Something is slowly approaching…
The pumping adrenaline in their hearts turns their chests to a cold fire. The Russian gently squeezes her arm. She startles for a moment at the touch. It’s a gentle and soft gesture, and those feelings infuse her with a glimmer of comfort. Then, like a flash, the memory of the bluish wound on the man’s hand flashes before her eyes and she instinctively makes a move away from him.
Moore leans slightly to the side to peek at the door to the laboratory and one of the long windows that flank the corridor running along the wall to her right. On the glass she can see the dark blood stains left by Ivanov during the former escape.
She can’t see anything else, yet the creeping sound says that there is something.
Right there, behind the low wall…
The sound echoes again, this time followed by a low moan and another noise that resembles a fabric ripping apart. The woman tightens her trembling hand on one of the incendiary vials made by Ivanov.
There is a movement, barely perceptible, right at the base of the long window.
What was that?
For a few moments nothing happens, but her heart is beating like a jackrabbit in her temples.
Maybe it’s just my imagination…
Then, as her breath dies in her throat, something emerges crawling slowly on the glass.
It’s a sprawling form, pulsing like an earthworm, red and shiny like a tongue. It moves slowly, snaking and twisting on the smooth surface, leaving a trail of whitish slime. The obscene appendix seems to move indecisively, swaying and slowly approaching the strip of dark blood left by Ivanov. Alerted by the touch of the woman, the Russian raises his head to watch the scene. The long tongue approaches the bluish spot, touching it for a moment. Then, after a few seconds, it suddenly gets away with a hiss, as if it had just touched something burning. A slurred sound comes from behind the door of the laboratory, and it fades into a long, agonizing groan.
Something on my shoulder blade…
The startled woman turns around. Ivanov makes a gesture for her to stay silent, then he leans in to whisper in her ear.
“The creature attacked five men, plus the soldier who was with us. I don’t think it had enough enzymes to overtake and digest them all. The abomination just outside that door has not yet completed the assimilation.”
She looks at him questioningly. Moore has the feeling that the thoughts in her head are engulfed with mud. Ivanov is crumpling a brown lump, the size of a fist, with the residual material used to create the triggers of his Molotov cocktails. “This isn’t the same creature that caused the blackout and that scanned the base not long ago. The thing in the hallway has not a coherent physiology and is not well-formed yet. It’s slow and vulnerable. It’s crawling and sniffing our tracks, maybe we can trick it…”
“…before it has time to complete the replication”, she concludes.
The man winks, hinting a smile, then works to fix the explosive to one of the improvised incendiary bombs, shaping it all around the stopper. The woman turns to the flipped table, rising her head just enough to peek at the door and the windows along the corridor. She can no longer see the sprawling tongue and the only trace of the presence of the creature is the mucus splash scattered on the glass.
Moore can’t hear any sound, except for the rhythmic drumming of her own heart and the occasional muted sound made by Ivanov, as he sneaks up to the Bunsen burner and lights the flame by adjusting it to a minimum.
A cold shiver runs down her spine like, branching out like lightning.
May it still be there?
Focused on keeping an eye on the window made opaque by the fluids released by the creature, she expects to see it reappear at any moment. Moore doesn’t see the silent form which slowly climbs a few meters to their left, beyond the portion of window that runs along the corridor beside the door through which they entered. At that point, the path is shady, since one of the fluorescent tubes has not lit up after the previous blackout.
The woman lingers for too long looking at the door, trying to make order in the whirlwind of thoughts stirring in her mind. Something between a sixth sense and a fleeting glimpse of a movement makes her turn to her left.
At first it’s not clear what she is seeing. Then, with a sudden flash, something moves, sticking to the window and emerging into the light.
The hideously deformed face of Vasquez presses against the glass. The grotesque caricature stares at her with a malevolent look that seems to express a concentrate of everything that is bestial and totally foreign to the human dimension.
A prolonged growl comes out of its mouth that’s absurdly wide open. Everywhere on its surface, tentacular appendages start sprouting and dart in the air like crazed snakes.
The two scientists, aware that they have been discovered, stand up and retreat slowly. Ivanov quickly sets fire to the wick of one of the bombs. In the meantime something grows out of what was formerly the mouth of Vasquez. A whitish shape, covered by a translucent membrane that surrounds it as an amniotic sac. With a ripping sound the fabric tears apart, revealing a bulbous ivory protuberance, like the head of a femur, but as big as a basketball.
The monstrosity twists and then throws itself against the window. The impact is violent and produces a loud thud.
“My God!”, Moore shouts as she takes a step backward. “It has generated a bone formation, to use it like a battering ram and break through the glass!”
With a feral violence, the creature impacts against the glass wall another time. The sound is incredibly strong and a fractal of cracks, reminiscent of a snow crystal, appears on the smooth surface.
“Stand back, and be ready to run!”, shouts the Russian scientist.
The window gives in to the fourth hit of the creature.
Before the glass fragments touch the ground, a cacophony of sound bursts into the lab, reaching the two scientists.
A part of the huge mass of the abomination falls within the room, dragging down a large section of the window. A long cord, like a pulsing gut, connects it to the rest of the shapeless mass lying on the floor in the corridor, hidden by the low wall. The creature that has broken through the glass writhes on the ground for a few moments. It’s shaken by tremors as big appendages burst out from its main trunk. They throb and swell, stretching with aberrant geometries, and then harden to shape rudimentary deformed limbs. At the same time, the pulsation in the umbilical cord that connects to the outside mass fades away and goes limp. A wound opens on its surface, such as a vertical cut that rips the creature in two distinct beings.
Now independent, the monstrosity inside the lab quickly generates new tentacles at whose ends weird shapes sprout. Some of them resemble human eyes, others are dark and multifaceted as insects’ compound eyes. The sounds coming from the being in the laboratory, and those from the corridor, are terrifying. Their multiple tones shake the two scientists to the core.
Ivanov throws a bomb, but his wounded hand betrays him with a stab of pain. The vial doesn’t reach the target and ends up shattering about a meter away. It explodes and generates instantly a flaming puddle.
Only part of the flammable liquid splashes hit the creature, which moves away letting out an angry roar. The fire prevention system activates almost immediately. While an alarm sounds loud in the base, sprinklers on the ceiling start to spread a drizzle that sizzles on the flaming ground, causing a vapor that floats like a low mist.
Walking quickly and awkwardly on unsteady legs, the deformed mass moves sideways, in order to get around the fire and reach the two scientists. A second bomb thrown by Moore centers it fully, going to pieces. The explosive on the cap doesn’t detonate, and for a moment it seems that the raw bomb won’t have any effect but, as soon as the liquid reaches the flames on the ground, a bloodcurdling scream echoes in the base. The creature gets engulfed with flames.