Pennsylvania, North America, 2030
“You hear that, Ray?”
“Pete… I can’t hear nothing.”
“It’s coming from the tree line…” Pete’s voice was a hushed whisper as if he was afraid of being heard despite the fact that they were the only two people on the stretch of wall.
Ray pulled his carbine from his shoulder and slowly raised it toward the same direction that Pete’s eyes focused like lasers on. He glanced over quickly and saw that his friend’s eyes were wide open, unblinking.
Pete’s breaths grew heavier, deeper.
“Calm down, bud. I can’t hear shit,” he soothed.
“No way, man… I can hear it—” Pete cursed. “I think it’s my mom!”
“That’s impossible,” Ray frowned as he scanned the mist-shrouded trees several hundred yards distant through his carbine’s night optics.
“No! It’s her! We need to go help her!” Pete vibrated.
“I’m telling you, bud! I don’t hear anything!” he snapped. “Think, Pete! Why would your mom be outside the walls? No one out unless they’re a fighter or escorted by a fighter and no one goes out at night!”
“I can hear her!” Pete hissed. “Listen!”
Ray did against his own will.
There was something in the calm air carried by the thin mist that seemed to always press in on the town’s boundaries after the sun fell.
Grasping fingers.
That’s what the mist looked like to him.
Hungry from the moment it began a few months ago.
No one went out a night.
They manned the walls and fought the monsters.
The mists seemed to stay back when they did that.
No eyes meant that the mists crept all the way up and over the walls.
One brutal time had taught them that lesson.
“Help me, my son!”
Ray heard it then.
His hands rattled his carbine against his shoulder and cheek.
“I twisted my ankle on a root. You know how clumsy I am… I just need you to help me back. Please, my son.”
It wasn’t Pete’s mom.
It was his.
Impossible.
He just had dinner with his mom before starting his overnight shift.
Her voice sounded concerned, but not panicked.
Logic dictated that this was impossible.
No one out after dark.
The gates were always guarded.
The walls too high for an older woman to climb down.
Neither his nor Pete’s mothers could be out there.
And yet… the voice…
He fought the urge to leap over the edge and rush into the dark, misty forest.
“Pete, I’m hearing my mom too—”
“No! It’s mine! I need to help her!”
Before he could act, Pete vaulted over the edge.
His friend was a warrior with a few Skills enhancing his physicals.
Fifteen feet down was easy.
Pete hit the ground and rolled to soften the impact.
He sprinted across the clearing.
Fifty yards in a handful of seconds.
“Pete!”
His shout fell on deaf ears.
“Damn it!”
Fingers of mist welcomed Pete into the dark forest as he reached the tree line.
Silence.
Not even insects.
Ray blew his whistle while he swept his carbine across the spot Pete had vanished into.
He waited for the bark of Pete’s gun or the snarls of a monster.
Nothing.
Fellow guards came running a short time later.
“Pete jumped over and ran into the forest,” he said blandly staring at the forest. He expected Pete to pop out at any moment. He didn’t notice someone waving a hand over his eyes.
“Ray, you need to unfuck whatever this shit is and tell me what the fuck is going on!” a gravelly voice snapped.
Dom, the guy in charge of this side of the wall, put a firm hand on his shoulder.
He blinked and felt like he had just woken from a deep sleep. From a dream… nightmare.
Mists of confusion swirled in his head.
“I— I…” he took a deep breath.
“That’s good. Breathe. Focus. Go step by step. What happened? You said Pete ran into the forest. Start there,” Dom said.
“He heard a voice. His mom. Then I heard it too, but it was my mom.”
“Go check on them,” Dom glanced at two other guards. “You know that’s impossible right, Ray?”
“Yeah, yeah…” he shook his head, “wait? We need to go get Pete!”
Dom’s eyes darted away from his to stare out into the dark beyond the torch light. “Where did he go?”
“There!” he pointed.
“Get me a light.”
Another guard turned on a staggeringly bright spot light following Ray’s direction.
The light cut through the mist and stopped at the tree line.
The forest remained black as night.
“It should be in range,” Dom murmured.
“We need to get a team and help Pete!”
“No one goes out at night, Ray,” Dom shook his head. “You know that. Pete knew that.”
“But—”
“We’ll go at first light.”
“But—”
“Go back to the office. I want to ask you more about this. You two take over,” Dom gestured to the other guards, “keep a sharp eye out for Pete and if you hear any any voices, even Pete’s, coming from the forest ignore it and blow your whistles.”
“But… Pete?”
“I’m sorry, kid, we’ll just be throwing lives away if we go out there now, c’mon. Let’s get you something warm to drink,” Dom ushered him down the steps and back into town.
Ray didn’t want to sleep, not with Pete still out there, but Dom eventually made him go home with the threat that if he didn’t get some rest he wasn’t going to be part of the group that was going to go out at dawn.
His worried mom met him at the door having been given a fright by the men banging on her door while she slept.
Relief flooded him at the sight of her face and the sound of her voice.
What he had heard on the wall seemed so real.
He didn’t have it in him to tell the story yet again, so he assured her that everything was fine and he’d tell her about it in the morning before heading to his room.
Still, the voice he had heard, the look in Pete’s eyes haunted him.
It took a couple of sleeping pills to finally knock him out.
It was still dark when his mom roused him from the deepest slumber swimming in nightmares.
The voice from the forest.
Pete’s panicked pleading and wild eyes as he ran into the grasping hands of the mist.
Ray ate quickly and was out the door within ten minutes.
It was still dark but he had to reach the station in time to join the others.
They waited for the first rays of the sun to peak above the mountains to the east and shine down on the valley forest where Pete had disappeared into.
Ray piled into the back of the truck with a dozen others.
Two trucks rolled out the eastern gate.
It was only a few hundred yards to the tree line but experience had taught them that monsters tended to run faster than men.
“Listen up!” Dom barked. “We’re going in together. Watch each other’s backs. You hear anything, ignore it. I don’t care if it’s your mom, wife or kids. You left them all at home, right? There’s no way they’d be out here.”
Weapons drawn, they moved cautiously into the forest.
The night mist had receded from the sun’s touch.
Oh, there was still a thin layer, but it felt normal. It didn’t set your teeth to chattering or send shivers up your spine. It was just natural condensation in the cold fall air.
They hadn’t searched for long when a whistle went up from the front of the group.
Ray pushed his way forward and regretted it immediately.
In an open space underneath the tangled branches of two oak trees was carnage.
The ground was torn.
Leaves, bushes, branches broken and scattered.
A carbine lay broken and twisted.
He turned away and emptied his breakfast.
From the sound of it he wasn’t alone.
“Jesus…” Dom crossed himself.
Ray had seen shredded clothing, camo, like they all wore.
The rest… the rest was bloody chunks and bits of hair.
Blond.
Pete’s.
“Most of him’s gone,” Dom said. “Alright, I don’t want to stick around too long. Gather… Pete… gather him up. At least his mom’s got something to bury, Christ.”
“Shouldn’t we, like, investigate this? Figure out what did this?” Taran said.
Dom regarded the weathered woman for a moment. “Later. With more people.”
“Dom…”
“What?”
“Look up in the trees,” keen-eyed Joe said.
Ray followed Joe’s gaze.
Squirrels.
Some with gray fur, some with red, others with a mix of the two colors.
Except something was odd about them.
“What? It’s just squirrels—” Dom realized something.
The decade after the spires appeared hadn’t been good for the local wildlife, especially the smaller ones. They either mutated, got bigger and worse or were eaten.
These squirrels were much bigger than they should’ve been and the way they looked at him reminded him of those big brown bears in Alaska.
It reminded him of the feeling he got when something looked at him like food.
“Dom, they’ve got blood on their muzzles,” Joe said.
“Weapons hot!” Dom shouted.
The squirrels leapt a split-second before the guns barked.
Dom went down under a handful.
Joe went next.
Taran pushed Ray back with one hand while firing with her other. “Get to shooting, kid!”
Ray staggered back as others pushed past him.
The cracks of the gunfire deafened him.
“Back to the trucks! On me! We need covering fire!” Taran roared.
“Leap frog!” another person urged.
“Fire Missiles!”
Spells scorched the mist as their mages opened up.
A bloody-fanged squirrel the size of a large cat leapt up into Ray’s sight line.
He kept the red dot on the animal, no, the monster and squeezed the trigger.
Three round burst.
Red bloomed from the squirrel.
He continued to fire as he ran alongside the others.
“Covering fire!”
He listened to the voice.
Stopped.
Turned.
And fired.
The squirrels were hot on their heels.
Another man went down underneath a furry whirlwind of ripping and tearing teeth and claws.
Taran hesitated slowing to reach out for the desperate man’s outstretched hand before it too disappeared in the furry pile. “Fuck!” she snapped a burst across the pile.
“They’re not dying!”
“Yeah, they’re fucking healing!”
Ray caught the words over the staccato.
He noticed it then.
A squirrel that had taken a burst twitched on the dead foliage covering the forest floor. Bullet wounds covered its body.
Slowly, it stopped twitching.
The bullets pushed out of the wounds as they closed.
It was like watching something in reverse.
“Shit! Taran, we’re being flanked! Freeze!”
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More monsters stopped under the Skill.
They had crept through a thicker portion of the undergrowth.
Small, like children.
Squirrels.
Or rather a gruesome blend of the two.
Bipedal.
Crude weapons in their claws.
“Hit them!”
“Needle Spray!”
“Fireball!”
“Automatic Reload!”
“Incendiary grenades out!”
The new monsters vanished in the conflagration.
“Keep running!” Taran said.
Ray was out, so he shouldered his carbine and drew his one-handed battle axe and small round shield.
He kept looking back as more men and women vanished underneath the furry horde that wouldn’t die.
Something was happening to those squirrels.
They were changing?
“Fuckfuckfuck, those things aren’t dying!”
They finally hit the tree line.
“Gogogogogo!” Taran urged the drivers.
Good training meant that they didn’t hesitate.
The trucks roared to life and were already rolling by the time what remained of their group clambered into the beds.
“What the hell were those thing?” Taran said to no one in particular.
Ray could see them hovering just beyond the trees.
Their eyes shined red with malice and hunger as some brandished crude weapons in their claws.
Back at the station, Ray tried to keep his hands from shaking as he struggled to thumb rounds into a magazine.
“Fuck, you’re rattling more than my baby.”
“Shut it, Neil!” Mills snapped. “It’s normal,” he nodded to Ray, “adrenaline dump. It’ll pass.” The deputy sheriff raised his voice for the rest of the room. “If any of you feel like puking, do it. Don’t try to fight it.”
“Hey, man. I ain’t taking a shot or nothing,” Neil held up a quivering hand. “I ain’t doing much better. What the fuck were those things?”
“Mutated squirrels?” Benny said.
“They were on two legs and I think they had weapons,” Lewis said.
“Weresquirrels,” Ray muttered.
“What’s that?” Mills said.
“Shit, yeah, that’s what they looked like!” Benny brightened. “Like werewolves, but squirrels. They had that backwards knee thing…” he trailed off as the others stared at him.
“He’s an idiot, but I can get on board with that,” Neil said. “So, weresquirrels… I guess, that’s better than werewolves.”
“How is that better?” Lewis said. “They killed Dom, Joe…”
The deaths replayed in Ray’s mind again.
It had all happened so fast.
Ten people gone in a handful of minutes.
Faces and voices he’d never see or hear again.
No.
That wasn’t right.
He’d see them again in his nightmares.
Their deaths.
“If it was werewolves none of us would’ve made it,” Neil said. “What now?” he turned to Mills.
“That’s for the bosses to decide.”
“You don’t think we’ll catch a break and maybe get the rest of the day off to process all that shit?” Neil said.
“We’re needed on the wall. Those things might attack.”
“Kid won’t be shooting straight with the shakes,” Neil nodded at Ray, “same for the rest of us. Except you, maybe, cold as ice, as usual.”
“Not my call.”
“What does it matter if we’re up on the wall? Those things’ll just roll right over us,” Benny said.
“They weren’t dying,” Ray said.
He remembered.
Lewis shook his head. “He’s right. I’m sure I saw them healing from everything we hit them with.”
“We don’t know that for sure. Maybe they just need to be killed twice,” Mills said.
“Cut off their heads?” Neil said.
“We need silver bullets,” Lewis said.
“Where are we gonna get silver?” Neil said.
“Coins, spoons and forks,” Lewis shrugged.
Ray thought of the stockpile of coins his dad had left. “I—”
“Knock it off with that fantasy shit,” Mills sighed. “Just focus on what’s real, what’s in front of you. We have a new type of monster. They caught us off guard out in the open. Now, they didn’t follow us out of the forest. So, that’s something. We can get up on the walls and see them coming. They heal fast? So, what? I’m willing to bet they can’t do that easily when they’re blown to bloody chunks by the mines and grenades. Don’t build them up into unkillable monsters. Remember… there is nothing we can’t kill with enough firepower. Now, I’m going to make an executive decision. Once your done reloading go home and hug your loved ones. You’re off for the day unless I get word from above.”
“I though we were needed for the wall?” Ray said.
“Shut up, kid,” Neil chuckled. “We need this,” he nodded at Mills. “Boss man says to go home, we go home.”
Ray gave his mother a brief explanation on why he was home so early.
He didn’t mention Pete or the other deaths. He just couldn’t bring himself to say the words as if doing so would make it real. His best friend was gone. Torn apart, devoured in the dark alone, while he had stood on the wall and did nothing except shake in fear.
“Mom, do you know where Dad kept all those coins?”
“Coins?”
“Um… the silver ones?”
“I don’t know… somewhere in the basement.”
His mom’s face fell. The way it always did when she thought about his dad.
“Sorry…” he mumbled.
She sighed. “No, don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s been five years, but… I still keep thinking that he’ll walk in here and ask where the maple syrup is even though it’s always in the same place. If he was still here you wouldn’t have to be out there.”
“I know how to fight. I’ve trained hard.”
“Yes, but you shouldn’t have to. Back in the old days, you’d barely be driving. Worrying me and your dad with whatever trouble you and your friends would be getting up to. Parties, girls, beer, weed. Instead, it’s monsters.”
“World’s changed,” he shrugged.
Stories of the old world always made him uncomfortable.
His mom didn’t mean to, but it felt like he was just being reminded how much better it was and that he’d never experience something like that. All he had to look forward to was watching her die at some monsters claws or if he was lucky, he’d die first, but then that’d leave her alone, which he had vowed on his dad’s grave would never happen.
The new monsters had been a claw’s length away from doing just that.
He stood abruptly.
“You’re not going to finish?”
“I’m not too hungry. Sorry, Mom…”
“No that’s okay… just… well, I’ll always be here if you need to talk about what happened. When you’re ready.”
“Thanks, Mom. Is it okay if I take the coins? The silver ones, I mean?”
“Um… sure…”
He felt a pang at the look of sadness on his mom’s face.
“They might help me,” he didn’t elaborate.
“Of course,” his mom rallied, “they’re basically worthless anyways. If they can help you then your dad would want you to use them.”
“Thanks, Mom. I need to go out… if anyone comes looking for me tell them I’m probably at the forges. I also might have to go back on duty later, so, don’t wait up.”
“Be careful…”
His mom hugged him tight.
The dark basement welcomed him like a tomb.
It had been his dad’s place and had remained untouched, barely used.
Too painful for his mom.
Too daunting for him.
It turned out that turning several pounds of silver dollars into bullets wasn’t going to be as simple as he had thought.
“Kid, I’m just saying that it’ll be a waste to just melt all that down and cast them into bullets,” Cassidy, one of the lead blacksmiths said.
“But… why? Just melt them and put them in the mold. I’ve seen you guys doing it dozens of times.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “I didn’t say we couldn’t do that. Just that it isn’t an effective use of our time. We just got word that we need to up production, like, right now,” she scrutinized him like a red hot bar of iron, “this got anything to do with the rumors going around?”
“I don’t know… what’s going around?”
“Something bad happened during a dawn op in the forest. You didn’t happen to be part of that, did you?”
“I can’t say anything.”
“Uh huh, well, then there’s nothing I can do for you today. Too busy and like I said. It’d be a waste. A pure silver bullet would be too soft. Sure it’d go through regular skin just fine, but I have no idea how it’d do against anything with some bullshit supernatural toughness to their hides. You getting me?”
Ray nodded.
“How would it compare to normal bullets? Like, let’s say, a normal bullet went in deep enough to hit an organ, or something. What would a silver one do?”
“Listen, you shoot me with a silver bullet and I’ll be in just as much trouble as if it was a normal one.”
“Okay, then I think you really want to help me out with this.”
He told her about the weresquirrels.
“Do you even know if silver will work on them?” she said after a long moment.
“No, but it wouldn’t be the first time that mythical shit worked.”
“Damn it. That’s why they’re on our asses today. You guys burned through a lot of ammo. Need to know bullshit. They should’ve just told us. You think we’re getting hit tonight? And you said they wouldn’t die after getting bodied?”
“I swear. I put a burst into one and I saw the bullets get pushed right out of the holes.”
“The mine field—”
“Might not be enough.”
Cassidy chewed the inside of her cheek.
“It’d be better if you jacketed a silver core or just mixed a little of it into the lead. Better penetration. Plus, we’d get more bullets out of your coins. Although, going by story rules, mixing is probably out. You’d want the silver to remain ‘pure’ and we have no idea if the amount of silver in a bullet matters,” she snorted.
“We don’t have time to test.”
“My boss will be pissed if I take one of my guys off bullet production to make yours. You remember the seminar?”
“Yeah…”
Everyone in town had gone through a lesson on how to make a bullet.
“Great. I’ll set you up with a station. Burner, crucible, molds. You can cast your silver bullets yourself.”
“Okay, yeah, that’ll be great.”
“Try not to burn anything, alright?”
“I promise.”
Ray spent the rest of the morning sweating in the forge.
When lunchtime arrived he went down the block to find a gunsmith to turn his bullets into complete rounds.
Lewis and Benny found him outside the gunsmith’s building hours later loading his new silver rounds into his magazines.
“There you are. You’re a hard motherfucker to find,” Lewis said.
“Checked your mom’s, then the forge and now here, so, really more like three places and the last two are basically the same, so…” Benny shrugged.
“Sup,” he nodded.
“All hands on deck for tonight,” Lewis eyed the sun over the western horizon.
Ray’s breath caught in his throat. “Is something wrong?”
Benny eyed the gunsmiths having their break a short distance away. He lowered his voice. “Maybe, probably.”
“What he means is that danger sensers all across town started pinging a little bit ago. Even the civvies that have it. They’ve been rushing into our stations. Bosses don’t want to start a panic, so, us fighters need to get ready and up on the wall,” Lewis said.
“Everyone,” Benny nodded.
“They’ll start ringing the alarms in, like, thirty. Get the civvies into the shelters,” Lewis said.
“My mom! She doesn’t have a car!”
“Don’t worry. Plenty of time,” Lewis said. “So, are these the silver bullets?” he picked one up from the pile. “5.56… got any other kinds?”
“No, sorry, it’s what I use,” he patted his M4, “and it’s what most everyone else uses.”
“Bad luck you love your AK so much,” Benny said.
“Tch. At least the kid’s using his brain. Better than you and your grandma’s forks,” Lewis said. “Get this, kid, Benny’s got a bunch of forks in his pack,” he laughed.
“Silverware. Didn’t think to melt them down. Didn’t want to piss my grandma off,” Benny explained.
“Isn’t she dead?”
“Before I was born. Don’t want to take the chance that her ghost is out there watching. Never know with the spires.”
“Benny, you’re a moron. There’s no way that’s possible. Even if ghosts are a thing now, your grandma died before the spires,” Lewis said. “Anyways, you weirdos can keep your silver. I’m not that worried. I thought about it harder and I’m, like, ninety percent sure that the weresquirrels we hit with magic didn’t get back up. So, mages just need to blast them and they’ll stay down. The ones that manage to make it past the mines.”
Ray started tossing the loose rounds into his dad’s old ammo case. “I’ll finish this at the station. Since you guys drove, can we stop by my house and take my mom to the shelter. It’s on the way.”
“Sure, don’t see why not,” Lewis said.
“Did you eat yet?” Benny said as they walked to the car.
Ray pointed at the food truck parked along the block.
It had a semi-permanent spot serving the busy people responsible for keeping them armed and armored.
“Had a couple of hot dogs for lunch,” he said.
“Shit, do we have time to grab a couple?” Benny said.
“We don’t to go into battle on a full stomach,” Lewis warned. “It’ll just sit heavy in there weighing you down. You’re body will want to get rid of it when things get hairy.”
Ray was well aware of that fact. There wasn’t a fighter in town that didn’t puke or shit themselves right before a fight. It was their body’s way of lightening the load for that good old fight or flight.
That’s why he had decided to skip dinner.
“We’ve got two hours before sundown. Plenty of time to digest,” Benny said. “I don’t know that I want to go into this on an empty stomach. This might be my last chance to eat something good. Lunch was shit.”
“Alright, I guess, go grab a couple of dogs for me too,” Lewis said.
Benny hurried over to the food truck while Ray followed Lewis to the car.
“Kid, good initiative on the silver bullets, but I hope we don’t actually need them,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t make any for you.”
“No worries, I guess Mills’ got a point about us using guns with the same calibers,” Lewis sighed. “It’s just that, I got my AK from my great grandpa. Original from the war. Sentimental value, you know?”
Ray nodded. “I used the coins my dad collected.”
“Your dad was an old numismatists, was he? Didn’t know that.”
“Er… yeah… I guess.”
Lewis chuckled. “Coin collector.”
“I don’t know about that. I think it was more, like, for an emergency. Just in case credit cards stopped working or paper money became worthless.”
“Oh… one of those. Well, I guess that’s what sorta happened. We just got really lucky that stores magically stock themselves otherwise we’d have starved years ago. Hey, if those bullets do work, mind making me a couple of mags worth?”
“Yeah, I mean, if you have silver. I used up my dad’s old coins.” The thought sent a pang through his chest. Each coin turned into a bullet was one less piece of his dad’s presence in the world. He suddenly felt really guilty. He hoped his mom was okay with it.
“Bet there’s a lot at the bank. Shit. You think the bank’ll re-stock itself after we empty it. Weird. All this time and no one’s thought to grab some stuff out of there. Like a gold bar or two. Not that they’re worth anything. It’d just be kinda cool to have a couple laying around the hou—”
An ear-piercing sound split the cool air.
The sirens.
Lewis cursed. “Too soon— Benny! Get your ass back here! We need to go! Hey!” he waved at the gunsmiths and other workers, “get to the shelter!”
He needn’t have done so.
The men and women were already scrambling.
“My mom!”
“Shit, yeah, no worries, she’s on the way. We’ll take her and anyone else in your neighborhood we can cram into the car,” Lewis said.
Ray had just jumped into the back seat when the sounds of distant explosions began. Followed shortly by the faint pops of frantic gun fire.
White-knuckled driving got them to Ray’s neighborhood in good time.
Lewis drifted the car around the corner and slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid slamming into the rear end of a truck filled with people. “Shit! Get to the shelters!”
The truck suddenly accelerated turning sharply.
“Watch out!” Benny said.
Lewis cursed throwing the car in reverse, barely avoiding a collision.
“What the fuck!” Benny pointed at several people thrown out of the truck scattered on the street like produce off a truck.
“Jesus, I’m going to find that driver and smack him. Now, we’re going to have deal with this,” Lewis said. “Alright, I’m going to have to go get the medics. You two are going to have to stabilize them and secure the area.”
“Can you take my mom to the shelter?”
“No time.”
“What spooked the driver?” Benny’s eyes widened. “Oh shit!”
Time slowed for Ray.
He followed Benny’s sight line to the far end of the long, straight street.
People screaming as they ran from a handful of weresquirrels.
He hadn’t gotten a good look at them during the frantic fight beneath the shadows of the treetops.
Now, they loped across the streets in the light of the sun.
“Oh shit! Too late. We’re retreating!” Lewis spun the wheel.
“Wait! Those people!” Benny said pointing.
There were only five weresquirrels, but they were already reaping a bloody harvest.
They easily overtook the people with their loping strides despite being the size of children.
Strength beyond that small size combined with wicked teeth and claws made short work of a man or woman before the monster moved on the next target.
They weren’t acting like animals looking for food.
“We can’t do shit for them! We need to warn the others! Come back in numbers! Fuck!” Lewis skidded around the corner slamming on the brakes to avoid a parked car.
Ray took the opportunity to kick the door open and rush out into the street.
His mom was in their house.
“Kid! Get back here!”
“He’s got the right idea, Lewis. Don’t be a pussy!” Benny made sure a round was chambered in his carbine before following.
“We can’t kill them!” Lewis let out a roar before joining the other two.
Ray sprinted down the street past the people that had fallen out of the truck and dropped to one knee raising his carbine to his shoulder.
Lewis tossed the car key to the least injured-looking woman. “Everyone get in the car and get to the shelter. Tell them what’s happening here and that we need help immediately!” he snapped.
Ray put the red dot on a weresquirrel savaging an older man.
The man was a fighter to the end stabbing with a knife even as the monster dug into his guts.
Ray squeezed.
Three round burst.
Red mist painted the air from where the weresquirrel’s fang-filled muzzle was.
He held his breath for a moment.
The monster’s body toppled and didn’t rise.
He sought the next target.
One after another, he killed the remaining monsters.
“Damn! Hey, can I get a mag?” Benny said.
Ray tossed him one before rushing to his mom’s house.
“Well, shit… it looks like it worked. Give my one of those forks of yours?” Lewis held out a hand.
Benny dug into his belt pouch for one. “We should probably make sure they’re really dead. I don’t want to waste rounds, so,” he handed a silvered fork over before pulling out a knife, “we’ll need to stab them.”
“I should probably head to the station and warn everyone that they’re inside,” Lewis turned and cursed.
People were getting into the car. The less injured helping the one’s that couldn’t walk.
“They probably already know. We heard the mines go off and shots. The monsters obviously attacked the wall and if they’re inside…” Benny shrugged.
The implication was clear.
“They would’ve heard Ray’s shots.” Lewis looked to the sky. “I’m not hearing anything…”
Ray’s mom met him at the door.
“What is happening?”
“No time, Mom. Grab your B.O.B. we need to get you to a shelter.”
“I heard—”
“Monsters are inside the walls! We need to go now!”
The frantic run to the nearest shelter was followed by a desperate and bloody night.
Ray defended the shelter with accurate fire until he ran out of silver bullets.
It was there that the weresquirrel’s intelligence failed them for they had ceased their attacks to seek easier targets.
And so, Ray could do nothing but listen to the sounds of battle and pray that he wouldn’t see his mom get eaten alive along with the dozens of people huddled in a barricaded conference hall.
When dawn broke and the monsters retreated he realized that his class had changed at some point in the night.
No longer a simple fighter, he was now a silver arms fighter.