Rus yanked his combat blade free from a Goblin's skull, its body collapsing in a twitching heap.
This one had been stupid. Rushed him with a rusty knife, all piss and rage.He dodged, slit its throat, then finished it with a quick stab through the temple.
No point in wasting bullets on vermin.
He made his way back to the Humvee, shaking blood off his armored hands.
Gino was already unloading a flamethrower, directing a roaring column of fire into the ruins where the Goblins had nested. The flames licked up the broken walls, turning everything into a searing, crackling inferno.
Dan grabbed another flamethrower from the truck, turning to Foster.
"Get the little ones out here," he ordered.
Foster laughed like a giddy child on Christmas. He started dragging the tiny Gobbers out from the ruined structure, tossing their twitching, barely-breathing bodies into a pile.
He wiped a bloody hand on his pants. "Why the hell do we have to drag these little fuckers out?"
Dan shrugged, nodding toward the recovery unit rolling in.
A convoy of armored trucks parked beside their squad's Humvee. The doors swung open, and a team of researchers in power armored suits stepped out, moving toward the pile of Gobber younglings with professional detachment.
One of the eggheads crouched down, inspecting the pile.
"This one will do," he muttered.
He picked up a doll-sized Goblin, barely larger than his forearm. The thing whimpered, weak and trembling. He marked it with a red X, shoved it into a steel cage, and gave Dan a nod.
The rest?
They burned.
Dan unleashed the flamethrower, the whooshing roar of ignited fuel drowning out everything else. The little shits screeched, their tiny limbs convulsing as they curled into charred husks, their flesh bubbling and blackening in seconds.
Foster winced. "Kinda fucked up."
Gino smirked. "Also wicked."
Rus exhaled, watching the smoke rise. "Tell me about it. We've been bombing the shit out of everything, but we still haven't seen those other things."
Gino stretched his arms, rolling his shoulders. "Yeah, well. Those things are rare, man. We just got unlucky that time."
Rus didn't like that word, unlucky.
Made it sound like they had no control.
And he fucking hated feeling powerless. He felt that the more he stayed in this place, the more he'd lost his patience enough not to care about the shit that sounds out of his mouth.
Dan's flamethrower ran out of fuel. He turned back to the Humvee, reloaded the tank, and went right back to burning everything in sight.
Dan liked fire way too much.
Foster made a disgusted face. "Shit, man, you got any paper towels?"
Rus dug through their supplies, tossing him a can of disinfectant spray. SOP required them to douse themselves in the stuff after encounters like this.
Standard protocol.
Because they had no idea what kind of diseases these freaks carried.
Rus sprayed Foster down, then handed the can to Gino. He did the same for Rus. Dan finished torching a collapsed house, came back grinning, and got sprayed like a wet dog.
"Try not to burn yourself alive, pyro," Rus muttered.
Dan just barked a laugh.
HQ had officially greenlit a scorched earth policy for this entire region.
Not just the ruins. Not just the monsters.
Everything.
The forests around the outposts and makeshift forts we were setting up were gone. Reduced to ash.
The top brass had decided that forests were liabilities.
They gave cover to enemies. They gave food and shelter to Mutates. They gave them nothing.
So they were erasing them and turning them into farmland.
Sure, it would take years before anything grew back, but that wasn't their concern. They weren't here to preserve the land.
They were here to take it back.
As they wrapped up the operation, HQ sent out another update.
They had secured a nearby town, one that still had its old-world sign.
The name?
Damasa.
Normally, UH forces renamed these places. Wiped the history clean if they saw no records and started anew. But because the old welcome sign still stood, it meant someone back in the city could pull up records.
Compare evidence. Get a sense of history.
Not that it mattered much.
Because soon, whatever Damasa used to be?
It was just going to be another human outpost.
***
They drove to Damasa for supplies.
Ran through too much ammo, and Dan and Gino emptied their flamethrowers torching those freaks. They needed to restock, grab some rations, and maybe—just maybe—get a few hours of actual sleep.
Damasa already had barbed wire, prefab walls, and concertainers stacked high around the perimeter. A proper forward base, still smelling like freshly poured concrete and napalm. Troopers stood guard at the entrances, their rifles held lazily but eyes sharp.
Gunships whirred overhead, their engines a dull roar even from miles away.
Another day in the war to take back the world.
Before entering, they got hit with another hose of disinfectant spray. Standard procedure. Kill the stench, kill the bacteria and all of that.
Once parked, they went to the quartermaster with their resupply list and then sat around with the other troopers.
Gino tore open an MRE, barely glancing at what he was eating before digging in.
That's when he decided to bring up the freaks.
He pulled out his camera, showing the pics he took of the things they fought in the ruins. Most of them didn't even know he took any. But the other troopers were paying attention now.
Dan, chewing through his meal, broke it down for them.
"Fast, strong, smart. Don't fight like Gobbers. If you see something that moves like a fucking person, torch it. Just don't spray inside a building unless you wanna be extra crispy."
One of the troopers grunted. "Damn. You guys get all the fun shit."
Dan scoffed. "That ain't fun."
Apparently, they weren't the only unlucky bastards to run into something that wasn't standard extermination work.
One of the other squads had a different problem.
"Had to deal with a big-ass Mutate last week," one of the guys said. "Napalm didn't kill it. RPG didn't kill it. Took the whole squad dumping rounds into it before it finally dropped."
He pulled up an image on his device, and they all got a good look at it.
Nine feet tall. Six feet wide. Limbs thick as tree trunks.
The thing looked like a rotting meat sack held together by sheer spite. Its single, bulging eye was clouded, and its body was covered in scar tissue, boils, and deep gouges.
But the worst part?
The shit stains.
Big, nasty streaks running down its thighs.
"Goddamn," Gino muttered. "That thing must've smelled like actual death."
"Yeah," the guy continued. "Stench was so bad, we had to wear masks. But here's the weird part—"
He zoomed in on the lower body.
"Why's it missing its dick?" someone asked.
The guy shook his head. "The Recovery Unit cut it off."
They all went silent.
"Wait," Dan said. "They cut off its dick and balls?"
"Yup."
"Why?"
"Studying it, apparently."
Foster made a disgusted face. "Man, that's fucking weird."
Another trooper groaned. "Tell me about it. It's one thing to kill the fucker, but then some nerds show up, slice off its junk, and ship it back to HQ? Not cool, man."
"Yeah," Rus muttered. "Even we have limits."
Apparently, desecrating a monster's dick and balls was where they all drew the line.
After eating, they headed back to the Humvee, setting up their camo tents and laying out their sleeping bags.
Took off their armor, chainmail, webbing, and harnesses and stretched out.
A Battalion Commander passed by, reminding them to maintain their gear.
Rus didn't even open his eyes.
Internally? Hel told him to fuck off.
Externally? Hejust nodded and saluted lazily.
Then he passed out.
Rus woke up to the sound of gunfire and the rumble of supply trucks moving in and out.
Muscles aching. Bones burning. Mouth dry as hell.
He crawled out of his sleeping bag, grabbed a pot of instant coffee, and shoved rye bread into his mouth.
PX had bacon and eggs, so he traded some of his smokes for a meal that actually tasted like food.
Then, back to the Humvee to clean his rifle, sharpen his blade, and check his electric baton/spear and shield.
The sun was already brutal, baking the dirt into dry, cracked patches. The smell of hot dust and exhaust fumes stuck to the air.
By ten-hundred hours, they were gathered in a large tent, where their Battalion Commander droned on about the importance of capturing targets alive.
As the BC went on. Rus thought he had no fucking clue why he was here.
Rus was trained for riot control.
Crowd suppression.
Urban law enforcement.
Not this.
Dan leaned in, muttering under his breath. "Man, we should be fucking around in Libertalia right now."
Rus sighed.
Instead, they were stuck in this shithole.
Dan nudged him with his elbow. "You get any of that?"
"Nope."
"Same."
Gino leaned forward. "Think he'd notice if we just walked out?"
"Yes," Rus muttered. "And he'd have our asses for it."
"Shame."
The Commander kept talking.
Eventually, they were dismissed, but not before being given new orders.
More clearing operations.
More search and destroy.
More scorched earth.
They were heading south of Damasa which was a stretch of ruined towns and abandoned farmlands that had become a breeding ground for monsters.
SOP was simple: If it moves, kill it.
If it doesn't? Burn it just in case.
They packed up, loaded into the Humvee, and rolled out.
The convoy stretched down the highway—multiple teams, multiple armored vehicles, all heading into the wasteland.
Inside the Humvee, the mood was the same as always.
Exhaustion. Resignation.
And bullshitting to pass the time. Gino started talking again, which made Rus wanna cover his ears.
"So," Gino started, wiping the dust off his rifle. "You guys ever wonder why HQ's so obsessed with capturing monsters now?"
"Research," Foster said. "Same reason they chop off dicks and balls."
Dan shook his head. "Nah, I got a theory."
"Oh, here we go," Rus muttered.
Dan leaned back, smirking. "Think about it. Why capture them alive if all we ever do is exterminate them? That means someone, somewhere, thinks we might need them for something."
Gino raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"
Dan shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe they wanna experiment on 'em. Maybe they wanna tame 'em."
Foster scoffed. "We're not gonna tame fucking Goblins… right? Those living turds isn't going to be my fucking my meal."
"No, but think bigger," Dan said. "What if they're looking for something else? A way to control them? A way to use them?"
The Humvee fell silent for a second.
Because the fucked-up thing?
Dan wasn't wrong.
An hour later, they reached the next shitshow.
Ruined buildings. Scattered debris. The skeleton of what used to be a town before the war wiped it from history.
The place was quiet.
They parked the Humvee, climbed out, and started sweeping the area.
Rifles up.
Eyes scanning.
Every step kicking up dirt and ash.
Something felt off.
Gino was the first to notice it.
"The fuck is that smell?"
They all paused.
It wasn't just the usual stench of decay and old-world ruins.
It was stronger.
Like rotting meat left in the sun for days.
Dan stepped forward, his boots crunching over something wet.
They looked down.
It was a severed arm.
Not a Goblin.
Not human.
Something else.
Flesh pale and leathery, claws still twitching.
Dan muttered under his breath. "Well… that's new."
Foster took a step back. "This isn't from the bombing, is it?"
"No," I said. "This is fresh."
Rus looked around.
There was no blood trail. No tracks. Just random body parts scattered across the ruins.
Like something had hunted here.
And then he heard it.
A sound he never wanted to hear.
Clicking.
Low. Guttural.
Like something was talking.
Dan froze. "Oh, fuck me."
Rus gritted his teeth and turned to Gino. "Call it in."
"Already on it," he muttered, radioing HQ.
The clicking sounds grew louder.
And then, from the shadows—
Something moved.
Something big.
Something that wasn't supposed to be here.
Rus exhaled slowly, tightening his grip on his rifle and started blasting.