SNAFU: Hunters

Warm Bodies An Alpha Unit story Kirsten Cross

The trouble with night-vision goggles is that the slightest flash of any bright light and you’re effectively ‘blasted out’. And when you’ve got some dirty little bastard Taint intent on chowing down on any soft tissue it can find about three feet from your arse then being blind, even for a split second, is not an option.

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the little saints, these sons of bitches are fast!” Robbie Moore, trying to find his bearings in the eerie green glow of a room seen through NVGs, aimed the adapted M4 Benelli pump action shotgun straight at the snarling face of the Taint. He fired. And missed. “Fuck!”

“Seriously? From six feet away? Who taught you to shoot? Your grandmother?” Terry Warner screamed abuse at his oppo and fumbled with his own M4. As inanimate objects are wont to do at the most inopportune moment, the damn thing stubbornly refused to co-operate. “Shit! Shit!”

“Okay, ladies. We all knew this was coming. Breathe.” The calm voice of Colby Flynn cut through the screaming and mayhem. “Terry, stop panicking. Safety off. Rob, prime and squeeze the damn trigger, don’t yank on it. You’re shooting a Taint, not giving yourself a hand job.” Colby wanted the newbies to get their first kill for themselves this time, rather than having to step in for them yet again. And preferably before the rest of the pack of slathering, wild-eyed Taints came barrelling through the door and tore them all to pieces, if you don’t mind lads, thank you very much.

An M4 blasted out a cartridge filled with liquid, spraying a fluorescent pale-green mist into the air, like someone had shaken a can of soda and pulled the tab. Colby checked the two men. It was Robbie Moore who had finally got his shit together and managed to fire off a second shot. “Adda boy.” He melted back into the corner of the room and watched how the two men handled a close-quarters confrontation with one of mankind’s most terrifying creations, a second-generation Taint with an appetite and an attitude. After the initial god-awful fumbling and general fuck-uppery, the two men started to get themselves organised. Their training — if it was ever truly possible to ‘train’ for your first full-on Taint attack — finally kicked in.

The Taint recoiled as the fine mist drenched it from the top of its oozing scalp to the large hole the M4 projectile had punched through the middle of its chest. It took a few microseconds for it to realise it had been hit. The Taint looked down at its chest, and then back up at Robbie. “In three… two… one…” Colby counted down, ticking the seconds off on curled fingers. “And…”

The Taint went rigid and splayed its arms out. Orange lines snaked through its body, visible under the surface of the skin, like rivers of lava flowing through its veins. Its skin started to bulge and blister. The Taint threw its head back and let out a wail. The incensed creature started to convulse and dropped to the floor. The spasms grew increasingly violent, and there was a loud crack as it twisted so savagely its spine snapped. It thrashed on the floor, screaming like all the souls of Hell were crying out as one voice. The creature’s fists smashed into the concrete floor and its heels drummed violently. The orange rivers became a tsunami of fire roaring through its body.

The explosion, when it came, was a bit of a relief to be honest. All that thrashing and screaming always gave Colby a headache. The liquid-filled projectile finally did its job, but it was more of a wet fart rather than a proper ‘boom’, rather like a damp feather pillow splitting. A shower of sparks and ash mushroomed upwards and filled the room.

“There ya go!” Colby grinned at the two men. It was their first close-quarters incendiary. They’d done decapitation, which was shocking enough, but relatively drama-free. Decapitating didn’t cause all that noisy thrashing about and exploding. But a blast from a M4 adapted to deliver a deadly organophosphur payload was a whole different story. It was always interesting watching the newbies react to their first full-on, heel drumming, concrete punching ‘party popper’, as the lads called them.

The two men stared at Colby. Through their night vision goggles he looked like a very muscular, very menacing green goblin. This particular grinch, though, wasn’t interested in ruining Christmas. He was focused on training the new kids to stay alive beyond their first sortie.

Flynn’s relaxed posture and nonchalant expression verged on the ‘seen it, done it’ arrogance that all the veterans of Alpha Unit had. But both newbies knew he was perfectly entitled to at least a certain level of arrogance. After all, the guy had, in fact, both seen it and done it. For real.

Colby grinned at his charges and pointed to the open door. “Um, incoming?”

Warner and Moore spun around. “Ah, crap…” In the green landscape created by their NVGs the men could see a set of long, sinewy fingers curling around the doorframe. Ragged, razor sharp nails that no French manicurist could ever redeem tipped off the insectoid-like digits. They dripped with venom. The latest generation of Taints had evolved yet again, developing tubes that ran underneath the skin and ended at the base of each nail bed, delivering a toxin that would paralyse the victim in seconds.

This new development meant that getting ‘up close and personal’ with a Taint had a whole new level of risk. Q division was working on clothing made from a Kevlar-mesh cloth that would protect the teams from accidental scratches, including gloves, full combats and balaclavas. But they were still a few weeks from going into production. Right now, all it took was one slash, one tear through the outer layers of skin and into the subcutaneous tissue beneath, and you were flat on your backside, paralysed rigid but still fully aware as Taints started to rip into your flesh. Never had the term ‘keep the buggers at arm’s length’ been taken so literally.

Right behind these toxin-laden fingers emerged a face that only a mother Taint could love. The skin on its face was lacerated into tramlines, and every wound was infected. A glimpse of white bone shone behind one particularly broad slash that stretched from its eye socket to the corner of its mouth. A mouth that, as to be expected, was filled with needle-sharp teeth also dripping with toxic juices.

It locked its gaze onto Terry Warner, two eyes filled with hate, vitriol, and probably even more damn venom. These second-gen Taints weren’t just mutant vampires — they were walking chemical factories as well.

Colby waited to see how Warner would react. Eye contact was one of the toughest tests anyone wanting to join the Unit would face. That whole thing about vampires having the ability to mesmerise their victims wasn’t a myth. The Old World vamps had it, and now, so did the Taints. That blood-curdling, bone-chilling gaze could stop even a fully trained member of the Unit in their tracks. It froze your soul. It coursed down your veins and nerves like crackling ice. It touched a primeval fear that every human being carried in their subconscious. That ‘look’ could crash though centuries of evolution and turn the most hardened, fully-trained and combat-experienced soldier into a gibbering, pitchfork-waving idiot villager in a second. It was the same cold fear that a human feels when they stare into the eyes of a wolf. That realisation that guess what, buddy, you’re no longer the apex predator. However, the bugger in front of you with the golden eyes, snarling face and big, fuck-off fangs most certainly is.

But the look that froze your soul and turned you into a dribbling, compliant moron could be beaten. Its power lay in convincing you that you were helpless in the face of this hellish horror. As in any combat situation, resisting the urge to freeze would be the only thing that would keep you alive. If you were getting the ‘look’, it meant that the Taint was within a few feet. And that was never a good place to be.

The newbies had been warned. What was commonly referred to as ‘getting a dose of epic stink-eye’ was right there in week-one training. But in all the fury and confusion of a hunt, Warner had done what all newbies do on their first outing — forgotten everything that really mattered. He flipped up his night vision goggles and gazed into the eyes of the Taint. His arms went limp and the M4 dropped to his side, his finger still curled around the trigger. If he it squeezed now, he’d probably shoot his own damn foot off.

“Terry! Terry, you idiot, snap out of it! Terry!” Robbie tried to get through to his oppo, but the mesmerised berk simply stood, gawping at the slathering, snarling Taint. Robbie cursed, swung his M4 up and blasted wildly at the creature. He didn’t miss this time. The Taint’s head exploded, closely followed by the rest of him.

Then came more. So many more. A writhing avalanche of snarling, slathering Taints poured through the door, screeching and slashing those venom-laced talons towards the two men. Within a heartbeat the Taints were all over them. To their credit, the lads went down fighting. But underneath a rugby-scrum’s worth of Taints, they didn’t have a prayer. Their own screams joined in with those of their devourers…

Colby Flynn watched the Taints overwhelm the two men. “Damn it!” He glanced up at a corner of the room and made a cutting gesture across his throat. “End program!” A loud buzzer sounded.

The Taints melted away.

All that was left were two whimpering men, lying in a foetal position in the middle of the floor, their M4s abandoned at their sides.

“Well, that went well…” Colby sighed and let out a sharp whistle between his teeth. “Upsy daisy, ladies!”

“Real enough for ya, Col?” A voice crackled over a tannoy, followed by a nasty little chuckle.

Colby glanced up to a corner of the room and spoke back to the disembodied voice. “Cox, you’re a sick, twisted son of a bitch, you know that? A damn genius, granted, and obviously a serious gamer with a Resident Evil addiction, for sure. But sick and twisted nevertheless. Loved all the thrashing and the drumming, though. Super real. When did you upgrade the VR programming?”

“Ah, there was nothing on the telly last night. So, ya know. Idle hands, devil’s work and all that shit…”

“Remind me to make sure you stay busy, you bloody lunatic.” Colby glanced at the newbies, who were slowly starting to uncurl and get back up to their feet. They both looked utterly embarrassed and brushed the dust off their combats, sheepish looks on their faces. Colby turned back up to the corner of the room. “One thing, Micky, that second one? Too slow, fella. Way too slow. We’re not dealing with zombies here, mate, we’re going up against genetically-altered, batshit-crazy vamps. Speed ‘em up a bit. Make it more realistic.”

Terry Warner flipped his NVGs up and glared at Colby. “More realistic? More fucking realistic? Are you actually kidding me?” A blank stare from Colby reminded him he was talking to a superior officer. “I mean, are you actually kidding me, sir?”

“Corporal Warner, you are currently standing in a puddle of your own piss after having been well and truly freaked out by a virtual-reality Taint that, if I’m honest, has some flaws that need to be ironed out—”

“Hey! I thought you liked Binky!” Micky’s voice crackled over the tannoy again, interrupting Colby mid-rant. He sounded mortally offended.

Colby paused, and looked straight at Warner, who responded with a shrug and a ‘Yeah, I heard that too…’ look of wide-eyed astonishment.

Both men looked up at the tannoy and spoke together “Seriously?”

There was a short pause before an indignant voice responded, “What’s wrong with Binky?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Colby shook his head, and returned his attention to Warner and his interrupted rant. “Listen, fella. This?” He waved an arm around. “It’s a simulation. Nothing more. It’s designed as a cold-body experience to get you used to facing a Taint up close and personal before we assign you to a unit. This is just like any other kill house, Warner. A training exercise. Nothing more. Okay, granted, it’s a kill house with a truly astonishing level of technical wizardry and the latest in virtual reality immersive training, courtesy of that nutjob up there,” he jerked a thumb towards the tannoy.

“I can still hear you, you know!”

Colby ignored the hurt, disembodied voice. “But that’s all it is, just a training exercise. So if you find this disturbing then, trust me, mate, facing a warm body is a whole ‘nother level of crazy shit. And in that situation you can’t just yell ‘player one out!’ and hope Micky turns the VR off before you go all pant-pissy and foetal again.” He drew a breath and studied the shocked Warner. “Look. Be honest, okay? If you can’t cope with this then just say the word and we’ll RTU you. Nobody will think any less of you. This gig isn’t for everyone, believe me—”

“No, sir! No, that’s not what I meant. I… shit. I’ve got nothing here…” Warner glared at the floor. “Ah, bollocks. You’re gonna RTU me anyway, aren’t you?”

Colby shook his head. “We don’t return someone to their unit just for one fuck up. Everyone fails their first kill house. But if you are selected to join the Unit then bear in mind that, out in the real world? Facing real Taints?” Colby shrugged. “Yeah, you only get one shot at that, mate. So fail in here, survive out there.” He pushed himself off the wall and stood a few inches from Warner. The newbie was still breathing heavy, and the slightly acidic tang of ammonia wafted up from his damp combats.

Colby’s normally jovial look melted away, and Warner faced Flynn’s own heavy-duty version of epic stink-eye. The big man’s pale green eyes were hard, and the hint of a smile that usually pulled at the corners of Flynn’s mouth had vanished. “But screw up a second time, or give me any indication that you could end up putting your oppos’ lives in danger and I promise you, mate, I promise you, you’ll be back peeling spuds in the Catering Corps before you can say Dauphinoise potatoes.”

“I was with the Guards, sir.”

“Same difference.” Colby sniffed, and wished he hadn’t. “Go and get yourself cleaned up.” He threw a glance at the silent Terry. “Both of you.” They paused, looking awkward and apologetic. Colby glowered, his eyes narrowing even further. “And you’re still here why, exactly?”

Without another word, the two newbies turned and trudged out of the room. Their body posture spoke of defeat, dejection and a mortal fear that an RTU order was in their future at some point.

Colby watched the two men shuffle listlessly out. The frown was still etched on his face, but now he focused it up at the corner where the speaker and camera were hidden. He jerked a thumb towards the door. “You get all that?”

There was a click and a woman’s voice — soft, authoritative and well spoken — responded. “They’re on their first run-through, Col. It’s a beasting nobody expects the first time around. Give them a second go at it and we’ll be able to make a decision from there. They’ll either get their shit together, or they won’t.”

Colby sniffed, rubbed his nose and nodded. “Yeah. Guess we all pissed our pants the first time, huh?”

“Speak for yourself, Mister Flynn!”

“Uh-oh!” Colby laughed out loud. He was in for a smack around the ear later from Yolanda for that one. He could tell — the only time she called him ‘Mister Flynn’ was when she was going all Sandhurst on his arse. “Okay. Get Micky to do a reset. We’ll go again at oh-two hundred. Zero warning. I want this to be as realistic as possible.”

“Copy that. I’ll get him to speed Binky number two up a bit as well.”

Colby rolled his eyes and sighed. “Seriously, Yol, Binky? Fucking Binky?”

“Honestly? I have no bloody idea. I think Micky’s a Discworld fan or something.”

The tannoy crackled then went silent. Colby flipped his NVGs down and scanned the room. It was too empty to make things realistic. If these guys were to become competent Taint hunters, then they needed to be pushed. Hard. He made a mental note to get some furniture put into this room. It could be an obstacle or a weapon, depending on how the guys reacted.

In the distance, four pops sounded in rapid succession. Colby frowned. There shouldn’t be anyone else in the kill house when they were training, so who was shooting? He thought for a moment and then shrugged. “Meh, probably one of the lads on the range.” Sound tended to travel in funny ways sometimes, thanks to the topography of the surrounding hills. He forgot about the gunfire and glanced at his watch. “Ooo! Chow time! Thank Christ for that, I’m starving!” His stomach let out a strangled gurgle and he pressed a hand on his abdomen to still the beast. “Yep. Deffo chow time.”

As he trotted out of the room and made his way down the corridors and stairs towards the ground floor, Colby mentally assessed the two lads. Terry Warner lacked confidence, but had shown real potential up until the most recent debacle. Leaving the safety on was unforgivable in a sweep-through of a known or even a potential hot zone. And he had frozen when he encountered Binky’s stink-eye act. Robbie Moore’s aim was atrocious. The lad needed at least a fortnight on the range and another week or two in the live-ammo kill house to get up to standard. But he had reacted according to his training, and saved his partner. So okay, both had messed up, but out of the two, Moore was probably worth a second chance…

“Whoa!” Colby threw an arm out to balance himself as his foot slid away. There was something greasy and viscous on the floor, as slippery as engine oil. The air had a strange metallic tang, mixed in with pungent top notes of shit and opened bowels. The hairs on the back of Colby’s neck rose, and he glanced at the floor. A smear, like a sauce flourish on a top-end restaurant plate, formed a crescent where his boot heel had skidded. The liquid was thick, dark, and in the iridescent light of a full moon Flynn could see vapour rising off it. So it was warm, then. And fresh. Very, very fresh.

He crouched, flipped his NVGs up and out of the way, and dipped a finger in the liquid. He rubbed it between his finger and thumb. As he pulled his thumb and finger apart, the liquid formed a hair-fine connection before snapping and creating two globules, one on each finger. Colby scowled. “Damn…” He knew that consistency. Only one fluid in the world felt like that — blood.

He pressed the button on his radio with his left hand. His right instinctively curled around the butt of a Glock 17 that sat in a holster strapped to his thigh. He flicked the safety off and disengaged the coiled lanyard that the Health and Safety lot insisted on attaching to the gun for no apparent reason other than that they knew it annoyed the ever living shit out of him. He cradled the butt in his hand, ready for a quick draw if necessary. “Micky, I’m in corridor two. Confirmation please, mate.”

A voice crackled in his earpiece. “Go ahead, Col.”

“I’ve got blood here. A lot of blood. Is this part of the simulation?”

“Blood?”

“Yeah. Blood. Ya know, blood. That sticky red shit that’s quite important for the whole living thing. I know you have a passion for realism in these simulations, you mad bastard, but does it stretch to chucking a gallon of pig’s blood on the floor as well?”

“Negative, mate. Negative.”

“Then we have a problem. Scan for heat signatures. I think we might have a live one on our hands here, fella.”

“Copy that. The captain’s getting Alpha and Bravo teams ready.”

Colby pressed the squawk button again. “That’s reassuring. Arm up for warm bodies. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this…”

Colby stood, the Glock now cradled in his hand. His Blackhawk combat knife pressed against his left hip. He had seventeen hollowpoint rounds and six inches of precision ground D-2 steel with a wickedly sharp edge. He patted the knife for reassurance. You might run out of bullets, but you never run out of knife.

He flipped his goggles back down. The NVGs allowed him to see clearly in that weird, mottled-green monotone, but like any soldier he knew full well that they could distort things, especially depth perception. Objects seen through a pair of NVGs could be closer than they appeared, a bit like a police car in a wing mirror. And when you were talking about getting the jump on Taints, that was not a good thing. You wanted Taints to be as far away from you as possible. And preferably dead.

Instinct kicked in. Since his first encounter with the granddaddy of the undead back in Turkey a year earlier, Colby Flynn had gone toe-to-toe with vampires of both kinds on numerous occasions. As part of the elite Alpha Unit, it was his job to keep London free of the man-made monstrosities that constituted probably the worst ever national ‘science project gone bad’ that the public didn’t know about.

Taints.

He thought about the first time he’d been briefed by Yolanda about the damn things. It had been quite possibly the single most bizarre PowerPoint presentation he’d ever sat through. And if it hadn’t have been for his experience with Micky Cox and Gary Parks back in that Turkish castle, he wouldn’t have believed a single word about vampires or any of that supernatural shit. But Flynn knew now there was a big dollop of fact behind the myth of Vampirism. It was real. It existed, and it sure as hell didn’t ‘sparkle’ like those Hollywood idiots portrayed it in the movies. It bit. It tore flesh. It devoured. And it was loose on the nighttime streets of London.

Yolanda had explained to the team that the Old World vampires were bad enough. But these mutant vampires — these ‘Taints’ — were a whole different level of crazy. They’d been created in a lab, not in some draughty castle full of bats and bad memories. Taints had emerged from a single lineage — a ‘Lucy’ whose DNA had been tainted by a rogue gene — hence the name. A hiccup in a single piece of coding had produced a vampire with all the fury, the strength, speed and blood-lust of the Old World version. Only much, much worse.

Lucy had been accidentally created by some stupid, science-y type morons who might have had PhDs in being bloody clever, but they had never apparently watched any horror film ever. They also didn’t stop to think that just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. So they’d happily wandered off down the road paved with good intentions and grant cheques, sciencing as hard as they could. They’d isolated a gene known as K307B they thought acted as a blood coagulant stimulator, and spliced it into a strand of vampire DNA they’d acquired as a result of Flynn and the boys’ expedition to Turkey. Then, ignoring every red flag, every internal ‘WOOP!WOOP!’ warning siren and that glimmer of common sense that kept pounding on the door of their consciousness shouting: “This is a really, really bad idea!”, they injected a willing volunteer with it.

It didn’t end well.

Within minutes the serum containing the mashed-up gene, which was meant to be a breakthrough cure for haemophilia, had sloshed its way up through the circulatory system and into the brain of the volunteer, simultaneously turning on every primeval ‘kill’ command at once. It also gave Lucy an unquenchable thirst for blood that would never, ever be sated.

Nobody knew where Lucy had gone once she’d torn the throat out of the nearest scientist and then jumped out of the window, landing feet first like a cat forty feet below. She’d let out a scream that announced her existence to the world, then vanished into the night.

The hell had begun.

The PowerPoint picture showing a screaming, slathering Lucy up close in the camera lens just before she jumped was one of the most disturbing images Flynn had ever seen. In the blurry, freeze-frame shot he had seen the bloodlust and madness in her eyes. And behind that madness the terror too, as the woman felt her last shred of humanity being obliterated. Colby felt sorry for the lass. Nobody should have to endure that.

“We didn’t think this would happen,” was the only excuse the one surviving scientist could come up with at the emergency COBRA meeting two days later. He’d wrung his hands, nervously cleaned his glasses and muttered some hollow apologies about what was a ‘salutary experience’. Sorry about that. They had people out looking. They never found her.

Lucy’s lineage had spawned a whole new generation. The gene had carried on mutating away merrily, turning those with the tainted blood not just into vampires, but into raving lunatics as well. Lunatics with super-human strength, speed, agility and an insatiable desire to feed constantly. The ‘off switch’ in their brain hadn’t just malfunctioned — it had disintegrated completely. So they’d gorge themselves, unable to stop until they slumped unconscious onto a heap of desecrated corpses and shredded body parts.

The next part of the presentation had made Flynn and the lads want to throw up. Lucy had started breeding. The first time was a vile, disturbingly bloody echo of a normal pregnancy — a process that turned her into a cross between an insectoid egg-laying machine and a very angry woman with appallingly bad parenting skills. Initially, Lucy was so confused that she ate the first batch of Younglings she produced, reabsorbing their toxins back into her own body. Slowly, she developed less cannibalistic tendencies as the tiny part of her brain that still worked reminded her that, in order to reproduce successfully, it might be advantageous to avoid snacking on your offspring. She let batch two live and develop into fully-grown Taints — the first generation of their kind.

The Old World vampires of the ‘Five Families’ had been furious. For centuries a relative peace had existed between the two species, again, largely unknown to the general populous. Now, thanks to mankind buggering about with genetics and generally screwing up in epic style, all bets were off. The Old World vamps had upped sticks and sodded off back to Europe, leaving the military and the Taints to battle it out on the blood-soaked, nighttime streets of London

And then, of course, just to add a little extra spice to the dish, there was Vlad.

Supposedly turned into pink mist when Gary Parks blew ten colours of crap out of both him and Tokat Castle a year earlier, the granddaddy of all vampires had in fact managed to avoid being obliterated by being remarkably quick on his feet for an old fella. That news came as a shock to Flynn and the lads. Yes, Yolanda had explained, he’d been seriously injured, but not, as they’d first thought, killed. After spending several weeks recuperating in the labyrinth of Tokat Castle, he had eventually managed to chew his way through enough local villagers to replenish his severely injured body with new cells, and then proceeded to snack his way across Europe. The Unit had tracked him. It wasn’t hard — they’d just followed the screams and the trail of dismembered body parts. Eventually he landed in Dover. The carnage he left behind in the Channel Tunnel took a week to clean up.

Now, after a meeting of minds and — somehow — bodies between Lucy and Vlad (which was a sex tape nobody wanted to see, and thankfully there was no PowerPoint slide to reinforce that particularly disturbing mental image), the second-generation Taints had a much more elaborate set of skills. Not only were they demented killing machines thanks to mummy, but daddy had also given them the ability to use tactics. Up until that point Taints were pretty moronic. They had one thing and one thing only on their minds, and that was the dinner gong. Once Vlad’s genes had blended with Lucy’s, the second generation Taints were intelligent enough to use some pretty advanced military tactics too.

Any questions?

Flynn and the lads had sat in silence, before Micky slowly raised a hand and asked, “Um, how do we kill ‘em?”

All of that was academic, though.

Right here, right now, in the winding, crumbling corridors of the kill house, if Colby really was facing a warm body, a real-life ‘Binky’ instead of Micky’s VR version, then he was in trouble. A shit-load of trouble…

He glanced around. The blood trailed off into a side room, like a grotesquely sticky trail of breadcrumbs. Colby had that twisted, knotted sensation in the pit of his stomach. Warner and Moore weren’t armed up for warm bodies. The M4 shotgun capsules they carried were full of coloured water, not the organophosphur compound that would send a Taint into a heel-drumming, party-popping frenzied death throw. This was meant to be a relatively safe environment, so live ammo wasn’t issued to the candidates.

Colby, however, never went anywhere without a full clip and one in the pipe. And the Blackhawk. Obviously.

Like Dorothy following the yellow brick road but minus the ruby slippers, he padded silently alongside the body-width smear of blood that led into a side room, his heart sinking further with every cat-like, crossover step. He kept the snout of the Glock up, ready and waiting to spit out a swarm of adapted hollowpoints packed full of organophosphur at the first bastard that moved. If it was human, it would cop a bullet wound accompanied by a pungent garlicky odour, which would probably disinfect the wound on contact. If it was a Taint, though, there’d be the whole blowing up shit with a side order of heel drumming and screaming, even if he only winged the bastard.

A mess on the floor made Colby stop in his tracks. “Damn…” He crouched and saw straight away that the mess was what was left of one of the newbies. Which one wasn’t clear on first inspection. There was very little that was still recognisable as human. It looked like an explosion in a butcher’s shop. Trails of intestines were laid out like strings of sausages, while all that remained of the man’s liver was a few tattered shreds clinging to a flack jacket that had been sliced into ribbons. Colby scanned the room for movement and pressed the squawk button on his radio. “Man down. Kill house is hot. Repeat, kill house is hot.”

Yolanda’s voice answered instantly. “Bugger. Casualty ID?”

“Moore.” Colby glanced down at the remains and grimaced. “I think.” He saw a glint of metal in the mincemeat that was left on the floor and gingerly extracted a set of dog tags from the detritus of the Taint’s feeding frenzy. He squinted at the blood-smeared discs. “Yeah, confirmed. It’s Moore. Shit.” He curled his fist around the dog tags. The bobble chain draped between his fingers, skimming and jiggling across the surface of what used to be a lung.

“Damn it. Colby, get out of there. We’ve got sweep teams coming in.”

“Not yet, Yol. I’ve still got a man in here. I’ll tie up with the lads when I meet them. Give them a head’s up that there’s at least one friendly in here, hopefully two. I don’t want them friendly firing my arse into the morgue, okay?”

“Copy that. You’re armed?”

“Always.”

“Live ammo?”

“Of course. Get those teams in here, Yol. Fast. This needs to be contained. Get Bravo team to check the grounds and secure the exits. We don’t know how many we’re dealing with here.” Colby stood. The derelict old manor house that doubled up as the training ‘kill house’ had five floors including the cellars and the attics, a warren of corridors, dumb waiter lifts, rooms, and at least three ‘secret’ passages they knew about. Add to that the crawl-spaces between the walls, and you had a whole heap of places a smart Taint could hide out.

They had nothing. No intel at all. This wasn’t a carefully planned operation. This was a blind bug hunt. And somewhere in this labyrinth was a man with no ammo and a very low opinion of himself who may or may not know that he was being hunted by a real Taint, and not just a VR simulation.

Colby swore quietly, pocketed Moore’s dog tags, and slipped out of the room, leading with the business end of the Glock. If he called out to Warner, he’d give his position away. This was going to be a bitch of a job. Warner didn’t have a radio. Note to self; give the bloody candidates comms in future!

Man, the debrief (if he got out of this alive) was going to be epic. Number one, how the hell did a cold kill house become red-damn-hot in the space of ten minutes? Number two, how the hell were Taints getting access to secure areas, and number three, what the actual, living fuck? Colby tried to suppress the feeling of guilt over Moore that threatened to wash over him. He didn’t have time to beat himself up right now. That would be the colonel’s job later on. He was the newbies’ training officer, so he was responsible for their safety. Yeah. Bang up job so far on that, Flynn. Colby gritted his teeth and tried to focus back on the job at hand, and not on the desperately sad meat puzzle that lay in the room behind him. He was fervently praying that he didn’t come across Corporal Warner in the same condition…

Terry Warner was scared.

More scared than he’d ever been in his life.

Shit, this was worse than watching his mates and their supposedly indestructible Mastiff get vaporised by the mother of all IEDs in Helmund. It was worse than walking into that pockmarked, mud-brick hovel and finding the decomposing bodies of an entire family of ten rotting away into putrefying slime puddles. It was way, way worse than the sandflies, the heat and the hell of an Afghan tour. And this particular terror was right here. Not in a faraway land, well away from the people he loved, but on their damn doorstep. His wife. His young son. They were just a couple of miles away in the soulless brick semis of the garrison’s married quarters. This horror was just two fucking miles away from his family! It was creeping around in the leafy, tranquil surroundings of Hampshire, and the crumbling old manor house that had been re-commissioned as the unit’s training centre. In a place that was supposed to be ‘safe’.

Up until two weeks ago, when he’d reported to the old barracks for ‘specialist training’, the thing that was chasing him through the dilapidated corridors had, as far as Terry was concerned, been confined to the pages of penny dreadfuls, and the blood-soaked landscape of nightmares. Now it was hunting him through the same corridors that were supposed to act as a training ground to turn him into the hunter.

When Terry and Rob had first come across the Taint as it snacked on a rat, they had believed it to be part of Micky Cox’s training VR program. So, in an effort to redeem themselves to the faceless watchers who they believed were spying on them through CCTV cameras, they’d played along. Both men had pumped two rounds each from the M4s into the beast. They fully expected it to do the whole ‘party popper’ routine in front of them. It should have dropped to the floor, thrashing and screaming. There should have been drumming heels and crackling skin. It should have died.

It should have.

It didn’t.

It dropped the half-eaten rat. It glanced at the minor four flesh wounds the projectile casings had inflicted on its sinewy body. And then it stood slowly, flexing its venom-tipped talons. A slow, evil smile oozed across its twisted face, giving both men a dazzling display of a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. Massive muscles and snaking veins made its elongated arms seem even more out of proportion to its emaciated body. This was a second-gen Taint, and a fully grown one at that.

And it was real.

Very, very real.

This was no VR simulation created by the evil genius that was Sergeant Michael Paul Cox, ex-REME and SAS lunatic. This ‘Binky’ was the real deal.

Terry was the first to snap out of the trance. The damn thing couldn’t mind-fuck them both at the same time. But poor old Robbie Moore stood limply staring into its hideous yellow-gold eyes, utterly mesmerised. In the training exercise it had been Robbie that tried to save Terry’s arse from this exact same scenario. Now it was Terry’s chance to return the favour. He swung the M4 up and pointed it at the thing’s head. The capsule may not have real organophosphur in it, but he was betting a dollar to a doughnut a shot between the eyes would at least give the thing a nasty headache, and them the chance to exit stage left and run like hell.

The M4 misfired.

The click was enough to attract the Taint’s attention, and it snapped its head towards Terry. Warner dug deep and his training kicked in. He was a seasoned soldier. He knew now what he was facing. And he knew what this son of a bitch was capable of doing to a human body. Warner snarled. “Oh, hell no!” He spun the gun around, hoisted it up to shoulder level and pounded the butt straight into the face of the grinning monster once, twice, three times. A series of sickening cracks indicated that at least two nasal bones had shattered. The creature let out a yelp and recoiled from the makeshift battering ram slamming into its face. It was enough of a diversion to break the hold it had over Robbie Moore, and the man let out a gasp. “Jesus!”

“Fuck religion, mate, just run!” Terry grabbed his friend and pulled him towards the door.

If they had been running from a normal opponent, they might both have made it out. But this was a Taint. A big, ugly and very angry Taint. And Robbie Moore was just one step too close.

“Terry, go! For fuck’s sake, go!” Warner heard Robbie gasp as the Taint’s venom-filled talons grabbed his neck and curled around his friend’s throat. The tips of the talons punctured the man’s skin. One slid like a needle into his carotid artery, pumping toxins directly into Robbie’s bloodstream and straight up to his brain. His eyes rolled in their sockets and his oppo slumped straight into the welcoming arms of the Taint.

There was nothing Warner could do. The Taint started tearing into Robbie. Warner watched, utterly stunned, as the creature disembowelled his best friend right in front of his eyes.

He had no ammo. He had the Blackhawk, though. A mix of adrenaline and pure rage kicked in. “You mother-fucker!” Terry slid the knife out of its sheath, spun it in his hand and primed to launch himself towards the Taint. Go for the neck. Go in hard…

“No!” Through a froth of blood and bile, Robbie spluttered his last words. “No, mate, run! Get out! Ru…” An explosion of foaming blood poured out of the dying man’s mouth and he went limp. His feet jerked and twitched for a few seconds, and then stilled.

The Taint slowly looked up at Warner, a blood-smeared monstrosity — a creature from the worst possible nightmare imaginable. A slow smile spread over its face and it scooped out a handful of stuff that should have really stayed inside Robbie’s stomach cavity. The gurning creature held out the handful of intestines towards Terry and in a rasping, guttural voice, spoke two words, “You. Next.” The creature’s grin widened and he recoiled his sinewy arm and stuffed the blood-soaked intestines into its maw.

There was nothing more Terry could do for Robbie. The Blackhawk suddenly seemed about as useful as a penknife. And as much as he wanted to attack the creature right here, right now, he knew it was suicide to do so. A good hunter hunted. They didn’t become the prey because they got all emotional and unnecessary.

Get out.

Regroup.

Find Flynn.

And then come back in with a shit-load of guns and hunt this bastard down before it escaped beyond the boundaries of the kill house and out into the community.

He let out a scream of rage and glared at the Taint. “You and me, Binky! This ain’t over! This ain’t fucking over!” Warner took one last look at the remains of his oppo, turned, and ran…

Terry Warner crashed his way through the door of yet another dilapidated room and skidded to a halt. Damn it, the house was huge! He’d got completely turned around and had a Taint, a real Taint, looking for him that apparently regarded him as the dessert course. Outside, a full moon had risen to its apex, shining a ghostly white light through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He slumped down, breathing hard and with his back against a crumbling plaster fire surround that, a couple of centuries ago, would have been downright regal. Having it pressed against his spine meant nothing could creep up behind him. So that was a start. He ran a shaking hand through his short hair and tried to get his breathing under control. This was worse than his first ever combat mission. At least that time he’d had some real fucking bullets! This time, all he had was a useless M4 that kept doing a Bob Marley on him and jamming. He checked his leg holster — he still had the Blackhawk, but using that would mean getting up close with a Taint. Much closer than Terry wanted to be. Ever.

He pulled his head up off his chest, sniffed hard, took a deep breath and looked around. Okay. Freaking out wasn’t going to help. He could do that later at home, in Claire’s arms. Right now, he needed to survive long enough to make it out of the house in one piece.

But to do that, he needed to turn from hunted into hunter.

A soft click made every muscle in his body tense.

He brought the M4 up to his shoulder then remembered that it was nothing more than a fancy stick, thanks to a jammed trigger. He dropped the useless weapon and slid the Blackhawk out of its sheath. “Right, you bastard!” he muttered. “Ding fucking ding. Round two…”

Terry let the image of his friend being torn to pieces crash into the front of his mind. He let all the blind, white-hot anger, and all the choking rage pile up, and concentrated it into a single pinpoint of fury. ‘Use it. Control it. Focus it. Then unleash hell on the son of a bitch!’ Colby Flynn’s words came back to him. Day one. Combat tactics. Damn, that guy might be a hard-arse T.O., but he sure as hell knew his stuff.

Terry braced, ready to explode up and launch a deadly attack with the Blackhawk on the first Taint that showed its ugly face through the door…

“Whoa!” Flynn slid effortlessly into the room and, thanks to lightning reflexes, years of training and battlefield experience, and a healthy sense of self-preservation, just managed to spring back in time to avoid getting sliced and diced by Warner’s Blackhawk.

“Sir!” Warner immediately retracted the knife and spluttered an apology. “Shit! I’m sorry! I thought you were Binky! I… shit, did I miss you? Tell me I missed you! Did I miss you?”

“It’s okay, you missed. But nice backswipe.” Colby flashed a humourless grin at the man. “Bank that one, Warner. We may need it again before the night’s out.” He put a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes, sir.” Warner’s voice trembled slightly, but his jaw muscle twitched and his stance was solid. He might have failed the VR simulation, but he’d come through his first encounter with a real Taint with added fire in his belly. “How did you find me?”

“Fella, you’re leaving a trail a blind man could follow.” Colby pointed down at the man’s boots.

“Shit. Sorry.” Warner examined the bottom of his boots. They were still wet with his friend’s blood. “Sir, Robbie—”

Colby’s voice softened. “I know, mate. I found him.” Flynn reached into his pocket and pulled out Robbie Moore’s dog tags. He looked down at them for a moment, and then held them out to Warner. “He was your oppo, Terry. You should hold onto these for him until we get out of here.”

Warner closed his hand around the tags and cleared his throat, choking back his emotions. “Thank you, sir.”

Colby sniffed sharply. “Right then.” He pressed his radio squawk button. “Yol, I’ve got Warner. He’s alive. Sound’s like we’ve got…” He paused and looked at Warner, who held up a single finger. Colby nodded. “Yeah, we’ve got a single Taint that we know of. We’re on level one, the old drawing room in the north wing. The Taint is…” Again he looked at Warner, who pointed up, held up two fingers, and then rotated his flattened hand from side to side. Colby responded with another nod and carried on talking into his radio. “We think he’s two levels up. Get the team to come in through the side entrance and meet us in the back stairwell.”

“Copy that.”

“And bring guns. Lots and lots of big, shiny guns.” Colby released the button and looked at Warner. “You and I are going to meet up with the rest of Alpha Unit. They’re going to give you a live payload for that M4–”

“This bloody thing’s defective, sir. Misfired on me. I had to use the other end to hit the Taint in the face.” Warner shrugged. “It seemed like a good thing to do. Ya know. Therapeutic.”

Colby raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Adda boy. Okay, so we’ll get you a damn gun that actually works, and then how about you and me go find Binky and blow its head off? Ya know. For Robbie. You up for that, mate?” As pep talks went, it wasn’t Colby’s finest. But he knew it would appeal to the lad and his desire to get even with the Taint.

Warner’s face hardened. “Yes, sir!”

“Good on ya. Righty-ho, let’s go and find the lads.”

“Sir?”

Colby stopped and turned. “Yes?”

Warner looked thoughtful for a moment. “When we first got briefed about Taints, the implication was they were pretty non-communicative, right?”

“Yep, they’re not known for their sparkling after-dinner conversation skills and witty repartee. Why?”

“Binky spoke to me.”

“He what?”

“He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

Warner did a quick impression of how the creature at pointed at him. “You. Next.” He lowered his arm. “A bit like ET. Only with teeth.” Warner sniffed. “That kinda surprised me, sir.”

Colby nodded. “It kinda surprises me too, Terry.” Colby scowled. “Right now, I’m not intending to debate with the bugger, just kill it. Shall we?” He pointed at the open door, and Warner nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

The two men jogged out of the room and into the corridor, Colby leading with the Glock 17 held straight out, and Warner bringing up the rear…

“I have never been so damn happy to see your ugly face, Micky! And Gary. Good-o. Where’s Dan and Sean?” Colby hopped down the last two steps and into the open space of the stairwell. Warner followed and stood quietly, waiting to be introduced to the legends that were Alpha Unit.

“Covering the exits with Bravo team. Good to see your flabby arse in one piece too, boss.” Micky grinned and clapped his friend on the shoulder.

Colby jerked a thumb back at his silent partner. “Mick, this is Terry Warner. Give him a gun. A big, honking gun with a shit-load of ammo. He’s coming with. And he gets first shot at Binky, okay?”

“Oh, so now you’re calling him Binky?”

Gary Parks, a huge, hulking, ebony-skinned man with a passion for killing Taints and blowing things up, frowned. “Who’s Binky?”

“The Taint.” Colby shook his head and pointed at Micky Cox. “Mate, don’t ask me. Ask that daft bastard.”

Gary grinned. “Hey, you can call it whatever the hell you want. All I know is we’ve got a live one. The guv’nor is scanning the CCTV from the control room. If she picks anything up, she’ll shout.” He handed Warner an adapted C8 carbine. “Live jackets. Make ‘em count.” He put a huge hand on the lad’s shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look. “Sorry about your oppo, mate”

“Thanks. And it’s a real honour to meet you, sir.” Warner slung the C8 over his shoulder and held out a hand. Gary Parks gave him a firm, brief handshake and then grinned again.

“Save the fanboy stuff for later, kiddo.” He looked at Colby. “Boss?”

“Hold up.” He pressed his radio. “Yol, we’re ready. Anything?”

“Movement on level two. Looks like it’s making for the central stairwell and the main exit. No other heat signatures, so you’re right, you’ve got a solo.”

“Copy that.” Colby turned back to Mick and Gary. “Okay lads, let’s tag-team this one. He’s just eaten,” Colby threw an apologetic look at Warner and then immediately carried on, “Sorry, fella — so he’ll be slow. These second-gen Taints have a metabolism issue, so after feeding they slow down for about half an hour.”

“I’m like that after a NAFFI steak and kidney pie. Takes me a good hour to digest it.” Micky sniffed.

“Mick, for Christ’s sake, show a bit of respect!” Colby smacked Micky around the ear. “Oh, and one other thing. Apparently, this one can talk.”

“You’re shitting me!” Gary raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“According to Warner here, yep.”

“Okay then. Let’s see if we can get the fucker to say ‘please don’t shoot me in the face’ before you blow it to pieces, how about that?”

“Sounds good to me.” Warner nodded and then looked to Colby for orders. “Sir?”

Colby grinned. “Lead on, Warner. You’re on point. Gary, bring up the rear. Eyes on.”

The four men threaded their way out of the stairwell and into the main corridor that ran from the North Wing to the central section of the house. Warner knew that he had three of the best Taint hunters in the country behind him. And that made him feel a whole lot better about his chances of surviving his first live hunt.

Terry Warner held up a fist and the four-man team stopped dead. He turned back to Colby, pointed at his eyes and then flicked his fingers forward. He then held the flat of his hand back at Flynn, and Colby — grim-faced and serious for a change — nodded and adjusted the grip on the Glock.

Alone, but knowing the team were just inches behind him and ready to back him up if things got serious, Warner stalked into the centre of the main entrance hall. To his right a grand staircase flowed up towards a landing, where it split into two. Carved balustrades that once formed the perfect backdrop to the grand entrances of debutantes in swirling taffeta dresses now stood peeling and battered by time. Through the huge glass windows the moonlight shone in, turning the whole world into a monochrome checkerboard of stark black shadows and illuminated silver-grey patches.

Warner stood in the middle of the house’s once-grand entrance hall and scanned the shadows. He rotated three-sixty degrees, the C8 pushed hard into his shoulder and the safety most definitely off this time. His finger lay alongside the trigger housing, ready to slide effortlessly onto the curved steel and squeeze as soon as he saw Binky’s snarling face. He stared along the barrel and muttered. “C’mon, c’mon, where are you, you ugly bastard?” He sang softly, “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”

A voice called out softly and Warner glanced back at the team. “Stairs!” Colby pointed up to the staircase’s landing.

Bathed in moonlight and looking like a ghastly silver wraith, the Taint slowly raised its head and stared straight at Warner. On either side the stairs curled gracefully away into black shadows. But the landing, which faced the huge windows of the entrance, was drenched in a soft, silvery glow. The Taint gave Warner that poisonous, vicious smile once again and raised a sinewy arm. A single talon pointed straight at Warner and the Taint hissed. “You. Die. Now.”

“Oh, ya think, motherfucker?” Warner smiled back. It wasn’t a nice smile. Visions of his friend’s violated body crashed into his mind and he felt that white-hot anger boiling back up again. Focus. Use the anger. Focus… He aimed the snout of the C8 straight at the creature, which let out a gurgling, rasping laugh.

“Broken!” It pointed at the gun. “You. Die. Now.”

The Taint let out a howl and leapt, clearing the stairs in one bound and hitting the slippery, black and white floor at a flat run. It hurtled towards Warner, a murderous look on its face and venom-laden talons outstretched.

“Boss!” Gary and Micky threw Colby frantic looks. “Col, the kid’s a candidate! He’s not trained for this!”

“Wait out. This one’s his.” Colby watched, but the Glock was trained on the Taint, just in case. He wanted Warner to take this bastard down, but if the damn thing got too close…

In the centre of the hallway, Warner held his ground, legs slightly apart and knees bent. He watched the Taint get closer… closer… closer…

Warner slid his index finger into the curl of the trigger. “Broken, huh? Well, guess what, arsehole? Wrong gun!”

The C8 let out two shouts as Warner squeezed the trigger twice for a double tap. Both bullets, laden with organophosphur, slammed into the Taint’s chest, sending it flying backwards, its grotesquely muscled arms flung outwards and its head back. The mouth was still open and the damn thing was still screaming blue bloody murder.

Warner slowly lowered the C8 and watched the fireworks, his mouth set in a grim smirk.

The Taint hit the bottom stair and spasmed. The organophosphur sent spiders of fire crawling up underneath his skin, a vivid gold that looked even brighter in the muted, silver half-light of the hallway. The Taint squirmed and thrashed as the liquid fire reached its neck and face. Its back arched so hard that the creature’s heels almost touched the back of its head. It writhed and thrashed in agony as its skin started to bubble. Finally, the spiders-web of fire underneath its skin filled every vein and artery, and it went into a violent, bone-breaking, heel-drumming fit. With a last ear-splitting howl, the creature exploded. Grey ash filled the hallway, coating every surface with a thick blanket of dust.

Warner watched the creature’s violent death throws and its explosive demise impassively. As the dust motes danced in the moonlight and floated down, he smiled. “That’s for Robbie.” He opened his hand and looked down at the dog tags, still encrusted in his friend’s dried blood. While the creature had been thrashing and screaming, he’d slipped his hand into his pocket, clutched the round metal discs into his hand and held on to them tight, feeling the edges pressing into the palm of his hand. Now, he slipped them back into his pocket for the last time and turned to Alpha Team.

Colby emerged from the shadows and walked across the floor, his footsteps making the softest of sounds and the Glock still in his right hand, just in case Binky had friends. He stopped in front of Warner and put his left hand on the lad’s shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Colby gave him a gentle smile. “You did good there, fella.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Think you could do that again?”

“Yes, sir. All day long.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Colby’s face split into a wide grin and he looked back towards Gary and Micky. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a new team member, lads. Waddya say?”

“I’d say he did pretty good.” Gary grinned and rested his M4 over his shoulder. “Mick?”

“Anyone who can face down a Taint in full yah-hoo mode is good in my book.” Micky nodded and gave Warner a thumbs up.

Colby turned back to Warner. “Looks like you passed, fella. If those two oiks say you’re good to go, you’re good to go.” He holstered the Glock. “Right then. Get Bravo team in here to do a sweep. Top to bottom. I want this place locked down until we’re absolutely sure it’s clear, okay?” His face darkened for a second. “And get a detail in to retrieve Corporal Moore’s remains.”

He looked at Warner. “We all lose friends, mate. That’s the way this gig works. You know what you’re signing up for now. You’ve got a missus and a kid. Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”

Warner took a last look at the pile of ash that was all that was left of ‘Binky’. A draught blowing from underneath the broken front door was already dispersing the fine ash. In seconds, it was as if the creature had never existed.

Warner looked straight back at Colby, a determined look in his eyes. He was damned if his little boy was going to grow up in a world where these… things… existed. He’d seen what they could do first hand. His first hunt had gone from VR exercise to horrific reality in seconds. And if it could happen here, it could happen on the streets where his boy played, and where his wife walked.

No.

No, he couldn’t let that happen.

He would hunt these damn things until the day he died.

Terry Warner swallowed hard and nodded at Colby.

“Yes, sir. I’m sure.”