The city had never been so quiet.

You never realize how much noise you're used to until it's suddenly gone. It's strange to hear your own heartbeat, and you strain to hear something else, anything familiar and comforting. People could go mad in that sort of silence.

The trolley lurched and creaked, but it held together well enough despite the scary state of its gears. With a bit of effort by Ethan and Liam, the old trolley locked in at the first emergency landing, where an unused door was set into the side of the wall. There was no railing, very little standing room, and not much between the trolley doors and a long fall.

Ethan caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye.

[b]BAM![/b]

Something terrible slammed into the roof; the trolley dropped a few jolted inches with the impact. The black-scaled beast stood unscathed from the dent it had made, and it scraped into the metal with its claws; it raised its ugly head and peered at Ethan with murderous, unsettlingly human eyes. With a fangy muzzled grin, it whipped the air with a scorpion's tail and tore open the roof of the trolley like it was paper.

Another one -- dark and fanged, with antlers and spikes and claws like knives -- crawled headfirst down the cables with the ease of a terrible monkey. It paused, and it took hold of Katrina's wire and gave it a powerful yank.

A noise was picking up at the top of the wall. Sounded like hissing and chattering, scratching and cackling.

The first of them skittered down the mirrored inside of the wall -- some of them fell, with wings tilted back -- some of them suckered their way down, slick as frogs. But the sight to be seen was at the top of the wall, where they all crowded up to look over the edge at the city, chittering and whistling and howling and snarling. They were a dark, monstrous mass of matted fur and dark feathers, stony scales, razored horn, putrid slime and dripping fangs -- the stuff of nightmares, terrors brought to life. Occasionally, something almost-human and heartless flashed among the teeming army, and somehow that was the most frightening of all.

Periphery was theirs for the taking.