The screams were some of the worst I have ever heard.
I am no stranger to the sufferings of the wounded. I have heard their cries across centuries, and they are never easy to forget.
The screams which issued forth from the ambulance I came upon, however, were far beyond those of the wounded.
These were the shrieks of the tortured and the damned.
I had every intention of passing the ambulance by, and perhaps I would have done just that, had I not seen the nurse who came stumbling out.
There was no saving her. Blood erupted from between her fingers as she desperately sought to keep the wound in her neck closed. But she only managed a few steps before she sank first to her knees, and then, with her bloodied hands falling to her side, she pitched forward and lay motionless, the last of her life issuing forth with the last few pumps of her heart.
With the BAR slung over my shoulder, I drew both Colts and stepped up to the tent and peered in, prepared to butcher whoever lay on the operating table.
What I saw caused me to pause.
I was on the table.
Or what was left of me.
A pair of surgeons were dragging a gossamer strand out of the gaping hole that had once been my chest. It was, I knew, whatever accounted for a soul. And they were stealing it.
What they intended to do with it, I know not. Nor did I care to ask. I can only assume they wished to use it in some machine of war, to power some device. The fact that it was a version of me on the table made it all the worse.
I fired both Colts.
The doctor on the left lost his lower jaw and his grip upon the soul. The surgeon on the right lost the top of his head. They both died.
The soul hung about the tent for a moment, nothing more than an undulating piece of silk. Then, it spoke, clear, and true in my own voice.
“Kill as many as you can.”
I nodded as the soul slipped through the tent’s canvas.
I reloaded my Colts, walked out of the tent, and kicked the nurse’s corpse for good measure.
#horror #monsters #supernatural #death
It says something about how dark this series is that the protagonist can say something like “I kicked the nurse’s corpse for good measure” and it doesn’t make him the worst character in the story.