Page 76 of Monsters within Men
“Don’t tell me the drone is playing up again,” said Luo.
“It’s not like before… it was working perfectly, but now the connection has been severed.”
Savannah sighed. “Theme of our day.”
They watched the few seconds of footage the drone recorded. It had flown down the staircase before sweeping the basement with an illuminating spotlight. No types in sight, but plenty of industrial clutter. Suddenly, the camera dipped, like something knocked it, and then, blackness.
“We’ll have to presume fatal error. Count it out of our strategy,” said Noah. “Intel suggests that we’re only expecting the one type down there. This shouldn’t be a difficult mission.” So why was he himself looking at the staircase like it led directly to hell?
The seven of them loaded their weapons—in case of surprise guests—before creeping down the staircase. Noah’s stomach lurched at leaving Zeke, even though he would be twenty times safer guarding the top floor than he would be in this godforsaken basement.
Light from their helmets darted around the space as the soldiers scanned the room at the bottom. Rows and rows of stacked metal barrels, glass bottles, and wooden crates lined the walls in the cavernous space.
He lifted his hand, signalling them to stop. It was quiet. Deathly quiet. Was there even a type down here? Usually it would have charged towards them by now, drawn by the noise and the need to feed. He glanced at his map. The tracker—shot into the type by a previous team—flashed red. It was only accurate to ten meters, but they appeared to be almost right on top of each other.
“Let’s keep going,” he said.
As one, they crept forward.
An unusual arrangement drew him to over to the far wall. A camp bed was set up in the basement’s corner. An oil lamp lay nearby, on its side. Someone hiding out here in the first wave perhaps, a decade ago? But no. This felt… more recent. But types—even typeBs—didn’t set up beds, did they? Surely it was some brave—or stupid—person trying to exist outside of the city walls?
A few scraps of paper near the oil lamp caught his attention, and he knelt to get a look. Certainly, someone had written something on them, but it was meaningless scribbles to Noah. If there was a code to the vague symbols, he couldn’t decipher it.
“What’s that?” Meredith asked, pointing to something running up the wall. The combined light of all their headlamps lit up the space. Three metal brackets—shelfless now—adorned the otherwise plain wall. Three metal brackets, and one long piece of metal wire…
Curious, Noah reached out to touch it, but Meredith slapped his hand back. The wire, which ended in a coiled pile near the camp bed, stretched up through the ceiling into the room above via a small hole.
“Bianco, I need you to look for some wire on the ground floor. It’s poking up through the basement to your level. About forty steps to your left if you’re facing away from the stairs. But don’t touch it.”
Vitt struggled for a few minutes, cursing under her breath, before finally announcing, “Ah ha! You were way off-piste. Found it to the right of the stairs.”
“No…” Noah said, frowning. He may have been wet and tired, but he wasn’t at the level where he’d confuse left and right. Yet.
“I can see it. Very thin wire. I’m not surprised we missed it earlier. It goes all the way up through the hole in the roof. But what’s it for? It couldn’t take any weight, surely…” She paused, and there was some clattering around as Vitt moved things around. “Oh! The wire goes all the way across.”
“Okay… just go back to Bates and Fleming now. Stay with them. Thanks.”
“What’s going on, Noah?” said Habib, arms crossed.
He examined the wire again, but there was nothing else to see. “I’m not sure. But I know I want to find that typeB. I want to find that typeB,now.”
“Shh!” hissed Luo, cupping his palm near his helmet, gesturing for them to listen.
Noah could hear it. A scratching sound. Subtle, but definitely there. And the sound of light, raspy breaths. Coming from—
In a grotesque parody of every childhood nightmare, two scaly arms shot out from under the bed, grabbing and clawing at the nearest human legs: Meredith’s.
A single terrified scream from Meredith ricocheted through the basement before she caught herself. The type’s claws missed her leg by millimetres as she jumped back.
In its haste to get to its prey, the typeB flipped the bed over, sending it flying across the room. It picked up the coil of wire and yanked hard. Noah frowned. What was it doing? No wonder the research team wanted to study it.
“Don’t kill it,” Noah shouted. Even though all he wanted to do was to sink six bullets into its brain, this would all be for nothing if it ended up dead. He signalled for Wolf to get behind him and stay there, not wanting to risk him in the carnage. Wolf gave him a small huff as he trotted off.
He raised his tranquilliser gun, and Aoife and Meredith did the same. Each of the three guns was loaded with six small darts. He fired off two, both narrowly missing the monster to bounce off the wall.
Noah became aware that Vitt and Zeke were asking a series of concerned questions through the audio feed, but he tuned them out.
The typeB furiously bounced between the seven squad members, who darted, ducked, and dived away from it. If they were only trying to kill it, their mission would have been over in seconds. Habib and Luo threw as many objects at it as they could get their hands on, slowing it down. It roared, revealing a too-wide jaw and far too many sharp teeth. TypeBs were supposed to be the more human ones, but to Noah right now, it looked every bit the monster from hell he knew it was.
