Misery County

Prologue - Part 2

His heart raced viciously as he tip-toed through the bitter cold. It couldn't have been freezing based on the foodstuff that was in there, but it certainly felt that way in comparison to the sweltering summer air outside.

A smash. Eric swung himself around toward the sound. The stock on the pallets turned the room into an indoor jungle thick with plastic and metal foliage. It was impossible to see beyond the aisle you were in.

"Don't move! Security!" Eric shouted in the direction of the sound, his fear clearly resonating in his voice. "Aaron, the chiller!" he called out, but if his colleague couldn't hear him out on the main floor, he doubted he'd be able to hear him from inside here.

Darting from aisle to aisle, he flashed his light down each of them as he went. No one. No one. No one. No - What was this? A jar of pickles lay smashed on one side of the aisle. Eric closed in on them slowly while scanning the surrounding area with his gun and flashlight. In spite of the cold, his shirt was drenched in sweat. It stuck to him as if he'd just crawled out of a swimming pool wearing it. He was now shivering too, although whether it was from the cold or the fear was anyone's guess.

He reached the smashed jar. Its remains and the pickles sat in a pool of brine, and beyond the edge of this pool were what looked like little droplets of the substance trailing toward the pallet that the jar came from. Eric shone his light in between the two nearest pallets. The sight made him jump out of his skin, but he quickly relaxed and let out a chuckle when his brain could process what he was seeing. A pair of rats were fighting over a pickle.

"Silly little guys," Eric said softly as he knelt down over them. The rats only barely reacted to his presence. "You're quite the friendly ones, aren't you?" Speaking to them like they were mischievous children seemed only natural. He holstered his pistol before picking up a pickle from the center of the smashed jar and holding it out to the rats. They both stood up on their hind legs to give it a sniff. The smaller rat started nibbling on the pickle in Eric's hand, while the bigger one went back to dragging away the one that they had been fighting over earlier. Eric slowly lowered the pickle down onto the ground as the rat kept munching on it.

Sitting and watching the rats eating was a relaxing experience, but Eric had work to do, so he left them to their midnight snack and walked back onto the ambient storage floor of the warehouse.

Aaron would be pretty impressed to learn that all of this hubbub was caused by a pair of hungry rats that had clearly evaded the many traps that the warehouse employees had set, Eric thought. The poor guy was probably still trying to get into offices and searching for a light switch.

Eric opened his mouth to call out to Aaron again, but he was interrupted by a blood-curdling scream. This time it was not a false alarm; he doubted Aaron's cry was a reaction to any rats. Pistol back out of its holster and pointed ahead of him, Eric sprinted through the warehouse in the direction of the shout.

Circling around a corner, he was faced with a disquieting sight. His mind couldn't quite decide what it was he was seeing. At first glance, he would have said that Aaron was being restrained in a full nelson hold by a malevolent-looking dog, but that couldn't be it. No, it was a man in a full-body suit... and yet, the face of the suit seemed so alive.

"Let him go now!" Eric yelled out, gun trained on the man's head. "Let him go or I shoot!"

The man snarled. The suit snarled. How was that possible?

"Just shoot it, man," Aaron broke the silence.

Eric couldn't reply. He was transfixed by this vision. The creature's mouth was open, and his flashlight was illuminating everything inside of it, all the way to the back of its throat. Long, yellow teeth surrounded a flapping tongue slick with saliva. This was no suit. This was no man.

"What the fuck are you?" Eric whispered as he aimed at the monster's head, constantly adjusting as it positioned Aaron in front of wherever he was aiming.

"My man, just shoot!" Aaron screamed, not bothering to suppress the quaver in his voice.

"I can't. He won't stop moving," Eric replied, still trying to keep his aim off Aaron and onto the creature's head.

With no warning of what was to come, the beast wrapped its gargantuan jaws around Aaron's neck. Eric took a moment to process the perverse scene before he realized that the monster was no longer dodging his aim. He pulled the trigger. Not wanting to accidentally hit Aaron, he only fired off one shot. The bullet hit the creature right in the head. Or, at least he thought it did. It was bleeding from a hole in its crown, but it carried on gnawing on Aaron anyway.

Eric took a brisk few steps towards the beast, taking as many shots at it as he did. The bullets were definitely making contact, but they seemed to have little effect. As he closed in on the monster, he grabbed its head. If the bullets hadn't angered it, this definitely had. The creature threw a limp Aaron over to the side before launching itself at Eric, hurling him clear across the aisle.

Eric's back connected with a box full of diapers. The impact hadn't been hard, but it left him disoriented nonetheless. He watched through blurred vision as the beast ran at a speed that no human could achieve toward the door that they had left open. Getting up, he wanted to chase after it, but he knew he had something much more important to do.

"Dispatch, this is Lincoln Seven. I need an ambulance sent to my location immediately. Sierra Five is very badly injured. He's bleeding. There's so much blood," Eric sputtered into Aaron's radio as he watched his friend circle the drain.

Aaron coughed weakly.

"Hold on there, buddy. We're going to get you to a hospital, all right?" Eric said to him, though he wasn't sure the man was hearing any of it.

The next few minutes were the longest that Eric had felt in a long time. The paramedics arrived eventually, but by then, Aaron had expired in his arms. Before the medics could take Aaron away, Eric pulled something out of Aaron's clenched hand - a tuft of fur, he knew not from what, but by God, he was going to find out.