If you don't learn the first time, then the fault is yours to begin with.
So when Gino spotted the filthy creature, he didn't hesitate.
He lit up the .50 cal, sending a storm of rounds straight into the thing's bloated, wart-covered body. The heavy shells ripped into its flesh, punching through thick muscle and bone like wet paper.
I squeezed the trigger, firing a controlled burst, my rounds tearing into its head.
Dan followed up with a 40-mike-mike grenade, the explosive thudding into its gut before detonating with a muffled whump.
Foster?
He slammed his hand down on his flamethrower's ignition switch.
A stream of pressurized napalm sprayed out, engulfing the mutant freak in liquid fire. The oily flames clung to its flesh, boiling the blisters and warts decorating its twisted body. It shrieked, a sound that didn't belong in this world, a noise of pure, unnatural agony.
We didn't move forward.
We let it burn.
"Reloading!" Gino called, his voice hoarse from yelling.
He swapped barrels on the .50 cal, replacing the smoking-hot metal with a fresh one before dumping a bottle of water over it. Steam hissed as it cooled.
Then he was back on the trigger.
A round hit the thing's eye, blowing it apart. It let out a final, woeful howl before stumbling backward and collapsing. Its cooked flesh curled inward, its corpse shriveling into a blackened husk.
Dan grabbed his own flamethrower, stepping forward.
"Let's make sure."
He torched the entire area, sending thick plumes of smoke billowing into the air. The heat alone was enough to suffocate anything still hiding inside the ruins.
I pulled on my gas mask and climbed into the Humvee, shifting it into position so that Gino could get a clear line of fire.
Foster kept spraying napalm, turning the area into an oven.
By the time they needed a refuel, the whole place smelled like charred rot—the kind of stench that stuck inside your nose no matter how much you tried to breathe through your mouth.
We marked the area on our PDAs, then called it in.
"Command, we found another nest of those things. Marking coordinates for cleanup."
Dan, sweating and exhausted, slumped against the side of the Humvee.
"Tell them to bomb the shit out of it."
"Gunships are occupied," I muttered.
Even from here, we could hear them in the distance. The whirr of rotary cannons, the dull thuds of missile strikes, the distant roars of things dying violently.
This whole region was one big war zone. Can we even call it a war zone when it's one-sided so far?
The TRU, aka Recovery Unit, rolled up again.
The same fuckers from before.
One of them grinned as he hopped out of the armored truck, stretching like he was off for a casual stroll.
"We gotta stop meeting like this," he joked. "Starting to think you guys are cursed."
Dan gave him a flat look. "Go fuck yourself."
Foster groaned, half-sprawled on the Humvee's hood. Gino, still sitting in the turret, looked about two seconds from passing out.
It didn't matter that we were superhuman.
Superhuman didn't mean inexhaustible.
If anything, all it meant was that humanity had evolved just enough to keep fighting longer.
The day we can't kill something with bullets, bombs, and fire?
That's the day they'll have to send in the Top Counters.
I had never seen one of the Top Counters fight in person, but I'd heard stories.
They didn't just kill monsters.
They butchered them.
Moved like blurs. Cut through metal and stone like it was paper.
They were something else entirely.
We were exterminators.
They were weapons.
And right now?
They were too busy fighting real threats to bother with grunt work like this.
Which meant we were on our own if real mutate-freaks appeared.
After TRU finished bagging their samples, they told us to tag along.
Apparently, they thought we were "prone to finding rare monsters."
Dan wasn't happy about it.
"Are you saying we're bait?"
One of them shrugged. "Lucky charm. Unlucky charm. Same thing."
We rolled out for another clearing op, eight hours of tedious shit, searching for anything worth capturing.
And what did we find?
Nothing.
Just the usual Gobbers and lesser creatures.
TRU did have us capture one weird Gobber, though.
It had a massive tumor growing on the side of its neck, pulsating like a living blister.
They threw it in a containment box and hauled it off.
Beyond that?
It was a boring-ass patrol.
After hours of sweeping empty ruins, we finally turned back toward Damasa.
We were running low on Ammo and Fuel again.
I sat in the driver's seat, listening to the hum of the engine, the rhythmic bouncing of the Humvee on the rough terrain.
Foster let out a tired groan. "Man, I swear to God, if I have to burn one more rat-farming Gobber, I'm gonna lose it."
Dan leaned back, closing his eyes. "Yeah? Well, if I gotta hear TRU talk about how lucky we are, I'm gonna commit an actual war crime."
Gino chuckled. "You already do, man."
Dan snorted.
I just kept driving.
Because no matter how tired we were, no matter how much we kept burning these ugly freaks.
It wasn't over.
Four more fucking years of this.
* * *
I was trying to sleep.
Keyword was trying.
But Dan, Gino, and Foster were wired on energy pills, buzzing with enough nervous energy to power a damn generator.
Those things were like crack, kept your ass awake through long-ass patrols, night shifts, and whatever miserable hours HQ decided we needed to function through. Legally, we were supposed to take them in "controlled doses."
Reality?
We stole entire cases every time we fueled up.
If HQ really wanted us to be alert, they should've just given us some actual sleep.
Damasa wasn't great.
We were allowed to refuel. We were not allowed to shower so we stank like shit.
So while the other troopers got to sit in the chow hall, enjoying hot meals and shitty stories, we were eating MREs, smelling like gunpowder, sweat, and unwashed regret.
Dan was still bitching about it.
"This place is a sausage party."
Gino snorted. "Yeah, well, you ain't exactly finding hot chicks in a culling zone. And the ones that do exist?" He whistled. "They got jungles in their pants and Kevlar in their bras."
Foster grinned. "Nah, nah, I heard rumors, man. Some women here are like succubi. Horny, absolutely degenerate."
Dan raised an eyebrow. "And?"
Foster smirked. "And the MPs don't like it when people fuck around. Even though they do it all the time."
Dan turned to me. "So, Rus, what's your type?"
I shrugged. "A normal one. Not some barracks bunny."
Foster nodded sagely, putting on his best documentary voice.
"There are three rules to dealing with these yucca yetis," he said.
One. Make sure you don't know their husband or that he's not in your chain of command.
Two. Ensure they're not related to anyone in your chain of command.
Three. Wear rubber. Always.
Gino laughed. "Amen. If you're really desperate, you could try going for the pilots."
Then he grimaced.
"But I don't recommend it. Those guardian angels are batshit insane."
Dan nodded. "Yeah, the worst part? They could 'accidentally' kill you on patrol and get away with it."
It was dumb locker room talk, but I got it.
They were all horny.
All tired.
All deprived of anything even remotely normal.
But at least I had self-discipline.
They?
They had energy pills.
And that was not the same thing.
Since we clocked 72 hours of work, they finally let us sit around and do nothing.
Which meant lounging near our Humvee, annoying the mechanics, and watching the perimeter while pretending to be useful.
Raz, our designated mechanic, walked up, took one look at us, and immediately told us to fuck off from the hood.
We complied.
Raz was one of the few people we actually respected, mostly because he was the only one who knew how to keep our Humvee from falling apart.
We sat back, resting on our gear.
Foster, scrolling through his PDA, had found a digital magazine.
It was full of women.
And the moron was zooming in and out of their cleavage and nape, like some kind of pervert scientist.
Gino nudged him. "Yo, share the material."
And just like that, the two idiots launched into a full commentary, rating the women in the magazine like it was a fine-dining experience.
Dan shook his head. "You two need God."
"God ain't here, man," Foster muttered, still scrolling. "Just us. And these amazing pairs of tits."
Then the radio buzzed.
Battalion Commander on comms.
"All units prepare to fortify Damasa. Additional squads will be escorting supply caravans in. Standby for assignments."
We all stiffened.
Then HQ continued.
"Your Team… you're not on the list."
Silence.
Gino blinked. "Wait. So…"
Dan sat up. "We're not doing shit?"
"Looks like it," I muttered.
Foster let out a relieved sigh. "Fucking finally."
We weren't picked for escort duty.
We weren't picked for fortifications.
Which meant we had the next few days to do absolutely nothing except:
Catch up on sleep.
Watch the perimeter.
Try not to lose our minds.
For the first time in weeks, we actually had some peace.
* * *
Turns out, doing nothing wasn't fun.
By Day Four, I regretted every single decision that led me here.
The black soil was evil.
I don't mean that in some poetic, metaphorical way. I mean it literally.
It was thick, sticky, and smelled like rot. It clung to everything, our boots, our skin, our goddamn souls. No matter how much we wiped it off, it came back.
It was like the land itself hated us.
Which, honestly? Fair.
We weren't exactly treating it with love either with all our uncontrolled burning.
At first, we tried shooting the problem.
Didn't work.
So when Gunny saw us wasting ammo on the ground like a bunch of bored idiots, he told us to fuck off and handed us shovels instead.
"You wanna shoot something? Dig first."
So we dug.
And we dug.
And we kept fucking digging because apparently, trenches weren't going to dig themselves.
By Day Five, we were officially in hell.
The wasteland was endless.
Just miles and miles of scorched earth, ruined buildings, and the occasional pile of bones.
We hated it.
We hated the sight of it. We hated the smell of it. We hated the way the dirt stuck to our skin.
And worst of all?
The meals were even shittier than usual.
I could've sworn I tasted cardboard in my MRE. Dan was convinced they were serving us rehydrated rat meat.
Foster found a literal rock in his mashed potatoes.
"This ain't food man," he muttered. "This is a war crime. An attempt to kill us."
And honestly? I wasn't going to argue.
By the end of the fifteenth day, morale was at an all-time low.
We were covered in filth, our backs ached from digging, and our brains were slowly rotting from boredom.
Dan leaned against his shovel, looking out at the endless wasteland.
"I swear to God," he muttered, "if I have to look at this dirt one more day, I'm gonna throw myself into a Gobber nest and let them eat me."
Gino groaned. "I'd let 'em cook me first. At least they'd season the meat."
Foster just sat in the trench, staring into the abyss.
I had nothing left to say.
Because for the first time in my life?
I was too tired to complain.
And that was saying something.
Just when I thought I couldn't take another day of filth, sweat, and existential dread, the gods of hygiene finally showed mercy.
We were told we could shower.
For the first time in weeks.
At that moment, I think I felt something close to happiness.
Then we actually got to the showers.
And it turned into a goddamn nightmare.
If you've never seen fifty grown men, covered in layers of dirt, gunpowder, and regret, stripping down to wash off weeks of grime in a single shared shower space, let me tell you—
It's an experience.
A terrible one.
The moment we stepped inside, the entire place turned into a high school locker room gone wrong.
Guys were either comparing dicks, throwing soap at each other, and debating 'scientific facts' that made no goddamn sense.
One dude even started singing.
Why? I have no fucking idea.
It was absolute chaos.
And the worst part?
I was too tired to care.
We stood under the lukewarm water, watching as weeks of filth slid off our bodies.
The water turned black, swirling down the drain like something out of a horror movie.
And yet, for some reason, half the guys stood there mesmerized.
Just… watching it.
Like a bunch of idiots staring into the abyss with their dicks out.
"Damn," Gino muttered, rubbing at his arm. "We were disgusting."
"No shit," I said.
Foster nudged me. "Yo, Rus, look at that."
He pointed at the water circling the drain.
"…It's water, Foster."
"No, no, look at how muddy it is."
"Yes. That's what happens when you don't shower for a month."
Foster nodded like I had just said something profound.
We all just stood there.
Watching the filth spiral down, entranced by our own nastiness.
Like cavemen discovering fire.
Dan finally shook his head. "We're so fucking dumb."
He wasn't wrong.