Chapter 4: The Gauntlet: Part 3

"Slimer! Slimer, you have to get Nicole outta here!" He finally got his marbles in order and realized what it was I was screaming at him. I looked back at Sperkipy and started detaching the tube from my thrower as Slimer got his little arms under Nicole's to drag her. For him to throw the trap out, easy targets needed to be taken out of Sperkipy's sight. All I could think was Jesus Christ, I gotta get this bastard away from her! Then I realized…

I had to be the bait.

My God, what the hell have I gotten my ass into here?!

Sperkipy got up and began heading toward the unconscious Nicole and my little green partner who was trying to pull her away. I got the tube from the Proton Pack hooked to the rifle and fired up the device. "Hey dickhead!" I screamed, "Yeah, you! The ugly fucker with the bad breath!" At first the demon stopped in its tracks and looked over its shoulder at me, then decided to ignore me and continue walking toward Slimer and Nicole.

Oh, I was not having it.

I fired the rifle at the demon's leg and nailed it in the ankle. Yeah, he sure as hell felt that!

Aaaaaaaaaand I felt it when he spun around and kicked me into a set of crates.

This was going to be a VERY long career if - and I do mean if - I survived.

As I struggled to get out of the crates - after I got my goddamn breath back - Slimer saw Sperkipy approaching and panicked. He started shaking Nicole in a vain attempt to wake her back up. He was crying and trying to wake her up as fast as possible, but she couldn't go beyond a stir because the drugs in her system kept her out. He finally did the one thing he knew would be effective and that was to slime her. His cold ectoplasm shocked her awake and made her sit up. Slimer started jawing at her pointing at Sperkipy. She finally looked and for what I had to assume was the first time she saw what Sperkipy looked like, and boy did she not like it.

I heard her scream in terror as I finally got my way out of the boxes and crates. As I finally got to my feet he had approached the both of them with Slimer getting in front of Nicole trying to protect her. He marched his way right up to the two of them. I tried to pull the destabilizer from behind me but the rifle was stuck on a nail or splinter on the crates causing me to not stop what I was doing and try to pull the weapon loose. I kept looking back as Sperkipy approached them closer and closer, making me panic. I finally got the rifle loose when Sperkipy grabbed Slimer…

"Slimer!" I yelled. Sperkipy wound up and threw Slimer across the warehouse, screaming as he sailed across the building. "You cocksucking, son-of-a…!" I opened fire on the beast and was nailing him in the back with the pulse but it wasn't distracting him or getting his attention. He walked to a scared-stiff Nicole and spoke in a very deep and gruff voice, "We must be rejoined. I need you as a vessel." He attempted to grab her when she ducked and started running away. I disengaged and tried and climb back over the crates I smashed down on to get ahead of the both of them.

I quickly pulled out my meter again and tried to tune the damn thing so see what was happening. Because Sperkipy was inhabiting Nicole for so long, there had to be a residual signal on her with his signature. After getting it tweaked I saw two signals, one clearly slower than the other and ahead of the larger one. You didn't have to be a hockey official to see where this puck was going. I started running through a row of shelves to try and get ahead of the two of them.

While I was getting ahead of the situation, Slimer had landed in the docking area of the warehouse coming to after once again getting smacked against a docked truck. He saw the both of us running, me down an isolated corridor and Nicole with ol' nasty behind her. He got mad and flew off toward Sperkipy. He slammed head first into the demon sliming him to the point of blindness. He then slimed the floor under the demon's feet causing him to lose traction.

As Slimer kept Sperkipy distracted me and Nicole rounded the corners of our corridors of boxes and blindly ran into each other, the both of us hitting the ground. Getting her up she started fighting me because she didn't look at me as I was picking her up. She was clearly panicking off her ass while ALSO being in a drug-induced daze, "Ow! Nicole, stop! It's me, it's me!" She finally looked at me and saw who she was hitting. She looked back where she came and saw Sperkipy getting up despite Slimer's assault on him. She cried out in fear, "He's getting back up! Why won't he stop?"

I had to think. He needed people like fuel, but for that to work he needed a conduit. Now that I disconnected the conduit from the creature, the other energy was inaccessible. He was in need of a lifeline…

That was why!

"He has to protect you because you're his access to an energy source!" I told her, "If anything, he'd take priority of protecting your body over rejoining with it… I think." She started getting confused and angered at my… well, lack of normal speech. The sleep was still in her voice, "What in the hell do you mean by that?!" Jesus Christ, I was starting to sound like Ray. I had to get Sperkipy to chase me instead of her. I needed to give Slimer time to get back to his pack and get this chump into the trap. I had one way to do that, I turned to her, "Nicole, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but…" I reached back…

I smacked her straight across the face.

Sperkipy let out a loud bellow and focused all his attention on me, "How dare you harm my vessel!" He swatted Slimer out of the air and into a set of boxes in the loading dock. I finally got him to leave both Slimer and Nicole alone, albeit with him taking what seemed like one last swipe. "Oh, shit, I hate being right!" I charged the rifle and screamed out, "Nevertheless, that got your attention, didn't it?!" After cranking the power to high and setting the wave pulse to a semi-blast mode I launched out several blasts from the rifle and knocked him back into the crates again. Nicole finally recovered enough to watch as I started heading back toward the other side of the warehouse with Ugly following behind me. "My God," she rubbed her slime drenched face as she yelled back at me, "are you completely bent?"

I skidded around the corner and damn near lost my footing as I tried to haul ass to the other side of the place. Sperkipy was done playing nice. He was barreling toward me knocking over shelving units and boxes galore. The more he tried to run, the more I was hearing him strain to keep up. Without his link to Nicole and the people he had abducted over the years he was steadily losing power. That was why Nicole would sleep for long periods - each attack drained her and the hibernation kept her in suspended animation. If left undisturbed she'd be resting in a place for several years without interacting. Without her body to make the initial spark for power consumption - like a car without a battery - Sperkipy couldn't sustain his presence in this realm.

He had just enough energy to remain in his chase after me and still overtake me. I randomly fired behind me blindly to give me just enough space to loop around the warehouse. He clearly had far more stamina than I did because my caffeine rush was wearing off and I was still lacking endurance with this goddamn equipment. Even under duress I'm still not exactly an athlete. When I was looking back to see the demon behind me, I suddenly lost my footing sliding on the floor and hitting something heavy. I went face first into the floor and slid into a pile of broken shipping crates. I got turned around and ended up back where I started, slipping on Slimer's ectotrail and tripping over his Proton Pack.

Now I was stuck. I was so out of breath I couldn't climb over the boxes again. Sperkipy came up behind me and effectively blocked me from leaving the dead end I was trapped in. He put his foot on Slimer's pack and kicked it behind him. There was no question: This rookie was about to die. I rolled onto my back, the rifle out of my immediate reach. One fast move and I was definitely a dead man. He approached, "You would have been adequate for subsistence but you were foolish enough to have harmed my vessel." He raised his claws, "DIE!"

I heard a pack activate. The cyclotron spinning up in these packs had a distinctive sound and not more than a second later I saw a yellow beam of protons flying out and striking Sperkipy in the back. Looking behind him and Saw that Nicole had grabbed the thrower of Slimer's pack and started firing on him. She was kneeling and leaning against a crate to keep her upright. She was very weak, the benadryl still keeping her under a level of sedation. In that moment of distraction, I started firing the rifle and slowly I was stripping him of his corporeal form. The beam from Slimer's pack was barely doing anything to the beast even after stripping him because it was still tuned to Nicole's frequency. Worse yet, we needed a trap.

Slimer finally found us and saw what was happening. Poor little guy had his ectoplasmic butt thrown every which way from Sunday tonight helping me. He was still disoriented from his last whack to the dome as he found the firefight before us. He yelled in panic as he saw the both of us struggling to keep our ground. Sperkipy was slowly starting to march toward me despite him getting weaker.

I finally noticed him, "Spud! Adjust her pack settings!" After a minute he finally got a grasp on himself and sped toward Nicole. He started messing with the dials and cranked the power to max causing the thrower to kick. Nicole nearly got knocked down over the whole thing but Slimer held her up as she fired. I kept firing on him and weakening him more and more to the point I was starting to see through him. I freed a hand up and grabbed my meter. The PKE accumulation was down to minimum. It was time to lock this piece of shit away.

I grabbed my hat and turned the bill toward the front. I don't know why, but every time I got pissed I felt like I needed to turn my bill forward as a signal I had enough. Believe me, I had enough! "Alright motherfucker," I cranked the destabilizer back to pulse wave and powered it up, "I'm putting your ass into our personal paranormal ant farm! Slimer, trap!"

Slimer heard me command out and went and pulled the trap off the pack he was wearing. Throwing it out under the demon he then threw the trigger at my feet. With absolute prejudice I stomped on the pedal and opened the trap up. I was hearing Nicole scream at Sperkipy as he was beginning to dematerialize and become entrapped, "This is for all those years of using me, you goddamn parasite!"

"On my mark, shut down. 3… 2… 1… Now!" I released the pedal and sucked the rest of Sperkipy into the trap. Nicole shut off the pack as I powered down the rifle as the trap sparked briefly then began to smoke as the containment light started flashing. Sperkipy was now contained.

Almost as soon as the trap started smoking I started to smell ozone. As I looked around us I saw glowing outlines that looked like people started to appear around us. Nicole started to panic again starting the pack when I came up to her and stopped her, "Woah, wait! I don't think they're ghosts." They weren't. They took form and solidified after a moment.

Police; paramedics; military; construction workers; people of all kinds started to appear in the small crowd of what looked like two dozen people. In the middle of the people that reappeared, Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston appeared among them. I yelled out, "Guys!" I got them up as the other people around us started to regain consciousness, "Guys, are you alright?" Peter leaned against the row of crates that made up the corridor and put his hand to his head, "Now I know what the liquid in a lava lamp feels like."

Winston got beside him and tried to harshly blink the disorientation from his vision, "I'd say that's accurate. Man, you should have seen what we saw in there!"

"PETER!" Winston yelped and jumped away from Peter's side as Slimer went and greeted him… with a healthy sliming to the face. Slimer kept hugging his face until he pried him off, "Slimer! Can I go one damn day without you snotting me up like a kleenex?!"

I had made my way back to Nicole and helped her back on her feet. She was still out of it because of the drugs. Ray and Egon jumped as they saw her, Ray yelling out, "Dan! Dan, stay away from her!"

"Calm down!" I told them as I straightened the bill of my hat, "This is Nicole Alcaline. She was possessed by a demon named Sperkipy and she only did it while she was asleep. With Slimer's help, we managed to get them separated and in a trap, right Slimer?" Slimer had by this time grabbed the smoking trap and floated up to Egon to hand it to him. Egon looked at the smoking trap and saw it was in fact full, "I can't believe it. You managed to entrap a class six corporeal entity nearly by yourself?"

Now I was pissed. That same demeaning tone came out of Egon's mouth as he spoke down to me. I picked the very weak Nicole up and chewed them all out, "Yeah, you just got your asses saved by someone that didn't understand what he was doing, or so you thought!" Egon looked back down to the trap as a look of shame came across his face as I continued to lay into all of them, "You treated me like I was stupid. I went my whole damn life being told I was an idiot, some cases outright. All you guys did was do it like everyone else in my life has up to now. When was I gonna be good enough?"

He knew what he did, "You're correct, Daniel. I should have been more open to allowing you to participate and preparing you for this," he looked back at me as he tried to get it out, "It wasn't that you were incapable, it's that we're very used to being the only ones who know our trade."

"Yeah," Ray stepped up, "I guess we forgot how to teach people after doing this for so long. We knew the situation was dangerous, but maybe we should have listened to fresh eyes and fresh ideas. You clearly figured out what to do."

"Don't patronize me," I told them, "You could have had this field job scheduled several weeks ago, but you made me fix all your gear and clear your goddamn headquarters. With the exception of Janine and Winston damn near all of you treated me like some lacky. I may not be a doctor, but I sure as hell ain't a dumbass, my grasp on English notwithstanding."

"We're sorry, Dan," Egon said to me as he dropped his hands to his sides, the trap hanging by its cord, "Apparently we misjudged you being able to handle the workload. If you're willing to stay on, we'd like to try again, next time allowing you to take the charge for the call."

I shook my head, "Look, just treat me like a human being, okay? If it takes me a couple of times, it takes me a couple of times. Treat me right; I won't let you guys down." I looked around us and saw how many of these people started to awake. Being part of Sperkipy's energy source, they had to have been drained for a very long time. I knew it was time to clean up, "Let's get these people some help."

Outside paramedics and fire department personnel helped with loading several people into ambulances. Nicole was no different. She was loaded onto a gurney and was being rolled to an ambulance of her own as I walked with her. She was so tired after her ordeal, but she wanted to talk with me, "Dan? What's gonna happen with me?" "Because of what happened," I told her, "you're gonna have to be looked at. Egon and Peter say you'll be looked at by people that won't poke or prod you at our request. They called in a few favors from what they were telling me."

"And after that?"

She was scared. Being I myself was just 19 years old at this point, there wasn't much I could tell her. Maybe there was some truth to Egon's words - I have no real experience. I guess all I could be right now was honest. After all, my Grandfather always told me honesty was the best policy, "Honestly, I don't know. I guess that's just how life works. You could have been in your 50's by now so you got a new lease on life. Learn what you can and don't squander it on emotional crap. It was what landed you here to start with."

She weakly smiled at me as he finally got to the back of the ambulance, "I'll try. Dan, I just wanna tell you thank you," a tear formed in her eye, "You're outta sight." The paramedics lowered the gurney down then picked it up to load her into the vehicle. I watched on until the last as the doors closed and the ambulance pulled away, its siren and lights turning on. Peter walked up to my side and watched with me as the ambulance pulled out of the docks and into the city, "Kid reminds me of when I was in elementary school."

I continued watching the ambulance become more and more distant as I asked Peter, "You think she's gonna adjust okay? She missed a lot of stuff; Cold War ending; landing on the moon; Star Wars."

He shrugged, "Eh. She'll find her way. I mean, you found a way, right? I have to admit we were wondering what was gonna happen with us. I was worried you didn't learn enough, personally."

"So, what?" I asked, "Did he set me up to fail?" "I've known Egon since we first met in college. That man can miss Godzilla destroying a Nitroglycerin plant if he's focused on a project. He has a habit of creating his own problems. Him not training you then treating you the way he did? He gets side tracked and forgets that, 'Oh, right, I'm supposed to help this guy!' He also forgets it was because of him he forgot. That man lives in his own world, so don't take it personally."

The ambulance was gone. I looked to the man beside me and heard his plea. He meant what he said and I began to consider it. He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and started escorting me back to Ecto-1.

That was my first job in the field. It was a very scary experience and most of the fear had nothing to do with the demon I was dealing with. Between commanding Slimer's help, rebuilding a device quickly to change its function, and protecting a very confused and scared young woman, I was very unsure how well I was going to perform this. Where I needed to learn to be self sufficient I felt let down by my peers. They needed to be more encouraging of the situation and not treat others like they were incapable of learning.

But that's the real lesson here, isn't it? The trouble with some people these days is that they feel as though no one can learn because of how deep they are into the situation they think you couldn't understand. In order for us to continue forward in this life, we need to remember that those people you're training now may be your future. Make sure you teach them the way and remember that no matter how inexperienced they are, you'd be surprised at how much they know if given the opportunity. After all, if you taught them right, one day you might need them to save your ass. Hard to do if you didn't teach them that part.