Science Fiction Short Story
The Rabbit Men
Deep down in a laboratory a scientist is working hard on a device, when suddenly an alarm goes off somewhere in the facility. The scientist hearing the alarm runs out of the room, leaving the device behind, and heads for the exit. As he is approaching the exit chamber a dark form comes leaping out of the darkness, and lands directly on top of him, crushing every bone in his body and killing him instantly. It then picks his body up in its huge jaw and hurries back into the depths of the facility.
"This is the last bit of video we got before we lost contact with the Beta Outpost" says Sergeant Brimor. "That scientists," he continues "was our top scientist Charles McGoober he has been studying these creatures for months trying to determine where they originated from, but as you saw they have escaped and now, it's our job to hunt them down and exterminate them." "Sir," the newest recruit of the squad says, "What exactly are we hunting?" "Rabbitmen recruit, Rabbitmen." "Now all of you head to the armory and get your equipment. Then proceed to the hanger you have 10 minutes before we head out." As the squad starts' heading out the Sergeant says "Recruit wait." "Yes?" he replies. "What's your name?" "It's PFC Joe Finnigan sir." "Thank you recruit, Dismissed." They both then head to the armory and get their gear, then they head to the hanger and head off for Beta Outpost.
A few hours later Sergeant Brimor, PFC Joe Finnigan, and the other 3 soldiers in the squad arrive at the outpost. Upon arrival they see the power is out and there is a pool of blood on the floor. "Ok squad our objective is to kill all of the creatures and not let any escape.. Our Secondary Objective is to get the device Charles McGoober had been working on before he died, apparently it should be able to hurt these creatures." The squad then heads deeper into the facility.
As the squad makes their way through the facility they hear growls coming from all around them and prepare for an attack. As they traverse the hallways trying to get to the lab they find more blood but no bodies. They finally make it to the lab and retrieve the device, Joe turns it on and hears a growl of pain in the corner of the room, he turn along with the rest of the squad and opens fire on the beast until it has become just a pile of smoking meat. Now knowing how to track them the squad decides to rest and take stock of their supplies having the soldiers take shifts watching the entrance to the lab. After a few hours have past the squad heads takes a head count coming up short by one man. Sergeant Brimor and the others start calling out for him, "Frank where are you?" After searching for a few hours the squad realize he must have been attacked during his shift, and they head out again to hunt down the creatures, whilst looking for any possible surviving scientists.
As they traverse through and kill more of the creatures, Joe asks the sergeant "How many of these creatures are there in the facility?" "The Intel report I was given said about 2000 of them, so we still have a long way to go." Joe then asks "Do you think we're going to make it Sarge?" "Just stick with the plan and well make it just fine private." "Sarge," we hear one of the other soldiers say "Bruce is gone, he was right next to me and now he's just disappeared." "Damn that's not good, but why didn't the device go off, Joe is it still working?" "It seems to be but I'm not sure." "Let me see it Joe." The Sergeant looks it over and realizes, "Its power source is drained. Oh well we can't do anything about it now let's just keep hunting down the creatures."
They head off again and kill some more of the creatures, when they find the nest. They look around and see that hundreds of the creatures are staring at them from all over the room and in the center are the desecrated bodies of all the scientists and their missing squad mates. Suddenly a large shadow rises up from behind the pile of corpses revealing the largest creature they have ever seen. As they stare in shock at the creature Joe and Sergeant Brimor hear a scream from behind and see that Tom has been attacked by one of the creatures, and they open fire on the creatures. They starting rushing to the remaining two soldiers and get put down quickly, but the two soldiers eventually start running out of ammo. Just as Joe gets down to his last clip of ammunition, he sees Brimor go down and turns to help him. Just as he reaches the Sarge he sees one of the creatures leaping at him, and just as it's about to hit him the creature freezes in midair and disappears.
"What was that?" a military trainer, who was watching them, yells. "That was horrible, if you performed during and actual escape the same way you acted here, the creatures would definitely escape the facility and kill everyone on the planet." Right as he finishes we hear the same alarm from the beginning of the simulation go off somewhere in the laboratory.