Chapter 10: Battle For The Planet:
"Ok Childs, run!" Shouted Macready, as he and Lars took aim. Lars felt good to have a flamethrower on his back once more.
Childs ran, two seconds before the thing burst through the door behind him.
That was the cue Fuchs had been waiting for. He stepped out of his hiding place in a storage room and swung the axe he was holding at Lars. It was only by a hair's breadth that Macready spotted him in the corner of his eye and shouted out to warn Lars.
He spun round, spotted the figure there and instinctively whacked it in the shins. Fuchs toppled down on top of him.
With Fuchs-thing still weak, and wrapped in bandages, he was in no position to do any assimilating. Lars lifted him off the ground and made to fling him into the rec room, but both of them were promptly knocked sideways and through the doorway as an explosion smashed a hole in the roof above.
They had forgotten the dynamite Mac hadn't needed in the tool shed. Kate had found it in the wreckage and used it to blast her way in. She now dropped through the hole, with an already lit stick in her hand, which she threw at Macready. He ducked, but the dynamite landed in the room behind him.
Macready knew better than to throw it back so he fled the room, and promptly collided with Childs, sending them both tumbling down the corridor to their left. By the time they'd got up, the Blair monster was right behind them. The only thing that stopped it grabbing them straight away was the blast that shot out the doorway, disorientating it for a second, whilst also blasting a dog-sized chunk off its back.
Macready hit it with a burst of flame, but it had cleared the oil spill now and filled most of the corridor widthways. Macready's blast merely lit up a third of it. And it kept coming.
Copper and Clark had heard the noise and came running from the far entrances. They each had a lit Molotov in each hand.
The chunk that had blasted off the Blair monster's back saw them and came at them Slowly at first, but faster and faster as it sprouted more legs. It scrambled off the floor, up a wall and across the ceiling. All the while charging forward.
The two men flung a Molotov each at it. Both missed and lit up the corridor behind it. Copper ran into the sick bay and took aim at the door, hoping to get it as it came in. But the thing ignored him and went after Clark, who ran for the far end.
But the thing was faster and soon dropped down onto his head, where it began to burn its way into his skull.
Fortunately, Clark had just enough presence of mind to bring his second Molotov up and smash it over the creature, lighting both of them up before it could finish.
Macready and Childs ran like mad, shoving barrels and cupboards in its path to slow it down.
They reached the kennel with Childs in the lead. He kept running down the main corridor, but Macready jumped into the dogs' pen. Once there, he fired again. This time, aiming for the wooden walls floors, walls and ceilings round the monster. Childs, meanwhile, flung his Molotov at the thing's body. It thrashed and flailed for a time, but quickly collapsed.
Macready grabbed a fire extinguisher and cleared a path where Childs was. But they were cut off from the rest of the base by flames. "We'll hack through the wall to Gary's office!" Shouted Macready. "The explosion should have weakened it!"
Lars, meanwhile, was still struggling to throw off the Fuchs-thing. It was stronger than him, but also lighter. He'd tried several attempts to whack it against the walls, but the thing still wouldn't let go. Meanwhile, the tongue was slowly extending out of the bandages, towards Lars's face.
But Lars had got an arm free and grabbed a lamp off the table. He smashed the bulb on the side and jabbed the still sparking end into the thing's tongue. A current ran through its head briefly, causing it to spasm, while Lars wriggled free.
Fuchs grabbed a chunk of wood from the floor and swung at him several times. Lars dodged back, grabbed the end of the couch and shoved it round, tripping the thing up, before torching the thing as it tried to recover.
He left the room burning and returned to the hallway. There were flames in both directions, but no sign of the others. Or of the remaining monster.
Norris, who was leaning against the wall by the generator saw Kate approaching down the steps, growling and extending her claws. He panicked and tried to fling his Molotovs across the room. They fell short and smashed harmlessly into the ground.
As she charged, delayed only slightly by the burning patches of ground, he did the only thing he could think of and switched off the power to the basement lights, in the hope of losing it in the shadows. He tried to stagger away into the dark, but the uneven ground quickly proved his undoing and he tumbled over. A sharp pain shot up his injured leg and he screamed in agony, alerting the whole base to where he was.
It also alerted Kate. Norris heard footsteps coming his way. He grabbed some shelves and tried to haul himself to his feet. By pure luck, the shelves were unstable and toppled over, striking Kate a glancing blow and granting him a few more moments to crawl into the shadows.
Kate decided to ignore him. She had bigger problems to deal with. Like taking out the generator. She rushed up to it, where she found the fuel line lying where Norris had been standing. Once there, she lit her final stick of dynamite.
"Don't move another centimetre!" Shouted Lars's voice, as he shone a light on her.
Kate had chosen to put a long fuse on this dynamite partially to give her time to get away, partially for a situation like this. Before Lars could get in range, she pressed the stick against the top of the generator. "If you burn me now, you'll set it off." As she said this, Macready and Childs came down the stairs. "This is your last chance!" She shouted to them. "Drop your weapons and back off!"
"Not gonna happen." Said Macready.
"You can help me get off this planet, or we can all die!" She repeated in Norwegian so Lars could understand.
"I think I speak for everyone when I say, so be it." Said Macready.
"Hold on, I wanna live!" Said Norris.
"You don't know what you're destroying. I know things you couldn't dream of. I can give mankind the stars if you just help me." Said Kate.
"You're asking us to risk the lives of every creature in Earth for the sake of your word." Said Macready. "Fuchs trusted you. Look where that got him. Maybe you are just some cornered animal, but I don't care. Because one way or another, you've killed a lot of my friends tonight."
Lars recognised the word friends. "You killed my friends too. Now you're pleading for mercy with Kate's voice."
"You'll doom yourselves and your planet over some petty revenge?"
"I'll see you in hell."
The fuse was almost gone now. "Last chance!"
"Which of us is more afraid of dying?" Said Lars.
Kate knew the answer to that. No one fears death more than one who can live forever. "Well, fuck you too!" She flung the dynamite at them and they all scattered for cover, while Kate ripped some cables from the generator and charged the group. She went for Macready first, who was the closest.
The pilot shot a burst of flame in the vague direction of her footsteps. It missed but she was forced to dodge backwards.
The three of them lit their torches and shone them all around. "Childs, get the lights back on." Said Macready. He stepped back to cover the mechanic as he worked. They all shone their flashlights all round the room, trying to catch the scampering footsteps.
But Kate's wasn't going for them. She made for the stairs, with a mind to lead them into an ambush outside. Unfortunately, her escape coincided with the arrival of Copper at the top of the stairs, shining his light down and raising his Molotov when he spotted her.
She turned to run, but her way was blocked by Macready and Lars. "THIS IS MURDER!" She shouted in both English and Norwegian.
"This is for Kate." Said Lars. He and Macready torched her together. They watched her until she collapsed. It was over now. But somehow, this didn't feel like a grand victory.
"Do you suppose we did the right thing?" Said Copper. "We didn't just jump to conclusions about her?"
"We're still alive. The world's safe." Said Childs. "I'd say that's a pretty good result."
"But still..." Copper couldn't think how to finish. "The base upstairs isn't gonna last much longer. Once the fires die down, we need to bring as much of the food as possible down here."
"So now we're gonna hold up in the basement 'till the spring?" Said Norris. "What about the medical supplies?"
"And what if the fire burns through the ceiling?" Said Childs.
"We'll see what we can salvage once the fire's died down. Everything else'll have to be cobbled together." Said Macready. "Do you think we'll make it, doc?"
"There's a chance." He said evasively, clearly neglecting to add "not a good one."
"Well... it could have gone worse." Said Macready.
Out in the snow, and far away from the camp, one last thing, no larger than a fist, was burying itself in the snow. Far away enough that the rescue teams wouldn't find it. But it wouldn't stay buried forever. Even if it had to sleep for 100,000 more years, it would escape.
Author's Notes: To answer some further questions. I actually forgot to explain how Kate knows what Blair has been up to in story (and have adjusted it since.) Macready tells Kate that Blair's disappeared and that someone's planted things in his shack. She can put two and two together from that. And from stumbling across his hide out. Blair never tells the other things his plan, as they'll make a more interesting distraction if they don't know about it. He mentions it to Kate out of annoyance.
I thought it would be a bit disappointing to give a conclusive answer about what was motivating the thing, and so I've left that point ambiguous.
Lots of thanks to the people who posted reviews and suggestions. I really wasn't certain this was going to work when I started.