“And Mr. Higgins, you’re going to stay right here for the moment and help Darren with his work. If you so much as think of doing anything that would put us at risk, I will personally put a bullet through your damn skull.”
Mike threw up his hands. “So that’s it then? I’m out just like that, and you’re all listening to Warren instead of me?”
“Mike, we’re grateful you got us here,” Warren said, stepping closer to him. “No one’s saying we don’t respect you, but rats or no rats, this is still a free country where people get to decide what’s best for them. None of us has the right to decide things for this group alone.”
Mike rocked back in his chair. “Fine. Fine. Do what you think you need to do. I won’t stand in your way.”
Warren nodded. “Benji, the meeting…”
Benji leapt up and scurried out of the room, glancing back at Mike as if to say he was sorry.
“Do things always work so smoothly for you guys?” Kyle asked, unable to resist his tendency for dark humor.
Two hours later, the survivors of the convoy gathered into the mess hall. Mike, Warren, and Kyle sat at a table facing the rest of the group. Warren finished explaining who Kyle was, how they’d found him, and what Kyle had told them about the state of the world. “So that’s what we know. Darren has spent the last few hours working on retrieving some of the transmissions Mr. Higgins spoke of. Darren?” Warren motioned for him to start.
“I have rigged the transmissions to play into the room for all of us to hear at the same time,” Darren said, walking over to the room’s intercom panel. “They’re random, and most likely some of them will be garbled, but the base’s computers have translated them into English where needed; this was the best I could do.” Darren punched a button on the intercom and the transmissions began to play.
“To anyone who can hear me, this is Captain Vladimir Nabov of the Soviet Home Guard. Please send assistance. We are cut off and running out of ammunition. The push to free the capital has failed. The main force is broken and shattered. My men and myself have taken shelter inside a cathedral outside of Moscow. Conventional weapons seem to have little effect on the enemy beyond slowing them down. Three of them alone decimated my entire unit with their bare hands, without a single loss to their forces.
“For whatever reason, the creatures themselves will not attack us inside these walls; however, we are far from safe. The bats… the bats come in waves, hundreds at a time, pouring through the shattered windows. So far, we have beaten them each time they’ve tried to overrun us, but we cannot hold on much longer. Please, in the name of God, if you can hear us, we need assistance.”
The intercom crackled and the broadcast changed to a voice with a heavy French accent. “So it’s me again. I’m still on the air as of now. I think I have enough fuel to keep the generator running and the heat on for another day or two. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I doubt actual people are listening to this anymore, but it helps me stay sane. Once a radio geek, always a radio geek,” the voice joked, then turned sad.
“They took my wife yesterday. We left the station to see if we could find some food. We’d used up the stuff from the vending machines and the stuff for the lounge fridge, despite careful rationing. We snuck out the rear entrance and were heading for Baker Street because we knew there was a grocery on that block. The thing must have caught our scent or something, because we were being quiet and as careful as possible. It came tearing out of an abandoned car it must have been sleeping in. It wasn’t a wolf either. We didn’t see any of those.
“This thing was one of their leaders, a full-on monster in the flesh. Must’ve stood eight feet tall. It went straight for Margaret, tossing me aside like trash.” The voice had become heartbroken and on the verge of tears. “When I got to my feet again, she was screaming and it had her skirt torn open, just… just taking her right there in the street.
“I lost it, I guess. I had a metal bat with me that one of my friends had kept in his office, and I started beating the hell out of the thing’s head. At first, it grunted like I was a mere annoyance, and it kept rutting away. Finally, it turned and I caught a glimpse of its yellow eyes before it backhanded me. When I came to, they were gone. Margaret’s blood was smeared onto the street where she had lain, but I don’t think she’s dead.”
The voice cracked, as if trying to hold back tears, and the speaker paused before continuing. “I think I’ll be seeing her again soon,” the man said with heavy sadness and an edge of fear. “She’ll change if she’s alive, then she’ll remember me. If the male of her pack allows it, she’ll be coming. I spent most of last night, before I got too drunk to stand, strengthening up the barricades on the doors and windows downstairs, but I’ve heard tell of those things tossing around cars. When she comes, she will get in.”
The transmission ended and a new one started up, but this time there was only the sound of men and women screaming in the distance, as if they weren’t at their equipment and had merely left it on. When the screaming stopped, a chorus of hissing noises could be heard before the transmission ended and the next began.
“Mayday! Mayday! This is the USS McDaniel. We are under attack! I repeat: we are under attack!” The sound of small arms fire and ripping metal could be heard loudly in the background. “The squids are everywhere! The bigger ones have breached the hull in several places, and the smaller mutated ones are climbing onto the deck. We’re being boarded. Help us! Help…” The transmission became static and cut off.
“That’s all I have been able to piece together so far,” Darren informed the group. “We have been getting a constant live broadcast from Mexico, but it’s just a constant buzzing noise now. I swear it sounds like a swarm of insects talking.”
Warren stood up behind the table he was at. “Thank you, Darren. As you’ve heard, the transmissions do confirm Mr. Higgins’ stories about what has happened to our world. He has also presented us with proof that he was indeed working as a British operative as part of a joint U.N. taskforce sent to the U.S. days after our country fell into complete collapse. None of this information directly changes our situation, but we are left with the question of what to do with Mr. Higgins himself. He has extensive knowledge in many fields that could be of use to us, and his presence will not adversely affect our resources. I would like to ask if he might be allowed to stay.”
Murmurs of shock ran through the group. Michelle spoke up first. “Are you suggesting that you and Mike have actually thought of kicking him out? I mean just sending him out there to die?”
Mike stood up beside Warren. “Transmissions and IDs can be faked. We don’t really know who this man is. I believe he may be unstable and a threat to our continued security. There are no such things as demons, yet Mr. Higgins firmly states that multiple factions of Hell have somehow been loosed upon our world. He believes these factions are at war with one another for the control of our planet. Does that sound remotely sane to any of you? Our problems come from the rats and a mutated viral strand, which has somehow caused an evolutionary jump in the rodent species.”
Darren looked Mike in the eye. “I think believing something different than what you do is not cause to sentence a man to death. As far as I’m concerned, he’s already a part of our group by being human and alive.”
“Those transmissions sounded pretty real to me,” Daniel chimed in. Words of agreement spread through the small crowd.
Seeing he was defeated, Mike sat down and left Warren with the floor.
Kyle, who had been smiling the whole time, suddenly jumped out of his seat like a lunatic. He pointed at something behind the group, and heads turned to the back of the mess hall where Jenkins was leaping to his feet, trying to claw his .45 free from its holster.
A rat sat beside him, sniffing the air. With its blazing red eyes fixed on Warren, Mike and Kyle, it screeched and charged at them, baring its large primary teeth. Its screech quickly turned into a hiss of anger and superiority.
As it made a path towards them, Michelle jumped out of her chair and crushed its skull underneath the heel of her right boot. Warm blood leaked from its eyes as she picked up its corpse by the tail and tossed it towards the back of the room. The group quickly spiraled into panic.
“Hold on!” Warren ordered. “Everybody settle down—now!” The room fell silent at the fury in his voice. “If there were more of them in the room, they’d be attacking us already. Darren, get up to the control center and run a scan. Jenkins, Michelle, go with him! Everyone else, stay the fuck where you are. If they have made it in, the last thing we need to do is split up and take off running through the halls.”
Darren, with Jenkins and Michelle in tow, had already sprinted out of the mess hall. Warren grabbed Kyle up by the front of his shirt. “Are there rats in this base? Have you seen any before?”
Kyle knocked Warren’s hand away from him. “No. If they’re here, they must have followed you. How did all of
