protect herself, her two jaws snapping ineffectively, her useless limbs thrashing the ground, trampling and scattering the tiny offspring that had suckled at her breasts.
Bullets ripped into her, explosions of blood spurting out in dark jets, drenching the two men, soaking the earth around her, covering the blind, squealing things beneath her with its sticky fluid. In a paroxysm of agony, she rose up, exposing her sickening, fleshy underbelly, several of her brood still clinging to the many breasts that dangled there. A frenzied hail of bullets tore her open, a waterfall of blood gushing out, carrying with it internal organs that steamed in the dank atmosphere. Still she moved, still she writhed, falling again, but incredibly shuffling her way towards the two men.
Fairbank's howling cry mingled with the muted crackling of the weapon, his face lit up with the bright flashes, his eyes demented with loathing, with revulsion for the monstrosity coming towards them. The massive, throbbing body began to come apart, the rising curved spine shattering into splinters, bursting outwards like shrapnel; flesh ruptured and
parts pulverized as bullets tore through; one barely raised claw was shredded to pulp. Yet still it advanced.
The pointed head, its incisors like curled tusks, the eyes white, sightless, weaved in front of them; a strange stump protruded from her shoulder next to the head, an opening within it which could only have been another mouth, spitting blood-specked drool.
Culver sank to his knees, strength draining from his legs. He stared at the heinous deformity, the misbegotten grotesque, horrified, his muscles numbed. But as her foul breath and her spittle touched his cheek, the shock was punctured.
The flashlight at his knees, he raised the short axe with both hands and, with a screaming roar, brought it down with all his force.
The pointed skull before him split cleanly in two, grey-pink substance inside falling loose, liquid from the opened throat jetting out.
The piercing screech came from the stump next to the cloven head, the toothless jaws wide with the creature's pain, her scaly purple tongue stabbing frenziedly at the air.
Culver struck again, cutting through this other skull, the axe head sinking into the shoulder, into the body itself.
The squirming abomination suddenly went rigid, became frozen just for a few moments. Then slowly, agonizingly slowly, it began to slump, nerve ends twitching, torn, bloated body quivering.
But Culver was not finished. His eyes were blurred and his face dampened by tears as he attacked the litter, the smaller more obscene - much more obscene - creatures that the monster had given birth to. He hacked their pink bodies, ignoring their faint cries, striking, pummelling, crushing their tiny bones, making sure each one was dead, beating any
small movement from them, shredding them from existence, sundering them of all form, of any shape.
A hand tugged at his shoulder, the grip hard, violent.
He looked up to see Fairbank grimacing down at him.
The other rats are down here,' the engineer said through tight-clenched teeth.
Culver was hauled to his feet, his mind still confused, still dazed by the slaughter. And by what he had slaughtered. He quickly became aware of the darting black shapes in the rubble of the damp underground chamber.
The rats were in turmoil, leaping from an opening in the brick wall, scampering down the slope of debris, squealing and hissing, looking wildly around, lashing out at each other, gnashing their teeth and drawing blood. They poured through, more and more, filling the room, and somehow oblivious to the two men. The mutant Black rats fought each other, groups turning on an individual for no apparent reason, tearing it apart and gnawing at the body.
Culver and Fairbank could not understand why they were ignored as the animals swilled around the chamber, biting at the other gross forms that lay dying or dead on the floor, high-pitched squeals filling the air, the sound resembling hundreds of excited birds inside an aviary; the noise, the movement, intensifying, rising to a climax, climbing to a thunderous pitch.
Then they stopped.
They lay in the darkness, black-furred bodies quivering, a trembling, silent mass. Occasionally one would hiss, snarl, rear up, but would become passive almost immediately, sinking back among its brethren. The shaking motion seemed to reverberate in the atmosphere itself.
Bathed in blood, grimed with filth and barely recognizable, the two men held their breath.
Nothing stirred.
Slowly, wordlessly, Fairbank touched Culver's sleeve. With a slight jerk of his head he indicated the doorway they had entered by. Keeping the light beam on the floor before them, the two men began gently, quietly, to make their way through the gathered vermin, careful not to disturb any, skirting round when a pack was too thick to step over.
A rodent lashed out with its incisors, hissing at them when they trod too close. The teeth grazed Culver's ankle through his jeans, but the animal did not attack.
At one point, Fairbank tripped and stumbled into a tight group, going down on his knees among them.
Inexplicably, they merely scattered, snarling at the air as they did so.
They were just thirty yards from the doorway, both men wondering why they could not see Kate's flashlight shining into the collapsed room behind, when an eerie keening began.
It started as a single, faint, low whine; then other rats joined in, the keening growing, swelling. The sound ended in a startling unified screech and the vermin broke loose again. But they darted towards the bloody, shapeless carcase of the gross monster that the two men had destroyed, the miscreated beast who had nurtured the even more hideous newborn, pouncing on the remains, fighting each other over the scraps, covering the nest completely with their own frantic bodies.
And when there was nothing left of the malformity and her brood, they turned on their kindred, the bloated beasts who were of the same breed but perversely different, savaging them until they, too, were nothing but bloody shreds.
The two men ran, heading for the doorway, kicking aside
those vermin still standing in their path. Culver swung the axe as a rat sprang at him, catching it beneath the throat. It squealed and dropped in a limp bundle to the floor. Another leapt and caught his arm, but the leather jacket ripped and the animal fell away, Culver cracking down with the blunt end of the axe, breaking bone. Fairbank scattered four or five others that had grouped in the doorway itself.
They were through and there was still no light from above, but they heard Kate cry out Culver's name.
Fairbank whirled in the doorway, pressing a shoulder hard against the frame, the Ingram pointed back into the chamber they had just left.
'Culver, give me light!' he shouted.
Culver did so, shining the beam into the next room. The rats were swarming after them.
Fairbank fired, the weapon hot in his hands, his trigger finger stiff with the pressure. The advancing rats danced and jerked as though on marionette strings. 'Start climbing,' he called out over his shoulder. 'I can hold them without the light for a couple of seconds!'
Culver quickly climbed the heap of rubble leading to the fallen joist. His torch lit up Kate standing on the ledge above.
With no time to even wonder what had happened to her flashlight he yelled, 'Catch!' and lobbed the light towards her. She only just managed to hold it; she turned the beam back down into the pit The thing they had dreaded most of all happened. The Ingram clicked empty. With an alarmed shout, Fairbank turned to follow Culver, dropping the useless weapon into the dust.
Culver ran two steps up the angled joist, throwing the axe onto the ledge above him and grabbing at the
