There were three of us on the mission.
We’d been briefed at the base as dusk fell by an officer none of us had ever met before.
“You will parachute in tonight,” he told us. “Your target is a scientist whose speciality is mixing up batches of new and very experimental chemicals for a country whose aims do not align with our own. We would like to persuade him to work for us. We would like to do this in person on home soil. You will go in quick and clean and you will extract him. His location will be provided when you are in transit.”
We were not asked if we had any questions.
Thirty minutes later we were onboard and in the air. An NCO came over to join us. He took out a Tablet.
“This a satellite image taken six months ago,” he said. “We were hoping to provide you with an up to date visual and had new a new image taken forty-eight hours ago, but there was a dense mist obscuring everything so this one will have to do.”
He had a real good old country boy accent that in other circumstances could have been quite charming.
Hunched over in the gloomy interior of the plane he was all business.
“Your area of operation is laid out around a simple grid system. There are low level apartments running the length of the main streets, with shops where the streets meet centrally to form a kind of town square. There’s a couple of bars as well, a clinic, a funeral parlour and a school. Everything you need for a rich and fulfilling life.
“Your target lives in one of the larger houses ringing the west of town. These are all in their own grounds. His workplace is another mile out, just on the outskirts. It presents itself as a simple plant manufacturing chemicals for use in the agricultural industry but, really, it’s a research facility. There are armed guards on duty twenty-four seven and they can keep patrolling in total ignorance of your activity if everything goes to plan.
“Once you have secured the target, there will be a ride out waiting at your exit point. This is twenty miles south, just over the border and into a country that we’re on slightly better terms with. We wouldn’t invite them over for a beer on a Friday night. But we also wouldn’t go fetch the shotgun if we saw them in our yard.
“As for your entry point. That will the Old Town, to the North-East. There’s a bunch of houses here that are long abandoned and a church and a graveyard, both still in use. So, the only people you’re in danger of disturbing here are the dearly departed.
“And that’s it, apart from the usual words of encouragement: If you’re detained there will be absolute denial from our side. You’re on your own.”
None of us said anything in reply. For my part I’d been taking part in covert operations for more than ten years and nothing about this came as any surprise to me. Don’t get me wrong, it stank. But this was my job. If I’d wanted an easy life, I would have been teaching bored housewives to play golf somewhere sunny.
I closed my eyes, slowed my breathing, and tried to rest.
Two hours later, the signal came. It was time to jump out of a perfectly comfortable plane.
The descent and landing went by the book and within minutes our parachutes were hidden and we were moving silently through the graveyard.
A gargoyle perched over a tomb was giving me a dirty look. I didn’t take it personally. Its face was made for scowling.
To our left, the church stood shrouded in darkness. The only lights were the stars in the sky and a quarter moon. That suited me just fine.
I took a sip of water – hydration is important even for spooks in the night – and jogged forwards. Soon we had reached the edge of the graveyard and the buildings of the town were visible ahead.
The glow of streetlamps settled on graffiti covered concrete walls rising two, sometimes three stories high. There were communal entrances. The skeleton of a bicycle lay on the ground near one door.
There were no lights on in any of the windows. No sign of anyone on the street. I checked my watch – it was three a.m., local time. Dawn was four hours away.
I signalled that we should proceed in single file, hugging the sides of buildings as we kept straight on down this street. Then it was second left and we would leave the low-rise apartment blocks behind, meaning we would be more exposed, but only five minutes from the target’s house.
I took the lead. Almost immediately held up a hand, calling a halt. There was a light in a street level window just ahead.
I came up alongside, glanced in. There was a man sitting in front of a flickering TV. I could see him side on. There were black dots on his face. They were moving and I realised with disgust what they were.
He had flies crawling on his skin and going into his mouth and his nostrils – and he was not reacting to this in any way.
I indicated we could move on and did not bother ducking down as I walked past the window. I did look back at the others and mouth the word: Corpse.
It looked like he’d died sitting on his backside watching the stupidity box and no one had noticed yet. Maybe when he started to smell, the neighbours would get the building owner to do something about it.
We carried on and reached the turning without encountering anything else of note. The tightly packed buildings fell away. There was open space ahead. Waste land to our left.
Actually, not waste land, I realised. There were goalposts for soccer at either end of a concrete strip, and trees and bushes that looked on their last legs but had clearly been planted in some kind of orderly pattern.
It was a park. A pretty grim one, but still…
“Sir,” one of the others whispered and pointed to the right.
This park, like parks all over the world, had benches.
There was a man sat on one of the benches. He wasn’t moving. Out for the count, I thought. Sleeping rough.
Maybe he had had a row with his wife and she would not let him back in, or maybe he’d just been too drunk to make it home.
We had no reason to wake him, and I was about to signal ‘move on’ when one of his legs jerked.
I swore under my breath when I saw what had caused this: A rat had its teeth clamped into one of the man’s ankles and was pulling at it.
I moved closer – and saw with horror that there were another two rats on the man’s stomach. They had chewed through his clothes and his skin and were eating his innards.
And the man was not moving – he must be dead as well, I figured.
I could also see by now that his eyes were open, but that meant nothing.
People died with their eyes open all the time.
The others were as transfixed as I by this hideous sight.
“Leave it,” I whispered. They nodded and turned away.
I was about to do the same – when the man blinked.
I would have sworn on everything that I hold dear, that he did. That his eyelids moved.
Only dead men do not blink.
I’d imagined it. I must have.
“Sir.” A new whisper broke my chain of thought. “Do we move on the target’s house now?”
I turned away from the man on the bench and the rats feeding on him.
“Yes,” I replied. “Let’s get this done and get out of here.”
We continued in silence. The houses around us were each in their own small grounds. Cars were parked by some.
The target’s house was dead ahead.
It was in darkness. Heavy wooden shutters covered the windows.
We circled it, checking for alarms, cameras, but there was nothing.
I gave the signal to go in.
The door took three kicks to break, and that was it. We were inside.
The darkness stretched on, along a hallway, past closed doors.
There was no reaction to our forced entry, no one had cried out or attacked us. Either the house was empty or the occupants were hiding.
The memories of flies and rats undisturbed on skin and flesh flashed through my mind.
I forced them away, ordered each room searched.
We found him in the bathroom, huddled down inside the shower basin. The shower curtain was drawn, as if that would make any difference.
The target was in his fifties and wearing a cheap looking suit. He had on little round spectacles and his grey hair stood up at crazy angles.
And was crying and shaking.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” I told him. “We’re going to take you for a little ride. Introduce you to your new best friends. Think of it as a move up the career ladder.”
Pep talk given, I smiled my best none-threatening smile.
He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand,” he said. “It’s not you I’m frightened of. Not you I’m hiding from. It’s them.”
He had lost me, but I did not have time to try and understand. We needed to get moving.
I grabbed his arm, began to pull him to his feet.
“Sir.” One of the men interrupted me. “We’ve got company.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Out on the street, we have eyes on them through the broken door.”
Dragging the target along with me, one hand clamped over his mouth to muffle his continuing protests, I went to look.
There was a figure out there, distant, but getting closer. I couldn’t make out any details. Male, female, young, old, armed or civilian.
I gave the order quietly, “We go out the back.”
We made our way to the rear of the house. Before unlocking the back door, one of the men opened a window shutter slightly, just enough to see through.
He swore then said, “There’s more.”
I looked past him, through the narrow line of exposed glass. I counted three figures, all heading our way.
Make that five.
“Did you invite your friends round for a party!” I muttered into the ear of the target.
He looked at me. I saw pure terror in his eyes.
And I made an instant decision.
I needed information.
“I’m going to move my hand,” I told him. “And you’re not going to cry out for help. You’re going to tell me what’s going on. Agreed?”
He nodded and I took my hand away.
He gulped and said, “As long as they didn’t know I was here I would be safe. But they must have seen you and now they’re coming.”
“You keep saying they.” I snapped at him. “What do you mean?”
“They used to be the ordinary people who lived in this town – until the accident,” he began then broke down in tears. “I’m so sorry,” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
I kept at him. “For what to happen?”
“There was a leak, one of the new chemicals I was working on. When it mixed with the outside air it turned into gas. Everywhere was thick with it. The people of the town thought it was just a mist and after a few hours the wind had carried it away. That was just the beginning. The beginning of the nightmare.”
He was about to go on, when I heard footsteps behind me. There was someone coming through the broken front door.
They were not alone.
More figures were crowded behind, all trying to force their way through at once.
As the first of them stepped closer, I realised that the fact the mission had been compromised was the least of my worries.
Something bad was happening here.
Something hideous.
The figure that was now just feet away from me had once been human. Now, it was an aberration.
The skin of its face was hideously pale and covered in open, weeping wounds. Its eyes were bloodshot and filled with hate. And its hands were outstretched in front of it, clawing at the air, as it dragged itself forwards.
As it moved, a low, guttural groan drifted from in-between its lips.
I reached for my weapon – accidentally leaving the target free to slip from my grasp. He sprinted towards the back door.
“I’ll get him,” I yelled. “You repel these… things.”
I had no name for them. No understanding beyond the fact they were real.
I turned and ran after the target.
Behind me, the sound of firing filled the narrow space.
Ahead, the target was through the back door and running into the grounds. I emerged close behind him – and saw that he was surrounded.
The five had become dozens. There was a mob of the things. Their distorted moans rose into the night as one sickening voice. Their hate filled gazes were all turned towards the target.
The scientist we had been sent to spirit away.
He was turning in a circle, staring helplessly as the things came closer.
Then they fell on him.
They bit and tore and ripped.
I looked away. I could not bear to see and staggered backwards, into the house.
There was no sound of firing now.
The hall was a sea of the things. Somewhere amongst them were the men I had come on this mission with.
I could only hope they no longer felt, no longer understood what was happening to them.
One of the things looked up from its frenzy. Its face was stained with blood and a strip of flesh hung from its mouth.
It saw me. Its eyes widened, and it lifted its arm slowly and pointed a pale finger at me and moaned.
Others looked up at this, and began to detach themselves, began to creep towards me.
I broke free of the reverie which terror had forced on me, and darted through the open door, towards the shower. There was an uncovered window. I shattered it with my first. Ignoring the waves of pain in my hand, I dragged myself through.
There were trees ahead, a clear route to them.
I did not hesitate. I ran, and pushed through the thick undergrowth, then dropped to the ground and lay very still.
I had remembered what the target had said about being safe because they did not know he was there.
Until we’d crashed in, I thought bitterly.
Back at the house, the things were still gathered outside. Some held bones from which they gnawed the last traces of meat.
Others looked around, seemingly in a daze.
One turned its face to the sky and screamed – a primal, grotesque howl which sent icy waves of fear rushing through me.
I thought that night would never end, but eventually I could make out the faint light of a new day at the edges of the sky.
The light brought new sounds. A low, mechanical rumbling which I recognised.
The first tank came into view soon afterwards. From the markings on it, I realised for the first time what country I was actually in.
There were six tanks in total and they were followed by armed men wearing Hazmat suits.
I watched from my hiding place as the assault began. The advancing force rained down destruction on the things, which stumbled and shuffled towards them. Then the tanks rolled on, over flesh and bone and the house itself, demolishing all with the force of its armoured motion.
The tanks and the troops continued in this way, destroying everything in their path.
I understood.
They were razing the town and everything in it to the ground. Hiding all traces of what had happened here.
I knew my country would do the same.
There would be no official records of the mission and, if I did not return, my personnel file would be falsified to say that I died on a training exercise. I would be given a military funeral and sandbags would be placed inside the coffin to weigh it down.
And, if that happened – I thought, my mind racing – it would also give me the chance to start again. Under a different name. To live a better life somewhere new…
Nightfall is close. I have remained still and hidden. And I have made my decision.
I will walk away, into the darkness.
I will no longer exist.
This testimony will be all that remains.