The White Death

My name is Ben Hanson, age 31. I've been a soldier in the British army for a few months now. Under most circumstances, I wouldn't mind. The pay isn't that good, but it has some perks: respect, admiration, scaring the shit out of people on the street. I would often ask my friends what their favorite thing about it was. I was new to the army at the time and I was still caught up in the soldier hype. I guess it wore out fast, because after a few times, they turned the subject to least favorite things about the British army. The obvious answers were "pay" or "probability of death" or "horrors of war," but one man, Giddeon, answered "The Hunter." The room gained an air of silent terror. Everyone acted like he had said nothing, but they kept glancing back to him. I had run across a few hunters in my patrols and they seemed fine, but I hadn't encountered who or whatever THE Hunter was. The rest of the conversation seemed rushed and everyone seemed eager to shut up and go.

The next day, I asked around, eager to learn what this "Hunter" was. From what I could gather, it went by many names. The White Death, The Running Blade, The White Eagle, The Predator, The White Predator, The Redhawk. Nobody seemed to be able to accurately describe it outside of being white and generally bad. Giddeon said it was a feral human that lurked in the treetops and dragged people to the branches to eat later. Sam called it a demonic eagle that took souls to the underworld. Zach told me that it was an arboreal animal with claws for hands. It was clear that this investigation was going nowhere so I let the matter be. It was probably just some local myth, like the hodag or gnomes.

A few weeks passed and I was on patrol near a farm. Our patrol path took us through the forest's edge where bears and cougars had been seen. I kept hearing rustling and assumed it to be a deer or rabbit. I remember thinking "If a pig got out, I bet the farmer will pay me to bring it back." If only it had been. Deeper into the forest, we came across a mangled bear carcass. Its skin had been removed and its claws torn out. Nobody really knew what to make of it. It almost looked as though it was placed in the path intentionally, like a wolf leaving a kill out as a warning. Giddeon and Sam investigated the bear and tried moving it out of the way, only for the bear's head to limply dangle, half attached. Its spine had been severed and the only thing keeping the head from falling off was the throat.

Once the bear had been moved out of the path, we pressed on, continuing our patrol. I glimpsed shaking branches and a white blur in the trees to my left. I knew what it was. My patrol knew what it was. Sam was in front, Zach was in back. Or at least, we thought he was. We were discussing what to do, when it became apparent that Zach wasn't talking. When we turned around, we was gone. The white blur kept appearing for brief moments between branches as it leapt from tree to tree. It was human in size and shape, but moved like no other human could.

We needed to make a beeline out of the forest as soon as possible. Giddeon ran as fast as he could, firing into the forest at any movement he saw, until the white noise of the gunfire became a slight comfort. As long as he kept firing, we could keep that thing at bay. The abrupt end to his firing could have meant only one of two things: either he had managed to kill it or it managed to kill him. I turned back to find him face down in the dirt, bleeding from his neck. I saw a glimpse of a white tail or possibly wings disappearing into the bushes. It was here that I saw its strategy. This twisted abomination was toying with us. It was taking the person farthest back to fuck with the rest of us and I was queued up next.

Sam recognized the area around us. It took me a moment, but I knew what he was talking about. Tom and his lot were usually patrolling this part. We just needed to find them and we'd have a bunch of highly trained English riflemen and one batshit insane Scotsman with a hatchet on our side. Tom was a crazy bastard. With him, that thing was going back to whatever demented hell it crawled out of. In the distance, I heard a faint noise. Shouting and gunfire.

“Take aim.”

Silence.

“Fire!”

A series of rife shots from a firing squad in perfect unison.

“Take aim.”

We were sprinting full speed in their direction.

“Fire!”

The shots were a bit off this time around. We could hear the sounds of a blade hitting flesh. We had to be getting close.

“Take aim!”

Silence.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">We finally found them and good god did I wish we hadn't. They were dangling from the trees by nooses like lifeless marionettes, blood dripping down their necks. I suppose this was its plan. While we were staring at the corpses, a white fog rolled in. I couldn't see a damn thing. My nose was out of my range of vision. When the smoke cleared, I was alone. The bodies were gone. Sam was gone. I was wondering if I had imagined the whole thing. Maybe I had killed them and didn't know it. At this point I was really questioning my sanity. I couldn't be certain of anything anymore. At least until I heard the news that all of the higher ups in the chain of command were being killed off by this thing. Mostly military fort captains and such, but even commanders and generals. We were told to be on the lookout for a man matching the description of what I saw. They even gave it a name. But I don't care how human of a name they attach to it, I know this thing wasn't human.

<p style="margin-bottom:0in">This “Connor Kenway” is no man. The White Death is a monster.