The alarms overhead blared their announcement: Defcon 3: Defcon 3, to which I had no choice but to believe its noises as I had programmed them myself. I rounded the corner hot, another gaggle of beasts at my heels, blood of my coworkers dripping from their mangled maws. As I headed a left through another corridor I saw sudden salvation left on the ground: a standard issue Septum-B sidearm. I had never been much of a shot in the training courses, but today? Well today my life depended on it.

I scooped it up on my pass, hearing another roar of wet snarls at my heels sending my body moving forward faster than I'd thought possible. My destination was just within reach, the blast doors to my office, jammed nearly closed (once again installed by yours truly). With any luck they'd hold long enough for the ODS Strike Team to arrive.

With a final desperate movement I rocketed myself through the thin gap between the two hunks of metal, the sounds of chaos left behind on the other side of the doors. The beasts now opposite of me roared and clawed, piled their bodies upon one another in frustration heaving their combined weight like a battering ram. But the doors barely flinched at the initial onslaught. If the experiments could read then they'd see my name lasered into the steel: Peabody Designs: Love it or Leave it. Too bad we hadn't gotten to the literacy portion of the testing before this mess.

I looked down to my stolen prize, the Septum-B handgun. Not a design of mine, but I knew...or rather had known the man who had crafted them up. Now when I aimed the sights down to the crack in the door it was solely for curiosities sake, whats science without a proper test? But when I pulled the trigger. When the bullet found that stream of air and rode it down, down through the head of one of the beasts long down the hallway, well I just had to try a second time. For a proper conclusion to be drawn the experiment must be repeatable, no?

And the second result proved to be the same as the first, another head exploding into a purpley goop to a roar of displeasure from the beasts. The conclusion being: Maybe Dr. Sherman Peabody wasn't such a bad shot after all.

Maybe all was not lost. Maybe the facility could be saved, and it could be days before ODS arrived after all. The facility could be saved, and all the less likely, by me. My old heart jumped in my chest at the thought, then my fingers twitched on the trigger letting off another round, another head gone. One by one, shot by shot the bodies piled. I couldn't, literally couldn't miss. Soon I was stepping out into the hall, pushing them back as if I was taking the lead score in a shooting gallery.

The beasts cluttered the hallway and up to the ceiling to get a taste at me, their gaping jaws dripping with saliva at the thought. Some were so desperate they pushed their way through others entirely. Initially my hands shook; my ears rang after shot. But before long I was a natural.

When one gun clicked empty another was miraculous at my feet, tethered to another body. If I didn't know any better I'd say I was giddy, excited to be doing so well and almost laughing at my success. Before long I had made my way back through the corridor from which I came to the start of it all Unit A: Testing.

The smell. The blood. The bodies of my colleagues stacked like sabdbags. Broken tubes and metal doors torn like paper (not my design). Then came the horde, the horde of demonic creatures tearing from their binds in the lab and pouring out towards me in a pile. There was more than I thought. More than ODS could handle, and certainly too much for one man. They were...multiplying it seemed.

With a click I pulled the magazine from the gun. One round left. I checked the floor to no avail. It seemed my luck had run dry. With one round left I felt good as to where it belonged. Felt lucky that I had done myself so proud, so confidently torn through the crowds. My name was engraved into this place and when they came, well they'd know who had laid waste to the many.

Dr. Sherman S. Peabody, Love it or Leave it. Luckily, my last shot wouldn't need skill to take.