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Stories from the Verse
In Version
Chapter 10: Beam 161
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 247
The windows on the second floor were not barred, and showed no damage.
“They can’t climb,” Beam said.
“What’s that?” Bron asked.
“Whatever those things are,” he replied, “there was no need to fortify the upstairs windows against them, so they don’t have the ability to get up here.”
“Sir!” Dawn’s voice called calmly but loudly from downstairs, and Bob picked up the message telepathically.
They are almost here, he said.
Good. You and Dawn come upstairs.
“We are about to see just how dangerous these things are. Open these front windows, carefully. We don’t want to break them.” He opened the first.
There were two bedrooms in the front, one long with two front windows, the other running down the side with one window in the front, plus what appeared to be the master bedroom beyond the stairs with both a front and a side window. Bron went to the next room, and before he had returned Dawn and Bob were upstairs.
“There are six of us, and five of them. We’re going to stand two at each window, and when they are reasonably close we’re going to try to kill them all.”
“You don’t want to try to talk to them first?” Bron asked.
Small brains in dead brains, do not talk, only eat.
“For some reason that’s what I expected. No, they’re not here to talk. Bron and Sophia, you’re down in that first window, on our left. Each of us targets one of them, working from left to right, Bron you have first, Sophia the second. Dawn, you’re in the middle and take the third, Bob you’re with her and take the fourth. Ashleigh and I will be at the third window in the next room, and hopefully together we can take out the fifth. Everyone got it? Use whatever you think is most likely to stop this without using up our resources. We don’t know how long we’re going to have to last here, or how many more of those things might be out there.”
He ignored the glare he got from Sophia, and went to take his place in the next room. Readying the rifle, he raised and aimed it; he noticed that Ashleigh had her pistols drawn.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #476: Versers Deduce. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
