His radio wailed and shrieked where he’d thrown it into the farthest corner of the room. Static bursts of distorted agony blurting through the dark, do you copy and the wet, forsaken screams of dying alone when no one answered.

He couldn’t answer. His voice had lodged itself like an unsolvable snarl of wires in the back of his throat, wheezing frayed and powerless through the hands he had clamped over his mouth. Did the things out there track by sound? The ones who screamed for help seemed to be the ones they found, but was that cause or effect?

Five dying screams so far, out of a squad of eight. He had lodged himself under a desk in that dark, ransacked laboratory, clumsy and desperate as a kid caught out in the open when ready or not, here I come rang through the halls.

The things in the halls only made the wet, grinding sounds of tearing apart whatever they found. No warning, and definitely no all the outs in free. What would happen when they ran out of louder people to look for? The ones following protocol, patrolling with weapons ready?

Bursts of gunfire on the radio hadn’t saved them. What would happen when he was the only one left?