The Time of The Cat 43

PAYBACK

The door flew open with a bang, and a Pug walked through. He was talking over his shoulder to the one behind him. They stepped in far enough for the next two to come through and then looked around in surprise.

There was something about their response that gave me hope for our chances in the coming conflict. They didn’t adapt as rapidly as we would have in the same situation. They looked wildly back and forth as if they couldn’t believe that everyone was gone.

The other two came in, speaking in their hissing speech. The first two began to aim their guns at the people lying on the floor when the last of the five came through the door. He was somewhat quicker on the uptake and hissed an order for the second two to cover the sides of the hanger in a belated attempt to clear the place.

Just as they turned, Jefferson stepped out of the shadows on the far side of the hanger and yowled. The Pugs refocused on him, crouching and aiming at him. I didn’t know if they thought he was responsible for the missing crowd, but it was obvious that they were going to shoot him. They were taking their time aiming because he was such a small target and moving.

The door started to swing shut on its automatic closer when the sergeant and I opened up with our splinter-guns. All five Pugs went down. I ran forward, and the sergeant stepped out and gave me a high-five. It was silly, but I guess he was pretty glad to get some revenge on the creatures.

We scavenged their splinter-guns and passed them out to the unarmed members of our team as they came forward. I gathered the group at the door and carefully opened it to peep outside.

I could see the rear of the canvas-covered truck with the cargo gate open, but there were no other Pugs in sight. My spirits fell. It looked like we’d killed the only ones that were there, leaving us without any clue as to where to go.

I opened the door slowly to clear the space. Seeing no one, I stepped out to the rear of the truck, passing through the exhaust of the idling engine as I did. I leaned out to look around the driver’s side of the canvas and was able to see a Pug’s head in the rear-view mirror. He was looking across the way at another hanger and didn’t see me.

I quietly got everyone on board, pulled the gate closed, and then hammered on the rear of the cab. The driver, thinking all was normal, shifted the idling vehicle into gear and we rolled off.

We didn’t go far. He drove us a hundred yards to the next hangar and backed up to the person-door. I was able to see that the hanger had a bright red sign that said, “Top Secret – No Admittance!”

The truck stopped, and this time the driver opened his door, got down, and came around to the rear of the truck. We weren’t quite what he expected to see, and he tried to run away, but not fast enough. One of the Marines jumped out and shot three rounds, bringing him down about forty feet away from the truck.

“Now, everyone out, and we’ll see if we can save the rest of the captives,” I optimistically said.

The sergeant stepped up to the person-door and opened it. I could hear his gasp as he looked through, and I ran up to look over his shoulder. It was a horrific sight. The first thing we could see was that the floor of the hanger looked like the floor of a slaughterhouse. There were parts of bodies and skeletal sections scattered all over. The second thing we encountered was the awful smell of death and putrefaction that rolled out the opened door.

I had barely started recovering from the shock when a wave of spiders came out of the darkness in the rear of the hanger, moving towards us. They were not like the ones I’d previously seen. These were bloated and swollen, and many had grown so much that it looked like their spindly legs wouldn’t support them. The big ones had vastly larger bodies in proportion to their legs and some of them were almost as large as the bear-sized creature that was so hard to kill.

It was obvious that, just as we’d suspected from seeing the eggs, the spiders were the immature form of the bear-sized thing. Thinking about it, I realized that the damned Pugs had been feeding the spiders in order to grow the bear-sized things. As if my thinking about them had summoned them into existence, the throbbing, moaning noise of an adult came from the shadows, and then there was a scrabbling rush as a full dozen of the adults ran at the door. I slammed it shut.

In my excitement, I somehow conflated the Pugs with bears and inadvertently created a more usable name for the large creatures. I turned to the others in alarm and yelled, “Pug-bears!”

Liz shouted, “Take cover!” and followed her own advice by crawling under the truck so that she could shoot while protected by the chassis.

There was a scraping sound, then a loud bang as claws penetrated the door. At the same time, I felt a mental wave of fear that seemed to be projected through the door. Without thinking, I unslung the eraser-gun from my shoulder where I’d been carrying it after retrieving it from Juan. I stepped back and triggered it at the door.

As I swept it back and forth, the front of the hanger gaped open, and I was able to direct the weapon at the collection of nasties inside. They responded by trying to rush out at us. This grouped them so that I was able to dissolve them back into their primal energy state.

Unfortunately, I missed several of the smaller spiders, and they swarmed over two of the Marines before we could get them. The sergeant was cursing and shooting the blamed things with his splinter-gun, but not having much effect, so I turned to the side after clearing the oncoming horde and wiped out the spiders and the dead Marines’ bodies at the same time. I felt bad about dissolving the Marines, but they were dead, and there was no time to be picky. I immediately turned back to the opening and blasted a few latecomers.

The last thing to come out was one of the adult Pug-bears. It wasn’t moving as fast since it was missing two legs on one side. I waited until it was fully out in the open and then pointed the anti-matter weapon at it. As I did, a strange thought passed through my mind. “Perhaps I shouldn’t kill it; it deserved to live.”

The Secretary of State had been standing to one side, wringing her hands and moaning in distress as we dissolved the creatures. I shrugged off the odd impulse to let the last one live, and as I prepared to finish it off, she darted in front of it with her arms spread wide in order to protect it.

“You’ve killed the Masters!” she screamed. “That will be met with total annihilation of all humans.”

I was puzzled, but Liz was quicker, “What do you mean, ‘the Masters’?”

The Secretary gasped, “The humanoid aliens are the Chosen Ones! They were chosen by the Masters for their ability to work with technology.”

As she started to speak again, there was a wave of mental anger as the ‘Master’ behind her brought its remaining front leg up and stabbed downwards into her back with its venom-dripping claw. She gasped and then practically melted in on herself.

I’d seen enough. The eraser-gun put a period on that act, leaving nothing of the Secretary or the last of this group of so-called ‘Masters.’