SNAFU: Hunters

Supposedly turned into pink mist when Gary Parks blew ten colours of crap out of both him and Tokat Castle a year earlier, the granddaddy of all vampires had in fact managed to avoid being obliterated by being remarkably quick on his feet for an old fella. That news came as a shock to Flynn and the lads. Yes, Yolanda had explained, he’d been seriously injured, but not, as they’d first thought, killed. After spending several weeks recuperating in the labyrinth of Tokat Castle, he had eventually managed to chew his way through enough local villagers to replenish his severely injured body with new cells, and then proceeded to snack his way across Europe. The Unit had tracked him. It wasn’t hard – they’d just followed the screams and the trail of dismembered body parts. Eventually he landed in Dover. The carnage he left behind in the Channel Tunnel took a week to clean up.

Now, after a meeting of minds and – somehow – bodies between Lucy and Vlad (which was a sex tape nobody wanted to see, and thankfully there was no PowerPoint slide to reinforce that particularly disturbing mental image), the second-generation Taints had a much more elaborate set of skills. Not only were they demented killing machines thanks to mummy, but daddy had also given them the ability to use tactics. Up until that point Taints were pretty moronic. They had one thing and one thing only on their minds, and that was the dinner gong. Once Vlad’s genes had blended with Lucy’s, the second generation Taints were intelligent enough to use some pretty advanced military tactics too.

Any questions?

Flynn and the lads had sat in silence, before Micky slowly raised a hand and asked, “Um, how do we kill ‘em?”

All of that was academic, though.

Right here, right now, in the winding, crumbling corridors of the kill house, if Colby really was facing a warm body, a real-life ‘Binky’ instead of Micky’s VR version, then he was in trouble. A shit-load of trouble…

He glanced around. The blood trailed off into a side room, like a grotesquely sticky trail of breadcrumbs. Colby had that twisted, knotted sensation in the pit of his stomach. Warner and Moore weren’t armed up for warm bodies. The M4 shotgun capsules they carried were full of coloured water, not the organophosphur compound that would send a Taint into a heel-drumming, party-popping frenzied death throw. This was meant to be a relatively safe environment, so live ammo wasn’t issued to the candidates.

Colby, however, never went anywhere without a full clip and one in the pipe. And the Blackhawk. Obviously.

Like Dorothy following the yellow brick road but minus the ruby slippers, he padded silently alongside the body-width smear of blood that led into a side room, his heart sinking further with every cat-like, crossover step. He kept the snout of the Glock up, ready and waiting to spit out a swarm of adapted hollowpoints packed full of organophosphur at the first bastard that moved. If it was human, it would cop a bullet wound accompanied by a pungent garlicky odour, which would probably disinfect the wound on contact. If it was a Taint, though, there’d be the whole blowing up shit with a side order of heel drumming and screaming, even if he only winged the bastard.

A mess on the floor made Colby stop in his tracks. “Damn…” He crouched and saw straight away that the mess was what was left of one of the newbies. Which one wasn’t clear on first inspection. There was very little that was still recognisable as human. It looked like an explosion in a butcher’s shop. Trails of intestines were laid out like strings of sausages, while all that remained of the man’s liver was a few tattered shreds clinging to a flack jacket that had been sliced into ribbons. Colby scanned the room for movement and pressed the squawk button on his radio. “Man down. Kill house is hot. Repeat, kill house is hot.”

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?”