Priming the Mantle
A Shaman States of America Short Hunt
W.T. Meadows
Chrishaun Keller-Hanna
Copyright © 2018 by The CKH Group and WT Meadows
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
A Taste of The Mantle
A note from WT
A note from Chrishaun
Chapter 1
The muzzle of Nathan Doyle’s assault rifle flashed in the midmorning light as he picked out each new target. In his crosshairs, the Goblins’ splattered blood looked so dark a red it was almost black against the trees and rocks of the forest just east of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The Goblins had been located only the day before and the team’s comm, Billy Prescott, had come up with a plan to flush them out of their cave and stop them at the source. The only problem was that no one on the team had realized exactly how many there were in these woods.
Dr. Arthur Sims was a math professor at the University of Tennessee and retired Hunter who still tracked things like human and pet disappearances on request. He understood that there was often a human-on-human cause for those things, but when you saw a large number in one area, it usually was due to some sort of monster. That was the case in Gatlinburg, so he had asked his brother, a handler who worked with Phillip Noble, to send out a team to investigate. Nathan’s team, fronted by a striker named Sarah Williams, had taken the contract to pass the time until their next scheduled gig, which would go down sometime around Thanksgiving.
They had driven Billy’s 1987 Volkswagen Vanagon down from Knoxville a few days prior and had started searching for clues as to what sort of creatures might have been in the area. Dr. Sims’ data had led them east of Gatlinburg, which made the most sense since that was closer to the Smokey Mountains. Things that went bump in the night often found wilder areas easier to go unnoticed in, which made mountains a nice habitat for them.
Sarah had driven around the periphery of the town while Billy used the single tracking membrane the team could afford to look for whatever they would be facing.
The membrane displayed a 3d rendition of the surrounding area, updated continuously, with red dots occasionally appearing to indicate specter-imbued creatures. They were smaller types and showed up only intermittently, which was not consistent with Goblins, who usually traveled in packs to overwhelm their prey more easily. The dots were likely Pixies or one of the lesser Slimes. Certainly, not their quarry and Sarah had no interest in diverting their attention while on a Hunt. Once Billy noticed a larger shape and a smaller one traveling together, only to find that it was just a powered human out for a walk with his Lagohawk. The human would pick up the small furry creature and toss in above and in front of himself. In the air, the Lagohawk would spread its wings and glide around with its long ears flowing behind it like some sort of rudder, to land on its owner’s shoulder when the man caught up. It became clear what they were doing when the dark brown Volkswagen passed them.
Once they’d left Gatlinburg proper, the group headed toward areas more frequented by hikers and other outdoorsy types. Nathan didn’t consider himself an outdoor person. His very pale complexion did not fare well in the sunlight; the individual freckles that already covered his face combined to make him look like he was made up of one giant freckle for a very brief time before his skin took on a brighter red hue than his hair. And after the painful burn peeled, he went right back to being pasty again. It was awful.
Sarah, for some reason, had always enjoyed being outside and had made it work with her lily-white skin by basically bathing in sunscreen. That someone who dressed in all black all the time and wore black lipstick and eyeliner like Cleopatra’s both loved being outside and managed to stay as pale as she was astounded Nathan.
Nathan was not sure if or how Billy tanned. He had heard about black people getting sunburns, but it was not something Nathan was eager to get into a conversation about. He and Billy had been thick as thieves for over a decade—basically since middle school—and this was honestly the first time Nathan had ever wondered if Billy needed sunscreen.
His reverie on the behavior of melanin was cut short by Billy asking Sarah to pull off to the side when she could. When they had parked in one of those scenic view turnoffs, Sarah took the van out of gear and turned to their comm, who was in the back.
“What’s going on, Billy? You see something?” Sarah asked. Her mohawk was up today and since they did not expect to run into any creatures. She often wore her hair in braids in the field, so it didn’t get in the way during engagements.
“I’m seeing a pretty big concentration of…something off that ledge over there. It looks kinda like they’re huddled together. Here, take the binoculars over there and see if you spot something.” He verified the location on the membrane and then pointed in the correct direction. “They’re southeast of us, probably sixty yards.”
Sarah walked to the ledge and put the binoculars to her eyes. After scanning the surrounding area for about a minute, she turned back toward the two Hunters, who were still seated inside the van.
“I can’t tell a lot from here, but it looks like there is some activity near a rock outcropping that contains a cave. It's likely that they have an encampment inside it. Is that consistent with what you’re seeing?”
Billy looked at the dots arranged on the map’s overlay.
“Yeah, could be. A cave would explain why the data just kinda stops after a bit. Sometimes the rock clusters like that play merry hell with the scanner. Once you guys get in there and I can start extrapolating the data from what is around your specters, I’ll have a clearer picture.”
Sarah nodded. She knew that their version of the membrane map would need to have them down inside the cave to get a better idea of what might be down there. She had heard of other Hunters having access to fancier membrane maps, but that kind of thing was not remotely in their budget at this point in their careers.
“Let’s head down there a bit after nightfall to give them time to leave the cave to hunt. If we find evidence of them, we’ll make a plan to take them out.”
Chapter 2
The team only had one membrane map, but they had purchased night-vision goggles for both Sarah and Nathan. A disproportionate number of the team’s assignments were at night, so they had made sure to get the equipment designed for low-light Hunts. All of them were still full-time students, but they had decided to make their own ways without much support from their parents. The pay from the Hunts kept them afloat and even allowed an occasional purchase that would make their lives more manageable in the long run.
Having only one set of night-vision goggles wouldn’t have helped the team since the other person would need to use a flashlight—which would make the NVGs unusable. The low-light gear had been bought recently so the exploration of the Goblins’ cave would be the team’s first trial run with them. After Nathan put on the low-profile goggles and pressed the activation switch on the side, he viewed his surroundings through a greenish light. That light then faded out to just barely be noticeable across the cave in front of him. He had been expecting to maintain that green washed out look that he always saw on tv or movies whenever he saw someone wearing NVGs. Whatever voodoo science that went into the thing worked with his spectral power to let him see his surround
ings mostly unfiltered.
Nathan followed Sarah through the trees and around the rocks to the cave’s open mouth. While not enormous, it was easily seven feet at the widest. There were places inside the cave where it was more than ten feet high—which was a bit surprising to Nathan, whose experience was that Goblins kept to lower tunnels. The creatures were around three feet tall, and they liked the fact that it was hard for more massive creatures to follow them into their warrens.
They progressed a few hundred yards down the winding tunnel before they started noticing small bones on the ground, although the smell of rotting meat had indicated a Goblin presence long before they had found the visual evidence. The farther they got into the warren, the larger the remains were until they saw an area that seemed to be a dead end. There were piles of bones off to the side that could easily have been human, among the bones were shreds of what had likely been the victims’ clothing. Nathan pursed his lips. He had been Hunting long enough, even in his early twenties, to have seen some horrific things done by the kinds of monsters he and his childhood friends had pursued. Those memories restricted any desire on his part to look closely at the bones they’d found. Some of the reported missing persons had been kids, and there was no evidence that anything was still alive down here. Hopefully, those children had been the unpowered, and the police would find them, but history did not paint a positive picture in that regard.
“Billy, you picking all this up?” Nathan asked the comm, who was monitoring the situation from the van via the specter input to the membrane and radio. Thankfully, their specters acted as a relay for their radios to push the signal further back through the cave and out to the person running comms in the van. Nathan was not entirely sure how that all worked and made a mental note to ask Billy about that sometime later.
“Looks like a big empty room from here.”
“Glad to hear that it’s empty of Goblins, but there doesn’t appear to be any indication of life down here. Definitely human remains, though. Makes the most sense that it’s a Goblin nest. From the size of the circled out area leading to the dead end I’m guessing a dozen or so of the creatures could get packed in here, likely not more than fifteen.”
“There hasn’t been any activity up here or sign of anything coming or going to the cave, so I suspect that they are all out for the night. Why don’t you guys pop back up here? I have an idea that might speed this up a bit.”
Chapter 3
By the time that Nathan and Sarah had gotten back up, Billy was sitting on the floorboards of the van with his legs kicking as if he were an excited child. Next to him was what looked like a lumpy package covered in a blanket. When he saw them come off the path next to the ledge where the van was parked, he got a goofy grin on his face and rubbed his hand over his shaved head in a vaguely sheepish manner.
Sarah laughed at the motion: she’d seen it before. They both had. “What’ve you got there, Billy?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at her friend.
He waggled his eyebrows at her and shrugged, but he could not contain himself any longer. Leaning forward, Billy gesture wildly as he spoke.
“So, I may or may not have some det cord—”
“Where the hell’d you get det cord?” Sarah hissed in a whisper, as though someone was sitting right behind her just waiting to catch them with the highly suspicious substance.
“The twins owed me a favor and got me... Well, they actually got me both of the items that will make this an excellent plan,” Billy responded with a nonchalant shrug. “It’s not important how I got them. The important thing is that we have them.”
With a flourish, Billy pulled the blanket back to show a spool of cord and a boxy rectangular shape. The edges were slightly rounded, and it took Nathan a moment to recognize it. When he did his eyes—like Sarah’s, who identified what it was a second after Nathan—shot open.
“Is that a claymore? Even gun-nut weirdos like the twins shouldn’t have been able to get their hands on something like that. What kind of favor did they owe you? Det cord—and a pretty good amount of it—and a friggin’ claymore ain’t easy to get.”
“We are grownups, Nathan, you are allowed to swear,” Billy told his friend, leaning forward from his perch on the edge of the van’s open door and giving his friend a condescending pat on the head.
Nathan pulled back immediately and flipped his friend off.
“Point still stands, dude.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Billy said with a shake of his head and a smirk. “It’s really not a big deal, but it is a long story. I’ll tell you guys over beers sometime. The point is that I have these, and they will be perfect for helping us clear out that cave.”
“I’ll give you that detonating a claymore in a cave sounds like a good way to make soup or anything that is inside it, but it could cause problems in the surrounding area if the cave isn’t the most stable. We don’t have the time or wherewithal to do a geological survey.”
“You are right that the claymore would be a bit too much for this scenario if it were a traditional one. But this guy…” Billy patted the mine, and Nathan took an involuntary step backward. He knew it wasn’t going to go off arbitrarily, but putting distance between himself and it felt like a good idea. “Is some kind of thermite-packed claymore. It has a much less explosive punch than a traditional one, but it sprays fire hot enough to incinerate pretty much anything in the blast radius.”
“Ok.” Sarah nodded. “That’s a good start. I like the concept of burning those bastards to ash.”
“That’s the first bit—we run the det cord from outside the cave. You guys observe, and when we’re pretty sure they’re all in for the day, we blow the mine. That will create an inferno inside the cave, but like you said, that’s only a start. I say we also bring some mulch or something else flammable in there and dump it along the path out to force them out of the cave.”
“Yeah, I like that idea,” Nathan chimed in. “But it can’t be gas or kerosene or something that they’ll smell. It’ll have to be something they’ll think is innocuous.”
“With the heat that the thermite’ll be putting out, we could put pretty much anything in there, and it would burn real fast. We just need to create a path. That way even if there are other warrens or tunnels that you guys didn’t come across, any Goblins that survived the initial blast will leave through them. As they come out, the two of you can just pick them off.”
“Dude, that is brilliant,” Nathan exclaimed and leaned toward Billy to give him a high-five. “Sarah, you down for this?”
“Yeah. I could melt a few Goblins,” Sarah said with a smile. “It didn’t look like there were a ton of them, so even if half or more survive the blast, we should still be able to pick them off without too much difficulty from outside the cave. With any luck, this will be a relatively straightforward Hunt.”
Chapter 4
It hadn’t rained much in the area around Gatlinburg for a few weeks, so the underbrush was pretty dry. Both to get something flammable to drive the Goblins out and to remove potential fuel for a forest fire from the area surrounding the cave, all three Hunters spent the remainder of the night removing as much of the underbrush as they could and placing it in a pile behind the cave. By the time they thought the Goblins would start making their way back toward the cave to sleep the day away, they had left to get some sleep themselves. They would need the sleep; the next day was going to be a long one.
They crashed in the local lodge reserved for Hunters until just before dark. Although they’d Hunted at night for years, none of them had ever slept well due to the butterflies they experienced before they really got going. Nathan knew those would be gone as soon as they set foot onto the Hunting grounds, but that didn’t stop him from tossing and turning.
The room was not the best, but it was better than a hotel room. Sarah, as the striker, always got the first pick. She’d taken the one closest to the bathroom and was no doubt going to take no time at all, even with braiding her mohawk ba
ck to stay out of her way during the Hunt. Billy always seemed to have the easiest time resting, because he slept like the dead in most circumstances—and took the longest in the bathroom.
Billy would track the movements around the cave to ensure that there was a steady flow of the creatures leaving, and by sundown, they only counted fifteen Goblin-sized creatures. That at the top of Sarah’s initial estimate, but still a totally manageable number for Billy’s plan. The butterflies doing flips in Nathan’s stomach increased their activity.
When there had been no activity near the cave for more than thirty minutes, the team decided the Goblins had left for the night. Billy monitored the membrane for Goblin activity while the other two set up the cave for their morning ambush. Nathan carried the underbrush into the cave and arranged it along the sides of the interior tunnels leading down to where they had found the giant pile of bones.
While he was placing one decently large branch, he noticed that some rocks had shifted and caused a small slide—behind which was a much larger cavern. There was not enough time to explore it, but he made sure to place underbrush in there as well in the hope that it would also force any creatures in there to run out the front. At the new entrance, he placed a giant pile of wood to prevent any of the Goblins from trying to use this new tunnel to escape. If that meant that he ended up trapping some badgers or bats or whatever in a flaming tunnel, he could live with that.
Sarah had laid the det cord before he set up the underbrush. That allowed for them to try and obscure it a bit more beneath branches. She had then run the cord behind the pile of bones and placed the incendiary claymore underneath them. They were counting on the Goblins not having a much stronger sense of smell than a human, and therefore not being able to smell the det cord or the claymore. The plan was to let it go off the bones themselves would be so much shrapnel to make the Goblins’ day that much worse before they either burned to death or were greeted by her and Nathan on their way out of the cave. Sarah didn’t seem tough, but she could be absolutely brutal when it came to the Hunt. She was a merciless Striker.
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