Uncertainty is a regularity in this job, that’s just the long and short of it when you’re a flesh and blood human attempting to combat things beyond one’s grasp. Victories will seem often uncertain or even impossible, when the road ahead seems like a cold case or a dead end. No matter what, you have to keep pushing, no matter how shit things might seem right now, how bad they might’ve been when John and I slumped back here and racked out after hitting a brick wall… we must see this through. We’re the men who are called upon to solve shit when it rolls up hill, there’s no mysterious upstairs room, no top floor- we are where the buck stops. It reminds me of a… mission I had about a year prior, where I was effectively in free fall until I wasn’t.
It was my first mission into Appalachia… yeah, heh. You learn in that region to let things go as it’s the longest existing spot on earth, while the majority of the world was underwater, the Appalachian mountains were high above the waves. There’s stuff there that knows how this world works before we were even conscious. Regardless there’s a line in the sand when man has to push back, sometimes it’s far back, other times it’s dead in the middle of the sandpit. Such was the case of a cottage that had been rumored, offering refuge to hikers who had gotten themselves lost in the deep woods. They were found weeks later, hundreds of miles away, afflicted with insanity…
My job was to get lost… intentionally lost. I stepped off the trail down a steep hill into the woods no one would dare cross into and I walked… for hours. So much so my Salomon boots were caked in mud, jacket covered in barbs… suddenly, my peltors told me a drone that had been tasked to guide me lost signal… soon after, my radio did as well. Several hours later as it started to get dark and I thought I was about to have to stand and fight:
There it was. A log cabin, cherry red wood with orange light coming from the windows. I… don’t know when I entered, I just remember setting my rifle down and dropping my vest onto an old blue silk couch. I can both remember it vividly and not at all… but I do remember her: A woman, Dark green emerald eyes and jet black hair, ears that almost seemed… pointed?
A green dress as she offered me food, it seemed like some of the best I had ever smelt… though I denied it. Something in my mind told me not to, reminded me that all of it was wrong. She seemed to notice and I remember the old exchange we had as in a high pitched voice she asked; “What’s wrong darling?”. A twitch in my eye… I took a heavy breath: “None of this is right”. She seemed confused as she tried to come closer “what do you mean-”. That’s when I remember the next part, my hand slipping into my dump pouch on the back of my belt and grabbing hold of 16 ounces of steel in a ball, pulling the tiny loop… and lobbing the M67 fragmentation grenade forward as I kicked her square in the chest, before ducking over the couch.
Strangely… the concussive effect of the grenade indoors didn’t feel like what it should have, though the shockwave still shook my organs.
However… the fragmentation ripped everything and it’s only by luck itself I didn’t catch any shrapnel. I remember rising to my feet with my chest feeling like jelly and drawing my pistol… her skin grew dark blue, eyes a deep green as her smile was replaced by rows of teeth. I had my reservations about what came next, but I remember those videos of those poor men, driven to insanity… so I fought it out with her in that house, close contact, trading blows, bullets, being repaid on scratches, bites… destroyed her lair, riddled her body until all she could do was hiss and snarl cuffed to her own fireplace and burn it all down with her inside. The fire combined with salt and a little bit of herb burned hotter than any burn pit I partook in overseas. I watched it melt to the ground and her along with it… she continued to snarl and yell even as she was melting, until she finally turned to ash.
Sometimes… The road ahead is fuckin’ uncertain, you’ve given bad orders, a bad hand, and told to come up with a perfect outcome.
Unburn millions are counting on you to make it work… and if we failed? Battle after battle?
We were going to lose this war and billions would die.
John and I woke up early, I guess our minds couldn’t sleep too long after what we encountered… whatever we encountered. Trying to conceptualize it hurt my brain, so I’m sorry if I don’t have a good recount to you but let’s just say we touched base about it very quickly. In the immediacy however I got our SATCOM all set up on one of the back tables and after some physical abuse of the antennas and cables, we connected with PEXU main.
Some good, some bad… We managed to establish a basic rapport with the local leadership and they were willing to work with us. The bad was we didn’t know what the hell we were facing out there, and it seemed there was a lot of ancient shit we were faced with.
Either way… we were going to be taking it step by step, if nothing else we had actually pressed an attack on it, even if it did minimal.
Montgomery also filled us in on the ongoings outside of Navajo nation: Reportedly… across the pond, Ireland had been hit with a series of kidnappings that reached their peak in the western and central portions of the countries, near ancient Gaelic cultural sites… Fae forts. The modern interpretation of Fae are small, kind fairies that seek to only help humans. Their basis in reality are a bunch of absolute little shits, I’ve got my own history with them but we’ll cover that story later.
For now all you need to know is they’ve been allowed to run rampant: Kidnappings that lasted anywhere from months to one woman being found 10 years after she disappeared, covered in tattoos and markings that seemed to make her sickly and debilitated. Montgomery told us the Irish government had enough… and approached PEXU. Within a weekend a joint operation was conducted between the Irish Army Rangers, 4th Special Forces Group, and members of the Danish Frogmen.
It was… well, as he put it: “Knock down and dragged out… Fae forts over there were deep under hills, the physical entrances were long since covered by their ancestors, the Fae don’t need them. They had to blow through every rock, stone, and seance to get down into them…”. The brit MI6 seemed to chuckle when debriefing us; “-Vietcong rat tunnels got nothing on what they had, at least that’s what Captain Walker reported. Fighting went on for hours, eventually they smoked them out”. Let’s just say, when it comes to fighting what’s in Europe? It’s never easy and always costs a pound of flesh.
History is grandiose, the reality is violent and every step of this costs us a year off our lives. But that’s just the score we signed for.
The hum of our TOC’s heater was interrupted with the door opening, and in walked the chief himself… Matsoi, a look of somber determination on his face. Marshal Blackburn extinguished the cigarette he’d been smoking the past few minutes while listening to Montgomery talk, and before even I could stand up he was already on his feet; “So where’s those details you’ve been owing us for about 30 hours?”.
Straight to the point, though I guess you can’t expect anything less from a Texan. I wanted to reel him back in, not wanting to hurt the working relationship we had with the town, but… John was right, and so I backed him up “He’s right chief, we nearly ran up on something we had no idea about last night… give us something”.
Matsoi looked down to the old wooden table that was in the middle of our area, a map of the town and it’s surrounding reserve lands that stretched for miles. He leaned over, staring intently before he looked to the both of us: “Something has destabilized this entire area”.
“Coulda fooled me” John said with a voice dipped in sarcasm. Matsoi wasn’t so keen to deal with it; “Did you expect me to be able to tell you everything Marshal? Did you not think I called you here in order to help? You see the situation, the people I have to deal with handcuff me!”. I raised my hands, now was the time to step in “Alright, alright… look shit’s tense, we all get that, but we are all on the same side. Matsoi… what’ve you got?”.
“Around a thousand years ago when our people first settled to these flats, we spent centuries trying to find a balance as our survival was constantly in free fall…” he explained, he handed the two of us an old journal, transcribed from old Navajo writing, it had several bulletins, notes, and annotations written in all generations of ink- a collective basis for what we encountered out there. I flipped through and… well, it’s strange how simple drawings can get a rise out of someone. There were things that seemed to spiral, with tendrils that shot out in all directions. Others were tall, thin, looming over an illustration of a family in the distance, others seemed to cover the entire page and were sketched to look like the page itself was tearing apart. There were no words, but I knew what they were trying to tell us: esoteric, predatory, incomprehensible, and invasive. “The only direct account we have from those times is the great grandson of one of the spiritwalkers… the sun stood still in the sky, the wind tasted stale, and the daytime was just as dangerous as the night for when they did target you it was too late” Matsoi said as his eyes glazed over as his hand rubbed the center of the map where his town was.
Some say the sixth sense is when you can feel like you’re being watched, others say it’s predictive, personally I think it’s the subconscious and the body’s alert alarm when they’ve entered the radius of something that is beyond our understanding. That’s what this journal is, I looked to the pages as John flipped through… every single one of them was worse than the last, each turning more and more into fragments or concepts, jagged lines, a thousand eyes, almost like whoever was cursed to try and record what they saw in those times went mad. Blackburn would later tell me the back pages smelled of iron and copper, like it was soaked into the print.
“So… old rivals?” I asked, trying to make light. I saw Matsoi look over to Zeus, trying to draw his mind out of things, probably before he himself went insane. “Possibly… one of the phrases used to name was Anaye, though that interpretation has gotten soft, diluted… The Anaye we tell were grandiose monsters slayed by a great warrior-” the Navajo lawman stopped, looking me dead in the eyes; “History recounted is often more grandiose than what actually happened. Designate them all you want but they do not abide by ‘conventional’ answers, as you say… what you saw that night, Nolan?-”.
I remember thinking back to that shit and the migraine started to return, a fresh hell sort of feeling that chilled my blood and tried its best to split my nerves like hairs. Matsoi tapped the map to the spot we were at: “-That was your mind trying to make sense of it. Something crawled into this world and it did not abide by our rules, and it almost tore everything apart trying to fit in…”.
The hard snap of the book as John closed it, pulling the binding string back over it as he slid it across the table back to Matsoi sobered all of us up. The Marshal tapped his can of dip, taking a pinch “Destabilized… I’ll take a swing at the fuss and say this was solved before someone and dug this shit back up”.
Matsoi nodded “Many medicine men and defenders laid it all out over generations to get to where we-... were”.
There was an austere silence from the police chief for just a moment.
“-My grandfather was one of them….”.
The revelation seemed to quiet John and I down as he steeled himself “Sometimes more than just their lives for even an inch in all of this, but it had gotten us to the point where we could walk the land with our heads high. No more, all of that blood is now in jeopardy of being not only wasted…. But everything lost too”.
Just then a set of footsteps could be heard outside of the room as we were joined, the door opened to the last person I expected: Niyol, the obtuse as fuck medicine man from our meeting the day prior entered with a lever action slung to his back. I could hear John audibly sigh and peered over, I returned the glance, we both did not want to know where this was going but sadly our involuntary cooperation was required.
“Relax… I’ve been informed of your work yesterday…” Niyol said, trying to establish even ground as he eyed us from the other side of the table. He looked down to the map and slid his hands back from the town outwards; “The ahóodziil”, the energy is tainted… like before a tsunami, all of it draws back…-” he stopped and slammed his fist into the town. “-Before it lurches and attacks. 36 of our people alone lost and that is only a preharvest. Your presence may have deterred them for but a moment, something I don’t want to have us afford in red iron again”.
Despite his initial hostility, I… well I can reason with it. At the end of the day Niyol has spent the better part of his life facing the harshness of not only the world but whatever this was, having the responsibility of dealing with both while being the subject matter of one. Now? Everyone who came before him, the effort spent is threatened to be for nought. I can relate in a sense… I did 4 tours in Afghanistan only to watch it all crumble.
“Alright..” I said nodding to him “What do you need us to do?”.
“We… will be heading back to an old place… restricted from outsiders…” Niyol pointed to a large spot. Okay so for context, on maps there are placed where “no access” areas like military installations, training areas, dump yards are lined at. There was one like this a fair ways from the town, it was marked… well, I’ll be honest I don’t even know how to spell that as it was written in Navajo on the printed map but Matsoi said it was called “The last gate”. Niyol tapped the spot again, the topographical details showed it was on a mesa; “If the seal has been destabilized, it had to have been here”.
“Does anyone else have access to this information? Knowledge of the site?” John asked, scanning the surrounding area which was a nearly flat plain desert all around. Matsoi shook his head “No, you’re the only outsiders to have ever seen this, this version remains locked away and only told to senior members through word of mouth”. I nodded to John, John nodded to me, Zeus probably would have nodded if he could; “Well… I’m honored”.
The medicine man shook his head “save the enthusiasm… the terrain is only passable by vehicle for so long, rocks, ditches, and cacti line the surrounding area. We can get halfway there on vehicle, the rest on foot”.
We were to meet him outside at approximately noon, he said it would be a fair and slow drive, and then a long walk.
John and I took time to adjust our gear… I had a feeling I might need some larger caliber stopping power so I traded in my short barreled 5.56 rifle for a full length rifle. I popped open my case and prepped an AK47 that had been fitted with updated furniture allowing me to have an ACOG on the top that could be used to increase and decrease the magnification… Meanwhile John took a different approach when I looked over… The Marshal prepped a 45-70 lever action, looking like a new generation cowboy with his Stetson, modern hammer action HK pistol on his hipl, wielding the silver and wood bear killer in his hands; “You got enough firepower there, Clint Eastwood?” I asked.
“Oh yeah…” Blackburn said, testing the action too engrossed in his all american mankiller. He took time to load every round holder on the weapon, I decided we weren’t probably gonna get any better opportunity; “So… what’s your gripe with Niyol?”.
John seemed to grow quiet, peered over at me from under his stetson “... ‘bout a year ago or so I got called here to aid against a lycan”. I raised an eyebrow “A Lycan? You mean a-”. Blackburn shook his head “Nah, Lycan, likely from Europe.. I’d been tracking it through this territory and was hot on it’s trail, so hot I didn’t detour an hour to contact the town or it’s police chief. Tracking turned into me chasing it down the streets, which turned into a stand off with it inside someone’s house. The occupants didn’t make it…-”. John loaded his 45-70 and chambered a round; “-neither did the dogman”.
I was putting things together pretty quick: “So he blames you for it…”.
“Yep. Had I detoured, it would’ve infiltrated the town and been impossible to sniff out without kickin’ in every door… but that’s how it goes, Nolan. Someone has to be the fall guy” John chuckled, slinging his rifle over his shoulder as he stood up.
I felt that. I think I’ve told you guys at the start of this cryptid war journal, but before PEXU I had cut my teeth on the anomalous and nightmarish in south missouri towards the end of my time in security contracting. I was hired by a less than ethical CEO to defend a whole lot of acres, his son, neck deep on hallowed ground in woods that were as territorial as they were lethal. I can think back to rainy nights where I could feel the heat of whatever was hunting me on the back of my frickin’ neck, undermanned, undersupplied, but still doing it. A regular ol’ security guard hired to protect a cursed estate, the forest had eyes- and fangs. I managed to pull things back from the brink, even saved the kid too, but… let’s just say I also had every crosshair on me after. Good intentions pave the road to hell….
…
We staged our vehicles just behind the police station, Niyol had his dark blue jeep taking the lead while Blackburn staged his SUV just behind. The Marshal himself had his trunk open as he prepped the rest of his equipment, I rested my AK on the back hatch and prepped my vest, stashing my helmet with NVGs in the back.
I heard John chuckle “AK, huh? Don’t telling me you’re going all eastern bloc on me”.
“Just a choice in firepower” I said, rolling my eyes as I chamber checked my pistol.
The Marshal laughed “You want firepower? Go .308, anyways, hop in, we’ve got a drive ahead of us…”. I waved to a few reservation kids that were spying on the five of us, as Zeus hopped in the back of the vehicle, from behind a fence across the street, Matsoi gestured as he slapped the top of the jeep and we were all in and ready to go. I felt a familiar sense of anticipation in my stomach as our SUV followed the police chief and medicine man out from the alley and out towards the northwest, checking our radios as we passed the last of the buildings.
[“You two good back there?”] Matsoi keyed in. Blackburn reached up and grabbed a handmic connected to the SATCOM he had hanging “trucker style”; [“Yep, loud and clear”].
The drive was relatively… familiar. The paved roads quickly turned into old dirt paths as either side of our root was lined with shrubs, cacti, rocks, showing this place had the bare minimum maintenance and nothing more.
I scanned out the 12, 3, 5, and 6 o’clocks, keeping my head on a swivel, just like I did out east, just like I did on multiple missions over the years, on contracts. If nothing else: fall back on what you know, and adjust to the unknown. So many guys deployed with 1st Brigade back at Drum were always caught up in the rock and roll, CLP, in the moment adrenaline rush… I would catch myself gazing at the distant mountains and remember we were walking in passes that not even Alexander the Great could conquer. Here we were… driving through old lands that ancient Navajo warriors revered as closely as they would a close relative, what was myth to people just a state away was reality to them- it was lethal, and we were driving into it.
Soon… their brake lights caused us to slow down to a halt, them pulling off the trail let us know we had reached our limit of vehicle advance. In the distance was the Mesa… maybe a few kilometers off, not too far, however… on foot, keeping security, with all of the terrain, would be several hours of a walk. We exited the vehicle as Niyol seemed to whisper something to himself, taking a knee and breathing in. Matsoi seemed to pray under his breath, scanning around as he, John, and I took up a sector. Zeus stayed by my side, scanning the around with his ears up… then slightly back, the cold wind and only a slight ambience this far out where the orange of the dirt made everything a strange yellow and white hue.
“Alright… follow me” the Medicine man said as he started off, all of us following in a file formation with a few meters in between. Normally I’d have us break into a wedge, keep distance… but this was the only form of travel, Niyol’s guidance, no negotiations… so I wasn’t going to argue. Zeus kept with all of us though mostly hung around with me towards the back, I felt the burning sensation of being watched although the distant horizon was nothing but jagged shapes of rocks, dead trees, and other flora. That and I felt the wind sounded… you hear it a lot in Appalachia, the Dakotas, but it applies to just about anywhere: If you think you hear something whispering or saying your name, no you didn’t, so anything I heard besides the other three or Zeus was wind. Just wind.
We were a few hours into the trek, silence and hand gestures to slow down or step it up were passed. Suddenly Zeus’ ears snapped up as he barked, sprinting forward as all of us watched him run a few meters ahead and eye something on the ground. We quickly hurried up, John took up rear security as I quickly raced over to my hound though Matsoi and Niyol were first.
Zeus had found… a hand.
It laid palm up on the ground, with tan skin that seemed flushed, as if it was still alive, the cut that made it… separated was clean… too precise even for a knife, the blood that leaked out was congealed. With the condition it was in it looked as if it had just fallen off, could’ve fooled me into thinking it still had blood pumping through it… That’s why when Matsoi knelt down and laid two fingers on it I wasn’t too surprised-
-When it snapped to life and onto it’s fingers, I was, all of us were, Matsoi stumbled back and took aim with Niyol and I as Zeus began to bark. Blackburn turned after having kept rear security, and with a widened eye muttered; “What… the… shit”.
The hand then scittered across the ground, congealed blood leaking out as it crawled through brush and grass and… disappeared. I knew this when Zeus snuffed the ground and looked around without focus, Matsoi and I scanned the area and it’s blood trail just suddenly stopped.
“Is uh… that a common occurrence?” I asked Niyol, hoping to find some wisdom.
There was none.
“We need to keep moving”.
We pushed forward with dusk setting in fast, having reached the foot of the Mesa with around a 300 to 500 meter climb ahead of us. As the night was approaching, what was a fully illuminated ridge and wall of rock was now beginning to turn into imposing shadows, hiding anything and everything. The burning feeling of being stalked only began to amplify like the conditions around us were a steroid for them, we stopped at the bottom of the rocky steps with Matsoi and Niyol talking about the trek ahead. I retrieved my helmet from my back panel, slipping on my dual tubes and bathing the world around me in a bright white and blue hue. That’s when I noticed something… so when it comes to phosphor night vision like my “31 Deltas”, they amplify ambient light in real time, all it needs is the smallest bit of moon or starlight.
When I slipped those on, the view seemed… crushed, I don’t know how to explain it, I could see, it just had this vignette style mass at the edge of crushing darkness. Seeing this out to distance wasn’t that hard but not as hard as it… should be. I gauged my surroundings as I looked up and around… I immediately knew why things were the way they were.
The stars were gone.
So was the moon. That initial feeling froze me dead on the spot, so much so John had to shake me, however I think he saw it too as he stopped. Zeus whined as he pawed at my leg, noticing my demeanor but in that moment I couldn’t even begin to snap out of it to answer him.
I looked over to see the marshal wide eyed looking up and around “Sweet… mother of shit” is all that escaped the Texan. I looked over to see Matsoi, more composed but nervous… he gazed at me and I could tell from the expression on his face that these were not the signs we needed to see.
Niyol didn’t pay it any mind, whether out of ignorance or necessity I still don’t know. The darkness around us was much more apparent when the sun fully went down, and thus Matsoi said; “Dwight, you’re up at the front”.
This caused Niyol to argue with him stating “I could see better than this than he could with every fancy piece of equipment!”. To which I turned to him and said “They stay at the front with me… two is better than one”.
He seemed to respect that… both of us took the lead, I could see the barrel of Niyol’s rifle to my right as I kept my weapon up and out, on the front of my AK was a Zenitco laser, and when I tell you that shit was painting every single cover point, overlook, and shadow, I’m not exaggerating. We kept our formation close with John and Matsoi overing the rear and flanks while Niyol and I kept pushing forward, Zeus just ahead, his ears back as he seemed to growl at anything and everything.
I didn’t like this… I had been here before: Walking up the slopes of an ancient mountain under the cover of nods in ‘ambush alley’- Fuck this… but we kept pushing.
The drag of our boots was the only noise heard for what seemed like an eternity before we reached the top, I quickly popped up, scanning the flat surrounding…. The flat top of the Mesa only had one slope that went up for about 30ft, a cave entrance that seemed to be surrounded by a makeshift structure of wood, metal, and tents… the clear “courtyard” spread out to the dead drops off the side. We pushed forward, all of us probably glad to have reached it… except Niyol.
“What is that…” he said pointing to the structure; “This is hallowed ground, there’s not supposed to be any buildings here!!!” he shouted.
Blackburn quickly turned back to him and in a mutter growl “can you keep it the fuck down? Before you reveal our position you shit!”.
This caused the Medicine man to storm forward towards the clearing “If you think they don’t know we are here, you’re as dense as the last time we met, Marshal”.
I could feel the energy slipping, we were getting irritated, it was hard to see, darkness, no stars… skin was itching.
“This… oh no” Niyol’s words drew me from my scanning as I looked. In the center of clearing was one of those old Navajo “Medicine Wheel” sites, where a large amount of stoles are placed in the shape of a wheel with the outer perimeter lined with “spoke” like pillars.
I barely noticed the spokes as almost every single one of them was smashed, destroyed, the entire thing desecrated and covered in ancient runes, markings representing dissent, others seeming incoherent as they coiled together like a web in black, gold… stepping into that broken circle with Niyol seemed… somber.
Then in the center, I noticed it; a figure, on his knees facing away from us, I aimed my rifle as my laser centered on his upper back. The rest of them joined, all except Niyol who angrily stormed over much to Matsoi’s dismay who called out to him. The Medicine man toon the butt of his rifle and slammed it into the back of the figure, flipping them over he went to grab them… then stopped.
We quickly closed the distance and I saw what he saw: A bloodied and black stained white garb, gaelic and eastern symbols of the russian “Rumova” liking their top as the skin on their neck was fused to that of some sort of strange taxidermized animal head. I wanna say it was a deer, though… impossible to know as it had been torn into along with whatever was left of the human head underneath, split open.
We all sat there in silence before Blackburn broke the silence: “Well… we can confirm it’s the cult. The Blackwood Brotherhood is in the Navajo Nation”.
I flipped up my nods, turning on my rifle’s white light and bathing the corpse of the cultist in it, the strange substance mixing with his blood seemed to pulsate… like some non newtonian substance that wouldn’t stop changing shape. The wounds seemed… well, his hands had most of the skin torn off of them and from what I could see, parts of his head were on them. I looked to John: “Self Inflicted?”.
“No…” Niyol said, swallowing hard: “Something crawled out of him”.
Just then, Zeus spun around and looked into the darkness, growling, I flipped down my nods and took aim. The sounds of harsh wind or what I thought was harsh wind, groaning and cutting the air began to nearly deafen us as flashes of movement could be seen all around. That should have been impossible… the mesa high in the air and that horizon… there was no ground. I kept watch as the rest of them took aim, all of us in a defensive formation, then I noticed something… none of the grass, the brush was moving, it sounded like we were being hit with 75mph winds and… I noticed even through my adrenaline, nothing.
Not even a cool breeze… … Those sounds? The roars that I thought was the air being broken and cut? The crashes? The… all of it? That wasn’t the wind?
Out of the corner of my eye I saw John look to our two local liaisons “What’s the play? We’re being fucking closed in on”.
Matsoi made the judgment call “To the house! We need safe structure, hurry!!!”.
As soon as I heard all of them break for the house, I dropped our outward security and began to book it, running faster than I have in years as my Belgian Mal even struggled to keep up; “Come on Zeus!!! Let’s go!!!”.
Matsoi reached the shack door first, having to kick and pull, Matsoi joined in to, to which John yelled; “Here!!! Let me!!!” before he put his whole weight behind it and forced it open.
I sprinted in after them when I noticed something that shouldn’t have been there…
It was impossible, their eyes were…
Well, okay. I don’t know but…
it was somehow normal size and yet as big as the fucking horizon….
-skin shouldn't be that stretched against the skull.
I stumbled into the door as I heard the boys slam and lock it, quickly John and I grabbed a shelf and pulled it down in front of the entrance.
I flipped up my nods as all of us elected to use flashlights or weapon lights, my AK’s 2,000 lumen bathed the door in light as I flipped on an ambient lamp on my helmet and aimed it upwards giving us some much needed sight.
Outside… it continued as all of us caught our breath, Matsoi slinging his piece and grabbing at his temples; “Shit… Shit!!! We’ve been cornered”.
Niyol wasn’t having it as he barked “Pull yourself together”.
John and I took up watching the door as they argued; “You felt what is out there… you’ve heard the stories”. I then watched, thinking a fight was going to break out as Niyol took a hard step forward “I’ve lived them… we are going to persevere through this, but keep your nerve”.
The two of them stood in silence, the adrenaline wearing off as the Police Chief “I… apologize”. “
Don’t… we will save your Ałchini” the medicine man said patting his shoulder, I didn’t know what that meant but let’s just say when we got going down the cave, it became very clear why this became personal for Matsoi.
Before we did… Zeus noticed before John and I did… the sound outside had stopped. All of it, the howls, the roars, the… babbling, the pleading. It had totally ceased as knocking came from the door. There was a moment of pause, all of us looking to it as it happened again: 3 knocks, perfect cadence. I looked to John who mouthed “Don’t you fuckin’ dare” as I eyed a crudely made peep hole. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I quickly took a glance through and well… I stopped.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, it should literally be impossible and yet… there he was.
There I was.
Standing almost exactly as I am now, in the same gear down to the shitty utility pouch and rubber bands I use for cable management on my vest exactly as I do. It took off my helmet and looked into my eyes and… when I say those things were soulless, they were… looked into that shit was like pure evil. It took a step forward leaning in almost as if it could see me; “Dwight Anthony Nolan…”.
Zeus began to bark at the door as John and Matsoi had to double take, hearing my own voice, Niyol began to angrily eye me as he gripped his rifle: “Open the fuck up”.
It stopped for a few minutes, knocking exactly I would as… suddenly.. I don’t know, it all changed in a flash but it turned… it walked away from the door and suddenly we were back somewhere I remember. The Kabul-Kandahar road, flanked on either sides by mountains vantage points, the ground illuminated bright even as walls of darkness surrounded it. Then… on the ground I heard him crawling… his pleads, the gray “ACU” uniform he wore… Clancy.
I’m not gonna lie… I froze, I didn’t even noticed that Blackburn had been yelling at me trying to get my attention, not having heard what came next. Clancy gripped at the thing’s pants, looking up at it as… his left leg was gone, I knew what removed it, same thing that blew off the real Clancy’s leg over a decade and a half ago. 250lb bomb buried underneath the road, triggered just as he was stepping out from his MRAP.
His skin was torn and he was bleeding… so much so his mouth was filled with it. He pleaded… fuck… I remember every word, begging “me” to stop and help and he didn’t. It then looked towards the door… and began to crawl. I.. well… had I not been as desensitized as I am now… I may have started to…
Something pulled him back into the darkness… things that I… that made my head hurt, even now thinking about it grabbed him and began to drag him into the pitch black. His crying, his sobs… were just like I remember, the worst day of my life replayed in some sick fuckin game. I watched him claw at the ground even as pieces of his hand fell off, charred and split, calling my name. I watched my best friend die, again, and I heard him die… I made the bold choice of staring into the black and… let’s just say Matsoi’s words of incomprehensibility made sense; I could see shifting, moving, my mind seemed to frickin’ bleed just trying to make sense of all of them, I thought at one point I went blind but I could feel my eyes sting as my throat went dry…
Matsoi finally pulled me from the door, John explained to me that all of that happened in the span of seconds. I was apparently gripping the door frame so hard my fingers began to split and bleed… I pulled myself from the floor as he asked “I don’t want to know… but you good?”. I collected myself and took his hand; “Yeah…”.
Somehow… I don’t think I’m going to forget… that. We pursued down the cave, now knowing our only exit may be blocked, white lights illuminating rocky halls painted with the glyphs of the Blackwood Brotherhood. The further we went down… the more we saw them… on their knees, garbs stained, bodies split open.
Over and over… and over… Niyol cursed; “Now we know how they entered… they used their bodies as currency”.
Suddenly a cry came from further down the cave, causing all of us to snap our weapons forward as our lights showed a large open area ahead. We heard a woman call out; “Help us!! Please!!!”.
At this point in the game all of us seemed pretty stone faced to possible traps…
Matsoi however, lowered his barrel “... Maria???”.
He quickly assaulted forward, Niyol shaking his head as the Marshal and I followed.
It was… a holding area, like you’d see for cattle but instead, people, by the dozens forced into a large carge crudely constructed in the cave wall. I quickly scanned the room for immediate threats, lowering my rifle and aiming my helmet light forward. There were so many of them… the conditions varied from someone who had just been captured, to advanced malnourishment, some were fully clothed, others were wearing scrap garbs the cult was known for forcing prisoners to wear.
Matsoi cautiously approached the cage, I snapped my fingers; “Zeus, check”.
Zeus ran forward, sniffing at the end of the cage and walking up and down… I looked for any signs of him detecting a threat, hidden or otherwise… he then backed away calmly.
They were clean, John turned to me “Tell me you’ve got a lock pick.
I reached back and from within the back panel I pulled out a simple pry bar; “Will this work?”.
The Texan chuckled accepting the tool; “Chicago, I love you”.
John and I went to work forcing the door open as the people within backed up, Niyol began to scan the room as Matsoi reached through the cage and reunited with someone I would find out… was his wife. She looked like she was here for weeks, barely able to stand, her hoodie a mess as Matsoi kept her steady; “You alright… where’s Alice?”.
The silent response… you can paint the story there, I’m not going to.
John and I however forced that lock open and started getting people out of there. John took up accountability: 16 people in total… 12 reservation inhabitants, 4 campers, hikers, people who… vanished off the road. 5 of which were children… sounds like they were intentionally trafficked.
John was finished tallying everyone up as I pulled off my helmet asking “We’ve got a town’s worth of people here, how are we gonna get them out?”.
“Could try Main… maybe we can reach them” John suggested, as I pulled out my radio and handed it to him. Matsoi took a long earned moment to sit with his wife towards the back wall, Niyol walked over to me saying “they were being prepared to be harvested… whatever is out there will want it’s meal, Nolan”.
I out of exhaustion shrugged, and was tryin to say “Yeah well, they can come get it from our cold, dead-” when… an extremely… familiar voice called out: “Dwight?”.
An old memory seemed to click, like I had hopped back into old skin. I stopped, flicking down the tac light of my helmet and glancing over where it came from. I turned and through the heard of people standing, sitting, sobbing, resting… stood a shorter guy, he had a trucker's hat, a beard… brown hair with a bit of gray in it, and an eyepatch covering his right eye.
I’ll be honest it felt like my mind was working overtime trying to remember… but then it clicked as I raised an eyebrow asking “... Isaac?”.
For context… Do you know about a certain… incident in the South Missouri woods that seemed to have gotten me into this entire industry?
The… “Cazamoth Estate Incident” as I refer to it?
Well I wasn’t exactly alone, not by a long shot.
From what I can gather the people like Rosanne and Isaac had disappeared seemingly as I did, or at least I thought. PEXU could find no trace of him and yet he was here… in a holding cell for the New Advent. He was crustier than I remember, seems like he’d been in that cell for a while but no worse for wear…. And I’ll be honest? I hugged him.
I was absolutely dumbfounded until he spoke: “Been a long time, Staff Sergeant”. The two of us stood there and I let out a nostalgic chuckle, shaking my head. Despite this I’ll be honest, I was short on dancing around the point: “Isaac what the fuck are you doing here?”.
Isaac to this, threw up his hands and rolled his head; “Woah!! Well that’s a nice ‘Hello’.. Hey you seem different? Done anything with your hair?”. This is also when I noticed something, I scanned him up and down and… then realized as I asked; “Isaac where the fuck are your pants?”.
The sigh of pure an absolute disappointment I let out after was reminiscent of the old days.
“They took them” he answered.
“Who?”.
“The Cultists…” He said pointing to a Blackwood Brotherhood member that had emancipated his soul.
I squinted at him “Why?”.
To which he responded: ”They were allowing horrors beyond my already limited comprehension to crawl out of them like satanic capsule animals, and their confiscation of my pants is where you start asking questions?”.
Fair.
"This is your compatriot?" Matsoi asked, looking over to Isaac in a fairly unimpressed manner, then shifting his eyes back to me. I clarified "Yeah... long ago before my current role, we'd banded together against something... similar to this". I took a hard look back at the shells that were the cultists, then to Matsoi. Isaac patted me on the shoulder, then proceeding to slightly lean on it: "Desperate times made for unconventional partnerships". Niyol who was now sat on a box towards one of the cave walls, drinking from his waterskin took all of this in and responded "It seems there was a big emphasis on desperation...".
Now Isaac and I did catch up but... well, we’ve been hunkered down the last hour, no signs of the darkness fading, my ATAK is also running out of juice even as I'm logging all of the notes in. John and I are going to try and get into touch with PEXU main, so I’m entering this log and… if you read it? We’ve made it out.... or we're dead and this was entered post mortem. If it's the more positive former, I'll catch you up on some of the things we discussed. I’ll get back in touch as soon as I can.
November-1, out.
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