“We’ll try providing what air support we can,” Captain Brooks told us over the radio as the helicopter rose back into the air. “But with the heavy tree cover, we’ll only be of limited use.”

“Figures,” Dani said with a scowl, obviously in a bad mood. Of course, all of us angels were in a bad mood at the moment. Our periods were nearly over, but they hadn’t ended quite yet.

Our current deployment location was in a national forest that had large wood areas which would make spotting the demons from the air difficult. According to the briefing, there had been reports of some missing hikers a couple weeks ago, though everyone just assumed that they’d gotten lost. Then earlier this week, a campground had been attacked and half a dozen people had been left dead. It wasn’t until this morning when other hikers had actually seen a demon that we knew where it was. From the direction and speed it had been heading, it would reach a small town in just a couple days and then things would get messy. We knew we had to stop it here and now.

“Let’s find this thing,” Rebecca announced as she left the clearing and went among the trees. Dani, Nicole, and I immediately followed.

The soldiers all began to spread out, sticking together in groups of three. Four of them remained with us, though they held back as usual, letting us take point while they watched our backs.

“Be careful,” Dani warned. “There are a lot of places around here for a demon to hide.”

I nodded at that, feeling nervous looking around carefully for any signs of the demon. The reports had been very clear about where the demon was headed so there was little doubt that it was in this area. I just hoped we were able to find it before it found us.

Half an hour after we’d begun searching among the trees, Captain Brooks came over the radio announcing, “We just received another report of the demon. A park ranger reported seeing a demon around the same time as the hiker…but the description of the demon doesn’t match.” There was a pause before he added, “We may have multiple demons in the area.”

“Damn,” Rebecca muttered with a scowl.

“That is definitely not good,” Nicole added.

Dani just snorted, “No fucking shit.”

“Reminds me of Nebraska,” Pete said from a short distance to the side.

Reese chuckled at that and responded, “Yeah, but this time I’m pretty sure we’re not going to find a bunch of kids in costume. They were damn lucky we didn’t shoot them.”

“I heard the second DSU did that,” Mason commented. “They shot some fucking idiot who was trying to play an April Fools prank on his buddy.”

I scowled, glaring back at the soldiers who were talking. I would have thought that it would be smarter to keep quiet so we could sneak up on the demon rather than warning it where we were. Then again, maybe making noise would draw it out of hiding and straight to us. Either way, I think I would have preferred to keep it quiet.

Then I heard it, a roaring sound in the distance. We all began moving towards the sound, which I thought was a very bad idea. Every horror movie I’d ever seen seemed to suggest that the wisest course of action wasn’t to investigate the weird noises but to run in the opposite direction.

I suddenly noticed a blur of motion from the corner of my eye and snapped around faster than any normal human would have been able to do. Something brown and furry was flying through the air, hitting a tree and then bouncing off. I shot at it, as did my sisters. However, this brown blur seemed to be even faster than we were as we blew holes in several of the trees, right behind the blur.

The furry blur launched itself at one of the soldiers behind us, and a moment later, the soldier’s body was sent flying through the air until he smashed into the side of a tree with a sickening crunch. It was only then that I got a good look at the demon since it was crouched down next to where the solider had been standing.

The demon was a little larger than a normal human but looked something like a cross between a gorilla and a rabbit. Its body was built like a gorilla, with a large upper body and thick powerful arms which it was leaning forward onto. However, its fur was soft and fluffy looking and its head definitely resembled that of a rabbit, especially the two large ears. That resemblance ended at the mouth, which was wide open and full of sharp teeth.

“Fucking thing got Trevor,” Mason exclaimed, opening fire on the demon, which immediately jumped into motion again.

“We’ve engaged the demon,” Rebecca called out over the radio as she opened fire.

The demon jumped up to a tree, bouncing off the trunk and then flying to another tree. One of the shots hit its side, though it wasn’t enough to stop the demon dead. Instead, it took another long leap, right over the top of Mason. A spray of demon blood trailed behind it, splashing all over the soldier’s front.

“FUCK,” Mason screamed in horror. I glanced to Mason, who was still wearing his gloves and plastic face mask, which was a good thing since several drops of blood were on the mask.

The demon continued running, so I called out to my sisters, “You guys get little bunny foo foo… I’ll catch up.” Then I grabbed Mason’s shoulder and ordered, “You stay here…”

I was already wearing gloves so didn’t hesitate to start removing the parts of Mason’s uniform and gear that had been hit with the demon blood and tossing them aside. He stood there, looking like he was in shock but not fighting me as I did this. The final piece was his mask, which joined the rest of the gear which would need to be decontaminated or destroyed.

“I don’t think you actually touched any of the blood,” I told Mason grimly, “so you might have escaped infection. Run back to the helicopter and have them spray you down with the sterilization foam just to be safe.”

“Thanks,” he stammered before rushing off, wearing nothing but his underwear and socks.

I turned my attention to Trevor, the soldier who’d been thrown into the tree. I checked his pulse and wasn’t at all surprised to see that he was dead. The angle his head was resting at had been a clear indication of that already. Since there was nothing I could do for him, I left his body where it was and went to catch up with the others.

I followed the sound of gunfire to where my sisters were still chasing big bunny foo foo. They’d managed to hit the demon again, slowing it down enough so that it was no longer able to bounce through the trees. Instead, it was staggering on the ground a short distance ahead of us. Then it turned and snarled at us.

“Time to put this bunny down,” Dani said as she took aim at the creature.

Suddenly, Reese screamed and I snapped around to see that the stump he was standing next to was moving. It was doing more than just moving…it was getting up and revealing that it was really a demon that had been crouched down and hiding. The demon’s skin was brown and wrinkled, looking almost exactly like tree bark which was how we’d missed it. I’d heard that would sometimes adapt to their environments, but was the first time I’d seen it.

Reese was still screaming from where he was curled up on the ground, clutching his hand…or at least the stump where he used to have a hand. The tree demon snarled, and while we were distracted by this demon, bunny foo foo jumped right at Rebecca.

“Look out,” Dani cried out a warning.

Rebecca immediately dove to the side, dodging the evil bunny demon. It snarled and swung large fists at her, but she dodged those as well. Then Nicole jumped at the demon, firing several shots and catching it in the side. The demon was thrown back while Rebecca and Nicole both continued shooting at it.

I remained focused on the tree demon, which slowly advanced on Pete. Pete opened fire on the demon as he backed away. I fired several shots as well, causing the tree demon to finally stop and then fall over. I was just thankful that the tree wasn’t nearly as fast as the rabbit.

“Are you okay?” I demanded as I rushed to Reese’s side.

“Do I look okay?” he snarled in pain. “I just had my fucking hand bitten off by a demon.”

Without another word, I removed my back pack and went to work. I gave Reese a shot for the pain and then put on a tourniquet in order to staunch the bleeding. I even bandaged Reese’s arm up, though the truth was he needed more medical attention than I could provide here.

But even as I was working on Reese, I knew that it was ultimately useless. After being bit by a demon, he was almost certainly infected with the demon strain. From the look of terror in Reese’s eyes, he was aware of this fact as well. Still, I had to do the best I could for him and hope that he had somehow escaped that curse.

“Damn it,” Pete said, watching Reese with a worried look on his face though he was also keeping his distance. “I’m sorry man…”

“Not your fault,” Reese said quietly, sounding groggy dues to a mixture of the shock, pain, and the shot I’d given him.

“At least we got both of the demons,” Nicole said, though she was giving Reese a worried look as well.

“I’ve notified the cleanup crew,” Rebecca told us grimly.

Just then, I heard a low rumbling growl from the side. I snapped around, gulping at the sight of a third demon stepping out from around a tree a short distance away. This one was wide and stocky, with thick gray skin that almost looked like it was made of stone.

“I’ve got this one,” Dani said quietly as she raised her weapon.

“Um…guys,” Nicole said nervously.

I looked to where Nicole was pointing and gasped at the sight of another demon, crouched down on a thick tree branch and looking down at us with a hungry expression. However, my eyes didn’t stay there. There were other growls and snarls from around us as well and I felt a cold chill run down my spine. Two more demons had appeared, leaving us surrounded by four of the rabid creatures.

I gulped, suddenly having a VERY bad feeling about this. However, it was Dani who verbalized what every one of us was thinking. “We are so fucked.”