Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

All of them vanished behind the building. All of them—save for one. It stood up on its hind legs, its head towering three meters above the ground, and looked at the running boys. For a moment, Desecrator thought that it would charge straight at them, but instead it fell to the ground and crept back into the bushes at the edge of the forest.

Corpse Eater vanished in the darkness beneath the roof, and ten or so seconds later the other two boys caught up to him there. Desecrator could not see what was going on there, but he had a good idea.

Everything that had transpired took place in no more than one or two minutes. The shock of what he had seen hadn’t passed, and the boy felt tempted to pinch himself to make sure that it wasn’t some bizarre dream. Five minutes before, he had been playing cards with the only people he could start to call friends, and now his mind was open to the existence of unimaginable monstrosities. Even during his worst trips on the battlefield, where the waking nightmare blended in with drug-induced horrors, he had never seen anything like this. And only shock, and the fact that he was a distant observer and not an active participant of those actions, spared him from having a mental breakdown.

Distance was making it all seem unreal. Yet if those creatures were to get close to him, the reality would quickly catch up as well.

Are there any of those monsters around? he wondered, and the mere thought that he might not be so far away from them made his knees tremble. He quickly lay down on the wet grass, trying to keep his head low, and only then carefully looked around. Nothing. He was safe—for now.

The sound of rolling thunder reached his ears, along with crackling gunshots—it seemed that the monsters had reached the brigade and were now engaged in combat with them. Desecrator could see gunshots lighting up in the distance, but he didn’t see the combatants themselves—most of the fights were taking place indoors. The boy shuddered at the thought of being trapped in an enclosed space with one of those creatures. Years on the battlefield almost made him forget how to fear a bullet, but he could imagine all too vividly what horrific wound those claws could cause and how much it would hurt.

Some movement caught his eye. He turned his head to see what it was and froze: one of those creatures was climbing down the roof of the warehouse toward the adjacent cover that, at that moment, still housed the other three kids. Desecrator watched it get to the very edge of the warehouse’s roof before leaping down onto the cover.

He couldn’t see the reaction of the boys, but he was sure that there was no way they missed the noise such a landing should’ve made. At any moment he expected them to run out of the darkness beneath the cover and run to the other side of the warehouse. But the darkness lit up with the flares of gunpowder ejecting rounds out of the gun, and the creature started twitching under the barrage of bullets; the boys had chosen to open fire instead of running away.

“They found the guns.” Desecrator smirked, feeling some sort of camaraderie with them growing in his chest—a new, but very pleasant feeling. He almost felt like rooting for them, if only because, unlike him, they could actually do something. “Lucky bastards.”

Of course, their luck was minor; had luck truly been on their side, they wouldn’t have ended up in this situation. They’d be near Desecrator, hiding in the grass while the rest did all the heavy lifting.

Despite the fact that their line of sight was obstructed by a sheet of metal, the boys did a very good job pinpointing the exact location of the creature above them—if Desecrator had to guess, he’d say that it was due to the noise that moving on such a rickety surface would produce. Yet even though they emptied what seemed like half a magazine each into its belly, the damned thing was still alive; Desecrator could see it try to crawl away from the line of fire despite the heavy damage it had sustained. Its right arm was barely moving and its general outline seemed pretty tarnished, yet despite all of that it still was not giving up trying to escape. For Desecrator, it was clear: these monsters were not just extremely deadly, they were also very hard to kill. An awful combination.

“The General would give an arm and a leg to have a few of those under his command,” Desecrator noted, watching the vile monstrosity finally fall off the edge of the roof.

Somebody walked out from under the cover—judging by his shirt, it was Corpse Eater. Desecrator grunted as the boy put a few final shots in the creature’s head: “Show off.”

After making sure that the creature was dead, the kids ran off in the direction of the gunfire, to join with the rest of the brigade. Desecrator thought that it was a good move on their part, but he had no intention of doing the same. Unlike the boys, he didn’t have any weapon on him, and he was far enough from the action, so keeping his distance was the best strategy for him. At that moment, he wasn’t burning with desire to prove his worth to the General; those creatures weren’t civilians or enemy soldiers. They didn’t go down so easily. So even if he had a gun on him… If it took three guns continuously firing at a point-blank range to kill one creature, what could he possibly do alone?

“Shying away from combat?” He suddenly heard a female voice behind him. It startled him to the point that he thought he’d experienced a heart attack. But it wasn’t just because of the sudden appearance of that woman coming seemingly out of nowhere—it was the intonation with which she asked her question, completely calm and carefree, as if the world around them wasn’t going to hell.

Turning around to take a look at the new arrival, he saw a young girl, no older than in her twenties, in a short dress, standing some two meters away from him. Her dress had a blood-soaked hole when her abdomen was and, although the pouring rain was doing its best to wash it away, her face and hands had blood on them as well.

No wounds, though.

Desecrator could put two and two together. He knew that the bizarre woman’s appearance and those monsters attacking weren’t taking place at the same time out of coincidence.

Which meant that she probably meant trouble.

He slowly tried getting onto his feet. She didn’t stop him.

“The hell you want, bitch?” Desecrator tried to sound tough, but nothing in his voice carried any threat—he was too scared for that. If anything, it sounded like he was concerned with what she could do to him.

The girl cocked her head to the side: “You don’t recognize me?”

“I recognize you want some trouble, bitch,” Desecrator tried to intimidate her. She was unimpressed.

She examined him from head to toe: “Where is your gun?”

“Not your concern,” Desecrator cut her off, carefully eyeing her. She didn’t seem to have any weapons on her either. What was she doing walking like that near their base, right when it was being attacked? And what was with the blood?

The girl turned her dreamy gaze to the base where the carnage was taking place, and, pointing at it, asked: “Are you with them?”

“Hell yeah, I’m with them.” Desecrator clung to that opportunity; if she didn’t recognize his authority then perhaps she’d recognize the authority of the General. “We are the Revolutionary Brigade of Liberia, this country’s finest. So you don’t mess with me or we’ll kill you, all right?” Desecrator finished with an aggressive glare, feeling his confidence coming back to him.

“How long have you been with them?” she asked in a calm tone.

“Bitch, I’m the one asking quest—”

“How long. Have you been with them,” She repeated her question more sternly, staring the boy right in the eye. Suddenly, he felt that even if he had a weapon with him he wouldn’t be able deal with her. At that moment, he was willing to bet that she would win in a stare down with a rhino.