Speaker 1: Warden Mike Kettinger's log. Of course, it was not really over.
I managed to catch our school principal Alvin and stop
him from falling face first onto the roof and break
his nose all over again. The man was exhausted, and
how he found the stamina to keep going up there,
I will never know. Then again, everyone down here tapped
into reserves of energy and experience. I never thought possible.
What we had was a breather. We had a moment
to start collecting the bodies and burning them in the furnaces.
Then we had to start searching every house, every building
in the entire ADMIN building, not just searching the rooms,
but crawling into the air ducts and looking behind the walls.
We found seventy five more of the creatures lurking there,
so the battles were not entirely over. We were finally
able to make a report to the surface, and we
sent a couple of the bodies that had turned into
zombe or demons or whatever the holy fuck they were
for study. The surface in turn also sent down doctors,
and we rebuilt a hospital, and people like Jen were
able to actually get proper medical attention. I'm happy to say,
I was finally able to talk to Jen and she
will be awarded for what she did. We don't usually
have awards down here, but I think we need to
create one just for the job she did taking charge
and then one on one battling one of those things.
She had several broken ribs and one of them poked
into a lung, but we were able to get her
fixed and she's already trying to get back to work.
We lost a lot. We are still counting the losses.
It started with our entire team of trustees, who were
all either outright killed or turned in the initial mine incident.
Then it took us far too long before we realized
the creatures were breaking into the cells and turning them
into creatures like themselves. We lost hundreds, perhaps thousands, So
now we are taking time to mourn. It's going to
take a long time. We have gotten permission from the
surface to continue to pause our mining operations. Right now,
our prisoners and the people who live here are rebuilding.
There is much damage to the homes, the school, the businesses,
and of course the administration building. The new gym is
already coming along nicely. Eventually the prisoners will go back
to their cells, and the surface tells us there is
definitely no shortage of replacement prisoners. I'm not looking forward
to dealing with that, but it is a bridge across
once I come to it. As for Dalton, well, he
and I have talked many times. The man who struck
fear into so much of the world came to the
defense of his prison. It is hard for me to understand,
and I still don't trust him. Our last conversation when
something like what do we do with you now, Dalton?
And how do I know you've actually changed? I want
to go back to my cell, Mike. It is my home,
and the silence is good for me. It shuts down
the voices in my head. And you can never trust me, Mike.
I cannot say that the things that compelled me to
do what I did on the surface are entirely gone.
I may have learned to accept this new reality here
and even appreciate it, I cannot say that it will
last forever. So there you go. The man admits he
may not be reformed. He will go back to his
cell and resume his isolated life, except that we made
a deal. From time to time, Dalton has permission to
meet with me. We're going to start playing chess. I'm
quite sure he will beat me quite handily. But we
have nothing but time down here, so I hope to
get better. One thing Dalton, red Jen and myself agreed
upon is the weird far below the surface. We are
well below what it's known to those above. There might
be other things down here, maybe things we cannot fathom.
The fact is we never saw what was originally in
that new tunnel. We just sealed it off and continued
to seal it off. Now, therefore, we don't really know
what to look for. We may need Dalton again, we
may all need to pull together again. In the meantime,
we mourn and we heal, and we try to prepare
for the new people, the changes, and the things to come.
To many, this may not be much of a life
down here, but to us, this is the entire world
and it's ours. Signing off from the Hive, this is
Worden Mike Kettinger, Hello, fans and listeners to When the
Night Comes Out. This is Ali James, your narrator and producer,
and first Brian and I would love to thank you
for coming along with us as we continue to develop
What When the Night Comes Out is Brian is writing
away right now, and we are in constant discussion over
what we are going to tell next. One thing Brian
and I discussed from the beginning was the idea of
doing a single story told over a long period of time.
There have been attempts to start things, but only when
Brian dug out his half finished novel The Hive, did
we think we had something. Brian discovered the story had
begun in a serialized format, but he no longer remembered
for what platform he had been writing. He immediately reached
out to me and said, we might have something here.
Now we have reached the end of The Hive and
have left the ending open to the possibility of revisiting
our friends far Beneath the Ground and Hive City. However,
we are going to take a break from being beneath
the Ground, but keep the long form content coming coming
Very soon. We will be providing you with the remastered
version of When the Night Comes Out, the original audiobook.
Then we have the thriller novella Brian wrote called among Friends.
These will be the Palate Cleansers. Before we tell another
of his novels, This time it will be his terrifying
supernatural thriller text. Thank you again. Please check out our
websites and links. Brian has lots of books out there,
and I am always available to help with your voiceover needs.
Also keep liking, subscribing, and sharing our podcast episodes. We
rely on you to help spread the word. Thanks and
we will be back in a couple of weeks with
When the Night Comes Out the audiobook remastered. Stay safe,
especially when The Night Comes Out.