SNAFU: Hunters

He held the trigger as the bonk whirled to the side and only one microgrenade found its mark, the others deactivating automatically as they missed the intended target. As it exploded the world disappeared from view and the car crashed down onto the pavement with a final crunch. Matt squirmed back and crushed the latch on the trunk with a knife-hand, tearing it free with a wince. Ignoring the bloody mess he’d made of his fingers he launched himself out, weapon raised toward the rooftops.

He fired and swept right over three targets, wishing for his tactical helmet with its Friend-or-Foe identifier and smart projectile guidance system. A man’s head exploded, raining bloody brains and chunks of skull from the rooftop before pitching back out of sight, but the other two took cover, unharmed. Shots rang out from the roof across the street, though at what target he couldn’t tell.

Footsteps rang behind him. On his back, he rolled his head to take aim at the charging bouncer, eight-hundred-plus pounds moving at twenty-something miles an hour. He triggered the rounds to explode ‘downward’ toward the sky and pulled the trigger. The weapon barely recoiled against his shoulder, and a dozen shots flew in two seconds. The depleted uranium-tipped rounds punched into the bonk’s legs and abdomen and then erupted in a bloody mist. The massive thing stumbled mid-stride, left femur and part of its hip exposed by the rapid disintegration of intervening flesh.

Matt fired twice more, punching up under the fused bones of its ribcage to pulp the heart and lungs. With any luck the trauma would be enough to bring it down.

The whispers tittered in hateful glee and he jerked his legs up, but his injured left knee didn’t respond. The shredded remains of his Impala came down on top of it in an explosion of wet red pain, erasing everything below his lower thigh in a gory smear across the concrete. Black spots formed in his vision, but he jerked up the shotgun – and found no targets. Blue sky and scattering civilians filled his vision over the demolished car.

As the arteries pumping life from his body closed and meat formed around undeveloped bone, he lay back and panted, trying to circumvent the unbearable, itching agony of bleeding, knitting flesh. His vision darkened, but he forced his eyes to remain open and trained on the rooftop. His view remained empty, devoid of targets.

In the distance, sirens wailed.

He slid to a sitting position, his right hand on the stock of the AA-12, and looked down at the tattered remains of his leg. The muscle writhed, ropy masses weaving together only to split, bleeding, as the bone grew between them.

A shadow crossed his vision. He looked up.

Conor shook his head, frowning, every inch of him covered in bright red blood. He smiled, white teeth glinting like the metallic sheen on his sword in the fading sunlight. “You let him get away. You going to do your job or what?”

Biting back his vulgar reply, Matt allowed his head to drop to the sidewalk, filling his vision with clear blue sky. “Call it in. And put that damned sword away – the cops are en route.”

* * *

Hurya al-Azwar stepped down from the helicopter and surveyed the carnage wrought by Conor Flynn. Five dead men sprawled across the rooftop, policemen already marking evidence with little yellow tags – shell casings, severed limbs, discarded weapons. Red stains marred the gravel in an expanding spiral that ended in the shredded remains of a giant black man, a third of his head three meters further away, remaining eye wide open in unending shock, mouth open to reveal serrated steel teeth bolted into his jaw.

“How many did they get?” She nodded toward the corpse.

Sergeant Karle frowned down at the dead bonk. “Two, plus nearly a dozen normals. All fatalities. Conor’s unhurt, Matt will be fine in an hour or so if we stuff enough food in him.”

“This was recon. What the hell happened?”

Karle held up his hands. “Conor Flynn happened. Matt said he picked a fight.”

“Remind me to never do that.” She nudged the dead bonk with her toe. “Intel didn’t even know about this one. What’s a big black guy doing Augging-up in a Latin gang?”

Karle grunted. “Tell Platt and Washington to make nice with the locals. I’m going to see if we can’t get Conor and Matt out of custody.”

“Aye, sir.”

* * *

The map appeared on Matt’s HUD as Karle spoke in his ear piece. The Mako Kings controlled a nine-block area just outside of downtown, and ruthlessly crushed any and all opposition regardless of whether or not they were law enforcement, rival gangs, or even the cartels. Pioneers in nationwide Jade distribution, they’d partnered with Dawkins’s organization to spread like a virus from Chicago to both coasts and everywhere in-between. With an irresistible product and superhuman augmentation they destroyed their competition and carved out an empire from the ashes of burning ghettos.