Monster Control Inc. 27
A clear and up-close view of inhuman evil
I watched through my scope as he reached Eric Swanson about a hundred yards below our position. I saw the relief on Eric’s face at seeing someone had come to his rescue. Carl didn’t hesitate, he immediately grabbed Eric’s arm and began helping him up the slope toward our defensive position.
That’s when I saw movement in the forest behind them.
At first, it was just a shadow among the trees, something dark and wrong-shaped moving with predatory grace. But as it emerged from the tree line, I got my first clear look at what we had been hunting.
Or, rather, what had been hunting us.
The wendigo looked nothing like the research illustrations had led me to expect. It wasn’t a skeletal horror or demonic monster. Instead, it looked almost human under the fur—almost, but not quite. It was tall, maybe seven feet, with unnaturally long limbs and fingers that ended in claws. Its skin underneath the dark brown fur that covered its face and body was pale, almost translucent, and its movements had a fluid, boneless quality that was deeply unsettling.
But it was the face that made my blood freeze. It was human enough to be recognizable as such, but wrong in every detail. The eyes were too large, too black, and set too far apart. The mouth was too wide, filled with teeth that were too sharp and too numerous. And the expression... the expression was one of pure demonic anticipation.
It was moving fast, covering ground with an inhuman loping stride that threatened close the distance between it and the two fleeing men with terrifying speed.
I put the scope’s crosshairs directly in the center of its chest and gently squeezed the trigger. I’m no sniper, but at that range, I couldn’t possibly miss.
BOOM! The .50 caliber echoed across the snowy hills like the crack of doom as a fist-sized hole appeared in the right side of the monster’s chest, staggering it. The wendigo let out a sound I’ll never be able to forget forget—part howl, part scream, and part something that had no name in any human language. The scream echoed off the rocks as I chambered a second round.
At the sound of the shot, Carl shoved Eric forward, then spun around and opened up with the flamethrower. A stream of hellish orange fire erupted in the direction of the monster. The wendigo shrieked and somehow dodged the napalm with incredible speed, the flames missing by inches.
I fired again, this time putting a round through the creature’s left shoulder. The wendigo screamed—a sound that was definitely inhuman now. But instead of retreating, it continued forward, moving past Carl in an attempt to put distance between itself and the hellfire of his flamethrower. Carl let loose another blast of napalm, but the creature was already out of his weapon’s limited range.
“Race!” Eric’s desperate voice was much closer now. I saw him climbing toward our position, moving as fast as he could, but slowed down by the snow as well as his injuries. The wendigo was maybe fifty yards behind him, closing fast despite its own wounds, and I didn’t have time to reload my rifle and sight it in before it would catch him.
I gripped the detonator, my finger hovering over the trigger. It was too soon. Eric was still in the kill zone.
“Come on, Swanson,” I whispered. “Move, damn it, move!”
Eric stumbled, fell, got back up, and kept climbing. The wendigo was rapidly gaining ground, its inhuman stride eating up the distance between them, although fortunately, being shot twice had slowed it down a lot.
Ten yards to the mine. Five. Two.
Swanson finally passed the claymore, stumbling into our defensive perimeter just as the wendigo entered the far end of the kill zone. I could see its black eyes fixed on me, could even recognize its inhuman fury at this prey that had somehow managed to inflict such pain upon it.
I let it come two steps closer, then pressed the detonator.
The explosion was tremendous, even from our protected position. The claymore sent hundreds of steel balls tearing through the air in a deadly arc, turning the narrow approach into a kill zone that nothing could survive.
The wendigo disappeared in a cloud of smoke, debris, and pink mist.
For a moment, there was silence except for the ringing in my ears. Then Eric collapsed beside me, gasping for breath and shaking with exhaustion and terror.
“Carl,” I said urgently. “Where’s Carl?”
“Down there,” Swanson managed between gasps. “Behind it.”
Movement in the smoke below caught my attention. A humanoid figure was rising slowly to its feet.
“Carl!” I called out, relief flooding through me.
But as the smoke began to clear, I realized my mistake. It wasn’t Carl.
Somehow, impossibly, the wendigo was still alive. The claymore had torn away massive chunks of its flesh from its frame and burned away most of its fur in the front, but the monster still managed to push itself upright and tried to take one unsteady step toward us.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered, chambering a third round into my rifle. But before I could raise it and fire the headshot that would finish the monster off, a second figure appeared in the smoke below.
Carl was still very much alive. And he still had his flamethrower.
The wendigo collapsed to the ground screaming as Carl unleashed hellfire upon it. This time, there was no dodging, there would be no escape. The stream of liquid napalm enveloped the creature completely, and its inhuman screams filled the air as it burned.
Carl didn’t let up. He kept the flames pouring onto the wendigo until it stopped moving, stopped making noise, and was reduced to nothing more than a charred mass of bone and ash.
“Carl!” I called down as he continued to hose down the remains with fire. “I think it’s dead!”
“Give me another minute,” he called back. “Doesn’t hurt to make sure.”
The sound of helicopter rotors echoed across the forest, growing louder as the aircraft approached our position. I looked up to see a black MCI helicopter circling the ridge, probably looking for a place to land.
“About damn time,” I laughed bitterly.
Monster Control, Inc. - Making Monday Great Again.
Eric called him “Race.” No one calls him Race. It’s a trap.