Chapter 16
658 Words
81
“YOU’RE SUNK!”
She lowered the pen slowly, the mouth-piece aimed at his lips. Then she abruptly brought the hot chamber close to the accu-mulating blood.
The blood flowed up his breast, fleeing the heat.
As Mac dropped the e-cig on his chest and reached in her drawer, the man altered. Red and white skin turned blue, as if blast-ed by a polar wind. Thick blue hairs poked from the base of the neck, like worms push-ing from a corpse. Two pale eyes became the three red orbs of a hell-hound.
Face twisting with rage, the thing that had been Chick Cabane surged upright.
Mac whipped her hand from the drawer and fired her pistol three times, planting a bullet in each eye.
The thing reached for her with elongating fingers. Draining the Glock 17 of its remain-ing fourteen 9mm rounds clearly wouldn’t improve the outcome, so Mac shoved the compact semi-automatic in her belt and her hand in the drawer. Her hand reappeared im-mediately, bearing the tool she’d relocated from the kitchenette.
The thing was about to seize her with its tentacle-fingers when she activated the tool. The thing sensed what she was aiming and reared back, its snarl exposing snake-like fangs.
Mac shoved her crème brûlée torch clos-er.
The eight-inch tool was intended for cu-linary use and jewelry making, so it hadn’t been sieved out of the luggage she’d checked for her flight to Malvinas Argentinas Ush-uaia International Airport and the ship to Antarctica (her Glock and ammo hadn’t been removed because she kept her paper-work updated for international carry). With a full tank, the flame of the small butane torch would burn at 2372°F for up to sixty minutes. She’d made sure the tank was full.
It was difficult to destroy the thing. She set the bed on fire, and the thing set the bed-room nook on fire as it flopped on the floor and crawled away from her. The live/work
space took flame with all the speed of sub-standard building materials.
The alien went still, but Mac didn’t try to confirm if it was dead (did it even have lungs or a heart?). And she had barely enough time to seize card key and gloves and parka, step into her boots, and get out of the container alive.
Coughing smoke from her lungs, she locked the door. As she dropped the card in her breast pocket with Stu’s razor, she wheeled around.
She stilled herself, ignoring the heat ra-diating painfully through the insulated door. Butt nestled in fresh snowfall, Whobert sat waiting for her master. She had a dense coat and was unconcerned with the flurry that had begun sometime after Mac closed the curtain. She met Mac’s gaze with bright blue eyes and gave a playful bark.
I love dogs.
“Good dog,” she said.
Dogs are the best.
As Whobert’s tail wagged into overdrive, Mac pulled the semi-automatic from her belt and shot the dog in the right front leg.
The creature lurched but caught itself on the three intact legs. Its head reshaped, gaining a third blazing eye. Growling like a pit bull in a fighting ring, the thing lunged forward. The tentacles rising like blue vi-pers from its neck nearly reached Mac’s ankle before she shattered the thing’s three remaining legs with three more shots, then activated the torch.
When the thing finally collapsed in a burning heap, Mac risked a glance at her container. She couldn’t see flames through the polycarbonate panel, but it was starting to melt, releasing smoke and British accents and the snap, crackle, and hiss of the fire. Smoke was also slipping around the door on all sides. Something else was sliding under-neath the door—something amorphous and fleshy and covered by tiny flames.
The metal in her hands felt like ice. With numbing fingers, she applied her blue flame to the fleshy mass until it retreated under the
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