Black Blood on the Red Hunt

 The War Letters of Doctor Amos Range: Recovered From the San Joaquin County State Hospital

“There's a sea of black blood seeped inside foreign soil. Countless young boys, eager for adventure and a chance to prove their worth, found themselves on the frontlines. I wasn't just a mere dishwasher or shoe shiner; I was unseen. My purpose was further cemented by Uncle Sam as we were turned into gravediggers and cooks. 

Destruction resided within the mind of a skilled specialist. When armies couldn't acquire enough bullets for their troops, they turned to an unbeatable weapon: chemistry. My gaze never wavered from the chemist. He observed epidemics as one would witness a symphony or a film – with rapt attention. The spread of diseases fascinated him, as they paid no heed to social standing or background.

It took five brave men to retrieve him from the Iron Lines. With gloved hands, he plucked purple petals from the earth, never considering himself a prisoner of war. As time marched on, the dragged-out war forced desperate generals to involve men like him – chemists who could deliver quick relief to the enemy's demise. I tended to the doctor's wounds, replacing his bandages as deep cuts narrowly missed his veins.

I bore my friend's dog tags across vast stretches of grass and groves – ground that had become the final resting place of numerous wars and thousands of soldiers whose very remains now nourished the earth around them. It's said that one must hold their breath while crossing a grave to avoid being possessed due to disrespect.

Crows may represent death, but they also herald new life in springtime. Yet, some corpses were so tainted that even these birds wouldn’t touch them. We navigated near animal droppings to evade landmines and tripwires while I ensured my rifle remained a foot away from this chemist – guarding against any chance of him seizing my weapon and dooming us both.

At Fort Blackwood, we dedicated endless hours to learning how to exterminate our supposed subhuman enemies.

 The Saxon never once showed contempt for my skin, even as I kept a bayonet pointed at his spine. The world around him was a giant puzzle to unlock and explore. “How many times have you destroyed the world in your mind,” I asked as he stopped to relieve himself on a diamond sign with black skulls staring beyond the field.

 “Sergeant this is but of many worlds I have seen vanish in a blink of an eye.”  The black skulls marked the bounds of the condemned. I rubbed the dog tags and made a special prayer for those who didn’t get out in time.

Slices of the sun were fading beyond the hills and the time to seek refuge was upon us. As we approached the farm I witnessed two totems sticking up from the soil. Deer sigils and red teeth were etched on the wooden poles. I kept my rifle trained on the prisoner as the aroma of liquid metal irritated the wood. I looked around and found no powder burns or shell casings. The sight spooked me and we headed inside the farm.

 The chemist picked more purple flowers and stuffed them in his pocket. I watched him eat a few when he thought I wasn’t looking. He claimed it was good for hunger pangs and tea.

 I dealt with my hunger pangs with stale bread I found from another ghost farm in the countryside.

 I picked the unsavory bits of the stale loaf while my eyes looked at the black lines of the map. I felt it rude to not often offer a few bites to my new friend but he exclaimed that the excitement of the war had spoiled his appetite most days.

 The previous owner left a stack of doodles and journals in the spare room. 

The scribbles were of pale creatures with blackened outlines. Red pupils matched the red stains in the mouths.  

“The buckshot puts them in the cold earth. fires keep their cold hands from rising from the black soil.”

My eyes followed the scribbled patterns on the papers.  A part of the words were wrinkled from drops of heavy tears long since dried.

“One of us will be chosen for the Red Harvest. I pray my daughter isn’t chosen to take the bride's path. 

 I couldn’t help but get the feeling of invisible eyes staring at us beyond the stone and brick buildings.

The once mighty stag proudly glared at all visitors in the small home. Emerald ornaments wrapped around the hazel tusks. “The mighty pronged beast. He's a motif that prowls all around this land.”

The man of science raised his glass to the mounted trophy as if it would come alive from his reverence. My eyes were lost in the detail of the stuffed creature. I came from the city so we didn’t do much hunting like my cousins in the south, I didn’t see many trophy rooms of dead prizes except when I waited on rich people in country clubs I was not allowed to step foot in after hours.

 A short snap outside reached the hairs on my neck and the tips of my ears and before I could register if it was foe or fauna the rifle was no longer sitting passively by in the corner but back in a lover embrace as I motioned the chemist to sit down. “Are you expecting company?” I inquired as we sat low to the ground. “I think someone is listening.” The scientist kept quiet and sipped the aged vino. The wailing proceeded to the broken foliage. I put the flat of my blade against his collarbone to break his silence.

 “Sargaent if they were my friends we’d both be in unmarked graves by now.”  

The last of the sun had dipped past the green and the shadows were left in its absence. The wailing washed over the green and the graves as if it were a rising tide under the moon. closer the Saxon could only laugh.

“We still may find unmarked graves anyway. We are in their sacred grounds after all.”

My knife went back into the strap, and I let the man compose himself. “There are more things to fear than gas and guns Sargeant.” The Saxon wasn’t just some egghead in a lab, he buried himself in the classics and studied folklore under shelling as if it were a mild inconvenience.

 “We are amid the rue verte, the red hunt.”

Tiny beads of sweat seeped from my skin and into my clothes. The rifle became a security blanket. I didn’t have enough shots in the magazine to take on a company let alone the void. I yanked my friend off his feet and dragged him below the cellars. The orange flame from the wax stick throbbed against the shade of the cellar. 

I could make out people on the wall. The pale hands with red stains reached out on black stick figures., I mean didn’t it always end up that we return to the earth that we take so much from? The wailing disappeared and in its wake was the tracking of dirt and gravel on the floor. 

A being draped in flora and fauna made no noises beyond their footsteps. I kept the rifle at the ready as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. My mouth became a desert and my arms felt like unrefined clay. I had seen men ripped in half by a storm of heat and metal, I watched animals pick unclaimed bodies apart.

 They felt like children compared to being beneath the beast. The man-thing carried stag horn on their skin dressed and a stained hatchet kept at rest. Two women draped in white with their scarlet stains against the sheets, now that was a familiar sight if you catch my drift. I never lived in the South. My grandmother told me horror stories on no matter how bad things got in the rustbelt the caste system was still alive in Alabama. 

Men and women could have been the butcher, a baker, or a candle stick maker. draped in white sheets would arrive after sundown and look for their sacrificial lambs. These monsters you couldn’t fight because they would come back in greater numbers like an undying scourge you had to let them tire themselves out. “If you aim at the devil you better never miss.” The beast sniffed the air for the last traces of our presence. The dirt from our boots and the grease on my gun left invincible stains in the air. 

The scrawlings in the cellar started to jump around as if it were the opening of a matinee. I wrote off the moving drawings as combat stress and exhaustion. New journals were released about men who came back from battle with bodies intact but their minds were long gone.

I always thought those effects were beneath me, but there they were moving around a large maze. That son of a bitch put something in the wine. “No can’t focus on that now.” The beast of a man opened his mouth and I knew it wasn’t the wine, I spotted the reason our ancestors locked their doors at night. I witnessed the dawn of the red night.

White fangs dipped in blood. It's as if he consumed it straight from the veins, not the vine. They sniffed the air, I prayed I rubbed enough of the earth on my skin to throw off the scent. Air sirens echoed from the thicket beyond the farm. The bouts of smoke and hellfire scared the demons from their trance. A breath of air released from my lungs and the knife's grip softened in my hands. 

“They want our blood, but not in the way an enemy wants.” He claimed. Suddenly I was glad I didn't cut the man's throat in his sleep. There wasn’t a bead of sweat on the man.  He seemed to relish the thought of seeing them up close.

“We woke them up, you see.” He spoke with such vigor and excitement. Was the whole world just a jar and we were all insects for him to study. “They like to sleep in the cold earth, away from the sun. The caves and the graves will do just fine.” His hands gestured how mankind's bloodlust created a feeding frenzy. The ramparts and rockets forced them out of hiding. The knobs on my brain began to turn, he saw the gear switch as the conclusion betrayed me with the slight twitch of a muscle in my face.  He wasn’t a simple chemist, and he wasn’t working on the next gas weapon, it had been here for hundreds of years.

“Those flying balloons, imagine if we could just drop them over Paris or Britain.” I rubbed my eyes as I pictured a collection of blood-mongers setting Europe ablaze with a new epidemic. It wouldn’t spare the children or the elderly, they would be the first to go. 

“My grandmother would warn us not to accept treats from strangers in the woods and there were stag bones stained red, that was their homestead.”

I was one of one hundred and four medical officers who passed the course at Camp Mead.  I realized why the  Second Bureau of the General Staff, French intelligence sent someone like me to apprehend the chemist. “Now that you have the information you need, what will you do Doctor?”

I was well within the parameters to punch his ticket and move back to the front. He would not hesitate to do the same to me.  Not just me, but the world itself. “Make it quick mein good doctor. But remember the blood is what attracts them. “It must be fascinating to find something the good Christian volk will fear more than you?”

The words stuck with me like a hot round from a sniper's nest.  I could see the burnings and the lynchings. It was so easy for humans to torment each other. How easy would it be to commit crimes against humanity against beings from the uncanny valley, especially if we didn’t consider them human? 

We would drive them into the sunlight and watch them burn. Medical teams would tear them open and dissect their bodies.  They would be freakshows for the traveling circus.  The easiest pill to swallow should have been the most difficult one.  Every empire on the face of the earth would weaponize the epidemic and spread the red night

I pushed the knife slowly and prodded the man up the cellar. The aroma of soil and liquid iron paced around the room. In the distance, I spied flickers of yellow and orange light up across the fields the sun no longer treaded. Farms in the distance feared the darkness more than artillery shells.

I watched a man escort two beautiful women into a rustic area beyond the flickering torches. The Stag sigil irritated him. The white veils snapped against the dry wind. The stagman bound both women on the wooden totem. He placed purple pedals in their mouths as they recited old dead tounges of old lost ways.

As the wind stopped there was another presence swaying in the dying grass. They moved from the cellars and dark holes in the ground like a hoard of locusts ravenous from being trapped in the stable soil. My legs moved faster than my brain could process the violation of my orders. 

The chemist was the priority, and it made no sense to die for white women in a white man's field.  How many times had my ancestors done that? But wrong was wrong. My hands grabbed the shotgun off the mantle and I popped two red shells in the grey and black breech. I crept low and off the side from the stag-mans vision.

“Your white dresses with my stained with the red liquid that gives life. I am honored to witness the atonement for our villages.” He said. I placed buckshot between his lower chest and sternum. The buckshot sprayed across his body. Red Hunt my ass, this was game preserve and we were the carrion.

The last words were the liquid bubbles foaming from his mouth. My combat blade sliced across the totem.  The purple petals did their best to transport the women's minds away from the onslaught, but the trembling hands and water running down their legs betrayed their zeal.

The other woman resisted my efforts. In her broken English said her family would be marked if she didn’t finish the ritual. She ran to the outskirts of the field. The first set of long claws with dirt-crusted nails reached out to her. The bits of meat were removed from her neck to reveal red lines of blood. The carriers fought over the red faucets leaking from the girl. God be with her. I cried.

I placed a second round in the soft parts of her brain to end the relentless suffering. Black ash and obsidian pellets mixed with maroon blood. The woman behind me grabbed the knife from my pocket and placed it on my throat. “You don’t understand. This has gone on long before the days of metal tanks and birds. This will keep going on long after the Kings of Europe grow tired of their petty games.” She pointed at the tiny torches in the distance. “These beings help us return to the earth and in turn the blood from our deaths allows the harvest to be plenty. It is a small price to pay.”

The knife quivered uncertainly in her grasp. Desperate to preserve her dignity, she sought to reassure herself that her faith hadn't faltered, but rather, the meddling of an outsider was to blame. It wasn't the first time a white woman had accused me of leading her down a sinful path.

The blade wavered, moving from my throat to her wrists. Blood had drenched this place for countless seasons; surely, a few more pints wouldn't make a difference. The poor girl was entangled in a vicious web of institutionalized chaos and violence. Why were only women offered as sacrificial lambs while men remained unblemished? I loaded another round into the weapon and handed her the hunting rifle.

We fled from the cursed totem, pistol fire punctuating our escape as I fired three rounds into the undead creature grabbing my wrist. Gory fluids spilled from ragged wounds; one drop mingling with mine could spell doom.

The shotgun's deafening report shook me to my core as another foe was torn apart by its devastating force; farm girls certainly had their aim honed sharp. Exhausted and blood-splattered, we made our way towards the cellar entrance, intending to save the last shots for ourselves– knowing that an eternity without sunlight would be far more terrifying than death.

Salvation was near, but every step bore its peril– bullets burned through once-living flesh as violet petals blossomed around exit wounds. Our chemist ally managed to hold off the advancing horde just long enough for our escape from death's icy jaws; a reassuring hand on my shoulder as we moved apart.

"Don't worry," he uttered with unsettling calmness. "I've lived and died a thousand times in a thousand worlds." Was it madness or chemical influence that drove him towards those undead fiends? Guilt gnawed at me for not yanking him back to safety; for hesitating in joining him.

The woman's grip dragged me out of the stupor and into the shelter. It was now as clear as dawn. The night would inherit the earth.