The nightmare occurred a month into Alexander’s stay at the camp. The boy rarely slept, staying up most of the night simply out of habit at this point. Dark bags pulled at the skin below his eyes during the day. His mother had noticed and had begun to badger him, but there was nothing she or her husband could do. Their son barely listened to them now. He barely registered the authority they had once held over his life. He no longer looked to them with awe or respect, just a slow burning distaste and distrust.
Alexander’s mind worked like clockwork in the hours after dusk. He was barely able to keep himself calm as the darkness settled over the room. The dying embers of the families cooking fire was the only thing he could find solace in. He had long given up on wandering the building, no amount of boredom could convince him to make the journey to the basement ever again. He knew what was down there and he had no desire to expose himself to any more of that horrific imagery.
Already his dreams were filled with gnashing teeth. There was never any difference between those that belonged to mutants and those that belonged to the bats. They were always one unified maw. One gaping orifice of razor tipped teeth that nipped and chewed at his flesh. Every morning he awoke with a slow realization that he hadn’t quite been eaten yet. He still held onto the majority of his limbs. His body was still relatively whole and the beating machine within his chest still kept him alive. He hid his panic every night from his parents, shivering and twisting on his mattress in silence until exhaustion forced him into sleep.
Alexander was one of the many nocturnal denizens of the camp. Though many of the bats were active during the daylight hours their true number was only evident when the sun sank below the horizon. The camp never skipped a beat, switching from organized slave labour to barely controlled chaos in only moments. Alexander had grown used to all the sounds that leaked into the small bedroom at night.
All of the squeaks and cries that echoed off sleeping walls. Every gunshot or scream. Every violent debate or calm conversation between hidden speakers. Most nights the amalgam of noise was his lullabies. Adding to his panic and slowly smothering him to sleep. It was because of this that he noticed the slight changes.
The gunshots that many had gotten used to, seemed to be coming more frequently. The odd mutant wandering into the camps territory wasn’t a rarity. It happened every so often, and many nights a gun shot or two could be heard before anybody raised the alarm. The change was subtle, but Alexander picked up on it. He hear one shot, quickly followed by another in the same direction. And then a minute or so later another pair coming from the same direction. They were too spread apart for any real pattern to emerge, and the others that had heard it didn’t pay any attention. The camp moved onwards like the well-oiled machine that it was But Alexander, with his sleep deprived and panicked mind sat wide awake. The set of shots had broken a pattern that had been worn into his mind a thousand times and had shook him from his drowsy state.
The gunshots had been different, and the young boy immediately took notice of them. He sat up immediately in his bed, the thin blanket the covered him pooling around his waist as he let his eyes adjust. His fear of the dark vanish as he listened closely, pushing aside all the emotion he felt in his chest for one strained moment. He listened with all the intensity he could muster. Alexander didn’t have the large telescopic ears that the bats had, he didn’t have the senses that allowed them for centuries to operate as the nocturnal predators of man. He didn’t even know what he was listening for nor if it would reap any benefits.
But he was rewarded nonetheless. A few minutes after the last set of shots, another occurred. And with it, buried beneath a wall of sound and only audible to a singular young man, there was a muffled scream. Not of a human, nor the guttural animal whine of a mutant. No, it was a shrill high pitched squeal that echoed for only a moment before falling silent. It was the scream of a bat. A scream that had been silenced a second after it had been uttered.
Alexander sprung from his bed in an instant, moving to his parent’s bed and reaching out to shake the sleeping figures. Sudden angry and disoriented grunts filled the room as he struggled to drag the pair from their slumber. His mother growled at him, asking what he was doing, but Alexander didn’t answer. He didn’t have one. His instincts were guiding him now. No thoughts entered the boys mind as he gazed at his father, bleary eyes meeting frantic ones. The dying light of their cooking fire barely illuminated the room, allowing for only a momentary shared gaze, but Doctor Pisk got the message. He had seen that look before. He had seen it on hunting trips when his son had picked up on something the older man had missed. He had long ago learned to trust his son’s instincts.
Scrambling to his feet the man moved to the crib where Macy had been set to sleep the night before. Gathering the small bundle of cloth into his arms the young girl’s singular cry began to fill the room. She, like her mother, was angry at being awakened. Unlike Diana who quickly caught on to what her husband was doing, Macy had no ability to recognize the situation the family was now in. She just disliked that she had been woken from her happy little dream.
Macy’s cry seemed to be the flint to the tinder. A spark that set the nights events off almost impossibly. As her cry echoed from the mall room, it was met with another young child’s. A toddler who had trouble sleeping, only to be disturbed by their neighbour’s child distress. It was paired by another shot just outside the complex. A cry from a bat, this time of one wounded and not quite dead. A desperate plea for mercy, for another of its kind to come to its rescue silenced a moment later but the damage had been done. This one could not be ignored. Alexander and his parents were already moving, packing what they could into the small bags they had only just finished unpacking. What supplies they had were stuffed into canvas bags, all that they could carry was strapped to their backs. Crying Macy was tied to Diana’s back by a sling of fabric, just as the howls began.
Joining the screams of the dying bat a hellish chorus leaked into the otherwise peaceful night. Human laughter twisted into a hideous arrangement. Vocal chords that should not have produced anything but angry growls suddenly lit up the night with voices of blood curdling joy. The howls that joined them twisted the world into a mad frenzy. The screams of the bats took on a new tone, a tone of warning that Alexander had yet to hear as the creatures discovered they were under attack.
The family scrambling to move inside didn’t see what happened next. They didn’t see the massive haired beasts suddenly bursting from the dark and tackling whatever guards they could get to. Their massive claws dug into pale flesh tearing and flinging corpses into the air. Weapons were fired into the hulking masses, wounding some and killing others but the onslaught only picked up as more of the creatures burst from darkened alleyways.
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Soon the battle was a melee of frantic limbs clashing in pitch black cramped spots. Knives were drawn by ancient hands, practiced and honed by many years of practice and sunk into the wild frames that tore into them. Eyes flickered in the dark as the battle raged on the streets below. Golden globes of flickering light clambered from whatever place they had been hiding that night to join the fray. Met with snarling mouths they fought with their brothers and sisters.
Nicholas had been still awake. His instincts hard to fight at times he suffered from bouts of insomnia. His kind were not meant to stay up during the day, and trying to sleep at night was a constant battle for the creature. He lay awake, slumped in his bed with a handful of notes in his hand, clawed fingers running through the scarred paper as he planned out the following day. He thought about which places he would visit first, and for the first time he debated sending Alexander out on his own to a few of them. A thrall wandered about the room, the older man simply doing what chores Nicholas deemed below him, as the room fell silent.
Nicholas had heard the gunshots as well, but like many of the bats he was preoccupied with his own business. His own priorities took precedence over his own senses. His ears twitched at every noise from the world above the basement dwelling he called home, one thick red tongue licking at a finger to allow him to turn a page just as the first of the howls reached him.
The bat froze, his eyes growing wide as he recognized the sound. Scrambling to his feet he screeched out an order to his thrall, the dull man suddenly twisting to grab at a weapon and following the bat from the room and into the darkened hallway. Unlike many of the bats his age, Nicholas knew what that howl was. Most of the generation he was from were naïve in many ways. They had only just joined the ranks of the ancient collective of their family. They had neglected to learn the history of the people they were a part of. Nicholas had done so, mostly as a hobby at first but then a fascination. An entire culture filled with heroes and conquerors was held in ancient vaults that barely any visited. Most of his kind were preoccupied with the society the now inhabited. They didn’t care much for the world that had existed before the bombs.
To them the bats had always been on top, because that was what they had known. They didn’t know about the darkened underground cities that they had once been forced to occupy. They didn’t know about the groups of humans that had almost hunted them to extinction many times over. They only had the barest knowledge of the other species that occupied the strata of society that bats had once occupied. The other hidden players in a world that had been bathed in fire. The wolves, the winged ones, the deep creatures. Human myths and legends were always ground in one type of other or another. They sat in the dark until the society that had kept them there had crumbled and allowed the cracks that gave the bats freedom. They had found themselves in a bountiful paradise that had never existed before.
The young of all species only knew the world that they had been born into. Young humans only knew starvation and pain. Young bats only new times of plenty. Nicholas recognized the howls because of the stuffed corpses he had seen on display. The snarling teeth preserved for the heroes that had felled them. He had seen the walls of skulls, bounties from times past, and he had seen the figures on how many of his kind had been sacrificed. Nicholas was afraid.
Nicholas didn’t have the strength of his elders. He didn’t have the decades of training or the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of battles. He didn’t have the ignorant courage of others of his generation, not knowing what they were stumbling into when many of their family called out for aid. All he had was his knowledge, and all that told him was to run.
Gesturing to the doorway he sent out his thrall first, the man stumbling into the wave of bats, splitting them like a rock in a river. Most ignored him, clambering up walls to continue their pace towards the surface, towards a battle they were more than happy to join. Their mouths were held in wide grins, their eyes gleaming with fervour as they answered an instinctive call to help their elders. Nicholas felt the urge to join them, to slip into the wave and make his way to certain death, but he ignored it. He swallowed his pride, driving all of that deep within him as he gave into his own self-preservation.
He strode in the opposite direction of his brethren, parting them just as his thrall did as he began to run for the surface, medical bag all that he could carry now strapped to his side.
Alexander and his family joined Nicholas on the street blocks away from the frightened creature, too far for either group to notice each other, but both of them heading in the same direction. Away from the sounds of the frantic fighting behind them. Alexander had pulled his blackened hoodie once again over his frame, one limp sleep flapping in the wind as both he and his family descended the stairwell. The left other humans behind, their confused looks shared among others of their kind as the sounds of the battle finally reached them.
A loud crashing noise filled the air just as the family reached the darkened streets below their home. A wall above them cracked as an arm was thrust through it, furred clawed fingers sliding backwards and moment later a deep red blood seeped through the crack. The scene was repeated further upwards with the cracks spreading and collapsing a section of the wall. A bat’s screaming face was thrust through the small hole, scrabbling fingers panicked and trying to pull the rest of its frame to freedom only for the movement to stop with a gargled moan of pain. Bloody spittle shot from the creature’s mouth at the family below, panicked eyes begging for their help before the neck supporting it fell limp.
Screams began to fill the building, rising in a chorus as the families within suddenly took notice of the invading force now working their way into the structure. One man was thrown from an upper floor window, his body spiralling out of control until he met the pavement with a wet smack. His screams urged Alexander back into a sprint, just as a hairy body dropped from the same window a moment later. It slammed into the man’s still living corpse, thighs already slick with gore spearing him with feet that drove themselves into the pavement.
Nostrils flared as the beast turned its head towards the family, locking eyes with Alexander as the boy turned to run. Intelligence that seemed foreign to a creature twisted as it was glinted in the night. The beast stood on two legs like a human, but it was twisted with the features of an animal. Limbs that bent strangely stretched into movement, gnashing teeth that belong to a wolf morphing into a grim facsimile of a smile. Green eyes that seemed more fit on a human glimmered from a furred face, glinting in the faint light. Excitedly the ears atop its head twisted, just in time for the beast to roll away. A pale figure had descended on it from above, twisted knife in one hand, its other arm hanging limp by its side.
As Alexander ran, the short fight behind him was swiftly ended. The handle of the knife sunk deep within the creature’s neck, its owner stumbling backwards with their intestines half clawed from their stomach. Both combatants stumbled towards each other one final time before collapsing, dying smothered by another’s body.
Humans began spilling into the night from whatever doorways they could reach. They were followed by the beasts that hunted them, dying echoes following every person that made it into the night. Alexander and his family had a head start, but that was swiftly being eaten up by the beasts that battled behind them.