The Time of The Cat 33
RUDY – THE STANLEY HOTEL
The rest of the team and I watched Dec and Liz hop in the door nearest to them. Luckily most of the Pugs were looking their way as they came out of the middle door. This gave us a chance to shoot five of them immediately. The splinter-guns were too deadly to take chances with and we were happy for the opportunity to shoot them in the back before they could return the fire. That left two more and they weren’t so anxious to die. They jumped back into the still-open middle door. Colin yelled, “Rudy, hit the button. Let’s get out of here!”
By chance, I was standing right beside the transporter door and I did as he’d said and pushed the Estes Park call button. This time the blasted thing seemed to take forever to come. I guess it was quick, but time seems to slow down when people are shooting at you.
Meanwhile, one of the two surviving Pugs tried to stick his head out low, about a foot from the floor to shoot at us, but Joe got him before he could shoot. That left one and he suddenly got the idea that he’d be a lot healthier if he simply went back to Wichita. The door shut and he was gone.
Joe observed, “That means trouble will be following us shortly. He’ll call for help.”
The Estes Park transporter interrupted us as it dinged and opened. There were two more of the dratted creatures standing there. Colin had his gun already pointed that way, just in case this happened and he killed them instantly.
This was getting a little too interesting. None of my crew minded a good firefight, but the addition of the deadly splinters made it seem even more serious than high-velocity lead. With a normal human weapon, a man has a chance of being shot and living through it. With these things, not so much.
We were unhappy about Chandra. He’d been part of our team for years. It seemed a little cruel of Dec to push him out to be shot, but I realized that he was dying and couldn’t be helped. Even so, Colin was cursing Dec under his breath. I told him that Dec wasn’t to blame. Chandra had gotten careless, but I could see that he’d probably still take it up with Dec the next time they met.
I made a mental note to keep a precautionary eye on that situation. Colin was like a lot of Irish. He made a great friend and an even worse enemy. He would never stop fighting until he had won or was dead. I didn’t want him and Dec to come to blows, if they did, I’d probably have to pick up the pieces and I might be missing at least one friend.
We piled into the Estes transporter and in a moment, we’d gone through, but we weren’t quite ready for where we came out. We were prepared for a fight, but we came out of a closet marked “Janitor” on the second floor of the Stanley Hotel.
There was no one in sight. The dimly lit corridor was very quiet, with dust motes floating in the air. The row of closed doors along the hall made my hair stand on end. Pugs could come out of any of them at any time.
I glanced across the corridor and saw room 237. I half expected a Pug to suddenly chop through the door with an ax and wildly shout, “Here’s Johnny!” After a moment, I got control of my mind and realized that I was fantasizing about a movie and not actual Pugs.
I could hear some noise that sounded like talking from the back courtyard, but it seemed hushed. The sound was floating in through a partially open window in the stairwell. It sounded a little like human speech. I wondered how people would be able to survive around a place that was most likely full of Pugs, but I shelved that mystery for later. Perhaps they were collaborators or maybe captives.
We checked both directions then went around the nearby corner and headed down the ornate stairs that led to the main floor. As we got to the lobby, the first thing we saw was an antique Stanley Steamer sitting in one corner. The second thing we noticed was that the three staff members, two behind the front desk and a bellman were all Pugs. True, they were concealed with realistic human faces, but we responded quickly when they pointed guns at us.
We were totally amped up on adrenaline and they didn’t have a chance.
I’d noticed that as fast as the Pugs were, their reaction time was still a little slower than that of an aroused human. Given an equal start at drawing and shooting, a trained human operator would walk away nine times out of ten. It was only when they surprised us or outnumbered us that they had the advantage with guns.
We were getting ready to congratulate ourselves for having finished those guys off when another Pug jumped down the stairs and landed on my back. He didn’t have any weapons, so he attacked with fists and teeth.
The creature hit me like a ton of bricks. They weren’t as heavy as us, but he’d leaped down the entire staircase in one jump and had a lot of momentum. They weren’t quite as fast as us, but they were definitely stronger. They didn’t look it, since their musculature was smooth, giving them a sleek look, but this one was a real handful.
I’m not as good as Dec in hand-to-hand. We rolled across the floor with the Pug trying to keep me between him and the rest of my crew who were trying to aim their guns in his direction. We were moving too rapidly for them to have a sure shot. Joe said later that we reminded him of a whirlwind with teeth and fists flying out of it.
I kept pounding on the Pug’s face, but it wasn’t doing any good, even when I got in two, really hard, elbow strikes. The creature was incredibly tough.
As we rolled under a grand piano, I somehow got hold of his upper lip without being bitten. He had no compunction about using his teeth either. He’d been trying to bite me in the neck the whole time. Dec says he’s seen them eating people, so I guessed that he thought I might be a very difficult lunch.
I yanked on his lip and his face split away from his skull. It seemed like an actual human face, but there was a synthetic layer under it that sealed off his true skin from the atmosphere. This synthetic layer tore as I pulled and he let out a shriek. He continued to fight, but now it seemed like he was fighting to escape rather than to kill me. I got into a full mount position and started raining down elbows on his head. The face tore fully off with the third really hard strike I made.
His skin was bubbling from contact with our air. It looked horrible and I jumped up and backed away as he thrashed back and forth. The skin of his face dissolved and melted through the underlying supporting structure. His skull didn’t look like bone; instead, it looked somewhat like brown cartilage or heavy, leather-like material. He suddenly quit moving and I saw that he was dead.
“Wow! That guy was tough,” I gasped. Colin replied, “Remind me never to get in a fight with you. You play dirty!”
Stormbreaker had been mostly silent since we lost the last of his friends, but he came over and put his hand on my shoulder,
and said, “You can fight on my side any day, paleface!”
As I recovered, I said, “The next thing we have to do is to locate the transporter head that leads off the planet. It’s likely to be heavily guarded. I don’t know why there aren’t more Pugs in this place, but – ”
I was interrupted by Joe, who’d been looking out the front door, “We’d better move now, there looks like about a hundred of them coming up the front steps!”