We had heard reports of Taliban insurgents torturing people in a remote village near the border between Afghanistan and China. When we arrived there were no immediate signs of life. The air was so putrid and thick that breathing itself was painful. We did a sweep of the immediate area, around thirty dilapidated shacks. It was the division leader who made first contact. We heard him call out that he had found a survivor and that she was badly injured. I was the first to arrive on the scene. When I walked through the door it was so obvious, and yet so unbelievable. This young girl, 13 at most, was crawling on the ground towards us. Mangled flesh where her legs used to be, thick dark blood dripping from her lips. Black Knight Alpha, the division leader, called out to me to help him carry her to the truck. I tried to warn him but he just wouldn't listen, he just kept screaming at me to help him. When he grabbed her she started thrashing and biting like a wounded animal, ripping several large chunks of flesh from his arm. I am not proud of what I did to that girl but it was what had to be done.
In the time it took to carry Alpha back to the rendezvous point, no more than 5 minutes, he had lost conciousness and barely had a pulse. Once all six of us had regrouped I explained what had happened and that the best course of action would be to create a quarantine lockdown area until we could be sure he was not infected. The others laughed at me for saying we should treat this as a zombie situation. I was told that the men would deal with it. They dressed the wounds and placed him on a stretcher, right next their own. I volunteered for lookout duty, but only to ensure I was as far away from Alpha as possible. I positioned myself on the roof of the tallest of the shacks. 600 meters to the west were the others, 300 to the south east was what appeared to be the only water supply. I had my sword drawn and I was scoping the area as the sun was slowly falling behind a mountain. It was eerily quiet, not even a tree to rustle in the gentle breeze.
It was 0300, give or take a few minutes. I had spent all night watching for the slightest movement but when it happened it wasn't movement that first alerted me, it was a scream. I quickly leapt to the ground and sprinted towards the truck, my ninja instincts overruling the part of my brain telling me to flee. I arrived to find Major Jackson, a non-ninja army doctor who was working with us. Blood was pouring down his face as he screamed. At one point he pulled his hands away showing that his bottom lip had been ripped from his mouth, bite marks covered the rest of his face. There was no sign of Alpha or the other three ninjas, they had most likely left earlier to perform a sweep of the outer perimeter. I turned back to see Jackson writing something on a piece of paper, as he put down the pen he pulled out his gun and placed it against his head. If I wanted to I could have stopped him, but I couldn't make him go through it.
And that's it, I have no idea what happened after that. No idea what the note said and no idea what happened to the others. I am not sure if I ever will, or really want to.
