The Warden of Shelter No. 4

Description

When the Front Assembly comes off its mount, the north wall of Bunker B tears itself out. It's the shelter's Civil Defence warden and everyone who sheltered with him, grown into one mass on four legs: his body in the middle, still in his helmet and holding his torch, three more heads on necks round it, arms everywhere, and the frozen faces of the rest across it. Until then it sleeps in an alcove of the people fused into the wall.

Getting there

Shelter No. 4 has no power. The two diesel generators are in the radio room; their fuel is wedged in the back of one of the shelter's lockers, a different one in every world, and the residents hiding in those lockers burst out at you. Fill both generators and pull each one's lever: twenty seconds of spinning up, loud enough that what's in the ducts comes out of the vents twice. Hold the room.

With both running, the lights come on section by section, the radio switches from the evacuation notice to Control's emergency broadcast, and Bunker B's blast door opens. Inside is one great hall two storeys high: a gallery along the top, stairs down at either end into the pit, cover heaped across it, a channel of black water, the earthing plates under the gallery, and at the far end the dais with the Front Assembly on its mount. The special forces squad holds it: the sniper up on the gallery, operators and a breacher about the pit, and their Squad Leader by the dais.

How it fights

• Slam: it rears up, bellows and charges, and comes down where you were. If it charges into a wall instead, it's dazed for two seconds and takes half as much again from everything.
• Mouths: all four heads bite, one after another, sweeping round in front of it.
• Grabs: it slams its hands into the floor and arms burst out of the walls round you: cracks first, then a hand that grabs and holds you while the Flesh gets into you.
• At half health it floods the pit: blood up to the knee with the Flesh in it. Get out of it, up the stairs to the gallery.

The overload switch

Control's emergency broadcast tells you what to do. The overload switch is on the gallery over the earthing plates. Get the Warden onto the plates while both generators run, and throw it: every volt in the shelter goes through it, 100 damage once, and it stands there shaking for three seconds. Thrown with no Warden on the plates, it only fries the infected down there.

How to survive it

• Clear the squad first if you can. The sniper's laser on the gallery gives it away.
• Bait the Slam into a wall, then hit it while it's dazed.
• Watch the walls for cracks: that's where an arm is about to come through.
• When the pit floods, go up. The overload switch is up there anyway.
• Bloom Serum or the hazmat suit help with the Flesh its hands put into you.

Afterwards

Kill it and the Watcher leaves you a locker on the dais with a Civil Defence Compass in it, its needle set on Rosemont wherever you are, and some bread, torches and a golden apple.

Field notes

A Warden's Log signed J. Pike was found in the Bloom, on the island where a Shelter No. 4 ended up: "Day 9. The whole shelter tipped. I looked out of the door and there was no street. There was green all the way down, and something at the bottom of it, opening and shutting." Read the whole log.

It drops two Bloom Serums, three Flower Ash Bombs, four to six Tainted Meat and two Flashbangs.

Turned

Since 1.51.0 the parasite can take it, which it never could before. Turned, it's the Warden, Unhoused: its four heads up on long necks, a mouth down the whole front of the mound, six arms out of its sides.