Night Terrors Pt. 2
To give the two police officers and the one criminal credit, they nearly made it out of the port.
Nearly.
There were indeed two ways out. They'd come in front the tollbooth that went off Carpenter Road. Said tollbooth was currently sitting about one hundred feet behind them. The gate was obviously up, but nobody was in the booth. The booth had a light on, but there was the little matter of the Calcinites.
There were about a dozen of the fucks behind the Charger. At least two of them had their claws out. As they walked closer and closer to the squad car, the gloves of at least three of them exploded; and out popped claws, with their queer and hard shine.
Rita yelled at Kelso to back up. And he backed up. Hard. To Rita it was like being yanked by a fishing line. There was the shriek of tires on asphalt and Calcinites in front of the car immediately started shrieking.
"Don't hit them!" Gibbs yelled, but Kelso ignored him. He went straight back and Rita didn't think.
There was an immense crushing sound as of the alien's got run down. Rita thought she heard its helmet crack open with a colorful pop that made her smile in spite of how scared she was.
Then the car ran into something solid that did not move, and stopped with a shuddering jerk that knocked Gibbs to the floor (they'd forgotten to belt him in, truth be told).
"Shit!" he cried out. His voice was high-pitched, like a girl's.
Kelso didn't hear him. The man's wide eyes were fixed on the rear-view mirror. A Calcinite had stopped the car, seemingly all by itself. It's large, padded gloves were pressing down on the trunk of the car. It might've been his imagination, but he thought he could see muscles standing up on the alien's diving suit, flexing with the effort.
He put the car in drive, and they shot out forward again. The admin building, and the Calcinites in front of it, passed him on the right. One of them swiped out its claws, and there was a loud terrible sound as the side-view mirror was released from the rest of the car. It banged against the passenger window, and Rita shrieked a curse.
They went North on Prone Lane, which went all the way through the port. Five miles this way, and eventually they'd hit Mille Street. In the water, ships listed on the waves; and Rita stared at some of the bigger ones. They still had their lights on, but nobody was walking the decks. The boats seemed to be staring at them. Or something inside them was.
Kelso cursed.
"What is it?" Rita said, turning to the road. There was a green thing standing in the middle of it. Kelso and Rita both knew it was an alien even before it raised a gun and started glowing red, its eyes like small red traffic lights.
Kelso kept his foot on the gas and did not attempt to dodge. That had probably saved his life. The lane running through the port was narrow, to the point of being obsolete. He could've dodged but not too much. The alien would've gotten a shot off, and its sonic rifle would've gone through the bulletproof windshield like it wasn't even there to begin with. Either he would've died or Rita would have.
Instead, he went straight at the alien. The alien, which was an Aquatoid, kept its gun raised for a half-second, and then thought better of it. Instead of rolling to its left or to its right, it decided instead to turn 180 degrees and start running down the road. No dice.
It did try to roll at the last second. Too little and much too late. The Charger shattered its shattered its legs. The Aquatoid shrieked, nearly startling.
Kelso panicked, turning when he didn't need to. He worked the steering wheel left and right, and the Charger swerved into a spin. They careened toward a boat.
"Fucking hell!" Rita, Gibbs, and Kelso screamed, nearly in perfect unison.
The Charger's spin carved a wild pretzel shape on the road. It came to a stop at the edge of the harbor, hitting the bow of a large boat with the trunk of their car. Gibbs screamed again. He was nearly crying.
In the road, about fifty feet in front of them, lay the Aquatoid. It was moving slightly. It was trying to crawl.
Kelso was wiping his face, wet with tears. "Duck…and cover." he sang weakly. "Duck…and cover."
Rita looked at him, her eyes wide.
"Jesus, Al. We ran him down. I felt it."
He began to giggle. Rita nearly slapped him. Instead she reached for his shoulder. He wasn't an especially large man, but she was an especially small woman. Putting her hand on him was like putting a hand on a giant.
She shook him. "Snap out of it!" God, she sounded even more afraid than him. Probably because she was. "C'mon Jack! I need you."
That seemed to help. He shook his head and turned to her, and his eyes became almost normal.
"What?"
"Get the car moving, Jack." Rita whispered. "Now."
He tried, but he could not. Their first thought was that one of the tires had blown. Then she remembered they'd been heading toward—
"Out of the car." she said suddenly. Then when Kelso gave her a funny look, "Move it, Jack. Goddamn!"
In her hurry to get out, she forgot her seatbelt was on. She didn't unfasten so much as ripped it off. She fell out of the car, swearing.
Rita and Kelso nearly forgot about Peter Gibbons. Then the thief bawled louder, and they were both rocked as if slapped.
"I'll get him." Kelso said. "Cover me."
Rita threw a flare out into the middle of the road. Nothing nearby…that she could see. Some of the streets in the distance were actually still on. Good. She spared one brief glance over her shoulder.
Only the trunk of the car was off the edge, suspended over dark Atlantic waters. The tip of the boat had stopped the car from sliding any farther, and had very likely saved them.
Rita had an image of all three of them falling into those dark waters, into the drink as her father would say. She could swim but knew Kelso could not, and in Gibbs' case it wouldn't matter because he was still cuffed.
Kelso worked him out, telling him to keep an eye out for the edge of the harbor. Gibbs had to toe the edge of the harbor when getting out. The back door itself was the biggest obstacle. It was block so much of his limited escape that for a few steps (ones that made his balls and legs feel like cold glue) half of both feet were on nothing more solid than air. When he finally made it around the door, and all of him was on solid concrete, he nearly fell to the ground with relief.
Kelso ordered him up. It was supposed to sound authoritative but sounded more like begging.
Rita had them march North on the road, towards the exit. It was a big gap in the port wall about twenty feet across, with a horizontally sliding gate for a door. The gate was concealed in its sheath. Through it, she could see the lights of houses across from the port.
She swelled with dawning relief, but then the old question
(where is our back up?)
came and to her and didn't curb her good feelings so much as riddled them with laser fire.
An explosion from the city. From beyond the port wall.
The three of them stopped. It wasn't just the port. The aliens of the second war were laying siege to the entire city.
