SNAFU: Hunters

The abomination’s abdomen had closed, cutting off the dead intestine and sealing over with fresh skin. It took a tentative, wobbly step forward. The train’s horn reverberated through the tunnel, too loud.

Matt took inventory: three combat knives, two 32-round magazines for a broken gun, no functional firearms. His knee no longer itched, but Pointy stood moments from full health.

As the train flashed between them, Matt bolted alongside, grabbed a handle and jerked himself aboard. He landed with his toes on the lip of the entry, pried the door open left-handed, and stepped inside. A half-dozen shocked faces gaped at his blood-spattered face and body armor.

“Go to the front car.” They stared, wide-eyed, but nobody moved. “NOW!”

The train lurched.

“GO!” Matt tore a stainless steel pole from the car and ran toward the back of the train. Ignoring the squeals of panic behind him, he stood alert, ready for bear.

Pointy’s head appeared in the rear window. Matt moved to dive forward, and the whispers chittered their approval as his body crushed into the rails, his brain splattering into the ground. Instead he backpedaled, shouldered open the door between cars, and gripped the handle to the coupling mechanism. The back door came off in a shriek of twisted metal, and Pointy threw it to the side.

Matt heaved, and the cars separated with a lurch.

The bonk pulled himself up onto the trailing car, quickly falling away into the distance, an almost quizzical look on his blockish face. Matt sighed in frustrated relief, alive but without his quarry.

And then the train braked, hard.

Matt shifted his weight to maintain balance as the other car gained ground, momentum carrying it forward as the train slowed to a stop. If the conductor didn’t have the sense to keep going, Matt would have to lead the bonk from the civilians on the train. He looked down at the pole, the best weapon he had, and suppressed a grimace. Better than nothing, but not by much. Not against that.

As the train ground to a halt he leapt out the back then darted left toward a side tunnel.

* * *

Miguel Salido watched the man in black armor fade into the distance, wielding a metal pole like a Ninja Turtle. He growled in curious frustration.

The high pitched squeal of brakes brought a low tremor to his throat; a laugh. The whispers rejoiced, a slithering, pernicious cacophony of psychotic bloodshed that got harder to ignore with every passing day, and though he couldn’t understand them, they urged him to slaughter every man, woman, and child on the train.

He crushed them to a disappointed mewling, forced himself to think like a rational person.

The man in black armor, the woman he’d crushed, Miguel had never encountered anyone like them. Through years of street fighting, standing guard over drug deals, rising in the ranks of the Mako Kings despite being Cuban, not Mexican, Miguel had always been bigger, tougher, more of a cabron than any bastard around. When Jade hit the streets and everyone started getting bigger, Miguel pushed the limits of musculoskeletal enhancement and backed it up with surgically-added barbed spikes in his wrists and titanium alloy plates under his skin.

But this man, not much bigger than most, had almost taken him down. One crazy gun and some kickass bullets helped balance the score, almost too much.

Since growing up in the shantytowns of Arroyo Naranjo, swiping fruit from stalls at the mercado to stave off scurvy and starvation, he’d come to appreciate the big things in life. In coming to the United States, his time with the Mako Kings had given him almost everything: a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Miami – despite his size he’d never had the team spirit for football – a mansion, three cars, all the gold, drugs, and pussy he could ever want. But since Jade, since augmentation, they couldn’t give him a challenge.

Sometimes it took the little things to bring a smile.

Miguel took off at a run. At twelve hundred pounds he couldn’t sprint much faster than your average Olympian, even with no body fat. But he knew these tunnels, had operated in Spanish City for two years, and his prey hadn’t. That had to count for something.

He slowed, approached the train at a jog, and cut left at the smell of the man, subtle deodorant and gun oil and blood tinged with an underlying spice he couldn’t quite place, like Jade but not. He followed the scent until it reached an access door, and stopped. Sized for normal men, it would constrict him, keep him from using his reach or bringing his full strength to bear. A perfect place for an ambush.

* * *

Conor Flynn watched as Pointy approached the doorway. The hulking monstrosity moved with a smooth grace at odds with its blocky form, silent in giant, almost comical basketball shoes. It cocked its head and waited, one hand on the door, listening or feeling for vibrations or something.