Acheron Chapter 12 - To Terrorize Y'awl's Neighborhood

A/N- Alright a little tidbit for you all to chew on, you do not have to be alive to be used as a host for the creature. I'll refer you to the director's cut of the third movie, in which the creature came out of a dead ox.

The evening was getting late now, it had been two hours since the meeting with the Major and all Kevin's and his crew was able to pull together were ten flamethrowers. The toxicology screen had come back on the two individuals the parasites had killed, and had proven that they were in fact killed with an overdose of the toxin they use to put their victims in a comma. The first growth had also been spotted in one of the hosts, putting Edd and Nazz in a race against the clock to remove it before it was too late, and hopefully still be in time to save the other two survivors.

Now armed with the weapon's Kevin's team had created plus the five that were already in the armory, Sgt. Kanker evenly separated the colonist into fifteen groups. One group to stay at the containment unit to be ready to operate the machine, this group is to be led by Kevin and herself. Four groups placed at key locations to drive the beast in the direction they needed it to go, the other ten were to start at sublevel three and work their way up the facility. Each group was armed with a flamethrower, shotgun, pistol, cattle prod and motion tracker.

Kevin had explained when the teams were divided up that the plant would be fine if it sustained some damage, that systems could be replaced and repaired. The only sensitive location that they were forbidden to us their firearms in would be around the primary heat exchangers, only the flamethrower could be used there. Damaging the cooling system would cause them to have to shut the plant down at best and could be catastrophic at worst, and it would be best not to risk it.

"I don't like this," Angela whispered as she pointed the flamethrower down the dark intersecting corridor.

"I got your back baby girl," Sy reassured her as she guarded their flank with the shotgun.

She took a deep breath to steady her nerves then replied, "I'm a lover not a fighter, Sy."

"Well we can't let this thing roam free," Cory added, "It's already killed one of our own." He was trying to remind her of the urgency of their mission, but only succeeded in reminding her why she didn't want to be there in the first place.

"Great pep talk asshole," she rounded the corner allowing him to sweep the area with the motion tracker.

Turning the tracker left then right down the corridor he pushes the button on his headset, "Junction 28 clear."

"Roger," Sgt. Kanker's voice responded in his ear and then the other teams bean calling in from other junctions.

"I don't trust that thing as far as I can throw it," Angela said looking at the tracker.

"Come on," he replied, "Modern technology at its best."

"Yeah, well Kevin and his team didn't see it coming till it was too late," and she moved forward heading toward the other side of the facility, her nerves still on edge.

A little further down the line Eddy fumbled with the cattle prod in his hand, "How dare he say I'm untrustworthy."

"That ain't what he said Eddy," Lee corrected him, "He said he didn' trust you to not blow a hole in the coolin system."

"Same thing," He waved her off, "This is the Major's revenge for losing all that money at craps last week." Waving the prod in frustration, "He could of at least let me have the flamethrower."

"That was me love," Lee stated as she pointed the flaming weapon down a corridor, "I didn' trust you with it, I mean really, you would probably torch us all because you saw a rat."

Further down Nat and Ed came upon something weird, Nat at point with the flamethrower, motioned for the rest of his team to stop and take cover as best they could. Pushing the button on his headset, "Sgt."

"Go ahead,' was her response.

'We've found something."

"Elaborate, is it the creature."

"I'm pretty sure it is what did this," he pauses as he looked at the substance on the walls a few feet ahead of them, "It looks like."

"Snot that's dried on the walls," Ed interrupted.

"Thank you Ed," Nat replied, "But yeah that. It looks like they're decorating the place to their liking."

Kevin's voice came over the communication channel, "Can you get a sample of it for Eddward?"

"Sure," Nat replied then released the button on his headset, "Sure Kevin, we'll get your man a sample."

Looking at the map she started barking out orders, "All teams move to the next junction and proceed toward team eight's location, let's see if we can encircle their home." She then proceeded to call out what corridor each team was to head down so there would be no confusion, watching their GPS signal on the map move in the desired direction.

Kevin looked at the map as each team began to reach their location and call in to confirm when they hit the strange structure, "That's right under the main cooling towers." It is the place where the steam that had been produced from cooling of the reactor would condense back down into water, releasing all of its heat into the air around the towers, then get sent back to the reactor. Pushing the button on his headset, "Remember only flamethrowers in there, we can't risk a rupture to the cooling system."

When all teams were in place Sgt. Kanker noticed something, "They can still be flanked," she pointed out the big gaping hole in the line between team one and team ten. She made a few adjustments in the line to widen the net, but still worried that there were to many holes for the creatures to escape through. "All teams proceed forward with caution," she called out to them, holding her breath as she waited for someone to call out that they made contact. On one screen she watched the ten groups of five dots as they slowly moved toward the center of the area, on another three screens she monitored the seventy-five life signs of those assigned to the mission. All of them had a higher than normal heart rate, the fifty under the cooling towers had the highest of the group.

"Sgt.," Jimmy called in quietly.

"Go ahead,' she replied.

"We found two cows, they look like they have been cocooned along the walls." Both Sgt. Kanker and Kevin exchanged a look at each other, Kevin quickly switched channels and called operations.

While Sgt. Kanker addressed Jimmy, "What is their condition?"

"Their dead," was his simple reply.

Her voice was full of frustration, "Injuries, are there any injuries?"

Jimmy looked closer at the bovine then noticed it, "Yes, their chests look like they've exploded."

She could see that the heart rates of everyone had spiked with this news, they all knew that this meant that there were two more of those things down here then they had originally thought. Kevin comes over to her, placing a hand on her shoulder and whispers, "Ops just reported that there are ten cows missing from the pens."

"Shit," the reality of the situation had just smacked her in the face, "Everyone stay calm." When they started this little venture, they were under the assumption that there were only two of those things down there, now if each of the missing cows had given birth that would make twelve in total. Two would have been rough enough to deal with, and she had hoped that their numbers would overwhelm them, but now that there was possibly ten more down there, she could see that she had just hand delivered them a ripe breeding ground. "I need everyone to turn around, slowly and calmly, and head back the way you came, keep those weapons at the ready and your motion trackers on. Groups one through five converge with the group to your left, groups six through ten the group to your right. Once everyone is accounted for meet up at the service tunnel for evac. All directional teams meet at the tunnel immediately."

Jimmy's teams heart rate's skyrocketed, the man turned around to follow orders to be met by strong hands grabbing ahold of him and a menacing maul opening to ram it's second jaw into his chest. His team had been to petrified by the towering creature to call out to him and ran the instant it was preoccupied with him. On the opposite side of the towers, Ramirez and Thompson ran further into the hive as a creature had descended into the middle of their group capturing Davis, leaving them no other route of escape. Finding themselves in the middle of a small egg field, with a fifteen-foot towering creature standing in the middle who was laying those eggs. They only caught a brief glimpse of this behemoth before they were caught by the parasites the eggs housed.

Lee and Eddy made a mad dash for the stairs as O'Malley was taken, Nat was able to fend off an attack, as the creature charged them, bounding from one wall to the next as it closed the distance between them. A quick jet of flame drove it back to where it came from, with an ungodly scream of agony. Calm and orderly was definitely not the way to describe this retreat, chaotic and a flight for one's own self-preservation would be more like it. Sgt. Kanker watched the monitors as one life sign after another either flat lined or went to nearly nonexistent, five people no eight, now twelve. "Come on Kevin we got to go," she picked up the flamethrower and headed toward the service tunnel.

Angela, Sy, Nat and Ed guarded the stairs as people ran to escape, hopefully ensuring a safe route for them to flee the massacre that was happening down here. Now safely out from under the cooling system all bets were off, and free use of weapons was allowed. Sy reveled in the loud bang and following shriek with each pull of the trigger, these things were hard to kill, one blast at long range was not enough to take one down. But it did make them more cautious of approaching them, as though they were testing their defenses and working out how to get at them.

With the last person up the stairs Sy turned to the other three, "Go," she told them, and followed them going backwards to guard their flank. Half way up the stairs, a slippery little devil bounded off the wall, dodging her shotgun blast and collided with her, slamming her against the opposite wall off the gangplank and suspending her in midair. The impact had knocked the shotgun out of her hands, Angela screams, "NO," when she heard the noise and turned around to see what was happening. Her first instinct was to blast the thing with the flamethrower, but she heard Sy moan and couldn't pull the trigger.

Nat yanks her up the stairs as she screamed Sy's name as the creature ran off with her along the wall, back down to its lair, "She's gone," he bellowed at her. Ed took her flamethrower from her and blasted a plum of flame down the stairs at the creatures, who were scurrying along the walls and up the stairs toward them. Coming up to the main level, they all ran toward the service tunnel, reaching the door Kevin and Sgt. Kanker were guarding, Kevin and Ed blasted fire down the walkway as the last remaining survivors entered the tunnel, then followed them, slamming the pressure door shut behind them, running the distance from the plant to the colony as quickly as they could.

A/N- Evil grin, Evil laugh, and we have only just begun, remember to keep your hands in the air and scream.