Alex Weller’s Reviews > Night Shift > Status Update

Finished "Graveyard Shift"! The rest of the crew is wondering what's taking Hall and Warwick so long, so Brochu suggests somebody go down there. Wisconsky refuses, and a coworker named Brogan selects a group of people to go with him. After the lights are collected, the group makes their way down there. Boy, are they gonna be in for a surprise. Overall, good story, though a little confusing at times.

Hall, Wisconsky, and Warwick go down to the sub-cellar, though Wisconsky runs away once they reach the end of the mill. Hall forces Warwick to continue on, where they find skeletal remains and giant blind, mutated rats with no legs. When they find the rat queen, Hall forces Warwick off the ledge to be eaten by the queen. Hall tries to run back to the stairs but gets eaten by rats and bats himself. Holy shit!

Hall and Wisconsky show Warwick the entrance to the sub-basement. Warwick doesn't care about the rats until Hall says he's gonna go to the town commissioner to have the place shut down. Warwick fires Hall, then changes his mind and decides to send him and Wisconsky down there to check out the rat issue. Hall agrees, but has Warwick go with them to represent the management. Okay. Let's see where this goes.

It's the third shift now. During a smoke break, Hall notices not many rats have been seen that night. Suddenly, a massive bat flies past them. Wisconsky's scream is heard by Warwick, but Hall dismisses it as having barked his shin. He then shows Wisconsky a wooden square in the floor that he found, leading to another level below the basement. Is that where all the rats went? This doesn't sound good.

It's the second cleaning shift, and Hall and Wisconsky are on hosing duty. One of the cleaning crew members, Carmichael, gets bitten by a large rat hiding in a heap of garbage and demands compensation. After the rats are evicted from the heap by Hall's hose, another crew member, Cy Ippeston, decides he's had enough of the rats and decides to quit. Warwick doesn't seem to care much about the giant rats. Weird.

It's the end of the first cleaning shift. The workers, usually rowdy after a hard day at work, are all silent as they leave the mill, possibly from seeing huge rats down there. Wisconsky drives Hall home, where Hall wonders what it is about Warwick that influenced him to take the cleaning job. When Hall goes to bed after a shower, he dreams about rats. Can't say I blame him, after an experience like that.

During lunch, a coworker named Charlie Brochu tells the crew that another coworker, Ray Upson, got sent home by Warwick after being bitten by a rat the size of a cat. Yikes. How big even are all these rats? I think they're gonna be the main antagonists of the story.

Hall and Wisconsky already hate the cleaning job. The basement smells horrible, there's mold and fungi everywhere, and the rats are even bigger than the ones Hall is used to. In fact, the rats don't seem to be afraid of humans, and one even lunged at Hall's foot and started attacking his shoe. As Wisconsky bitches about the work, Hall feels a sort of connection between Warwick and the rats. Interesting.

It's the beginning of Fourth of July week. Hall and his coworker, Harry Wisconsky, have been assigned to the half of the crew that gonna be collecting garbage and sorting it so it can be hauled out at the end of the week. The other half of the crew have been assigned to hosing the area. Hall gets the feeling something bad will happen, but he's okay with it because he hates Warwick. Here we go!

Just started reading the second story, "Graveyard Shift". Hall is a drifter working the graveyard shift at a mill infested with rats, who he likes to chuck cans at when he's not working. The foreman, Warwick, shows up to offer Hall a job cleaning the basement over the Fourth of July week, which will give Hall a much higher paycheck. Hall accepts the job. Let's see how this goes.