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.