Without his teammate covering him, Nick had no time to reload. He threw away his M4A1 with its empty magazine, drew his forty-five-centimeter Bolo knife, and met the charging "Hollow Man" cavalryman blade to blade.
The rust-covered saber was clearly no match for the thick-backed, kukri-shaped Bolo knife. It snapped in two with a clang. Nick put all his strength into the blow, and his blade continued unchecked, slicing open the flank of the creature's mount.
Foul-smelling fluid sprayed everywhere. Like the "Hollow Men," the warhorse had most of its flesh replaced by something resembling plant tissue. It let out an agonized whinny and collapsed, pinning its rider firmly beneath it.
"Dasha!" Nick called, holding his knife ready as he stood his ground.
Dahlia got up from the ground and checked her weapon as she answered, "I'm fine."
Before she finished speaking, the "Hollow Man" cavalryman that had knocked her flying came charging back, heading straight for them.
Ready this time, Dahlia raised her gun and fired, riddling both horse and rider with a long burst.
Their surroundings seemed to fall silent in an instant. Only the faint sound of retreating hooves came from the fog, along with an angry roar tinged with unwillingness.
"Looks like one got away."
Seething with anger, Nick beheaded the "plant man" pinned beneath the "plant horse" with a single stroke. He discovered that the thing had almost no flesh or skin left apart from its bones. The vines on its body had even grown into the horse beneath it, turning them into a horse-man in the literal sense.
Yet the other "Hollow Man," which Dahlia had shot to pieces along with its horse, could be separated from its mount. These hideous creatures in the canyon seemed to have mutated in different directions, with no rules whatsoever.
"Nick, do you recognize this?" Dahlia tore a scrap of cloth from the "Hollow Man" she had killed.
The scrap bore an intact shoulder patch. Though filthy, its red, blue, and white background was still barely discernible, with two stylized white letters "A" embroidered in the middle and an arched strip at the top, white on blue.
Nick frowned and studied it for a while. The word seemed to be "Airborne," meaning airborne troops. "It's the insignia of the US 82nd Airborne Division."
The instructor who had taught him to parachute had come from that unit. Though the 82nd Airborne Division was less famous than the renowned 101st Airborne Division, it had been the first airborne unit formed by America during World War II and had participated in the famous Operation Overlord.
Dahlia's expression grew grave. "Back on the tower, I also saw 'Hollow Men' wearing old Special Air Service and Alpha Group uniforms.
"It looks like this place wasn't sealed off after World War II ended, the way our 'predecessors' claimed. According to the stories, all 2,400 men who disappeared back then were cavalrymen, but these were combat personnel from elite units."
"All three major powers clearly sent people down here to investigate, but the results probably weren't good. I'm more concerned about what caused all this. Do these things count as dead or alive?"
Nick had already ruled out radiation. There was a Geiger counter in the armory, and the background radiation around the canyon was within normal limits.
They exchanged their guesses in low voices as they advanced warily. Before long, they left the woods shrouded in yellow fog and emerged onto scorched earth.
As the light changed, the fog shifted from pale yellow to pale blue, then finally to pale purple. Their surroundings grew increasingly terrifying, and that atmosphere reached its peak when a suffocating expanse of charred, withered trees appeared on the scorched ground.
The charred trees varied in height, standing like some kind of horrifying "totems" on the barren, scorched earth.
Almost every trunk had human skulls "embedded" in it, some more than others. Though those skulls had long since lost all skin and flesh, it was still possible to make out the suffering they had endured in life.
Some of the charred trees even retained the vague outlines of complete human bodies, only with grotesquely exaggerated proportions. Their torsos had been forcibly stretched to three or four meters, their exposed spines extending down into the ground.
This scorched land seemed like the creation of some deranged god, something that could only appear in a madman's dreams. Standing amid it, even Dahlia, an elite sniper with the resolve to remain unflinching before a collapsing mountain, could not help pressing close to Nick.
It was then that both of them understood the true origin of the term "Hollow Men."
The British poet Thomas Eliot had used the poem as a metaphor for the spiritual predicament of Western society after World War I, describing those who had lost their faith and whose souls were empty as "Hollow Men" trapped between life and death.
And were these monsters in the canyon, deformed and twisted by some unknown cause into half-human, half-plant beings, not also a kind of "Hollow Men" caught between life and death?
"Uh, these should all be thoroughly dead, though." Nick prodded the already petrified skeletal tree-men with his Bolo knife.
Seeing that he was still in the mood to study them, Dahlia pressed her dry lips together and forced her voice not to tremble too much. "Nick, let's keep moving."
Nick had been somewhat shocked by the horrific scene at first, too, but he adjusted after a while. His close, face-to-face encounter with zombies had raised his threshold for such things considerably.
They waded through a shallow stretch of stream and spotted a large cluster of indistinct dark shapes ahead, resembling buildings.
Then a ruined asphalt road came into view, followed by all kinds of abandoned vehicle wrecks. They were all models from the end of World War II to the early Cold War, British, Soviet, and American alike.
Soon, a small town that looked as though it had once been quite lively appeared before them, with rows of dormitory buildings, shops, bars, and even a department store and a small church with a steeple.
A deep fissure cut through the center of town like an ugly scar etched into the earth. Nick carefully stood at its edge and peered down, but no bottom was visible.
"Looks like it was caused by an earthquake." Dahlia merely glanced down with him before resuming her careful watch over their surroundings.
Nick remarked casually, "Feels like a demon burrowed out of the ground and caused all this."
He remembered the final episode of the first season of Love, Death & Robots, which he had watched in his previous life. It had also been set near the end of World War II, with ghoul-like monsters emerging from underground and running rampant in the Far East.
In the end, Soviet Air Force bomber formations, finally freed up after the Battle of Stalingrad, had bombed them out of existence.
So why hadn't the three major powers simply bombed this damned place back then?
Though the "Hollow Men" were not particularly formidable in combat, their grotesque appearance alone made it clear that some infectious agent or contaminant had caused this. If it ever escaped, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Nick was certain that the mission to save the world had to be connected to whatever had caused all this.
Now he could only hope it was nothing supernatural, like one of those hopeless Cthulhu scenarios. Otherwise, even if he sacrificed his life in this world, he would have little confidence in getting Dahlia out safely.
Before you continue