Season of Rot (30 page)

“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
you get here?”

“The damn cars,” Warren said, realizing what
Kyle was suggesting. He turned back to the crowd as the intercom
blared to life and Darren’s voice flooded the room.

“The base is clear. That thing must’ve been
alone. But Warren, you and Mike need to get up here as fast as you
can.”

“Everybody stay calm!” Warren barked. “Go to
your quarters, seal the doors, and we’ll let you know what’s going
on as soon as possible. Now go!” Warren looked over the crowd as
they poured out of the room. Mike and Kyle were running side by
side for the control room and Warren cursed as he took off after
them.

Warren was the last one to make it. He looked
at the external camera screens the others were staring at and
simply breathed the words, “Oh shit.”

Darren nodded gravely. “Yeah, it looks pretty
bad.” Rows upon rows of rotting bodies stumbled around above the
base, and literally thousands of rats skittered about beneath the
corpses’ feet.

“My lord,” Mike whispered and pointed at one
of the screens showing the main doors. “Are those the things you’re
calling demons?” he asked Kyle.

Two massive creatures were looking down the
shaft that led to the complex’s inner doors. They stood seven feet
tall like humanoid rat monsters from a child’s nightmare. As Kyle
spoke, a clawed hand fell over the camera’s lens and the screen
went black.

“Yep, those would be them,” Kyle confirmed
smugly.

“How the hell did they find us?” Mike
wondered.

“They followed us.” Warren drew his sidearm
and checked its magazine. “Kyle said the rats want all of us dead
and their borders clear before they launch into the war he’s told
us about. Think about what our convoy must have looked like to
them. It was likely one of the last large gatherings of us anywhere
in the U.S. They planned the attack on it and they’ve come to
finish what they started.”

“Yeah, but how did they know where to follow
us?” Jenkins asked.

“We had to leave the vehicles up top. They
must have recognized them by our scent, then all they had to do was
look around. With those damn huge open doors, where the hell else
could they think we’ve gone to?”

“The bio-scanners are still showing we’re
clean so far,” Darren said with a shrug. “But if one got in, others
probably will. It’s just a matter of time.”

“The rat was a scout,” Warren and Kyle said
almost at the same time. Warren snarled and Kyle gestured at the
blank screen. “I’d be worried about the demons. Who knows how many
are up there? The two we saw are enough to tear apart the inner
doors alone, given time.” Kyle plopped down in a chair. “This is
your base now, your group. You guys make the call. Are we going to
fight or run?”

“Where could we run to?” Mike fumed. “If this
place isn’t safe, where the hell is?”

“My home was still standing when I left. We
could try for there,” Kyle offered.

“You’re forgetting something.” Warren slid
his gun into the holster on his belt. “In order to get out, we’re
going to have to go past them... And on foot. They’ve torn the
vehicles to shreds, you can bet on it.”

“So there’s no other option?” Michelle asked.
“We make a stand or die?”

“Looks that way,” Daniel answered.

“Great,” Michelle said bitterly. “Anybody got
a plan as to how we do that?”

“We could lock down the upper levels. Buy
ourselves some time to think,” Darren suggested.

“Are you insane?” Michelle appeared on the
edge of exploding in his direction.

“No, wait.” Warren gave her a stern glance.
“He may be onto something. Kyle, can you control the lockdown?
Choose which doors to seal?”

“Yeah, sure. You want to lead them down a
path, keep them from spreading out and using their numbers against
us? I can do that, but remember, we don’t know how the lone rat got
in. There’s no guarantee we won’t be facing them from two or more
places regardless.”

“If we’re going to make a stand, doing it
gives us more of a chance than not trying it.” Warren pointed at
the layout of the base on the scanner screen. “Try to force them
through here.”

Kyle spun around in his chair and went to
work laying his preparations.

“Daniel.” Warren laid a hand on the hulking
man’s shoulder. “Go round up everyone you can who knows how to use
a weapon in close quarters. Michelle, Jenkins, go break out the
flamethrowers.” Warren placed a finger on the screen. “We’ll meet
them here in the main corridor, two doors in from the main ones.
They shouldn’t have time to break in any more than that before
we’re in place.”