Angie Truscott (Elizabeth Sellars) wakes up from a nightmare. She heard screaming in her sleep. Unsure as to what is happening she begins to hear scratching noises from under the floor. She turns on a loud record to drown out the sound. Shortly after that her husband Roger (Anthony Bate) arrives home. Angie tries to explain to her husband but he is oblivious to her concern. He tries to comfort her, but because he doesn’t believe her, it’s not having any calming effect on her. She tells him she believes there is a rat under the floorboards.
When the scratching noises begin again Roger finally understands that Angie’s fear has a basis in reality. On the radio is a program called Barty’s Party. Barty Wills (Colin Bell) is a DJ. Barty tells the audience that they have been receiving reports about rats migrating. The reports are being backed up by, an expert named James Dodge (Denis Cleary), the Automobile Association, and a police report that there are swarms of rats moving in the area where Angie and Roger live. The sounds of rats under the floor gets louder and more numerous.
Eventually Roger becomes just as scared as Angie and begins taking out his fear on his wife by berating her. Normally Roger is just condescending but now he is openly verbally abusive. Angie understands that the rats have evolved and are now intelligent. Angie calls the Barty Wills show to try to talk to the expert, James Dodge but he has already left the studio. Barty believes that Angie is just afraid of nothing and, at first, uses her as the butt of his jokes. After some conversation Barty realizes that what Angie is telling him is true, Angie and Roger are being besieged by intelligent, malicious, giant rats. Then the power goes out.
There seems to be a running theme in many of the stories in “Beast”. The main focus or the main object of them is a bully of some kind. Here it is Roger. At times he appears to be the protective husband but just under the surface he is dismissive and bossy, at least until his fear paralyzes him. At that point you see Angie become the stronger of the two. She ends up being the clear thinker and Roger is the babbling baby too scared to move. Unfortunately, by then it is too late to escape their fate.