Since the Beginning

What follows is my latest short story set in the Dark War universe. Obviously, it's a piece of fiction, but it is also more. It provides a look into the war, and why it gave rise to the monsters that have ravaged our reality.

Changed

Since the beginning. Before the written word. Certainly, before any mass communication. They existed. Among us. The beasts, monsters, and demons of our nightmares. It is their tale that I must tell, and their danger that I must make you, indeed all of mankind, see. And yes, also the history of the war that drew them from the shadows. My name is Martin, and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Now I know that the stories rational humans believed to be myths, horrific legends, and macabre fiction are fact. Vampires exist, Lycan exist, ghosts and witches too. In retrospect, how could it be otherwise? How can legends of blood-sucking creatures simultaneously arise in Asia and Europe unless there is some basis for their origination? What fevered imagination dreamt of man changing to beast unless sparked by a tale spoken by a traveling gypsy or personal experience?

These dark entities were only waiting for a chance to walk among us. A chance to kill freely.

Or perhaps not. Maybe they had no idea.

Maybe the war surprised them as much as it did mankind. Yet when the monsters recognized the chaos wrought by the violence, the opportunity, they leapt at it. Because although vampires, lycan, and their ilk are infinitely more powerful than the humans on which they prey, they are few. Their discovery in the ordered world—the world before the Soviet tanks crossed into West Germany--would have meant the monsters’ death. We would have hunted them mercilessly, killed them without the slightest remorse. As we would have every deviation. We fear deviation, and we kill what we fear.

It is why they attacked my wife.

We crave order, but the world is no longer ordered. This war has ripped it apart. All is chaos. The Soviets frantic to reach the Rhine, to split NATO before it can recover from the Red Army’s onslaught. NATO reeling, throwing what units they can, when they can, into the maw of the advancing beast. Perhaps, however, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. At least the beginning of World War Three.

The Soviets crossed the West German border at 0637 on May 23^rd, 1985.  You can study the whys and wherefores elsewhere, but as of that moment, they ceased to be important. We were at war. The world was at war. Hordes of T-64B and T-80 tanks, scores of BMP-1P, BMP-2, and BTR-80 armored personnel carriers, or APCs as we call them, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, swept into the Federal Republic of Germany. Two things surprised us.

First off, the Red Army’s competence. Our field manuals and our training led us to believe that the west’s superior weaponry and doctrine would prevail over the Soviet’s quantitative superiority. And yes, we destroyed more equipment and killed more men, but not in the ratios we needed. The Soviets fought bravely, tenaciously, with great tactical skill. Yes, their doctrine was rigid, but only when applied to their large formations. When the battle broke down, when it was company versus company, leaders emerged on both sides who applied common sense and cunning. In short, we gave better than we got, but not nearly enough. Soviets burst through the NATO lines by the second day of the war. Those lines would never reform.

Our next great surprise was death. That sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Death comes with war; a fact that is somewhat glossed over in high school history books and patriotic speeches. But death had never come like this. Four hundred and eighteen thousand Americans died in in the four years of World War II. One hundred and four thousand soldiers died in the first forty-eight hours of World War III.  As anticipated, the Soviets streamed through the Fulda Gap, the same east-west passageway used by Napoleon hundreds of years before. The town of Fulda simply ceased to exist, turned into a pile of rubble when the 11^th Cavalry chose to defend it. Not rubbled by nukes, not rubbled by secret weapons, but rather rubbled by the destruction two modern armies throw at each other.

This destruction, this madness, this death, dissolved order. Into that dissolution came the vampires, the Lycan, the demons and witches. All manner of otherworldly creatures that normally hid among the shadows, feeding on humanity’s scraps. Now they no longer needed to hide. Police had better things to do. There would be no mobs to hunt monsters now. Now it was to each his own. Now the monsters no longer needed to feed on scraps. The humans were divided, helpless. They were food.

I’m an analyst. I examine photographs, pour over intercepted communiques, study interrogation transcripts. Early in the war a pattern emerged. Amidst the wanton destruction I found photographs of eviscerated soldiers, mauled civilians. Wounds that just didn’t fit the cold death meted out by a 7.62mm round or Mark 82 bomb. Some of the wounds were obviously animal-like; deep, four-clawed rendings. Other corpses were bloodless, pale skin and muscle displayed through wounded necks. In scratchy drone footage (a secret capability when the war began), I witnessed a man, clothed in suit and tie, approach a group of Soviet riflemen lounging beside their BTR-80. He spoke to the men, his posture relaxed, their response equally so. Those who were smoking continued to do so. The man stepped back, and each soldier pulled their bayonet from its calf-sheave and slit the throat of the soldier next to them, the victim unresisting. Those remaining sawed through their own necks, blood spurting over the serrated steel. As the drone passed overhead the operator flicked to the suited man. He stood in the running blood, smiling beatifically.

A week into the fighting a report crossed my desk. A private named Hudson. His debrief describing remote farmhouse battle with human-like wolves.

The pieces didn’t fit. Not in any reality I knew. I did know, however, that it was time to show my findings, voice my fears, to someone above my paygrade.

Vans Prillamen is my team leader. I stood at his desk, photos in my hand, beatifically smiling man on a CD. I explained. He laughed, he excused, he refused to believe. At the time it struck me as strange, but at the time I didn’t understand. You see, Prillamen was one of them. Not a monster, not exactly, but a man recruited by the monsters. Offered wealth or power or sex or whatever hidden fantasies lie buried in a man. Offered all this to help them keep their secret. In this case the “them” were vampires.

Prillamen told me to drop it. I didn’t. They got serious. They sent me a message. They hurt my wife, Cheryl. Left her a note. “Tell him to stop,” it said. Cheryl, a computer game programmer, had no idea what I was supposed to stop. I did have an idea, and I did stop, but it wasn’t enough. We took a weekend vacation. Mountain Lakes, Virginia. Had a nice dinner, chicken cordon bleu, and a pinot noir from Chateau Morrisette. The spring air felt refreshing, the walk back to our cottage electric with the anticipation of the night we would spend in each other’s arms.

Inside they waited. A pair of vampires. The male pulled me into the darkened cabin. Threw me against the wall like I might throw a pillow. Inside my head, lights flashed, and the rough wooden wall scraped my back as I slid to the floor, struggling to remain conscious.  Despite my semi-concussed vision, I witnessed the female lift Cheryl and pin her to the wall with a single hand. I struggled to stand, and the male back-handed me. More exploding lights. 

That was enough.

You see, I’m a bit of a monster myself. Since childhood. Since my teacher discovered I could slide the eraser from her hand while sitting at my desk, fifteen feet from the chalkboard. Since Jimmy Jackson, the fourth grade’s bully, discovered I could swing an eight foot two by four into the side of his head without moving a muscle. I stopped after that. Too many questions, too many men in white coats with endless tests. I just shutdown. But I never forgot.

There were no two by fours in the cabin, but I didn’t need any. In my mind I willed the male to rise, envisioned a massive hand grabbing his ankles, and then I swung him. Oh, not with my muscles but with the energy conjured in my brain. I swung him, swung him hard, headfirst, into the unforgiving wall. His skull splatted like a ripe pumpkin. They might be the monsters of our dreams, they might be mythical supermen come to life, but a popped skull is a popped skull. The vampire fell to the floor like a sack of mulch.

That left the lady, and I had her attention now. She released Cheryl and turned to face me, baring her fangs, her guttural hiss raising the hair on the back of my neck.  My wife dropped to her knees, hand pressed tightly against the wound on her throat, stunned, seemingly oblivious to the battle above her. The air reeked of blood, its coppery scent nearly gagging me. Much of it was my wife’s. That pissed me off.

Perhaps ten feet of hard wood floor separated the vampire from me. Three strides for a man my size, but I had no intention of striding. Inside my anger coalesced into a white-hot ball. Of energy? Of emotion? To this day, I don’t know which. For one heartbeat the vampire glared, her irises hateful neon. In the next, she leapt. There was no doubt that she could cover the distance in that leap, and once covered, when she was on me, there would be no fighting her speed, strength, and fangs. I focused my entire being into projecting that white hot ball of emotion, anger, energy, whatever the hell it was, at the vampire. The room flashed with searing white light as the swirling blur-white ball burst from me and struck the vampire. Then nothing. Or almost nothing.

The room instantly darkened, the retina-burning afterimage of the ball’s light conflicting with the black. Again, the sound of a bag of mulch hitting the floor. I stood there panting for a minute or so, unmoving, mind blank, my effort having sucked the energy from me, from my soul. Cheryl’s voice pulled me from the stupor.

“Martin?”

I blinked, my eyes growing accustomed to the dark silence. Cheryl sat, her back against the wall. Hands no longer clamped to her throat, but rather held in front of her eyes, incredulous eyes.

“Yes,” I whispered.

She lowered her hands, and slowly those incredulous eyes changed, a bright glow filling the irises.

“I’ve been turned.”

So now we run. Those that would protect the monster’s secret: that they are not only here, but pervade our society, want us dead. And those that fear the monsters, that being the rest of society, want at least to kill my wife if not both of us. I stand on the forecastle of an ocean-going trawler, Cheryl by my side. It is night. Of course it is night; she will never see the sun again. I paid the captain enough, almost all our combined savings, not to ask questions. Ahead the sparse, scattered lights of the West German coast. We head to chaos, because it is only in chaos that my wife can live. That we can live.

Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the creator of the Dark War universe, which includes two novels, Revelation and Retribution, several short stories, and the Dark War Role-Playing and Skirmish game. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games as well as Tiny Battle Publishing the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the Communists invade South Vietnam game, '65, publisher of Old School Tactical, Armageddon War, and the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military science fiction novel with a twist, with plenty of damn science fiction in it despite what any candy-ass reviewer says. All the books and stories are available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell?