Chapter 1

One

Theo Anderson was absolutely furious, and there were numerous reasons for that fury. It was six in the morning, and a freezing cold morning at that. He was wearing quite possibly the most uncomfortable clothes he'd ever had the misfortune to wear. And he was stood in a dilapidated classroom, in an army base, somewhere in the backend of Somerset.

Theo couldn't ever remember being up and about at six in the morning before. His alarm was always set for eight, and he never deviated from that. His go-to clothes were hoodies and sweats, not cargo pants and scratchy jumpers. And the day he'd finished university, well over a decade ago now, was the last day he'd ever intended to step foot in a classroom again!

So, how the hell had he ended up here?

Well, no, he knew the answer to that, and it only added to his fury.

"You need to listen very carefully to everything I am telling you!" the instructor boomed in what could only be described as a heavily Bristolian accent. "Because this is not going to be an easy mission! Not for you newbies anyway!"

She jabbed her pointer at the whiteboard next to her. A map filled the screen. Theo didn't immediately recognise the area it showed but then why would he. It was somewhere past the south of Bristol, a region he had successfully avoided his entire life. It was all beaches, fields, and woodlands down there, and Theo had no interest in that. He liked pavements, and roads, and shops that opened on schedule, not when they felt like it due to the season! To Theo's mind, if he hadn't wanted to visit when it was all ice cream and surfing then he certainly wouldn't now that the coast was infested with munching monsters.

"I know you were shown this during your initial briefing," the instructor continued, moving her pointer in a sweeping motion along the screen. "But this is what the infestation looks like now. It has entirely taken over this beach and all the villages running alongside it. It's not the worst I've ever seen, not even close, if anything this is a minor infestation. But given this is your first mission we can hardly send you into some of the worst hit areas!" She jabbed her pointer lower down the map. "We still have thousands of troops down in the Cornish peninsula, not to mention thousands more down in Tenby. They've been there for months, and they'll be there for months more."

She stepped forward and tapped the screen with her hand, zooming them in on their infestation. Theo shuddered at the thought. The screen showed hundreds of munching monsters racing around the beach, eating anything and everything in sight. From this distance it was difficult to see them individually. They looked instead like a many-limbed organism that couldn't stop moving, tentacles going in every direction, never satisfied, never full. They were also surrounded by a silvery shimmer, a clear sign that they were from a different dimension.

"You should have this done in a few weeks," the instructor continued. "And then it will be on to the next one, we might even send you down to Cornwall to help out there. Won't that be fun! Now, here's where we think the boundary of the infestation is," she added, sweeping out a circle on the map. "As you move in, we'll contain the infestation zone. You'll all be trapped in the area then, and all you need to do is find every one of the little fuckers and kill them. Every single one. No exceptions."

One of the recruits at the very front of the classroom, a young guy probably no more than twenty, muttered something, and the instructor responded by smacking her pointer down on the desk in front of him. She looked as if she would quite like to smack him instead.

"Yes, killing the queen does kill them all, but the queen is almost impossible to identify," she snapped, gesturing back to the screen. "She's somewhere in the middle of that mess so don't think you can get away with finding her and doing the job that way. You'd be eaten before you got anywhere near her. No, you start on the outside and work your way in, killing them all as you go. No escapees or the infestation will be back before we know it!"

"Is it true that they only care about protecting the queen?" a recruit on the other side of the room asked. Theo recognised her, she was called Julia, and she'd volunteered for the Monster Defence Force. Volunteered. "Especially when they're down to the last few hundred?"

The instructor sighed, and Theo wondered, admittedly for the first time, how often she'd had to give this lecture. It had been well over a year since the first of the munching monsters had slipped through a dimensional rip next to a small village down in Dorset, gaining their foothold in the southwest of England. It felt like they were all this arm of the MDF dealt with now. Sweep after sweep, clean up after clean up, and all of it aimed at killing those monsters. In the meantime, many other monsters were slipping through the many other dimensional rips across the country and who knew what they were doing…

"They rally around the queen, this is true," the instructor said, gesturing to the tablets in front of them. "And they willattack anything that comes close. And by attack, I mean try to eat you. Flesh is flesh as far as they're concerned and they're fast!"

"And we're walking happy meals!" someone said.

A few people from their hundred strong squadron laughed. It was probably meant to be good natured but honestly Theo thought, there was a clear edge of anxiety to it. Surely no one could blame them for that though!

"Not sure how they know when their numbers get to a point where they have to protect the queen," the instructor continued. "They're not telepathic so far as we can tell. But they do know, and it will make them more aggressive than ever. Kill them. Kill that bitch too." She paused and took a deep breath. "All the info you need on this is in your tabs. You should already have read it. Now you need to read again and then again. Then, when you feel like you know everything there is to know about these monsters, you need to read the info again!"

Theo suspected those words were aimed at him and not least because she was looking in his direction. How old was Instructor Becky? Late twenties? Early thirties? Theo had never been good at guessing ages, but he thought perhaps about the same age as him or close enough. Unlike him though she was army proper, shipped across from the British Royal Marines so he'd heard, specifically to train them up on the munching monsters and ensure that the MDF removed as many as possible.

She knew that he was not proper army. Unlike Julia, he wasn't even a volunteer. Theo was a conscript, and he was far from happy about that, in fact he was furious, and pretty much everyone on this base knew it.

"Are we clear on the mission?" Becky continued.

A chorus of yesses rang out across the room. Theo shifted in his seat—the damn army-issue jumper as itchy as it had been when he'd put it on for the first time some weeks past. He missed his hoodie. He missed his sweatpants. But most of all Theo missed being at home. His job had been a work-from-home one ever since the pandemic way back in 2020, and Theo had never been happier. It wasn't like he had anything fancy, a small place in a cheaper part of Bristol, but it was close to all the shops, several nice running routes, the local community cinema, and his board game group. Everything he liked most in the world was in those few square miles so why the hell would he ever want to leave?

He hadn't been given a choice.

The god damn munching monsters hadn't given him a choice.

The MDF hadn't given him a choice.

It was do or die now.

"Read your notes. Enjoy some breakfast if you can," Becky said as she dismissed them with a final wave of her pointer. "You ship out in an hour."