Sweat once again trickled down to sting her eyes but she resisted wiping it away, blinking rapidly and shaking her head instead to try to clear her blurred vision. She decided to leave the bike where it was for now, she couldn’t risk dropping the weapon or her guard until she was absolutely sure she was clear of these creatures. If that meant leaving her bike and coming back for it later when the coast was clear, so be it.
There was a rustle in the long grass off to her left and Emily spun to face it, loosing off a shot that severed a wide swath of the grass but didn’t seem to have hit anything else. She’d have to check her shots now. The shotgun only held a total of eight rounds, she’d used four already so she only had four more left in the magazine with no chance to reload; she’d left her spare ammo in one of the panniers of the bike.
Emily turned and faced back into the forest, her back to her exit as she started to edge carefully backwards towards freedom while blindly feeling her way over the remaining few feet of tree trunks and uneven ground. With each tentative step she swung the barrel of the shotgun left to right to cover her retreat.
There was a sudden blur of motion in her peripheral vision and Emily instinctively dropped to the ground, just in time to avoid losing her own head to the massive paw of one of the remaining two creatures. Emily felt the hair on the top of her head fly up as claws sliced through the air where her head had been a millisecond earlier. She rolled to her right and brought the weapon up to where she thought the creature should be but it was already gone, leaping off the ground to land on the trunk of a nearby tree. It stopped for a second and stared at Emily, spines vibrating in anger and its mouth wide open in a vicious snarl. As she brought the shotgun to bear on the alien, it began climbing in swift graceful leaps up the tree trunk. Emily tracked it with the shotgun as it used its claws to pull itself up the tree before finally disappearing into the dense canopy, well out of range of her weapon. The feathery branches shook as it leaped from tree to tree above her head. It seemed to be heading towards the edge of the forest as if it knew that direction was her only escape route.
The bastard’s trying to cut me off
.
The second creature melted into view from behind a tree to her right. Leaping over twisting roots it ran between her and the path she had already come, blocking any chance she had to retreat into the forest. The creature’s tentacles undulated and the spines on its body vibrated angrily, but it seemed to understand the shotgun represented almost certain death if it got within range. It slinked back and forth as Emily tried to get a bead on it but it moved too quickly for her to risk another missed shot.
She began backing away towards the edge of the forest. The creature on the ground in front of her matched her pace but kept its distance never stopping its evasive dance. With each backward step she took, Emily risked taking her eyes off the alien for a second to glance up and over her shoulder, searching the canopy, ground, and trees for any sign of the second monster that had moved to block her exit from the forest.
Each step took her closer to freedom and she began mentally counting down the remaining distance between her and the edge of the forest. She could feel the air begin to cool the closer she got to freedom, stirred by a light breeze seeping in from outside, but it didn’t slow the continuous river of perspiration that coated her body like early morning dew.
Emily had managed to count down to the final seven feet when she heard the creature dropping from the canopy above her. At the same time, she saw the second creature on the ground drop back on its haunches and begin to launch itself into the air towards her in a beautifully synchronized joint attack. The next few seconds stretched out into a dreamy slow-motion movie played out frame by frame. She observed everything from a distance, disconnected from the reality of the situation as her sympathetic nervous system took control of her body and forced her conscious mind into the passenger seat.
Emily felt herself drop to the ground and roll over onto her back, positioning her body to face the direction of the creature falling toward her from above. The shotgun traversed an agonizingly slow arc toward the creature as it hit the ground with a grunt just a few feet from her prone body, its muscles tensing as it raised one of its paws, the talons catching the sunlight that filtered through the tree line just a few feet away. The thing’s spines rustled in anticipation of the kill and she watched the tentacles flicker excitedly back and forth towards her like snakes readying to strike. Its jaws opened wide and she could smell the fetid breathe from way down in its stomach as it washed over her. And that was where she aimed the shotgun; she heard the boom echoing through the strange alien trees and watched as the buckshot tore through the mouth obliterating the tentacles into a fine red mist and exiting through the back of the creature’s skull. Globs of whatever amounted to a brain went spinning into the air behind it. The alien fell dead at her feet, its pink tongue lolling from what was left of its mouth as the dead creatures legs gave a final few kicks then became still.
Good shot. Good shot
, her distant self cheered, as she flipped herself over onto her front and began to push herself up to her feet.
Now there’s just one last one to
—
The thought was pounded from her mind as the third creature landed on her back, its weight smashing her down into the ground and forcing the air from her lungs. Emily heard herself scream in pain as its claws found their way under the backpack and sank into her flesh just below her right shoulder. The force of the impact sent the shotgun spinning from her hands.
Her ears filled with the sound of shredding and ripping. She was sure it was the thing slicing the skin from her body, but then she realized with relief that it was her bergen tearing as the creature tried to get through it to her.
Emily began thrashing as hard as she could, but she was pinned firmly to the ground by the monster’s one paw while the other relentlessly tore at her backpack. The thing was just too strong and heavy for her to stand a chance of turning over to face the creature, not that it would do any good if she could because the shotgun now lay just outside of her reach. It was just a matter of time before the monster slashed its way through the layers of the backpack and snapped her spine or decided to take a bite from her throat. As if it sensed her thoughts, the monster dipped its head towards Emily’s face and she felt the wet slathering of its tentacles brush over her skin, probing into her mouth, nostrils and ears. She screamed in terror as it brought its mouth down to her eye level and opened wide, giving Emily a perfect view of the black rows of teeth lining its mouth. Emily felt the tongue, rough and scaly, against her face as it tasted her, savoring its moment of glory before it delivered the final coup de grâce.
It wasn’t so bad
, she thought from the solitude of her inner mind. The pain was a distant distraction, the weight of the creature on top of her more disconcerting to her as she was finding it harder and harder to breath. Darkness was already starting to close in around the periphery of her vision as her oxygen-starved brain slowly began to shut down.
Through her blurred vision, Emily could see something advancing rapidly toward her from the direction of the field beyond the forest. The shape was just a silhouette of motion, backlit by the afternoon sun as it darted swiftly between the trees, leaping over the roots. It was another of the creatures, she supposed, come to join in the kill.
The shadow vaulted over a particularly large root, using it as a springboard to launch itself through the air towards her. She closed her eyes and waited for the end to come.
Instead, the weight of the creature suddenly lifted from her as she felt rather than heard something heavy collide with the creature on her back, knocking it away from her and tearing its claws from the backpack and her shoulder. The relief was instant and she sucked in a huge gasp of air. The blackness began to recede and pain flooded in its place as she found herself once again in the driving seat of her own body.
“Oh, good God,” she moaned, through teeth gritted so tightly in pain she could feel the enamel beginning to buckle.
The dirt was cool against her cheek and she was tempted to simply lay there, close her eyes again and sleep, but she couldn’t do that, not if she wanted to live.
And she
did
want to live.
So, instead, she rolled over onto her back, ignoring the pain in her shoulder and ribs, and turned her head in the direction she thought her attacker had been knocked.
The creature was still there, crouched low as it sidestepped around the trunk of a tree, its lipless mouth bared in a snarl, tentacles quivering, muscles tensed and ready to leap. But the beast’s anger was no longer focused on Emily. Its attention was squarely on the thing that had saved her.
The dog, a male, was almost as large as the alien creature it now faced down. Its dense light-gray fur shot through with stripes of darker gray, and its broad chest was a tabard of white stretching from its throat under its belly back to its muscled haunches. The dog’s head was also gray, broken only by a mask of white fur around his eyes that stretched down his muzzle to his jet-black nose, while a thick gray tail curled proudly in a question mark above his back.
He was the most beautiful thing Emily had ever seen.
Emily recognized the breed as an Alaskan Malamute. Her uncle had owned two on his farm when she was child. It looked kind of like a Husky but it was bigger and far stronger. Originally bred as sled dogs, Malamutes were incredibly powerful and highly intelligent. Where it had come from and how it had survived the red rain, Emily had no idea, but she owed this dog her life and she’d be damned if she was simply going to lie there and let him take on the alien bastard on his own.
The dog was crouched low to the ground between Emily and the alien, his lips pulled back in a silent snarl as he eyed the creature while it continued to circle around, unsure of how to deal with the dog.
While the Malamute and the alien faced off against each other, Emily sat up and rolled over onto her knees. She had to find the shotgun. It had fallen somewhere nearby, but in the struggle that followed, the alien must have knocked it away because it wasn’t where she had last seen it. Flipping back onto her butt, Emily scanned the other direction and spotted the stock of the shotgun protruding from beneath the root of a tree. She willed her shaking legs to stand but they just would not obey. The best she could do was to get on all fours and crawl towards the weapon.
The alien must have figured out what she was going for because it let out an ear-piercing shriek, leaping toward her.
The dog leaped too. Emily saw his jaws open wide, his white fangs flashed as he collided in mid air with the alien, sinking his teeth deep into where the throat would have been if the thing had had a neck. The momentum of the dog bowled the creature over and the two entangled animals rolled off into the underbrush, both snarling at the other as they tried to land a killing bite.
It was now or never, Emily decided and pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the tingling pain that ran from her shoulders all the way down into her legs. Limping the final few feet to where the shotgun lay, she pulled it from between the tree’s roots. She quickly checked to make sure the barrel was clear of any debris then racked another round into the chamber, ejecting the spent shell.
She turned back towards where the two animals were fighting in time to see the alien erupt from the underbrush, closely followed by the dog. The Malamute snapped ferociously at the monsters hindquarters as they both raced toward her, the dog’s ears flat against his head, white froth coating his muzzle and flying from his mouth as he pounded after her attacker.
Emily drew a bead on the rapidly advancing monster and eased her finger onto the trigger … then released the pressure. If she fired now she risked hitting the dog following so closely behind the charging alien, and she would be damned if she was going to be the one who risked killing what very well may be the last specimen of humanity’s best friend. Instead, as the advancing monster ate up the final few feet between its quarry, Emily breathed in what felt like the deepest breath of her life but in reality must have been the shortest intake of air she ever made and then yelled…
“Down, boy. Get down.”
The Malamute instantly obeyed, dropping to the ground and forcing the flat of its jaw tight against the earth while tucking its tail around its flank. It only took a second for her to issue her command and the dog to obey, but that was all she needed to ensure sufficient space between the dog and the charging monster. The creature’s butt-ugly face seemed to take up her entire vision as she squeezed the trigger on the Mossberg and then it disappeared in a spray of green gore, as the 12-gauge buckshot obliterated it. Momentum carried the body of the alien past Emily and she felt the spray of green arterial blood splash over her as the dead body sailed past and crashed into the undergrowth behind her.
The dog was still lying where she had commanded it to stop. Its mouth was open as it panted hard, its tongue lolling between its front canines. Its left flank was smeared with dirt and stained with red blood, but the dog’s eyes were bright and clear and fixed directly on her as she limped her way over to it.
A wave of gratitude washed through her as she noticed the dog’s tail begin gently swooshing back and forth, sending a small cloud of dusty soil into the air. Emily knelt down on one knee, using the butt of the shotgun shoved into the ground to help steady her.