Becoming What You Hate

Before the monsters arrived Evan would have been considered a young man. He doesn’t feel young.

In the sixteen years and eight months since The Feeders and their servants the Howlers had first come to earth, and begun their insidious near genocidal harvesting of human beings, living to see 30 had become a remarkable feat.

Especially for someone like Evan.

He doesn’t hide from the Monsters.

Doesn't cower in fear beneath some frozen rock waiting be eaten.

No Evan, is the Red Death, The Scourge of the eyeless.

Evan's belief system is simple, kill all of the monsters.

The howling, chittering eight legged howlers, and their towering blind masters. Both kinds of beast appeared on the planet while he was a boy. The militaries of all of the now non-existent governments had deployed against them in full force. The two and a half meter tall eyeless “Feeders” seemed to number in the millions, and resisted most projectile weapons. If the gigantic Eyeless were not enough, their servants The Howlers, roiled like an endless swarm of locusts, blackening the horizon eating anything living.

 All Evan knows to do is kill them.

 All of them.

The stragglers that remained on Earth whenever the mass of the Hive go wherever they come from, and the rest when they come back to Harvest again.

Evan's Father had barely survived the first quell. The Hive and their purple stinging, biting, howling retinue, were overwhelming.

 Evan had been a boy.

When suddenly the grotesque Hive minded feeders had thinned taking most of The Howlers with them.

 A mere fraction of the noisy armored creatures remained and a skeleton crew of the Feeders stayed to direct them. That had suited Evan's old man, he used the time to plan and prepare and to kill as many of the creatures as he could.

Leif Gunhild, Evan’s trainer and father, was a throwback to his Viking ancestors and most surely was drinking mead in the halls of Valhalla now.

Leif hadn't been certain when, or if The Feeders would return, it was just a gut feeling that he passed down to Evan.

Leif had taught his boy how to take the fight to the monsters at every opportunity.

Leif was right.

Ten years after the Eyeless Hive of flesh eaters left they returned to harvest more humans.

The Gunhild”s carried out a form of guerrilla warfare against the invaders.

That’s become Evan’s sole purpose, he takes the fight to the monsters, hard.

The only other thing that Evan finds worthwhile other than eradicating The Feeders, is helping survivors. Up until recently Evan has gone out seeking humans who have managed to avoid the ravenous eyeless creatures and the purple skinned howling, stinging, death that precedes them.

Lately he has only left their hideout to kill the enemy.

Any report of The Feeders or their poisoned clawed forerunner’s mobilizes him. This is his planet and he wants it back.

The refugees that Evan has found while hunting the Hive had grown into an army. An army that he’s taught to build specialized weapons and hunt the Hive and The Howlers alongside him.

They call themselves The Monster Hunter Clan.

Their single minded purpose is to rid the globe of the eyeless hive and their limitless eight legged hunting dogs.

 The Monster Hunter Clans has grown powerful under Evan's firm hand.

He toys with a monstrous claw absent mindedly, one of many hung on a braided strand of Feeder underbelly that he wears over his shoulder like a bandolier. Often when new survivors are brought into the compound Evan fells their stares.

The Scourge they call him.

 “Good!”

 The thin, yet deceptively strong man thinks to himself, as he absently runs his finely boned fingers over his empty right eye socket.

“The people should fear me. They ought to be afraid to do anything but fight.”

 Evan tells himself that but the fact is he wonders why his fellow humans don’t recognize that brutal men like himself are the only reason that there are any human beings left alive.

The Scourge, gets to his feet.

The small cell of a room is a privilege of his rank. Space is limited and at a premium. The walls of his room are full. The room holds well-worn but sharp blades, hammers, bows, axes, arrows, picks, shovels and other weapons of his own design. It also holds things that have been pilfered at every sporting goods store he and his soldiers come across. Anything that might possibly kill the Eyeless or Howlers.

The Hive seems endless, so the fight has to be endless but the wiry redhead is tired.

 As a boy Evan, had travelled with his Father and Uncle Sten.

 They had hidden and killed the creatures in order to survive. He had learned to use the heavy swords and axes that were required to kill the beasts. By the time the young ginger was 19 he could cleave one of the “Howlers” in two with a single blow.

His father had insisted that he learn how to make those melee weapons, and Evan had become an expert.

He has passed that knowledge on to his followers.

After traveling across the country for all of his formative years Evan and his uncle decided to settle in the mountains of what once was Montana.

His Father had been lost fighting the bloated monstrosities outside of Las Vegas.

 Evan's uncle choose their location strategically.

The Hive become sluggish in the ice and snow and the swarm of Howler’s is utterly useless in the cold climate.

The first bodies of Howlers that Evan discovered frozen solid with their stingers and claws still intact had changed the dynamic of how The Monster Hunter Clan did things.

Evan, and his late uncle had spent months try to find a way to use the electric charge that the howlers produce as their legs move, against the Hive.

Instead it is their poison that’s key.

The eyeless are more susceptible to the toxin than human beings.

The stingers themselves are the perfect delivery system.

Once Evan’s guerilla fighters were armed with arrows tipped with those stingers and dipped in the toxin the beasts fell in increasing numbers.

As word of the Scourge and his Monster Hunters Clan spreads, recruits show up in greater numbers.

 It makes the “Old Man” glad to see that life is finding a way.

Evan, grabs his favorite battle axe, a massive tool with a 10 inch wide blades on both sides and a sharp stabbing point in the center.

 On, his right hip hangs a gun of his own design he’s modified it to fire the Howlers claws.

It’s odd that the thing that is most dangerous to the invaders comes from the interlopers themselves. On his left side he wears a traditional weapon, a .50 caliber pistol, one of the only guns that appeared to have any effect on the eyeless, at least it slows them down enough to get a good old fashioned blade into them.

 It has been a while since Evan has gone out on a hunt alone, in fact it seems that the more people that are brought to the converted Hospital the less he could do alone. The new comers all treat him as if he is either a savior or the devil himself.

 Not to mention that it is getting harder to find the eyeless.

Evan’s lieutenants seemed to think that was a good thing but Evan can’t agree. To him the lack of the Hive in their area simply means that some poor human beings are being tortured and eaten elsewhere. He remembers New Mexico, can recall seeing hundreds of carcasses with hunks of flesh ripped out.

The thing that sticks with him the most is hearing wolves silenced mid howl by the snarling fiends and their shrieking counterparts. The screams of human beings, conjoined by the clamorous braying of wild animals as they fell.

 Evan can remember when the land around where his compound now stands fairly teamed with horses, elk, Moose and other wild life. Now it is rare to hear the cry of any living thing.

 The red haired fighter grabs an oversized duffle. He has been hiding the things he would need for months. As he fights the monsters more and more Evan feels that he is becoming one himself.

More often his decisions are less about the good of the people and more about his overwhelming desire to destroy all of the creatures. Where he used to run into unwinnable odds to save a single person, he see the wisdom in leaving a few victims to the Hive as long as it means being able to kill more eyeless.

 The last battle he fought was outside of what used to be Texas.

 The experienced hunters had put on a good show, and the Hive had fallen by the dozen.

One of the soldiers failed his compatriots.

The red headed and freckled teen could have been a relative. The hair color was rarer than ever now, but Evan didn’t allow the resemblance to give him any pause.

 The 15 year old hesitated and cost one of Evans hunters his life.

Angry, Evan picked up a severed arm from one of their prey and disemboweled the youth for his cowardice. At the moment it had seemed the right thing to do, and even now after having rehashed the event time and again, he knew that it had been a logically sound decision.

 When your world is at war you have to be a warrior. If you hesitate you are lost.

However, that young man had haunted Evan since and not in the way many claimed to see the ghosts of the dead fighting alongside them.

Evan fears he is becoming, the very thing he is trying to protect his kind from. Feels horror that his soul has been killed by all of the killing that he has done.

He believes his usefulness is at its end.

 He’s decided to go where The Hive are the most plentiful and either wipe them out or die doing what he does best.

It’s time.

He has saved hundreds of people, families, women, children, and an entire generation of people who wouldn’t be here if his Monster Hunter Clan didn’t exist.

 Even nature is beginning to turn against the invaders. Evan had seen wolves cast off instinct and wreak vengeance against a single eyeless. The beasts aren’t good to eat so there is no other explanation.

The scourge has served his purpose, he has trained enough warriors to keep the couple hundred residents of the compound safe. He knows that the young men he has taught have the drive to rid the planet of The Hive.

 His services are no longer needed on the killing grounds and the people are begging him to do more leading and less hunting.

 Every door that he opens creaks louder than usual, as things do when you are trying to be cautious. Fortunately Evan had the foresight to fill up his converted pick-up truck beforehand, the noise of the hand cranked gas pumps would alert the entire compound to his leaving.

The duffel makes little noise as he hoists it into the covered bed.

 The Scourge looks around at the assorted vehicles that his army has converted into machines capable of hunting down and crushing the largest threat that mankind has ever faced.

The man who separates himself from one of the heaviest of these, was invisible moments before.

 If anyone could lay claim to being the solitary leader’s friend it was this phantom.

 The hiding man had been killing the eyeless with a street sign converted into a weapon when they had met. He is the only other person Evan knows that is as driven as him.

If Evan recalled correctly the two of them had killed about 40 of the beasts that day.

 “Hey, what are you doing here X?” Evan asks the question well aware that X cannot answer vocally.

X’s larynx was shattered during one of their earliest hunts.

 Even while he was healing Xavier hadn’t missed a single hunt.

He has had to recently.

 On his last hunt Xavier had used one of their dead compatriots to lure the Feeders into a trap.

The younger hunters have begun to shun the mute since.

The stealthy giant of a man points at his friend and fellow predator, using his rudimentary sign language to let Evan know.

 “If you go. I go.”

 Evan, knows there is no point in arguing with Xavier.

Knows too that there was no one else he would rather have beside him.

 “You knew I was leaving?” X nods the affirmative. “You understand why?” Again the silent Native American giant gives a single nod.

He points to his fiery haired friend, then to himself, and makes the sign for monsters.

They have spent so much time hunting and killing the vile beasts that had decided to attempt to conquer the earth and feed on its inhabitants, that they have become the very thing they hate.