Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

“There’s another pair,” he heard Homewrecker say. Looking in his direction, Corpse Eater saw that his friend was right; there were more imprints along the line where the water was falling from above. “And here’s another pair.” He pointed, walking along the edge of the concrete platform, noticing more and more. With each phrase he spoke, Corpse Eater’s heart was sank lower and lower.

“And another. And another. And here as well. And—”

The lighting cracked the sky again, shining light under the cover. Then Homewrecker’s voice was cut short by Puppy Slayer’s incessant screaming. It was not a proclamation of disgust as before; the emotion in his voice was primal terror.

“Don’t look at them!” Corpse Eater shouted, turning around. He was expecting to see the younger boy gazing at the mangled corpses that the lightning exposed, but instead the boy was staring into distance—right into the forest. His mouth and eyes opened wider and wider, the whites of his eyes and teeth creating a sharp contrast against the darkness of his skin, and his scream became a high-pitched screeching. Even in the darkness, Corpse Eater could see the boy’s eyes—full of terror and disbelief. He had never seen anything like it.

Corpse Eater glanced at the forest, but the darkness had already settled, concealing whatever Puppy Slayer had seen there. Grabbing him by the shoulders, Corpse Eater demanded answers: “What did you see there?”

“I didn’t want to,” the boy hysterically lamented. “I didn’t want to do it! Tsetse forced me to! Please forgive me!”

Corpse Eater turned to Homewrecker: “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Yeah,” Homewrecker uttered, taken aback by what he had just heard. “I do.”

The thunder from the lightning finally reached them, its low rumbling slowly rolling over them, before being overpowered by short crackling bursts—somebody was firing their weapon. It appeared that whatever had attacked the five gamblers had found its way into the main camp.

“I’m not going there.” Corpse Eater shook his head. “They’re on their own. I’m not facing whoever did all of this.”

“No! We need to go to the others! Please!” Puppy Slayer suddenly started pleading, grabbing Corpse Eater’s hand. “Let’s go, right now!”

“Are you crazy? Whoever did all this is probably there at this very moment!”

“We need to go. Please. We need to go” Puppy Slayer whimpered, looking at Corpse Eater with wide, full-of-fear eyes. It was clear that he wanted to join the others but was too afraid to go there alone.

This didn’t seem like the usual Puppy Slayer, who was always evading combat, nor was it even logical. If he was scared of what had killed all of the adults, why go to the place where they knew it was at this moment?

What did he see in that forest that made him terrified beyond reason?

Perhaps he should be scared, too?

Corpse Eater grabbed Puppy Slayer by the shoulders and shook him again: “Man, you have to tell me: What did you see in those woods?”

But no matter how hard he tried to force the answer out of the boy, Puppy Slayer wasn’t replying.

Corpse Eater was getting impatient; this was neither the time nor the place to throw a fit for no apparent reason. “Listen, I’m getting sick of it. Either you tell me right now or—”

He suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder. Homewrecker reached out to him, and when Corpse Eater looked at him, the boy made a “hush” sign and pointed upward.

The old rusty roof was slightly screeching as the metal sheets were rubbing against each other. Something was moving on top of it.

The three boys running in front of him were gaining a significant lead on him, but Desecrator didn’t want to follow their example and speed up—partly because he thought that racing was childish, and partly because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to catch up and overtake them. And you can’t lose if you don’t play.

The rain was pouring more and more, but running through it would only make it worse, so the boy resigned to walking at a steady pace. If the adults were to see him racing along with the rest of the boys, he could get in trouble—just like they probably already had.

He looked ahead at where the adults were and stopped in his tracks. He thought that his eyes must’ve been deceiving him. There was no way that was happening.

From such a distance, it was hard to see what was going on, with everyone almost looking like stick figures, and at first the boy thought that he was imagining things. And yet, as he blinked and wiped the water from his eyes, the same scene was unraveling before him.

One of the adults was already lying dead on the floor, while the rest were trying to escape, completely abandoning any attempt to help him. Their pursuers were what made Desecrator question whether he was feeling all right—he couldn’t see them well, but he could definitely make out that there was something off about their appearance, and the difference was strong enough that he could easily tell them apart from the soldiers of his brigade.

The attackers’ limbs were unnaturally long, carrying their bodies with inhuman grace and speed. When they leapt toward their prey, Desecrator could swear that their legs had more joints than a normal human leg should, and when they swung the long blades in their hands the boy was sure that no knife could be held like that.

Those can’t be humans , Desecrator realized. They looked more like grasshoppers who had revolted against crawling on the ground, insects that learned to walk upright. And yet, their resemblance to humans was uncanny. Arms and legs, while bizarrely elongated, were attached to their bodies just where a normal human would have them, and the heads on their shoulders had the same shape and size as the boy’s own. He thought that he could even make out some clothes on their bodies.

They operated with precision and without any remorse. He could see the adults run past their guns, too scared to pause even for a second to pick them up, and he saw how futile it was when the monsters caught up to them in three steps. The men were probably screaming, but Desecrator couldn’t hear them—the rain had turned off the volume.

And all the while those creatures were slaughtering them, while the number of living soldiers under that old rusty roof went down from five to zero in mere seconds, as the grey floor and blue-and-white walls were rapidly turning red, three boys were cheerfully running toward them, completely oblivious to the carnage that was taking place some two hundred feet in front of them.

The last of the soldiers had his throat slit, and the gush of red blood landed on the lamp. Its light immediately changed from warm yellow to hot red and, to Desecrator’s surprise, one of the creatures approached it to turn it off—most likely to conceal the crime scene from unwanted eyes.

A second after the light went out, Corpse Eater tripped and the boys stopped running, approaching him to help him up. During those few seconds, the monsters crawled out of the darkness, swiftly moving on all fours, and headed in the direction of the warehouse where the rest of the brigade was.

As if waiting for their signal, more creatures charged out of the woods. Desecrator counted seven, but he wasn’t sure there weren’t more in the darkness or approaching from the other side of the building. Some of the monsters were crawling on all fours, almost dragging their stomachs on the ground, while others were gracefully leaping on their hind legs, as if on long stilts, covering a good ten feet per leap. These otherworldly monsters, demons that his mother scared him with in childhood, were marching toward the brigade. An unearthly parade marching seemingly straight out of hell.