Unspeakable Horror!

The "Wolfish Trigger" originally appeared in The Harrow: Original Works of Fantasy and Horror. 

Here in the outerness,
in a vicious jungle
where the special forces team slithers through the green density,
their laserbeam targeting-systems
like demonic eyes in the shadows.

The youngest of the team,
recent initiate into the elite,
stumbles on a root,
steps on an adder,
and feels the whip and fang puncture of the poisonous serpent.
In a move,
the adder's head is sliced off,
but the recruit collapses in despair,
and falls at the foot of a towering wolfish beast with a fanged smile.

The beast nibbles on the snakebite of the paralyzed soldier,
sucks out the poison,
and giggles.

The solider returns to formation,
grinning,
emitting short giggles
that annoy his stealthy compatriots.

One-by-one
the soldiers awaken to strange nibble-kisses
on their ankles, forearms, and tender necks.

When the unit returns to the base,
everyone is amazed by their weird pack-like behavior,
the sinister giggles, the dirty tricks like schoolyard bullies.
Several weeks pass before the government learns
of the inexplicable massacres in the jungle.

The biting spreads;
the pack grows.
The gangs rape young privates in bathroom stalls.
The shouts for help shatter into giggles.

The curse travels bunkbed to bunkbed in the barracks
through surreptitious moonlight kisses
with just a touch of fang and tongue.
The whole unit giggling by the dawn.

After exponential growth across the bases of the empire,
the wolf soldiers no longer hide behind human faces.
Their fur bristles
and their giggles explode
into shrieks of sadistic glee.

The remaining human soldiers put up a last hope defense,
but fall to the savage precision of the laughing wolf soldiers.
The oldest of the generals sprout hair and join the thrill
of the front line combat.

The clean-up quick –
decapitate the wounded
and post heads on stakes.

Despite the mad thirst for slaughter
and howling laughter,
the wolf soldiers retain
the tactical exactitude of their training,
everything sharpened.
Every branch and facet of the war machine
under the control of their hairy glee.

The pack is complete; now for the fun.

The battleships,
the destroyers,
the aircraft carriers unleash shock and awe –
the terror from above on the cities.

Convoys penetrate the tranquil suburbs;
house-by-house machine gun massacres commence,
the only survivors left for gang rapes and point-blank executions.
Mortar shells pockmark the playgrounds
and roving attack helicopters descend on the highways.

The submarines
all slumbering dens of wolf soldiers
position off the coast,
and the laughing button-pushers enable firing sequences.

In the end,
werewolves are immune to radioactivity,
and its all just a dogpile-feeding-frenzy.