The Beast. Barry Hutchison

      hat had I expected to see? I wasn’t sure. An empty street. One or two late-night wanderers, maybe.

      But not this. Never this.

      There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They scuttled and scurried through the darkness, swarming over the village like an infection; relentless and unstoppable.

      I leaned closer to the window and looked down at the front of the hospital. One of the larger creatures was tearing through the fence, its claws slicing through the wrought-iron bars as if they were cardboard. My breath fogged the glass and the monster vanished behind a cloud of condensation. By the time the pane cleared the thing would be inside the hospital. It would be up the stairs in moments. Everyone in here was as good as dead.

      The distant thunder of gunfire ricocheted from somewhere near the village centre. A scream followed – short and sharp, then suddenly silenced. There were no more gunshots after that, just the triumphant roar of something sickening and grotesque.

      I heard Ameena take a step closer behind me. I didn’t need to look at her reflection in the window to know how terrified she was. The crack in her voice said it all.

      ‘It’s the same everywhere,’ she whispered.

      I nodded, slowly. ‘The town as well?’

      She hesitated long enough for me to realise what she meant. I turned away from the devastation outside. ‘Wait... You really mean everywhere, don’t you?’

      Her only reply was a single nod of her head.

      ‘Liar!’ I snapped. It couldn’t be true. This couldn’t be happening.

      She stooped and picked up the TV remote from the day-room coffee table. It shook in her hand as she held it out to me.

      ‘See for yourself.’

      Hesitantly, I took the remote. ‘What channel?’

      She glanced at the ceiling, steadying her voice. ‘Any of them.’

      The old television set gave a faint clunk as I switched it on. In a few seconds, an all-too-familiar scene appeared.

      Hundreds of the creatures. Cars and buildings ablaze. People screaming. People running. People dying.

      Hell on Earth.

      ‘That’s New York,’ she said.

      Click. Another channel, but the footage was almost identical.

      ‘London.’

      Click.

      ‘I’m... I’m not sure. Somewhere in Japan. Tokyo, maybe?’

      It could have been Tokyo, but then again it could have been anywhere. I clicked through half a dozen more channels, but the images were always the same.

      ‘It happened,’ I gasped. ‘It actually happened.’

      I turned back to the window and gazed out. The clouds above the next town were tinged with orange and red. It was already burning. They were destroying everything, just like he’d told me they would.

      This was it.

      The world was ending.

      Armageddon.

      And it was all my fault.

       woke up screaming. This, of late, was not unusual. The seats beneath me creaked in complaint as I sat upright and tried to shake away the memories of the nightmares before they could fully take hold. No such luck.

      The faces of the fiends I’d fought leered at me – vague, half-formed shapes tormenting me from the deepest recesses of my own mind:

      Caddie, make-up smeared across her bone-white skin.

      The

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