Alright, we’re back. Well, not fully. Sort of-....
I’ll explain.
It’s been a minute since the end of our mission to the Navajo Nation. Truth be told, opening the car door to my driveway has never felt more tranquil… That was until I heard the passenger door swing open and I could hear every single vertebrae in Isaac’s back realign as he stretched. “Ah, home-sweet-ranch-compound, huh Dwight?”. Yes for the foreseeable future, noting our long absence from each other and his seeming inability to recall the last better part of a decade, I’ve elected Isaac can shack up at my place. Zeus has seemingly taking a liking to him, although truth be told that 90lb canine assault missile will take to just about anyone that will feed him.
Sorry back on track, we were looking at several weeks of downtime, which despite the fact that I should have been focused on recuperation… I could only think of piecing together what’s been happening. It’s a flaw of mine, once I’m hooked I have to see something through to the end… I guess that’s why I’m the maniac who didn’t run from the Cazamoth Estate and went to Afghanistan four separate times. Regardless we had some noncombat objective… or so it seemed.
“Hey Dwight, you like decorating your house with hand prints?” Isaac quipped, my mind immediately thought back to the print indent I saw on the gutter and porch post. “Yeah, don’t mind them, I’ll… it’s a thing” I said as I dragged my gear bag out of my trunk. Then something he said made the hair on the back of my neck stand up: “... All of them?”. What did he mean “all” of them? Well, I found out what he meant when I turned and… on the wooden railing, the steps, doorway, at multiple points on the glass were more hand prints. Coating the front of the house… I’d been gone for a few weeks, but this was new, this hadn’t happened before. I dropped my gear on the porch and looked at some of them, they were embedded just a few millimeters into the wood, the glass, even the stone… just enough to be noticeable. All of them were human like, four fingers and a thumb, but… I don’t know. They were cave painting is, archaic, weird… enigmatic.
Just like the traps that were warped and bent impossibly.
Just like the hundred dead birds that passed inexplicably.
… This was another probe.
The only thing greeting us besides the wind and Zeus’ sniffing and growling at some of the prints was the silence, all eyes were on us… That was until Isaac broke the air with an all too giddy: “Do you have a craving for property that’s got demonic intent or is this all just happenstance?”.
Guess I’m just lucky.
Truth be told, getting used to Isaac again wasn’t too much of a challenge, to be honest between him and Zeus, having people around this place again was much better than absolute solitude. Though we had our fair share of weird moments, Zeus seems to be sticking to the area immediately around the house when he trots outside, there’s an eerie feeling I’ve been getting everytime I take my ATV out and scout the lands. Isaac’s been telling me the “walls are talking”, though that may just be the alcohol. Like, a serious amount of alcohol, we’re out in an isolated part near the rockies, where does he get that much- nevermind, rambling again, just like old times.
The knocking… did I tell you guys about the knocking? Well, there’s knocking everytime I go to get the coffee. Sometimes its at a window, a wall, other times from the door, one day Isaac went to go confront it but I just told him: “Don’t answer it”.
There’s some things in this world you just don’t mess with, and I’ve got some hella’ spiritual blood on my hands. It will always probably be “weird” for the rest of my life, but I guess that’s just the parameters… the hand I’ve been dealt.
Things were starting to get worse though… coyotes started to show up dead. Now it’s not unusual for Zeus to embrace his canine apex predator instincts and chase them down, then drag them back to the house to enjoy his kill right where everyone including the mailman could see it. What was unusual was for a whole pack of them to be left right at the bottom of the front steps, gutted brutally to where they were all peeled and ripped open, their blood and innards painting the front of the damn house.
I remember nearly stepping in when we went to go check, door slowly opened as I kept my glock to my right, Isaac had elected to creep out a shotgun and scan the front. “Okay, yeah, this place is definitely screwed, you ever think about relocating?” he remarked. Even if I wanted to, I don’t think this is something you can run from… I remember Zeus sniffing at the pile, only to back off and growl at it with his ears back refusing to eat any of it. We went to my office on the second floor where I had the entire property’s motion sensors, cameras, and surveillance set up… it happened last night, although no motion sensors triggered it. We found the point of appearance and… well.
2:17am; the porch is clear and everything is fine, night vision on my cameras gives us damn near a 360 view of the property and every inch of it from where the pavement turns to gravel, and then to grass. Then… it all appeared instantaneously: the dead coyotes, the blood to the point where some of the lenses were even smeared, all of it. Isaac and I zoomed in on the exact millisecond, opening maybe there was some cut off or something to show what happened…. Nothing.
.01: it’s not there, .02, all of it.
Whatever did this, didn’t do it through conventional means.
“What do you think it could mean?” Isaac asked, flipping through all of the cameras showing every angle of the carnage. I’ll tell you what I told him… something was sending a message, in the same way bodies are strung up at the front of bridges to ward off enemies this was the same thing. Isaac had a different theory, he pointed to an image of the pile: “The blood is one thing, but the bodies? They seem to be in the form of an… offering”.
I was dumbfounded and my face probably showed my confusion: “What?”.
My Idaho alcoholic went on to explain: “Think about it… This is a crossroads, right, you got the Dakotas to our northish, west is red rock territory, south is Texas and Oklahoma, this is a merging area of all kinds of nasty shit, that’s why so many different things happen… We’ve seen uglies leave carcasses and stuff out as a warning, this… the way they’re like, placed all together like a meat wicker basket. Seems like they were presenting it to you. Gotta remember, things don’t work like people do”. If this is the way things worked, then it could happen on the opposite: just as something could show you respect, something else could target you.
We kept moving though; carcasses went in the trash and I took a power washer to the front of the house, and after some replacing of tiles, wood, the majority of the handprints were gone. I was tired of running and I wasn’t about to let anything scare or force me off this land, well, force “us” now I guess as this isn’t a one man circus anymore.
Likewise there’s been developments on the grander scale, more specifically the shadow war PEXU is embroiled in against our adversaries. You ever wonder who leads the Blackwood Brotherhood? It’s a question that’s been raised by many, while the New Advent has Ryan Evans we all know that man’s nothing more than a gray skinned puppet with darkness behind his wide toothy smile.
After he appeared at that meeting where he addressed the world flanked by politicians from north and south america, europe, leading figures in economics and big tech… an investigation was launched by the CIA’s Special Collection Service to track when this huge shift in momentum for them happened. They sorted through tens of thousands of emails, phone calls, texts, and found almost nothing relating to the New Advent at all.
Then… a singular message shared on an encrypted messaging app by some lower level informant shells connected to our adversaries sent everyone into a panic.
“Belial”; in Hebrew it means the Devil, in the context they found it in it reignited a manhunt that had gone cold nearly 32 years ago. Believed to be the victim of a death camp in the middle east, he was being tracked by Israeli intelligence for quite some time after a special mission unit they sent to capture him all turned up dead. No wound, blemishes, nothing, just cold and unalive. After that he fell off the grid and ever since they it’s been nothing but theories connecting him to the primordial death cult we currently face: cells found in Denmark, Great Britain talked about an Augur from Damascus instructing them to revive the parafor leading to shit we are still fighting to this day.
Every connection from groups or training groups we get stops, no names, no ranks… just the tale of a man with dark red skin, sunken eyes and a bright white smile. His lips supposedly gone from acid burns that also line his body. Yet… it was all conjecture, drawings in scribbles of mad men who died when they allowed ancient shit to crawl out of their bodies like molted animals. Until one single message: “Belial will lead the way”.
Then it all hit the fan: two operatives PEXU had with us, one from the agency and the other homeland security were found dead outside of a site that doesn’t exist on any manifest in the United States internal security directorate. No documentation exists because all of it’s funding is from black budget. The recovery teams assigned to retrieve them became casualties themselves as whoever left them there carved glyphs into their eyes… the same one the Blackwood uses for indoctrination.
Shortly after? Deep in the Amazon ABIN, Brazil’s premiere intelligence network, was searching for a facility hidden in the rainforest connected to the cult. Attached to them were some members of the Special Activities Division… almost all of them didn’t make it out alive, half of them were grievously injured. A completely compartmentalized operation was compromised and ambushed… worst yet was the place they were hunting for disappeared. Every piece of metal, everything from the satellite photos was gone, like it never existed.
2 steps forward, 3 back into the woodchipper.
I won’t lie, my security office has turned into that of a makeshift war room with pelican cases and tough boxes lining the walls, a rack securing my armament, and a cork board of all I’ve learned complete with red string. The noose was tightening around our neck, 2 intelligence agencies experiencing major breaches, vew few within he FBI can be trusted and even MI6 needs to work in the shadows. Everyone from megachurches to corner stores is starting to wear those golden bands, and no one seems to be noticing. Not a peep or a whisper, anyone who does goes missing… 110,000~ a year and counting, if even a tenth of that has been turned into vessels for ascension then we are neck deep in enemies. Honestly staring too deeply into it all laid out like that makes me nearly go mad sometimes, sitting back in an armory knowing that just weeks ago we fought through hell just to get ourselves an inch of breathing room.
“Oh lord, don’t tell me, you’re going insane aren’t you?” Isaac’s voice managed to draw me out of it with an eye roll as he walked in and took an eye at the board: “Hey Dwight, if you are succumbing to whatever MKUltra stuff they pumped into your veins, give me a heads up so I can get out of the blast zone alright?”. We seemed to stare at each other for a good long while as he took a step closer to he, chuckling “Ah! I’m just messing with yah, but for real, did they… put anything in your coffee? I mean you never drank coffee last time I’d seen you so I’m wondering if you’re the real Dwight…-”.
Isaac somehow manages to say so much and yet nothing at the same time. He leaned back against the wall next to it, crossing his arms “So, what now?”. I shrugged, I leaned back and grabbed my coffee that was sitting atop a palette of ammo cans “We wait until we hear more”.
“Oh come on! There’s gotta be something we can do, call up that hogwarts fellow of your, Montana-”. “Montgomery” I corrected him. “Yeah sure, we can still do something, get back out there, hop in our supe-d up mystery machine and take it to ‘em!” he said emphatically, pumping his fist in the air. A supe-d up mystery that had the transmission blown to hell ever since I had to floor it over a sasquatch back in the Dakotas… more on that later.
“Isaac, we’re part of an organization… well, me, but-”.
“I am too?!” Isaac said with the excitement of a kid on Christmas, I pinched the bridge of my nose realizing my mistake. “No, I am, you are unofficially by association”.
“Still, how’s the pay?”.
“Terrible”.
“The benefits?”.
“Worse”.
“Soooo.... what’s the incentive?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Duty”.
“Oh good God you people really are insane”.
You think? Mortals using the modern day’s best armaments to cut through the hordes of wherever-the-hell to send whatever-the-hell back to where it was summoned from by other mortals. I’ve seen more of our people succumb to injuries that can’t be determined by our laws of universe than slashes and guttings, yet I still clock in. There’s definitely something wrong with me.
“I guess that gives us some time to think… or well, remember” Isaac said, rubbing his head. It was no secret his lack of memory was weighing on him, he does a good job putting up a front. “You’ve had no contact with anyone? Haven’t been back there in?…” I asked, his eyes snapped to me “Too long…”.
We had ourselves, the cult, but then there was Theodore Cazamoth, my old boss who was obsessed with seeing how he could industrialize the primordial to advance humanity. “Advancement” that 4th Special Forces Group encountered on more than one occasion and lost more than a few of their own. We had been so dug in fighting a subversive apocalypse, what the hell was Theodore able to do the last 6 years? We were going to have to find out… later. “I’m hitting the hay, let me know if some demon tries to tear our hearts out in the middle of the night, yeah?” Isaac said heading for the door. “Wilco, if you get the chance before me, dump my body down a flight of stairs” I joked. Isaac stopped at the door as he looked around, then back to me “Hey Dwight”.
“Yeah?”.
“I’m glad you’re back”. The sincerity in his words seemed to sober me up, the same feeling that drew me back to this years ago… that’s why I keep marching on. Not insanity or money, duty… someone had to make the shit in the dark afraid, someone had to go in there and get vengeance for the grieving spouse, the crying child, the mourning parent, or those who went alone with no one to remember their name. I did… every single person I have gotten some pound of justice for.
I woke up later around witching hour to grab a water. Zeus stayed in bed as I headed downstairs with iron in my pocket just in case someone wanted to try. I rounded the bannister as I reached the bottom of my stairs, my front door just ahead of them as the entire living room was laid out with a couch, chimney, table and all… I stopped as my eyes snapped to the chair in the corner.
I drew my pistol and tried to hit the light, nothing… my finger felt the rail underneath where it should have been. A light then shined on me causing me to squint my eyes, it aimed down as my eyes adjusted… it was my taclight. “You rely on your equipment too much, Dwight Nolan” the figure sitting in the chair said, that of an impoverished male’s voice.
The moonlight just barely missed them as shadows cloaked them, they tossed the taclight to me causing it to bounce across the floor. With my pistol still aimed I reached down and placed it back on and got a good lock at them. In a dark suit and dress shoes was a bald man, gray skin with dozens of stitches of different sutures lined their head. A black set of shades hid their eyes as on their lap they held what looked to be a chalkboard.
“Dwight Anthony Nolan. 39 years old. Son, Leader, Killer…”.
Tally marks were underneath, hundreds of tally marks… each one of them dark red, whispering to me. I knew what they meant… a name, an age, a birth and death date. Some were the things I had been ordered to cut down, target packages filled in the dozens… over a hundred. I looked to them, then back to the man; “Who the fuck are you?”.
“A watcher, numbers keeper mostly”.
“You got some sort of point in doing this? I’ve got half a mind to-”.
“You’ve got a lot of blood on your hands” the stitched up freak said accusingly. Even with the shades I could tell it's eyes were piercing, however they looked. There's a seventh sense that joins the sixth sense of danger alert humans have, I like to call it ancient instinct. Whenever you come across something you can tell has been there since before the rocks were eroded, and has been a problem generationally? That's what that is... I've encountered it while hellmarching many a times through many a mythological hallowed ground. Something tells me the "watcher" probably bumped elbows with God, maybe literally.
Still, I wasn't going to let it know the gut dread I was feeling: “What? Sad I put down your friends? Or something in the woods, or the swamp, or across the ocean. I’m not gonna apologize” I growled, my finger well on the trigger as I started to apply force.
“What about them?” it said staring blankly at me, pointing to another tally mark… Alyssa, Age 23, born in the Navajo Nation, died because we weren’t fast enough to reach her house to tell her to get to safety. It’s hand pointed to another: a small boy, 5, killed because I took a longer route to track down a Wechuge in Eastern Canada… These weren’t just kills, these were people I had failed to save.
Sometimes it was because I had a wrong lead, other times I was just too slow, some there was nothing I could do… but it was on my soul.
“Protectors have continued to form a membrane of annoyance for thousands of years, Dwight Nolan. We are closer than ever to shifting the momentum back to the era where you hid in the caves protected by a campfire and a stick. Don't hide it, futility is a noticeable trait in human eyes, you're well aware of the deficit you're in” It said with glee in it’s voice. It was well aware of the pressure going on around the world, it knew that I knew as well… I didn’t give it an inch.
“Well you won’t be there to see it” I said, pulling the trigger… the gun didn’t fire. I raised an eyebrow as suddenly I could hear pounding on the door that made my heart shoot straight into my throat.
“No, Dwight Nolan, you won’t. You didn’t really think hiding in the rockies would save you, would it?” my light went out… and I woke up in bed. That being said, I woke up to a chorus of alerts coming from the speaker on my night stand; [“Multiple intrusions detected… multiple intrusions detected…. Condition Alamo, Condition Alamo, Condition, Alamo”].
Something had followed us home.
-------
Dossier: Condition Alamo
Alamo… in every military there’s a contingency when deployed for whenever the wire is breached and the enemy has entered. The Poles I worked with liked to use the term Red, a Brit unit I worked with preferred Direct Fire Charlie. I’ve always stuck with one I’ve encountered at a number of American Fobs: Alamo.
Zeus was barking a storm as I could hear banging coming from the front door downstairs, for reference I bought a steel lined reinforced door with heavy duty hinges and several locks. That being said I had also gotten into scraps with things that cut through material tougher than it with no issues. I had minutes at most… I scrambled out of bed to find my pistol on my nightstand, drawing it and scanning around. Zeus was standing on the bed growling… the banging had stopped as I looked… no moonlight just like there had been hours ago.
I approached the curtains and peeked just under the edge to see, only to find an eye staring back. It was completely white, the iris gone with a pinprick needle for a pupil… my blood ran cold, I remember that kind of eye. I stumbled back and aimed my boomstick but only darkness remained. Then… laughter, dozens of different cackles, jeers, echoed from the outside… this wasn’t right, this… I had been here before, I had encountered something exactly like this… back when I was just a security guard hired to protect that fuckin’ forest estate.
Fuck this, we need to kit up quick. I opened the my door and shined my pistol light around, clear left and right, a few doors ahead of me were the bathroom and a study, directly to my right was the armory. I took a step out, watching the stairs down to my left… only to be deafened when a gunshot rang out to my right… The round barely missed me as it hit the doorway of the bathroom just in front of me, the snap and wood shavings from it showering the area as I ducked down and gripped my ear, aiming my boomstick, it was Isaac… who immediately waved his hands. “Ah hell!! Sorry!!!”. “Isaac what the fuck?!” I exclaimed, though I could also barely hear him as he walked over and shouted. I nursed my ear as he asked “Hello!? You hearing me?!”.
“No, you deafened me!! The hell did you say?!” I asked, his answer sent a chill up my spine: “Look I had already seen you just before the house started to scream at us, and you nearly bit my fuckin’ head off!!”. Seen me? I stood up as I scanned around “Isaac what the hell are you talking about?”. “I woke up just before the alarms started to go off, you were creeping over my bed and I was getting a bad vibe… then you tried to leap on me, and I grabbed this and started to fire into you-” he said showing the Glock 19 I had given him as a bedside carry. This was odd because that was sure to have woken me up.
I looked to him, my ears still pounding “Well… where did… I go?” I asked. A crash from downstairs caused both of us to turn and aim at the stairwell down, Zeus had crept into the hall and began to growl at it. I reached over and pulled him by his collar “Isaac… into the safe room, now”.
All three of us got into that armory as Isaac locked the door, I took to the desk connected to the security system as Isaac went to work preparing himself some firepower.
“What the hell is going on?!” he asked and frankly I was wondering the same thing. I pulled up the grid to my property… out of the several dozen motion detectors and trail cams I had set up, over 60% of them were offline, the rest were in states of damage, flickering, and only a few worked… one of which was one adjacent to my driveway. A single pinprick eye looked through the tall glass, then before I could even register it… a flash of silver, blackened nails on a bloated dead hand pried the camera’s steel and concrete embedded post out of the ground and smashed the unit.
That skin… that hand.
I switched between the cameras, so many of them were out of commission. Some were smashed and nearly tore off their mounts, others just flashed LED colors with fragments of their vision still intact. The driveway ones were already taken out, the one on the front of the house was completely offline, something had already invaded the property and taken out our eyes… not only that, but it knew where to look. I saw the notification for sound being registered, I got some crackles, static, like I expected… but then, cackles… deep, warped cackles of what sounded like a dozen people forced into one.
I had… stopped this, I thought I did. Then, just as I did one more run back through all of the cameras… unit 21, mounted near the peak of the back of the house, highest up… registered a voice. It came through calm, almost a whisper, but like some sort of predator that caught it’s prey it called out: “Nolan….”. A sudden thrash as something monstrous running across the roof shook the whole damn house, caused me to almost lose balance as I held onto the house.
“What-in-the-bayou-fuck is going on?!” Isaac said, looking over my shoulder. I looked back to see he had gotten himself 2 bandoliers of shotgun shells, including a belt… while in his tanktop and shorts. Zeus was barking, as the sound of something crawling around the outside caught his attention.
Then… the movement on the roof stopped, towards the center; wet tearing and ripping, flesh and tendons, I know that sound anywhere, echoed… as thuds sounded on the roof. I switched off the cameras and made for my equipment table, prepping my rifle as I pulled my belt and plate carrier on. “Is that shit sounding like what I think it’s sounding?” Isaac asked, aiming his shotgun around at whatever the hell was deciding to demonically touch every ceiling tile out there. He was feeling the familiar feeling too, this rhymed all too closely to whatever the hell was at the Cazamoth estate.
“Those intelligence leaks” I pointed out, “You think they found us as well?” he asked.
“I think something found us…”; I tried to key into my radio; [“Main this is November-1…”]. Nothing, I tried again: [“November-1 to Main, serious situation, I need support….”]. Still nothing, dead silent, I looked back to him “Either our comms are cut, or our friends are preoccupied”.
Front outside towards the front, a thunderous roar sounded followed by what I knew damn sure was my front door being forced off his hinges and the snap of my bannister soon after. Isaac snapped towards the door with his shotgun as I pulled down my night vision, my rifle’s laser trained on the door as well. “So? What’s the plan? Sit tight and wait for help?” Isaac asked. “Help ain’t coming Isaac, and by the time we even get a word out for help these things will be right ontop of us” I said, the sounds growing louder. The barrel of his shotgun dipped every slightly “So… what do we do?”.
Simple: “-We get the hell off my lawn”.
Zeus began to bark as a set of footsteps raced up the stairs and towards the door could be heard, the sound of a woman’s full lung scream growing louder. It began to slam on the door again, and again, finally it gave way and she stumbled in. In some tattered gown barely covering her dead skin soaked in what looked like tar. Her arms were bisected longways as she clawed at the floor more insect than human, through her long hair she looked to us, her face peeking through as whatever was coating her at through it… I don’t even know how she was even screaming, just a gap in her skull where her face was.
She roared again; “Ah jesus hell!!!!” Isaac yelled as he blasted her in the chest with his shotgun. The scatter blast tore through her hip and momentarily stopped her, however she used her multiple limbs to launch right at us…
I responded with a group of shots, tearing through her torso, she fell onto the large wooden ready table I had in the center sending ammo cans of rounds tumbling off, and tools flying. Zeus barked snapping his jaws at her from the ground, she stood up and Isaac got one hell of a good shot at her shoulder.
She went flying back against the wall, Zeus grabbing onto her leg and beginning to kill shake it out of her socket. I joined and fired several rounds, the snap of my suppressor echoing as they impacted her brainstem. That corrosive shit splattered all along the wall as she grew still. Zeus seemed to back off, he could tell from the smell that none of that was good.
A moment of still occurred and I closed the distance, I used the tip of my suppressor to move her head to the side as that shit fell onto the floor. I watched it impact the floorboards… the black ichor seemed to… move.
My mind thought back to the plastic baggie of shit I had encountered, between the coloration, the eyes, the laughs… the substance. “This is from the Cazamoth Estate-” I stated my theory as I knelt down next to the corpse.
“Ain’t no way though, I read your entire memoir on that, you killed those freaks” Isaac said, scanning around with his mossberg not wanting to even think of the theory.
“-Then tell me, Isaac, why the hell are they filled with the exact same shit from south Missouri?” I barked back.
Our debate was cut short as a rumbling could be heard, inside of the walls. We could hear every single shuffle, and pained movement as it closed in on the vent… it fuckin’ popped off, a set of bloated dead arms, skin that cut itself on the metal edges and spewed puss, reached through as they aggressively tried to force themselves through.
Two slimy heads, eyes sunken in dark rings, pin prick eyes and brown toothy smiles were attempting to force themselves through, to the point the wall around the vent opening contorted and bent. “Isaac!!! Nolan!!! Isaac!!! Nolan!!!” their voices sung with each other as they screamed.
There was something about their aggression, their hatred I could feel through their forced smiles that was just shocking, making you feel like prey. I didn’t say a word, I fired my rifle, tearing through their skin, Isaac let loose with his shotgun.The resulting blast of buckshot tore through the vent, showering the trio in pellets and broken metal, as the floor and wall around was torn up, all that remained was a pile of mess that was once human. I turned towards him “Still skeptical now?”.
Isaac steadied himself the best he could, his stock in his armpit as he sheepishly dug… oh for fucksakes, he dug a flask out of his shorts and tool a long sip; “Nah, I’m right here with you”. “For fucksakes, Isaac…” I shook my head, he looked “What?! They’re invading, I’m standing our ground!!!”.
“I didn’t say redecorate my entire fuckin’ house with double ought buck while you’re plaster out your-” our argument was cut short as the sounds of more of them from the stairwell could be heard. “How about this: We clear this place of ghouls, and I’ll fund the reconstruction” Isaac quipped.
With what money, Isaac? you sleep on my couch… or well, figuratively, or he’d be down there getting possessed and quartered by the neighborhood brigade right now. “We beat them before, we can do it again, let’s go” I asserted to him, he nodded and followed.
My laser scanned as we pushed into the hallway, Isaac cleared right as I pushed forward towards the stairs, he joined me as Zeus was at our feet sniffing ahead. I was on the left side of the hall, my laser aimed down the stairs, I could see the remnants of the door hinges torn clean off… they were rated for 3,500lbs of incoming force, whatever came through here did so with a vengeance.
We pushed down the stairs, my barrel leading the way and centered on the wide open front door as Isaac watched our flank. As I reached the ground floor, I shuffled right and pied around the opening, I could hear them running throughout the tall grass, laughing, whispering, eyes peeking out and then ducking back with speeds too quick for their hulking forms. all peeking through as they could see me better than my dual tubes could. Then from the tall grass, one of them bolted out. “Incoming!!!” I yelled, heading over to the doorway I fired as the gray mass closed the distance across my front area onto the porch. I fired rounds that cut through it’s back, lodged right in it’s body, black splurts filled the are and yet it still kept it’s momentum.
“Move!!-”.
That’s all I could get out as Isaac ducked right, Zeus barked as the thing charged and knocked me clean off my ass through the air and into my couch. It didn’t seem to care how many rounds I fired into it, I rolled off and groggily got a good lock. Its still human torso was the cross roads for a horrifying monstrosity where dog-like legs met an army that was that of a centipede, but the chitin was made out of calcified black flesh. The other one was seemingly made of glass and had gaps between bones, the head was fighting between several different mouths, gray and sunken into it’s torso… it’s sunken pin prick eyes centered on meWhatever the hell happened to it, it decided to turn their soul into some sort of skin split thing.
It’s voice was that of dozens, roars, yells, and yet it semi coherently all said: “Nolan”. I tried to back up as it reached down, the centipede arm gnawing at my plate carrier, tearing through the nylon corduna as I fired into it’s torso sending chunks of flesh and bone flying out the back. Zeus lept on top zinking his teeth into it’s neck causing it to yell what sounded like a cross between a tiger and a ma. Isaac planted his shotgun right on the skull, the shot caused the entire thing to explode out which completely showered me… and I didn’t know what was worse: being covered in dead person or dead rotten beast.
I forced my buttstock into the ground, my head still rolling around as Isaac took point and looked to me: “How you feeling? You got knocked a country mile”. I felt the base of my neck that still felt like it was on fire: “Been worse, landed right on my neck.
“Quick, how many fingers am I holding up?”.
“Isaac you’re not holding up any”.
“See? You’re good”.
From the doorway to the kitchen, a set of elongated arms connected to a body that was stretched and contorted beyond human proportions. It stepped in bow legged, its face… a human skull that had been buried and pushed into the collar bone area sat below a smooth, angler fish like top portion. Two sets of jaws forced together, formed some horrifying maw that just hurt to look at, like knives being dragged down my bare bones.
We quickly fired on it, it grabbed onto the ground around it and spat at us… that same tar like shit, Isaac was quicker that I was. Some of it hit directly on the plate carrier, eating into my ATAK.
The smell was… awful, it began to fuck with me, I didn’t know it until well into it’s effects but soon I realized I was hallucinating. My eyes burned, my nose doing everything it could to exorcize the feeling to no avail, the pounding noise in my head felt like screams and chants. It felt real, every gust of wind, everything was hypersensitive.
I scanned around, the ground unsteady, then it lunged at me. I could feel it’s claws slashing into my skin, I screamed and fired at it although it just degloved my arms like it was nothing, I could see the veins and blood underneath as it threw me into a wall and it gave in.
I stood up and I was back… upstairs? The thing came charging down and I managed to clip the human skull underneath, causing it to stumble. As it did I fired, the flash of my suppressor under nods short, small, yet controlled as I tore through one of it’s legs. It then reached out and hooked my jaw….
-Then pulled and yanked it clean off.
The feeling of my tongue flapping around, my gasps for air… I dropped my rifle to it’s sking as it slashed at my face. I fell to the ground, back in the living room… Zeus was now gnawing at it’s head as it reached for him.
Not. My. Fuckin. Dog.
I fired an entire magazine into it, having switched to auto it tore through it’s center off mass. I then charged forward and tackled it to the ground, the armored knuckles on my gloves being buried into it’s head. It’s elongated arms tried to reach and tear through my plates, I didn’t care, hell I took off my helmet and began to pound it over, and over, with the clear side of my kevlar. The burning feeling it had on my corneas combined with a chorus of screams that just wouldn’t end, I would make it end.
It’s head snapped back as it began to be crushed, soon the vortex-like swirls that formed it’s eyes began to snap back… looking human, and looked… like me.
Isaac threw me to the ground, I gasped as I could feel the clear air again, my vision normal as the property, the house… everything was silent. Zeus was sat in the center carpet… surrounded by dozens of malformed, transformed adversaries that were now spending their last seconds on this earth bleeding out. I sat up, catching my breath. I looked around… the beast with the elongated arms was laying on the floor, it’s head completely pulverized… my helmet embedded into it.
I looked to Isaac, I’ll be honest I was shaken the fuck up “W-What the fuck…”.
“Yeah you lost your shit… a bunch of them began to pour in, you were firing wildly, you started tearing them apart…” he said, I raised an eyebrow, I didn’t remember that and I still don’t but I looked around. There was a hole in my wall wide open into my kitchen… some sort of hound like beast, skeletal with blood and muscle being it’s only exterior had it’s throat ripped out and my multitool stuck in its skull. My rifle was on the ground, bolt locked to the rear amongst several others.
“I don’t hear anything else…” I said, staggering to my feet.
“Yeah, I think we might’ve gotten them all…” Isaac said, he paused for a moment, looking around “Okay, no jinxing us this time, I think they’re actually all dead… or escaped”. I quickly cleared and replenished my rifle, Isaac and I secured the kitchen and basement, right around when we got primary power back on… my radio crackled to life.
[“November-1, sitrep…”] it was Montgomery’s voice. I looked to Isaac before hitting the push-to-talk; [“This is November-1, just experienced an attack on my residence, it got kinetic… we’re still alive but in a bad way… how copy?”].
A few seconds of static, some failed key-in attempts… Montgomery answered [“Roger that… we’ve got an organization wide attack… stay put and prepare the best you can”].
\Isaac scoffed, rolling his eyes he kicked the mangled remains of something that was formerly intruding, now decomposing “yeah, tell manchester it’s a little late for that”. [“November-1 to Main, I’ve got several dozen EKIA, I need reinforcements-”].
What he said next planted a deep pit in my stomach: [“Dozens of PEXU solo units have not reported back in, November-1. We’re barely able to take accountability. Hunker down the best you can and we will be coming for you… Main-Out”].
There Isaac and I stood in my house, I sighed as he slung his shotgun, looking around “Well…. Nail and boards?”. I pinched the bridge of my nose; “What are we going to just board up all the holes and sit next to the radio?”.
Yes, We did. It took around 25 minutes however Isaac and I successfully and haphazardly re-secured the house. Cold sweat on our necks as we pushed out the fragments of my front door and pushed into the area around my vehicle, that now had shattered windows, torn off mirrors, popped tires... I scoffed as I scanned over the thing under NODS, Isaac looking around. "Damn, they even fucked up the rims... like popping the tires would've just enough but I guess they wanted to turn a seventy dollar fix into a seven hundred" Isaac dryly noted as he walked around, Zeus was rounding the house, sniffing for any traces of our foes. "More like seven thousand-" I remember muttering, I reached for the door handle... aaand it came off. Not the handle, the entire door, pulled straight off and I heard the outer part of it crack as it hit the gravel. We both stood there, silent, staring at the uparmored vehicle that had been downgraded into a shitbox SUV, seemingly with the bare hands of the foes we just fought. "I'm sure insurance will cover it... right?" Isaac asked, trying to brighten the mood, and I'll be honest the only thing that could brighten this would be a road flare- preferably directly into my corneas.
Why did it take 25 minutes? Well apart from the fact we had to secure every window and door, we did so one man at a time as the other covered them. That takes longer than you think, it's why I hated replacing sandbags in country- sorry, more Afghan war memories. We both tried to push the obvious out of our minds as the last nail went into the last board of the last sill. I grabbed one of the hands of the corpses, painstackingly dragging it across the floor as the black blood soaked into the wood, I could feel the skin putrifying and melting as I kicked it into the concrete. "Not gonna say I missed these fools...." Isaac said, he took the muzzle of his shotgun, poking it into the dog like creature as he pushed it on a gap of my porch bannister our guests were so happy to conveniently create- my smashing it.
This time it was difference, it was my damn house. I didn't give a shit about the Cazamoth Estate house, I cared about getting safeguarding his son, Isaac, and... Rose. I thought about her as we forced the doors closed and sat in the silent dark, the wind outside our only cold comfort. Rosanne's disappearance wasn't coincidence, it couldn't have been.. Isaac's memory loss, her vanishing, and now the ghouls from underneath the nineth circle were four whole damn states away.
"I hope she's okay..." I said, hands around my knees as my rifle rested on my lap. Isaac sat just a few feet away as he played with Zeus, no names but he could tell who I was talking about. We both felt the same way; "Yeah... listen, she's a smart chick, she'll be fine. I mean.. weird too...". He paused for a moment before turning to me; "She's... okay, we're both in agreement she's gotta be a witch, right?". I raised an eyebrow... for those not knowing, Rosanne at various points during South Missouri, annotated and otherwise would connect to the world around her in ways that made both of us think she was on drugs back then. I'll be honest... even after our buisness concluded, I believed she still was. 6 years of war against Folklore Phantasms? Nah... if she's crazy, so am I... then again I am the guy who signed up to be the hammer. She didn't, she was extremely knowledgeable and Theodore remained in that town... he definitely had something to do with it.
Another knock came from the door, which was a little funny and made me chuckle seeing as there was no door, just a set of boards. Zeus growled as Isaac went to sit up, I raised a hand; "Don't... answer it". Good to know not everything around my house is an invasive species.
Occasionally we would hear the sound of something outside, neither of us went to look however we did keep our weapons ready, nothing would attack again. In the morning the sound of an SUV approaching after the sun rose above the horizon cautioned all three of us to approach, my suppressor and his barrel sticking out gaps in the boards.
A blacked out SUV looking like what mine used to before it's close encounter with the fifth kind stopped, headlights facing the front of the house. The morning sun had begun to slowly crawl over the horizon, the winter ensuring we got as much darkness throughout this as possible. It began to snow... creating a light flurry as the door opened and a young man in a navy suit, slicked back hair exited. He kept his hands up, only moving one to take his sunglasses off…. Montgomery chuckled at the state of things before he looked at the structure: “I’ll take it, you’ve had a very entertaining night, November-1?”.
At this time we both had our guns trained through any gap we got, I drew my barrel back from the opening and peeked through “You can say that… what're you doing in the states?”. the MI6 agent lowered his hands as he carefully stepped past black gut fluid that stained the gravel leading up to my house, nonchalantly putting his hands in his pockets. "Enjoying the American culture, aren't you? I'm sure the night you've had probably made you bloody hungry for a Boulder, Colorado pub sandwich, yeah?" he quipped. Brits had a sense of humor that was like greeting you with a jab straight to the teeth, and somehow you found it endearing.
As he approached the front of the house, I peeked at him through a gap in the boards, just happy to see another face. "What's the rest of the unit like? How're the others?" I asked. The smirk on his face faded with a strained sigh that grew a zip code sized pit in my stomach. “SMUs survived intact, many weren’t touched for obvious reasons… others like yourself, intelligence personnel… well, let’s just say we’ve got less comrades than when the night started”.
That’s where we are at right now; Isaac and I are still holding down the fort, surprisingly we’ve gotten the actual structure resecured but let’s just say it won’t be pretty for some time. I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon… this place is my home, I hid here when I wanted to step away, and I don’t plan on running off again. PEXU has taken a considerable amount of casualties, though we’ve sustained it… it’s time for us to hunker down, lick our wounds, and soon we will be counter attacking. Don’t think it’s over, it’s not, just a little bit shot to hell right now… we’ll get back to it. We’ll take it to them, their home, their blood…
Montgomery has also said PEXU is interested in looking into whatever Theodor Cazamoth has been doing… because that black ichor we found on many of those bastards that tried to gut Isaac, Zeus, and I? They match samples recovered from a facility found on the east coast, one that 4th Special Forces Group touched down at a few years ago…. The same substance I encountered while I was defending Cazamoth’s estate.
It’s not over, we’ll be back.
This is November-1, Isaac, and Zeus, signing off.
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