by Jacob Rayne
The second blast caught one of them in the stomach. It let out an ear-splitting cry and pitched forward, hands clasped to its bleeding belly. He quickly loaded the gun and aimed, but the creatures had gone.
He breathed a sigh of relief then heard breaking glass in the next room.
Shit, the kids!
No longer caring about his own safety, only wanting to save his poor darlings from the rampaging monsters, he kicked their bedroom door open.
The two creatures were here, their eyes bright in the darkness. One of them had his son on its back like a knapsack. He fired at its legs to make he didn’t hit his son. The creature cried out, dropping its cargo.
The second creature roared and dived at him. The gun pointed down, forced there by the creature’s powerful grip. To his bulging eyes, its razor teeth looked obscenely big. He barely had time to scream before it tore his throat open and feasted on the liberated blood.
Craggs and his ragtag bunch of men fired as one unit when they saw dozens of eyes appear from the gloom. Hideous screeches assailed their ears.
Bob Wright fell back, one of the creatures eating his head. Its jaw had unhinged like that of a snake and the huge fangs had sunk into his skull with terrifying force.
His blood sprayed over those nearest him.
Someone fired, taking the top of a creature’s head off. It fell, the wound pissing blood, but already healing up.
Another mutant took its place, landing on the gunman before he could fire off his second round. His eyes rolled back in his head as its claws sliced through his stomach and pulled out handfuls of his intestine.
Craggs fired, hitting the creature between its glowing eyes. It slumped on top of the gunman, letting out a low moan. He dived in and applied the chokehold that Duggan had shown him.
Its claws raked bloody furrows in his arms, but two of his allies pinned its wrists so he could keep the chokehold on. Finally, the life faded from the creature’s eyes and the moth parasite burst from the skull in a shower of gore.
Craggs nearly had a heart attack – despite the fact that Duggan had warned him this would probably happen – but managed to apply the Taser to the moth in time.
The man next to Craggs fell, his face clawed all the way to the bone and leaking blood at an alarming rate.
Craggs reloaded, fired at the nearest pair of eyes.
We’re losing badly here, and it’s only just begun, he thought.
‘Fall back,’ he said. ‘There’s too many of the bastards.’
Vanessa and the three girls found themselves in the cold darkness beneath the city.
It stunk down here and filthy water soaked them as it dripped from the ceiling. The darkness and the echoing noises from the sewer were already starting to play tricks on her mind.
She put on a brave face for the kids, who were obviously bricking it.
‘Mammy, will the cops hurt us if they catch us?’ Simone said.
Vanessa wasn’t sure how best to reply; she didn’t want to scare her daughters, but she wanted to make sure they were aware of the threat.
‘Let’s not wait around to find out,’ she said.
Vanessa opened her husband’s smartphone and flicked through his emails until she found the one she needed. Like magic, the blueprints to the sewers popped up on the screen.
Kyle had foreseen the need to do this one day, so there was a chip implanted in the phone to track its position. Their position appeared as a blinking red dot on the blueprints.
‘Ok,’ Vanessa said, moving the map around to try and find the quickest route to the lab.
The light in the sewer suddenly became much brighter when the manhole above them opened.
The cop peering down began shouting to his colleagues when Marla raised a loose lump of brickwork and caught him flush on the temple with it.
He went down like a sack of shit and landed on the stone floor below.
‘Well done, sweetie,’ Vanessa said.
She pulled the gun out of his convulsing hands and led her children into the darkness.
Vanessa found it hard to run as it felt like red hot knitting needles were being jabbed into her calf. A thick dark goop was seeping from the wound and she knew it was extremely harmful to her.
She just prayed they could get the antidote before the poison took hold.
And already behind them they heard the boots of the cop’s colleagues.
Chuck and a few of the officers who’d stayed to man the station were faring a little better than Craggs’s group. Using Duggan-approved Taser techniques, they had already put three of the creatures out of commission.
A creature lunged at Chuck, clawing an agonising gash across his face, just missing his right eye.
Chuck ducked and came up with a huge uppercut, knocking the creature back. Its legs hit one of its fallen kin and it landed on its back, its arms and legs flailing wildly.
Chuck darted in and shoved the Taser to the back of its head. It bucked for an age, but finally the light went out of its eyes.
‘Come on, guys, we can do this,’ he shouted.
When he looked round he was all on his own.
Weiland Wright was asleep when his screaming teenaged daughter ran in.
‘What is it, Lisa?’ he asked, instantly awake. He pulled out his father’s service revolver from beneath his pillow. The terror on her face told him that the creatures had come. ‘Where?’
She pointed to the stairs.
‘OK, honey. Get up in the loft. Take your brother and get a weapon. Anything. You don’t let them get you, you hear me?’
She nodded, still too stunned to speak.
Weiland went downstairs. He counted two of the creatures, but he could hear more outside. He didn’t really want to draw their attention with a gunshot – they’d probably come running like he’d just sounded the dinner bell.
He managed to get to the kitchen without them hearing him. His new meat cleaver caught his eye, so he pulled it loose from the knife block and tested its weight.
It’d do just fine.
He snuck out.
To his horror, one of the creatures was already on its way upstairs.
He followed it, muttering curses as his presence was betrayed by the creaking stairs. The creature turned, but he struck before it had chance to attack, sinking the cleaver deep into its chest. Weiland reckoned it wasn’t a fatal shot, but it must have hurt.
He tried to pull the cleaver out but it was stuck. The creature’s open jaws came closer, eager to taste him.
After a second of frantic thought, he decided that the creatures downstairs must have already heard him so he put the gun in its open mouth and pulled the trigger. Its blood sprayed up his framed copy of the Mona Lisa.
Thinking fast, with Duggan’s advice in mind, he pulled the lamp from the table at the top of the stairs and smashed it into shards.
He applied the wires to the creature’s head.
It sizzled and crackled then fell still.
He slipped a few more rounds into the chambers, taking the chance to reload before he was overwhelmed. The first creature made its way upstairs.
He sent a bullet through one of its blazing eyes. It fell back, knocking its companions a few steps back. The nearest creature threw the injured one aside and ran up the stairs.
It cried out as Weiland’s shot hit it in the shoulder. His next shot put a raw, bloody hole in its throat. The next creature was past it before it even fell.
Its chest exploded in thick gouts of blood and flying chunks of pallid flesh as his nerves began to settle and his aim began to improve. He reloaded again. He saw one more creature down below. It darted up the stairs, taking a bullet in the arm.
It didn’t seem to notice, just barrelled on into him, flattening him against the wall. His head slammed into the Mona Lisa picture, shattering the blood-spattered glass.
The creature dragged him down, its knee pinning his gun hand to the floor. The blood-streaked jaws came closer, the smell of death s
eeping out from between them.
This is it, Weiland, he thought.
He struggled, but the creature’s bulk pinned him. No escape. He closed his eyes and waited for its teeth to rend his throat apart.
Duggan, like Craggs, had taken stock of the situation and quickly realised that they were going to die if they tried to make a stand against the creatures.
He’d seen no shame in a tactical retreat (like in Taunton) and had encouraged everyone to do the same.
The vast majority of the cops had seen sense, only a very small portion were stubborn enough to stay.
The scenes were horrific but fascinating in a macabre way. Duggan found it hard to take his eyes off the creatures as they battled the remaining cops.
Already bodies – mostly men, but a few creatures laid there too – were strewn across the ground. Screams echoed all around them. The number of gunshots and explosions put him in mind of Taunton’s spectacular Fourth of July celebrations.
The sheer number of creatures pouring into town was staggering; the orange eyes seemed to be everywhere in the darkness.
Kyle heard shuffling noises in the dark alleys ahead of him. He hoped it was more cops, but knew he was unlikely to be so lucky.
Sure enough, a pale-skinned man stumbled out from behind a wheelie bin. His face was thick with blood and he made low noises in his throat as though he had chewed off his own tongue.
Kyle noted with horror the blank eyes and the bulge on the back of his head.
Time to test out the new toy, he thought grimly.
He’d have preferred to do it in the lab, and after a few more months – hell, years – of development, but realised he was shit out of luck.
Besides, the man was already shuffling his way towards him.
‘That’s it, just a little closer,’ Kyle grinned.
A gunshot from behind him made him start. His heart nearly leapt into his throat.
The mutant snarled and glanced over to the source of the gunshots – the cop standing in the alley behind him.
‘Stop right there,’ the cop said, the sound echoing through the loudspeaker he had to his lips ready to utter a final warning to Kyle before he blew his brains out of the back of his head.
The mutant seemed to grin and began making his way towards the cop.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ the cop reassured himself.
He took careful aim with his machine gun and fired in a tight line across the mutant’s chest.
Thick plumes of gore rose from the mutant’s bare skin, spattering his flesh and the alley floor and walls around him.
The mutant moved as if being pummelled by invisible fists, but remained standing despite chunks of its pale anatomy being blown away.
The cop reloaded, took careful aim and put a round right between its eyes. Kyle watched in awe as the blast sent a spray of blood flying from the back of its head.
But the bulge remained intact and the mutant was still lurching towards the cop.
The cop was clearly unsettled by the fact that this monster was still standing despite an entire magazine being pumped into it.
Kyle let out a gasp as he noticed that the gunshots had drawn more of the blank-eyed mutants.
Their leering, blood-smeared faces were like a figment of the most despicable nightmare.
They were all headed towards the cop, bar one, who seemed to be the most transformed of the group. One of his hands had fallen away to reveal a dark gleaming spike.
Kyle’s eyes were drawn to it and he couldn’t help but notice that the tip of the spike was coated with a dripping coat of gore.
The cop’s gunshots pounded his ears. In his peripheral vision he saw the mutants being blasted, saw thick gobbets of gore flying through the air, saw them shudder and shake from the impact. Saw them continue, undeterred, in their inexorable path to the cop.
The mutant was within ten feet of him now and it seemed a grin had begun to creep across its features.
He raised the weapon to his shoulder, took a deep breath. He sighted carefully – ignoring the cop’s bloodcurdling screams, the sounds of his flesh being torn from his bones, and his blood splashing onto the floor – and squeezed the trigger.
The bolt hit the mutant dead centre of its chest; the ideal target as the serum circulated quicker if it was injected close to the heart.
The mutant did nothing for a second, then it let out a weak cry. Its stomach contracted and it threw up a thick gout of black blood.
It let out weak noises as it threw up again. Then its eyes and nose and ears began to pour with ribbons of dark blood.
Gradually, the mutant’s arms and legs erupted in tides of blood, its flesh being riven from within as the powerful poison destroyed the insect DNA. The mutant fell to the floor, now just a raw lump of flesh disintegrating rapidly into bloody mush.
Its panicked screeches were almost enough to make him feel sorry for it, but he had seen first-hand what they were capable of, and his pity for them had died with his brother.
The cop was still screaming a little behind him and he debated taking out the rest of the mutants before they turned on the cops, but he left it.
They would keep the cops busy while he escaped and he would be wise to conserve his ammunition.
After all, he had no idea how many of them there now were.
The creature’s teeth didn’t sink into Weiland’s throat. Instead he was sprayed with blood and tiny chunks of brain.
He looked up to see the cleaver stuck into the back of the creature’s head. The creature was jerking like an epileptic at a rave. Sparks and smoke rose from the back of its head.
‘How’s that for improvising?’ his daughter, Lisa, grinned, wiping blood on her trousers.
His bulging eyes focused on the bared wires that were crudely fastened to the metal handle of the knife.
‘Shit hot, honey. Thanks.’
She pulled him out from beneath the creature, pulled the cleaver out of its head. They climbed up into the loft and waited.
Craggs’s band retreated. Another man fell, a creature’s jaws clamped around his fountaining throat. Craggs fired a shot at it, then turned to see a pair of glowing eyes charging straight for him. He fired again.
The creature fell at his feet like it was worshipping him.
He reloaded. Shot another creature which was charging towards him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They fell back, headed towards the police station, reasoning that it would be easy to defend. A good way from their destination, it became apparent that it was not wise to go there.
Everyone in town seemed to have had the same idea. The path outside the station was a sea of screaming, struggling people.
All around, the creatures were gathering, sensing easy prey.
Joe Coache was not so lucky in his attempts at home defence. As soon as the creature had appeared in his front room, he had raised his shotgun and drew a bead on it, but he was damned if he dared pull the trigger.
He managed to persuade his legs into letting him run upstairs, his heart almost leaping out of his chest as the creature’s claws raked four long wounds in his upper back.
Warm blood spread across his back as he backed his trembling body against the bathroom door, bracing it in case the hideous thing tried to shove its way in. His breath loud in his ears, he couldn’t hear if the mutant was outside.
Then it hit the door. He let out an involuntary cry. The thing hit the door again.
It felt to Joe that the door couldn’t take too many more of these blows. He leant against the door, sobbing into his hands, as the creature tried to smash its way through to him.
Outside the police station, the scene was one of utter mayhem.
Craggs tried to tell the screaming, panicking townsfolk that they were sitting ducks, but his words fell upon deaf ears.
‘Leave them to it,’ he said, leading his small group away.
The group with Chuck at the police sta
tion had a few guns between them, but not enough to protect them effectively.
The first three creatures fell easily enough, a bullet in each of their heads. They were not dead, but the gunshots seemed to have shocked their controlling parasites into inactivity.
A creature ducked under the shooter’s frantic blasting and pulled his arm from his body.
The crowd screamed and tried to run into the police station. A few died in the rush, trampled by their fellow townspeople. Those who were trapped soon fell beneath the brutal attack of the creatures.
Claws tore holes in heads, stomachs and legs, spraying a river of blood across the station’s pristine sidewalk.
A few frantic shooters took out a handful of creatures with their wild shots, but they hit almost as many humans. The gunmen were soon overwhelmed and their blood shed into thirsty mouths.
The lucky townsfolk who made it into the station locked the heavy door to keep the creatures out. They found the station manned by a few officers – most of them being out by the fences.
Out of breath and severely depleted in numbers, Craggs’s group reached the town hall. This was surprisingly quiet, considering the chaos at the police station. Craggs found the door locked and he put his gun butt through the pane of glass in the door.
‘Just fucking great,’ one of his companions said as the alarms began to blare.
Craggs ignored him and searched for the lock. His hand pulled back the latch and the door swung open. They ran into the building, bracing the door with a table from the hall. It was light and wouldn’t last long, but even a flimsy barricade was better than nothing.
In the light of the town hall – Craggs reasoned the creatures were already headed here due to the sound of breaking glass, so no need to keep themselves in the dark – they looked at each other.
Their twenty-strong group was down to seven and most of them were wounded. Pat Cook had even been shot by a well-meaning but inept citizen. His leg was a mass of blood, but he gritted his teeth and tied his belt round his leg.
‘We may be here some time, guys,’ Craggs said. ‘So get comfortable and prepare for a siege.’
