Forty-three years ago, during the demon invasion, he led a twelve-man squad in holding Montana's last line of defense.
That battle lasted seven days and seven nights. Only four people survived in the end.
He bore more than thirty scars, three of them deep enough to expose bone. The military doctor had said at the time, "It's a miracle you survived."
He had retired twenty years ago.
It was not because he could no longer fight, but because he was tired. Too many people had died in those years. Every name he knew had eventually become an inscription on a tombstone.
He bought this abandoned farm and began raising sheep, living a simple, quiet life free from conflict.
Then the angels fell from the sky.
He sat at the barn entrance, watching the occasional streaks of blue light in the distance and the battle reports constantly refreshing on his communicator.
He watched Chicago fall. He watched Los Angeles fall. He watched the number 170 million appear on the screen.
He took that old hunting rifle out of the attic and began cleaning it.
In the "Past Combat Record" section of the application form, he wrote simply: Demon invasion incident, killed twenty-seven demons. Over the following thirty years, sporadically dealt with a few escaped demons and vampires.
Twenty-seven demons.
That number, in this day and age, was enough to make any young demon hunter's eyes widen.
But when Marcus wrote it down, he merely typed it out line by line without any change in expression.
Only two of his recommenders were still alive.
One had been a comrade-in-arms back then, now confined to a wheelchair and barely able to speak clearly. The other had been his subordinate back then and was now in the North American Theater. His name was Dean