SNAFU: Hunters

“Halt!” Blake ordered while DeShawn Williams panned around with the short periscope on the Stryker’s roof.

“Contact, my ass. There ain’t nothin’ out there.”

“What did you see, Marine?”

“A person, I think. It was real quick. They looked like they were crawling… like they were on all fours.”

“What’s up?” asked Borrows over the ‘com. “Why have we stopped?”

“Sir, we have a possible survivor. Lyons saw–”

“Where?” This time it was Carroll. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

“It was only for a second,” Lyons said. “Something moving in the dust storm.”

“Williams, you stay on that scope,” Blake ordered. “Fernandez, Howard, you’re with me. Prep the portable decontamination shower and get a spare suit ready. If there’s anyone alive out there I want to get as much dust off them as possible and get them inside a suit and breathing clean air.”

“Roger that,” said the two marines in unison.

After buttoning up their JSLIST suits and checking each other for breaches, they stepped out through the airlock into the radioactive storm. Blake made his way carefully around to the right of the Stryker, where Lyons had said he had seen his survivor. The wind was almost strong enough to knock him off his feet. It was like being sandblasted; all he could see was the swirling brown dust, and his ears were filled with a sound like static from countless tiny impacts.

“Williams, do you have eyes-on?” Blake asked over the ‘com.

“Negative, Sergeant.”

“Roger that. Switch to thermal, see if that helps.”

“Switching to thermal imaging.”

Blake scanned his surrounds, but could see nothing except the swirling dust until Carroll and Burrows advanced around the Stryker’s nose – both had their rifles raised. Blake imagined what the Stryker would look like to a survivor, let alone the five strange figures, armed and masked with bulky re-breathers. Whoever was out there would be scared shitless.

“Lower your weapons,” Blake said over the ‘com.

“Son, you’d better get back inside,” said Carroll. His voice was deep and calm, like the measured tones of a news anchorman.

Blake ignored him. “How’s the thermal camera looking, Marine?”

“Still sketchy. Wait… I got a signal but it’s moving too fast. Doesn’t look like— Holy shit!”

Blake caught movement at the edge of his visor – a flash of white cutting through the swirling storm, then it was on him.

It rode him down to the dirt. Hands clawed at him, gouging and ripping at the tough rubber of the JSLIST suit. A flailing limb caught his re-breather and knocked his whole mask upwards so the heavy rubber seal was across his eyes. He tasted dust. I’m exposed!

He pushed upwards, trying to free himself. Around the obscuring mask he caught fragments of his assailant: a white, hairless head with a terrible wound where the eyes should be – a wet crater above a mouth that was too wide and filled with broken ridges of what might once have been teeth. Long fingers encircled his throat. He wanted to gag from the sand in his mouth but he couldn’t muster the breath. The sand got inside his mask making the world dark… or maybe it wasn’t the sand.

The sound of a shot cut through his foggy senses. The weight and pressure left him and he sucked in a great gulp of air only to cough it back out as the sand hit the back of his throat. Blake rolled to his knees, hacking and spluttering. Then someone was at his side squirting water into his mouth and yelling at him to spit. He managed to clear his mouth while the boom of Carroll’s big calibre rifle echoed around him. Specialist Howard slapped an oxygen mask over Blake’s mouth and he took his first clean breath. His head cleared enough for him to cleanse and re-set his own mask.

When he turned around Carroll and Burrows were standing over the body of the survivor.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Blake yelled. “You just shot a fucking civilian.”

They both looked back at him, inscrutable behind their masks.

“Look at it, son,” Carroll said.

Blake ignored him. “Some goddamn farmer or hitchhiker manages to ride out the shockwave from a nuclear blast, poor bastard, and then you come along with your big-ass elephant gun and blow half a dozen holes through him. What the fuck do you think we’re doing here?”

“Just look at it.”

Blake dropped his gaze to the body sprawled in the dirt. It was naked, clothes burned off, Blake guessed. It lay sprawled at an unnatural angle – the legs bent back as if on broken knees. How could it have moved so fast with injuries like that? It was impossible and yet it had happened.

“Jesus!” Howard said from somewhere behind Blake. “What could do that to a person? The blast? The heat pulse? Dude’s fucked up.”

“It’s not a person,” Carroll said. Burrows shot a glance at the man, but said nothing.

“What do you mean?” Blake asked. “If it’s not a person then what the hell is it?”

“Careful, Carroll,” Burrows said.

“What does it matter?” The old dude said, “they’re all dead anyway. The least we can do is let them die knowing they done some good.”