They say that in very, very stressful or memorable moments, that we remember every detail clearly, even the unimportant ones. I've heard it called "flash-bulb" memory, because it's like your mind takes a picture, burned into your brain forever. That's how it was for me. What came next happened so terribly fast, but this is what I remember of it.
Me, one hand on the gear shift, and the other on the wheel. My feet on the pedals, and the smell of oil and sun-burnt vinyl. Fingerprints on the top of the window glass, partway rolled down. Captain Jack Harkness, the coat man, shouting something in a language I didn't understand (kalatu nerad' ta la, it sounded like, to me, but I still don't know what it meant). The creature swinging one of her arms in my direction.
Then, the sound of impact, creaking metal and shattering glass. The car, being shoved rightward. My head, jerking left and smacking into the frame of the door. Bits of broken glass in the window, inches from my face, as my head jerked back the other way. My hands, clutching the steering wheel. My feet, struggling unsuccessfully to get the car in gear, and the plastic lion I kept hanging from the rearview mirror swinging wildly.
The second impact. A flash of light, the creak of tortured metal, and me spinning up, and over. The trees and sky making crazy streaks outside the spiderweb cracks of my smashed windshield. My hands, clutched white-knuckled on the steering wheel as though it might hold me in place as my car toppled over. A spray of blood across the dash, and my casual curiosity. Where might that have come from?
And then the car stopped moving, and I hung there, suspended by my seatbelt. My head hurt and my hands hurt and my chest hurt like holy hell, and it occurred to me that I probably should get out of the car. I released my belt, pulling myself carefully upright and towards the far door- mine seemed altogether too close to the action- with my miraculously unbroken arms. I didn't even try to open the battered door. I just pulled myself out of the opening, scraping my back just a little on the broken remains of the window.
My nose was bleeding, and I was cut up pretty good, but I seemed to be basically intact. I crouched behind the shattered hulk of my car, and peeked around, trying to get a look at what had happened to the coat man and the bug thing. Bug person?
He'd jumped on top of her, at some point, and they were wrestling over some device. I was guessing it was some kind of weapon, but it didn't look exactly like a gun. There was blood on his face and hands. I could see why, too, when he landed a punch on her. Soft human flesh and bone weren't made to crunch into hard, pointy bug shell. That didn't seem to slow him down, though. They twisted, and rolled together, and when they stopped, he was turned towards me instead of her.
His face was all bright blue eyes and streaks of blood, and this breathtaking anger and determination. I'd never seen a look like that on a person's face before. I've seen it a few times since then, but not often. People just don't get put in positions where they have to feel that hard and that fast and that much very often. I think the coat man, though- that Captain Jack Harkness- I think he must have been more than passing familiar with such situations.
And then, while I was still watching him, two things happened more or less simultaneously. The first was that, in my continued creeping around the car, I stumbled over one of the coat man's guns. I recognized it from his suitcase the night before. The way they were tussling at each other, it's no surprise that various bits and bobs they were wearing would fly off.
The second thing was that the bug creature flipped him over, slamming him into the ground. He shook his head, dazed for just a moment. She raised one of her arms, that weapon in her clawed hand pointing down at him. And then I shot her.
I've had a lot of time to think about why I did that, in the years since. After all, she couldn't have killed him, so I wasn't saving him. Maybe I was just trying to protect myself. If last night was anything to go by, it was going to take him at least a little time to come back to life if she killed him. And, in the meantime, she'd be free to come after me. And I did live, obviously, so it sort of worked.
Anyway, regardless of why I did it, I did. I pointed the weapon. I pulled the trigger. This blast of light came out of the end and slammed into the bug creature. The gun jumped a little in my hand. She howled and spun and turned on me. I fired again, my hands shaking, too scared to aim. Even without aiming, though, the blast hit the thing I was staring at most. Which, so you understand, was her weapon hand, rapidly coming to bear on me. She dropped the weapon, and screamed.
Behind her, I could see the coat man pulling himself off the ground, but she wasn't paying him any attention. She jumped at me and, before I could fire again, spat at me. I pulled my arms up in front of my face at the last moment. They caught most of it, but not all. I could feel it hit my hair and on my neck and chest. When I opened my eyes, my arms were covered in yellowy goo, and the coat man was standing behind her with his gun raised. "I didn't want it to come to this," he said in a sad voice, and shot her in the head. She crumpled to the ground, and winked out of existence like she'd never been there at all.
Around then, the goo began to burn. It was the most exquisitely painful thing I've ever experienced in my life.