Dreadwood

I've been writing this for a while now. Haven't had a a lot of time to work on it so I haven't gotten very far into it yet.

April 21st. That was when we were sent out here. Never told why. We were just handed a gun, told to suit up, and if we saw anything... unusual, shoot to kill and don't hesitate. When you get told something like that, you already know the trip's gonna suck. because the last time they said that, we lost 17 men. I really wish they would actually brief us on these before we get there. Maybe more would live.

The trip took 3 days. A plane ride, then a boat ride, and a day and a half of driving. The place we were sent to was a forest out in the dead reaches of nowhere. Didn't even have an official name. We just gave it the highly fitting name of Dreadwood. Because nothing good ever came from that place. Nothing but wicked sounds and horror stories. The forest didn't even look natural. No transition. Just a wall of trees making an abrupt stop by an empty field.

We were apparently being sent their to look for a missing recon unit, we later found out. Make sense? Didn't to me at the time either. Why send anyone here? What did they expect to find? You would think a place like this wouldn't have anything important to an organization like us. We're supposed to be fighting off the worlds assorted rebels who think they're getting justice through local terrorism, not investigating local folk lore.

After setting up camp outside the forest, we were called together to discuss the mission. A mid-mission debriefing courtesy of the idiots back at HQ. Anyways, our recon unit, Epsilon, was sent in 2 weeks ago. 5 days after, all contact with them had seized. HUD cameras weren't working, satellite tracking went offline, and the life-support scanners came back blank. Almost like they disappeared from existence. Our job was to locate them and "Extract" any survivors, and eliminate whatever might be in there.

The next day was the day we were sent in. 3 tanks, 50 infantry units(split into 5 squads of 10), and a vehicle to clear a path through the trees.(Tree Eater for short.) We didn't know exactly where they entered, but we had a location on where they made their last transmission. That's where we were headed, and we were gonna cut straight through to it, cutting a 4 day trip into a 2 day one.

The trip was relatively uneventful. But even though nothing happened, it was not a trip I hoped to repeat again. Aside from the light that entered from the path created by the Tree Eater, the surroundings were dark. Between the gnarled trees around us, weird noises could be heard. A ticking sound that closely resembled a variety of different pens being clicked in succession. Every so often, I would see fast movement in between the branches and bushes. Quick, dark blurs that were to concealed to identify. Although, I coulda sworn I saw what looked like a large, hairless wolf moving at one point. I couldn't really tell at the time.

About halfway through the second day, we made a discovery. But a far from happy one. The forest had begun to thin out to the point where we could move our vehicles through without the need for the Tree Eater. Strange, that there had been absolutely no change in the amount of light. But nothing here was normal considering how it began to thin out towards the center instead of thickening. Anyways, about that time, we came across a scout buggy. It had been torn in half, and the cockpit had blood everywhere. And then, there was the driver. Impaled on a nearby branch. He had no skin left on his body save for a few pieces of bloody flesh hanging in strips from his body.

Something obviously happened here. Aside from the driver, there were other bodies scattered nearby. All of them were in the same mutilated condition as the driver. A few trees had gashes in the bark that could not have been made by bullets, even though shells were everywhere. This all continued down aways to the left. We had found Epsilon.

Immediately we were ordered to our squads. Bravo, the squad I was with, and Joel were ordered to scout to the left to see if there were survivors at where ever the trail led, while the others checked the immediate area. If I had a bad feeling before, I was wreathing in discomfort now. Signs of battle were everywhere, yet the only bodies were ours. Until, however, we reached the end, where we stood looking down upon the most horrifying sight I think I've ever seen.

It was the hairless wolf. No, not a wolf. Not even close. It was reptilian. Like a small wingless dragon. It's hands had claws about 8 inches long, and an inch wide. It's teeth, if they still even qualified as teeth, could have passed for railroad spikes. It's back was lined with three rows of spines all the way down to the tail; and it was bleeding a black ooze out of hundreds of holes. 5 feet away from the body was a soldier, still alive, but gripping madly at his gun, shaking violently, and muttering in tongues. Scared into full insanity.

Me and a few others tried to comfort him and bring him to his senses, but had no success. We radioed back to camp that we were heading back and for a medic to pick up the soldier. When we got back, all the other teams had already returned. Gamma and Yankee hadn't found anything but more gore and violence. Delta, however, had recovered 2 things: A HUD camera that hadn't been crushed in the fighting, (surprising, given the sad reliability of the things) and an automated recording of all transitions between soldiers(though, the length span is only an hour for memory storage purposes.) Both where handed over to the tech crew. The one soldier we found was immediately taken to MASH. The creature, though, wasn't brought back for examination. It was incinerated on the spot. As if leaving it to rot will do anything other than stink up the place.

Anyways, we were all put on standby until further notice. They said we could do whatever as long as we stayed alert and in camp. Funny; "relax" was one of the words they used. As if anyone of us could possibly relax. We were 2 days into the worst place imaginable, where a squad of 25 were slaughtered, and creatures that didn't look natural thrived. Yet, they use "relax". Well, no one relaxed. No one even bothered to hide their fright and discomfort. Everyone just kept watching all around. Scared that if they looked away, they'd suffer the same fate as Epsilon. I kept flashing back to earlier. The torn open vehicle, the skinless driver, the dead soldiers, the living soldier scared to bloody death, and that... thing. It wouldn't leave my mind. It tortured me all hours of the day. Because of it, I couldn't sleep, and had no appetite. The food, our standard what-cha-ma-call-it, tasted like ash, and the drink seemed to resemble gasoline. Every time I tried to sleep, I'd wake up a few minutes later drenched in sweat. The dreams were always about what I saw.

This continued the next day as well, until we got notification back from the tech crew that they had finished getting the camera and audio logs working again. First, they played the audio logs for us. It was filled with random radio chatter and standard protocol mumbo-jumbo. Nothing to much out of the ordinary until about 10 minutes into it. A few reports came through about investigating a strange noise. If I remember correctly, the report from around that time is as follows:

To be continued...