The Exterminator is Late
by Sarah Cole
The Late Bob Essex
The Program summons our agents directly to the local morgue to meet Coroner Lucy Fisher, a Friendly who’s concerned about the body on her slab.
The corpse of Robert 'Bob' Essex is a mess. An exterminator by trade, he was found dead in a back alley, not far from his van.
Lucy believes he consumed a large quantity of rat poison, but that isn’t the reason she called this in. The more alarming element is that much of the flesh on his arms seems to have been gnawed away before he died – and Lucy thinks the injuries are from human teeth.
Further damage appears to have been done by rats in the alleyway post-mortem, who tucked into his abdomen before themselves dying of the poisoned flesh.
If prompted, Lucy can investigate Bob’s damaged stomach contents more thoroughly and (after removing an entire rat that had burrowed in there), finds that he devoured at least some of his own flesh himself.
Burns House
Bob’s final job was two days ago at Burns House – a detached, older, three-storey apartment building about a mile across the city from where his body was found.
Agents can find Bob’s last appointment by digging through paperwork in his work van, which the police have possession of. They can also discover traces of Bob’s blood in the back of the van (where someone has failed to clean it up thoroughly), and infer that he died elsewhere – his own van being used to dump his body in the alley.
The residents of Burns House have been hearing what they believe to be rats in the walls following remodelling work a few months ago, and hired Bob in to deal with the problem themselves when their landlord (once again) told them that there was no sign of rats and accused them of colluding to scare off prospective tenants and force the rents down.
The current occupants of Burns House are:
- Apartment #1 (ground floor): Martha Norbury – retiree, half-deaf
- Apartment #2 (ground floor): Sam Logan – ~40, labourer
- Apartment #3 (first floor): [vacant]
- Apartment #4 (first floor): Charlie & Anna Knight (restaurant manager & copywriter), plus their 2-year-old daughter, Rose
- Apartment #5 (second floor): Emily Winters, illustrator
- Apartment #6 (second floor): [vacant]
Emily moved in only a couple of months ago, and doesn’t seem to hear the reported rodents as much as the other residents. She is babysitting Rose today while the Knights are at work.
Martha is elderly and very hard of hearing, but claims to hear rats in the walls nonetheless.
Agents do not hear the rats unless they fail SAN rolls.
All residents claim that the noise has been getting worse, but that they haven’t managed to catch a single rat in their own traps. They also haven’t clearly seen any rats – just shadows darting around corners.
All residents except Emily seem to be exhausted – unable to sleep at night due to the noise – and struggling to function.
Residents admit to hiring Bob, but seem nervous and generally vague on the details. They claim that he did a lot of poking around, and even clambered into the wall cavities for a while, but say that his extermination efforts don’t seem to have been successful. They all say that he left the building straight after his appointment, no problems.
They all say that a little too similarly, as if they’ve all agreed to stick to a story, and agents may notice this. Agents can also find traces of blood in-between the floor tiles of the ground-floor lobby, and fresh paint on the landing where a hatch access to the wall cavities is located. Some of Bob’s equipment is poorly hidden in the janitor’s storage closet.
If agents question the residents about whether Bob died in Burns House, they crack with only moderate pressure – they’re not criminal masterminds. From their perspective, Bob seemed perfectly normal until he went into the wall cavities. When he emerged from them, though, he was bloodied and screaming, gnawing at his own arms. He dropped dead on the landing before anyone could even think to help him, and the residents panicked. They decided to clean up and move the body, rather than have the police investigate; Sam’s immigration status is 'iffy', Martha was scared the building might be declared unsafe, and Charlie Knight has a history with the police. Emily was out during these events.
Residents are resistant to any overt suggestion of burning down the building, but it’ll be tricky anyway – there’s a fire station just at the end of the street, so any arson attempts need to be extremely efficient.
At an appropriate moment, Emily realises that Rose is missing, and that an access hatch on the landing of the top floor is open. She begs the agents to help them find the child, threatens to call the police if they won’t, and goes with them into the walls unless persuaded not to.
The Rats
The wall cavities are initially narrow enough that agents must travel single-file. Dusty and dark, there are bloody smears from Bob but they’re otherwise fairly devoid of life.
There are no signs of a mass rat infestation, although the sound of rats is now more audible; it somehow sounds like the rats are still in the walls, but that’s where the agents now are, making the source unidentifiable. Agents may think they see rats run past their feet, but it’s only ever odd shadows.
The wall cavities soon widen, and it quickly becomes apparent that this warren of passageways cannot be wholly located within Burns House. Unless very lucky, agents get turned around and struggle to keep track of their route.
Agents occasionally come across cracks or spy-holes in the walls; looking through them, they glimpse rooms from other times and places, but cannot get the attention of any occupants. If unlucky, they see themselves from earlier, questioning the residents, or Sam Logan and Charlie Knight crying while wrestling Bob’s mangled body onto a piece of old linoleum in order to drag him to his van.
Agents feel watched, like rats in a maze, but cannot identify any observers in the darkness of the now-distant ceiling above them. As time goes on the feeling increases. Agents may find that they grow hungry, and that their skin and teeth itch.
In time, agents find a long staircase leading upwards – despite starting on the top floor of Burns House. Rose can be heard laughing upstairs.
Agents who climb the stairs find an old wooden door ajar at its top, with light on the other side.
Exiting through the door is extremely bad for the agents’ sanity.
On the other side of the door a vast, ancient estate sits in bright sunlight – true sunlight, for the agents find themselves suddenly uncertain that they’ve seen it before. They recall the skies they’ve seen, yet they feel as if they’ve emerged from the bowels of the earth into a place more beautiful and terrible than they could have imagined.
A couple of figures watch the emerging agents with curiosity and wariness. They’re humanoid, perhaps, but clearly not human. They have too many teeth, are much taller, and merely looking at them makes the agents feel lesser – stupid and docile, like cattle blundering towards an abattoir, unaware of their intended fate.
Rose plays happily close by the door, bonking a human skull that lies on the ground with another bone like it’s a drum, and laughing at the hollow noise it makes. The ground is littered with human bones.
After a minute, the figures move to shepherd the agents and child back through the doorway. If successful, they lock the door shut behind the agents. If the agents resist, the figures may decide to attack instead.
Fighting the figures is almost a futile exercise – they’re effortlessly strong, and seem to be able to move across large distances in a moment, as if teleporting. Shooting them or similar does hurt them, but more can figures appear to assist. If the figures fight back, they simply grab at agents to pick them up and try to devour them alive, making haunting noises of delicious ecstasy as they do so.
Fleeing back through the wall cavities, agents pass by an open hatch and catch a glimpse of the impossible – the city, the world is there, but the stars in the sky are merely viewing windows in the walls of the vast cave that contains the humanity below. The agents’ minds skitter away from the truth, that they are but rats to some greater race of beings.
The Walls
Eventually escaping back into Burns House with no further challenges, the agents – if still sane – can only do so much about the situation. Blocking up the wall cavities or destroying Burns House may close this route to Elsewhere and protect the locals, but they can do little else beyond endure the truth they’ve uncovered.
Credits
The Exterminator Is Late was written by Sarah Cole for the 2025 Shotgun Scenario contest.
Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tRnCcBD8OgfeHvnfDk17fBamJ1O-UriMKxkgphTJ120/edit