Page 5 of A Very Monstrous Desire

The team were in good physical condition, the tweaks to the conscription algorithm had seen to that, and they covered the first few miles of their route before late afternoon. It was wild to Theo that it even took that long, but their approach was cautious and considered, and that meant going slow. The area they moved through was sparsely populated, lots of wide open fields, which was a good thing given the MDF had evacuated it some weeks past.

Not that everyone who lived within the infestation zone had been keen on being evacuated from their homes, not with rent prices in non-infestation areas being what they were, which was sky high. And there were always some who ignored the law despite immediate evacuation now being the firm policy in response to any inter-dimensional rip forming.

So, regardless of what Joel had said, Theo fully expected that they would bump into other people as they made their way through their part of the infestation zone. An old, grizzled farmer here, a crotchety lady in a massive country house there, a crusty couple and their pets trying to get away from city living holed up in yurt or something similar. They’d likely avoided the evacuation and were insisting they could look after themselves.

They couldn’t.

England wasn’t like other parts of Europe where the population had guns from their national service. Most people didn’t have access to firearms at all. There had been some discussion a few months back about arming the whole country, but it was stuck somewhere in a parliamentary commission. Theo was glad of it. He couldn’t imagine the chaos if the general public got their hands on guns. A neighbour knocking on your door late at night for a spare tea bag and the next thing you know John’s been shot because Gary from number twenty thought he was a munching monster!

No, no, in fairness, and Theo was rarely fair to the government, but they’d done the right thing where that was concerned. Instead, they had expanded the army as much as possible, and when that had dried up, they’d tried their conscription lottery, and when that didn’t work, they’d fudged it in their favour a bit.

And they were in much better shape than some parts of Europe! Most of the north of England from Birmingham onwards was completely free of dimensional rips, and there was only one recorded so far in Scotland. Of course, that did mean more people heading north and so bumping up house prices, and Theo had bemoaned more than once how much money he’d lost given his flat wasn’t far from a rip and its decrease in price now reflected that.

France on the other hand had hundreds of dimensional rips. Germany and Spain were not much better. Italy too but they had responded with absolute ruthlessness and there were very few monsters roaming round Tuscany or Venice these days. The Nordics had fared a little better given most of the population had been armed following the Euro-Russian conflict in 2025. Turkey on the other hand was blocking access along the Bosphorus and so halting the flow of monsters into the Middle East, but it was only a matter of time.

“You look like you’re deep in thought,” Julia said as she came alongside him. “You should not be deep in thought. You should be alert!”

Theo shot her a look. “You know it’s impossible for a person to be perfectly alert for hours on end. Human biology doesn’t work like that.”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s why they should be focusing on AI for this.”

“Robots?”

“Yeah. There are quite a few start-ups that have been looking at creating robots that look like the munchers,” Theo said. “They could get in there, infiltrate them, kill them, hardly any human involvement needed.”

“Except they keep killing animals,” Joel said as he gestured for them to come to a halt. “Their pattern recognition can’t tell the difference between a muncher and a bloody sheep even with the inter-dimensional shimmer. And considering we’re trying to save the things we need to eat…”

“They might just need some more practice,” Theo suggested.

“And that is happening,” Joel added. “But they’re not there yet.”

“Humans it is then!” Gill said.

They were approaching the edge of a small village. The first building housed the one and only local shop. It was the type that sold everything from milk through to postage stamps through to knitting needles. The owners probably lived in the little cottage next to it or even the top floor above. They had clearly evacuated, as the whole place had a bit of an air of recent neglect about it.

“This is the first shop we’ve seen since we got here,” Joel said, rubbing his gun affectionately. “Looks like it will have some supplies.”

Dimitri gestured to the front door that the owners had probably locked when they left. “Does not look like it has been breached.”

“Perfect lunch spot!” Joel said.

“How shall we do this?” Dimitri asked.

“You and Gill take the back. You’re not looking for a way in, you’re looking to confirm a way out.” They nodded. “Liam and Simon, one of you either side, here and here, you’re keeping a look out for anything coming for us whilst we’re in there. Won’t be munchers,” he added. “We’re still too far out for that but could be something else.” They also nodded. “Julia and Theo, you’re with me, we’ll go in through the front and see what we can see.” He frowned. “As Dimitri said, looks like it’s locked up tight so there shouldn’t be anything threatening in there, but you never bloody know! We go in through the front, fan out, confirm there’s nothing in there but Mars bars and Diet Cokes, and then we’ll start shopping.”

Theo nodded, lifting his gun as he did so. He was suddenly quite nervous. He had known he would be once the action started and had actually spent the better part of the walk considering what he would do when that moment came. The fact that Theo did not want to be here was irrelevant now. He was a realist at heart and fury aside, there was no getting out of this. Theo was stuck in the MDF for the rest of his standard twelve-month deployment, and that was assuming dozens of rips didn’t suddenly appear and increase the workload!

There was no escaping it.

And so, despite his clear desire not to be involved, Theo was, which meant he would do the job he had been given, and he would do it properly, exterminating the munchers and protecting himself and his teammates as he did so. He might even, and Theo felt quite odd about this, but he supposed he might do some good for his little part of the world, which was not something, if he was quite honest, that had ever really motivated him before. Staying alive did though. And with that thought firm in his mind, Theo did everything that Joel asked as they approached the store, following his instructions to the letter. From the weird crouching walk as they got close to the door, to the positions they took either side of it as Joel brute-forced it open.

The store was…musty…there was no other word for it. The smell hit them the moment the door swung open. It was a combination of the place being locked up these last weeks, a bunch of food slowly rotting, and oddly the smell of rain.

And yet…there was enough light coming in from the windows that Theo was able to look around the room. It was all very neat and tidy, as if the owners had made a real effort to ensure everything was just as it needed to be when they left. They probably thought they would be able to return the moment the MDF cleaned the area out and made it safe, and they weren’t wrong because no munchers meant no problem. It really just came down to how much of the animal and plant life they’d managed to eat before they were exterminated. It was hard to live somewhere where nothing was alive.

Something was alive in here though.

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