"Statistical Anomaly" by A Gentleman of Leisure.
Disclaimer: See Part 1.
Part 7: "Scary Monsters".
"Get up the ladder, quick!"
Mulder hurriedly glanced back over his shoulder at the three tall creatures shambling rapidly towards them out of the gloom down in the tunnel, and gave Scully a mighty boost that shot her up and out of the manhole, to send her sprawling on the grass in the moonlight. Then he lunged for the bottom rung and desperately started to haul himself up the ladder out of reach.
Just as he neared the top, something sharp sliced a piece off the heel of his shoe and nicked his calf. Swearing under his breath, he scrambled up the last few rungs, fell out of the manhole onto his knees, and staggered away after his partner, fumbling in his pocket for the spare magazine for his pistol. He looked back for his pursuer, the top half of which, or whom, was already visible above the ground waving its sword, and realised with a nasty sinking feeling that the shiny little rectangular object he could just make out on the grass between them was his extra ammunition clip.
Scully fumbled with her own reload, aimed and fired once. He supposed it must have missed, because it had no visible effect. She tried to steady her breathing, squeezed the trigger again carefully, but nothing happened - her gun had jammed.
"Run, Mulder!"
Now all three of the monsters were above ground, so the two agents turned and fled, and the creatures came lumbering after them.
"Where did we leave the car?"
Mulder pointed a little to their right, where he could see the cemetery gates in the distance, and they both changed direction.
"I can't believe this is really happening - it's like something out of one of your old horror movies!" Scully exclaimed breathlessly. "And I think they're catching up with us".
"Don't talk. Keep going! Run!" Mulder panted, weaving between the burial plots like a football player dodging through the opposition, going for a touchdown.
"Anyway, which horror picture were you thinking of?" he added as they ran. "One of the old British 'Hammer Films' ones?"
Unfortunately, it's never a good idea to be thinking about one small insignificant matter while you're doing something else of life-and-death importance, as Mulder was suddenly reminded.
He tripped over a gravestone and fell heavily.
Scully turned back to grab him by the arm and help him up... and found herself face to face with the leading creature.
Despite the poor light, she could see every detail of its reptilian skin - very like a lizard's but with tufts of wiry hair poking out here and there between the scales, and it seemed to have a sort of acrid smell, a little like scorched plastic perhaps. Its peculiar yellow triangular-pupilled eyes stared down at her from its great height, and a chill went up her spine, right to the top of her scalp.
She couldn't move.
Time froze.
The thing opened its mouth very wide and seemed to grin - she saw acres of teeth like ivory daggers, and then she was enveloped by a waft of bad breath that could have killed at forty paces. Slowly it lifted its sword, preparing to strike... and then, with a good solid thud, a spear point suddenly appeared, sticking at least two feet right out from its chest.
The creature looked down, gave a sort of plaintive, astonished grunt, and fell forward flat on its excruciatingly ugly face, stone dead, right on top of her.
"Yay! B-bulls eye!" someone exclaimed nearby - a girl's voice.
"Hey! I'm not playing you at darts again, Buffy. It would be no contest!" someone else responded, a young man this time.
"Damn, I'm good though, aren't I?" That was another girl.
The last thought floating through Scully's mind as she passed out was 'Looks like the cavalry's here!'
-----
"'Ware the others!" Xander said sharply, and the Slayerettes quickly turned and split into two groups - Buffy and Xander as one, Giles, Willow and Cordelia the other.
The demon facing Giles raised its weapon, a vicious short-handled battleaxe, and with room now to swing freely, Giles hacked and slashed vigorously at it with his own sword. The creature's left arm flew off, severed just above the elbow, and went cart-wheeling away into the shadows, spraying and spattering everyone within reach with bright green blood as it went, at least Willow supposed she must think of it as blood.
Cordelia gave a little shriek of rage and disgust at the mess it suddenly made of her clothes, so angry that any actual words she tried to utter were completely incoherent.
Giles slowly drew back his long broadsword again, and with a big, big smile said "Now sonny, this is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me!"
The astonished demon looked up from the raw spurting stump of its arm. Giles' sword cut through the cool night air with a sharp whizzing sound which ended in a dull 'Thwump', and the creature's head shot right up high into the air, came down and bounced a couple of times, and finally rolled to a halt right at Mulder's feet.
"Wow! Conan the Librarian! Way cool, or what?" Xander exclaimed, much impressed.
"Buffy, look out!" Willow said quickly. There was an enraged bellow from behind her, and Buffy hastily turned back from watching Giles to find that her own opponent had just yanked a headstone right up out of the ground. It raised the thing over its head and hurled it - straight towards Agent Fox Mulder!
There was really only one thing Buffy could do - she leaped forwards and caught it in mid-flight! She clutched it to her chest, staggered back several paces, and then slowly straightened up.
She glanced down at herself, and then at the inscription on the slab, and then she looked the amazed demon straight in the eye.
"Now I'm slightly annoyed", she said quietly. "You know who's this is? It's Principal Flutie's. There was little enough of him left in the first place, but nooo-ooo... you couldn't leave well alone, could you? You had to pull up his grave marker, you... you... vandal!" She almost spat the word out at the demon.
"And while we're about it", she added, her voice rising a little in pitch, "there's another thing. I only bought this top this afternoon after school. It's brand new, and now it's completely ruined! Ruined! What have you got to say for yourself about that? Am I going to get an apology out of you before I kill you?"
Baffled, the creature could only snarl at her - "Grrrrrr!"
"I thought not! Right", said Buffy, now sounding dangerously calm. "If that's all you've got to say for yourself, mister ugly, here's your gravestone back!" and she raised the slab high over her head and smashed the thing into its face. There was a muffled "Aaaaaargh!" and the third and last demon fell over backwards, utterly crushed.
"Yay! Goodies 3, Baddies 0!" exclaimed Xander.
Giles, Willow, and even Cordelia (distracted for one moment from her own fashion woes) stood and clapped enthusiastically.
"That's the way to do it!" Buffy said, dusting her hands on the seat of her pants, not even slightly out of breath. "Ugly brutes, aren't they? Any idea what sort they are, Giles?"
Her Watcher gazed at the remains strewn about like the debris of a very good party, and shook his head.
"No. I don't recognise the type at all. I'll have to have a session with my reference books later tonight, or perhaps tomorrow. I'm sure they're only minor - they didn't even seem to have any proper speech so far as I could tell".
"B-but do you think they were after us, or just happened to be passing by?" said Willow.
"I'll bet they were called up and set on us by those two vamps we were hunting", Xander said. "Something to keep us occupied while they get up to mischief somewhere else".
Buffy nodded, looking thoughtful.
"You mean it was... Oh, what's the word I want? Um, Giles, help me out here will you, please? I keep thinking of a detour, but I'm sure that's not the right word".
Mildly concerned, the Watcher looked at his Slayer thoughtfully for a moment, wondering if perhaps the impact of the gravestone had caught her on the head.
"I think you might mean a diversion, my dear", he suggested quietly.
"One of them. Right. Whatever".
Xander contemplated the two FBI agents still sprawled on the neatly mown grass.
"Perhaps these two guys could tell us", he said.
-----
Scully came-to slowly. It was still night-time, and she found that her head was resting comfortably in someone's lap. It's owner, a long-haired teenage girl, a red head like herself, was looking down at her with a gently concerned expression. Around her were several other young people. She supposed they were all members of the group who'd been down in the tunnel. Strangely, they too seemed to be carrying antique weapons.
Her partner, Mulder, was kneeling on the grass beside her, also looking anxious, and there was another older man, who wore glasses, standing just behind him.
"What happened? Sorry, stupid question, I know".
"That's all right. It's traditional", the older man reassured her. He had a rather nice English accent, she thought irrelevantly.
"Hi, ma'am. I'm Willow. And these are my friends - Buffy and Xander and Cordelia. How are you feeling, now?" the red headed girl said. "Are you hurt"?
Scully smiled up at her rather weakly, and tried to sit up. Mulder put out a hand to help her.
"Hi, Willow. I'm Dana Scully. I'm OK, thank you. Honestly, Mulder, I am - just a bit winded perhaps. Really, I'm fine - I think".
She looked round, and there on the grass a few feet away the glazed dead eyes of the second monster stared in her direction, looking blankly somewhere a little over her shoulder. She shuddered.
"Ugh! Now I remember! What the hell is that thing? Not an actual alien, surely?" she asked Mulder quietly.
"We know Agent Mouldy came here expecting to find aliens and flying saucers", the blonde girl said. She was standing with hands on hips, silhouetted dramatically by the cemetery's lights behind her.
Mulder looked up at her quickly. He recognised her as the girl Buffy Summers, who he'd spoken with the evening before. Then he realised that all five of them were exactly the same group of people he'd met out in the country two days back.
"How did you know about that?"
"We heard you talking. To Tweeedledum and Tweedledee", she replied. "But these are not aliens".
"At least, not in the sense you were thinking", the red headed girl called Willow said.
'So it was you last night', thought Mulder. 'I wonder who the heavy was?'
"Well", said Scully, "if those aren't aliens, then what the hell are they?"
The man with the glasses started to say something. Scully now recognised him as the teacher Mr Giles, who she'd first seen in his car, driving by only about half an hour before - who wore a tweed jacket even in early fall in California. However, the boy called Xander interrupted him.
"Monsters, demons. They're the sort of things you believed lived under your bed when you were little. When you grew up you thought you knew better, but you were wrong. They are real - they actually exist".
"And you'd better watch out, because there are other things, too", the red head added cheerfully.
"Be afraid, be very afraid", the teenage boy said in a mock solemn tone.
Then the third girl, whose long dark hair was covered in a strange green slime, said in a snippy tone of voice "So what's your problem? Have you never seen a demon before?"
Mulder cautiously reached out to touch the nearest huge, scaly corpse, as if wanting to check it was real, and he slowly shook his head.
"Not even a dead one".
Everyone instantly came back with the same response:
"Best sort".
END OF PART 7. TO BE CONTINUED...