Bat Blood - Resurgence

By Richard I Myerscough

Bat Blood III - Resurgence starts where 'The Devil's Claw' left off, and deals with elements of 'Unshackled Demons', as is continues with the resilient mutants' plight.

The Bat Blood series takes you beyond the immortalization of mankind, and into the realm of intelligent, hybrid creatures that feel they have the right to exist, and challe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Myerscough
• Release date: Oct 28, 2025
• ISBN: 9781999078041

Richard I Myerscough

Richard Myerscough was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada and is currently enjoying a quiet life in Cape Breton Island. Despite his passion for writing the lure of the outdoors draws him to the water and the great Canadian Outdoors. Having written and made up stories for numerous teachers, his children and himself throughout his life, in 2013 he decided to finally share his talent with the rest of the world www.richardmyerscough.com

Book preview

Bat Blood - III

Resurgence

by

Richard Myerscough

Copyright ©2022 Richard Myerscough.  No part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Dedicated to

Laurie for her understanding

Claraicy for her encouragement

And Marq for his inspiration

Chapter One

Sarah and The King

A rumbling storm made its way across a remote stretch of Northern Ontario, stripping the trees in the dense, boreal forest of most of their remaining, multi coloured leaves.  A large, burning building, nestled next to a long, secluded lake stood in its path.  The downpour drenched the structure's flat, tarred roof, along with its outer, concrete walls.

The rainwater quickly filled the depression created by a damaged, military helicopter that had landed nose first onto the building's roof.  The leaking fuel and hydraulic fluid pouring out of it, formed a colourful, shimmering coating on top of the rapidly spreading pool of water.

With a damaged, military helicopter on the roof, and another one in the paved yard between the building and the tall, barbed wired fence, the fortified facility looked out of place.  It didn't look anything like the large, luxurious, wooden, hunting and fishing lodges that adorn the shores of some of the neighbouring lakes in the region.

Dark, clouds of chemical laced soot seeped out of every crack and opening of the structure.  As the rain mixed with the black particles, the droplets turned into a toxic slurry.  The brisk wind that accompanied the storm drove some of the plummeting mixture into the nearby forest.  The slurry turned the trees and underbrush into a dreary, grey mess, that even the pouring rain couldn't wash away.  The pools of the soot and chemical infused rainwater helped protect the building's roof from the fire, but did little to suppress the rapidly spreading flames from consuming its interior.

Lightning lit up the dark storm clouds as an upright, winged creature, with the head and claws of a lion, emerged from the smoke-filled stairwell, carrying a hairy creature.  A crack of thunder momentarily drowned out the screams coming out of the open doorway.  With a layer of soot stiffening the regal king's shaggy mane and fur, he looked like an animated, stone gargoyle.  When he lowered the badly injured, half-human, young woman, she clung to his arm for support.

Her entire body was covered in dark, soot-covered hair.  After they got away from the smoke exiting the stairwell, the king glanced at Sarah.  The left side of her chest and abdomen was covered in blood, from the deep, knife wound that had punctured her lung.  They were not kin, however, Sarah's subtle cat-like facial features had compelled him to do everything he could to save her.

As they slowly walked toward the edge of the building, the drifting smoke bellowing out of the stairwell made both of them cough.  With Sarah's head resting against his shoulder, the leader of the defiant mutants looked down.  Inside the compound, he noticed a man attempting to refuel the grounded helicopter.  He grinned as he watched the pilot emerge from a small metal shack wielding a chainsaw.

A crack of thunder made the frightened pilot look up as a bolt of lightning outlined the couple standing on the roof.  Several coughing, unarmed people emerged from the building and ran towards the shack.  Their soot, covered clothes made them unrecognizable.

The lion-faced creature looked at Sarah, then the colourful, fuel, laden pool of rainwater that they were standing next to.  He carefully picked her up as gently as he could.  While cradling her in his arms, he pressed her uninjured right side tightly against his torso.  A dark cloud of drifting smoke made him cough some more.  Seeing no immediate threat, he unfolded his huge, drenched, batlike wings and beat them as hard as he could.

Despite the pouring rain pelting the king's wings, he managed to get airborne.  Another bolt of lightning lit up the sky.  Despite the fear of being struck by lightning, he fought to get above the sprawling, low hanging clouds of toxic smoke.  He only had to ascend a half dozen metres before he was able to breathe in some moist, smoke-free air.

With both of his legs broken, the crashed helicopter's pilot used his hands to crawled out from behind the large airconditioner unit mounted on the roof.  Looking up, he saw the fleeting silhouette of the king's large wings.  Sweat dripped from his brow as he rolled onto his side, and used both hands to aim his pistol at the obscure figure.  As the winged creature turned towards the lake, the pilot's hands shook as he squeezed the trigger.

The flash from the pistol's muzzle ignited the fumes coming off the puddle that the pilot was lying in.  His fuel soaked clothes turned him into a screaming human torch.  It took less than a couple seconds for the fire to reach the helicopter.  Seconds later, the helicopter's ruptured fuel tanks exploded.

An enormous, booming fireball shot into the air.  The shock wave generated by the blast, struck the king's wings with enough force to snap several of their sturdy bones.  With the hair on their exposed body parts set ablaze, the pair was catapulted through the sky above the lake.

His wings and back took the brunt of the damage.  With his arms still tightly wrapped around Sarah, only his chest and lower half of his face was shielded from the flames.  Sarah's face and her entire right side were spared, along with some semi-protected sections on her left side.  As they tumbled through the air, the king's ripped, scorched and battered wings flopped around in every direction.  With his wings, back, mane and both legs engulfed in flames, the winged, lion-like creature roared.

Immediately afterwards, Sarah felt his powerful muscles relax.  As his arms went limp, the pair separated as they plummeted into the cold water.

Sarah heard the water sizzle as she sank beneath the surface.  Seeing some blood coated bubbles exiting her chest, she pressed both of her hands against her knife wound.  The extreme temperature change shocked Sarah's nervous system, and temporarily dulled the pain.  When she exhaled, pink, smoke-filled bubbles were released.

On the surface, as the smoke escaped the bursting bubbles, Sarah's cat-like face and large, unburnt right ear emerged.  While she gasped for air, protruding pieces of burnt cartilage appeared where her left ear had been.

Leaving her singed left hand on her open chest wound, Sarah used her right hand, arm and leg to fight the white-tipped waves.  She tried to use her singed left leg, but found it stiff and awkward to manipulate.  Through pure determination, she overcame the pain and somehow managed to keep her body upright in the water.

Sarah knew that the king had to be somewhere nearby.  Despite the waves limiting her vision, she searched for the courageous, mutant creature that had cared for her as if she was his own daughter.  She heard the odd, faint, rasping gasp, along with a strange gurgling noise.  Her eyes opened wide as she realized, ‘Water is getting into his lungs.  He's drowning!'

A bolt of lightning struck the compound next to the building, electrocuting the chainsaw wielding pilot.  The refuelling station exploded, destroying the helicopter.  The explosion enlarged a crack that had formed in the adjacent wall, causing part of the building's roof to collapse.

One of the support beams under the rear of the crashed helicopter gave way, heaving the front of it into the air.  The jolt combined with the roaring fire caused one of the missiles attached to the helicopter to accidentally launch.  The tail of the helicopter spun around, hit the side of the stairwell, and sent pieces of both flying.

Sarah watched the missile arc over the lake towards Devil's Claw Ridge.  Without hearing a secondary explosion, she envisioned it landing in the swamp that encircled most of the huge, claw shaped ridge.  ‘That's where it all began.  That was where Doctor Scott's modified cells had initially infected a colony of bats, and where I was infected.'

As she splashed around, desperately trying to get to the king, Sarah thought of his daughter's tainted blood flowing through her body.  Despite Sarah's sharp claws, thick fur and a set of teeth that could frighten a bear, her slender, human physique set her apart from the other mutants.  Nevertheless, the mutant leader had accepted her as one of his own.

The mercenaries that hunted the mutants, didn't differentiate Sarah from the others.  The doctors that promised to help her, in actuality, only wanted to use her as a lab animal.  Even her own father wanted to put a bullet between her eyes.  Without the mutant king, she had nobody left to turn to.

A second lightning bolt added to the carnage on shore.  Inside the facility, various gas canisters exploded, shooting debris out of the windows, doors, cracks, and newly made openings in the walls and roof.

Sarah bobbed on the surface of the frigid water with her singed left hand tightly covering her wound.  She couldn't afford to get any more cold water inside her lung and chest cavity.  Any further drop in her core temperature would greatly handicap her ability to fight the waves, and keep her head above the water.

As the crest of a large wave lifted her, she got a glimpse of the once majestic leader who had valiantly defended his colony against the man that had inadvertently created them.  He was lying on his back with his charred, broken wings spread out across the water.  While gasping for air, Sarah knew that she had to do everything she could to save him.  Without him, she wouldn't have escaped Dr. Scott's medical facility alive.

Every painful, shallow breath that Sarah took inflamed her throat.  Below the surface, the frigid water dulled the pain from the numerous burns that ran down the left side of her body.  That allowed her some limited use of her left leg.

Unable to inhale deep breaths, Sarah grew increasingly tired.  She could barely keep her head above the water.  Minutes felt like hours, as the wind and waves pushed her towards the far shore at a steep angle.  Despite the condition she was in, the further she drifted away from the facility, the safer she felt.

Above the pounding rain, she heard several helicopters flying towards the burning building.  She hoped the helicopter pilots would concentrate solely on rescuing their surviving comrades, rather than spending time searching for them.  If sighted, they might mistake her as a floating piece of debris, but not the winged ruler.  Even with his mangled wings, he would be easy to identify.

Sarah knew that he was somewhere to the right of her.  She also knew that the relentless, white, crested waves were pushing them both in the same general direction.  Unable to get to him, her only hope of helping him, if he was still alive, would be after they reached shore.

Floating on her back, she kicked and used her right arm as a paddle in hopes of getting to shore first.  She felt like she had been in the water for hours, but it had been barely twenty minutes.  As Sarah stretched her right arm and began to take another stroke, her fingers became entangled in the long, thin stem of a lily pad.  While trying to free her hand, she noticed the fast approaching, rocky shoreline.

A white-crested wave struck her and yanked the stem of the lily free.  As she fought to keep her head above water, she felt her toes brush against the muddy bottom.  Another large, white capped wave hit her, toppling her head first into the water.  The wave behind it, lifted her up like a piece of driftwood, and tossed her against one of the large boulders that lined the shoreline.

While being hammered by the surf, Sarah wiggled and clawed her way over and around the slippery, algae-covered rocks.  After grabbing a tree root, she pulled herself out of the water, and crawled under a nearby pine tree to get out of the wind and the rain.  She couldn't see her winged protector anywhere.  Feeling that she might pass out from fatigue, she crouched down, wrapped her right arm around her knees and pressed her legs against her chest for some added warmth.

With her head resting on her knees, Sarah peered through the dangling pine needles and falling rain.  Within half a minute, she noticed the ends of his wings bobbing up and down with the waves.  His arms along with the remnants of his wings were spread out to the sides.  The large surface area they created allowed the waves to get under him, and helped keep his face above the water.  A few seconds later, a large rogue wave tossed his body between a couple large boulders that were jutting out of the water.  The wild surf began pounding his lifeless body.  As the waves pushed him deeper into the narrow gap between the boulders, his battered wings became entangled around his head, arms and legs.

Spotting a notched stick on the ground, Sarah crawled over to it and quickly snapped off some of the small unwanted branches.  Then she shoved the end of the stick between two tree trunks.  With a quick tug, she broke the end off it.  It was still too long.  She glanced at her battered, gallant protector, and muttered, I can't waste any more time.  It will have to do.

After using the modified stick to stand upright, she placed the notch under her left armpit.  Needing to use her left hand to hang onto the crude crutch, she covered her wound with her right hand.  Once in the water, she used the stick to help brace herself against the pounding surf.  Aware of her weakened condition, she knew that she had to carefully calculate the risks, along with the physical challenges, of every move and step she made.  Needing time to think, she barely had time to take a single step between the waves.  Thinking about the waves battering the once regal king's body, and the cold water in his lungs, kept her going.

A wave flung his arm across the front of the nearest boulder.  Instinctively, Sarah used her right hand to grab his wrist.  As she covered her wound with her left hand, a wave swept the notched stick from under her arm.  She fell onto her left knee.  Luckily, between the waves, the water was only waist high.  Another wave struck her as she got up.  Instead of it knocking her back into the water, the mutant king's body had provided enough resistance to keep her upright.

As more waves struck Sarah, their added force helped her yank her mangled friend's body around the boulder and out of the gap.  Once out, the waves pushed, shoved and tossed both of them ashore.  Sarah crawled over to him and brushed his shredded, charred wings away from his face.  Tears flowed from her eyes as she crouched down and wrapped her right arm around him.  His badly burnt and battered body was almost as cold as the water.

Sarah thought about how the doctors had dissected the bodies of the other creatures.  She looked at the devoted king, and defiantly said, They are not going to slice you up like they did Betty and the others.  I won't let them.

Grabbing his wrist, she pulled his limp body towards the nearest grove of trees.  As his jostled body banged against the rocks, and twisted over large pieces of driftwood, water spurted out of his mouth.

Sarah had only managed to drag him a half dozen metres from shore before collapsing from exhaustion.  His right arm flopped against the calf of her left leg.  As his cold fingers slowly squeezed her leg, Sarah's jaw dropped.  Using her right arm to prop herself up, she stared at his ice cold hand, and jubilantly cried out, He is still alive!

Several hours later...

The rain had finally stopped.  With the slow-moving storm clouds blocking the moon, other than the departing helicopters, the only source of light in the dark, night sky was from a few stars.  Concealed beneath some dense, low hanging, spruce boughs, Sarah gently squeezed the cold creature's forearm.  With their bodies pressed together, she hoped that her body heat might keep him alive.

While re-checking the king's pulse, Sarah questioned herself, What should I call you?  I can't keep on calling you ‘the king'.  The colony no longer exists.  You have no subjects, and you can't rule over the dead.

After thinking of his regal demeanor, she decided, From now on, I think that I'll call you Ra.  Like the ancient Egyptian god of creation, you created Honda's sister, who in turn created me.  For good or for bad, I would not be alive if it wasn't for you.  Even though it cost your daughter her life, she saved me from an agonizing death.  When the modified cells in her blood took over my body, it had eradicated the cancer.  For better or for worse, they saved my life, and I'm glad to be still among the living.

Looking down the shoreline, Sarah noticed a raccoon strolling out of the woods.  It didn't take her long to spot what the scavenger was after.  The surf had tossed a fish ashore and left it flopping around in a shallow pool behind some driftwood.  Sarah reached up, grabbed a tree branch and pulled herself upright.  With dry blood gluing her left hand to her wound, she wildly waved her right arm in the air.  A massive pain ran up her left side.  She screamed in agony.  Startled, the masked scavenger stopped and snarled at her.  As Sarah took a couple, awkward and very painful steps forward, it reared-up and growled.  Seeing the size of Sarah's teeth as she growled back, it quickly turned and scampered away.

Sarah clinched her teeth and slowly limped towards the pool.  After squatting down, she avoided the medium sized northern pike's sharp, snapping teeth and jabbed two of her claws into the top of its head.  After it stopped flopping around, she picked it up.  Using the claw on her forefinger, she slit open its belly.  Raising the fish slightly above her head, Sarah poured some of its guts into her open mouth.  She slowly chewed and swallowed them as if they were a rich, chocolate pudding.  After finishing eating the rest of the fish's guts, she bit into its side and ripped off a long piece of its skin.  While chewing on the tough skin to extract the thin layer of fat that was attached to it, she limped her way towards Ra.

The charred, blistered skin along the left side of her body had swollen up and made every move she made painful.  While standing in a narrow stretch of open shoreline, she gently freed her left hand from her wound and looked at her palm.  There was no fresh blood on it.  The only moisture on her hand was from the fluid seeping out of the broken blisters.  She looked at her wound.  A scab had already formed over it.  On her arm, and the back of her hand, she noticed tiny ice crystals forming on the stubs of the few remaining hairs.

Sarah looked at the surrounding landscape.  The dark silhouette of Devil's Claw Ridge appeared above patches of smaller trees.  Looking over at Ra's still body, she gave out a sigh, We have nowhere else to go.  If we stay here, they will find us.

The cold night air helped numb her pain.  Ignoring the desire to scream, Sarah placed the remains of the pike on a flat rock.  After picking up some split, sharp edged rocks, she used them to cut and hack off two, long, fir boughs.  With the limbs laying parallel to each other, she wove their pliable, overlapping branches together to form a crude travois.  What should have taken her a few minutes, had taken over half an hour.

Before she was finished, she had broke open almost every blister on her body.  The fluid that had seeped out of them had frozen, forming patches of ice over her burns that helped numb her pain.  As her tears froze on her cheeks, she knew that she couldn't dwell on the cold or the pain she was in.  If she did, it could mean the death of both of them.

After cutting off more fir boughs and placing them on top of the crude travois, Sarah dragged it next to Ra's comatose body.  As gently as she could, she rolled him onto the thick mat of soft needles and placed the dead fish beside his head.  After repositioning his body, she folded the remnants of his wings over him, like a blanket.  While picking up the end of the travois she looked at the ridge, and released a long sigh.  She knew it was going to be a long, agonizing journey.

As she dragged the travois through the woods, every step she made sent almost debilitating pain waves throughout her body, and made her quiver.  Within half an hour, she felt blood trickling down her side.  She looked down and saw that her chest wound had reopened.  Small blood-covered bubbles were slowly seeping out of it.

Stopping under a pine tree, she looked back at the trail that she had left behind.  The long soft end of the branches had smoothed out most of the footprints that she had dug into the unfrozen mud.  Unfortunately, they also left behind a wide path of mud smeared, bent and twisted plants.  Like a badly painted brush stroke across a masterpiece, she knew that come daylight, even a novice spotter could see it.

Needing a rest, she put down the travois and looked at her side.  The blood, mixed with the fluid from the blisters, had formed tiny pink icicles on the singed fur along her side.  Sarah knew that she had to keep moving, in order to keep warm.   Despite feeling the onset of hyperthermia, she knew that Ra was worse off.  His ears, arms and legs were starting to freeze solid.

She couldn't stop shaking as she bit off a hunk of fish.  As she contemplated which path she should take, the throbbing pain and freezing cold had caused her mind to grow hazy.  At the pace they were travelling, it would take a day and a half or maybe even longer to get to the cavern inside the ridge.

Fearing that they wouldn't make it, Sarah gazed south towards the burnt remains of Fort Scott.  Despite her burnt left ear, she managed to hear the faint, relentless caws from a large flock of crows.  She knew that sound could travel a great distance in the crisp night air.  As she listened to the faint caws, she figured that it had to be coming from the large gutted structure.

Sarah stared at the sky above the deserted fort.  Crows are not normally active at night.  I wonder what has got them riled up?  The mercenaries should have retrieved all of their dead by now, along with the bodies of the dead mutants.  There shouldn't be anything left behind for the crows to be fighting over, but if there is, we might be able to use it.

Sarah thought for a moment, then turned and looked at Ra.  Change of plans.  Fort Scott is much closer.  From what I overheard, its walls are still standing.  There must be someplace inside of it where we can hide.  With a slight grin, she added,  Besides, they'll never think about looking for us in there.

Chapter Two

Walls

Shortly after Sarah found a familiar trail, it began to snow.  It was one of the old, intersecting, ATV trails that the mercenaries had used to patrol the area outside of Fort Scott.  Some of the longer trails meandered through the giant swamp that ran along most of the east side of Devil's Claw Ridge.  Others even went around the entire ridge, with cleared, easily secured, sites for them to stop at along the way.

The trail gave Sarah a much easier terrain to drag the travois over, and the sparse vegetation on the dry hump in the middle of the trails didn't overly highlight her tracks.  The light snow helped conceal and filled in her footprints, along with any disturbances the travois left behind.

It was nearly ten A.M. before they finally got to the remnants of Fort Scott.  The last time she saw the fortified research facility, all of its surveillance equipment and manned, rooftop stations, made it look like a high security prison.  Through the links of the three, tall, once electrified fences that encircled the building, she noticed that only one of the ramparts that had jutted out of its four corners was still intact.  The others had large chunks missing.  What was left of the soot covered, concrete ramparts gave the ruins an ancient medieval appearance.

In front of the structure, the large metal hoops that once scanned and monitored everything that went in and out of the front gates, were twisted and covered in grime.  Despite multiple cracks of various sizes, most of the blackened exterior walls of the building appeared to be still intact.  Along the side of the structure, Sarah had no problem picking out the window that she had spent a lot of time looking out of.  Unlike most of the windows, its bars were still attached.

Dragging the travois behind her, Sarah limped along the fence looking for a gap to crawl through.  She couldn't find any.  Her best chance of getting in was through the small man-door next to the main gate.  Glancing at Ra, she mumbled, I hope I didn't drag you here just to freeze to death.

A gust of wind freed a small piece of debris that was caught in the razor wire on top of the outside fence, and deposited it in front of her.  She picked it up and looked at it.  She could tell that it was part of one of the creature's wings.  From the size of the bone and distinctive blueish tinge of the fur, she knew it was from a juvenile dog-like creature she had befriended.  She had known the young, fearless creature's entire family.  Looking back at Ra, she blurted out, Why did they all have to die?

She didn't expect him to respond.  She already knew the answer.  The doctor and Duncan's men would never rest until every single mutant creature was either captured or dead.  She knew what it was like to be lashed to an examining table for weeks at a time, and used as a living incubator to further the doctor's research.  To a wild creature it would have been a fate much worse than death.

Despite the temperature remaining slightly below freezing, it didn't take long for the sun to melt the thin layer of snow that had accumulated on the open ground in front of the ruins.  Fortunately, in the forest, the tall evergreens blocked a lot of its sun's rays from melting the snow on the trails.

Seeing no other way in, Sarah violently shook the man-door next to the gate.  Despite no electricity, the electronic lock wouldn't budge.  She looked at the scattered piles of debris that lined the inside of the fence.  The massive explosions that had blown all kinds of debris out of the building, tore apart sections of the inner most fence, and created holes in the middle one.  The outer fence held firm and acted like a net, catching the debris and depositing it on the ground in front of it.

As she stood in front of the gate, Sarah noticed the sunlight glistening off a few metal objects amongst the strewn debris.  They were eating utensils from the cafeteria.  Sarah slowly got to her knees, and used a stick to wiggle a spoon and a butter knife close enough to the fence for her fingers to reach.  They were cheaply made from thin, pressed stainless steel, but had served their purpose.

Sarah rubbed them against the fur on her right leg to polish them the best she could.  Using the spoon as a light deflector, and the butter knife as a mirror, she peered along the thick bar that stuck out of the gate's lock and into the adjacent fencepost.  Through the narrow gap between the bar and the lock, she saw that the bar was secured in place by a square pin resting in a notch cut into the top of it.

Without electricity to control the gears and cam that held the pin in place, its mechanics seemed fairly simple.  With her small finger, she wiggled the bar and saw that the pin moved freely up and down with it.  All I need to do is find a way to lift the pin, and hold it up long enough to slide the bar inside the lock.

She stared into the mechanism until she formed, what she hoped was an easy solution.  After retrieving a fork, she bent the tip of the outside tine ninety degrees.  It was just enough to slide it inside the gap beside the bar, plus hopefully dig its way into the notch, to enable her to lift the pin.  The space between the lock and the post was barely a finger and a half wide.  After bending the other tines sideways toward the specially bent tine for added support, she wiggled the tines of the fork into the gap along the side of the bar.

After bending and rebending the fork handle to force the tines inside, she finally felt the bent tine touch the pin.  After wiggling the fork a bit, she felt the tip of the bent tine slip into the notch beneath the pin.  As she tried to pry the pin out of the notch, she could feel the tension of a spring holding it in place.

Sarah looked over at Ra, closed her eyes and lowered her head.  After a minute she shook her head, and began to twist and bend the thin blade of the butter knife.  Then she forced the tip of its blade along the top of the bar until it touched the pin.  As she rocked the fork up and down, she tried to apply enough pressure to the knife to keep the pin from dropping back down.  After fifteen minutes of flustrating and tedious work, she could barely feel her fingers.   When the tip of the mangled butter knife finally slid under the pin, preventing it from dropping back into the notch, she gave out a sigh of relief.  The bar was finally freed.

While holding the knife in place, she carefully pulled out the fork.  The knife acted like a wedge and added extra pressure onto the bar.  That made it difficult for Sarah to slide the bar inside the lock.  The gap between the door and post only allowed her to use her finger tips, and her claws kept getting in the way.  After freeing the door, she had barely pulled the travois through it before a sudden wind slammed the man door shut.  Glancing back, she was relieved to see the bent, butter knife still jammed inside the lock.

The man doors of the two interior fences were ajar, but the door to the building was shut.  After setting the travois down, Sarah checked the main door, before she went around the building searching for another a way inside.  Both fire exits and the service door were shut and had no exterior handles to even pull on.  The only breach in the thick concrete wall, was the hole that the guards had chiselled into it, in an attempt to free the men that had been trapped inside.

As she dragged Ra through the narrow hole, a faint but inviting smell drifted by her.  She sniffed the air and then shook her head.  She had to get the alluring odour out of her mind.  She had more important matters to attend to.  Inside the abandoned lab, the hard, fire retardant foam the guards tried to plug the opening with, was everywhere.  Except for a gap between the hole and the remains of the lab's open doorway, the majority of the lab was plastered in a thick layer of foam.

Sarah looked around and noticed that the long, wide metal counter that was mounted to the wall was completely covered in a thick layer of foam.  Recalling the times she had been taken to the lab for various tests, she remembered the thick vinyl curtains that hung along the front of it.

Sarah looked at Ra, then picked a spot in the counter that was slightly off centre.  Using her claws she carefully cut through the thick layer of foam, and the tough, vinyl curtain.  As she came to one of the posts, she began her downward cut.  After cutting out a large square chunk of foam, she placed it to the side to use as a door.  Sarah smiled as she poked her head inside, and said, I think we found our new shelter.

The shelves under the table had been used to store supplies, glassware and various spare parts.  As Sarah cleared stuff from the shelves, she found a stack of neatly folded lab coats.  Now these could come in handy.

Sarah crawled deeper inside, and removed all the equipment, shelves and their support brackets.  The robust counter was over a metre wide and almost four metres long.  It was designed to support various pieces of diagnostic equipment, while leaving ample room in front of them for the technicians to prepare the samples.

Once outside, she quickly got to work cutting and prying off large chunks of foam from the floor and walls.  Then she neatly arranged them inside the newly constructed shelter to make an insulated bed for Ra.

Next, Sarah wrapped two lab coats around Ra, before she started to drag, twist, push and shove him feet first through the opening.  Once inside of the small, narrow shelter, Sarah did her best to tug, jostle, and lift his torso and limbs until his feet touched the foam insulation at the far end.  Afterwards, she shifted the insulation under Ra and adjusted the lab coats.  With his head clear of the entrance, Sarah could freely come and go without adversely bothering him.

After placing the block of foam that she had cut out back in place, Sarah found that there was still enough light coming in through the edges of the foam door to see inside.  She wiggled next to Ra and rearranged what was left of his wings to make him as comfortable as she could.  He never made a sound.

Sarah couldn't detect any chest movement.  As Ra's still body rested on top of the bed of insulation, Sarah used three lab coats as blankets to tuck him in.  After wrapping a piece of foam inside another lab coat, she placed it under his head like a pillow.

Sarah wasn't sure if he was still alive, but needed to believe he was.  She pulled the three remaining lab coats towards her and carefully put them on, one at a time.  While snuggled next to each other, despite Ra's cold body, it didn't take very long for Sarah to doze off.

Awoken from her slumber by a loud chorus of cawing crows, Sarah pushed out the block of foam and stuck her head out of the opening.  She got another whiff of the same intoxicating scent that she