Night Shift by Stephen King Page B

his legs above the tops of his boots with biting lunges. One hung stubbornly on at his thigh, ripping at the cloth of his corduroy pants. Hall made a fist and smashed it aside.
    He was nearly three-quarters of the way back when the huge whirring filled the darkness. He looked up and the gigantic flying form smashed into his face.
    The mutated bats had not lost their tails yet. It whipped around Hall's neck in a loathsome coil and squeezed as the teeth sought the soft spot under his neck. It wriggled and flapped with its membranous wings, clutching the tatters of his shirt for purchase.
    Hall brought the nozzle of the hose up blindly and struck at its yielding body again and again. It fell away and he trampled it beneath his feet, dimly aware that he was screaming. The rats ran in a flood over his feet, up his legs.
    He broke into a staggering run, shaking some off. The others bit at his belly, his chest. One ran up his shoulder and pressed its questing muzzle into the cup of his ear.
    He ran into the second bat. It roosted on his head for a moment, squealing, and then ripped away a flap of Hall's scalp.
    He felt his body growing numb. His ears filled with the screech and yammer of many rats. He gave one last heave, stumbled over furry bodies, fell to his knees. He began to laugh, a high, screaming sound.

    Five A.M ., Thursday.
    â€œSomebody better go down there,” Brochu said tentatively.
    â€œNot me,” Wisconsky whispered. “Not me.”
    â€œNo, not you, jelly belly,” Ippeston said with contempt.
    â€œWell, let's go,”
Brogan said, bringing up another hose. “Me, Ippeston, Dangerfield, Nedeau. Stevenson, go up to the office and get a few more lights.”
    Ippeston looked down into the darkness thoughtfully. “Maybe they stopped for a smoke,” he said. “A few rats, what the hell.”
    Stevenson came back with the lights; a few moments later they started down.

NIGHT SURF
    After the guy was dead and the smell of his burning flesh was off the air, we all went back down to the beach. Corey had his radio, one of those suitcase-sized transistor jobs that take about forty batteries and also make and play tapes. You couldn't say the sound reproduction was great, but it sure was loud. Corey had been well-to-do before A6, but stuff like that didn't matter anymore. Even his big radio/tape-player was hardly more than a nice-looking hunk of junk. There were only two radio stations left on the air that we could get. One was WKDM in Portsmouth—some backwoods deejay who had gone nutty-religious. He'd play a Perry Como record, say a prayer, bawl, play a Johnny Ray record, read from Psalms (complete with each “selah,” just like James Dean in
East of Eden),
then bawl some more. Happy-time stuff like that. One day he sang “Bringing in the Sheaves” in a cracked, moldy voice that sent Needles and me into hysterics.
    The Massachusetts station was better, but we could only get it at night. It was a bunch of kids. I guess they took over the transmitting facilities of WRKO or WBZ after everybody left or died. They only gave gag call letters, like WDOPE or KUNT or WA6 or stuff like that. Really funny, you know—you could die laughing. That was the one we were listening to on the way back to the beach. I was holding hands with Susie; Kelly and Joan were ahead of us, and Needles was already over the brow of the point and out of sight. Corey was bringing up the rear, swinging his radio. The Stones were singing “Angie.”
    â€œDo you
love
me?” Susie was asking. “That's all I want to know, do you
love
me?” Susie needed constant reassurance. I was her teddy bear.
    â€œNo,” I said. She was getting fat, and if she lived long enough, which wasn't likely, she would get really flabby. She was already mouthy.
    â€œYou're rotten,” she said, and put a hand to her face. Her lacquered fingernails twinkled dimly with the half-moon that had risen