Tales of a Missing Squad

For all their faults, Vampires are at least polite. After all, it is not as if a wooden lintel would deter a hungry, supernatural predator.

"You don't get tenants half as good as these blood-suckers, almost a pity that we have to kill them."

I chanced a peek around the armchair that had been turned to face the burned out fireplace.

"You sure about that sir?"

I watched Captain George Peters wince at the corpse that reclined in the armchair's embrace; its throat ripped out while a plaid shawl was laid upon its knees, a chilling contrast to the savagery of the wound.

"Like I said Corporal, 'almost a pity'."

We completed the examination as General Coal Gray strode into the living room. He was a short, bulldog of a man with the attitude to match, being a tenaciously stubborn old coot who just can't accept that there are things in this world that lead can't solve, or even tickle. Silver could, but even that is iffy at best.

The General tracked dirt all over the carpet as he stomped around the neat but tiny living room, sneered at the lace doilies covering the furniture and scowled at the scent of smoked applesauce before he crashed to a halt before us. I heard Captain Peters hiss at the muddy footprints that had appeared on the weave, and though I couldn't directly see him, I could imagine the look of horror on his classically perfect face. I would have put an arm on his shoulder, except that he was my superior officer, I wasn't tall enough to do so naturally, and such an action is grossly inappropriate in all the wrong ways.

"Talk to me spooks, what's the problem."

Captain Peters couldn't bear to look the General in his beady, steel eyes as he gestured towards the armchair. "See for yourself, sir."

His summation of the entire situation was concise, as was the way with all generals

"Fuck."

"It's a vampire General, a raptor, judging from the signs."

"How do you see that?"

Captain Peters turned to me, baby blue eyes framed by eyebrows moulded into slight bemusement. "Corporal Baths, care to explain?"

I struggled to find the most concise explanation for the General.

"Elders will clean up after themselves. A juvenile would have turned this place into a slaughterhouse."

My arm swept towards the contents of the armchair.

"And Raptors don't like doing the dishes."

The General swept his hat off his head in frustration as he turned back to Captain Peters, who was scrutinising a photograph in a yellow and red frame, depicting a little old lady flanked by her family, two girls and a huge man with messy blonde hair.

"Peters!" The General barked, "It's your show, how are we doing this?"

Captain Peters turned to me, and I shrugged back in reply. After all, wasn't what comes next obvious?

"Well, General. We'll take a little trip down into the cellar, and stake ourselves a vampire."

***

Ironically, one does not kill vampires by the stake. To place oneself within arms reach of a creature that could tear you limb from limb as an afterthought is never a good idea. Which begs the question; how does one slay a vampire?

"Have you checked the second floor, Corporal?"

I huffed once and jerked down with all my considerable weight, and with the aid of an old crowbar, broke the lock on the cellar doors.

"Twice sir, nothing there," I affirmed, rubbing sensation back into sore hands.

The miasma that poured out as the cellar doors swung open was robust enough to curl paint.  How does one describe the scent of utter desolation? You can smell decay as it was born from life or the end of life. But what about something that is utterly devoid of it in the first place?

Does that make sense?

The initial assault was carried away by the autumn breeze, and as the smell turned bearable, the Captain and I regarded the stairs that led straight into the leviathan's belly.

"Alright then, let’s crack on." Captain Peters turned to me "Lead the way, Corporal."

"Shouldn't you lead the way, sir? After all, you are the superior officer."

"You're right; I am the superior officer. Corporal Baths, I order you to lead the way."

Bugger.

We tackled the stairs one creaking plank at a time. I followed my revolver along the left-hand wall whereas Captain Peters, I hoped, stayed an arm's length away over my right shoulder so that he would have a clear line of fire should something decide to rush at us up the stairs. Operating procedures in regards to such matters are currently non-existent. However, a few intrepid souls have taken up the battle to introduce safe and efficient tactics to combat supernatural threats to the brave stallions of her Majesty’s armed forces. In the past, vampire hunters would have clamoured down the stairs, knocked each other over in the dark despite having sufficient illumination, and thus would have become light eating for a fledgeling vampire. Now we moved in relative silence, merely bruised shins and stubbed toes, and a vampire would have to work for his meal.

Progress

As my feet cleared the last step, I knelt and scanned the area for any hostile activity, left, right and the ceiling twice, vampires love the high ground advantage when they are on the hunt. The only illumination was the sunlight that poured down from the cellar entrance, a pool of gold that stretched about a foot away from the stairs in every direction, which left the rest of the underground space in near darkness.

"All clear."

"Do you have them?" Captain Peters asked over my shoulder.

Holstering my revolver I reached for the pouch that rested next to my rifle and extracted the contents, four Number 76 Sunlight Incendiary Grenades, which Captain Peters carefully examined before he returned two of them to me.

"You know the drill Corporal, good luck."

I placed the grenades back into the pouch and drew my revolver while Captain Peters pulled out his notebook, expertly bound in black moleskin and inscribed with runes on its cover. Those who were in the same speciality as the Captain believed that the runes were some protective spell or blessing that was meant to ensure the security of the book's contents from prying eyes; Actually, they just spelt out the Captain's name in old Gaelic.

Once everything was in order, Captain Peters clapped me on the shoulder twice and left his hand in place while I rose to me feet, turned on my flashlight and led the way into the cellar's depths.

I took it an inch at a time, stopping every few steps to sweep the area in front of us while Captain Peters covered our backs, a constant stream of words fell from his lips and at each stop, he would consecrate the ground that we had just covered. It went on for 15 minutes, although in the oppressive silence, 15 minutes seemed like 15 years for the both of us.

Finally, the red glare of my flashlight fell upon our objective, a mash-up of bobs and ends piled into a nest with a sheet of corrugated metal serving as a lid for the makeshift 'coffin'. Captain Peters got to work, and while he consecrated his way around the nest I kept my revolver trained on the metal lid. It was a precaution if nothing else, at this time of day a raptor would be deep within its catatonic sleep, preparing for the night's hunt. We could have had the camp bugle boy play reveille off key in here, and that thing would have just kept snoring. I did not wish to take any chances, though, so I kept a firm grip on my revolver and tried to ignore the feeling that something was stalking us.

I felt the Captain's hand clap my shoulder twice as he completed his circuit. Everything was in place.

With my hands freed, I readied one of the incendiary grenades, hooked the edge of the coffin's lid with my boot, counted to three under my breath and kicked the metal sheet aside.

The coffin was empty.

***

I was shoved to the floor as the raptor tore its way out of the shadows. Tackling Captain Peters, and spilling antiques and refuse across the cellar. As the two bodies toppled over and crashed into the nest, the power of the consecrated ground took effect, and the raptor's roars soon turned into shrieks of pain. Shrieks which mingled with the Captain's terrified screams as the raptor's frenzied assault intensified in its attempt to break free.

I staggered to my feet and scrambled over to the melee, my revolver tight in my right fist while my free hand plunged into the chaos and grasped at the first solid surface available, with a tremendous effort, I hauled upwards and found myself face to face with the raptor's tooth-filled maw. The thing hissed at me. Black pools of tar shrinking in the glare of my flashlight. I spat and clubbed it over the head with my revolver.

"Corporal! What are you playing at?! Get me out of here!"

I reached over and with another great lift from the knees, extricated Captain Peters from the mess of limbs, only to find that the raptor had its arms wrapped around the Captain's waist.

"Good Lord get that thing away from my crotch!"

I cursed as I clubbed the raptor again. "Sir! St Elmo's Fire!"

I turned my head aside as a sudden flash of light illuminated the cellar, what merely blinded me for a moment proved to be agony for the raptor when it shrieked and flung its slender arms up to shield its eyes from the fairy fire Captain Peters had conjured and thrown into its face. As the raptor recoiled from the glare, I emptied my revolver into its pale, hairless chest and as it scrabbled at its latest injuries, I put my back into it and finally dragged Captain Peters to safety. Relative of course to the fact that during the struggle, I lost track of my incendiary grenade, and that grey cylinder of joy had decided to do a little remodelling of the ‘burn it to ashes and start from scratch’ school of interior design.

Bright orange flames had already consumed the exposed timbers at the two farthest corners of the cellar, which created an ominous creaking crackle that was drowned out by the shrieking mass of flesh stuck in the nest, struggling to get on its feet again. As I shoved Captain Peters ahead, I got out the second Incendiary Grenade, pulled the pin, hurled it into vampire’s lap and took off after the Captain.

Everything became blurry at that point; one moment the Captain and I were pounding towards the cellar stairs, choking on black smoke with Satans fiery fart licking at our backs. The next moment we were breathing fresh air as hands plucked us from the entrance and dragged to safety by a waiting squad of infantrymen.

General Grey ran over to where we sat in the dirt.

"What in Celestia's Mane happened?!"

Everyone's heads whipped around as the cellar exploded, and what remained of the raptor staggered out, a pitiful whine escaped from what's left of its throat as the flames gobbled it up.

***

"Feeling alright Corporal?"

I scrambled to attention as Captain Peters approached, as meticulously kept as ever, barring the bandages that covered his arms and the simple dressing slapped onto his cheek.

"Fit as a fiddle sir. Just a few scratches here and there, nothing major."

"Glad to hear it. And at ease soldier, I think we can dispense with the formalities for now."

I relaxed as Captain Peters stood next to me on the hill which overlooked what remained of an orchard. The land was bare now, having been denuded by the bombing runs in the war's early years. The only thing that remained were blackened stumps that jutted out of the soil and the merest twigs that had once hung from huge, healthy trees, sticks that the locals found no use for and were thus left where they lay.

"Quite a shock in that cellar eh?" Captain Peters broke in after several moments of silent contemplation. "Bloody raptor."

"Maybe it was an elder?" I replied. "A very fresh one at that."

I watched Captain Peters as he considered my words.

"No, I had the chance to study it up close corporal, that thing was undoubtedly a raptor."

But only vampire elders can hunt in the daytime, so what was a raptor doing out of its coffin before sunset?

"As we talked about corporal, it could have been a raptor that was just about to reach full maturity." Captain Peters shrugged. "Or, it could be a symptom of the changes in magic ever since - "

" - The Griffons brought their brand of sorcery to Equestria."

It truly boggled the mind how such drastic changes to the nature of magic could be wrought in just a mere decade by the civil war thanks to the Griffons. With just a handful of their sorcerers, vampires are now able to operate in the light of day. What would happen next? Chocolate rain in June?

Captain Peters must have read my mind somehow.

"Cheer up corporal, you did well back there, keep it up and we will have this little unpleasantness wrapped up before Christmas."

It was a hopeful thought, a fool's hope I now know, but at that time, the idea of Christmas turkey free of lead poisoning did cheer me up somewhat.

Captain Peters stuffed something into my pocket as we turned to leave.

"Just a little job for you corporal."

I pulled a photograph out of my pocket, a picture depicting a little old lady flanked by her family, two girls and a large man with messy blonde hair. I flipped the photo over, and in the bottom left the corner in blocky writing were two words.

‘Apples together.’

"We will need to notify the next of kin regarding current events, so track them down for me would you?"

"Sir, I'm pretty sure this is the duty of a superior officer!" I called after his retreat.

Captain Peters laughed as he strode towards a waiting military truck.

"It was not a request, corporal Baths."