LOG_NAME: "CAZAMOTH EAST COAST INCIDENT" AUTHOR: [IDENTITY REDACTED]. DATE: MAY2021 | APPROX <0040 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The United States Special Forces; “The Green Berets”, also known as “Silent Professionals”. And yet, here I am about to spill the beans for the entire world. That’s because things have changed.
A while ago, I recalled a very…. Unique QRF operation our team undertook in Western Tennessee. Even with all my tours from Africa, to the middle east, to training ops in Europe…. What happened there never sat right with me. A little while ago, something happened deep in North Eastern Maine. A logging town went quiet, dozens of people are listed dead or missing from a supposed “Gas leak”, but what actually happened there was much more sinister.
Just like last time, Raider found itself on QRF duty for the month. This was coming just as winter ended, as the snow was melting and the heat was turning up, every other team was ready to hit the outdoors, catch some North Carolinan waves, and get a taste of barbeque and booze. Not us, however. We found ourselves lucky enough to be spending our time in our COF (Company Operations Facility, our locker room, basically). Eating stouffer's meals out of the microwave, drowning in our 2 whole regulated beers, and playing pool.
This wasn’t uncommon, however. Several times our short leashes paid off as we got pulled to go back up some super secret squirrel force in parts of the world I actually cannot disclose. But, other times, there we were. I remember that early ass morning, it was around 0500ish. Half the team was crashed taking naps across the room, I was shooting some pool with our medic, big ol’ former football player from brooklyn, while our Comms Sergeant was duking it out with some others on a few consoles…
For reference, Raider has two fire teams led by senior Weapons Sergeants; Myself, and a fellow Staff Sergeant we’ll call “Chuck”. Above us we have a Chief Warrant officer 4, “Chief” for short, and our senior officer, and the leader of the team. Captain Nicholas Walker, Formerly a 10th Mountain Platoon Sergeant with several tours on his belt and a stacked left shoulder. He went through and passed selection, arrived to the teams as a Sergeant First Class…. And then found himself the topic of a battlefield commission after… let’s call it strange circumstances.
Captain Walker was a man of focus, discipline, and absolute grit. On a team of NATO’s finest, he radiated death. So when he walked in…. Consoles went on pause, people awoke from their slumber, pool sticks shot up towards the ceiling…. Everything went quiet.
Walker looked around, a fat lip in as he spit some dip juice into his spitter. He looked me in the eyes, then gazed around; “We’re getting spun. Everyone, in the head. Now”.
Now usually with QRF, we’ve already got somewhat of an idea as to what’s going on, and it’s usually a quick ramp brief on the landing strip before loading up. This time, however… was different. We went into the conference room, and Chief already had a laptop hooked up to a monitor displaying a readily made OPORDER.
Chief took the lead; “At 0435, local law enforcement in Maine gave out an all points bulletin after a biological facility in a small, out of the way logging town came under attack. Current identity of OPFOR combatants is unknown, with the actual “distress call” being fairly vague. Several surrounding departments, also including Maine State Troopers and SWAT units were dispatched. All of which have gone quiet, leading to US Marshals and State Troopers to cordon off the town…”.
Chief reach down and hovered the button over a play button on an attached MP3 file; “This is officer ------ of the ---- Police Department. We’re in a Code Black situation, I say again, Code Black. Department’s taken at least a dozen casualties and-”. The officer’s east coast accented distress call was interrupted by high powered gunfire, it’s kind of fucked up but I’d wager it was something made by HK. “-We need back up!! Serious back up!! These fuckers ain’t human, there heads are… Oh god, the chief is dead, somebody help-”.
Captain Walker took point as the slide switched to a bird’s eye view of the town; “Target of the attack seems to be some sort of Biological facility claiming to be working on pharmaceutical aids, what it’s doing in a logging town? Fuck if I know. However…. For you boys who’ve been here for a year… owner of this facility is the same one who ran that Black Site back in Tennessee…. Cazamoth Industries, led by their corporate master Theodore Cazamoth”.
Our medic laughed, and muttered under his breath “Vain as shit..”.
Captain Walker continued “Whoever the combatants are, they’re well armed. Satellite imagery can’t get any sort of bead, CCTV before it was taken offline provided these images….”. Chief then switch to the next set of slides… blurry images of several men, body armor over some sort of white parkha type jackets, wielding full length rifles… their heads though, is what confused everyone. They weren’t wearing any masks, but they looked too darkened out to be normal… they also looked like they had…. Antlers.
The Captain snapped us all back to reality; “Look, I’m going to level with you boys. I know how these type of ops might feel, and I know things never really sat well about that Tennessee shit a while ago… But whatever the fuck is going on, it’s not happening on the other side of the globe, or in some random ass forest. It’s happening on American soil. In a town. Regardless of why you signed up, there’s innocent people living in that town, hiding in their closet, parents clutching their children begging for someone to help them. I don’t give a shit what rounds their weapons are chambered in…. I don’t care how many of them there are, or what they might be trying to get into in that building. They fucked with the American people, and we’re going to go send every single god damn one of them to hell, Roger?”.
“Roger” we all answered, in unison. Walker nodded, looking to chief as he dumped his lip and bottle into a nearby trash, then gazed back at us; “COF door with your shit in 10…. Execute”.
The clock read 0513 when we all left that conference room, when 0523 rolled around everyone was on the outside asphalts. Kits on, weapons ready, minds set. I don’t know what it was about QRF missions, but they’re always different that regular ones. Usually, there’s some mild banter, an upbeat feeling between us all. Standing outside, the cold dusk air hitting our faces… we all could feel the tension as we waited for those 3 armored Humvees to pull up and give us trans to the airfield.
You’ve probably seen it all in movies, but that walk to the chopper is surreal. The long, yet quick drive in shaky ass humvees that should’ve been decommissioned a long time ago. The pit in your stomach that grows as airfield security waves you through the gate. The slow turn they make, parking parallel to the birds. 160th SOAR, 2 blackhawks crewed by the finest the US Military’s aviation had to offer. We’d worked with them before on countless ops, they’ve always done their job and gotten us there safely.
I remember stepping out onto the tarmac, Chief led the way as our two fire teams split and chose a blackhawk. I remember Captain Walker getting a count of personnel as we left, watching him jog over to the farther bird. I remember watching each and every one of my guys disappear into the chopper’s dark pits, climbing aboard myself and fist bumping the gunner. I remember watching that door slide shut, and the black hawks pick up shortly after…
The flight was long, ungodly long. That high in the air the only light you get are the lit up devices on the birds and the faint glow of street lamps thousands of feet below us. The silhouettes of the other passengers aboard staying still, some catching up on sleep, others listening to music. Sleep, really should’ve gotten some of that myself.
I remember the distant street lamps disappearing below us, showing only a dark sea of shadows representing the New England area’s vast forests. Before long, the shake of the chalk’s slow descent downwards had me looking at my watch. 2 hours had passed.
The doors opened and we all stepped out onto what I can only guess was a private runway of some sort. It was well furnished, and long enough to probably field a 747 if I’m honest, but the fact that there were no visible control towers, and the fence around it was layered with C-wire gave the impression that… only those in the know land here.
Before the Blackhawks even started their ascent back towards Bragg, 3 up armored SUVs sped down the dirt road leading to this place, and quickly pulled up along side us. They were similar to the ones we used overseas. Ballistic reinforced windows, doors lined with high rated armor, “Non tactical vehicles”, meant to blend in sight. But they had tinted windows and a shiny jet black finish.
Even stranger so… the pit in our stomachs grew larger as a single person stepped out. He was probably 5’8”, clean shaven complexion with a comb over, and a navy blue suit… a bump under his sport’s coat told us he was concealed carrying. The same guy who met with Captain Walker after the whole “Tennessee Shit”. I couldn’t hear what they said, but they shook hands, and the one guy had a strangely British accent.
Captain Walker motioned for us to mount up, and I remember locking eyes with the guy briefly before doing so. I didn’t feel any malice, but I didn’t feel trust either.
Chief chose to TC the rear vic, climbing in with some of the other members of Raider. I piled in the middle one, two of my guys, and our medic. After they were finished talking, The Captain climbed into the lead vic with the comms Sergeant, the latter of whom had to bend the giant antenna of his manpack to enter. We drove off into the night… leaving that mysterious ass man on the runway alone.
The drive there was more or less uneventful, periodic radio checks between the vehicle’s as we eventually found our way onto the main highway. The tinted windows protected any passerby's from seeing us, but anyone with a brain knew what 3 blacked out SUVs speeding down a highway in the middle of the night meant.
Eventually we neared the police blockade around the town, which had caused traffic wanting to pass through to back up severely. We took to the shoulder, but were stopped several times by others trying to use the shoulder to get by.
Captain Walker didn’t appreciate that; [“Tell this motherfucker in the hatchback he’s got 2 seconds before I thermite his engine”].
I could hear the medic laugh over comms, [“You tell ‘em, sir”].
Eventually… We reached the blockade, and 2 state troopers kitted out with rifles waved us through… about 200 meters down, a roadside ROLE 2 set up by several ambulances was in the process of treating people seemingly just medevaced from the town…. And beside them was a long line of body bags. We passed by just in time to see 2 shell shocked officers carrying a body out of their squad car. They were covered in blood, looking like something tore them apart… their gear was torn apart, and read “SWAT”.
A sigh came over the net, and Chief spoke up; [“Guess we know what happened to the SWAT Unit…”].
The drive into the town was tense, the street side lamps became less common resulting in less visibility. The convoy slowed to about half speed, with all of us keeping our eyes peeled to the surroundings outside of the vic. We were in the town’s suburbs area, dense woods surrounding sporadic houses, all dark, not a single god damn lamp or sign of life. Even creepier was how it was an absolute ghost town… not uncommon in this part of the country, at this time of night… but there was a strange, undertone to it this time.
We got more towards the center of town, and that’s when it got even weirder. Cars, abandoned in the street, were parked diagonally, some having collided with parked ones. This caused us to take a series of detours, which set off more than a few alarms from doing convoy ops back east.
And before long… car windshields shattered, not like a baseball spiderweb type of shatter, but… like a strange zig zag cut through the glass. Doors and hoods lined with with bullet holes, street lamps flickering showing signs of a damaged power grid… and blood. Trailing across the streets, more visible on the sidewalks than the asphalt. I remember someone from the lead vic, probably the captain, shined their tac light out of one of the windows… beside a large pool of blood and gore, was the distinctive shine of 9mil brass…
Eventually the convoy stopped just outside of the town’s police station, or, what was left of it. Glass with the same peculiar smash marks, bloody hand prints and splashes all across the front of it, flickering lights causing shadows to dance across the inside of the station…. And a god damn bench thrown through one of the front doors. Literally, lodged in the god damn door.
This wasn’t the work of some sort of paramilitary force, whatever did this was rabid and crazed. One of the doors to the lead vic opened as Captain Walker came over the net; [“This is Lead, stay in your vics and keep your heads on a swivel”].
As he exited, he turned on his helmet light, and began to scan the ground…. That’s when the small cone of light illuminated something on the front steps. A Bushmaster AR-15, magazine still in, barrel pointing towards the sidewalk…. Covered in a strange black ooze. We didn’t know what it was, but as Captain Walker followed the trail…. It seem to eat into whatever it laid on, creating a mini crevice.
The Captain dropped the mag out of it, being careful to not touch the pistol grip that was now being eaten up by the same black ooze. He waved over to the Comms Sergeant, who hurried out, and knelt down next to the captain. The air had grown quiet at that point, unnaturally so…. No crickets, no wind…. Just the humm of the engine. I could the comms sergeant through the bulletproof doors;
[“Main, this is Raider-Romeo, prepare for weapons serial-”]. None of us could hear any of Romeo’s chatter, so Chief keyed in [“Is it one of the OPFOR?”], Walker shook his head [“Negative, it’s one of the locals. The station chief”].
After a few minutes, the comms Sergeant hurried back to the lead vic, as Walker pulled the bolt from the half disintegrated weapon and broke the firing pin. He walked up the steps to the police station, peaking inside as we all could see the look of disgust on his face as he shook his head, hurrying back to his vic.
Chief hopped on the net; [“Want to search the station from any info”], Walker responded [“Chief, trust me. We aren’t gonna find shit in that mess”].
The convoy carried on towards the station, by now the unnatural silence was apparent to everyone. The low crawl of the tires on the asphalt road as the SUVs swerved and moved around abandoned cars created a tense white noise to it all.
Then, suddenly- all of the street lamps went out. The drivers of all of the vics quickly slammed on their breaks, causing all of us to lean forward and then slam back. We looked around… the only visible light being the headlights pointing forwards, and the orange hue of the target building just ahead.
Captain Walker hopped on the net [“What’s the approximate to target?”], Chief responded [“100 metersish, just down the road on the right”]. 100 meters. We could see the facility, through mashed windows and torn apart blinds, we could see the soft, orange lights of the biological facility light up the sky of the now dark town. However…. That meant if anyone was on that 6th floor, they could easily see us. And there we were, sitting ducks on a dark road.
Our radios crackled as Captain Walker keyed in [“Everyone dismount, nods down”].
As we left the safety of our bulletproof vehicles, stepping into the cold night air of a town that now, obviously didn’t want us to be there… we pulled down our $40,000 GPNVGs, “Quad Nods”. High end night vision devices that made the dark streets of that town look all too well lit. Combine that with our Peqs, IR-Lasers only visible through night vision devices allowing us to point and shoot… and the pit in our stomachs grew just that much smaller.
As we exited, the captain motioned for the convoy to head off. Those god damn pentagon uber drivers were all too giddly to turn around and peel off, leaving us there in the streets alone. Then again… we we’re SF, we’re the god damn boogeymen. We’ve got nothing to worry about.... right?
Raider formed up into two diamonds, the front team taking point with the Captain while my team hung back with Chief. Everything, from the cars, to the rooftops of buildings, to the windows, to the doors. Every possible opening had a laser on it. We’d trained for things like this… ran drills every minute of every hour of the night for weeks on end.
We neared the end of the block, rounding the corner… the building was a gigantic grey square, a series of symmetric windows now covered in the same broken, bloody, destruction and signs of battles appeared everywhere. A large, bright neon “CAZAMOTH BIOLOGICAL” sign was mounted above the lobby doors… The gigantic glass being covered in messages, written in…. Something.
“BE FREE”
“SAVIORS”
We quickly maneuvered behind a line of cars parked across the street, across from the building. As we scanned our 12, we could see what happened to local law enforcement… patrol cars were parked and scattered all around, the same black ooze from before had eaten clean through doors, windows, and engine blocks. And yet… despite all of the abandoned weapons and loose brass… not one body. Not a god damn one.
The other fire team covered the left side, my team took the right. As we said there hunkered down, I could hear The Captain and Chief talking. Walker’s words sent a chill down my spine; “They know we’re here”.
Chief was confused “Who? OPFOR?”, Captain shook his head.
“No… Cicadas, in this woods, should be straight deafening. Nah… woods grow quiet whey they sense a predator nearby”.
“What, did we scare them off?” Chief asked, Walker scanned the surrounding woodline “Not us….”.
The Captain then hopped on the net;
[“Everyone pick up and maneuver, lobby doors…”].
The entry was text book, pure and simple. Carefully stepping over the trails of tar eating into the ground, engine blocks, and generally everything… we stacked up against the concrete walls on either side of the lobby doors… My pointman and the other team’s pied the corners, and after a small signal, we moved in. Quickly stepping through the shattered glass windows, we invaded that lobby, flipping up our nods since it was much more well lit that the outside… we looked around.
Bullet casings, 5.56, and what I think were 6.5 and 7.62 blanketed the floor…. Bullet holes marked the walls all across the room, signs of the corners of the hallway leading further into the building being chewed up by high rates of fire caused pieces of concrete and wall guts to fall off and form piles….
After the fire teams secured the lobby, Captain Walker entered with chief, stopping for a moment as he observed different marks on the metal door frame and then the desk. Chief joined him as he explained; “These exit holes are aimed towards the outside… whoever Cazamoth hired to protect this place was packing a lot of heat… and they didn’t go down without a fight”.
It’s then that… our medic noticed the body at the desk. Black polo with a CAZAMOTH INDUSTRIES logo on the left sleeve, slumped face down. I watched him walk around and reach out to flip him back- The captain stopped him, citing plenty of the black ooze around the corpse… guess he didn’t want to risk doc, because he flipped him over himself…
What we saw… what happened to the poor son of a bitch in that rolling chair, I’ll never forget. The man’s nose… hell most of his face was ripped clean off, and whatever remained was covered by patches of deer hide. His eyes were removed, and stuck through his temples were branches…. Resembling a deers head…
-Just like the blurry image on the CCTV.
Chief nearly puked as even doc, an SF medical Sergeant, an 18D, had to look away…. Hell I don’t think any of us could stand to look at it- and him, what was a him, for too long. The only one who could was-
“Antlers…” Captain Walker said.
Doc shook his head “The fuck…. Terrorists with a white tail fetish?”.
The Captain shook his head “This ain’t white tail, it’s gotta be caribou,”.
Chief, who’d now recomposed himself, looked over at Captain Walker “How do you know?”,
“I hunt, sir. This shit’s out of state game, whoever did this… all of this, isn’t from around here”.
The discussion was cut short, after a guttural scream…. Had to have been female, I think, came from deeper down the hall. Everyone’s rifle snapped to the entry way, expecting gunfire, expecting a demon…. And yet, nothing.
I could see Captain Walker look at the mutilated security guard, then back to the hallway “Let’s get moving..”.
As we moved forward the three; myself, a gunner, and another weapon’s sergeant, formed a rolling T. Captain Walker followed behind, a hand on my shoulder since I was the middle of the T, controlling the pace.
We continued down the liner corridors…. Paintings that were once murals of different forests had been torn off the walls and smashed, the walls were layered with holes and smash marks, as furniture and end tables were torn into pieces. All the while, we followed the trails of black ooze still eating into the ground below.
Chief keyed in [“One hell of a fire fight”],
[“Rounds didn’t do this”] Captain Walker retorted. He was right… gunfire make identifiable holes, and with enough of them, they will tear chunks off the walls. They don’t make strange, way too large zig zags. They don’t make teeth marks in wooden studs, or gut furniture the way we were seeing. These marks were intentional, biological, but animals kill for survival. They eat, they don’t just tear things apart, they never have. Whatever did this, did so out of rage.
After searching the rooms on the ground floor, Captain Walker called for a halt and our Comms Sergeant radioed for Main.
[“Main this is Raider-Romeo, ground floor secure, ready to mov-”], he stopped as if he was cut off. Causing many of us to look at him for that long, silent minute. He looked to The Captain “They said maneuver on the sub level labs”.
Chief looked at him funny “There’s only supposed to be a storage basement, here”. Captain Walker shook his head “Yeah, that tracks…”.
We quickly found an access stairwell, the other side blocked as someone attempted to place a metal bar between the door handle- One of our jacked as hell gunners mule kicking it quickly removed that variable.
After a short while, the now messy carpet turned into blood and tar stained tiles, and wallpaper was replaced by concrete. The captain stopped us, and shined his tac light up at a sign above a set of forced open metal doors: TESTING. We gazed ahead, and could see vials leaking, mixing with the tar, as an exposed ceiling tile overhead caused a smoke like gas to leak out of a burst pipe.
The Captain sighed, and looked around; “Mask up”.
“Protector Masks”, known more commonly in the military as “Pro Masks”, are the anti chemical, biological, radiological gas masks that are issued out to the lowest level. Albeit… in recent years their reliability has been questioned, we weren’t taking any chances in this place. Even if it meant painfully fitting our helmets with night vision over top the gigantic hunk of plastic and rubber.
The trick to fighting in these was too keep your breathing smoothe, or else it would fog up. Considering how far up shits creek we were, that was easier said than done. Once we were masked up, two of our guys slung their rifles and pulled back the sliding metal doors as much as they could, and I led the rolling T inside.
It was a long straight away hallway, leading to another set of double doors, the ground was a mess of water, blood and…. Other fluids from different test kits and samples that had been dropped, vials smashed causing every step we took to be interrupted by cracking glass.
On either side of the hallway however… reinforced ballistic glass had protected different chambers used for operations and experiments, everything from the tables, to the monitors, to the walls and floors inside of them was still intact…. That didn’t stop whatever was outside from having at the badly damaged wire glass.
Several pipes were also broken in the ceiling, that combined with the still flickering LED lights from above, and the light pollution from the labs, had us flip up our night vision and resort to the tac lights on our rifles.
Being the middle man of the rolling T, my job was to keep watch forward. Scanning down the hall, then to the floor…. Then to the ceiling, back to the floor. The lack of bodies, yet the excess amount of blood and gore was stick fucking with me… with all of us…. I remember the cone of light from my O-light following the trail of black ooze… it bent, and zig-zagged…. Before leading up….. Towards a body…
-That twitched.
I quickly called for a halt, and everyone stopped right on the dot. Thank god for all the training we do. Captain Walker hurried up and got up right next to me, “Whadd’yah see?”. His question was answered as the body, quickly identified as one of the security guard, slammed it’s lacerated right hand into the floor. Our lights shined brightly on it’s “CAZAMOTH SECURITY SERVICES” patch, as it shakingly pulled itself from the floor…. And gazed at us…
It’s face, his face…. Was gone. No I mean, actually gone. Whatever the fuck that black tar shit did to him, had removed his face, and the skull and head around it in a clean cut. His head was hollowed out… nothing inside but more of the black tar falling out in gallons…. It’s movements were broken and janky, and it looked at us with it’s absent eyes…. But, I could tell that it could see us, somehow….
“Sweet Jesus…” Chief muttered as he looked around, while all three of us in the rolling T kept our weapons trained. “Sir?” I asked the captain, but before he could say anything- It rushed towards us. Reanimated feet slipping and struggling with the wet surface of the tiled floor, it’s hurried footsteps caused black ooze to fall out even quicker, as it helt a hand up towards us-
-The in-unison fire of all three of us, our M4s tearing apart the thing’s chest. The security polo and the now grey, dead flesh underneath was absolutely cut apart as we aimed for the center of mass and didn’t stop- those taclights gave us an all too well lit view of it all.
But… even as the thing fell back from the sheer force of the gunfire… it still tried to get up, even as mounds of it’s chest were falling out after being ripped apart. We all took aim, ready to try and put it down again- but Captain Walker pushed past us. He took aim at the thing with his SCAR, and fired off 5 rounds into it’s brain stem, right where the neck met it’s head…
The thing fell back, it twitched, it shook….. And then, it stopped.
And just liked that, we moved on. That same type of engagement had occurred so many times overseas that we’d become numb to it, robotic to it. However not as… paranormal as our QRF operations were getting nowadays, it seems. As we pushed forward, I could hear The Captain and Chief talking behind us…
“How the hell could Cazamoth be hiding all of this down here?” Chief asked, exasperated by the scenery, “There’s only supposed to be a storage basement”. “Supposed to be” Captain Walker retorted. A senior Weapon’s Sergeant, the other fire team leader… we’ll call him “Chuck”, a bit of a nickname, asked; “Sir… if they were going for the basement, then what painted the upstairs windows with-”.
“-The same thing that tore than reinforced door’s lock off from the inside” Captain Walker interrupted, coldly.
The double doors at the end of the hall, luckily, weren’t reinforced. As we pushed through…. We were greeted with yet another sight. The carnage continued, and more bodies of Cazamoth Industries workers could be seen…. But the way they were killed wasn’t rabid, or with military precision…. It was sacrificial…
Some had their backs to the walls, others were on their knees…. Different gash and slash marks cut up their clothing, as their faces and skin were being eaten into by the black ooze. Then…. What I can only guess was one of the biologists, his white lab coat painted with tar and blood… lifted his head to look at us. The motion of doing so caused part of his face, now dried up and broke to fall off… exposing a hollowed out head….
Then…. They all did. All of them, standing up, shakingly forcing themselves to their feet like thralls. There were no moans, no zombie-like cries…. Just the silence.
Captain Walker keyed into the net, [“Sir?”].
Chief answered [“Your call”].
One of them… what was a female in nurse’s scrubs, broke the mob to rush at us. I took aim for her neck, and fired. My 5.56 tore clean through her now rotted skin, destroying the brain stem, and causing her to fall forward. Then….. They all rushed.
The first three of us in the rolling T quickly took a knee, gunfire erupted, soundwaves bouncing off the close quarter walls of the hallway causing our peltors to work double time. The captain and several others quickly followed in behind us, as a whole wall of semi-automatic death quickly filled the air.
Black tar went flying, pieces of their head and neck were ripped off instantly…. That’s when one of our gunners too aim with his M48 (Mark 48), and let loose. The wall of belt fed 7.62 fury quickly cut them in half horizontally, whether intentional or not, it made it easier for us up in front to take them out. Controlled pair after controlled pair, the captain now switched to bursts of automatic fire to simply remove the neck instead of precision shooting it.
But…. unlike zombies…. Then found other ways of attacking. I saw it play out in slow motion through my holographic, one of them stood itself up with it’s two arms, and grabbed a large chunk of glass. Coated in the black ooze, it tossed that shit just before I cut it down. I heard a scream, and looked…. The other fire team leader, Chuck, had that chunk of glass rip right through the side of his neck.
Grabbing at it, Doc quickly pulled him from the line, as Captain Walker pulled me to my feet by my kit’s carry handle; “Clean this shit up, move!!!”. We all pushed forward, stepping over the decayed, disgusting abominations, and put two into every single one of them….
When it was over…. I stuck two of the junior Weapons Sergeants on either side of the hallway with one of our gunners to keep watch.
Captain Walker hurried over to our downed battle buddy, sitting back against the wall as his neck was being packed by our medic. “You gonna make it, Chuck?”. The Staff Sergeant simply laughed, giving a thumbs up.
We pushed forward again, the formerly linear hallway now turned into a series of off branch corridors, and small rooms covered by plastic door covers. The Captain knew where to go, however; “Whatever they were after…. It’s where this tar is comin’ from, follow the trail”.
The overhead lights on the ceiling started to get dimmer and dimmer, eventually forcing us to flip down our quad nods. We fought to keep our breathing down, as we scanned the hallways stuck in a claustrophobic mess of rubber and plastic. One of the junior Weapons Sergeants near the front with me, noticed a shadow at the end of the hall just as I did.
“I’ve got something” he whispered, The Captain answered: “Drop it”.
Before he could get any shots off, a scream…. Guttural, pained, female sounding radiated off the walls, through our electronic headphones, bouncing off our souls. Then, from the right, inside one of those rooms I was talking about… figure rushed out, and threw all three of us in the rolling T on our asses.
Green berets, each of us probably 200lbs of solid muscle, not counting the kit and weapons… thrown on our asses. The guy to my left got ragdolled by the middle man, me, as I went sailing into the wall so hard I broke an AED case, that then fell and slammed right down onto my face. The man to my right, right next to…”her”, got the worst of it. Into the god damn ceiling, then onto a table.
My pro-mask was knocked off center, my breathing heavy, I struggled to see through the now fogged, crooked lens and my NODS… fuckin’ hell.
It’s body was spindly…. Naked, covered in blood. Long, black, patchy hair half covered a face which were now just eye sockets, and a wide open mouth…. Black of which, poured out of all of them. She screamed again, this time so close it caused my head to ring.
IR Lasers locked onto her immediately, although she had the strength to toss us all across the hall… she still became rocked as the entirety of Raider lit her the fuck up. Captain Walker circled around to her left, she shrieked again. It’s then I noticed… where there should have been hands, were just five, thin, razor sharp… appendages?
She quickly lunged, and buried them deep into the front plate of one of our Weapons Sergeants who was just too close. This caused him to fall right back onto his ass, as she lifted her other arm, just as sharp and-
-and whatever she was planning never came to fruition, as both of our gunners let loose on her. The combined fire tore the arm stuck in his chest off at the deltoid, and she stumbled back… She looked at us…. She looked demonic, absolutely evil through the strange white and blue haze of the GPNVGs…. Then looked at me…. And ran off into the darkness….
I fixed my pro mask as I got to my feet, helping the man who was trapped under me up, as the man thrown on the table slide off… The captain walked over to the downed weapon’s sergeant, who shook his head…
“I don’t think this was agreed upon, in my contract-” he was cut off as Captain Walker put a boot on his shoulder, taking both hands and pulling the demon’s severed arm out of him…. He tossed it to the floor… I watched as it landed on that trail of black ooze…. And immediately melted back into it.
The captain then checked underneath his front plate, pulling the guy up to a sitting position, then shook his head. “-Your plate caught it”.
He shook his head, and helped him up; “One boogeyman tries to take your shoulder off, the other tries to rip out your heart. The fuck is with you, Kayce?”.
Kayce, the same guy who took that pike to the shoulder back in West Tennessee, laughed as he got to his feet; “Guess they just can’t get enough of me, sir”.
We pushed forward…. The size of the black ooze’s trail was now increasing… we had to be getting close. Captain Walker once again controlled the pace of the Rolling T as we neared another set of reinforced double doors. I guess chuck, still suffering from his neck injury, was unusually sluggish… causing Chief to ask; “Raider - Alpha, you good?”.
“Always, Chief”.
It was right around when we neared the double doors, it opened up into a larger area staging ground for some of the security officers with a few tables, chairs, and monitors, now thrown around and corroded with the tar…. And…. then we found our “OPFOR”....
There they were…. On their knees, weapons carelessly tossed away, now being eaten up by the tar the same as that rifle outside of the police station. They sat back on their knees, arms out to their sides… they had… all to realistic deer masks, that covered their entire face, and would be basically suicide to wear in combat…. However, black ooze poured out of the opening… which started to eat their bulletproof vests and white parkhas, melting them like candles….
Captain Walker moved to take one of the deer hoods off, that’s when a voice stopped him; “I wouldn’t do that if I were you”.
We all turned to where the voice had come from… a half dead Cazamoth security officer sat against the wall just to the right of the reinforced doors…. We could see the black ooze had melted his legs and one of his arms into the floor…. And was working it’s way up the veins of his neck towards his head…
The Captain motioned us to secure the room, where I positioned two guys to watch the hall, and two to watch the door…. Captain Walker got down in a squat, flipping up his nods he looked the half dead man in the eyes through his promask; “What happened here?”. The man coughed up; “There’s…. More at stake, than what you….”.
Walker turned on his helmet light…. The cone of light followed the black ooze, from it’s corrosive crevice in the floor, to the man’s leg.
“The hell is this shit?”, the security officer laughed “I don’t…. Know what… Mr. Cazamoth is hiding, but whatever it is…. Other people want a piece of it. I was just…. Wrong job, wrong time…. Just a pawn….”.
The man pointed towards the half melted deer men “So were they….”. He then…. Shakingly lifted his good hand to point at walker…. Before it went limp, as the black ooze worked it’s way into the veins of his arm; “So are you”.
“There’s gonna be a lot of questions after this” The captain said, the officer weakly nodded; “For Mr. Cazamoth…. Not for me…. Do me a favor…. Don’t let me….”. The guard then started to violently cough, as black ooze slowly poured from his mouth, and his eyes slowly became enveloped in it… As he head dropped, the captain stood up…. And switched his rifle from safe to semi.
The following three gunshots radiated in my mind, still do…. And I think they still do for everyone. We all know the stakes now after that. If we didn’t finish this, everything leading up to this… the lab techs, the security guard… that thing that was once a woman. That was the fate of everyone who would come into contact with this evil black shit.
The comms sergeant and I quickly grabbed the right metal door, as two others piled on the other. We then pulled both back at the same time, creating enough room for the rest of Raider to move in, Captain Walker taking the lead.
Before I flowed in with the rest, I took one look at the sign above the door: CRYOLAB.
We moved through a now destroyed decontamination chamber into an open lab… dark, with a few red lights creating an ominous as fuck hue across the room.
Different cylindrical tanks lined either side of the room, laying down horizontally on stands… Several of them had gunshots in them, others were fogged up…. But one of them, at the end of the room lay center against the back wall… broken open, seemingly the center of the black ooze as it actively poured from the tank.
...Captain Walker flipped up his nods, as did we, and all of us shined our tac lights…. On a lone deer headed cultist. Standing inside of the black ooze, as it climbed up his pants, soaked his previously white parka, which was now a deep jet black. Noticing all of the lights bathing him, he turned around… as he did, more black oozed poured from under his mask.
There was a deep silence in the room, just the sounds of heavy breathing from inside of our masks, the sounds of the tar leaking out of the tank…. A silence which was broken, when he spoke…
“Nicholas Walker…” his voice was deep and monotone. This caught Captain Walker… and all of us, off guard. He lowered his rifle, just slightly, allowing him to make eye contact with the man. “Who the fuck are you people?” Walker said in a low, furious tone.
The man laughed “I am simply an instrument of change, Nicholas Walker, as you are an instrument of order”.
This only pissed off The Captain “How the fuck-”,
“You see, society as we know it today seeks to instill a new normal. One where everything is ‘Fine’, people leech off of others, and the ways of the old world, the primordial world, one that the natives and the tribesmen once knew are kept at bay by the men with guns…”.
The man reached out, black ooze seemingly radiating from his pours as it dropped to the floor; “This…. Is the building block of the universe. It shapes, it creates…. And it can make us all beautiful. It is the DNA, the alpha and the omega of which, all of those boogeymen you and your government seeks to… keep quiet, come from. A layer, under the surface of the current way of the world….”.
All of were quiet, although his ramblings seemed crazy… the effect the tar had on people… on the ground and earth around it. It added up.
The man spoke again “Tell me, Captain. How many beings will you walk into the shadows and put a bullet into the head off, before you realize this is futile. I realized it is futile, me and my brothers… we realized… all those who go missing. The forests… shunned for disappearances, and the things they contain… we should not fear it… we should not fear them, we should embrace them….”.
Walker flicked his selector switch, taking aim at the man “You and your cell are going to be hunted the fuck down, and-”.
He interrupted him “ -‘Cell?’ Hahaha!!! This isn’t just one group, in one part of the world…. You’ve seen the reports, Captain Walker. Afghanistan, the jungles of Indochina, the mongolian deserts, the forests of Bravarria… it’s breaking through the surface… what you call anomalies, treating them like monsters…. They’re coming back to reclaim this world…”.
That’s when… we heard the sounds of coughing, and gurgling coming from behind us.
“-And they’re going to make us all… beautiful”.
Our medic called out; “Captain!”.
We all turned, “Chuck”, the man who’d taken that glass to the neck, dropped to one knee. The wound packing on his neck became soaked in the same black tar, and the more he coughed, the more caked his mask became with that shit.
None of knew what to do, green berets, the free world’s finest and we all just fuckin’ froze.. I kept my gun trained on the cultist, who simply stood there… probably smiling underneath that deer mask.
“Chuck” Captain Walker said authoritatively.
He didn't answer, just fought at the packing around his neck, he stood there for a few moments before speaking up again “Sergeant-”.
That’s… when Chuck pulled off the packing on his neck… and a goddamn gallon of that shit spilled out onto his uniform, painting his top and kit… covering up the multicam.
Doc was hesitant to do anything, but when he moved towards him; “Don’t fuckin’ touch him!!!”.
Captain Walker barked at him, causing him to back off. Chuck removed his helmet… the kevlar smacking off the floor, as he pulled off his mask…
It ran through the veins all over his head, all over his face, creating a horrifying black web just underneath his skin. Tar spat from his lips… as his eyes were completely jet black, more of the shit coming out of his tear ducts. He looked around… nervously, almost as if he was blind. Captain Walker’s breathing became tense, cursing under his breath. “Chuck?”, the green beret staff sergeant simply spat out more of the shit. He then looked around, now seemingly able to see us- and move to lunge at us… but, stopped, holding himself back, as he banged his hands against his head, hyperventilating.
I looked back to the cultist, he stood there, arms now crossed. My eyes broke from him when I heard chuck wheezing… finally saying…
“I’m…. sorry, Sir”.
He then reached down to his holster, pulling out his side arm, a sig saur M17. Chief’s eyes went wide underneath his mask, he then looked to the captain; “WALKER!!!”.
“Chuck, don’t-” Captain Walker yelled, as he brought the muzzle to the underside of his head… the brain stem.
“NO!!”.
The shot rang out.
Staff Sergeant Charles “Chuck” Ivensky, airborne qualified, proud member of 4th Special Forces Group for over 8 years… A loving husband, and father… My friend- Fell to the floor, his weapon clattering out of his hand on the way down. Officially, listed that he was killed in a mortar strike in Libya, the place Raider was supposed to officially be that night.
Unofficially-
The silence broke as Captain Walker turned, letting loose on the cultist with his SCAR. .223 tore through the man’s coat, as it did nothing but seemingly cut through the black tar like butter. He fired until there was so much on the black wall, you could swear those tiles came black. He fired so much, his bolt clicked- empty.
The cultist dropped to his knees, voluntarily. He gazed up at the captain, as he seemingly melted into the floor; “Before this is over, Captain. Every single warfighter you drag into this…. Will die”.
We all stood there…. Watching every last inch of that deer mask sink into the tar… The Captain turned, looking at Chuck, then the medic: “Get him up…. He’s coming with us”. As we all packed up, Chuck’s team went with the Comms Sergeant and Chief to escort them out. Mine stayed with me, as we watched Captain Walker pull a thermite grenade from his belt… and toss it onto the tank.
Whatever is in that shit… whatever it was made of…. Caused it to erupt immediately. We heard hissing, we hard screeching…. The Captain simply turned, and loaded a fresh magazine into his SCAR. “-We’re done here”.
Usually after these types of things, we have an after action report with the entirety of Raider. However… the second we touched down back at the COF we let the guys loose. Usually it’s both team leads, Raider Lead, and the CWO of the team. However… this time it was just Chief, Captain Walker, and myself…
I peeled off my kit, tossing it in my locker and heading out. There’s an all to pungent, homey smell to a combat shirt soaked in sweat after a long op. However… the sweet and sour aroma of that tar just made me want to burn this fuckin’ thing. My locker was at the far end of our wall, once it was locked I headed over to the COF door… I stopped and stared at one: Chucks.
The shock and misery that hit us on that Blackhawk ride back, the one that the guys were probably feeling now as they let loose on the post QRF-dry status… it was replaced by rage. Whoever they were, those deer headed fucks…. Whatever “anomalies”, being they talked about. We’re gonna take them all down, we have to.
I stepped into the conference room, Chief was at the window side end of the table across from Captain Walker. Walker had cracked open a pack of cigarettes, while Chief rubbed his temples, halfway into a watermelon body armor drink. Fuckin’ Warrant Officers.
“Sergeant…” Walker said, beckoning me to sit down. He offered me a cigarette, I declined.
We all sat there, a strange, tired silence looming over us before the door opened again…. I was expecting some colonel to come in, shake our hands, and call us heroes. Maybe some Sergeant Major talking about his glory days, and saying maybe Sergeant Ivensky would get a medal of honor in a few decades…
….What I didn’t expect, was an old man with grey hair, in a navy blue suit. Chief stood up as the man approached, looking to shake hands- he immediately brushed it off. “No, no. You boys have had a long night, sit…”.
I… can’t figure out what his accent was, it didn't sound particularly southern, but not northern… also, kinda French?.
The man had a file folder with him, he pulled up a chair next to us and laid it on the table. His eyes were sympathetic as he looked around “I’m sorry about your comrade, Staff Sergeant Ivensky... “, Walker sighed, rubbing his eyes. “We all knew the score… well, this time, we did at least. If we’re going to keep doing this, we can’t keep doing this blind, last minute clandestine shit”. The man nodded “I agree”.
Chief capped his empty bottle, tossing it into the trash near us; “Look…. I wasn’t here for that last Op, but after tonight…. Someone needs to start explaining things, right now”.
Walker looked over to him “Chief, this is Xavier… he’s a third party, let’s just say, working with the government”.
Xavier interrupted “-And several others”.
Walker nodded “-And several others-, about a recurring anomaly problem popping up across the world”.
Walker’s words… I thought back to what the cultist said, about this being a worldwide problem.
I looked to Xavier “How long has this been going on?”.
He straightened his tie as he sat back “Well operations like this have happened ever since… before World War 2, before The Great War. Minor incidents, previously unconnected… Europe has always had a rich history in dealing with Undead Transylvanians, Lycanthropes, and witches in the swamps of Scandinavia… even Northern America. The Natives tell stories about the Skinwalker, warlocks that cast down the pelts of animals, that seek to harass tribes and their reservations… acts that still go on today”.
Xavier then looked over to Captain Walker “Your captain here appeared on my Radar after he had a few run ins himself… Minnesota”. I raised an eyebrow, Walker looked down “I was hunting in the wrong area, hollowed ground… met a Native American cannibal demon…”.
My jaw dropped “A fucking Wendigo?”.
“A fuckin’ Wendigo”.
Chief’s eyes grew wide “You said that was a Bear”.
“Yeah… I did”.
Xavier continued “1st Special Forces Group has also had some… off the books operations, should we say. In the 1980s, a group of Sasquatches causing an uproar in a western forest preserve were hunted down by them. This has been going on for a long time, Staff Sergeant. And it is getting more prevalent… previously unconnected events are now connected, if we want to stop what is coming, we need a united front. This war isn’t gonna be conventional, and we most certainly cannot waste time trying to capture and hide everything…”. “Extermination…” Walker’s said abruptly, and to the point. He continued by saying “Look having all the Tier 1s in the world is great, but we need men with experience in this… particular subject. I don’t want to face off with some death cult with a bunch of kids straight out of selection”.
Xavier nodded, “I agree. Which is why I’ve been reaching out to individuals as well… you might know one, Captain”.
Xavier gave Walker a strange look, it seemed plaine at the time, but Walker’s reaction surprised me. “Nolan? I thought he went dark after that Cazamoth Estate shit”.
“Cazamoth Estate?” I asked.
Walker gestured with his non cigarette hand “Cazamoth Industries has been fucking around for a few years now. They were doing something at some estate down in the south missouri woods…. Nolan was a security officer tasked there. He dug into some things he shouldn’t have, ended up saving the whole town’s asses. He’s been dark for a few years now”.
Walker lookked to Xavier; “If we’re doing this…”, he then gazed at me and Chief, before back to Xavier “and we are… because I don’t want mine or anyone else’s families turning to fuckin mush, or demons… we need to get everyone we can onboard”.
Xavier nodded, he opened the file protector, and handed each of us a laminated dossier… at the top: PEXU - Paranormal EXtermination Unit. Task Force Raider.
[Log://-Ended]
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