We’re running. My most trusted friend, my younger brother, and I run through the mud and dirt paths through a forgotten part of Louisiana. A place abandoned since the civil war due to the dead rising and corruption from some otherworldly force. I won’t claim to understand it, I read what I can but the best you can find on this stuff is in newspaper clippings and old research notes.


I do, however, have enough research on the things I’m hunting. A huge spider, made of multiple human corpses. Gross, I know, but you get used to them after fighting them a few times. The Doc back at the AHA keeps me loaded up with antivenom, so it’s just a matter of beating the rotting thing in with a sledgehammer and waiting for it to be “banished.” They always come back though. It leaves behind these tokens, valuable to someone I’m sure, but I get good pay for the work. I’ve done well for myself. Saved up enough cash to import one of those fancy french rifles, even got a scope to put on it. A Lebel 1886, clean as she can be. But it’s time to put her to the test.

See, we weren’t running from those undead grunts, we were running from other hunters. The AHA is full of infighting, and whoever gets those tokens gets the paycheck. Scarcity drives us all to do bad things. The boat is right there, we can see it on the shore, it’s our ticket home and we have enough time to get out, but between harsh breaths, we make an agreement.


We’re not leaving here without making a reputation.

An old lighthouse sits near the boat, white paint peeling down the bricks. Little slit windows spiral their way up the sides. We get inside and prepare. I take the stairs, my brother on the balcony up top, my friend down on the ground floor. Poor guy, only one of us who doesn’t have a scope. I yell to warn my brother to stay off the balcony since he’ll be an easy target, the windows down with me are much safer, but he’s always been thick-skulled.

Suddenly I spot something. Branches in the sparse bushes rustling, someone sneaking their way close, trying to line up a shot on us. I fire the first bullet from my new rifle and she does me proud. Straight through the head, one kill for me. After that, they pour out of the woodwork, multiple teams surrounding our little stronghold. Running up and down the staircase to different windows, taking potshots and wearing them down.


Then comes the thud on the metal walkway above me. I hear my brother screech as he falls down. It would be a death sentence to walk up there and try and patch him up.

I’m a lucky man though. Some… shaman, a magic man invited me to perform a ritual back at the AHA. He told me I could channel my life into someone, get them back on their feet without even touching them. I performed the ritual with a bunch of other hunters, it’s easy to get into that stuff when it surrounds you every day you go to work.

Now’s my time. I close my eyes, look up at his body, and feel a pain surging through the veins in my arm, like giant mosquitoes stealing my blood with spears for mouths. I’ll admit I opened my first aid kit and took some painkillers after that. But it was worth it, I see my brother, alive and well, climb down into the safety of the lighthouse and start bandaging his wounds. We’ve got this, he says with a cocky smile. Soon he’s back with his gun and points out the guy who did him in. Someone creeping in the bushes north of us, in the middle of the swamp.

The first bullet kills him.

After we take out the stragglers, we do a sweep of the forest, grabbing their supplies and weapons, and board the boat. Hopefully, nobody will chase us down after what we did there. Maybe I’ll even get a promotion.