The Howling at Darband

I sat in the back row of the briefing tent at Forward Operating Base Calder, watching Lieutenant Colonel Alistair Vane pace in front of the projection screen. The tent smelt of dust, sweat and the cheap coffee somebody had spilt on the plywood floor three days earlier. Nobody had bothered to clean it up. Outside, the afternoon heat pressed through the canvas walls despite the best efforts of the struggling air-conditioning units.

"The village of Darband has shown increased activity over the past week," Vane said, clicking to the next slide. Grainy drone stills appeared on the screen. "Intelligence suggests an insurgent cell has been using it as a staging area for attacks against our supply routes."

I studied the black-and-white images whilst adjusting the sweat-stained bush hat that kept the perspiration out of my eyes. Darband looked like dozens of other villages in northern Helmand: mud-brick houses clustered around narrow lanes, with a few larger buildings that might have served as communal spaces. Nothing about it suggested an insurgent headquarters.

Sergeant Callum Price sat two chairs to my left, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees and absorbing every word. Price was the section commander. I was the senior specialist and primary sharpshooter. Callum always listened as though his life depended on it, which, more often than not, it did.

"Your section will provide observation support from this position," Vane continued, circling a shale rise roughly 900 metres from the village perimeter. "UKSF Patrol Kestrel will conduct the cordon-and-search operation. You are eyes only unless the situation changes. Questions?"

Price raised a hand.

"Sir, what intelligence do we have on civilians in the target area?"

It was a good question. I had been wondering the same thing. Vane paused a fraction too long before answering.

"The latest assessment indicates normal civilian activity. Kestrel will handle the identification and separation of combatants from non-combatants."

That was not much of an answer. I exchanged a glance with Corporal Imran Shah, who sat at the end of our row cleaning beneath his fingernails with a folded scrap of paper. Imran raised one eyebrow. He had noticed the hesitation as well.

"Task duration?" Price asked.

"Initially overnight, extendable to thirty-six hours depending on what Kestrel finds," Vane replied. "Standard observation protocol. Mercer will be primary sharpshooter. The rest of you will maintain security and communications. Departure in ninety minutes. Dismissed."

Everyone stood and filed out. I lingered, taking another look at the drone stills left on the screen. Something about the village layout seemed wrong compared with what I remembered from previous tasks in the region.

The angle and length of the shadows suggested that the imagery was roughly six weeks old.

"Something on your mind, Daniel?" Vane asked from behind me.

I turned to face him.

"Sir, when was the last confirmed ground intelligence from Darband?"

His expression remained neutral, but his eyes narrowed slightly.

"The intelligence is sound, Sergeant. Concentrate on your role."

He had not answered my question, and he had switched from my first name to my rank. Two warning signs.

"Yes, sir," I said, and left the tent.

Outside, the sun struck like a physical blow. The temperature was above 43 degrees Celsius and my shirt was already sticking to my back. I found the section gathering beside two Jackal 2 patrol vehicles, checking kit and filling water bottles and hydration bladders. Our people and equipment were distributed between the vehicles, with enough room to move and fight if we had to. Price was studying an Ordnance-style operational map spread across the bonnet of the lead Jackal.

"Mercer, have a look at these elevations."

I joined him, grateful that he was concentrating on practical details rather than the gaps in our briefing. The shale rise Vane had indicated would give us a clear view of the whole village. A broken ridge along its northern edge would conceal us from the valley floor.

"I'm thinking we establish here," Price said, pointing to the northern end of the ridge. "It gives you the best angle on the unmetalled district track and the bazaar."

"Agreed," I said. "Forecast has the wind coming from the west. At that range, the adjustment should be minimal."

Elliot Ward edged closer, trying to follow our discussion. He was the newest member of the section, twenty-two years old and desperate to prove himself. He had the right attitude, but enthusiasm sometimes got ahead of his patience.

"First observation task, Ward?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yes, but I've studied the procedures. I know what to look for."

"Watch and learn. Stay quiet, stay hidden and do exactly what Sergeant Price tells you."

"Yes, sir." He caught himself almost at once. "Sorry. Yes, Sergeant."

I let it go. After nine years in the Army and two previous operational tours, I was used to nervous young soldiers muddling their forms of address.

Lance Corporal Owen Pritchard and Private Nathan Briggs were checking weapons nearby. Both were solid soldiers whom I had worked with for more than a year. Pritchard was methodical and quiet, with sharp eyes that caught details other people missed. Briggs had more to say for himself, but he knew when to shut up and concentrate.

"Shah," Price called, "make sure we've got extra water. It'll still be hot up there and there isn't much shade."

"Already doing it," Shah replied, securing extra water bottles and full hydration bladders amongst the section stores.

Corporal Imran Shah was our combat medical technician, consistently calm and exceptionally good at patching people up. I had seen him work under fire without so much as a tremor in his hands.

I moved to the rear stowage and opened my rifle case. My L115A3 lay in its fitted foam, its stock marked by years of use. I had fired more rounds through that rifle than I could count, first proving myself during specialist training and then repeatedly in the field. I checked every component in the same deliberate order.

The Schmidt and Bender sight was secure. The bolt ran smoothly. The barrel was clean. I loaded the rifle and secured the additional ammunition in my webbing and Osprey body armour pouches.

"You've got a feeling about this one?" Shah asked quietly as he came to stand beside me.

I continued checking the rifle whilst I answered.

"Vane is holding something back."

Shah nodded. "Some of the Kestrel lads were talking at breakfast about odd reports coming out of villages in this sector. Nothing specific. Just strange behaviour amongst the locals."

That caught my attention.

"What sort of strange behaviour?"

"Didn't hear the details. The conversation stopped when they realised I was listening."

I frowned and closed the rifle case. In my experience, when UKSF personnel went quiet about something, trouble usually followed.

"Mount up in five," Price called. "Final kit check now."

We went through our pre-task rituals, checking weapons again, securing anything that might rattle and confirming that the radio equipment worked. I pulled on my gloves and adjusted my webbing and body armour, feeling the familiar weight settle around me.

Price drove the lead Jackal, with me in the front passenger position and Ward in a rear weapons seat. Shah, Pritchard and Briggs travelled in the second vehicle with most of the medical kit and additional stores. As we passed through the main gate of FOB Calder and took the dusty track west, I reviewed the task in my head.

Observation support for a UKSF operation. Standard procedure. I had completed more than a dozen similar tasks.

But I could not shake the feeling that Lieutenant Colonel Vane had withheld part of the picture. The intelligence gaps, the old drone imagery and the way he had deflected my question about recent ground reporting all pointed to something being wrong.

As we travelled towards Darband, the afternoon sun glaring off the vehicle, I ran through contingencies. What if the village was not as normal as Vane claimed? What if Kestrel met something unexpected? What if we found the trouble first?

The Jackal lurched through a rut. Ward tightened his grip on his L85A2 until his knuckles whitened. In the other vehicle, Pritchard stared out across the landscape with the distant expression soldiers developed after enough time outside the wire. Briggs checked his watch for the third time in five minutes.

They felt it too. This task would be different from the others.

I simply did not know how.

Two hours after leaving FOB Calder, we reached the base of the rise designated as our observation position. The sun hung low, throwing long shadows over the dry landscape as Price switched off the engine.

"Gear up," he ordered, already reaching for his pack. "Let's get established before we lose the light."

I took my rifle case and equipment, feeling the load settle across my shoulders as I stepped into the cooling evening air. The shale rise stood about 70 metres above the surrounding ground. It was not especially high, but it offered clear sight lines to Darband, roughly 900 metres away. The fractured ridge along the northern edge provided both cover and concealment.

We climbed in silence, concentrating on our footing over loose gravel and shale. My boots raised small puffs of dust at every step. Ward breathed heavily behind me beneath the weight of his first full operational load. He had trained well, but training could not quite prepare a man for carrying combat kit uphill after a day of Afghan heat.

"You all right?" I asked without looking back.

"Yeah," he managed between breaths. "Just heavier than I expected."

Pritchard passed us with practised ease despite his pack and rifle.

"First one's always the worst," he told Ward. "It gets easier."

Twenty minutes later, we reached Price's chosen position: a natural hollow behind the ridgeline that protected us from observation whilst giving us an excellent view of the village. The last sunlight painted the ground amber and filled the deeper hollows with purple shadow.

"Mercer, set up here."

Price indicated a cluster of boulders that formed a natural support for my rifle.

"Pritchard, Briggs, establish a sixty-metre all-round security perimeter. Radio checks every twenty minutes. Shah, set up comms and a medical point behind that outcrop. Ward, assist Mercer with the observation equipment."

Everyone moved with practised efficiency. I unfolded my shooting mat and unpacked the L115A3, working through movements I could have completed blindfolded. Ward watched closely as I fitted the sight and checked every fastening.

"Rangefinder," I said.

He passed it to me immediately.

I took readings on the key points in Darband. The large central building was 926 metres away. The eastern entrance was 897 metres. The northern irrigation cistern was 951 metres.

I recorded each distance in my weatherproof notebook, together with the wind and temperature for my ballistic calculations. Price established his observation point beside me with binoculars and a spotting scope. Behind us, Shah set up the communications relay and checked channels and signal strength with Kestrel and battlegroup headquarters.

"Comms are up," Shah reported. "Kestrel Zero says they're still about forty minutes from their insertion point."

I settled behind my rifle and put my eye to the Schmidt and Bender sight, conducting my first detailed survey of Darband in the fading light.

Something immediately felt wrong.

"Callum," I said quietly. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

Price raised his binoculars.

"Talk to me."

"No movement. No lamps. No smoke from cooking fires."

I adjusted the sight and scanned methodically across the village.

"The place looks empty."

Price studied it for a long moment.

"Keep looking. It could be a curfew or a lockdown if insurgents have moved in."

But even villages controlled by militants showed signs of life: sentries walking their routes, animals being tended or some other evidence of human presence. Darband showed nothing. Its mud-brick buildings stood silent against the darkening sky, their windows black and vacant.

"Ward, get the thermal imager running."

I maintained my position behind the rifle and continued scanning. The layout matched the drone stills Vane had shown us, yet something remained wrong with the proportions or the spacing of certain buildings. Without people moving amongst them to provide a sense of scale, I could not identify precisely what troubled me.

"Thermals ready," Shah said as Ward finished setting up the equipment.

The imager should have revealed human bodies, cooking fires or recently used vehicles. I shifted across, adjusted the focus and swept it over Darband.

"Nothing," I said. "No significant heat signatures anywhere."

"That isn't right," Price murmured.

He keyed his radio.

"Kestrel Zero, this is Overwatch. Target location shows no indication of current occupation. No visual movement and no thermal signatures. Over."

Static crackled before a clipped voice replied.

"Overwatch, Kestrel Zero. Observation copied. Maintain position. We are proceeding as planned. Over."

Price frowned.

"Kestrel Zero, request current intelligence update on expected village population. Over."

The pause lasted longer than voice procedure could explain.

"Overwatch, maintain task parameters. Cordon-and-search proceeding on schedule. Kestrel Zero out."

Price and I exchanged a glance. It was not a proper answer.

"They know something they aren't telling us," I said quietly.

Price gave the smallest nod. "Keep watching. Record everything."

The sun vanished beneath the horizon, plunging the landscape into deep blue twilight. I switched to night observation equipment and the world changed to shades of green. Darband remained still and lifeless below us.

Pritchard and Briggs returned from establishing the security perimeter.

"Approaches are clear," Pritchard reported.

"No movement anywhere in our sector," Briggs added. "This place feels wrong, Sergeant. Even the wildlife has gone quiet."

He was right. I had not noticed it until he spoke, but the usual desert sounds seemed muted or entirely absent. There were no distant bird calls, no insects and scarcely any whisper of wind.

"Ward, water," Price ordered, breaking the uneasy silence.

Ward distributed bottles from the stores. I took a measured drink without lifting my eye from the sight. The water was already warm, though it had been cool when we left the base.

"How can an entire village be empty?" Ward whispered as he settled beside me with his binoculars. "Shouldn't there be something?"

"They may have heard about an operation and cleared out," I suggested, though I did not believe it. Villagers might hide, but they seldom abandoned their homes altogether, particularly without taking their animals or possessions.

Once full darkness had settled, we established the watch rotation. Ward and I took the first observation period whilst the others maintained security or rested. Four hours on, two hours off, cycling through the night until Kestrel completed its search.

Night vision rendered Darband in an eerie green stillness. Buildings that should have contained families preparing to sleep stood dark. Lanes that should have held at least a few people moving under cover of darkness remained deserted. Not even a stray dog or goat passed between the buildings.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Ward asked, barely above a whisper.

"Once," I said. "A village near Sangin, but that was after an artillery strike. There is no bomb damage here and no indication of fighting."

Ward shifted uneasily.

"So where did everyone go?"

I had no answer. Through the sight, I continued scanning every building, lane and possible hiding place. Nothing moved but an occasional scrap of cloth or rubbish stirred by the slight evening breeze.

Pritchard and Briggs occupied positions on our flanks, their outlines occasionally visible against the stars. Shah sat with his back to a rock, monitoring the radio whilst checking and rechecking his medical kit, a habit acquired after an earlier task when the section had nearly run out of gauze. Price moved amongst the positions, checking each of us before returning to the centre of the perimeter. It was what a good section commander did: maintain awareness of his people whilst trusting them to do their work.

"Kestrel reports that they're approaching the insertion point," Shah said quietly after receiving a transmission.

I acknowledged him with a nod, my eye still against the sight. Kestrel would enter from the south and clear Darband building by building. We were supposed to warn them about movement or threats beyond their view.

But the village remained as still as a photograph. No doors opened. No shadows passed between buildings. No pinpricks of light betrayed a cigarette or a cooking fire. Nothing living stirred in Darband.

"Movement," Price said suddenly, lifting his binoculars. "South-east corner."

I shifted the rifle and found the area in my sight. For an instant I thought I saw something, a deeper shadow moving between two buildings, but it disappeared before I could identify it.

"Lost it," I said. "What did you see?"

"Not sure. Thought I saw someone moving along that back wall, but..."

His voice trailed away as he kept searching.

We all watched the south-eastern quarter, straining for another sign. Several minutes passed in tense silence.

"Nothing," I said at last. "It might have been cloth caught by the wind."

Price nodded, but he did not look convinced. Neither was I. The shadow had moved with purpose, not like debris.

Shah's radio crackled.

"Overwatch, Kestrel Zero. We are entering the village now. Report any movement immediately. Over."

"Kestrel Zero, this is Overwatch," Price replied. "Possible movement in the south-east corner approximately three minutes ago. Unable to confirm. Village otherwise appears deserted. Over."

"Copied, Overwatch. We'll investigate. Maintain position. Kestrel Zero out."

Through my sight, I picked out the patrol's approach. Dark figures moved with tactical precision towards the village perimeter, barely visible even through night vision. They moved like ghosts.

Ward tensed beside me.

"What's that smell?"

I had not noticed it at first, but then I caught it: a faint, foul odour arriving from the direction of Darband.

"Evening katabatic wind has turned down the wadi," Shah said quietly.

The stench strengthened. It was unmistakably death, not fresh but decaying. Anyone who had spent long enough in a war zone knew it.

"Kestrel is going to find something down there," I murmured, mostly to myself. "And I don't think it will be insurgents."

Price heard me. He shifted closer, keeping his voice low.

"Stay focused, Daniel. Record everything you see. If that village isn't what Vane told us it was, I want a proper account."

I nodded and resumed my methodical scan. Kestrel had reached the edge of Darband and divided into smaller elements to begin the search. I tracked them as they entered the first line of buildings.

Time dragged. The patrol moved efficiently from house to house. Its radio transmissions occasionally carried code phrases indicating that structures had been cleared, but no contact or discoveries were reported. The smell worsened as the downslope wind continued to carry it from the village. Ward pulled his shemagh over his nose. Shah did the same. I forced myself to breathe through the stench and kept the rifle steady.

"Kestrel is reaching the central area," Price said, following the patrol through his binoculars.

I shifted slightly to ease the stiffness in my shoulders without losing my sector. Four hours into the watch, nothing had moved in Darband except Kestrel.

The radio suddenly came alive.

"Overwatch, Kestrel Zero. Initial search complete on approximately sixty per cent of structures. Village appears abandoned. No civilians, no insurgents and no recent indication of normal occupation. Something is wrong here. Over."

Price keyed his handset.

"Kestrel Zero, Overwatch. Any indication of what happened to the population? Evidence of fighting or forced evacuation? Over."

Another long pause followed.

"Negative, Overwatch. No cartridge cases, no blood trails and no signs of a struggle. It looks as though everyone simply left, and recently. Flatbread dough has been left drying beside still-laid bowls in several houses. Over."

I looked at Price. Food preparation interrupted like that suggested a sudden flight, the kind that happened when people feared for their lives.

But what could make an entire village run without taking anything?

"Copied, Kestrel Zero," Price said. "Continuing observation. Be advised, we are detecting a strong decomposition odour from your location. Over."

"Roger, Overwatch. Same at ground level. Investigating the source now. Kestrel Zero out."

The patrol continued deeper into the centre of Darband. Through my sight, I watched its disciplined movement and the way each operator covered the others through buildings and lanes. Whatever Kestrel had found, or failed to find, was putting them on edge. Their movement had become slower and more deliberate.

Ward rolled his shoulders, trying to release the tension caused by hours in the same position.

"This is wrong," he whispered. "Where are all the people?"

"Keep watching," I told him. "Remember every detail."

He nodded and raised his binoculars towards the northern quarter, which Kestrel had not yet reached.

The night deepened. Stars blazed overhead in the clear Afghan sky, providing just enough light to outline the ridge. The temperature had fallen sharply, as it often did after sunset. I pulled on a light layer without looking away from the village.

Shah approached with fresh water.

"Rotation in thirty minutes," he reminded us.

I nodded. I knew I needed to rest when my watch ended, but doubted I could sleep with the mystery of Darband below us. In all my service, I had never seen an intact village abandoned without explanation.

Through the sight, I continued watching Kestrel work through the empty streets. The green image revealed no movement, no heat and no signs of life.

Only a deserted village waiting in the darkness.

At 21:47, I caught movement through my night sight. After hours of staring at emptiness, the abrupt appearance of a human figure brought me instantly alert.

A tall man crossed the central open ground with frantic purpose. He was dragging something.

No. Someone.

An adolescent.

"Callum," I said quietly, keeping my eye to the sight. "Movement. Centre of the village. Adult male with an adolescent."

Price crawled across and lifted his binoculars.

"I see them. What's wrong with the younger one?"

I adjusted the focus. The adolescent's body moved unnaturally, either struggling weakly against the man's grip or suffering some sort of seizure. Arms and legs jerked at irregular intervals as the figure half-carried, half-dragged them towards a reinforced field shelter I had scarcely noticed before.

"Hard to tell," I said. "Injured or ill, perhaps. The adult is frightened."

Every few paces, the man looked over his shoulder as though expecting pursuit. His movements were hurried but deliberate, like someone who had a clear destination and was terrified of what followed.

"Where is Kestrel?" I asked, still tracking the pair.

Price consulted the operational map.

"Eastern quarter, moving west. Several minutes from that position."

The tall figure reached the shelter, tore back its entrance flap and hauled the adolescent inside before following. The flap dropped shut behind them.

I held the sight on the entrance, expecting them to reappear. Nothing moved. Darband returned to its impossible stillness.

"Should we warn Kestrel?" I asked.

Price was already reaching for the radio.

"Kestrel Zero, Overwatch. Visual on two individuals at village centre, grid Echo Three Seven. One adult male, one adolescent. Adult half-carried, half-dragged the younger person into a large field shelter. Adolescent appeared in distress. Acknowledge. Over."

The radio hissed and popped. A voice emerged, distorted and broken.

"Over... watch... continuing mission... parameters... hold position."

Price tried again.

"Kestrel Zero, say again. Transmission garbled. Over."

More static followed, then the same voice returned with an oddly flat cadence.

"Maintain original orders. We will investigate when we reach sector."

Even through the distortion, the commander's tone sounded wrong, almost as though the words had been recorded and played back in the wrong context.

"Copied," Price replied, frustration sharpening his voice. "Be advised, both subjects appeared distressed. The adolescent may need immediate medical attention. Over."

The response broke into fragments, several words repeating beneath the interference before the signal died.

Price lowered the radio with a scowl.

"They want us to remain here."

I kept watching the shelter. "That makes no sense. Survivors requiring medical aid change the task."

"Agreed," Price said, lifting his binoculars again.

Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen. The shelter remained motionless. Kestrel continued clearing buildings several hundred metres away, apparently unaware of the urgency at the village centre.

"Something is wrong," I said. "That man was terrified, and now both of them have vanished."

Price nodded but said nothing, his binoculars fixed on the village.

A sound caught my attention. It did not come from the centre of Darband but from somewhere nearer its northern edge. Ward had moved to check the right flank and now returned with an unsettled expression.

"Sergeant," he said quietly. "Can you hear that?"

We fell silent.

At first there was only the faint passage of wind over the ridge. Then the sound came again, carried through the darkness, and the hair rose along the back of my neck.

It was a muffled cry somewhere between a human scream and an animal call. It lasted only a few seconds before fading.

"What the hell was that?" Price asked, his composure cracking for the first time.

"It could have come from the shelter," I said, although it had seemed to originate elsewhere.

Ward shook his head. "No. Northern quarter, near the collapsed buildings."

The sound came again, a strangled, desperate noise no human throat should have produced. Another answered from a different direction.

Pritchard changed position and searched the darkness with his weapon ready. Briggs moved nearer, his face tense in the green glow of the night-vision equipment.

"Callum," I said quietly, "we need to move closer. Something is happening down there that was not in the briefing."

Price remained silent for nearly a minute, weighing orders against the situation. We were supposed to observe, not intervene, but the presence of two civilians in distress changed matters, and Kestrel was moving too slowly.

"Those weren't normal sounds," Ward whispered.

Another cry echoed through the night, closer than the last.

Shah looked towards Price from the radio position.

"The net has collapsed completely. Nothing but static now."

Price made his decision.

"We're moving to the village perimeter. Close enough to establish what is happening, far enough to break contact if necessary. Mercer, on point with me. Shah and Ward in the middle. Pritchard and Briggs on rear security. Five-metre spacing. Weapons ready, safety catches on. This remains observation only. We do not engage unless directly threatened."

I packed the L115A3 with practised speed and secured it in its case. At close quarters, I would rely on my L85A2.

As I shouldered my pack and checked the rifle, I could not dismiss the sense that we were walking into something far beyond a routine task. The abandoned village, the impossible figures and the inhuman cries bore no resemblance to the insurgent activity Vane had described.

"Ready?" Price asked.

"Ready."

I adjusted my night-vision equipment. The section formed up and began descending towards Darband. Every step carried us nearer to whatever waited below. My instincts screamed that we were entering danger, but they also told me we could not stay on the ridge whilst people might need our help.

The shelter into which the man had dragged the adolescent was now only a dark shape in the distance. I kept watching it as we descended, wondering what we would find inside.

The route down took longer than expected. Loose shale and broken rock forced us to move carefully in darkness, and night vision turned the slope into an unreal green landscape. I kept the L85A2 ready and searched the ground ahead with every step.

The strange cries had ceased. Their absence left a silence more oppressive than the sounds themselves.

"Keep the formation tight," Price whispered when we reached the foot of the rise. "Observation only unless directly threatened."

We approached Darband from the north, passing a cluster of damaged buildings at the village boundary. A dark shape lay across the path ahead. I stopped, raised one hand and signalled the others to halt before moving forwards to investigate.

It was a man lying face down in the dirt. Blood had soaked into the ground around him, forming a dark stain visible even through night vision.

"Casualty," I said quietly.

Price came alongside me and crouched. He carefully rolled the man over, revealing what remained of his face and chest.

I drew a sharp breath. His throat had been torn open. Deep wounds crossed his torso, ripping through clothing and flesh.

"Christ," Pritchard muttered behind us.

Price searched for identification and found none. The man wore local civilian clothing, loose trousers and a long shirt, both shredded and stiff with dried blood.

"No gunshot wounds," Price said. "These are tears."

"Animal attack," I said. "Or something like one."

We moved farther into Darband with our weapons raised and every sense sharpened. The narrow lane opened into a small courtyard.

That was where we discovered why the village had appeared deserted.

Bodies lay everywhere.

Men, women and children were scattered across the dirt like discarded toys. Some had been heaped against walls. Others remained where they had fallen. The stench that had drifted up to our position now struck with full force. I covered my nose and mouth with my shemagh, but it made little difference.

"Search for survivors," Price ordered, his voice tight.

We spread out and moved from one body to the next. I knelt beside a middle-aged woman whose arms still encircled a small child. Both had suffered the same injuries as the man at the village edge: catastrophic trauma to the throat and chest, without any indication of bullets or fragmentation.

"Imran," I called softly.

Shah approached and examined them. His trained eyes found details mine did not.

"Weapons didn't make these wounds," he said, indicating the jagged rents in the woman's flesh. "Look at the pattern. Claw marks. And these around the throat are bites. Large ones."

"How long?" Price asked.

Shah examined the condition of the blood and the first signs of decomposition.

"Between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. No more than that."

Ward stood nearby, his face pale even under the green wash of night vision. It was his first close view of civilian dead, and the brutality made it worse.

"What could do this?" he asked, barely audibly.

"Feral dogs, perhaps," Pritchard suggested. "There was an attack on livestock outside Lashkar Gah once. A whole pack got into the pens. It looked a bit like this."

I had seen the aftermath of dog attacks. This was different. The wounds were too large and too deep, and an entire village had apparently been hunted down in a systematic assault. Ordinary dogs did not behave that way.

"Search the houses," Price said. "Pairs. Mercer, with me. Pritchard and Briggs, eastern side. Shah, remain with Ward and clear these buildings."

I followed Price towards a cluster of mud-brick homes. The first door hung open and creaked in the downslope breeze. Inside we found a family caught without warning, all bearing the same savage injuries.

A ball of flatbread dough had been left drying beside bowls still laid out for a meal.

"They were attacked as they prepared to eat," Price said.

We moved from house to house and found the same scene repeated. Some victims had attempted to resist. Crude weapons remained gripped in rigid hands, and furniture had been overturned to form barriers. None of it had saved them.

"There is no pattern to the victims," I said after the fourth house. "Men, women, children, elderly. Everyone was killed the same way."

Price nodded grimly. "This wasn't selective. It was slaughter."

My training as a sharpshooter had taught me to analyse patterns of attack. Insurgents usually targeted military or government personnel, or used violence to spread fear for a political purpose. Extremists might murder civilians, but bombs and firearms produced casualties quickly.

This was something else. Something had killed with teeth and claws and hunted down everyone it could find.

Pritchard and Briggs rejoined us near the village centre.

"Same everywhere," Pritchard reported. "Whole families torn apart. No survivors in our sector."

Price tried the radio again.

"Kestrel Support, this is Overwatch. Multiple civilian dead at target location. Request immediate assistance and direction. Over."

Garbled noise answered. Broken words surfaced beneath the static.

"Copy... maintain position... wait for patrol."

"Kestrel Support, say again. We have an entire village of civilians killed by unknown means. No evidence of conventional weapons. Over."

More static followed, then a formulaic reply in the same oddly flat cadence.

"Acknowledged... stand by... support proceeding."

Price lowered the handset, frustrated.

"Something is interfering with the net," I said. "Or somebody doesn't want a clear report leaving this village."

We regrouped beside the northern irrigation cistern near the centre of Darband. Shah and Ward returned from their assigned buildings, both looking grim.

"Nothing," Shah said. "No survivors. Same wounds in every house we searched."

I looked towards the field shelter I had seen from the ridge. It stood approximately 50 metres away, its entrance flap stirring in the wind. That was where the tall figure had taken the adolescent, the only apparent living people we had observed.

"What about Kestrel?" Briggs asked. "Shouldn't they have reached the centre by now?"

Price checked his watch.

"According to their last confirmed location and movement rate, yes. They should be here."

I searched the surrounding buildings for any sign of the patrol. There were no operators, no discarded kit and no tracks I could distinguish amongst the marks in the dust. Nothing moved except the shadows cast by our own section.

"We need to search that shelter," I said, indicating it. "That is where I saw the two figures."

Price considered it, then nodded.

"Mercer, with me. The rest of you establish a perimeter. Shah, be ready in case somebody inside is still alive."

As we approached, several details appeared wrong. The structure was larger and heavier than the local shelters. Its reinforced canvas had once carried contractor markings, but somebody had scrubbed them away. Thick walls were fixed firmly into the ground with steel stakes, and heavy ties secured the entrance.

It was a semi-permanent field shelter, not something the villagers had made for themselves.

"Military specification," Price said quietly. "And recently installed. Somebody brought this here with transport and resources."

We stopped several metres from the entrance and listened.

Darband was silent apart from the faint flap of canvas in the breeze. We heard no voices and detected no movement inside.

Price signalled the approach. I took the left side of the entrance whilst he moved to the right.

With practised coordination, we prepared to enter the structure where I had seen the only signs of life in that village of death. Sergeant Callum Price, our section commander, took one side of the field shelter's entrance and I took the other, my hand steady on my L85A2. At his nod, I pulled back the heavy canvas flap and he swept inside with his rifle raised. The interior was darker than the night outside, forcing me to adjust my night vision as I followed him.

The reinforced aid-station shelter was larger than it had appeared, approximately 5 metres by 7, with military-grade equipment scattered throughout. Scrubbed-off contractor markings showed faintly on the canvas. A battery-powered lamp lay on its side in one corner, its bulb shattered. Tables had been overturned and papers strewn across the dirt floor. Something had happened there, and recently.

A small movement caught my eye - a shadow shifting in the far corner. I trained my rifle on it at once.

"Contact," I whispered. "Back corner."

Price directed his torch towards it, revealing an elderly man pressed against the canvas wall. He had drawn his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible. His traditional clothes were torn and stained with what appeared to be dried blood. His face, weathered by decades beneath the Afghan sun, was twisted with terror.

He flinched from our lights, raising a trembling hand to shield his eyes whilst muttering rapidly in Dari.

"Shah," Price called over his shoulder, keeping his weapon trained on the man. "Get in here."

I kept my rifle aimed at the elderly Afghan whilst scanning the rest of the shelter for other occupants. There was no sign of the figure and adolescent I had seen earlier. Corporal Imran Shah slipped through the entrance and assessed the scene quickly.

"He's terrified," Shah said. He slung his rifle and raised his empty hands in a calming gesture.

Our CMT approached slowly, speaking in halting Dari. The old man's eyes widened at his words, and he answered in a torrent too rapid for Shah to follow completely.

"Slowly," Shah said, making soothing movements with his hands. "Speak slowly. Who are you?"

The man took several deep breaths, visibly trying to master himself. He began again, his voice quavering. Shah listened intently, occasionally interrupting with a question.

"His name is Rahim," he translated. "He says he's one of the few who survived."

"Survived what?" Price asked, lowering his weapon slightly without relaxing his stance.

Shah put the question to Rahim. The old man became agitated again, gesturing wildly as he spoke.

"There's one word he keeps repeating," Shah said, his expression troubled. "Shaitan. The Devil. He says the Devil came to the village."

Price's jaw tightened. "Ask him what happened to everyone. Where are the bodies?"

Shah relayed the question. Rahim's answer made him look even more uncomfortable.

"He says the Devil took them. Made them change and turn on one another." Shah hesitated. "I think he's describing some sort of attack, but he's using religious language I don't fully understand."

Price tried a more direct approach. When had it happened? How many days ago?

The question seemed to focus Rahim. He held up three fingers.

"Three days?" Shah asked.

Rahim nodded emphatically.

"And where are the other survivors?" I asked.

When Shah translated, Rahim shook his head violently and pointed towards the far end of the village. His gestures grew increasingly frantic. He pointed, made clawing motions with his hands, then drew his fingers across his throat.

"I'm not certain," Shah said. "I think he's saying the people who survived the first attack hid over there. Or that they were taken there."

I stepped closer, keeping my voice calm. "Ask him about the figure and the adolescent I saw. One was half-carrying, half-dragging the other into this shelter earlier tonight."

Shah put the question to him.

The change in Rahim was immediate and disturbing. His eyes widened until I thought they might bulge from his skull. He seized Shah's arm and pulled him closer, speaking in a harsh, rapid whisper. Shah listened, the colour draining from his face.

When Rahim finished, Shah remained frozen for several seconds.

"What did he say?" Price prompted.

Shah swallowed. "He says the figure you saw was his son, Farid. The boy was his grandson, Sami."

"And?" Price pressed when he hesitated.

"They're both dead," Shah said quietly. "They were killed three days ago, during the first attack. Rahim says he buried them himself behind his house on the eastern edge of the village."

Cold spread through my chest despite the lingering heat.

"That's impossible," Price said flatly.

"I know what I saw," I replied. "One of them dragged the other through this entrance."

I indicated the canvas flap. Shah translated, and Rahim became even more distressed. Tears streamed down his weathered cheeks as he spoke.

"He says what you saw wasn't his son any more," Shah told us, his voice unsteady. "He says the dead sometimes walk at night. Since the Devil came with his beasts, nothing stays dead."

Price shook his head. "Trauma and confusion. He's mixing up what happened."

I wanted to accept that explanation, but my memory was too clear. Farid had moved with purpose as he hauled Sami into the shelter. The adolescent had not fought him. His body had twitched and spasmed with an unnatural, broken rhythm.

"Ask him about Kestrel Patrol," I said.

Shah did so. Rahim merely looked confused.

"He doesn't know of any soldiers entering the village before us," Shah said after listening to his answer.

Price frowned. "That can't be right. Kestrel has supposedly been inside the cordon for hours. They should have reached the centre long before we did."

Rahim suddenly gripped Shah's arm again, his bony fingers digging in with surprising strength. He drew the CMT closer and whispered urgently, his eyes flicking towards the entrance as though he feared something outside might hear him.

"Dogs," Shah translated, looking increasingly troubled. "He keeps talking about sick dogs. Rabid dogs that came with the Devil."

"Dogs did all this?" Price gestured towards the flap and the carnage beyond it.

Shah shook his head as he listened to the rest of Rahim's explanation. "Not only dogs. He says they attacked people and bit them. Then the bitten people became like animals themselves. They turned on their families and neighbours."

"Rabies?" I suggested, reaching for any rational explanation.

"No," Shah said. "He's describing something worse. Something that spread too quickly and changed people completely. He says those who were bitten became like the dogs, only worse. They still looked human, but behaved like beasts. Then they attacked others, and it spread."

I thought of the bodies we had found, the savage wounds and torn throats. Rahim's account fitted what we had seen, but it did not explain the speed or scale of the slaughter.

"Where are the dogs now?" Price asked.

Before Shah could translate, we all heard it.

A long, mournful howl rose somewhere in the village. Another answered from a different direction, then a third.

Rahim went rigid. He pressed himself harder against the canvas as if trying to force his way through it, then began praying rapidly and rocking back and forth.

The howls came again, closer this time. They were not the ordinary cries of feral dogs, but something deeper and more guttural. I had heard plenty of them during my previous tours, including reports of a pack savaging livestock outside Lashkar Gah, but I had never heard anything like that.

"We need to move," Price said. All scepticism had vanished from his voice. "Now."

I grabbed my pack whilst he called to the soldiers outside.

"Pritchard, Briggs, incoming. Unknown number of hostile dogs approaching from several directions. Form on me."

Shah tried to get Rahim to his feet, but the old man refused to move. He continued praying and rocking.

"He won't come," Shah said after another attempt.

"We can't leave him," I said.

The howling grew louder, converging on us. The sound made every combat instinct I possessed flare. Whatever was coming, it was not merely a pack of feral dogs.

"I'll carry him if I have to."

As I moved towards Rahim, he looked up at me. For a moment, his eyes held perfect clarity. When he spoke, it was in accented English.

"They smell the blood," he said. "They always return to where they killed. You cannot save me. Run."

Before I could answer, the howling outside rose to a fever pitch. Several animals were surrounding us. Growls and snarls joined the howls, creating a nightmarish chorus that seemed to come from every direction at once.

Price gripped my shoulder. "We're out of time."

The words hung in the air for half a second before we moved. I slung my pack over one shoulder and turned towards the entrance with my rifle ready.

"Move now," Price ordered. "Pritchard, Briggs, covering positions. Shah, stay in the middle."

I looked back at Rahim, still pressed against the wall and muttering prayers.

"We have to go," I said, reaching for his arm.

He wrenched it away with surprising strength. "No. They smell me. I stay. You go."

There was no time to argue. Price was already pushing through the flap and the section had to move. I followed him out into the night.

The village looked different now. Shadows shifted between buildings where nothing had moved before. Lance Corporal Owen Pritchard and Private Nathan Briggs had taken positions on either side of the entrance, rifles trained on the darkness. Elliot Ward crouched nearby, his young face tense beneath his night-vision equipment.

"What's the plan, Sergeant?" Ward asked.

"Defensive formation," Price said, his voice steady despite the rising howls. "We move towards the eastern edge. There's a stone-walled building there that looks defensible."

I raised my L85A2 and scanned through the sight. The green wash of night vision showed only empty alleys and gaps between mud-brick buildings.

Then I caught movement.

"Contact, ten o'clock," I said quietly. "Thirty metres."

Through the optic I saw a dog, but there was something profoundly wrong with it. It was larger than any feral animal I had encountered in Afghanistan. Its coat was matted and missing in patches. Foam hung from its jaws, catching the ambient light. Its eyes were worse. They reflected the infrared illumination with unnatural brilliance, almost as if they produced light of their own.

"Seen," Price said. "Everyone stay tight."

More shapes emerged, slinking between buildings and around corners. Five, then ten, then more. I counted at least fifteen animals moving with a coordination no ordinary pack possessed. They did not bark or rush us. They emerged silently from every direction, heads low as they circled our position.

"Those aren't normal dogs," Pritchard whispered, tracking a particularly large specimen on our right flank.

"They're closing the routes out," I said.

The animals were thinking. Planning. Encircling us methodically.

Ward shifted beside me. The largest animal had fixed its gaze directly on him, watching with those fiercely reflective eyes. Whatever restraint held the pack broke when Ward raised his rifle.

His shot cracked through the village and one dog dropped. For a heartbeat everything became still. Even the howling stopped.

Then it began again, louder and more frenzied than before.

"They're coming!" Briggs shouted.

The pack charged as one. It was not the chaotic rush of ordinary predators but a coordinated assault. The animals came from several directions, dividing into smaller groups to strike from different angles.

I sighted the nearest and fired twice into its torso. Both rounds struck. The dog stumbled but kept coming despite wounds that should have killed it. I adjusted my aim and put a third round through its skull. This time it stayed down.

"Head shots!" I shouted. "Torso rounds aren't stopping them!"

Price and Pritchard fired controlled bursts, throwing up a barrier of fire as the animals closed. Shah remained in the centre of our formation with his rifle raised, maintaining the circle whilst keeping himself free to treat casualties.

"Briggs, Ward, on me!" Price called above the gunfire. "We're moving to that building."

He pointed towards a structure approximately 50 metres away, one wall partially collapsed. We began a fighting retreat in tight formation. Shah and Briggs edged towards better cover whilst Price, Pritchard and I kept firing.

The dogs were cleverer than any animals had a right to be. They darted from cover to cover, using the village buildings to conceal their approach and appearing in blind spots we could not all cover.

"Left!" Pritchard warned as three animals flanked us.

I swung my rifle and dropped two. The third vanished behind a low wall. The green wash of night vision made fast targets difficult to track, particularly with the pack splitting into separate attack groups.

Ward was moving backwards and covering our right flank when it happened.

A massive animal, easily twice the size of the others, cleared a crumbling wall nearly 2 metres high and landed directly in his path. It moved with impossible speed. Ward fired, but the shot went wide as the creature lunged. Its jaws closed high across his right shoulder and upper back with enough force to drag him to the ground.

Ward's scream cut through the gunfire and growls.

"Ward's down!" I shouted, already turning towards him.

The dog had him pinned, its jaws locked into his shoulder as it shook him like a toy. Blood darkened the back of Ward's combat shirt beneath his Osprey armour. He struggled to bring his weapon round, but pain and the animal's strength made it impossible.

I lined up the shot, conscious that Ward was thrashing beneath the creature. I could not risk hitting him. My first round struck its hindquarters, but it did not release him. I stepped closer and fired into its flank. The animal jerked yet maintained its grip.

"Get it off him!" Shah yelled, trying to reach Ward whilst watching for the rest of the pack.

I closed to less than 3 metres, settled the sight on the animal's skull and fired. The round punched through the back of its head. At last the dog went limp, though its jaws remained clamped into Ward's flesh.

Pritchard reached him first and kicked the dead animal clear whilst I covered them. Ward lay clutching his right shoulder, blood forcing its way between his fingers.

"Can you move?" Pritchard asked, seizing his uninjured arm.

Ward nodded through gritted teeth. Pritchard hauled him upright whilst Price and Briggs laid down covering fire. The remaining dogs had withdrawn for the moment, regrouping among the shadows.

"They're circling again," Price warned. "We move now."

Shah reached Ward and made a rapid examination.

"Deep wound, but he can still move. I need cover before I can treat him."

We closed around Ward, who remained on his feet but leant heavily against Pritchard. Blood soaked the right shoulder and upper back of his clothing, though his eyes remained clear and focused. Adrenaline was carrying him.

"That building, thirty metres," Price said. "Go!"

We moved as one towards the partially collapsed structure. The dogs shadowed us, darting between buildings. Some rushed forwards only to fall back when we fired. They were testing our defence and searching for weakness.

"Conserve ammunition," Price ordered. "Fire only on a clear target."

The building ahead was two storeys high, its thick stone walls having partly survived whatever had ravaged the village. One corner had collapsed into a pile of rubble, but the remaining structure appeared sound.

"Metal door on the south side," I said. "Better than those open arches."

We altered course. The dogs seemed to understand our intention, and several broke forwards to cut us off. Briggs and I dropped the two leading animals with shots to the head whilst Price directed the retreat.

"Ten metres," he called. "Pritchard, get Ward inside. We'll cover you."

Pritchard practically dragged Ward over the final stretch whilst the rest of us formed a semicircle facing outwards. The dogs surrounded us now, slinking through the shadows, their eyes burning in our night vision.

Behind us, I heard Pritchard kick the door. Metal scraped against stone.

"Clear!" he called from inside.

"Shah, go," Price ordered.

Shah backed through the doorway with his rifle still trained outwards. For an instant I glimpsed Rahim directly behind him, bent almost double as he hurried within the protection of our formation. The old man had changed his mind after all. Briggs went next, then Price signalled to me.

I backed through the entrance, searching for targets as I moved. The largest concentration of dogs had gathered to the north. At least eight moved together with the same disturbing discipline.

Inside, Pritchard was already lowering Ward against a wall. The room contained no bodies. It had thick stone walls and only two ground-level openings: the metal door through which we had entered and a small window in the opposite wall.

"Briggs, secure that window," Price ordered as he backed through the door. "Pritchard, help me barricade this."

I knelt beside Ward. He was breathing hard, his face pale even through the green glow of our night vision. Shah was already cutting away the material around the bite, his medical training taking over.

"How bad?" I asked.

"Bad enough," Shah replied. "The teeth went deep and tore muscle, but they appear to have missed the major vessels. He's lucky."

Ward gave a strained laugh. "Doesn't feel lucky."

Outside, the howling continued. I moved to the window where Briggs had taken position and peered out. The dogs circled the building. Some scratched at the walls, whilst others simply watched us with those unsettling eyes.

One of the larger animals stood squarely in my line of sight and stared at the structure as if it knew precisely where we stood behind the stone.

"They're not leaving," I said.

"They will eventually," Price replied as he and Pritchard wedged a heavy wooden table against the metal door.

Watching the methodical way the animals moved, I was not convinced. These were not ordinary dogs acting on instinct. Whatever had happened in Darband, whatever had killed its inhabitants, now waited outside our shelter.

The stone walls muffled the howling without making it any less menacing. Claws scraped across the masonry. Briggs and I remained at the narrow window, tracking the pack as it tested different parts of the structure.

"They're searching for another way in," I whispered, following a particularly large dog as it paced the western wall.

Briggs nodded, his jaw clenched. "Never seen dogs behave like this. It's as though they're thinking."

Behind us, Shah had opened his field kit beside Ward, who sat propped against the far wall. Ward's face had gone pale. The right shoulder and upper back of his clothing were dark with blood that looked black through our night-vision equipment.

"How is he?" I asked, moving away from the window once I was satisfied the animals could not reach through it.

Shah cut away the remaining fabric around the wound.

"Hold this," he said, passing me a small torch. "Keep the light on the injury."

I directed it where he indicated, giving us our first clear view. The bite had torn through muscle and tissue, leaving ragged arcs of punctures where the animal's teeth had sunk in. The surrounding skin was already swollen, and the wound's edges had turned an angry red. Ward hissed through clenched teeth as Shah examined it.

"How bad is it, Corporal?"

"You'll live," Shah said, taking water from his medical supplies to irrigate the wound. "But it is deep. Some of those teeth reached the bone."

Price finished securing the room and crouched beside us. "Report."

"Multiple puncture wounds high on the right shoulder and across the upper back," Shah replied without looking up. "No arterial damage that I can identify, but there is a serious risk of infection."

"I'm fine, sir - Sergeant," Ward insisted, his voice wavering. "It just hurts like hell."

Price squeezed his uninjured shoulder. "Hold it together. Shah will sort you out."

I returned to the window to relieve Briggs so he could check his equipment. The dogs were still circling, though their movements had become less frenzied. They patrolled the perimeter, occasionally stopping to sniff at the foot of a wall or claw at the earth.

A noise from the rear corner made me swing my rifle round. I stopped when I recognised Rahim. In the confusion of the retreat, I had seen him following Shah but had lost sight of him after we entered. He had wedged himself into the corner furthest from the door, knees drawn to his chest exactly as when we had found him. His lips moved in constant prayer and his eyes remained fixed on Ward's wound with an expression of naked dread.

I approached slowly, keeping my movements calm.

"You're safe for now," I said, though I did not know how much English he understood.

His gaze flicked towards me before returning to Ward. He muttered something in Dari and made a warding gesture with one hand.

"Activity is dropping," Pritchard called from beside the door. "I think they're pulling away."

I returned to the window. Several dogs were retreating into the darkness between the buildings. A few remained in sight, watching from a distance, but the immediate pressure had eased.

"They're giving us room," I confirmed. "Still out there."

Price nodded, his expression guarded. "They'll return. They're too clever to waste themselves against a secure position."

Shah cleaned the wound thoroughly and applied a field dressing, his hands precise despite the poor light. He gave Ward a battlefield analgesic from his kit. Within minutes, the young soldier's eyes had become slightly unfocused.

"Ammunition check," Price ordered from the centre of the room. "Everyone report."

We counted our remaining rounds. I had three full magazines for the L85A2 and a partial magazine fitted. Pritchard had slightly more. Briggs was down to two full magazines. Price combined the totals, his expression grim.

"Conserve them. If those animals return in force, we'll need every round."

For the next twenty minutes we held our positions whilst Shah finished treating Ward. The dogs gradually dispersed into the darkness, though I occasionally caught a shape moving between buildings. Their howling stopped, and the silence felt more threatening than the noise had.

Price and I conducted a full sweep of the building. The ground floor consisted of the room we occupied and a smaller storage bay reached through an internal doorway. The storage bay had no roof, though its high walls made it defensible. Part of the upper storey had collapsed, leaving a section of wall and ceiling missing at the north-western corner. We checked every possible entrance and found none large enough for a dog to use without exposing itself.

When we returned downstairs, Shah had finished bandaging Ward's shoulder.

"I've cleaned it as well as I can and given him an antibiotic dose from the field kit," he reported. "The wound is deep but clear of debris. Infection is the main concern now."

Ward sat upright, pale but alert. "Told you I'm fine," he said with a weak smile. "Barely a scratch."

I crouched beside him. "You reacted quickly out there. Dropped the first one cleanly."

"Not quickly enough." He grimaced and glanced at his bandaged shoulder. "Bastard still got me."

Price gathered us for an assessment, keeping his voice low.

"We're secure for the moment. Those things have withdrawn, but they know where we are. We hold until first light, then request casualty evacuation."

"What about communications?" I asked. "The radio was useless earlier."

Price frowned. "We'll try again in an hour. It may have been temporary interference."

None of us said what we were thinking. Nothing about the task had been normal. Kestrel Patrol's increasingly formulaic transmissions, the distorted fragments on the net and the complete absence of any physical trace of them had already undermined our faith in standard procedures.

Shah remained beside Ward, monitoring him and checking the dressing. Ward insisted he felt better, although sweat had begun to gather across his forehead despite the cooling night air.

"I'm just hot," he said when Shah questioned him. "Probably the adrenaline."

"Drink," Shah instructed, passing him a water bottle. "Small sips."

At approximately 02:00, Ward's condition began to deteriorate. We established a watch rotation so that pairs could rest. Pritchard and Briggs took the first watch whilst Price, Shah and I attempted to sleep. I positioned myself where I could see both the door and Ward, too alert to close my eyes.

Ward dozed fitfully and muttered beneath his breath. His face looked flushed even in the dim light, and he pushed away the light covering Shah had placed over him. Twice the CMT checked his temperature, his concern becoming more apparent each time.

Ward woke with a gasp and sat bolt upright. His eyes darted wildly around the room before settling on me.

"You all right?" I asked, moving closer.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "Bad dream. Thought I was... Never mind."

He wiped sweat from his face with his good hand.

"How's the shoulder?"

"Burning. Feels as if it's on fire. And I feel sick."

I called Shah over. He gave Ward another antibiotic dose with water.

"Your body is reacting to the wound," Shah explained. "Nausea after trauma is not unusual."

Ward nodded, but something in his expression troubled me. He kept blinking and rubbing his eyes as though struggling to focus.

"Something wrong with your sight?" I asked.

"Everything is too bright," Ward said. "And it all looks slightly yellow. Must be the painkiller."

Shah frowned. "I didn't give you anything that should disturb your vision."

He took out a pen torch and examined Ward's pupils. They contracted normally, but a thin amber ring had appeared at the edge of each grey iris.

Shah noticed it as well, though he did not comment directly.

"Headache? Confusion?"

"My head is pounding," Ward admitted. "And I keep hearing things."

"What sort of things?" I asked.

He hesitated. "It's stupid. Echoes, probably. Or my imagination."

As the hours passed, his fever climbed. He alternated between violent shivering and complaints of unbearable heat. Shah administered what treatment he could, but it had little effect.

Price tried the radio again. The handset had taken a knock during the retreat, and inspection revealed an intermittent connection where the casing had cracked. I repaired it as well as I could and restored a steady power indication, but the interference remained. We heard only static and occasional distorted fragments, none clear enough to establish contact.

"The damage explains some of it," Price said, frustration hardening his voice. "It doesn't explain this interference."

He tried both the battlegroup net and the emergency frequency. The same abnormal white noise swallowed every call.

At 03:30, I relieved Briggs at the window. Darband remained unnaturally quiet. The moon had set, leaving only starlight over the empty lanes. There was no sign of the dogs.

Behind me, Ward began muttering incoherently. I caught fragments about scratching beneath his skin and voices calling from the darkness.

Shah checked him again and swore under his breath. "He's burning up. This isn't a normal fever response."

"Reaction to the antibiotic?" Price asked.

Shah shook his head. "I don't think so. It is progressing far too quickly."

He soaked a cloth with water and placed it across Ward's forehead. "We need to bring his temperature down."

Ward's eyes fluttered open and roamed around the room before fixing on Shah. The amber ring had spread across each iris, steadily consuming the grey. Worse than the colour was the expression behind it - wild, unfocused and faintly predatory.

"Something's under my skin," Ward whispered, clawing at his injured shoulder with his left hand. "I can feel it moving."

Shah gently restrained him. "That's the swelling. Keep still."

"No," Ward insisted, his voice rising. "It's inside me. It put something inside me. I can hear them talking."

Pritchard and Briggs exchanged uneasy looks. Price moved closer.

"Corporal?" he asked quietly.

"Delirium caused by the fever, perhaps. Or a reaction to something in the animal's saliva." Shah shook his head. "I've never seen an infection develop at this speed."

Ward suddenly seized Shah's wrist with startling strength.

"They're coming back," he hissed. "They know we're here. They can smell us."

"Who is coming back?" I asked.

"The pack."

For an instant recognition returned to his eyes as he looked at me. Then it vanished beneath that feral stare.

"They're hungry," he whispered. "Always hungry."

At around 04:00, Ward convulsed. His back arched clear of the floor, heels hammering against the stone as Pritchard and Price struggled to stop him injuring himself. Shah protected his head and tried to maintain his airway until the seizure subsided.

His skin was hot enough that warmth radiated from him. The bite had swollen grotesquely beneath the dressing. When Shah lifted its edge, dark veins were spreading away from the punctures, visible along Ward's neck, down his arm and across his chest. The tissue surrounding the wound had turned purplish black, and thick, dark fluid seeped into the dressing.

Shah tried everything available to him - cooling cloths, fever treatment, antibiotics and careful hydration - but nothing slowed the deterioration. Ward drifted between delirium and brief periods of lucidity. Those moments were almost worse. He would look at us with fear and confusion before slipping back into fevered muttering.

I stood with Price several metres away and kept my voice low.

"This isn't normal."

"No," he admitted, watching Shah coax water between Ward's lips. "I've seen infection set in quickly, but never in a matter of hours."

"Remember what Rahim said about the bitten changing?"

Price's jaw tightened. "Rahim is traumatised. This must be an infection, perhaps something endemic that we haven't encountered before."

I did not believe him, and from his expression I knew he did not entirely believe himself.

Rahim remained in his corner, staring at Ward with undisguised terror. He had stopped praying. Now he simply watched as though his worst fears were being confirmed before him.

"What do we do if he gets worse?" I asked.

Price did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice was heavy.

"We hold until dawn, then we get our people out."

He did not specify whether Ward would still be one of them. I did not ask.

Across the room, Ward emitted a low moan that sounded nothing like a human voice. It carried the same layered resonance as the howls we had heard outside. The hair lifted along the back of my neck.

Shah recoiled from the sound. Ward's eyes snapped open and fixed upon him with sudden, predatory concentration. His lips peeled back, exposing teeth that appeared subtly wrong in the dim light.

"Shah, step back," I warned.

The CMT hesitated, medical duty warring visibly with instinct.

"Give him space," I said, moving closer with my rifle held ready.

For the next hour, Ward alternated between terrible stillness and bouts of violent thrashing. Price and Pritchard had to restrain him whilst Shah checked his condition. The dressing became saturated with the thick, near-black discharge.

"This is beyond anything I've seen," Shah admitted when he moved away to fetch fresh water. "Whatever is happening is moving through him too quickly."

He drew back the dressing again. I had to fight the impulse to recoil. The puncture marks had swollen into black-edged pits. Dark lines spread from them like ink injected into Ward's blood vessels.

"What is that?" I asked.

"I don't know," Shah said. "It appears to be following the vascular system, but it resembles no infection pattern I've studied."

Price returned to the radio, pressing the repaired handset to his ear.

"Kestrel Support, Kestrel Seven, this is Calder observation section. Medical emergency. Private Ward requires urgent casualty evacuation. Two dead within the village, one urgent casualty. Does anyone receive? Over."

Only static answered. Beneath it, for a moment, I thought I heard one of Kestrel's earlier phrases repeated in precisely the same cadence as before. The words stretched and broke apart, as if played from a damaged recording or relayed through failing equipment. Then the signal vanished.

"Try the emergency net again," I said.

Price changed frequency and repeated the call. White noise swallowed him once more.

Ward's muttering grew clearer.

"Voices telling me things," he rasped. "Hungry. So hungry. I can smell your blood."

"He's delirious," Shah said, although he had begun to keep beyond Ward's reach whenever he could.

"Anything else you can give him?" Price asked, setting the handset aside.

Shah checked his supplies. "One more analgesic dose if the pain becomes unbearable. I have more antibiotics, but they are doing nothing."

Ward went unnaturally still.

"It isn't an infection," he said.

His voice was suddenly clear, though its rhythm no longer sounded entirely like his own.

We all turned towards him. His eyes were wide open. The amber colour had now spread across nearly the whole of each iris and seemed to catch the weak light.

"It's a gift," he said. "They told me. The change comes with the bite."

A heavy silence settled over the room. I exchanged a glance with Price. His expression hardened into something between concern and calculation.

"Who told you that, Ward?" he asked carefully.

Ward's head turned towards Price with a smoothness that did not seem natural.

"The others," he said. "The ones who came before. They're waiting."

His lips drew back in what might have been intended as a smile, but looked more like a snarl.

"For me. For all of us."

At 04:00, Ward began convulsing.

It started with a slight tremor in his hands, then rapidly worsened until his entire body was thrashing against the stone floor. The sounds he made were not human. Guttural growls mingled with high, keening whines that echoed the howls we had heard from the dogs outside.

"Hold him down!" Shah shouted, rushing forwards with Pritchard.

They seized Ward's arms whilst Briggs pinned his legs. I moved to help Price control his head, trying to stop him smashing it against the floor. His strength was shocking, far beyond anything a man in his weakened state should have possessed. It took all five of us to keep him relatively still.

"What's happening to him?" Briggs asked, the strain clear in his voice as Ward nearly threw him off.

"Some kind of seizure," Shah said, though he did not sound convinced. "I need to give him an analgesic."

Shah managed to administer the injection whilst we held Ward down. It should have subdued him quickly, but it barely dulled the violence of his convulsions.

"This isn't possible," Shah muttered as he checked Ward's pulse. "His heart rate should be falling, not climbing."

Ward's skin burned beneath my hands, so hot it felt like gripping a pan straight from a flame. Sweat streamed down his face and soaked through his uniform, yet his temperature continued to rise. The veins in his neck stood out beneath the skin, threaded with the same dark discolouration that had spread from the bite high on his right shoulder and upper back.

"Everyone back!" Price ordered suddenly, releasing Ward. "Give him space."

We retreated several paces and watched Ward continue to thrash on the floor. The seizure gradually subsided, leaving him panting and twitching, his eyes rolled back in his head.

"What now?" Pritchard asked, wiping sweat from his face.

Price looked at Shah. "Options?"

Shah ran a hand through his hair, frustration and exhaustion written into every line of his body.

"Keep trying to bring the fever down. Hope the analgesic eventually takes effect. Beyond that..." He shook his head. "We need a casualty evacuation and proper medical facilities."

At 05:30, Ward went completely still.

For one dreadful moment, I thought he had died. Then I saw the shallow rise and fall of his chest. His breathing had changed, becoming deep and rhythmic, almost as though he were sleeping peacefully.

"His fever might be breaking," Shah said cautiously as he approached to check Ward's temperature.

I remained close, mistrusting the sudden calm. Shah pressed the back of his hand to Ward's forehead, then felt for his pulse.

"Temperature's dropping," he confirmed, relief entering his voice. "Pulse is settling as well."

Price nodded. "Good work, Shah."

But something felt wrong. The change had come too quickly and too completely. I studied Ward's face. The tension had drained from it, leaving his features relaxed. The swelling around the wound appeared to have diminished slightly, although the dark veins remained visible beneath his skin.

"Should we try to move him when it's light?" Briggs asked. "Carry him back to the Jackals?"

"If his condition remains stable, yes," Price replied. "We'll reassess at first light."

For the next hour we maintained our watch whilst Ward slept. Shah checked him regularly, reporting that his temperature continued to normalise and his breathing remained steady. The immediate crisis seemed to have passed, but I could not shake the unease that had settled over me.

As 06:30 approached, the first suggestion of dawn filtered through the narrow window. The room slowly lightened from absolute black to a dim grey, allowing us to see without night vision for the first time in hours.

Shah was bent over Ward, changing the dressing on his shoulder, when Ward's eyes snapped open.

"He's awake," Shah called, relief plain in his voice.

I moved closer, wanting to see for myself that Ward was improving. Price joined me whilst Pritchard and Briggs remained at the door and window.

Ward blinked several times. His gaze wandered around the room before settling on Shah's face. In the strengthening light, I could see his eyes clearly for the first time since nightfall.

His grey irises had developed a narrow amber ring. As I watched, the colour seemed to spread across each iris, swallowing the grey. The whites were webbed with red, making the amber appear even more unnatural. What chilled me most, however, was the expression behind them. Cold, calculating and utterly devoid of recognition.

"Ward?" Shah said, leaning closer. "How are you feeling?"

Ward did not answer. His head tilted as he studied Shah's face with the detached curiosity of a predator assessing prey.

"Can you hear me?" Shah asked, reaching for Ward's wrist to check his pulse.

Ward's lips drew slowly back, exposing his teeth in something that could never have been mistaken for a smile. His canines looked longer and sharper than they should have been, more like an animal's than a man's.

"Shah," I said, sudden fear tightening my voice. "Move away from him. Now."

Ward lunged with impossible speed. One moment he was lying on the floor, the next he was in the air. Shah had no time even to raise his hands before Ward struck him and drove him backwards onto the stone with a sickening thud.

"Ward, stand down!" Price shouted.

His command died as we saw what happened next.

Ward's mouth opened far wider than any human mouth should. He clamped his altered teeth into Shah's throat with savage force. The sound that followed was wet and terrible - cartilage and flesh tearing as Ward ripped away a piece of Shah's neck in a single vicious bite.

Blood sprayed across the room in a fine mist. Some struck my face, warm and sticky. I stood frozen for what felt like an age, although it could not have been more than a fraction of a second.

"Get him off!" Price yelled, surging forwards and grabbing Ward by the shoulders.

Ward released Shah and turned with the same unnatural speed. His hand shot out and struck Price with enough force to lift him from his feet. Price flew backwards into the stone wall and collapsed, his head making a hollow crack against the masonry.

Pritchard reacted first, raising his L85A2 and firing twice.

The shots were deafening in the confined room, but Ward was no longer where he had been. He twisted at an impossible angle, scrambled across the floor on all fours and sprang towards Briggs.

"He's too fast!" Briggs shouted, retreating as he fired three rounds into the wall where Ward had been an instant earlier.

Ward moved in a grotesque series of jerks, sometimes upright, sometimes on all fours. His uniform was torn and saturated with sweat and blood. His face no longer looked like Elliot Ward's. His jaw thrust forwards unnaturally, and his amber eyes fixed upon each of us in turn with cold, predatory intelligence.

Pritchard fired again and struck Ward in the shoulder, but the wound barely registered. Ward twisted towards him, lips peeled back in a snarl that exposed every tooth.

"The head!" I shouted, remembering how the dogs had continued attacking until we shot them in the skull.

Ward's head snapped towards me at the sound of my voice. For a moment, I thought something flickered in those amber eyes - recognition, perhaps, or even fear. Then it vanished beneath the animal hunger.

He charged straight at me in the same low crouch the dogs had used.

I raised my rifle, forced myself to breathe and aimed as I would at any other target. I squeezed the trigger three times. The first round struck his chest, the second his shoulder and the third just beneath his collarbone. The impacts jerked him backwards and dark blood flowed from the wounds, but he kept coming.

I stepped back and fired again as he closed the distance. The round hit his abdomen and finally dropped him, but even then he did not stop. He began crawling towards Briggs, hauling himself forwards with his arms whilst his legs scraped and pushed against the stone.

The movements were jerky and uncoordinated, but driven by a dreadful purpose. His mouth opened and closed, teeth clicking as he tried to reach Briggs's boots.

I moved closer and stood over what had once been Ward. From that distance I could see that his skin had taken on a grey cast. The veins beneath it were black and swollen. The bullet wounds oozed blood so dark and thick that it barely looked like blood at all.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, although I knew Elliot was no longer there to hear me.

I aimed at his head and fired once.

The round entered just above his right eye. Ward's body immediately went limp and his head dropped against the floor with a final, soft thud.

The room fell silent except for our ragged breathing and the terrible noise coming from Shah.

I rushed to him and knelt beside the fallen CMT. Blood pulsed from the massive wound in his throat, forming an expanding pool across the stone. His eyes were wide with pain and confusion as he tried to draw breath through a windpipe that was no longer intact.

"Imran," I said, pressing my hands to the wound although I knew it was useless.

The damage was too severe and the blood loss too rapid. Shah's hand closed weakly around my wrist. His lips moved as he tried to speak, but only blood bubbled from his mouth. His grip tightened for a moment, then went slack as the light faded from his eyes.

"He's gone," I said quietly, closing Shah's eyelids with my blood-covered fingers.

Pritchard stood nearby with his rifle still trained on Ward's motionless body, as if expecting him to rise again. Briggs moved to Price, who lay crumpled beneath the mark his body had left on the wall.

"Price is alive," Briggs reported, his voice trembling. "Pulse is steady, but he's unconscious. He took a bad blow to the head."

A movement at the edge of my vision caught my attention. Rahim was near the doorway, his weathered face rigid with terror. He had followed Shah through the shelter flap during our fighting retreat and remained behind our formation through the night. Now he slipped through the door and fled into the pale dawn before any of us could stop him.

The metallic smell of blood filled the room as I went to Price. A large bruise was already rising at his temple, and a trickle of blood ran from his hairline down the side of his face. I checked his pupils and was relieved to find them equal and responsive despite his unconsciousness.

"He needs urgent medical attention," I said, looking at Pritchard and Briggs. "We all do."

I returned to Ward's body and stared down at what remained of the young private. In death, his face had relaxed slightly, but his amber eyes remained open, fixed upon nothing. The changes were even more apparent now. His fingers seemed longer, and his nails had thickened into blunt, claw-like points.

The wounds from my shots had already stopped bleeding. The blood around them was congealing into a black, tar-like substance.

"What happened to him?" Briggs asked, barely above a whisper.

"I don't know," I answered. "But Rahim was right. The bite changed him."

Pritchard approached Shah's body and knelt to murmur a prayer over our fallen medic.

"We should close his eyes," he said, reaching towards Shah's face.

I caught his wrist. "I already did."

Pritchard pointed.

Shah's eyes were open again, staring blankly at the ceiling. I was certain I had closed them only minutes before. A chill passed through me as I approached and gently lowered his eyelids once more, keeping my fingers there to make sure they stayed shut.

"We need to secure this position and call for extraction," I said, forcing myself to concentrate on what had to be done. "Briggs, try the radio again now it's getting light. Pritchard, help me move Price away from the bodies."

We lifted Price carefully and carried him to the far side of the room, propping him against the wall in a half-seated position to ease his breathing. His head sagged to one side, but his chest rose and fell steadily.

Briggs worked through the channels, repeating our call sign on the radio net.

"Still nothing but static," he reported after several attempts. "We might have better luck from the rise."

I nodded. "We'll try from higher ground once we can move safely."

The first direct rays of sunlight entered through the window, revealing the room with cruel clarity. Shah's blood looked shockingly red against the stone. Ward's body seemed less human in daylight, not more, every change in his shape exposed.

Pritchard stood by the door and peered through a narrow gap.

"No sign of the dogs," he said. "Nothing moving out there."

I checked my watch. It was just after 06:45. We had survived the night, but at a terrible cost: two dead, one urgent casualty, and the rest of us trapped inside a nightmare we could not begin to understand.

"We wait for full daylight," I decided. "Then we move Price to the vehicles and get out of here."

Briggs nodded, pale but determined. "What about..." He gestured towards Ward and Shah.

I swallowed. "We take Shah with us. Ward... I don't know what happened to him, but we cannot risk bringing him back."

Pritchard looked away from the door. "We should burn him. Just to be certain."

The suggestion would have sounded monstrous a day earlier. After what we had witnessed, it felt like the only safe choice.

"Agreed," I said. "Find anything that will burn."

Over the next fifteen minutes we gathered broken furniture, lengths of dry timber and a small quantity of fuel from a lamp in the corner. We wrapped Ward in a stained canvas sheet and prepared to carry him into an adjoining roofless storage bay, where the smoke would not fill our position.

Before we could move him, Price groaned.

Briggs hurried to his side whilst Pritchard and I watched both the section commander and the bodies of our dead comrades.

Price's eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then gradually sharpening as he took in the room.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice rough.

"Ward attacked," I said. "He killed Shah. You took a hard blow to the head."

Price tried to sit upright and winced.

"Ward? Where is he?"

"Dead. I had to put him down."

Price found Ward's wrapped body and studied the inhuman shape beneath the canvas, the dark stains spreading through it.

"And Shah?"

I indicated where Shah lay. "Nothing we could do. Ward tore out his throat before we could react."

Price closed his eyes. Pain, both physical and otherwise, tightened his face. When he opened them again, grim purpose had replaced it.

"Help me up."

"You shouldn't move," Briggs protested. "You could have a serious concussion or-"

"Help me up," Price repeated, in the tone of a section commander who expected to be obeyed.

Pritchard and I took an arm each and raised him carefully. He swayed, but remained standing with one palm braced against the wall.

"Radio?"

"Still mostly static," Briggs said. "Nothing usable on any channel."

Price nodded as though he had expected that answer. "We move as soon as the light is strong enough. Back to the Jackals and straight to Calder." He looked at Shah. "We take our man with us."

"And Ward?" Pritchard asked.

Price studied the wrapped body for a long moment.

"That isn't Ward any more," he said at last. "Burn it."

Full morning sunlight spilled into the room. Outside, Darband remained silent beneath the brightening sky, offering no hint of the horrors it had contained. Shadows that had hidden things during the night withdrew across the mud-brick walls, leaving nowhere for secrets to hide.

I turned from the window to the room where two members of our section lay dead. One was a victim. The other had become something else entirely.

"We need to move," I said, checking my watch. It was just after 08:00. "Price needs proper treatment."

Pritchard finished securing the canvas around Ward's body. Briggs helped Price drink from a water bottle, supporting his head whilst every movement made the sergeant wince.

I picked up the radio and examined it more carefully. The casing was cracked, damage I had not noticed earlier. It might have happened during our retreat from the dogs, or when the set was knocked against the floor in the chaos. I opened the rear panel and found a loose connection inside. Using my multi-tool, I reseated it and secured it with tape from Shah's field kit.

"Let me try again."

I reassembled the set and moved through the channels until I found one where the interference briefly weakened.

"Calder Command, this is Kestrel Support. Sergeant Daniel Mercer speaking. Medical emergency, multiple casualties. Request immediate extraction. Over."

Static surged across the channel. Beneath it came a clipped fragment in a voice that might have belonged to Kestrel Seven, repeating words we had heard earlier in the night: position held, search continuing, no contact. The cadence was identical, too exact to be natural. Then the transmission warped into a low mechanical howl.

I changed frequency and tried again.

"Calder Command, this is Kestrel Support. Do you receive? Over."

For several seconds there was only interference. Then a voice broke through.

"Kestrel Support, Calder Command. Receiving you weak but readable. Send status and position. Over."

Relief washed over me.

"Calder Command, request immediate casualty evacuation. Two dead and one urgent casualty. Current position Darband village, building on the eastern edge. Area hostile. Unknown number of feral dogs displaying abnormal aggression and possible infection. Over."

The response came through more clearly, although static still pulsed beneath it despite the repair.

"Kestrel Support, confirm injuries and threat assessment. Over."

I looked at Price. He nodded for me to continue.

"One casualty with severe head trauma, conscious but unstable. Two dead. One killed in an attack, the other following acute deterioration after an animal bite. Dogs are extremely dangerous, unusually coordinated and may be carrying a fast-acting disease. Recommend full CBRN precautions for the extraction force. Over."

There was a long pause. The interference rose and fell in deliberate-sounding bursts before Calder replied.

"Understood, Kestrel Support. Chinook inbound, estimated four zero minutes. Move to village perimeter for extraction. Mark landing site with smoke on approach. Calder Command out."

I lowered the radio and faced Pritchard and Briggs.

"Forty minutes. We have to get Price and Shah to the extraction point."

"What about Ward?" Pritchard asked, glancing at the canvas bundle.

"We burn him here, as ordered. We can't take whatever he became back to Calder."

Price raised his head with visible effort.

"Daniel's right," he said. "Contain it here."

We worked quickly. Pritchard and I carried Ward's wrapped body through a side opening and into the roofless storage bay. We laid him among the dry timber and poured the lamp fuel over the canvas. Briggs helped Price to his feet whilst Pritchard and I fashioned a stretcher for Shah from another sheet of canvas and two lengths of broken timber.

"Ready?" I asked, striking a match.

Pritchard nodded.

I dropped the flame. Fire spread across the fuel-soaked canvas at once. Black smoke climbed into the open air above the storage bay.

"Let's move."

I helped Briggs support Price whilst Pritchard took the front of Shah's stretcher. I lifted the rear and we made our slow way out of the building.

Darband looked different in daylight: smaller, less mysterious, but no less appalling. Bodies lay where they had fallen, bloated and discoloured by heat and decay. The stench was overwhelming. We breathed through our mouths as we picked our way along the narrow lanes towards the eastern perimeter.

"No sign of the dogs," Briggs said, scanning the mud-brick roofs and dark doorways.

Their absence did not feel like safety. It felt tactical, as if they had withdrawn from the daylight and were waiting somewhere beyond our sight.

"They hunt at night," Price muttered. "Like Ward did after he changed."

We reached the edge of the village after twenty gruelling minutes. Price had grown paler and increasingly unsteady, but he refused to be carried. I checked my watch. The aircraft was due in roughly fifteen minutes.

"Set Shah down here," I said, indicating a level patch beyond the last buildings.

Pritchard lowered the stretcher gently. We covered Shah with the remaining canvas and established a hasty all-round watch.

The thudding of rotors reached us ten minutes later. I pulled an orange marker smoke grenade from an Osprey pouch, removed the safety pin and threw it into the open ground. Dense orange smoke billowed upwards.

The Chinook appeared above the shale ridge and circled once before descending towards us. Dust and grit lashed the ground as it settled roughly 50 metres away. The rear ramp lowered, and British CBRN personnel in protective suits emerged with a medical team and four armed soldiers wearing full protective equipment.

They moved with unsettling precision. The soldiers established a 60-metre all-round security perimeter whilst the medical team went directly to Price, as though they had already been briefed on exactly what to expect.

One of the suited figures approached me.

"Sergeant Mercer?" a muffled female voice asked through the respirator.

I nodded.

"Captain Eleanor Shaw, CBRN response officer. We need all survivors placed under containment immediately."

"What about Corporal Shah?" I asked, pointing to the covered body.

"The deceased will travel in separate containment," Shaw replied with practised efficiency. "Is he your only fatality?"

I looked back towards Darband. Smoke from Ward's burning body rose above the rooftops.

"No. We contained the other one on site. He was infected."

Shaw stared at me through her visor for a long moment, showing no surprise.

"Understood," she said. "Command requires a full debrief on return."

The next hour passed in fragments. Price was placed on a stretcher, secured and treated whilst we were screened for visible wounds. Shah's body was sealed inside a containment bag and fastened in a separated section of the aircraft.

As two CBRN technicians lifted the bag, I saw something shift beneath the black material near Shah's shoulder. It might have been the movement of trapped air or the settling of his arm. Then it came again, a single, deliberate twitch from within.

I shouted for them to stop. Captain Shaw looked at the bag, then ordered an additional restraint fitted around it. No one opened it.

Pritchard, Briggs and I sat in silence as the Chinook lifted away. Darband diminished beneath us until it became a cluster of mud-brick shapes in the vast, bleached landscape. A thin column of black smoke still rose from the roofless bay where Ward's remains burned.

There had been no sign of UKSF Patrol Kestrel. No bodies, no weapons, no equipment and no verified sighting. Only the distorted, increasingly formulaic transmissions, some of which now seemed more like recordings or relays than replies from living men.

Back at Forward Operating Base Calder, we were separated immediately and placed in a field isolation unit.

Medical staff in protective equipment examined us repeatedly, drew blood and checked every centimetre of exposed skin for bites and scratches. I answered their questions mechanically, describing the dogs, Ward's injury and his transformation.

The doctors exchanged guarded looks but offered no explanation. They simply wrote down my answers and moved to the next test.

Several hours later, Lieutenant Colonel Alistair Vane entered my isolation compartment wearing a respirator mask. He looked tired, the lines around his eyes deeper than I remembered from the briefing that now seemed an age ago.

"Sergeant Mercer," he said from the foot of my camp bed. "I need your full tactical account."

I sat straighter. "Yes, sir. We established the observation post as ordered. Darband appeared deserted. During the night, we observed a figure half-carrying, half-dragging an adolescent into a reinforced field shelter with its contractor markings scrubbed off. We investigated and found evidence of a massacre. Civilians killed in what appeared to be animal attacks."

Vane nodded, his expression carefully neutral. "Continue."

I described finding Rahim and the old man's warnings about Shaitan - the Devil - and then the attack in which Ward had been bitten high on the right shoulder and upper back.

"You're certain the animals were dogs?" Vane asked. "Not wolves or jackals?"

"They were dogs, sir, but wrong somehow. Larger and more coordinated than ordinary feral dogs. They moved with purpose, as though they were conducting a hunt."

Vane wrote something on his clipboard.

"And Private Ward. Describe precisely what happened after the bite."

I recounted Ward's deterioration: the fever beginning around 02:00, the amber spreading across his grey irises, the convulsions at 04:00, the sudden apparent recovery at 05:30 and the attack shortly after 06:30.

"You shot him in the head?" Vane asked, his tone unnervingly calm.

"Yes, sir. Nothing else stopped him. Hits to the torso and shoulder slowed him, but they did not stop him."

Vane studied me.

"And you burned the body?"

"On Sergeant Price's orders, sir. We were concerned about contamination. We moved him into the adjoining roofless storage bay and burned him there."

Vane nodded slowly. "You made the correct decision."

He checked his notes.

"And UKSF Patrol Kestrel?"

"We never saw them, sir. Their transmissions became distorted and increasingly repetitive. By the end, the replies sounded recorded, or relayed by someone else. They should have reached the village centre hours before we left the observation post, but there was no physical trace of them anywhere."

Something flickered across Vane's face. Concern, perhaps, or calculation.

"I see."

"Sir," I said, leaning forwards. "What happened in Darband? What was wrong with those dogs? What happened to Ward?"

Vane straightened and tucked the clipboard beneath his arm.

"The preliminary assessment from our biological warfare specialists suggests an engineered lyssavirus released by an extremist network, possibly as a trial for a wider biological attack."

I stared at him. "A lyssavirus? Rabies? Sir, with respect, I've seen rabid animals. This was something else. The pack's coordination, the speed of infection, the way Ward physically changed-"

"Advanced neurological infection can cause aggression, hallucinations and acute hypersensitivity," Vane interrupted. "Combined with combat stress and sleep deprivation, it is unsurprising that your perceptions may have become distorted."

"What about the missing villagers? The figures I saw - Farid and Sami? Rahim said they were already dead. What about people turning on one another?"

"Collective panic is common in isolated communities facing an unfamiliar disease outbreak," Vane replied smoothly. "As for Rahim, no survivor matching that description was found during the initial containment sweep. Darband has been designated a biological hazard area and will remain cordoned until full decontamination is complete."

The practised way he delivered the explanation told me everything I needed to know. This was the official account, regardless of what had actually happened.

"What about Sergeant Price?" I asked, changing tack.

"He has entered the established military casualty evacuation chain and will be transferred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. His head injury is severe, but current assessments suggest he will survive."

I nodded, relieved that Price at least had a chance.

"You, Lance Corporal Pritchard and Private Briggs will remain in this field isolation unit for 96 hours," Vane continued. "If no symptoms develop, you will be released to accommodation."

"And Corporal Shah's body?"

"It is being handled under the appropriate biological-contamination procedures," Vane said, already turning towards the exit.

"Sir, something moved inside his body bag."

Vane stopped, but did not turn around.

"Involuntary post-mortem movement is not unusual, Sergeant."

"His eyes reopened before we moved him. I had already closed them."

For a moment, Vane said nothing.

"Get some rest. I require your written report by tomorrow morning."

After he left, I lay back on the camp bed and stared at the canvas ceiling. His explanation made no sense. Rabies did not spread that quickly. It did not alter people the way Ward had changed. It did not make dogs hunt with tactical intelligence.

And a response force did not arrive that well prepared unless someone had expected to need it.

The next four days passed slowly. Pritchard, Briggs and I remained separated in individual compartments, undergoing regular examinations. None of us developed symptoms. On the fifth morning, we were released to accommodation.

I found Pritchard cleaning his rifle when I entered the hardened block. He looked up but said nothing.

"Heard anything about Price?" I asked, sitting on my bunk.

Pritchard shook his head. "Nothing beyond Birmingham."

"They're calling it an engineered lyssavirus."

His hands stopped on the rifle.

"Rabies?"

"Released by an extremist network, apparently."

Pritchard looked directly at me. "That wasn't rabies."

"I know."

We fell silent as Briggs entered, looking exhausted. He lowered himself heavily onto his bunk.

"Intelligence officers have just spent two hours asking me the same questions in different ways," he said. "Trying to catch me contradicting myself."

"They want our statements to fit their explanation," I said.

Briggs glanced around before lowering his voice. "They kept asking whether I was certain about what I saw. It was as if they wanted me to admit I wasn't."

"What did you tell them?" Pritchard asked.

"What I saw," Briggs replied. "They didn't like it."

The days that followed were strangely normal on the surface. We were assigned routine patrols, equipment maintenance and training serials - everything except another observation task. Beneath that routine, I felt that we were being watched. Officers I barely knew suddenly sought casual conversations about Darband. Soldiers who had previously ignored us began asking pointed questions about the village.

No one spoke openly about Kestrel Patrol. Their call sign disappeared from the radio net and their disappearance from conversation, as though the patrol had never existed.

Seventeen days after the incident, separate reassignment orders arrived. I was to receive a return posting to the United Kingdom. Pritchard and Briggs had orders for different British garrisons and postings. The separation felt deliberate - a means of keeping the witnesses apart before we could compare details too closely or reinforce one another's memories.

On the night before my departure, I sat alone on the roof of a hardened accommodation block at FOB Calder, somewhere I went when the walls felt too close. The Helmand night stretched around me, the stars hard and bright in a clear sky.

Somewhere beyond the darkness lay Darband, still cordoned off according to rumours circulating around the base. The official explanation had been repeated so often that it had almost acquired the weight of truth.

An engineered lyssavirus. An extremist biological attack. A tragedy contained.

But whenever I closed my eyes, I saw the amber light spreading through Ward's grey irises and the cold intelligence that followed. I heard the coordinated howling of the pack as it encircled us. I remembered Rahim's warning that Shaitan had come to his village, and his insistence that the dead walked after dark.

I remembered the figures of Farid and Sami, already dead according to Rahim yet moving through the village with an uncanny, physical wrongness no ordinary illness could explain.

I thought about UKSF Patrol Kestrel, missing without a body, weapon or scrap of equipment left behind. I thought about their formulaic transmissions, distorted into repetitions that might have been recordings. I thought about Vane's evasive answers when we questioned the age of the six-week-old drone stills before the mission.

Most of all, I thought about how quickly Captain Shaw and the CBRN team had reached us, already equipped and already familiar with the containment measures they expected to use.

Almost as though they had been prepared and waiting.

The following day I would board a transport aircraft and leave Helmand behind. I would return to Britain and to people who had not seen what I had seen.

But I knew I would not leave Darband behind.

Ward's transformation would remain with me. So would Shah's death, the movement beneath his sealed body bag and the abandoned village with its terrible secret. I could not escape the conviction that what happened there was not over. It was the beginning of something larger, something command did not want examined too closely.

Perhaps the operation had never been intended merely to support Kestrel's cordon-and-search. Perhaps we had been placed on that shale rise to observe something Vane already knew was there, or to help contain it if it came out.

I had no proof. Only old imagery, missing men, broken and manipulated communications, an extraction force that arrived too quickly and orders that scattered the survivors across Britain.

Pieces of a puzzle placed deliberately far apart so no one could see the whole picture.

As the night grew colder, I climbed down from the roof. Morning would come soon enough, bringing new orders, new places and new routines. It would not bring answers.

Those, I suspected, would remain buried in the dust of a village that might soon disappear from maps and official memory, surviving only in the nightmares of the few who had witnessed the howling at Darband.