SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

The four of them found themselves in a small cavern with a tunnel leading into the depths from the opposite side. Cade waited for the others to re-don their homemade flamethrowers and then led the way toward the tunnel and into its depths.

They found the first body a dozen feet or so along the tunnel, pushed up against one wall as if it were nothing more than trash to be cast off and discarded rather than all that was left of a human being.

Or, at least, Duncan thought it had been human; the deformed nature of the corpse and the odd array of extra limbs, both insectoid and mammalian made it very hard to determine its original state.

After that, the corpses became more regular, until it seemed to Duncan that half of the town must have been lying there in that unholy tunnel, twisted into vile shapes that not even their creator could recognize. On more than one occasion he thought he might vomit; it was the thought of showing weakness in front of his battle-hardened companions that, more than anything else, kept him from doing so.

Shadows danced and writhed at the edges of the light cast by their headlamps, ratcheting up the tension with every step forward. Twice Duncan spun about, convinced that the enemy was sneaking up on them in the darkness, and it was only the steadying presence of the master sergeant that kept him from squeezing the trigger and sending a cascade of bullets into the darkness around them.

After what felt like an eternity, the narrow passage through which they were descending began to grow lighter, as if lit by something farther ahead and soon the men didn’t need their headlamps.

Travelers are often known to remark on how the yellow-red glow of a campfire can warm the soul before the heat from the flames ever reaches you, but there was nothing soul-relieving in the light that reached them from the depths of the tunnel at this point. It was a harsh, silvery glow, one that gave off the sense of being colder than the weather they’d recently traveled through and it slipped down the edges of the passageway to light their steps forward as they moved the last twenty yards to their destination.

At that point, the tunnel opened on a wide cavern and the stench of blood and guts and feces that swept over them as they crossed the threshold unequivocally confirmed that they’d found what they’d come to find – the location where the original summoning had taken place. It was here they would find the master demon controlling the protean drones they’d been fighting off all this time.

Duncan let his light drift across the floor of the chamber in front of him and immediately wished he hadn’t. A massive arcane summoning circle had been drawn in colored sand across the cavern floor and what he assumed was all that was left of the original summoners were scattered about within it. Limbs and entrails and a seeming ocean of blood filled the space wherever he looked. The remains were so strewn about that it was hard to tell which limb belonged to which body.

Using hand signals, Cade sent Riley and Olsen around the right side of the cavern while he and Duncan took the left. They moved slowly, stepped over the debris in their path, keeping an eye out for the master demon. Cade wasn’t often wrong, so if he said it was here somewhere, Duncan was convinced it was as well.

They had crossed roughly three-quarters of the cavern when a rustling sound reached them from behind a pile at the rear of the cave, an area that was all but shrouded in darkness.

Cade held up a closed fist.

Duncan gripped the barrel of his makeshift flamethrower tightly, his finger sweaty on the trigger. The lesser demons they’d fought so far had been bad enough, but he knew the thing that spawned them was going to be infinitely worse...

Before any of them could act, however, events took a turn of their own.

From behind the pile of rubble they were watching so earnestly stepped a young girl.

She couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. Her blonde hair was in disarray and she had dirt stains on her face and hands. Her once-blue dress was now nothing more than a set of filthy, tattered rags that barely hung on her thin frame. She was shivering against the cold, or perhaps, Duncan thought, with fear at the sight of strangers standing before her with guns in hand, but her gaze remained steady and she stood before them without trying to run.

Seeing the young girl in this condition nearly broke Duncan’s heart. He smiled, to show that he meant her no harm, and started forward.

“Don’t worry,” he said to her, in his most soothing voice. “We’re here to rescue you.”

The child looked at him quizzically.

“Rescue me? Don’t be silly,” she said, with a laugh that should never have come out of a child’s throat. “What on earth would I need rescuing from?”

Then she lashed at his throat.

CHAPTER TWELVE