Hood scanned the surrounding area, spotting more spent shells scattered along the passage continuing forward. Hundreds of rounds had been fired, and it was difficult to imagine that any enemy force could have withstood such an intense barrage.
Conspicuously absent were any indications that the enemy had returned fire. There were no bullet holes or graze marks on the walls of the passage, and no glistening pools of blood drying on the ground. He should have been gratified by the absence of the latter, but Phantom’s insistence that the Monster Squad had been killed made it seem only ominous.
“Everyone hold up here,” Hood said. He had to speak louder than a whisper in order to project his voice from the mask, and was sorely tempted to remove it, but with this first sign of combat and the knowledge that something terrible had subsequently happened, he knew it was even more important to take precautions.
Careful to avoid stepping on any of the brass, he resumed moving forward, his rifle at the high ready. A few more steps brought him within sight of a rightward bend in the passage. The left wall had been savaged by bullets and the floor beneath was covered with chips of stone and twisted bits of copper and steel — fragments from dozens of M80A1 penetrator rounds. He moved cautiously, inching around the bend, and then froze in his tracks as his light revealed a black puddle on the rubble-strewn floor, and in it, an outstretched hand.
The appendage was barely recognizable. The flesh had been shredded, presumably by bullets, and two fingers were missing entirely, torn away to reveal ragged tissue and splintered bone.
Another cautious step revealed the arm, likewise savaged by the relentless fusillade. The limb protruded from a ragged garment that definitely wasn’t one of the Monster Squad’s coveralls.
One more step brought the rest of the body into full view.
It looked as if the man had been turned inside out. The clothing, saturated with blood, lay in shreds around ragged chunks of flesh and bone fragments. Hood did not doubt that this had been one of the IS fighters, but short of a DNA test, there wasn’t enough left of the man to make any kind of positive identification. The wall beyond was stained with splatter patterns, but not enough to account for the level of damage done to the body.
They kept shooting after he was down, Hood realized. He could understand taking a confirmation shot to make sure a downed enemy was really dead — not strictly legal under the laws of war, but easily justified — but this level of savagery was inexplicable.
There was another body, similarly destroyed, right behind the first, and as Hood took another careful step toward it, he saw two more just a little further down the passage.
None of them held weapons, which Hood found a little unusual. It was unlikely that any of the enemy weapons would have survived the full-on cyclic assault, and he couldn’t imagine Wolfman taking the time to have his team collect non-functional weapons, but then again, he couldn’t imagine any elite operations team doing what he now beheld. Never mind the carnage, it was poor fire discipline. You might blow through a few mags in response to an ambush, but you didn’t waste ammunition turning already dead enemies into hamburger. But the Monster Squad had apparently done exactly that, and then taken the enemy weapons and any remaining ammunition with them.
Hood looked past the bodies and could distinctly make out a trail of dark spots — bloody footprints — leading further into the passage. The Monster Squad had walked through the blood of the fallen enemy and continued on their way, heading toward whatever it was that had killed them. The passage widened and then diverged at a Y-intersection, but strangely, the bloody footprints went both directions.
Hood backed out of the passage and signaled for the others to join him. He noted that Mad Dog and Bender began moving before Rollie could pass on the silent command, and easily avoided stepping on any of the brass as they came forward. Evidently, the lichen was providing more than enough light for them to see by.
As the three men approached, Hood warned them about the bodies. “Four EKIA in here. It’s pretty messy, so watch where you step.”
“What killed them?” asked Mad Dog, no longer whispering.
Hood looked back at his friend. Mad Dog was looking at the bodies, the green dots that were his eyes darting this way and that as he surveyed them. There was real, unguarded anxiety in his expression. “Don’t you mean who?”
“You think bullets did this?” Mad Dog spoke rapidly, sounding faintly breathless. To anyone else, his apprehension would probably have seemed appropriate under the circumstances, but Hood had seen his friend stay cool under far more intense conditions.
“I know it. They shot the shit out of them.”
Mad Dog shook his head. “There’s something else in here with us. Something inhuman.”
“He’s right,” said Bender. “I think whatever it was got to them.” He pointed down at the bodies. “Turned them into—”
He shook his head, unable to articulate what he was thinking, but Mad Dog picked up the thread. “Monsters,” he said, nodding. “That’s what happened. That bitch figured out how to do it, how to turn people into actual monsters. She used it on her friends and set them loose in here.”
Hood frowned behind his mask but gave the bodies another look. There wasn’t enough left of the insurgent fighters to confirm whether they had undergone some kind of physical transformation, but the hypothesis accounted for the seemingly excessive use of firepower. It also provided an explanation for why there were no weapons near the bodies and no indication of return fire.
But monsters? Hood thought. It didn’t seem possible.
“Four,” Rollie said. “We saw eight hostiles come in here. If they were all turned, then there could be four more.”
“At least four,” Mad Dog said. “For all we know, Doctor Tox has herself a regular monster factory in here.”
“At least we know they can be killed,” Bender said.
“Yeah,” Mad Dog replied. “With a shit ton of rounds. The Monster Squad burned through their ammo fighting these four. One of the others must have gotten them.”
“All of them?” countered Bender.
“If they were black on ammo,” said Rollie, “they should have gotten the hell out.”
“Maybe they couldn’t. Maybe those things—”
“At ease,” snapped Hood, silencing the discussion. “Enough. We don’t know what happened here. We don’t know that there are monsters running around in here, so knock it off with bogeyman stories.”
He thought the rebuke would end the discussion, but after just a few seconds, Rollie said, “If you’re right, then it wasn’t gas that killed them. We can take the masks off.”
“We don’t know—” was all Hood managed to say before Rollie had his helmet and pro-mask off and was inhaling the unfiltered air.
“Ugh, you’re right. That’s putrid.”
“It’s worse here,” Mad Dog agreed, “but only because of them.” He jerked a thumb at the remains on the cavern floor.
Rollie blinked several times and squinted into the darkness. “You don’t think those things can smell us, do you?”
“I wouldn’t rule anything out. Stay on your toes. Once your eyes adjust, you’ll see better without the NVGs.” Mad Dog turned to face Hood, seemingly looking him straight in the eye as if to prove his point.
Hood resisted the urge to grind his teeth in frustration, and returned his best poker face, easily done with the night vision device still covering his eyes. Mad Dog, in assuming the role of expert on the as-yet unproven metamorph-monster theory, had effectively usurped Hood’s place as leader. And yet, Hood couldn’t offer any evidence to the contrary.