blistering and then burning into dust and ashes though there was no heat. The rest of her body soon followed suit, and in a space of ten seconds, her remains were gone, drifting away on a harsh wind that affected nothing else.

  When she had vanished into nothingness, Crowley rose from his squat and shook his head. And he was smiling. His eyes looked almost feverish and his smile was broad enough that I feared it might actually split the skin of his lips.

  A moment later he sobered and shook his head.

  “I’m not sure what the Nazis summoned, but whatever it is, it doesn’t want to be found.”

  He was speaking to the captain.

  The captain did not answer. He stared at the spot where the little girl’s body had been standing on lifeless feet, and trembled.

  I understood exactly how he felt.

  Per the captain’s orders, we left the area, walking for another mile or more before he decided we were far enough away to safely make camp.

  We left the bodies where we found them.

  When we started walking. Crowley stayed behind for a while. No one questioned his decision. I don’t think anyone dared.

  * * *

  The deaths haunted us. We were in a war zone. We had all of us been shot at and either wounded or killed other people. I was twenty or so, as I recall it, but just like most of the guys with me, I didn’t really act it. We were too busy worrying about whether or not we would live to see home to goof around. Most of the time we had to scout out towns before we could consider entering them, because as much as we might have wanted to claim we were winning the war it didn’t feel that way. There were Germans everywhere and they seemed to be in control of nearly every town we encountered.<
br />
  Through all of that, the deaths haunted us. They weren’t acts of violence in a kill or be killed situation. They were slow, methodical murder.

  Everyone was on edge, except, of course, for Crowley.

  He seemed more alive than he had been, more vibrant and more vital as if finding those massacred shapes had somehow made his world a little brighter. I won’t say he had a spring in his step and he sure as hell wasn’t whistling, but he moved differently and seemed lighter on his feet.

  And he smiled all the goddamn time. Not always a full smile, not always bright and sunny, but it was like that nasty grin of his was lurking just under the surface and you could feel it there, waiting to pounce.

  We managed two days of peace and quiet before things went south.

  Early morning on the third day we were walking and we were doing our best to be quiet in the early-morning light of a cloudy day when a rifle shot blew the helmet right off the captain’s head and took half his brain with it. I remember looking at his helmet as it bounced across the dirt road and looking at the bullet hole right through the front of it and thinking that it shouldn’t have been there, and that there shouldn’t have been hair and red sticking to the inside of it either. I didn’t really register that he was dead; I just looked at the damned helmet and tried to understand what had gone wrong.

  I would have died right then, but Crowley was there and he hauled me backward and threw me into a ditch right around the time something blew a crater in the spot where I’d been standing.

  “Pay attention!” He roared the words at me and moved, crouching low and grinning as he moved across the road and looked toward the woods about fifty yards away.

  They were there. You couldn’t see them, but the flash from their muzzles let us know they were trying to kill us.

  A bullet took Lorenzo in his chest and blew out his back. That was bad because Lorenzo was a good guy. It was worse because that same bullet also took out the radio pack Lorenzo was wearing. Just that fast we were cut off from any possible assistance.

  Fifty yards away, and I swear to you that Crowley was looking at them. His eyes scanned the woods too intently. He took his time as the ground let off puffs of dirt where bullets came too close and as the rest of us tried to find a good position to shoot from while keeping ourselves intact.

  I had trouble looking away from Crowley. I yelled at him to get to cover, same as he had yelled at me, but he either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Instead he stayed where he was until he spotted whatever it was he was looking for and then he ran straight for the woods.

  I thought it strange the sarge didn’t yell until I saw the man slumped in the road, both hands on his stomach and a dark stain marking his jacket and shirt alike.

  Januski moved to help the sergeant. I looked back to Crowley.

  I saw a bullet pound into his jacket along the shoulder. I don’t think it hit him, I didn’t think it then, either, but it blew the epaulette off the jacket as he charged, his long legs cutting the distance quickly.

  He took the time to fire at the enemy. I give him that and nothing more. He did not duck. He did not dodge. He seemed utterly unconcerned about whether or not he lived.

  All we could do was try to offer him covering fire or watch him die. I chose to offer as much help as I could and every time I saw a muzzle flash I aimed at it.

  Crowley ran hard and fast and made the woods as quick as any track star I ever did see.

  We couldn’t fire when that happened. We might have hit one of our own.

  I can only tell you this. There was an explosion over in those woods that was large enough to shake the few remaining leaves from the trees and to split an old oak in that copse in half. After the explosion the gunfire slowed and then stopped.

  Except for the sounds coming from Sergeant Marks as Januski tried to patch him up. There was an awful lot of silence. I don’t think I can explain how worrisome that is when you’re certain people are trying to kill you.

  Crowley came out of the woods, hauling two men behind him. One man was struggling and thrashing, the other was either dead or unconscious and was being dragged along by his heel.

  After about ten yards Crowley dropped the one who wasn't moving just long enough to beat the one trying to get away into a stupor. I could hear the punches from nearly forty yards away.

  When the German stopped struggling, Crowley dragged his prisoners along with him.

  They weren’t regular soldiers. Their uniforms were all black and they were older men, not soldiers but officers.

  Not just officers, but SS. Hitler’s special elite according to what we’d heard. These were the guys the rest of the Germans were scared of.

  Crowley scowled at us as he came back and threw the two men into the road.

  The one he’d beaten on was breathing in rough gasps, and his face was swelling.

  “Boys, I’m going to need you to keep a look out for a while.”

  “What happened to the rest of them?” Lewis was a good egg, but not so bright.

  Crowley looked at the kid for a long while and then spoke as if dealing with a child who refused to learn. “I killed them.”

  “All of them?”

  “Well, Lewis, I didn’t leave them in the woods so they could come after us.” A long pause while Lewis looked at him, frowning. Then, in an exasperated voice Crowley said, “Yeah, Lewis. They’re all dead.” He looked my way. “Is he actually this stupid?”

  Lewis shook his head. “Hey. Don’t call me names.”

  “Lewis?”

  Lewis was a big man, easily six and a half feet in height and broad as a barn. “Yeah?”

  Crowley smiled. Lewis flinched.

  “Shut up and let me work here.”

  Lewis nodded.

  Crowley dragged the first of the men in black off to the side and crouched over him, speaking softly in the cold air.

  Listen, technically I was supposed to be in charge at that point. I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I knew it and I accepted it. I was a grunt. I was there to fight and to take back what the Nazis had stolen, but I preferred not to lead. I didn’t want that many lives on my conscience.

  Crowley spoke to both of his captives while we listened without any idea what was being said. He spoke to them in German. I didn’t understand a single word and if anyone else did they hid it well. I say he spoke. What I mean is he interrogated. That’s the only way to put it. He never touched them, but I could see them flinch when he talked, and I could well see the fear in their eyes. The second one actually cried while Crowley questioned him. At the end the man fell back and openly sobbed. I have no idea what Crowley said or did to cause that.

  When he was done he pointed to the two men he’d dragged with him and said, “I’m done with them. Do what you want.”

  He looked right at me as he said it.

  “I. What?” It wasn’t my best moment.

  “Corporal.” He pointed to my two chevrons. “You’re in charge. Your sergeant is dying, your captain is dead.” Those brown eyes looked at me and I nearly cringed. “That means it’s on you.”

  “Well, the sarge is still alive.”

  Crowley looked at me and spoke slowly, softly. The expression on his face was one of barely repressed anger. “He’s dead. He won’t make it through the day. There’s no one around to help him. I would, but I have other things to take care of.”

  “What? Where are you going?”

  “Leiber and Dunst over there,” he jerked a thumb at the Germans, “told me what I needed to know. Now I’m going to go find the man who committed those murders and make him tell me what he summoned.”

  “Summoned? What are you talking about, Crowley?” I was doing my very best not to panic. I need to clarify this: I did not want command. I wanted to survive and get home and that was all. Two little patches on my sleeve did not make me a good candidate for command.

  “I really don’t have time for you.” He spoke under his breath, but the way he said it, I knew
he didn’t much care if I could hear him. “Okay. The four people that got killed? They were sacrifices. Their lives in exchange for summoning something to help the Nazis win the war. I want to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s what I do. So, I’m going to hunt down the bastard that did the summoning. I’m going to kill him. I’m also going to stop whatever the hell he brought through. I don’t know what that is yet, but the Wild Hunt showing up told me there was some bad news coming our way. That’s why they showed in the first place. The only time the Wild Hunt appears is to warn people that something truly deadly is drawing near. You just have to know how to listen and what to look for.”

  “Well, what do you look for?” I wanted to beg him to stay and take command. I needed that. I wasn’t ever going to be ready.

  That look again, like he was talking to a deeply stupid person who simply would not listen. “You look for corpses laid out in a sacrificial cross. You look for corpses cut and marked and used as a beacon for things that should never be allowed into this world.”

  I flinched a little, and he took mercy.

  “Listen, kid. I need to go take care of the bad things that are coming. You need to take care of your people and try to get help for the sarge.” His tone remained patronizing and I felt my teeth lock down on each other. I wasn’t annoyed. I was angry.

  “Miller!”

  The eldest of the privates looked at me. “Yes, Corporal?”

  “Get everyone on the road. Try to find help. See what you can do to keep the sarge alive. Tie up those two bastards and haul them with you. Me and Crowley are going to take care of some business with the Nazis.”

  Miller nodded as did Nunnally and Januski who went back to patching up the sergeant as best he could. He wasn’t a medic. We didn’t have one any more, but he’d worked on a farm all his life and had taken care of more injuries than anyone else in the squad.