Full disclosure, I was an anti-masker during Covid. No, it wasn’t because they infringed on “muh freedoms” or that I found it hard to breath. It was just that masks made my assignment at the time rather… difficult.

I’m a mercenary, a gun for hire. I contract out through a shadowy outfit based in D.C. Up until 2020, my jobs had all been sandy—The Sahel, Somalia, Afghanistan. Poor places where the big governments like to play war. My jobs were the dirtiest of the dirty work. I did missions that militaries wanted to be able to distance themselves from if something went wrong.

It was only a matter of time before I got a fucked-up contract like I did in Romania. A memo came in from Bucharest asking for a dozen American contractors with combat experience. I didn’t ask questions. The paycheck was enormous for what seemed like a cakewalk compared to keeping up the West’s “war of terror” Or shit… I mean ON terror. Yeah, that’s it, War on Terror.

All twelve of us were given different arrival dates. When I landed in Romania, six soldiers from America were already there and I suspected I’d be meeting up with them, but none of my suspicions turned out right.

Upon landing I was put into a taxi hired by the government and after several hours without so much as a pee-break I’m stepping out of the car all groggy with my black duffels and rifle crate.

A swath of great forest runs through Romania following the Carpathian Mountains like a backwards L. I was now near the head of that L, by the Ukrainian border.

I could hardly believe my surroundings when I got there. I was expecting to join a tactical team for a briefing, what I found was a thatched roof shelter. It was wall-less, little more than a structure to give travelers shelter from the rain for a night.

The shelter was stationed at the edge of the forest. It was some kind of checkpoint or resting point before you ventured any further into the woods.

There was a single trail that snaked through the dark spruces behind it and disappeared deep into the forest. Something was off about this assignment, but I my mind didn’t linger on what.

I stopped and breathed. The fragrance of the coniferous trees was a balm after six hours of smelling my cabbies Camels.

But he himself wasted no time getting away from fresh air. The taxi driver slammed his door and sped off without a goodbye. A spatter of mud slapped onto me as the little car puttered away.

I flicked a few globs of mud off my sleeves as I went to the shelter. There, an old man tended a fire, cross-legged, while two gray-muzzled sheep dogs rested their chins on his legs.

I did not speak Romanian. I reviewed the emailed instructions I received. All they said was speak to Boian once I arrived at the destination. I knew I wasn’t being played. My contractor has a system to verify all communications. It was confirmed that the Romanian government had wanted me here, but why?

“Boian?” I asked and waited for an answer. The old man nodded.

“Sit, please.”

He gestured at a dry spot of dirt across the fire. I moved my bags in under the shelter and sat. “I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”

“Oh, you are.”

“Where are the other soldiers?”

“It is just you and me.”

I laughed and shook my head. “And what’s our objective? I take it there’s a terrorist outpost in these woods?” I pointed at the trees. “Or are we after wolves attacking a Shepard’s herd?”

The old man just stared at me until I blushed and looked away. His expression was a quiet condemnation of my arrogance. When his silence had properly highlighted the stupidity of my last sentence, he spoke.

“There are many tribes in these woods. They choose to live a life…unspoiled. They cut wood, carry water, catch fish. They shunned the cities to live in the woods.” He broke a few sticks in half and fed them to the fire.

The dogs watched the new kindling crackle and burn before gently closing their eyes again.

“It wasn’t always like that. One tribe was so cruel. So cunning. They were the Paraziti. Parasites. They took what other tribes had instead of making things of their own. They had no fisherman, no smiths, no weavers. Only killers. This tribe… they adapted to kill and feed on humans. They grew fangs.” I nodded my head up knowing where this was going. “It’s wasn’t Vlad the Impaler but these sick beings that began the legends of Dracula.”

“I see,” I said, skeptically.

“Well, you will come to. Eventually, when nearly every tribe was wiped out, the Paraziti vanished. Some say the devil took them to be his demons. Others say that they crawled into the earth to hibernate until more people populated these woods so they could kill once more. But the truth of where they went… it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they’re back.”

I stayed quiet for a moment, expecting him to laugh at my stoic expression, to say he was fucking with me and that there was actually a terrorist cell hiding out in the caves. But instead, he kicked dirt on the fire and the dogs shot up and shook themselves off.

“Come. We have several miles to travel before we sleep. Take only what equipment you need. Rifle, ammo. Don’t worry about food, I have plenty.”

He started off down the trail while I stayed sitting. I thought about walking to the nearest village and buying a ride back to the airport. This was ridiculous, but who was I to complain? After all, I was getting paid the same.

I assembled my rifle, slung it over my shoulder and left the plastic case behind.

In the next few weeks, I learned the world was a much bigger place than I ever imagined. There were full-blown cities in these woods, each ringed with walls of spruces that had been sharpened to spikes and teeming with hundreds of inhabitants. They made their own clothes, soap, and cookware. It was like I had stumbled through a portal to the medieval ages.

I stayed with Boian off one of the main roads that connected the villages. He had a hut there, and I learned that his job was to act as a kind of highway patrol. He taxed trade between villages and made sure bandits weren’t raiding the roads.

But there was hardly any trade or traffic between villages when I started. The air was quiet with fear. Apparently, a family homestead had been attacked a month back. Holes were found on their necks, draining their bodies dry. The whispering and the rumors swirled that they were the Paraziti, but none of the attackers were seen.

With so much wilderness patrolling one road felt useless, but Boian said the legends were true and in order for the Paraziti to reach a village they must be invited inside. They can’t just sneak there through the woods.

To be honest, the assignment didn’t have my full attention. It felt like a joke. The other 11 contractors that were hired had the same job as me, they were assisting other patrols between villages. Boian did have a radio and no unusual activity had been reported by any on the sentries on the road. Until one by one, they went dark.

It started further down the mountain range, first it was the outpost near the Serbian border. Then the woods of central Romania went quiet. It was making its way towards us. We used to get a wagon or two a day coming from the south, but all travel suddenly ceased.

When the village caught word that communication with the south was gone, I thought they’d flee to the cities. Instead, they nailed closed their shutters, barred their doors as soon as it was dusk, and loaded their rifles. It felt like something was coming.

One day when Boian and I were watching the road, a rickety wagon approached pulled by a pair of mules, their ribs bulging against their fur.

Boian and I looked at one another and I shouldered my rifle, stepping out into the muddy road.

With not much else to do, I had dived into learning Romanian my first few weeks here. While I couldn’t much speak it or read it, I could understand the gist of Boian’s conversations at this point.

He did most of the talking while I stood tall and menacing with the rifle across my chest.

The protocol for our road patrol was simple: Check the teeth of all persons to make sure they didn’t have fangs and second, make sure there are no stowaways in the cargo. This sometimes meant going through sacks of wool or piles of potatoes but so far, we hadn’t turned up anything.

The driver wore a mask and stopped the mules. The beasts stood dumbly in the road, blinking lazily.

“What is your business on these roads?” asked Boian.

I looked at the wagon. There were four women in the back, wrapped tight in coats. Their shawls covered their faces.

“We are fleeing before the storm in the south can reach us.”

Boian walked closer and I followed. “What do you know about what’s happening in the south?”

“Something is coming. We intend to cross the border and stay in the wilderness until this evil has passed.”

“Well, you can go no further without inspection.”

“As we expected.”

Boian gestured for me to go to the back of the wagon. The women all wore masks, too. This was 2020, and Covid was taken seriously here. The people knew if there was an outbreak in any of these remote villages there would be hardly anything town doctors could do and many would die.

“Teeth,” I said and held my mouth open in a smile with my pointer fingers. One by one, the women pulled the heavy shawls up over their eyes and showed me their upper teeth. But even before I looked for fangs, something about their movement bugged me.

They moved rigidly. Robotically, like there was something wrong with their arms.

The women held their mouths open funny, too. Their lips were pushed and curled up so I could see. They didn’t smile like you would for a dentist, but there were no fangs.

The last two women who showed me their mouths had fresh blood running from their gums. I indicated that they could let their masks down and walked over the Boian.

I pushed him back a few steps so we were out of earshot of the driver and whispered in his ear. “No fangs but something seems off. Some of the women, their gums are bleeding.”

“That is not uncommon, especially when travelers know we’re checking teeth. They brush them hard to be polite. But I agree they are strange, but they don’t look like Paraziti. Their teeth, they are real.”

“But what if… what if they stole regular people’s teeth.”

Boian gave me a funny look. “Did it look like that to you?”

I thought back and to be honest it didn’t. Their teeth hadn’t been replaced and if they had, the Paraziti were phenomenal dentists. “No,” I said.

“May we go to the village?” asked the driver.

Boian and I looked to each other. We were both on edge, if it weren’t for our anxiety it was possible we might’ve found nothing out of the ordinary with this inspection to begin with.

Boian waved them on. “You may go. Safe travels.”

The driver raised one arm in farewell and Boian and I both watched him with skeptical squints. There it was again, that strange robotic movement.

We stood in the road while the mules plodded on, listening to the cart moan and creak until they were up the hill and out of sight.

That night, Boian and I ate supper in silence. I was getting paid weekly so there was no completion clause for my contract. I remember I was thinking about leaving that very night when Boian and I looked up at the same time.

There was a sound on the wind. A wailing. We burst outside of his hut where the noise was clear. The nearest village was almost three miles up the road, but we heard the screams clear as day.

I started gathering my things and Boian was already sprinting. As we got closer, we smelled smoke and could see the orange glow of flames flicker in the sky. In the time it took to get there the screams had ceased.

The gate to the village was left wide open, invitingly. Boian and I slowed and walked silently the rest of the way. The village still made noise—the fire leaping hut to hut was crackling, whistling and roaring.

We got to the mouth of the gate and I froze. My combat experience didn’t prepare for this terror. There’s speed to a firefight, a forgetfulness of fear. But this had me shaking like a child.

There, inside just the gate, were the bodies of the coach that had passed by hours earlier. The man and the four women.

Boian bent and turned one of them over and we both jumped back at how easily the corpse moved. It was weightless. I set my rifle barrel against the chest of one and prodded with it.

The entire chest was empty. No organs, no bones. It was like that for all of them. Their legs and arms were hollow tubes. And their heads… they’d been cut in two and stitched back together.

“The Paraziti,” I said aloud. “They massacred them when they got to the village. They were already here, waiting for more people to come.”

“No,” said Boian stepping backwards. “No,” he started to sprint away into the woods. “Trojan horse!” he shouted back at me.

“Hey, wait!” But I stayed still, realizing what he meant.

It was why their movements were so mechanical earlier.

It was why some of their gums leaked blood.

The Paraziti had emptied these humans out. Spooned out every last ounce of flesh and stuffed themselves inside.

“Oh… fuck. Oh fuck.” I said while beginning to follow Boian.

You see, it was our fault.

We were the ones that had let them in.