I guess at this point in my career there’s no going back, is it? I know too much, I’m too invested in everything, I’ve proven myself too capable to leave. I feel like if I tried to hang all of this up, I’d be stuck awake at night thinking about every potential person saved that would be lost. That’s what I get I guess, down that forest slope, chasing after the first beast all those years ago and now here I am… like Alice, down the rabbit hole I went, never once considering how in the world I was to get out again. I guess now that I’m waist deep in NATO’s secret war, there’s no point in even thinking about going back… sometimes the pass of least resistance is a straight line, the only way out is forward.
Sorry, rambling a bit… This is November-1, Dwight Nolan.
Last we left off, I was recounting the more notable operations, the time in between has been spent with plenty of other target packages. PEXU as an organization has grown over the years, although we’re still strapped for men, intel, and support that we need to be fighting this thing on equal footing. It’s a shadow war, plain and simple, it can’t go hot or we play right into the hands of the New Advent and they know it. You remember us speaking about Ryan Evans, right? The supposed blue collar face of the movement that’s been bringing churches, communities, and the common man together all with those golden arm bands? He spoke the other night at some fest, seemed more like a rally… footage showed an old school carnival, steel fences on the tall grass, cheap ferris wheel, and him speaking to a crowd.
What about? Well in his words: “Ascension… Not just for America, but for every soul… society as we know it today has been so obsessed with the material wants, we’ve forgotten what has made us whole: families, communities, finding the strength to carry on and finding solace in each other…”. I dunno what was worse: the demented confidence in which he said it that shook me to my bones, or the roaring applause he got after. Times of hardship weaponized by ensnaring people in their traps, they preach community, but really what people find is a brotherhood that feeds them to the slaughter. Missing persons cases have been on the rise, it’s getting blamed by homicide, natural disaster, war, when really intelligence agencies have been detecting human trafficking increasing in scores. Everyone who wears one of those devilish arm bands smiles, skin pulling back against their skulls more and more…
Monsters are living among us, we’re running out of time to fight this parasite. Why am I bringing all of this up again? Well the assignment I’m currently on is on exactly that. Yes we are finally in the current times, we may take more trips down memory lane but for now… my work in the great plains has been eventful. PEXU doesn’t have a lot of allies: SMUs (special mission units) reassigned due to their encounters with the anomalous, supplies scrapped off the top of every department and branch we can get, all led by a former top NATO officer: “Hammer”. His policy is like his name, he’s a shorter man, build like a bulldog, his ribbon rack has stuff reaching back Pre-Gulf War, and he’s got the square mug of someone who has definitely eaten roadside bombs. From what I can gather… “former” top NATO officer due to his outspokenness for what’s going on, they tried to bury him in paperwork, however found he had too many friends in places like Ground Branch to be killed off.
He is probably one of the world’s last best hopes. A full log of dip in his lip, and enough scars to line a medical book, if we do survive his work like all of ours will go completely unknown- that’s the job we all agreed to. So flashforward a few weeks prior to this… I get a call from Montgomery that was, as he worded it: “Absolute bloody emergency, Nolan”. For years PEXU had been trying to establish ties with other organizations like the Hunter’s Guild, reservation tribes, places that had way more time in grade against the darkness than us but astronomically less funding. Trust was hard to come by, it might seem confusing at first but realize they’re people who have usually been ignored, cast out, or ostracized due to their ancient history in dealing with the mystic ways of the worlds now being approached by a military joint task force… just as everyone is slowly capitulating to a new world order under the gold of the New Advent. I’d tell ‘em to kick rocks and rack a round, though they were nicer… even if it was complete silence from the Hunter’s Guild.
That was the status quo for nearly a decade, it changed a week ago when PEXU was given a request for assistance from one of the reservations out west. Now you might be asking, why didn’t they sent a full SMU? Why not sick 4th Special Forces Group on them and have my old friend Captain Walker hunt them down? Despite needing dire assistance, many in the reservation were still paranoid… this was a group of them all experiencing this “mass casualty” event, and only one of them dared to come forward and ask and they were still split down the middle with paranoia. Deploying an entire force? No go.
This is where the “solos” of PEXU like myself come in.
I wasn’t going alone… assigned to me was an old friend I had been working with for a while. He was a US Marshal by the name of John Blackburn, PEXU can and will generally recruit help from whenever they can get it. Blackburn’s experiences along with his status as a federal officer made him quite the asset. I met the Marshal down by the border near New Mexico a while back, maybe just after my first year. A pack of Chupacabra had been on a cleansing path and had cleared house through 5 separate ranches, locals began to turn up dead, so he and I were assigned to estimate their next destination, intercept, and exterminate. When I met him at the ranch he was sitting on the hood of his forerunner, old cattleman’s had and a leather jacket, badge on his belt, looking like he was several cigarettes into his wait.
His first words? “Yeah… you’ll do” he said with a chuckle. I remember being confused and asking something to the tune of “what’s that supposed to mean?”.
To which he replied “You look like you’re either the coldest one I’ve seen in a while, or you can take a beating, I can work with either… name’s John”.
I shook his hand replying “Dwight”.
“How’d you get into this mess, may I ask?” the Marshal probed. I shook my head “It’s a long story”.
“We got 9 hours, ‘Dwight’...”.
The hunt itself was relatively simple, we had baited them to the ranch that was empty, except for two gun toting PEXUs that were ready to ambush. John took the ground level, a large campfire we had illuminating the surrounding area as he kept watch with his old school M4. I was on the roof, per our planning I brought a longer rifle, AR-10 in .308. A thermal I had along with a set of nods on my helmet allowed me to scan the surrounding land with pretty much no obstacles… 9 hours of nothing but catching up, cold weather, and eventually darkness before “-Nolan, 11 o’clock, I got movement”.
I quickly changed towards the northside of the roof and looked through… in the distance there was a group of at least a dozen… 20 cold signatures heading towards us. Chups are part reptilian and canine like, at least that’s what is theorized, so it was no surprise they’d be colder than the ground around. All of the dog-like silhouettes maneuvering onto us like wolves.
“They’re heading for us…” I said, making sure my round was seated in its chamber. “Alright… I’ll draw them in, start covering…”.
I remember John beginning to fire off a series of rounds from the porch, through the thermal I could see the streaks of heat pass through and begin to impact some of them. My first round hit the one in front… I dunno if it was the pack leader, but the .308 tearing clean through it’s solar plexus sent them into a frenzy. I worked the bold, hot brass hitting the roof tile as I took aim at another, with John’s fire… the cold, still air reverberated with shots as we could hear all dozen of them sprint towards us, adrenaline setting in as we quickly worked to establish fire superiority to break their charge or they’d run up on us…
That was until the sounds of movement behind me drew my attention, the scratching of tile, the huff of an animal’s exhale, I flipped over and saw it… it was bigger than a wolf, disgusting hair and stretched skin mixed with reptilian like claws and scales, it’s eyes with wide, facing front as the frills on it’s back stood up, it’s disgusting round mouth lined with teeth dripped with it’s corrosive venom.
“Crap” was the only thing I could utter as the Chupacabra darted across the roof at me as I rolled, it slammed into my .308 and lost it’s footing. This gave me enough time to scramble to my feet and grab my rifle, firing through it just cut the trail and tackled into me. With my rifle pressed between me and it, I lost my footing and both of us went falling off the one story house onto the ground. Even as it snarled and gnashed with it’s jaws, I still managed to make sure it landed underneath me.
The second of soaring wind as both of us hit the dirt ground hard just in front of the garage, despite this… the thing still sunk it’s teeth into my shoulder, my jacket and vest protecting me although I still swore and cursed like a motherfucker. The two of us scrambled, it scratched at my gear, tore up my pants, I remember socking it straight in its jaw, pulling off my helmet, and slamming the ACH directly down onto it’s head stunning it. I then remember… grabbing its rear half, and swinging it into the brick corner of the house nearby- the snap of its spine was the answer.
Not my proudest moment, but you get busy scrapping, or get busy dying.
By the time I gathered my senses I got to my feet and aimed my rifle at another, dropping it with a series of shots… when I focused on the area around me, the work of Blackburn and myself became clear as the corpses of the half reptile blood suckers lined the entire front. Blackburn cleared through towards my position, the both of us depressing our muzzles; “Shit…. You get bit?” John asked walking over. “Just surface damage…” I muttered, dropping my vest and rolling out my right arm.
“The hell happened?” The marshal asked. I answered: “One of them got onto the roof”.
“Ah hell… and then?”.
“We fell off the roof”.
“Ain’t that a tizzy, you’ll be fine, you’re still kicking” he said proceeding to slap my recently bit shoulder.
That was my introduction to Marshal Blackburn. We’d worked together a few times after that but it had been around 8 months since John and I last linked up. We were to meet in southern Colorado in an annex used by state police and an EOD unit that had been there for a while. I pulled up to the Texan with my window down, he leaned in shaking my hand “Nolan… ya’ll doing alright? How’s solitude been?”. I shrugged; “coyotes keep leaving handprints on my gutter, apart from that it’s all cherry. How’s the family?”.
The marshal rolled his eyes “Wife wants a new horse, son wants a truck, meanwhile I want a vacation… come on, I’ve got us set up inside”. I grabbed my gear and headed inside, once there a slew of equipment had been laid out for us including advanced comms, a full array of medical aid bags, anything. I brought Zeus along, I’d run him through a few training courses and he was as loyal as can be. However his first act was whining to Blackburn who rolled his eyes and tossed the beast a piece of jerky.
“A lot of hardware…” I noted as John handed me our ‘Target Package’. “Here’s what we got… the reservation we’re going to is in conjunction with several other towns run by the tribe’s government. This started out with a single homicide: A boy stabs his sister dead in her room one night, proceeds to go to the living room and wait there in the front room coated with her parent’s blood…” Blackburn abridged as I read along, and I was… well “-Holy shit”.
Shocked.
“Kid gets arrested… then disappears in the cell with two reservation officers on shift in the building. Since then? 27 homicides…” the Marshal noted, opening a folder and laying out several photos. They were… well, to be brief yet to the point: It looked like some of these people got mauled by bears, parts of their bodies torn up, others were flayed, one person had their scalp nearly pulled off their head. Symbols of navajo medicine men were cut into the bodies but were… warped, some inverted, others given grotesque antithesis that were hard to look at, if I stared too long I thought I’d go mad. The thing about it was it didn’t look like slaughter, not entirely, it… well.
“-It looks like something crawled out of them” I noted, Blackburn seemed to agree; “Yeah… some of this damage? To themselves… look here, September 20th, little ol’ lady damn near carved her way into herself with her own hands… doesn’t explain the bite marks”. The marshal set the folder down, offensive attacks and self mutilation, runes that were now poisonous to the navajo culture left behind. It seemed like… a plague.
I asked the question I know many of you are probably gonna ask: “So… do you think this is a…” my words trailed off as he looked me dead in the eyes.
“A Sierra Whiskey?” he responded, much like Situation Whiskey, Sierra Whiskey stands for the a term in Navajo culture that must not be uttered; Skinwalker. No, not the regurgitated and often cannibalized version you see in media. The recognized definition of one that PEXU has defined is that of the yee naaldlooshii, which translates to “by means of it, it goes on all fours” or something to that effect. Thought to be witches that predate the oldest societies on North America, they’ve prayed on many native peoples for over a millennia. In modern times a fair amount of rationalization has been given to them, to a negative effect…. Any good medicine man will tell you they come from somewhere unseen and incomprehensible, they seek only chaos and malice, and they’re often completely undetectable until they start to kill. Despite this, it didn’t match the evidence presented: “Nah…” Blackburn said, lighting himself a cigarette “-the bodies of the victims are almost always never found when it comes to sierra whiskeys, add the fact that the mutilation matches none of the signs and that theory spins herself off the rails very quickly. Plus, look here…”.
He pointed to a more recent photo, a few kilometers north of one of the towns; a camping area in which the three inhabitants, all in their teens, were found laying face down dead. Their backs were torn open, and their bodies were of the same state as the others. However he points to photos from the autopsy; “Their Achilles heels are cut perfectly, at an angle impossible for themselves to do… with precision no beast has. That’s intentional debilitation of their ability to run in the simplest way, that’s human”.
A chill ran down my spine as the situation so far was absorbed; A miasma of death, carnage, running rampant through an area thought secure by their own means, with possible human cause… or at the very least, aided by man: “Brotherhood?”. John exhales a ring of smoke into the air; “If it ain’t? I’ll be surprised… but it’ll be the first attack they’ve conducted on native land. That means one of two things: they’re desperate or bold, both are almost impossible to discern unless you’re knee deep in the shit against it. We’re fixing to find out, cause we’re it… apart from any help they provide us”.
I looked around, the set up was that of a ready room prepped for an entire team to go out but it was just us. Montgomery’s assurance of the importance of this was present as PEXU didn’t spare us any expense they would any other SMU before sending us in. Enough meds to run an aid station, enough rounds to fuel a platoon, a US Marshal, a burnt out Staff Sergeant, and a dog- around this time Zeus had fallen asleep next to the $25,000 SATCOM kit, none the wiser of it’s importance or MSRP value.
The last thing I asked before we hit the road: “Whose car we taking?”.
....
Dossier: Reservation Epidemic
We loaded probably the better part of several hundred pounds of equipment into the back of John’s silver Tahoe, along with hooking up a radio to a wave relay antenna mounted to the top in case we had any problems on the road. We took shifts, it was a near 10 hour drive and once we got there it was likely we would need to get straight to work. Yeah, there’s no glamor in this, the old lawman nodded off in the seat next to me as I took us through the Colorado mountains. The earth there is some of the oldest in the world and a lot of it is mini frontiers, untouched… When we pulled through the forests I’m not gonna lie it took me back to some times. Not good times necessarily, in an uparmored SUV peeling through the forest, looking to hunt down incursions from the dark. Every once in a while I’d check in with main to update them on our progress… after about 6 hours, just as the sun was lowering, we switched.
Strangely… that was some of the best sleep of my life. Until the marshal banged on the roof of the vic causing me to jump awake; “Wake up, army. Welcome to the Navajo Nation…”. We were probably several hours into it, but as the morning sun was already up and about I saw what he was talking about. Northeast Arizona is exactly what you’d expect: rocks and distant mesas over an uncanny flat horizon, with sticks and barbs spread out so wide you could probably see a person from several kliks off. Yet… there was no one, just dust and whatever was lurking out there.
“How many times you been down these parts?” I asked Blackburn. He chuckled as he rolled his window down and spit some dip out. “ ‘bouta few, usually just investigations…” he said with a slight shrug. Interested in knowing what we were getting into, I inquired with “How does working with local forces usually go?”. The slight roll of the eye and the huff he made told me this next mission we were on was going to be nothing but cooperation and joy: “-Last time I was down here, I got a gun drawn on me by a Navajo Badge. I don’ wanna sour your taste though”.
Too late Marshal, thanks.
We approached the reservation that contacted us around 9am, the rocky landscape ahead had a slight ridgeline just to the south of it overlooking a sea of ground floor houses and lights breaking through the morning dusk. I couldn’t help but feel a strange isolation… sure we had a radio as our lifeline, but we were in… well, Indian Country, for a strange lack of better term although this might be the one time it’s correct. Tensions were high but they asked for our help, my only worry was could we establish such a trust before whatever was reaping this area got it’s fill.
A small checkpoint had been established on the road leading in, a pick up with two officers flagged us down with their lights. John slowed the truck to a halt and rolled down his window as the officer’s flashlight shined in, I let John take the lead: “Ya’at’eeh…-” it was some sort of greeting, though coming from his Texan drawl, sounded damn near hilarious. He presented his badge; “Chief Maitsoi requested us…”. A long stare from the officer as he stared into the truck, he glared over to me, then to John “Who’s that?”.
“My partner”.
“I don’t know him”.
“Yeah, no shit Gomez, you’re gonna freak him out” Blackburn retorted, earning a slight chuckle from the officer. I eased up as it seemed he’d been here before, though the officer to my side kept his steely gaze… not everyone was so trusting. “You’ll wanna head to the station, be wary, curfew’s in place…” the checkpoint officer said letting us go. I turned to John as he opened a can of wintergreen and popped a pinch of dip into his lip; “You know the law enforcement here?”.
“Tangentially” marshal retorted; “ ‘bouta few of ‘em”.
“You didn’t think to bring that up earlier?” I asked.
“Didn’t know how many of ‘em were left, some ambushes got a few a week ago” Blackburn said, my blood ran cold. “What? The hell you mean? Why didn’t you tell me sooner-” I asked, only for him to gaze over; “Cause that’s a courtesy given to me by Maitsoi, the local police chief we’re goin’ to meet… not PEXU privy. He’ll tell you yourself. Easy, Nolan, stuff rolls differently ‘round these parts.
Clearly.
We parked in front of the station, the ringing of the doorbell gracing us to the dead silent town around us as Blackburn and I exited. I popped open the back door as Zeus trotted out, the dog quickly made himself known by marking his territory on a nearby post… hopefully there’s no land issues between him and some cryptid, though my money’s on the Belgian Mal. “Usually there’s a lot more life to these parts” John says walking around to my wife, an air of dark blue dusk skies and mist hung over as the orange lights of the houses around were some of the only ambient life. “Goes for a lot of the world nowadays….” I muttered, the pressure of everything on our shoulders.
“Eh, this truck tumps over, ‘guess we better get used to goose stepping’ with golden wrist bands” John chuckled, slapping my shoulder. Great, real reassuring, though the positive talk was cut by the sounds of steps… from out of the dark of the station walked an absolute tank sized man, outsizing both me and John (probably put together with Zeus). There was a cold, calculated gaze in his eyes as he exited, a cap sporting the department logo of his town as he approached the both of us. He stopped… there was a moment of tense silence before he shook Blackburn’s hands with a smirk; “John, I thought you said you were retiring”.
The marshal shrugged “Yeah well, Betty wants the house paid off before she’s 50 so I guess I’m still on satanic clean up”. He turned his eyes to me; “This is Dwight Nolan, former army, real pipe hitter with PEXU…”. I shook hands with the lawman, his grip as viceful as stare, he introduced him as Matsoi Clahchischilliage (I hope that’s correct), meaning “abandoned”, though for the duration of our work together he told me to just refer to him as his first name since we’d be working alongside him. We were to meet with local leaders, a pseudo emergency council enacted with the curfew, but we had a few hours so Matsoi caught us up on any more information… things had gotten bad.
27 jumped to 35 within the last 72 hours. In his operations room he laid out a map, all of the red pins marking the incidents started around the outskirts, and were slowly closing in. The deepest had been just a few blocks from the station: The first one, the boy who murdered his sister, the most violent was “the ambush” as John and Matsoi call it. I got handed a large photo of the front driver’s side of a truck, the logo of their department was covered in blood that was caked on the doors, hood, the entire windshield busted as the entire body of the truck was shredded with marks. The insides were gutted and electronics rendered completely scrapped, with the radio torn out and missing.
“How many officers?” I asked, steadying my voice as adrenaline shot into my veins. “Four, sent on a call to the south of town. Once they reached an intersection near the town’s perimeter, their transponder went off. The follow up party included myself… found this…” Matsoi said pointing to the photo: “I took that picture”.
“Any remains?” I asked, Matsoi shook his head. “The first attack on our law enforcers and there are no signs of them or their bodies… equipment scattered, whatever attacked them knew aggression was key… and it won” Matsoi said, a dark look in his eye. A torn basketweave police belt was laying outside of the driver’s side door as a broken hand mic hung from its stretched cord. “Give it to me straight, what is this? Wechuge? Sierra Whiskey?” John asked, Matsoi’s eyes snapped to him; “No”. This caused confusion in the Marshal as we all surrounded that table, the full situation laid out “You sure?’.
“This is my history, Marshal…” Matsoi said with a deep seriousness in his tone: “Something not of our lands has come here, it’s permeating and evil. The things you suggest wouldn’t dare invade like they are… this is… alien, as you would say. It had to have been brought here”.
“Well who would do that?” John asked. I had a sneaking suspicion: An intelligent threat that knew the defenses were secure, and thus needed to import… heavier firepower, something looking to win a war.
We headed up to the meeting hall a few hours later, it was imperative to make a good impression as in Matsoi’s words: “How we break this to them will lead to a decade of cooperation or a dead end, something we can’t afford right now”.
Great, no pressure, thanks lawman. It was a gray concrete building with white paint on the outside that had long since been chipped, artwork in the style of old paintings of the Navajo nation, and dozens of stories all intertwining was like a feast for the eyes. As we walked in wooden planks lined the walls as we approached a long table, four individuals were seated; An older man in his late forties, effectively the “mayor”, an old ponytail stretching back out of his old leather jacket that was lined with patches. Most were hand made, however I recognized others… the 101st screaming eagles, 25th tropic lightning, 3rd ID Rock of the Marne. Next to him sat an older woman along with a younger man, two leaders of the town, to his right was an old lady pushing well into her eights (with respect, ma’am). They were an assembled group of the town’s most senior and experienced, they were also the people we had to convince… no pressure.
Matsoi approached a small bow as we spoke to them in Navajo. The younger woman and the man both stared intensely, unapproving as they kept eyeing the Marshal and myself, the mayor nodded with his eyes locked onto Matsoi, the older lady immediately beckoned Zeus over. Against my better judgment I made a small whistle and he trotted over, this caused the mayor to smirk as who I found out later to be his wife began to play with the hound. The other two… the senior town woman, and the medicine man, didn’t seem convinced.
Matsoi gestured to us; “Marshal John Blackburn and-”. The Medicine man immediately spoke up “We know who the Marshal is… I thought I told you to tread lightly if you returned here, John”. I gave a quick side eye to the Marshal as Matsoi stepped back… I started to realize he had a lot more history with this place than just career experience in the region. Remind me later to shake the info out of him before we progress further.
To his credit, Blackburn tried his best to be diplomatic: “I’ve come on better terms, Niyol, we’re answering a call for help-”. It did little to satiate them: “-Save it. We did not summon you here, not in a unified manner, this is the business of our community, not you and not your government”. John glanced to the side at Matsoi, the Medicine Man immediately turned his ire to me “You… why do you hide behind the Marshal? Who are you?”.
“Dwight Nolan, I believe your police chief was about to tell you that” I responded a little more crass than I should have, albeit that earned a chuckle from the Mayor’s wife and seemed to put the man on the backfoot. It was at this point the mayor himself sat up, and in a voice that sounded like old iron spoke: “Then tell us, Dwight Nolan… why have they sent you?”.
“I’ve made a recent career in unconventional extermination… I’ve proved it everywhere from here, to Europe, to Korea. You’ve got yourself a problem you can’t handle alone… I can see it in your eyes” I said, trying to summon the tone I briefed all battalion level officer whenever I got dragged out of company to perform senior NCO duties. The medicine man seemed to roll his eyes, to which our marshal crossed his arms retorting with a “He’s right… your chief here is strapped for options, he was the bigger man… so was your mayor”.
“Look, I get it… your people have been burnt, throughout all of history…” I said, trying to level with them, I was met with the stares of conviction from every single person at that table; “But you’ve got to see the writing on the wall… how many of your people have been harvested?”. John spoke up soon after “We’re not here for money… if we were, there’s a helluva lotta better options closer to home… we’ve seen what’s out there, hell this old soldier seen just as much as I have in half the time. The world’s dying… you’ve seen it, we all have…”.
The mayor’s gaze seemed to change, he turned to me “You were in the service?”. The feeling was weird… even before he said anything, I knew it was one old vet to another, a familiar connection in strange territory: “2nd brigade out of Drum”. A faint smile twitched at the edge of his mouth as he said; “Rakasons”.
“Campbell, huh?” I chuckled quipping “Air Assault”.
This tangent seemed to piss the Medicine man off, who barked at the Mayor in Navajo… Matsoi later told me he said something skin to “enough of this nostalgia trip, Altse”, to which the Mayor shouted back in a way that made me feel like my ass was getting chewed out again, shaking the room. Matsoi wouldn’t tell me what he said, but the look in his eye as he glared over at John and I told him the “Niyol” hit a nerve.
The mayor then sat back in his chair, his temper cooled as he muttered “I am tired of burying our loved ones… we cannot go it alone, not anymore. The world has changed, and if don’t act… there won’t be anyone left to populate it when this is a graveyard of ***ch’į́įdii***…”. There was a tense gasp of wind from that last statement, guess Altse invoked something... He looked to Matsoi leaning forward and folding his hands on the table “We must act, we have to do it now… no more division, no more separation… if we don’t, we lose the world, our future, and damn our children that are still breathing… if that is not enough I don’t believe you”.
I looked over to the Medicine Man, Niyol, who seemed to let go of whatever was eating at him and nod, as did the woman next to him. Altse’s wife was still playing with Zeus, who rested her head on her lap as she continued to play with him as if he were a puppy. Altse himself turned to us with a single order: “Whatever you need, just hunt it down, and put an end to this”.
Matsoi nodded, and I responded “roger that”, something that seemed to earn a chuckle from the Mayor and relieve whatever tension was in his mind. Zeus trotted back over as we left. First thing outside, Blackburn breathed the cool autumn air taking off his stetson; “That coulda’ gone worse…”.
“Much worse…” Matsoi said, jabbing Blackburn earning an eyeroll from the Marshal. “You gonna start telling me the full story or giving me bits and pieces” I said, John and I locking eyes. The Texan native stepped forward “How about this, you keep winning hearts and minds and by the time we’re cooking steaks after this, I’ll tell you all my little dark secrets, sounds fair Staff Sarn’t?”.
“Just let me know if we’re walking into a loaded conversation next time” I said back none too pleased, “listen… we did it. Now? We make preparations? Tonight will be rough” Matsoi said. Oh boy… that was not a fucking understatement. …. Matsoi had set Blackburn and myself up in a storage room towards the back of the police station. While not the most classy, what it did provide was direct access to work with their comms, space for all of the equipment, and 1ft thick concrete walls… although as my hand ran over one of them I kept thinking back to that picture of the ambush. The gashes through chassis and metal, the blood, the carnage- whatever was roaming around here wouldn’t be stopped by this. By nightfall we had set up two cots and gotten some early winks, we were gonna be up all night… come 2100 hours, we were shoving radios onto our vests, strapping the vest and ammo onto our bodies, and loading up into the vic.
We slow crawled through the roads of the town where asphalt intermingled with dirt and gravel. My rifle sat between my legs, I tried to go as “low profile” as I could with a jacket and jeans, though the gun belt and plate full rig made it hard to not stand out like a, well, as John put it: “incognito as fuck….”. I chuckled to which the Marshal threw a hand up “I’m serious… not like whatever’s out here can’t sense us, probably smells all the anthrax shots uncle sam shoved in you from a mile away”.
Zeus kept walking around the back seat, looking out either window “Your dog’s freakin’ me out”.
Just then, my peltors lit up as Matsoi could be heard; “I just got a call from the northside of town, screams, reported break in, sending you the address”. John stepped on it as his suv kicked up half a pound of dirt, I quickly punched it into the ATAK mounted on my rig as we sped off; “Two right and then a left”. While he swerved around each corner, I press checked my glock and prepped my rifle. I pulled on my gray helmet, regular old army ACH with a set of dual tubes. I learned well enough, if we were fighting at night… even the odds.
“Which one?”.
“This blue one up on the right”.
“Dwight, they’re all fuckin’ blue”.
“The one that says 612-”.
I quickly bolted out of the passenger seat with John in tow, the Marshal brought along his M4 as he and I rushed for the door. We were joined by Matsoi who held his pistol and flashlight old school style; “Let me lead!!” he shouted. He announced ourselves as we followed him in… the air stunk of rot decay, causing all of us including the two officers he brought along to gag. “Police!! Monika are you here?!” Matsoi shouted, a woman answered in manic cries that caused my hair to stand on end from the hallway leading off to the left. We arrived and…
Christ. The woman was on her knees, the carpet of the room was covered in some sort of black tar as she held the scrap of what we later learned was his shirt. The substance seemed to be coating her arm, her eyes red with tears; “My brother… my brother is gone, he’s…”. She was hyperventilating so bad, Matsoi attempted to console her, while snapping back to the windows. John and I trained a barrel on each, both shattered open. “Monika tell me what happened, please…”.
“S-Screaming… I… I was a second away from the room, I enter and… something was dragging him through the window…” she said, breaking down again. “What? What was it?” Matsoi asked, John quickly lowered his barrel; “We’ll backfill later, search the perimeter”. As we broke off from the reservation police, I could hear her say; “Anaye”.
John quickly rounded the house, I had other ideas… We had a 110lb assault weapon on four legs that was born to track targets. Zeus was already scratching at the door as I whipped it open- then proceeded to make like the cruise missile he is and shot off into the darkness faster than I could keep up. Shit.
“Zeus!!! Zeus, Heel!!!” I shouted, flipping down my nods and taking off after him. I am not made to run as fast as I did, faster than I was even at peak physical strength in my youth. Through the blue and white hue of my night vision I could faintly see him as he took off… through the brush over the ridge behind the house, then down into a ditch, we must’ve ran for what was maybe a good 50 meters before he dead stopped, causing me to nearly trip over him.
Zeus was at my leg as I fought to catch my breath, and quickly I realized… it was silent. I had to pivot hard into the dirt for there to even be an echo, it wasn’t just nature silent… ambient noise was being cut off by something. I looked around, standing at the bottom of the ditch with my hound, we were flanked on all sides by darkness, my binoculars could make out the stairs, the terrain… but not much else. My hands gripped my rifle, Zeus was trained to track his target till he reached it…
…. And he had stopped. The Belgian Mal began to bark forward, further down the ditch at something. My rifle was raised as I flicked my laser into IR flood, a mode that allows a flashlight effect that won’t blind me under night vision. This time it seemed to show through the darkness and… I wish It hadn’t.
Almost as it it formed out of the ground and shadows around, it stood up unnaturally tall, arms spindly, like that of crows or coyotes that meshed together, it was bow legged but then switched to frontward kneecaps… I could make it's silhouette very clearly, and I should have been able to see more detail but it just… didn’t let me… like I was being denied it. It turned, its head was both large and yet… not, I can’t, the only way I could describe it is that I literally saw its shape was both at different dimensions of size at different times. It didn’t have a face, not that I could see… until it stood straight to look at me, nearly 10ft tall… then, it’s eyes seem to light up, reflective like any animal’s would be when it… sees things in the dark.
It could see me… Just like the several dozen other eyes could that shown through after.
[“This is November-1, multiple contacts!!! ”] I shouted into my peltor’s mic as I took aim and fired, my laser taking aim on the figure along with several others, it seemed to almost instantaneously vanish, even as the rest of the eyes continued to remain. It didn’t matter as my suppressor snapped as rounds were sent down the ditch. Zeus continued to growl, in fighting stance incase anything charged, nothing did…
I paused for a moment, scanning as the sounds of bootsteps nearby… I pivoted, preparing to defend myself, only to see Blackburn scan from the top of the ditch, tense, he looked to me; “I’mma wager you saw that shit too”.
“No shit… the hell did we just make contact with?”.
As the Marshal scanned around, a series of flashlights from behind blinded me, forcing me to flick up my nods as a series of yells came from our end of the ditch. A group of reservation officers had caught up, to which John snapped; “Shut up, shut up, shut yer’ fucks, shut up!!!”. They stopped, some of them scanning as the Marshal scowled; “Fucksakes, comin’ in here louder than skeletons fuckin’ on a tin roof ”.
Thanks for that John, that’s permanently in my brain now.
A series of gunshots up ahead from the direction our target left caused me to flick down my nods, the group of us pushed forward, everyone picking up a sector of fire as we moved near towards the location I saw it…
Matsoi stood in the exact spot, scanning the ground, he looked over to me. No reflection, he was good… thank god because my laser wasn’t exactly off him. I don’t even know how he had managed to circumvent all of us and reached the area before we did, then again this was his territory… He had pulled on a latex glove, the kind you case evidence with and lifted a scrap off the ground. A single fragment of white cloth, the same kind the woman was gripping, drenched in the ichor. “Your contact was here?” Matsoi asked.
“Sure was, all 10ft of em” Blackburn retorted.
“Along with the dozen others” I added, I cocked my head at the substance left behind “What is it… and what.. was it?”.
Matsoi didn’t respond for a long time, he bagged up the evidence with the shred from the house, the only thing he said was “If I… can confirm it tomorrow morning… then our task has just gotten a lot harder”.
“Well what was it? What’s the theory?” Blackburn pressed, Matsoi ignored him simply saying “You two did good work… head to bed, we will talk in the morning.
John wasn’t happy, he still isn’t, I’m not either. I’ve got a feeling we just stepped in something generational.
What do you know, Matsoi’s calling us now. I’ll brief you on what’s next, till then.
November-1, signing off.
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