The silence was a lie. Arthur knew that. It was a tactical pause, a gap in the chaos while the enemy regrouped. Sitting on the cold, oil-slick floor of the workshop, he focused on mastering the tremors running through his body. The pain in his arm was a constant anchor, a burning reminder of his fragility. The makeshift dressing had reduced the bleeding to a slow drip, but the wound throbbed in sync with his racing heart.
He forced himself to stand. Inaction was poison. He needed an inventory—needed to understand this new environment. The place was a labyrinth of heavy metal. Presses, lathes, workbenches buried beneath tools and metal shavings. At the center, a thick chain hung from a ceiling beam, ending in a rusted hook. It smelled of labor, sweat, and cold iron—the scent of a world that no longer existed.
His search for something to treat the wound was short and brutally realistic. He found a metal cabinet, tore the door off, and inside discovered a first-aid kit. Nearly empty. A few old bandages and a small bottle of disinfectant. He ripped away the makeshift wrap with his teeth, shouting as air struck the open gash. He poured the disinfectant over the cut, and the world dissolved into a blinding explosion of white pain that drove him to his knees.
The pain cleared him. It was real. He was alive.
He dressed the wound clumsily with one hand, then tore more of his shirt to fashion a cleaner bandage, wrapping his arm tight—so tight it nearly rivaled the wound itself.
That was when the first sound began.
Not a thud. A scrape.
Skreeee...
A light sound, almost shy, like a tree branch brushing against a window on a windy night. It came from the west wall—the broad stretch of corrugated steel that served as the garage door.
Arthur froze, breath locked in his throat. He turned slowly, the axe back in his hand, eyes fixed on the wall.
Skreeee… skreeeee…
Another joined it, from a different section of the same wall. Then a third, from the back. Within seconds, a chorus of scraping surrounded him. They weren't attacking. They were testing. Like a burglar tapping lightly along a wall to find the hollow point, the creatures were mapping his fortress—scratching, prodding, searching for weakness.
The sound was maddening. Rats. Rats the size of wolves with razor claws, infesting the walls. Arthur circled the center of the workshop, turning in a slow arc, axe ready, feeling like a man sealed inside a metal box while curious giants examined it from every side.
The testing phase stretched into what felt like eternity.
Then, without warning, the scraping stopped.
The silence that followed was heavy with intent.
BOOM.
The entire west wall shuddered. The sound was like a car slamming into a shipping container. Not a single impact. Coordinated. Arthur heard—terrifyingly clear—the crash of three or four massive bodies striking the wall at the exact same instant.
BOOM.
The corrugated steel buckled inward, the metal ridges flattening and stretching with a groan of protest. Dust coating the machines trembled and spilled to the floor.
BOOM.
This time, another sound accompanied it.
Metal tearing.
Arthur ran to the wall. Near the floor, where the impact hit hardest, a small fissure had formed. Through it, he saw an eye.
One red eye, burning in the dark, staring in.
It vanished—and the wall was struck again at the same point. The crack widened, steel peeling apart like foil. Claws forced their way into the gap, pulling, ripping, widening the breach.
They weren't just ramming it.
They were tearing the building open.
Their strength was incomprehensible. They were peeling back his tin-can sanctuary with their bare hands. Their persistence was elemental—like water eroding stone—except this was happening in minutes, not millennia.
Fear gave way to desperate fury.
This was his sanctuary. He had bled for it. He would not surrender it.
He scanned the room, searching for something—anything. His gaze landed on a massive hydraulic press near the assaulted wall. A mountain of steel and pistons, weighing several tons. Immovable. But the metal shelves beside it weren't. They were stacked with heavy steel dies—solid blocks used to shape and cut.
He ran to the shelves. Each die block weighed seventy, eighty pounds. He grabbed the first, cold steel biting into his fingers, and dragged it to the base of the failing wall, slamming it against the warped metal. Back again. Another. And another.
A Sisyphean labor against a rising tide of destruction. For every block he stacked, another ripping shriek split from a different section of wall. The workshop filled with the pandemonium of tortured metal.
The sanctuary had become a closing trap. The walls no longer protected him. They only enclosed him while the enemy carved its way inside. And Arthur—bloodied, sweating, wounded, exhausted—could do nothing but keep stacking steel against steel, in a futile attempt to delay an end that no longer felt merely inevitable, but imminent.