It took a couple days for Thomas to work up the courage to look up the information on the Deadhand system, and after reading the first couple pages felt an overwhelming depression begin to set in. He needed a beer, then several more before he just started having the MRD print off bottles of liquor.


    Mutagenic weapons, designed to induce genetic mutations across multiple generations. That probably explained the creatures he encountered the night he arrived in this hell.


    Something called project stoplight, described as an area denial weapon. Just fancy wording for a weapon that released bursts of deadly radiation.


    More biological and chemical weapons, some to cause plant growth increase exponentially, others to poison everything for miles around its deployment. Some of these weapons apparently were designed to work together to create hellscapes that even the Devil would say crossed a line.


    Thomas raged within the shelter, with anger and sorrow in his heart, and liquor burning in his veins. Destroying furniture and equipment in equal measure until, bruised and bloody, he collapsed face first onto a ruined couch like a puppet with its strings cut.


    NIghtmares plagued his sleep, and when he finally began to claw his way to wakefulness, all Thomas found was pain and terrible smells. The side of the couch he lay on, and the floor next to it, was coated in gelled vomit, his bladder had let go while he slept and it tasted like he had been licking the floor.


    Slowly and painfully, squinting against the now seemingly overly bright lights in the shelter, Thomas forced himself into a seated position. He was reminded of his university days before the fragmented memories of the night before came crashing back. Feeling sick all over again, he struggled upright using some of the nearby furniture for assistance and staggered to the nearest lavatory.


    After another thorough purging of his overindulgence the night before, Thomas sat in the showers letting the steaming water pour over him as he gathered his thoughts.


    Fact one, the world had ended, and its ending likely resulted in his mishap with the teleporter.


    Fact two, the government had decided to help make an already terrible situation nightmarish by releasing an arsenal of terrible weapons.


    Thomas wondered, was anyone still alive? There had to have been some survivors, even the worst predictions of a global nuclear war would have some survivors. “I need to see if anyone survived this madness.” he said aloud, his words echoing off the walls in the shower room.


    The shower had done him some good Thomas thought, as he walked out of the lavatory completely naked. HIs clothes were far too ruined for him to put on, and so he went and printed off some new clothes, and some greasy food to settle his stomach.


    Sitting at the control console, now dressed and slightly less hung over, Thomas once again began checking through the systems available to this shelter. He found controls for a short ranged radio, but it was showing an error with the antenna. Thomas also found the controls for the security camera system, also listing connection errors to some cameras.


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    Turning the camera system on, he saw the wall of monitors attached to the wall begin to flicker to life. He now regretted his actions the previous night as several of the monitors showed a spider webbing of cracks across the display. It looked like at least three of the external cameras still worked. One screen showed a view of the street outside, another had a large, dark eye staring into it, slowly blinking, while the third appeared to be partially covered with vegetation.


    Wait, what was that, Thomas thought as his eyes shot back to the second monitor in time to see a leathery face pull back from the camera and cock its head. It looked kind of like the creature he encountered when he arrived, but in the light of day he could make out more detail, especially as it was extremely close to the camera.


    Thomas noticed that the gray, leathery skin was clothing. Crudely made, but definitely some kind of leather. He initially took the creature to be rat-like, but the head was too wide and the snout too short.


    Using the camera control knobs, he began making adjustments trying to get the image to pull back for a wider angle. It looked like the creature noticed something because it suddenly jumped back and began brandishing what appeared to be a wooden spear at the camera. Thomas continued to make adjustments so that he could get a better view before the creature ran off, and with it now being further from the camera and standing in full view, a sudden thought hit him. Definitely not a rat, he thought as he stared at the screen, A raccoon.


    Well, a mutated and likely irradiated raccoon. What little fur he could see on the head was matted and dirty, and its tail was not the bushy kind of tail he remembered seen in pictures and videos of raccoons, but shorter and, well, stumpier looking.


    His parents were, in his honest opinion, unrepentant nerds. Hence his unfortunate middle name. He grew up surrounded by comics, action figures and media from all facets of nerd culture, and this creature reminded him of one of the characters from the comics his parents had in their vast collection.


    The creature, obviously weary of the camera, began to shift to the right, slowly moving toward the edge of the camera''s vision range. Thomas considered using the controls to follow it, but was afraid that he would either spook it enough to flee or try to damage the camera. While he didn''t mind if it fled, he did not want it to damage the camera and remove one of his views of the outside.


    This particular camera appeared to be on the roof of the old mess hall, he could see the torn open section of roof to the left, and if he looked carefully, he could see the door that led to the shelter''s entrance. Wait a minute, Thomas thought with a sudden tingle of fear down his spine. Was this the same one that had attacked him? Had it tracked him here, and why?


    Leaving the camera running, Thomas got up and went to the MRD lab, returning fifteen minutes later with a shotgun and a box of ammunition. Honestly, he thought he should have had one printed up as soon as he found the lab, but exhaustion and confusion at his situation had rattled his mind.


    Sitting back at the control station, he noticed the screen was darker, like something had been smeared over the cover of the camera. He could make out bits of the outside from spots that had been missed or thinly applied, but as his heart thundered in his chest, he wondered where it went, and more importantly, could it get inside.


    Thomas rushed back into the lab, he had been underestimating the threat of this new world he found himself in. He needed to prepare, and as he did so, he missed a furred and eerily human-like hand slap something over another external camera.