Chapter 4

Four

The team were in good physical condition, the tweaks to the conscription algorithm had seen to that, and they covered the first few miles of their route before late afternoon. It was wild to Theo that it even took that long, but their approach was cautious and considered, and that meant going slow. The area they moved through was sparsely populated, lots of wide open fields, which was a good thing given the MDF had evacuated it some weeks past.

Not that everyone who lived within the infestation zone had been keen on being evacuated from their homes, not with rent prices in non-infestation areas being what they were, which was sky high. And there were always some who ignored the law despite immediate evacuation now being the firm policy in response to any inter-dimensional rip forming.

So, regardless of what Joel had said, Theo fully expected that they would bump into other people as they made their way through their part of the infestation zone. An old, grizzled farmer here, a crotchety lady in a massive country house there, a crusty couple and their pets trying to get away from city living holed up in yurt or something similar. They'd likely avoided the evacuation and were insisting they could look after themselves.

They couldn't.

England wasn't like other parts of Europe where the population had guns from their national service. Most people didn't have access to firearms at all. There had been some discussion a few months back about arming the whole country, but it was stuck somewhere in a parliamentary commission. Theo was glad of it. He couldn't imagine the chaos if the general public got their hands on guns. A neighbour knocking on your door late at night for a spare tea bag and the next thing you know John's been shot because Gary from number twenty thought he was a munching monster!

No, no, in fairness, and Theo was rarely fair to the government, but they'd done the right thing where that was concerned. Instead, they had expanded the army as much as possible, and when that had dried up, they'd tried their conscription lottery, and when that didn't work, they'd fudged it in their favour a bit.

And they were in much better shape than some parts of Europe! Most of the north of England from Birmingham onwards was completely free of dimensional rips, and there was only one recorded so far in Scotland. Of course, that did mean more people heading north and so bumping up house prices, and Theo had bemoaned more than once how much money he'd lost given his flat wasn't far from a rip and its decrease in price now reflected that.

France on the other hand had hundreds of dimensional rips. Germany and Spain were not much better. Italy too but they had responded with absolute ruthlessness and there were very few monsters roaming round Tuscany or Venice these days. The Nordics had fared a little better given most of the population had been armed following the Euro-Russian conflict in 2025. Turkey on the other hand was blocking access along the Bosphorus and so halting the flow of monsters into the Middle East, but it was only a matter of time.

"You look like you're deep in thought," Julia said as she came alongside him. "You should not be deep in thought. You should be alert!"

Theo shot her a look. "You know it's impossible for a person to be perfectly alert for hours on end. Human biology doesn't work like that."

"Uh huh."

"It's why they should be focusing on AI for this."

"Robots?"

"Yeah. There are quite a few start-ups that have been looking at creating robots that look like the munchers," Theo said. "They could get in there, infiltrate them, kill them, hardly any human involvement needed."

"Except they keep killing animals," Joel said as he gestured for them to come to a halt. "Their pattern recognition can't tell the difference between a muncher and a bloody sheep even with the inter-dimensional shimmer. And considering we're trying to save the things we need to eat…"

"They might just need some more practice," Theo suggested.

"And that is happening," Joel added. "But they're not there yet."

"Humans it is then!" Gill said.

They were approaching the edge of a small village. The first building housed the one and only local shop. It was the type that sold everything from milk through to postage stamps through to knitting needles. The owners probably lived in the little cottage next to it or even the top floor above. They had clearly evacuated, as the whole place had a bit of an air of recent neglect about it.

"This is the first shop we've seen since we got here," Joel said, rubbing his gun affectionately. "Looks like it will have some supplies."

Dimitri gestured to the front door that the owners had probably locked when they left. "Does not look like it has been breached."

"Perfect lunch spot!" Joel said.

"How shall we do this?" Dimitri asked.

"You and Gill take the back. You're not looking for a way in, you're looking to confirm a way out." They nodded. "Liam and Simon, one of you either side, here and here, you're keeping a look out for anything coming for us whilst we're in there. Won't be munchers," he added. "We're still too far out for that but could be something else." They also nodded. "Julia and Theo, you're with me, we'll go in through the front and see what we can see." He frowned. "As Dimitri said, looks like it's locked up tight so there shouldn't be anything threatening in there, but you never bloody know! We go in through the front, fan out, confirm there's nothing in there but Mars bars and Diet Cokes, and then we'll start shopping."

Theo nodded, lifting his gun as he did so. He was suddenly quite nervous. He had known he would be once the action started and had actually spent the better part of the walk considering what he would do when that moment came. The fact that Theo did not want to be here was irrelevant now. He was a realist at heart and fury aside, there was no getting out of this. Theo was stuck in the MDF for the rest of his standard twelve-month deployment, and that was assuming dozens of rips didn't suddenly appear and increase the workload!

There was no escaping it.

And so, despite his clear desire not to be involved, Theo was, which meant he would do the job he had been given, and he would do it properly, exterminating the munchers and protecting himself and his teammates as he did so. He might even, and Theo felt quite odd about this, but he supposed he might do some good for his little part of the world, which was not something, if he was quite honest, that had ever really motivated him before. Staying alive did though. And with that thought firm in his mind, Theo did everything that Joel asked as they approached the store, following his instructions to the letter. From the weird crouching walk as they got close to the door, to the positions they took either side of it as Joel brute-forced it open.

The store was…musty…there was no other word for it. The smell hit them the moment the door swung open. It was a combination of the place being locked up these last weeks, a bunch of food slowly rotting, and oddly the smell of rain.

And yet…there was enough light coming in from the windows that Theo was able to look around the room. It was all very neat and tidy, as if the owners had made a real effort to ensure everything was just as it needed to be when they left. They probably thought they would be able to return the moment the MDF cleaned the area out and made it safe, and they weren't wrong because no munchers meant no problem. It really just came down to how much of the animal and plant life they'd managed to eat before they were exterminated. It was hard to live somewhere where nothing was alive.

Something was alive in here though.

And Theo understood then that was where the smell was coming from.

It was the slightest of movements that alerted them. A flash of a shadow in the back of the shop right by the post office counter. Joel signalled them to fan out, and Theo found himself walking down the household goods aisle, which was a bit longer than he had expected as the shop was actually quite deep. Carefully, gun aloft, he crept past tinned apricots and bags of flour, and he wondered as he did so what his heart rate was. It never usually got above forty-five beats per minute, but Theo wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't in the high sixties now!

He made sure every step was gentle, cautiously thought out, and he tried his best to control his breathing as he went. As he got to the end of the aisle, he spotted Julia who had walked parallel to him along the cleaning and pet foods aisle. She looked quite flush faced. Joel joined them a moment later from a spot by the newspapers and magazines, and together they converged on the post office counter. It took up the entirety of the back of the store, and there was a shadowed area behind it.

Another flash of movement from there.

What was it?

Theo lifted his gun, intending to turn the attached torch element on and illuminate the shadowed space, but suddenly the back door opened, and Dimitri burst in, quickly followed by Gill.

Gill let out a scream.

Dimitri fired off a shot.

From behind the post office counter a dozen monsters exploded out, their mouths clicking and their claws clattering furiously.

Munching monsters.

In truth, Theo might have screamed slightly then too. He had never seen one in real life before, and they were a lot bloody bigger than he had expected them to be! The one heading straight for him was maybe three foot tall and powerfully built. Its skin glistened a horrible, pulsing purple and it was surrounded by the same inter-dimensional shimmer that everything from the other dimension had. It had four eyes and they rotated in all directions for just a moment…and then they all seemed to converge…and then they fixed on Theo.

Fuck!

Theo tightened his grip on his gun just as Joel shot the thing between two of its four eyes.

More munchers appeared.

Someone screamed again. Shots rang out and Theo turned and pelted back down the aisle past the flour and the tinned beans. Fast on his heels was Julia and they both skidded to a halt when they came to the front door. It was blocked by three munching monsters.

Where the hell had they come from?

These ones had their mouths open, and their teeth were already vibrating, sensing food nearby, and Theo didn't think that meant the dried lentils!

"Fuck!"

They lifted their guns and shot them, taking down two. One dodged the bullets and jumped at them. Theo somehow managed to smack it away with the butt of his gun and he wasn't sure who was more surprised, him or the munching monster. It landed back in front of the door, vibrating furiously.

"You can make a break for it from here," Theo said quickly to Julia as the monster righted itself and began to advance. "Straight down by the biscuits and through the back door."

"An easy sprint," she said.

Theo nodded and steadied his gun to fire again. "Yeah."

"I thought you said you could outrun me if you needed to?"

"Said I could, didn't say I would."

"I knew you were going to work out, Theo. Knew it the first moment they dragged you kicking and screaming into the base!" she said and then she went ahead and shot the munching monster straight through its fourth eye, just in time for Joel to join them.

"There's a few more coming," he said, and he was quite out of breath. "Suggest we retreat and regroup."

The door was pulled open from the outside. Dimitri beckoned them out. His leg was bleeding profusely but Gill was there too, and she pointed in the direction of a field to the left where Liam and Simon were already making a run for it.

"Suggest we move, boss," she said as the clicking noise coming from the back of the shop increased in volume.

They did not need telling twice and ran for the field, slamming the door behind them, but continuing to fire off shots as they went, and taking down any munchers that came from the back of the building. But it was only once they turned onto the field and Theo was able to see the village from a different direction that he saw something else entirely. It was next to the cottage that was next to the shop. The owner's cottage perhaps.

A shadow.

A movement.

A shimmer.

It lasted only a brief moment, but it was something.

And one thing was for sure. It was far too big to be a munching monster.