Amp and Cara help prisoners being hunted by hybrid dogmen, a Slay Inc. story

Cara is gathering her things for an assignment. It has been weeks since she has seen Amp, but she is happy that they have an assignment together again. Slay is being good to its slayers. She and Amp made a good team, always moving in tandem, and she knew Amp really liked her. He had a hard time hiding it.

She put her brother Kalen’s slingshot in her jacket pocket. It was the first time she had touched anything of her brother’s since his death. Her emotions were still raw and jumbled over the biggest loss of her young life. It wasn’t just about revenge, the wendigo actually took his body, and her tribe was not able to send him on his way to the spirit world according to their customs. It crushed her. But it made her even more determined to work to find the wendigo kingdom, just a hypothesis at the moment, but something that was scratching at her mind. She knew the good in the universe would give her ideas and thoughts that she could work on. But taking his slingshot with her into the supernatural was a turning point in her healing. She was on the other side of the invisible boundary that kept her from moving on. From here on out, although she didn’t know it, her skills as a warrior would sharpen and increase. She was on the verge of becoming invincible. She had always been deadly.

There was a horrendous rumor going around in the monster hunting world. One of unspeakable horror and disbelief. In the United States, the government had a monster program that had become unstable. Not that it was anything new, any program the government ran there eventually got out of control whether it was aliens, hybrids, or existing, legendary monsters. But it was believed that the use of prisoners and people lost in the woods was being used to train young beasts to hunt. Not even serial killers or molesters or real human garbage, but petty theft, bad check writing, other minor crimes. They were released into the forest with no weapons and no support from anyone else and then the monsters were released a few minutes after. There were cameras everywhere and a viewing area for the guards. Like a modern day coliseum. So barbaric.

Black site trouble. She wondered how Slay found the facility. Probably a leak from a worker with a conscience. She had no real idea what type of monsters they would be dealing with, so Amp and Nico and a few slayers she had not met yet were assigned the job. She had a few hours to debate what fresh Hell they would be in tonight.

She checks her phone, and sees a message from Amp. Telling her he can’t wait to collect some heads with her tonight. Amp speak for “I miss you and can't wait to see you.” She laughs. She is starting to like him, but just a tiny little bit. He was a ray of sunshine in her life of darkness.

A few hours before sunset, she gathers her things to make her way to the portal. She rides her dirt bike and leaves it next to the entrance. She grabs her gear and goes through.

On the other side, she finds she is in dense woods. Nico and Amp are there and they all greet and hug each other. A few other slayers she has not ever seen are there too, and they introduce themselves as Mark and Keith. They are equipped like Special Forces soldiers, with special rifles and noise suppression. This is a good thing, plenty of manpower and weapons. They decide to camp and leave in the morning. They will need several days to get to the location and set up, and they decide to go by day and do the final approach at night.

They build a nice fire and sit around drinking some whiskey and making a strategic plan for their arrival. Having a few military guys was an advantage so they could learn how to flank and approach. They were unsure how many monsters would be unleashed at one time. And they had a pretty vague description of them. Cara thought it could be a modified version of a dogman. Which was believed to be a genetic experiment already. So… a modification of a cryptid. That would be lots of fun! Well, if it bled they could kill it. That really was the goal, kill as many of them as they could, and even shut down the operation if they could. The facility being a government entity meant they could hope to make a dent in the activities.

Before turning in for the night, they had a lengthy discussion on the situation. Mark and Keith told the others they were medically discharged from the Army after an incident that left them both with PTSD. Both were Rangers. They had just started with Slay Inc. and were happy in their new roles as monster and demon killers. They explained it gave them real meaning in their lives and also gave them the inside knowledge to protect their families. Cara, Nico and Amp were happy to have them along and gave them as much information as they could on cryptid killing.

They got up and broke camp and headed into the woods. After two days of travel, they arrived at a group of buildings between two mountain ranges, and they were hidden pretty well. The team thought they would not be visible from the air. If anyone tried to escape, they would be boxed in by the snowy mountains, and would have no survival gear for the woods. They didn’t know what state they were in, but they were surrounded by wilderness. The team figured Idaho or maybe Montana..

They formed a small hidden campsite a few miles away, far enough to go undetected but close enough to see what was going on. They had a few small drones they could put up if needed. They were not sure where the monsters would come from, the woods or inside one of the buildings. They picked an area that seemed likely for the monsters to enter the field. They decided to spread out a bit and stay within radio contact, and set up their rifles and got ready to engage. They only had to wait a few hours to hear some movement.

A horn blew for a few seconds around 10pm. They could see a protected indoor viewing area on an upper floor start to fill up with people that were dressed like guards and scientists, and men in suits. There was a series of small doors on the lowest level that led out onto a small field, about the size of a football field. Then searchlights were lit up and directed into the woods. Small doors opened up on the lowest level and several men in orange jumpsuits were led out into the field. Their ankle stocks and handcuffs were removed. They look frightened out of their minds. They were left there, unsure what to do or where to run. There was nowhere to go as a fence surrounded the field.

After a few moments, the slayers could hear sounds coming out of the woods, low, guttural snarling sounds. They could hear movement coming from the direction of one of the mountain ranges and through the woods. The prisoners could hear them too. The prisoners were shaking. The team got into their positions to try and intercept the monsters. They were hoping not to be sensed by the dogmen. They would have to be stealthy and kill them quickly before the facility could figure out what was going on. They used night vision to locate the monsters coming, and each slayer picked a monster to engage. It sounded like there were about a half dozen monsters. Time to battle.

Cara was right, they were modified dogmen. Fast movers but actually slightly smaller and uglier on average than the urban legend dogmen. They seemed really smart and intelligent, not really a trait found in the legends. They walked on two legs but would drop down on all fours to run. She guessed they had been genetically crossed with some other species. The team had suppressors on their rifles to keep the sound down. The team was able to shoot 4 of them quickly, but two were proving to be a problem. Mark and Keith were done and were rushing to help Cara and Nico, Amp was running to help Cara also. They had engaged and shot the monsters but had not killed them and were in a fight. The whole team came down on the 2 remaining monsters and finished them off quickly.

Cara looked towards the field, everyone in the audience was still on standby, waiting for the creatures to show up. She hoped that the audience would just think the monsters had turned on each other in the woods and that would explain why they never made it to the field. The team of slayers would need to make a fast exit because the government workers would be up to find out what went wrong. The creatures were riddled with bullets and there wasn’t anything they could do about that. Cara told the others that a portal was arranged close to them so they could make a quick exit. They gathered up their gear quickly and moved out. They found the portal and everyone went through, back home. Mission accomplished.

Cara gets home and call Nico and Amp.