"Phylla. You flung me here." That rat-girl didn't sound too charmed about it. But Phylla was usually in a foul mood.

"Doll Tearsheet-at your service."

"Not right now, Doll." Fat Falstaff sounded more cheerful already.

"Shut up, Fal. I know you're here. Anybody else?" Chip hoped for a human voice…

"Nym."

"Pistol."

"Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel."

Despite the name, that was a rat too. "Doc," as everybody else called him, was the platoon's medic.

Rats. Rats and bats. Chip felt for his torch again. Maybe he could see her. Then a bat voice said, "Try the other side of you, indade."

The bat-Irish idiom, as always, grated on Chip's nerves. "Why can't you just say `indeed,' dammit?" he muttered, as he began feeling around. "Stupid friggin' affectation…"

The voice, still as heavily accented as ever, clarified the location: "About a foot from your knee."

He felt there. Encountered the hard roundness of his torch. Felt for the switch. On. There was no light, but he'd done enough globe changes in total darkness to manage to fix that, a lot faster than soldiers had once been able to fieldstrip their rifles. The light stabbed out through the hanging dust.

No Maggots. In the narrow uncaved-in section of what had been their bunker, a handful of rats and a cluster of bats pressed against the sandbag-wall. There were no other human survivors with them. Already one plump rat was scrabbling aside pieces of debris.

"Gotta find my pack. It's got my grog in it!" hissed fat Fal, digging frantically. "Damn near a full bottle too."

Two of the other rats hastily got up to join him.

"Oh, aye, that's right," said a bat sarcastically. O'Niel, that was. "Bring the rest of the roof down on all of us in your mad search for the daemon drink."

Fal, the paunchy rat, simply grubbed harder. "It's dig or die sober," he said with grim humor. "Besides, I might find someone. Maybe a grateful bit of tail."