breath is the camera showing the front gate slightly open with one person standing just outside. The way into the compound is open and a horde of night runners are on their way.
“Wake everyone!” Watkins says to one of the operators and turns in a flash. His last sight of the monitors before bolting from the room is of the first of the night runners beginning to pour through the gate.
With the alarm given, the teams emerge from their cubicles. Their sleepiness wears off quickly as they slip on their vests and gather their gear. Forming into their teams, they begin to take their prearranged positions established in case they ever experience a breach of the walls and sanctuary. The interior turns from the quiet of peaceful slumbering into a madhouse of shouts, tromping boots, magazines being loaded, and weapons locked and loaded.
Those not on any of the teams emerge with panic-stricken looks but shuffle off to the upstairs dining room and surrounding area giving the soldiers the freedom to move and shoot at will. They lie on the hard, chilled linoleum floor with hearts racing and eyes wide with fear. They’ve all practiced this numerous times but now it is for real. Practice may make it easier to move into position and know where to go but it doesn’t help with the sheer terror of actually having to do it.
Watkins stands next to Lynn and Drescoll telling what he witnessed on the monitors. “There are thousands of them on the way,” he reports.
Lynn knows they won’t be able to get updates from the control room as the outside cameras were moved to provide coverage along the length of the walls and haven’t been replaced. There just weren’t enough cameras on base to provide coverage for the walls and the building. They had planned to locate more from the naval bases farther north but higher priorities overrode those plans.
Lynn and Drescoll stand near the upstairs railing arranging the last of their gear on their vests and checking their weapons. The teams are all just coming into their positions along the upper railings as the first loud shriek sounds downstairs, filling the vast interior with its echo.
Sandra watches as her pack streams by her. She is running along with them but allows many of them to pass. She knows the two-legged ones are dangerous and she will lose many in her pack but they are numerous. Among the eagerness and excitement she feels, she relishes in the fact that she was right and Michael wrong. A part of her sees this as an opportunity to take them all down once and for all but she has a specific quarry in mind. It overrides any other thoughts.
They will vacate after they capture the female. Deep down, she knows the wrongness of this with regards to the overall pack. An opportunity like this won’t appear again. She thinks of keeping up the attack once she has the female and eliminate them all. The thought of feasting on all of the two-legged ones she smells brings about an overpowering, salivating hunger. The odor of them also induces rage. She’ll have to control her pack tightly if she is to accomplish what she wants tonight. If the two-legged one is inside, she will capture him as well. She doesn’t sense him but will direct the pack to him if she senses or spots him. If that opportunity arises, she will kill the female once the two-legged one is captured. She’ll have to play this night as it comes.
She rushes past the strange one by the gate. He stands as if embracing the pack. She senses some of her pack turn on this one. He feels the same as them but carries the scent of one of the two-legged. Sandra hears his cries of pain but doesn’t care and runs on. He’s fulfilled his purpose.
His heart is beating fast… he is free. The night air somehow seems cleaner, fresher. Alan is so eager for the hunt he is almost salivating. He wants that sweet taste and to feel flesh in his mouth once again — sweet, raw meat. And to be with a pack once again; to be safe and secure both in knowledge and numbers.
He senses a large pack waiting in the nearby trees across the hard path and watches as they emerge. He sends a call but doesn’t receive any response from them. The leading ones race past him as if he isn’t there and continue through the opening behind him. Alan smells them for the first time. They have a different scent than he remembers. It’s the odor of unwashed, musky bodies and not the familiar aroma. He stands confused as they flow by him, looking left and right for any sign of recognition. The strong female he sensed the other nights runs by him with only a cursory glance.
Fear begins to surface and he’s not sure why the others aren’t acting like he is one of their own. He senses their eagerness to be inside and feed but that shouldn’t cause them to completely ignore him. Among the picture images he is receiving is something about a particular female inside but that is quickly shunted away as his alarm grows.
The others of his kind continue to stream by. The night is filled with their screams of hunger and excitement. Turning to the front, Alan is shaken by a transformed one directly in front of him snarling and coming directly at him. The image fills his vision and he begins to raise an arm to fend the one off. He quickly realizes there is more than one coming at him. His heart kicks up another notch as he recognizes the hunger in their eyes. The one directly in front slams into him. Alan feels himself knocked backwards and begins to fall. His vision of the transformed ones flowing around him turns into one of small, bright lights above against a velvet sky. He impacts the ground on his back and his head rocks back hitting the hard pavement below. Stunned, he is only vaguely aware of growling bodies on him.
He is brought back to full consciousness by a loud scream of pain and realizes it is own. Coming out of his foggy state, he is aware that he was walking in his sleep again but this time, he is not merely downstairs but surrounded by snarling faces. He feels agony beyond compare. A fleeting memory surfaces of waking in the crowded room of what he has become to know as night runners. This feels the same only, instead of the night runners chasing him through the building, they are on him, tearing into his flesh. Another thought intrudes through the pain, that maybe this is just another one of his nightmares. However, he has never felt pain in them before and it was usually him doing the biting and rending of flesh.
He screams as he feels another set of teeth sink into him and tear a chunk of flesh off. The white-hot agony races through his body like electricity and his flailing to remove the night runners from him weaken. All thoughts he had flee and his mind is now only filled only with the redness of sheer agony. With his eyes squeezed close and teeth clenched hard, he arches his back as another strip of flesh is torn free. Suffering beyond belief envelopes his mind and body. His mouth is closed so tight that only a whimper escapes but the agony is too much. His back falls back to the ground limply. Darkness invades and his last breath escapes in a puff of white mist.
Inside the once impassable walls and rushing through the tall grass, Sandra sees her goal. It rises above her surrounded by the hard ground the two-legged ones seem to favor. Her desire builds with each step through the field. She is trying to sense the two-legged one inside but is coming up empty. With the grass stalks brushing against her as she races through the open air, she directs her pack to the back where she saw the strange one exit hoping the door will still be open.
It will take some time to get her entire pack through the smaller opening but she is relying on her numbers to overwhelm the two-legged ones inside. She’ll wait for a moment outside until they break in and through. It wouldn’t do for her to be taken down in the first moments. She knows she will lose a few tonight but it will be worth it. Her pack means a lot to her, as does her young one, but this urge she has is overpowering, she needs for it to happen.
The building looms large but not as large as the ones where Michael has the large pack. She sees the first of her pack race around the corner and disappears down its length. They are close to being inside and she feels her heart pounding with anticipation. Being open, she feels Michael intrude on her thoughts and she immediately shuts back down. The last thing she needs right now is his interfering with her plans. He may send others to her and, although that would be helpful, it would also mean that the female or the other two-legged one that has held her thoughts for so long would be killed and eaten. That, she can’t allow.
Sandra turns the first corner leading to the back trailing a large contingent of her pack. She senses the leading ones as they turn the far corner at the rear and sees the entrance inside still partially open. They throw a door that slides up and down farther open and enter. Feeling almost light-headed with the excitement of them entering, she knows she is so close.
She turns the last corner and sees her pack as they crowd the portal, pushing to get inside. Sensing their craving and rage that the smell of the two-legged ones brings, she sends a sharp reminder that they are not to feed and their goal is to find and capture the female. Sandra stops by the side of the door through which her pack is
