Before the critter recovered its balance from the swing, Roland struck back. The baton landed squarely on the side of the rodent’s head with a wet crunching sound. The rat-man fell on one knee, shaking its head, its chittering gone blessedly silent for a moment.

  A good whack deserved another. Roland went for the top of its head for his second attack, putting his back into it. Rat-man went down. It was still twitching, so Roland didn’t spare the rod and gave the rat the pinata treatment. Three, four, five hits while the furry thing squealed and kept trying to get up. On the fifth hit, it finally stopped moving.

  Roland was sweating, breathing hard, his pants leg soaked with his blood. His heart was racing. But when he stepped away from the dead or unconscious critter (from the way his last blow had caved in the ratty skull, he was betting on dead), he turned back toward the lights and not the highway he’d left behind. Whatever was going on in there, it wasn’t right, and he was going to put an end to it. And if more furries got in his way, they would learn all about effing up and finding out.

  Roland bared his teeth in what only an idiot would call a smile as he made his way through the trees.

  The ground was sloping down again; the lights were coming from a ravine cutting through the woods. When he got closer, he spotted two more figures darting through the foliage, headed straight toward him. Two more short furries. One was wielding a carving knife as if it were a short sword; the other had a long stick with a broken Colt 45 bottle duct-taped to its tip, a spear made out of literal garbage. Like the first furry, they were naked and smelled like they’d marinated in raw sewage.

  Two on one sucked, even if the two were way shorter than him. Roland glared at them, sidling off to one side, trying to face only one of them at a time. The spear carrier met his eyes – and froze, which caused it to stumble and trip on its own feet. The other looked at the ground, avoiding Roland’s gaze as he charged, carving knife held high over its head.

  Roland had no idea why the rats reacted like that, but he didn’t look at the gift horse in the mouth. He stepped out of the charging rat’s way and smashed his baton at the back of its mangy head. Since both he and the rat had been moving, the hit wasn’t strong enough to crack its skull. The critter still staggered and ended up running into a tree. Roland kicked it in the back, slamming it into the tree a second time.

  Sudden sharp agony flared up on his side. Roland recoiled from the pain and discovered that the spear-rat had finally gotten going and stabbed him on the side, right in the ribs. The bottle had shattered, and he felt pieces of glass sticking in his flesh. The shards tore stuff inside him as he turned toward the spear-rat, cold fury overriding the pain and fear.

  The rat squeaked when it met his eyes and froze again. Roland didn’t wait for it to recover and kicked him right where its nuts would be if it were human. The impact lifted the rat-man off its feet, and from the way it curled into a ball when he landed, wheezing in agony, its family jewels had been properly desecrated.

  “Found out, didn’t you?” Roland gasped.

  An angry squeal warned him in time to twist and meet the carving knife wielder, who once again was trying to attack while avoiding his eyes. His baton smacked the rat’s weapon hand away, likely breaking its wrist. Roland pivoted and drove the heel of his left hand into the rat’s snout. His wrist hurt like heck from striking bone, but at least he avoided breaking his knuckles. The rat’s thin skull gave under the impact; the critter faceplanted and Roland stomped on its head with his Timberlands. On the second stomp, he felt something crunch under the heavy sole. The rat stopped moving.

  Roland used his left hand to put pressure on the laceration on his right side while he walked toward the spear-carrier, who was still curled up in a ball, squeaking softly. He stomped on the rat-man until it was dead. For a moment, the pain and terror were replaced by a fierce, brutal joy as the critter fell silent. Three down. He was bleeding like a pig, but he was still alive, and he wouldn’t let himself die until he reached what the furries had been trying to protect.

  He made it to the top of the rise overlooking the lights, and what he saw sent a cold shock through his body.

  Two rat people were dragging a body toward the center of the cleared area at the bottom of the ravine. A male human, wearing a nice silk shirt and dark slacks, now drenched in blood. The flashing lights let Roland see the fatal injuries the man had suffered: defensive cuts on his arms, a deep slash across his neck, deep enough to nearly sever his head. The man was as dead as the rat bastards Roland had stomped.

  He only spared the dead one glance before the source of the flashing lights got his full attention. Floating in front of a cloaked figure, a sphere about the size of a basketball glowed brightly enough to hurt his eyes if he stared at it for more than a second or two.

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  Under different circumstances, the ball of light could be called beautiful, shining with all the colors of the rainbow in a seemingly random pattern. But from where he was standing, Roland felt a sense of wrongness coming out of it, something that set his teeth on edge. The rat things didn’t belong in his world, and neither did that thing, he was certain of it.

  Other rat things were lined up along the ravine, keeping watch. At least six of them were in the clearing; movement past the tree line suggested there were even more furries out there. The one in the black cloak was at least a foot taller than the rats; the hooded cape it wore hid it too well to determine if it was an oversized rat-man, human, or something else.

  Just a few seconds after he set eyes on the scene, the floating sphere confirmed his gut feeling by eating the dead guy the rats had dragged in.

  A tendril of crackling light like a miniature lightning bolt reached out from the ball and touched the corpse. There was a loud popping sound, and the body disappeared, leaving behind a steaming pool of blood.

  “Fuck this,” Roland growled. Whatever was happening, he had to put a stop to it.

  He made his way down the slope and was almost to the bottom of the ravine before any of the rats noticed him. Closer, he noticed that the light ball was making loud crackling sounds, which explained why his fight with the now-dead rat bastards hadn’t alerted this bunch. The cloaked figure stared intently at the glowing orb and made weird clicking and buzzing noises, oblivious to anything else.

  One of the rats that had carried the body into the ravine spotted Roland as he came down. By then, he was just a dozen feet from the body snatcher team, and he closed the distance just as the more alert rat squealed a warning. The other rat was just beginning to turn when Roland punted it with all the power his hundred-and-ninety pounds could muster. The critter was knocked into its pal, bowling it over. The three on the other side finally heard the noise, but they were a good sixty feet away, giving him plenty of time to inflict some pain and suffering on their buddies.

  Roland whacked the downed rats with his baton a few times apiece, but didn’t waste time finishing them off. He went for their tiny hands, which they conveniently held in front of them in the classic defense pose. Broken or bone-bruised limbs would slow them down and let him get past them. The rats didn’t matter; Roland wanted to go after the light. Sure, he had no idea if his metal stick would do anything to it, or if all he’d accomplish was to get disintegrated like the dead guy had. It was all he had, though, so he went for it.

  There were next to zero chances Roland was walking out alive, but he didn’t care. Not as long as he could break that people-eating light and maybe kill Black Cloak before the rat bastards got to him.

  Gotta keep moving, he thought as he ran toward the glowing light and the hooded boss, leaving the squealing rats behind to clutch their mangled forearms. He worried that if he stopped for any reason he wouldn’t be able to move again. The cold numbness spreading through his body told him that his gas tank – his freaking blood – was running on empty.

  Black Cloak was still staring at the floating light. Low situational awareness or caught up in some bizarre and most likely satanic ritual? Either way, it would soon suck to be him. The rats on the other side ran down to intercept Roland, but he glared at them and they froze; one even tripped on its own feet and went tumbling down the slope. He was doing something just by looking at them, but he didn’t have time to think about it.

  Roland was almost on top of Black Cloak when he, it or whatever finally reacted to his presence. The clicking-buzzing stopped and the cowled figure began to turn toward him. Too late: Roland set his feet, whipped the baton over his head, and swung down with everything he had. The sound when the metal stick struck the top of the critter’s skull was different: instead of the crunchy-wet sound the rats had produced on impact, it sounded and felt like he’d struck the side of a car or a sheet of thick plastic. The baton rebounded and Black Cloak staggered back a step, its garment swinging loose and revealing its full awfulness.

  It was a freaking bug. A five-foot bug wearing a cloak.

  When Roland was a kid, he’d found a dead cockroach and studied it under a magnifying glass: the insect looked a lot like the monstrosity in front of him. Black Cloak had six segmented limbs. It stood on the lowest pair, the others were moving in bizarre patterns that left behind shiny contrails, like it was weaving something out of beams of light. One of its antennas was twisted out of place, crushed by his baton.

  “You are one ugly mother…”

  One of the insect’s legs flashed brightly. Roland recoiled when something cold and sharp tore through his midsection. There was no pain, but he was leaking blood and strength with every beat of his heart; he had to struggle not to drop to his knees.

  It shot me, he thought, although the flash had been all but noiseless.

  He was probably dead, but even dead men got a full ten seconds before they dropped, or so he had heard.

  The roach in the cloak met Roland’s killing gaze and froze, just like its rat friends. It gave him enough time to land three swings, putting his back into it. Its head cracked open, spewing some foul fluid, and the big bug folded just like a real cockroach under a work boot, its legs kicking feebly as it fell on its back, dropping a short glowing stick Roland hadn’t noticed before. He stepped over it, ignoring the wetness running down his lower body. He was running on pure adrenaline now.

  The ball of light. It had to go next. His vision narrowed into a tunnel. His ten seconds were almost up.

  He stopped thinking and focused on the flashing sphere. Roland had one good whack left in him, and then he could sleep.

  Roland struck. The baton hit something solid in the center of the bright light. Something solid enough that he felt the metal stick bend under the impact. The weapon and his arm rebounded, and he almost fell flat on his back. More rats were coming at him from every direction, but he ignored them.

  Okay, let’s try again. Swing for the fences. He grabbed his right wrist with his left hand, took a breath, and gave everything he had left to the next swing.

  The thing in the center of the light shattered.

  I did it, he thought as his tunnel vision closed into pure darkness.