The creature pulled itself from the barn and into the clearing, the full moon above bathing it in silver light and giving us a clear look for the first time. It was a towering abomination of hunger and malice, easily eight feet tall. Maybe even taller, since it moved on all fours like some kind of enormous gorilla with gangly, oversized arms. This thing wasn’t a gorilla, though. It was a grotesque parody of humanity with a skeletal frame, draped in paper-thin skin stretched tighter than a drum.

Enormous elk antlers twisted upward from the bleached skull of some great wolf, and its huge mouth was a cavern of jagged teeth. Burning red eyes like hot coals regarded us from deep within the skull, and I could tell it wanted to murder us all in the bloodiest fashion possible. In the center of its emaciated torso, right where it’s stomach should’ve been, was a circular mouth the size of a manhole cover, ringed with rows upon rows of teeth like a lamprey.

The monstrous creature shuffled toward us on all four, its limbs cracking and popping as it moved, its snout raised to the sky, tasting the air with a writhing tentacle tongue.

Dweller 0.39729B – Kannibal Kid (Feral – Blighted) [Level 39]

Growing kids need lots and lots of food, and these not-so-little crotch goblins are never, ever full. It’s like they have some sort of bottomless black hole for a stomach! Thankfully, they aren’t picky eaters and will devour anything they can get their grubby, oversized, talon-studded fingers on. Including you!

Like all children, the Kannibal Kids don’t follow rules particularly well and just aren’t ready to exist in polite society, where the laws of the HOA hold sway. Especially, not when the sun goes down and bedtime approaches. The rising moon does strange things to all the little Timmys and Tammys, granting them an additional ten levels and transforming them into gluttonous, veracious creatures with an appetite for flesh.

Hunting is their favorite activity and the adults of Sunnyside happen to be their preferred prey; they’ll happily make a meal of any Kevin or Kathy foolish enough to venture too far from their homes. Eventually, though—once they’ve consumed enough parents, stripping the fetid, spore-filled meat from their bones—they grow right up, evolving into compliant members of the HOA.

Isn’t the circle of life beautiful?

“No one move,” Ed whispered, though he kept his eyes fixed on the ridiculously powerful Dweller. At level 39, this thing could probably kill us all without even batting an eye. Well, maybe not—depending on what kind of firepower Ed was packing—but I didn’t much like our odds. Mentally, I was already preparing to summon one of my Doorway Sentinels and get the fuck out of dodge.

Ahead, Ed crouched down and pulled something from his coat pocket.

I thought the eyebrows might climb right off my face when I saw a pint of ice cream with the words Twilight Treats emblazoned on the side of the container. Ed popped the lid, and a fetid stench washed out from the container, making me gag. Whatever was in there, it sure as shit wasn’t ice cream, but the horrible creature seemed fixated on the pint of foul goop with ravenous intensity. Ed set the container down like an offering to one of the Old Gods, then slowly backed away with his hands raised in the air, never making eye contact with the creature.

We all stood perfectly still, watching the creature the way a hiker might watch a wild Kodiak bear—just silently hoping and praying that it doesn’t start eating you from the feet up.

The Kannibal Kid sniffed at the air, its tentacle tongue whipping back and forth for a few tense beats. Then it moved. Moved so fast I could barely track it. In one blink it was ten feet from the ice cream container. The next, it had snatched the container from the ground, before disappearing back into the cornfields with its prize in hand. Vanishing like a ghost, swallowed by the dark of the night.

“Boy, those guys really like ice cream,” Croc whispered, cutting the tense silence, “almost as much as I like Froyo.”

“I’ve seen these monsters slaughter each other over a single ice cream cone,” Ed said gravely. “But it’s always a coin toss. Sometimes they prefer the kill over the cone. That’ll buy us five minutes. If we’re lucky. Which I sincerely doubt, considering how badly everything else has gone tonight.” He shot me a sour glare, then trudged toward the open barn door. “Well come on, unless you want to light the cornfields on fire and try to fight every Kannibal Kid in a ten-mile radius all at once.”

The interior of the barn was just as decrepit as its exterior. The roof was mostly gone and the floor was covered in moldering hay, while huge piles of corn were stacked against the walls. Ed ignored all of that and beelined toward a corner of the room, veiled in a thick layer of shadow. Except, there was something subtly off about that shadow, I realized after a second. Mostly, it shouldn’t have been there at all.

The man waved a hand lazily through the air and the gloom evaporated in a blink, revealing the heavy wooden door to a root cellar, embedded in the floor. Someone had carved a series of crude sigils directly into planks. Based on my limited experience, I was guessing those runes served as some sort of barrier spell. Or maybe reinforcement wards? It was hard to say without examining them more closely, and we didn’t have time for that. Not with Kannibal Kids and an army of enraged Sunnysiders dogging our trail.

Ed pulled an amulet from around his neck then pressed the odd talisman dangling from the end against the root cellar door. There was a brief but intense flash of blue light followed by an audible pop—the sound of a heavy lock disengaging. He immediately returned the amulet to his neck, then pulled open the doors with a grunt and gestured for us to go down.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, casting furtive looks toward the barn doors and the darkened cornfields beyond. “I’ve gotta reengage the locks or those Children of the Corn cock womblers will slaughter us all before we can even get our weapons out.”

Despite Ed’s urging, I hesitated at the top of the stairs. It was possible Ed was just a good Samaritan and really was just trying to help us, but I still had doubts. Since noclipping, I could count the number of genuinely good people I’d met on one hand and it was equally possible this was some sort of elaborate setup.

“Look,” Ed said with long-suffering patience, “I know you’re skeptical. That’s good. Smart. Always question the signal. Always. I’d be suspicious too, if the roles were reversed because I’m not a conformo sheep. But I want you to really think about this. Does it make sense that I’d go out of my way to help you, if my goal was to kill you? If I wanted you dead—or worse, converted—I could’ve just left your asses at that barbeque. Or not said anything in the first place.”

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“Unless you’re some sort of mad scientist type,” Croc countered, “who plans to lock us in your basement, chain us to the wall, and then do weird experiments where you try to turn our organs into ice cream.”

Ed grunted and nodded. “That is a very specific scenario, dog that talks.” He glanced down at the blunt still smoldering between his fingers. “Honestly, I think I might be too high right now.” He killed the cheery and stashed the joint. “Fine, the talking dog brings up a fair point, but I’ll see your potential situation and raise you one. You happen to find yourself trapped in a cornfield in the middle of night, surrounded by creatures that you know damned well want to eat you. In comparison to that, this”—he gestured toward the root cellar—“is basically an invitation to the Ritz.”

It was a compelling pitch. Besides, we did have options, even if Ed didn’t know that.

Thanks to the Compass of the Catacomber, we could bail if things really went sideways—though I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that. Although theoretically I could plant a doorway back to the shop whenever I needed to, doing so essentially meant giving up all hope on advancing further. If we wanted to make it down to the Franchisor, we needed to find a way to get to that firework kiosk, and that meant figuring out a way to deal with the Sunnysiders.

If anyone knew how to do that, I had a feeling it would be Ed.

“Okay,” I said, “but I’m only going to warn you once. If you try to dick us over, I swear to God that I will spend all of my not-inconsiderable resources turning you into a carpet stain. You might be higher level than any one of us, but you aren’t stronger than all of us collectively. When we’re done, there won’t be enough left of you to fill a mop bucket.”

Ed just grinned. “You’ve got some fight, kid. Keep that. You’re going to need it if you want to get away from this burning dumpster fire of a level.”

A loud, long howl pierced the night. It sounded like someone had tossed an angry wolf into a woodchipper and it was close by. Uncomfortably so.

“Stay sharp,” I said to the others as I took the lead and slipped down the stairs one at a time, using Spelunker’s Sixth Sense to keep an eye out for any potential traps or pitfalls. When I got to the bottom of the relatively short and narrow staircase, I found a light switch on the wall and flicked it up with my thumb. Overhead fluorescents blazed to life, revealing what could best be described as a 1950s style bomb shelter.

The walls were constructed from gray cinderblock bricks, the ceiling was a slab of thick steel, while the floor was bare concrete partially covered by a pitifully threadbare rug. There was a small kitchenette in one corner and a tiny, attached bathroom that made an Iraqi porta shiter look roomy.

As for the furnishings, they were both sparse and depressing.

A tiny military-style cot. A single table with a couple of rickety chairs. Pushed up against one wall was a badly scratched coffee table that held a record player and a stack of old vinyl. By the foot of his bed was a makeshift bookcase, haphazardly cobbled together from scraps of wood and loaded down with an odd assortment of heavily creased and dog-eared books.

At the far end of the room was a heavy steel blast door with the words, Laboratory – Restricted Access splashed across the front, and a metal bird cage dangling from the steel rafters.

“Strangers, strangers!” An avian voice squawked in agitation. Inside the cage was the largest and grumpiest looking parrot I’d ever seen in my life. The bird was damn-near the size of a house cat and was completely gray other that a few blood-red tail feathers. “Stay away, stay away or I’ll kill you with fire!” the bird shrieked, flapping its wings menacingly.

How exactly the bird was going to kill me with fire wasn’t entirely clear, but I didn’t want to take the risk. I mean, I doubted this parrot actually had a concealed flamethrower, but I’d seen enough weird shit in the Backrooms to take nothing for granted. It seemed my caution was warranted, since a prompt appeared above the bird a moment later.

Delver #01T-03-B0C9V8H47S – African Gray Parrot [Level 13]

With the intelligence of a four-year-old and the self-control to match, African Gray Parrots are 90% attitude, 10% feathers, and 100% assholes. These little guys are more emotionally needy than your crazy ex, Shandra, and are liable to shit all over your house if you fail to pay them enough attention. And FYI, they need A LOT of attention.

Once you get past the violent pettiness and the unfortunate predisposition to alcoholism, you’ll find African Grays are surprisingly affectionate and make great pets—or familiars. Armed with a rudimentary Spatial Core, they can equip up to two Relics and are masters of mimicry, imitating anything from sirens to human voices with disturbing accuracy.

Holy shit.

This bird was a Delver. Not a human one, obviously, but at some point in the past this bird had noclipped into the Backrooms just like the rest of us unlucky assholes. Plus, it could equip Relics which meant there was every possibility that this thing could, in fact, kill me with fire. As a level thirteen, this parrot was stronger than the majority of the Howlers.

There was a flutter of movement and suddenly a rubbery blue parrot, not much larger than the African Gray, landed on the edge of the cage. The blue parrot still had stupid, oversized googly eyes.

“You don’t have to worry about us, little guy,” Croc said in its most soothing voice. “We’re friends with your dad, Mr. Ed. He let us in.”

The bird cocked its head to one side, eyeballing Croc curiously, then took a few tentative hops toward the dog who was now a parrot. “Friends?” The bird squawked. “Kill you with fire?” It repeated, though now the words sounded more like a question instead of a statement terrible certainty.

“Yeah, no,” Croc replied, bobbing its head. “No need to kill us with fire. You don’t kill your friends with fire. You also don’t lie to your friends or try to kill, eat, or dismember them, either. Dan taught me that.” The mimic flapped a wing in my direction.

There was a clang from overhead as the root cellar door snapped closed, followed by the heavy thump of footfalls. Ed appeared at the bottom of the stairs and froze, openly gawking at the strange sight of a blue rubber bird, chatting it up with a gray parrot in a fallout bunker buried beneath a cornfield outside of a Cronenberg horror movie.

“Yep, definitely too high,” Ed mumbled beneath his breath. He just shook his head then slowly plodded over to the tiny dining-room table in the center of the room and promptly dropped into one of the wobbly chairs with an audible groan. “That’s Woodstock,” he said, jerking his head toward the parrot. “Don’t mind her, she’s a good bird. A little standoffish, but she’s been with me damn near since the beginning.”

“She threatened to kill us with fire,” I said.

“Don’t take it personally,” Ed replied. “She threatens to kill everyone with fire. Even me. Isn’t that right, sweetie?”

“Kill you with fire,” she cooed affectionately in response.

“That’s not the only thing she knows how to say, but it’s definitely her favorite thing to say. Incidentally, setting things on fire is also one of her favorite pastimes. But she knows not to set things on fire inside the bunker, isn’t that right Woodstock?”

“I’ll kill you with fire,” she agreed while nodding her head happily.

“I know, sweetie.” Ed beamed at the parrot like a proud parent. “You’re such a good girl.”

“Woodstock a good girl,” the parrot confirmed. “A very pretty girl. Kill you with fire.”

While the bird whistled contentedly, Ed pushed off his clunky combat boots with a deep sigh of relief then propped one foot up onto his knee and began kneading the sole with his fingers.

“Terrible arthritis,” he said to us by way of explanation. “Getting old sucks. And it’s worse in here. The damned system keeps patching you up, but things still break down overtime. It’s like that old curse—saddled with immortality, but not eternal youth. Anyway, please come in. Take a load off.” He gestured at the three remaining chairs. “We’ve got a whole lot to talk about. Including how we might be able to help each other get off this damned floor…”