SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  Colin shook his head.

  “It’s the only way.” I mimed firing the Remington, then hacking the machete.

  No! Colin mouthed. He looked to Nick for support, but the Armenian nodded instead.

  “It’ll work. But I’ll go. I’m senior knight.”

  “You don’t have this,” I said, opening my palm. “Bang,” I whispered, miming pulling the trigger, then dropping the gun and rolling my empty palm before me. “I’m the only one that can do it.”

  Nick’s lips tightened. He handed me the sawed-off. I’ll push you through, he mouthed. Then you, pointing to Colin, push me. One, two.

  I nodded.

  Colin looked at Nick, then to me. Finally he nodded. “You need earplugs.”

  “Ah.” I reached for my pack and drew out the yellow foam plugs Nick had given us. With those firmly in place, I returned to position, gun and Hounacier against my body and before my face.

  “Close your right eye,” Nick ordered.

  I did.

  “Open it after you’ve fired. Otherwise the flash will leave you blind.” He cracked his final glow stick and set it on my stomach then took position at my feet, crouched in a runner’s stance, hands on my boots. Colin squeezed in behind him, mouth tight in an unhappy line.

  Right eye clenched, I nodded to Nick and mouthed, three… two… one.

  I launched forward, rocks scraping my back. The tunnel flew past me in a blur. As my head came into the room I extended the shotgun toward the ceiling. I had only a moment’s glimpse of a thousand eyes looming above, black tendrils lashing toward me.

  I fired.

  The brilliant flash burned my vision and the boom was so loud it jarred my bones. A keening shriek filled the room, audible through my plugged and ringing ears.

  Without time to think I rolled to my feet, staying low but still banging my head, and slinging the other glow stick onto the floor. The room was no more than five feet high. Opening my unblinded right eye I saw the demon before me lashing and writhing like an enraged manta ray. Thousands of eyes rolled to focus in my direction. I dropped the smoking shotgun and extended my warding palm. The tattooed lid stretched wide and the beast shrieked again.

  I lunged, thrusting Hounacier into the heart of the thrashing mass. Her blade buried deep. I yanked it free and hacked and hacked, shredding rolling eyes as slimy tendrils squirmed and whipped at my face and arms.

  Screaming, I rammed the machete’s blade back into the twisting folds with both hands, and then slashed to the side, splitting the monster nearly in half.

  Brilliant maroon fire spilled from its wounds as the demon crumpled to the chamber floor. Panting, and covered in blood, now burning with cold flames, I noticed Nick beside me. Hounacier twisted in my grip moving like a dowser’s rod, her blade coated in flickering fire.

  Loosening my grip, I allowed the machete to move, to guide me where she wanted to go. The blade bent, moving in circles. Transferring her to my off-hand, Hounacier dipped toward my now-emptied right. I brought it up to meet her, palm flat. The edge met my skin then bit in with sharp pain. Demon fire surged into the wound and the machete’s fighting ceased, her newest gift bestowed. An orange and blue half-lidded eye, similar to the one tattooed in my left palm, glowed within the flesh of my cut hand. Then the image faded.

  “Thank you,” I breathed.

  “What was that?” Nick asked, his voice muted.

  “Hounacier telling me to get a new tattoo.” I turned as Colin scrambled into the room.

  “Thank God,” he said, looking at the dead monster. “Everyone all right?”

  “Yes,” I replied, closing my bloodied hand. “Let’s get some fresh air, and buy Nick a beer.”

  The Secret War

  David W. Amendola

  Death lurked in the hamlet. A great deal of death.

  Lieutenant Nikolai Zakharov could feel it. He could not smell it – the temperature was at least thirty degrees below zero so anything that died would quickly freeze solid – but he knew it was there, waiting. Kneeling behind a windfall at the edge of the forest, he observed the cluster of stout log cabins in the clearing through binoculars, watching and listening for signs of activity.

  Nothing. Not even chimney smoke. All was quiet.

  Black ravens perched in the nearby trees, another indicator of death. He noted that they were strangely silent and kept their distance from the hamlet.

  Including Zakharov, his team numbered ten. He and seven others were armed with PPSh-41 submachine guns. The wiry Junior Sergeant Okhchen preferred his Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle with its PE telescopic sight. Private Kaminsky, a giant of man with red hair and fierce eyes, was responsible for the DP-28 light machine gun. He handled it like a toy, shouldering with ease the heavy satchel of extra magazines that normally an assistant would carry for him. Each man also had an RGD-33 stick grenade.

  They were dressed for the extreme cold: quilted jacket and trousers, woolen underwear, fleece cap, fur mittens, and felt boots. For camouflage a white, hooded snow suit was worn over everything.

  Nervous tension sharpened their senses and attuned them to their surroundings, made them alert for the slightest scent or sound. They knew all too well the nature of their enemy.

  Zakharov whistled a bird call to get everyone’s attention and then motioned. He and six others emerged from concealment, snow crunching underfoot, and warily approached the hamlet.

  The tiny settlement huddled on a river bank was an old trading post and stores that had catered to the local fur trade for nearly a century.

  Mere minutes of murderous frenzy had snuffed it out forever.

  On the icy, dirt street the soldiers found pale corpses and pieces of corpses lying frozen among stiffened tatters of shredded clothing. Puddles of blood and gore had solidified into dark-red ice. The villagers had been ripped apart: heads, limbs, and entrails were strewn about. All were gnawed and half-eaten, bones split for marrow and skulls smashed open for brains. A grisly feast for scavengers, but as Zakharov expected, none were skulking around. Wolves, like the ravens, were shunning this place.

  A laika, someone’s pitiful pet, cowered behind a woodshed too terrified to even whimper. What had killed and eaten the villagers did not have a taste for dog meat.

  The soldiers surveyed the carnage dispassionately, hardened to such horrors. This was not their first mission. All were frontoviks – combat veterans. Each had already been awarded the Medal for Combat Merit and a few had also earned at least one wound stripe.

  Zakharov motioned again. Kaminsky lay prone and covered the length of the street with his machine gun. Then three men led by Senior Sergeant Sergei Kravchenko, a short stocky Ukrainian who was Zakharov’s second in command, crept up to the rear of the nearest cabin, staying below window level. With a bang the door was kicked in and they rushed inside, fingers on triggers and grenades ready to throw. After verifying the cabin was unoccupied, they moved on to check the next building.

  At length the search was complete and Kravchenko briskly strode over to relay the results to his superior, who had remained beside Kaminsky.

  “All clear, Comrade Lieutenant.”

  “I assume there are no survivors,” said Zakharov.

  “No.”

  Zakharov nodded at Okhchen, who began inspecting the claw and bite marks on the slain villagers. He squatted to study a footprint in a patch of snow stained pink by blood, viewing it from different angles. Roughly the size of a man’s, it had three clawed toes reminiscent of a bird’s. He walked around and carefully examined other tracks on the hamlet’s outskirts before returning to make his report.

  “Comrade Lieutenant, there were ten of them. They attacked last night.”

  “Which direction did they come from?” asked Zakharov.

  “Northeast. They’re headed southwest now.”

  Zakharov nodded then turned to Kravchenko. “Let’s get moving. We head northeast.”

  “We’re not following them?” asked Kravchenko.

 
; “No, the other teams will have to intercept them. Our assignment is to locate their hole. Signal that we’ve found evidence of an attack and they’re headed southwest.”

  “Yes, Comrade Lieutenant.” Kravchenko beckoned to a private and barked an order.

  The Red Army possessed relatively few radios and the team had none. Laying wire for field telephones was often impractical, so messengers and flares were usually relied upon for communication between teams. The private loaded a flare pistol according to his signal chart, pointed it at the sky, and sent a two-star purple and white flare arching high above.

  The Secret War had raged on and off for almost a quarter-century, never mentioned in the Soviet press or publicly acknowledged by Soviet leaders. Matters of internal security never were.

  Zakharov remembered when he returned from his first search-and-destroy operation. He had been congratulated by his superiors, decorated with the Order of the Red Star, and then bluntly informed that if he ever told anyone outside the unit what he had seen he would be sent to a corrective-labor camp.

  There were lulls in the war, but then the things would return. Just exactly what they were no one knew. In the dead of winter, when the nights were longest, mysterious holes would appear in northern Siberia and the things would come forth, hungry for human flesh. They never hunted animals, only people. And Moscow would have to organize another campaign to eradicate the bloodthirsty creatures.

  They had no official name, as they corresponded to no known species. Soviet scientists debated whether they were the wild men of myth – the almasty of the Caucasus, the chuchunya of Siberia, or the menk of the Urals. But legends described all of these as similar to apes or men, perhaps even surviving Neanderthals, and the terrifying creatures that attacked villagers and herders were definitely not human or simian. Unofficially they were simply referred to as upir, the generic Russian word for bloodsucking monsters such as vampires and ghouls.

  Security operations within the USSR were normally handled by the internal troops of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs – the NKVD, Joseph Stalin’s ruthless secret police. But these paramilitary units lacked the specialized training required. Hunting ghouls was altogether different from conducting mass arrests and deportations of alleged ‘enemies of the people’. After an entire NKVD regiment was annihilated along the Middle Tunguska River in 1936, search-and-destroy operations were taken over by the Red Army.

  A unique unit of irregulars was formed: Special Group X – Spetsialnogo Gruppa X, often referred to simply as Spetsgruppa X. The X was not the Cyrillic letter but the Latin, taken from the mathematical notation for an unknown variable, since the creatures they fought were an unknown species. Composed of soldiers acclimatized and trained for winter warfare, preferably those who had been trappers or hunters in civilian life, its independent detachments were based at Siberian outposts. Whenever a ghoul incursion occurred, teams would hunt down the creatures, eliminate them, and destroy their holes.

  But when reports were received in late 1942 of renewed ghoul activity they were given a low priority by the Kremlin. The Soviet Union was locked in a bloody death struggle with Nazi Germany, which had launched a massive invasion the previous year. All available troops and equipment were needed to replace the appalling losses suffered in the desperate battles for Minsk, Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow. Spetsgruppa X was reduced to a token force. Before the war Zakharov’s team had been the size of a platoon; now it was a squad.

  Zakharov took a sun sighting with a sextant. There were no accurate maps of this area, and he kept a log of their movements and location.

  When none of the others were nearby, Kravchenko asked, “Permission to speak freely, Comrade Lieutenant?”

  “Of course, Sergei Pavlovich.” Despite their difference in rank they were on familiar terms in private. Smart junior officers listened to and learned from their senior non-commissioned officers and Zakharov greatly valued Kravchenko’s experience. Almost twice as old as Zakharov, he had served in the First World War and the Russian Civil War.

  “The detachment’s teams are deployed too far apart,” said Kravchenko. “We can’t support each other and coordinate patrols to sweep each sector properly. If one team encounters too many ghouls it might be overwhelmed before the others can help.”

  “I raised that concern.”

  “May I ask what the major’s response was?”

  “He said we can cover more territory if we disperse this way. Not many ghouls were reported so he’s confident each team can handle any it finds.”

  “Only a few have been detected so far, that’s true, but who’s to say there won’t be more? We have no way of knowing how many will show up each winter.”

  “I know.”

  Kravchenko sighed. “Why did Moscow send us a new detachment commander who has no experience in these operations? It’s bad enough we’re undermanned.”

  “We have our orders.”

  “Understood, Comrade Lieutenant. Did the major at least say something about the planes that were requested?”

  “No, and I wouldn’t count on any either. Supporting our comrades fighting at Stalingrad is Moscow’s top priority right now.”

  They returned to the forest. The dead villagers were left where they lay. Others would come later to dispose of them. The hamlet itself would be abandoned. No one would want to live here now.

  Three soldiers in a nearby gully held the team’s horses, the animals’ foggy breath rising from frosted muzzles. Much of Siberia was still primordial wilderness, impassable for motorized transport. These beasts were small, shaggy Yakutians, a hardy breed that thrived in this brutal climate and subsisted largely on wild grass.

  The team slung weapons, saddled up, and rode off in the direction from which the ghouls had come. Tracks led down the bank and over the flat, slate surface of the frozen river, swept by a whistling southwest breeze. This time of year the ice was thick enough to easily support horsemen. Upon reaching the opposite bank they plunged into the forest.

  Okhchen scouted ahead, his dark, almond-shaped eyes picking out signs of the ghouls’ passage – broken twigs, scuffed lichen, footprints in the snow. But no droppings. Ghouls left no excrement. The team took care to ride single file alongside the trail, not over it, so as not to obliterate any clues. It was easy to follow: their quarry had made no effort to conceal it.

  Zakharov considered himself lucky to be assigned to Spetsgruppa X. The nature of its operations necessitated giving commanders in the field more freedom of initiative than was usual in the Red Army. This comparative independence had increased with the recent demotion of the Communist Party political commissars. Reduced to an advisory role, they no longer held dual command with military officers.

  Keeping one’s command still depended on results though. Failure was never an option in the USSR. Even if you were a marshal it could mean a sentence to a penal battalion or the Gulag, the NKVD’s network of prisons and forced-labor camps. Or a firing squad.

  Not that results guaranteed safety. Thousands had been imprisoned or shot during the purges. To meet the quotas of enemies demanded by Stalin’s insatiable paranoia the secret police could arrest anyone for any reason – or no reason at all. Arbitrary terror maintained his iron rule.

  Every division had an NKVD Special Department attached. Fortunately the head of this unit in Spetsgruppa X was an alcoholic whose wife had an eye for bourgeois luxuries. The commanding general prudently supplied plenty of vodka and furs to ensure glowing weekly reports.

  The team followed the tracks through the bleak taiga. Larches stood gray and skeletal, having shed their needles last autumn. The forest floor had little underbrush, tufts of brown grass poking up through the snow in clearings. Siberia was not only very cold, but also very dry. Many parts actually received little snowfall, although what snow did fall would remain on the ground for at least six months out of the year. The only signs of humanity were small deadfall traps; winter was the hunting season for sable.

&nbs
p; This time of year the days were very short, a blue twilight only lasting about four hours. The golden sun did not come up until late morning and struggled to rise just above the horizon before setting again by mid-afternoon.

  At one point the team heard a long wail far in the distance. The shrill cry resembled nothing uttered by human or animal. They heard it again from time to time, coming from different directions. The soldiers exchanged anxious, knowing looks.

  “Ghouls,” Kravchenko muttered.

  Zakharov raised his hand to signal a halt. He glanced around at the trees. One nearly fifty meters tall towered above the rest. Handing his binoculars to Okhchen, he said, “Get up there and see if you can locate them.”

  Okhchen strapped spikes to his boots and shinnied up the trunk until he could reach the lowest branches, then climbed up through the boughs. Sitting in a crook near the top, he slowly scanned in all directions before quickly clambering back down.

  “Comrade Lieutenant, twelve are two kilometers northeast moving down the trail towards us,” he said. “Ten more are a kilometer and a half southwest, following us and coming fast. The second group is probably the pack that attacked the hamlet. They must have discovered our tracks.”

  “They’re hunting us now,” said Zakharov. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We could dig in and summon the other teams.”

  Kravchenko shook his head. “It’ll be dark before anyone can get here. We’re too far apart. Then the ghouls will have the advantage since they can see at night.”

  “Then we’d better attack now while it’s still daylight and the packs are separated. Eliminate the ones behind us then destroy the rest.”

  Kravchenko grinned, revealing a gold eye tooth. “We’ll catch them by surprise.”

  The team wheeled about and cantered back the way they had come. Soon the horses neighed. They had a keen sense of smell and ghouls exuded a disagreeable odor.

  Swerving behind a rise, the soldiers dismounted. Three held the horses. Okhchen and Kaminsky crawled up to the crest to over-watch positions while the others, led by Zakharov, spread out in a skirmish line in front of the rise.