SNAFU: Hunters

“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.