The flashlight at his knees, he raised the short axe with both hands and, with a screaming roar, brought it down with all his force.
The pointed skull before him split cleanly in two, grey-pink substance inside falling loose, liquid from the opened throat jetting out.
The piercing screech came from the stump next to the cloven head, the toothless jaws wide with the creature's pain, her scaly purple tongue stabbing frenziedly at the air.
Culver struck again, cutting through this other skull, the axe head sinking into the shoulder, into the body itself.
The squirming abomination suddenly went rigid, became frozen just for a few moments. Then slowly, agonizingly slowly, it began to slump, nerve ends twitching, torn, bloated body quivering.
But Culver was not finished. His eyes were blurred and his face dampened by tears as he attacked the litter, the smaller more obscene - much more obscene - creatures that the monster had given birth to. He hacked their pink bodies, ignoring their faint cries, striking, pummelling, crushing their tiny bones, making sure each one was dead, beating any
small movement from them, shredding them from existence, sundering them of all form, of any shape.
A hand tugged at his shoulder, the grip hard, violent.
He looked up to see Fairbank grimacing down at him.
The other rats are down here,' the engineer said through tight-clenched teeth.
Culver was hauled to his feet, his mind still confused, still dazed by the slaughter. And by what he had slaughtered. He quickly became aware of the darting black shapes in the rubble of the damp underground chamber.
The rats were in turmoil, leaping from an opening in the brick wall, scampering down the slope of debris, squealing and hissing, looking wildly around, lashing out at each other, gnashing their teeth and drawing blood. They poured through, more and more, filling the room, and somehow oblivious to the two men. The mutant Black rats fought each other, groups turning on an individual for no apparent reason, tearing it apart and gnawing at the body.
Culver and Fairbank could not understand why they were ignored as the animals swilled around the chamber, biting at the other gross forms that lay dying or dead on the floor, high-pitched squeals filling the air, the sound resembling hundreds of excited birds inside an aviary; the noise, the movement, intensifying, rising to a climax, climbing to a thunderous pitch.
Then they stopped.
They lay in the darkness, black-furred bodies quivering, a trembling, silent mass. Occasionally one would hiss, snarl, rear up, but would become passive almost immediately, sinking back among its brethren. The shaking motion seemed to reverberate in the atmosphere itself.
Bathed in blood, grimed with filth and barely recognizable, the two men held their breath.
Nothing stirred.
Slowly, wordlessly, Fairbank touched Culver's sleeve. With a slight jerk of his head he indicated the doorway they had entered by. Keeping the light beam on the floor before them, the two men began gently, quietly, to make their way through the gathered vermin, careful not to disturb any, skirting round when a pack was too thick to step over.
A rodent lashed out with its incisors, hissing at them when they trod too close. The teeth grazed Culver's ankle through his jeans, but the animal did not attack.
At one point, Fairbank tripped and stumbled into a tight group, going down on his knees among them.
Inexplicably, they merely scattered, snarling at the air as they did so.
They were just thirty yards from the doorway, both men wondering why they could not see Kate's flashlight shining into the collapsed room behind, when an eerie keening began.
It started as a single, faint, low whine; then other rats joined in, the keening growing, swelling. The sound ended in a startling unified screech and the vermin broke loose again. But they darted towards the bloody, shapeless carcase of the gross monster that the two men had destroyed, the miscreated beast who had nurtured the even more hideous newborn, pouncing on the remains, fighting each other over the scraps, covering the nest completely with their own frantic bodies.
And when there was nothing left of the malformity and her brood, they turned on their kindred, the bloated beasts who were of the same breed but perversely different, savaging them until they, too, were nothing but bloody shreds.
The two men ran, heading for the doorway, kicking aside
those vermin still standing in their path. Culver swung the axe as a rat sprang at him, catching it beneath the throat. It squealed and dropped in a limp bundle to the floor. Another leapt and caught his arm, but the leather jacket ripped and the animal fell away, Culver cracking down with the blunt end of the axe, breaking bone. Fairbank scattered four or five others that had grouped in the doorway itself.
They were through and there was still no light from above, but they heard Kate cry out Culver's name.
Fairbank whirled in the doorway, pressing a shoulder hard against the frame, the Ingram pointed back into the chamber they had just left.
'Culver, give me light!' he shouted.
Culver did so, shining the beam into the next room. The rats were swarming after them.
Fairbank fired, the weapon hot in his hands, his trigger finger stiff with the pressure. The advancing rats danced and jerked as though on marionette strings. 'Start climbing,' he called out over his shoulder. 'I can hold them without the light for a couple of seconds!'
Culver quickly climbed the heap of rubble leading to the fallen joist. His torch lit up Kate standing on the ledge above.
With no time to even wonder what had happened to her flashlight he yelled, 'Catch!' and lobbed the light towards her. She only just managed to hold it; she turned the beam back down into the pit The thing they had dreaded most of all happened. The Ingram clicked empty. With an alarmed shout, Fairbank turned to follow Culver, dropping the useless weapon into the dust.
Culver ran two steps up the angled joist, throwing the axe onto the ledge above him and grabbing at the edge just before his boots began to slip down again. Pieces of masonry fell away, but he quickly had both elbows on the overhang. His feet scrabbled for purchase.
He heard screaming from behind.
Kate was kneeling on the ledge, pulling at his clothes, trying to lift him. Dealey, too, had ventured out and had a hand beneath Culver's shoulder. The pilot's boots found a grip, enough to push upwards. He scrambled over the edge, instantly rising to his knees, grasping the flashlight from the girl.
Fairbank was halfway up the slope, his lower body engulfed by biting, scratching vermin. One darted up his back, sinking its teeth into the back of his neck. The engineer rolled over in an effort to dislodge the animal; his mouth was open in a scream, his eyes tightly closed against the pain. The rat fell away and Fairbank started to crawl again, his hands clawing into the rubble, the weight of the vermin chewing into his legs holding him back. He rose to a kneeling position, the rats clinging to his lower body. He tried to push them away and his hands came away bloody, fingers missing.
'Help me!' he screamed.
Culver tensed and Kate threw herself at him, knocking him back against the wall.
‘You can't, you can't,' she kept saying over and over again.
He tried to free himself, but she held him there, Dealey using his weight to assist her. And in reality, he knew that the little engineer was beyond help.
'Give me the other gun!' he shouted and could not understand why they did not comply, why they merely held him tight.
Fairbank was dragging the giant rats upwards with him. They covered him now, making him a creature of black, stiffened fur, a monster of their own kind. His screaming had turned into a raspy choking as they tore into his neck. One