Star Cat Forever: A Science Fiction & Fantasy Adventure (The Star Cat Series - Book 6)
Page 21
GNASH — GNASH.
“Nyaaah,” Jelly whined and rammed her knee into the webbing between its third and fourth limb.
SCHWAAA-AAACK.
The Shanta’s front two limbs swiped at Jelly’s face. Before it had the chance she pushed forward and smothered its central section with her arms, forcing them both to the ground.
WHUMP.
A whirlwind of footsteps rumbled further up the corridor, “Damn it, there it is. Kill it,” a man screamed.
Jelly looked up from the Shanta’s slit and saw Brayn aiming its gun at the creature.
“Jelly, get down.”
Maar’s voice rang out from behind Brayn’s left shoulder. “Anderson’s out? How did she get out?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Maar’s heels skidded as he clapped eyes on Jelly on top of the Shanta.
“Oh, J-Jesus—”
“—Arrggghhhhh.”
Now that she’d been freed, the sight of Maar Sheck evoked a rage in her that couldn’t be sated. She climbed to her feet and used the Shanta as a ribcage-cum body shield.
THRAAAA-AAAA-TAT-A-TAAAATT.
Brayn fired a round of bullets up the corridor.
WHELP — SPLOTCH — SPLOTCH — SPLOTCH.
The bullets smashed through the Shanta, throwing ropes of pink gloop out of the exit wounds and narrowly missing Jelly’s head and arms.
SCREEEEEE.
“Agghhhhhhhh—”
Jelly elbowed the Shanta in its slit, hooked her arms around its body, and ran into a shower of oncoming bullets.
Maar tapped Brayn on the shoulder, “I gotta get out of here.”
“Hold on, sir,” he said as he reloaded and fired another round of shots up the corridor.
SWISH — SWASH — CRACK.
The Shanta’s limbs flailed around, catching most of the bullets. Two of its talons sprung off the end of its limbs, splattering pink goop up the walls.
Brayn lowered his gun as he saw the Shanta’s body grow, indicating it was getting closer and closer.
“Mr. Sheck, sir. Run.”
“Right, good idea,” Maar said and clutched Arden’s arm, “You coming?”
“Screw that. I’m off. I’ll see you at reception.”
Arden ran off, screaming.
“Run. Go, go, go,” Maar squealed as he chased after him. “Across the gantry and out through reception.”
The pair ran through the door and onto the walkway above the research laboratory.
“Kill that damn rodent while you’re at it,” Maar yelled over his shoulder as he and Arden clanged their way along the metal floor.
Brayn aimed at the Shanta once again and blasted two of its limbs off.
BLAMM - SPATCH.
“Yes, sir,” he yelled over the noise of the alarms. “I’ll be right there.”
Jelly ran towards Brayn as the angry Shanta tried to bite at her shoulders.
“Nggggggg,” she ran past Bay Thirty-Three and glanced at the corpses littered inside, “Daaaaaaammmmmnnn it.”
The Shanta inadvertently provided a barrier to Brayn’s bullets as they whizzed along the corridor.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEE.
Jelly gripped two of its limbs in her hands and wrenched it to her chest.
“Sorry about this, Alex.”
Brayn ran backwards and dropped his empty magazine to the floor, “Reloading,” he screamed, not that anyone could hear him.
Bay Sixty-Five whizzed past her left shoulder as she ran, “Furie.”
“Damn it, why can’t you be a good little kitty and die?” Brayn roared as he fired off more shots at the Shanta.
WHACK — WHACK — SCHPLATTT.
Three more bullets careened into the back of its midsection and exploded
“Nice knowing you, Hughes.”
“Whuh—” the Shanta contorted, seeming to recognize its genesis.
FLING.
She launched the complicated spider web of flesh up the corridor. It tumbled through the air, hit the deck like an injured Octopus, and bounced into Brayn.
“Wahhhh,” he lost his footing, fell onto his back, and swung his gun at the Shanta - all in the same motion.
“SHAAAAANNNTTTTAAAAAAA.”
“What the hell are you?” Brayn huffed with disbelief as he struggled to keep his gun held at its mid-section.
STOMP — STOMP — STOMP.
One by one, the Shanta slapped its remaining five limbs along the walls and ground. Determined, and in danger of losing its balance, it shuffled forward and groaned through its busted slit.
SCHLEEEEEERRGH.
Five USARIC mercenaries raced up behind the floored Brayn and aimed their guns at the hideous spider monstrosity barricading the corridor and threatening to kill Brayn.
“Open fire!” Brayn ordered.
BLAM — BLAM — BLAM — SPLACTH — SPATCH.
The Shanta twisted back and tried to avoid the cavalcade of bullets whizzing towards it.
— Bay 65 —
Jelly ran into the viewing gallery and saw Furie sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at her glowing chest.
“Honey.”
Furie couldn’t hear her mother’s voice from inside the chamber. She swung her feet back and forth and felt along her vibrating whiskers.
“War is coming,” she sang. “War mage will save us.”
“Honey,” Jelly screamed at the window and rammed her fists against the plastic.
It didn’t produce so much as a sound, let alone a dent.
Jelly’s hands slid down the glass, “Honey, can you hear me?”
Furie couldn’t hear anything other than her own voice.
Jelly clocked the lever on the wall. A microphone sat on a desk just underneath. She darted over to the control bank and slammed the counter with her fist.
A wash of static spat out of the speakers in the chamber.
“Ugh, how does this stupid thing work?” Jelly’s voice pinned through the microphone, and caught Furie’s attention.
She looked up at the ceiling and planted her feet on the floor.
“Mommy?”
Jelly’s ear pricked up. Her daughter had heard her. She moved her mouth back to the microphone.
“Honey, can you hear me?”
Furie’s eyes lit up, “Mommy?”
Jelly squinted through the wall at her daughter, “Yes, it’s Mommy. Stay away from the glass.”
“What glass?”
Furie looked around and could only see four white walls. The largest one, directly in front of her, contained only a mirror.
“Go and stand by the bed, honey. Quickly.”
FLIP.
She released the microphone switch and paced over to the clear glass.
Furie took her seat and stared at the mirror, “Mommy’s here,” she said as she ran her paws along her whiskers. She looked at her chest and grinned, “She’s going to get me and help me get to you.”
Jelly kicked her right foot along the ground and gripped both her elbows in her hands.
BOLT.
Jelly stormed forward and pushed her left elbow in front of her chest.
“Yaaaggghh.”
Furie looked up at the mirror and saw her own image stare back at her.
“I guess I won, huh?” her reflection said. “Star Cat?”
KRAAAA — SMAASSSSHHHHHHH.
Furie’s reflection, and erstwhile oppressor, burst into a thousand pieces of silver rain. Jelly smashed through the shards and stormed towards her.
CRUNCH — STOMP.
Jelly’s feet bled as she ground the soles of her feet across the glass-strewn ground.
A cacophony of gunfire and screams pounded against the darkened viewing gallery wall.
“Mommy.”
“Honey.”
“Where have you—”
“— No time to explain,” Jelly said as she held out her right hand. “Take my hand.”
“But, but—”
“—For my sake, child.
Don’t argue with your mother. Gimme paw.”
“Aww.”
“Do it. Gimme paw.”
Furie held out her left paw for her mother, “Okay, Mommy.”
The girl’s tail swished around and glowed a beautiful bright pink, along with her heart and abdomen. Jelly widened her eyes and meowed in shock.
“Honey?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Are you ready?”
Furie ran her paw over her chest as her whiskers sparked, “I think so. But I don’t know where it is.”
Jelly pulled the girl away from the bed and sheltered the girl’s ears with her hands.
“Listen to Mommy very carefully, okay?”
Furie nodded and stroked her mother’s face as she spoke. Time was of the essence, but Jelly couldn’t resist her daughter’s touch.
“We don’t have time for this, honey.”
“I just want to feel your fur again.”
Jelly took her daughter’s wrists in her left hand, careful not to nick the skin with her infinity claws.
“Furie. Look at me.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
“You’re ready,” she said. “But there are a lot of people out there trying to prevent you from doing what you must do. They are not friends.”
“Not friends.”
“No,” Jelly turned over her shoulder and heard the commotion from outside grow louder. She turned back to Furie and grunted, “So, you have to be a brave little Star Cat, okay? Mommy will protect you so you can save us.”
“Yes, Mommy. You will protect me.”
Jelly lifted her right leg and pushed her foot to the ground, forming a makeshift step with her knee.
“Climb up.”
Furie used her mother’s hand as balance to pull herself onto the giant leg.
“Wow, Mommy. You got biggest.”
“Bigger, honey. Not biggest,” Jelly said. “Now, sit in my arm.”
“Okay.”
Furie lifted her hind legs along her mother’s forearm and snuggled into the crook of her elbow.
Jelly wiggled her nose at her daughter’s pulsating pink heart and closed her eyes.
“Beautiful, honey.”
“Thank you, Mommy.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
In the corridor, Brayn and his mercenary colleagues opened fire on the Shanta suspended in the middle of the corridor.
“Get its legs,” Brayn shouted over the sound of the gunfire. “It’ll drop.”
BLAM — BLAM — BLAM.
None of the USARIC mercenaries saw Jelly slip out of Bay Sixty-Five and into the corridor.
Her feet busted the shards of glass as she moved forward.
SCREEEEEEEE.
The Shanta’s slit wailed at Jelly, with its back facing the mercenaries.
“Hughes?”
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
It wailed, seeming to confirm she was correct.
“Thank you, Hughes,” Jelly whispered.
She raced as fast as she could up the corridor, towards Bay Seventy.
Several stray bullets crashed into the walls and ceiling on either side of her shoulders.
“Mommy, I’m scared.”
Jelly said as she trained her sight at the far end of the corridor.
“Be brave, honey. It’s okay—”
AROOOOOOGAHHH.
The corridor speaker system spoke over the sound of the gunfire, “This is not a drill. All personnel to convene at assembly point A.”
Jelly ran past Bay Thirty-Three, using Jaykay and Rowan’s body as a reminder of where she was.
Jonas and Nathan’s bloodied corpses lay across each other in the middle of the corridor.
“Oh, that’s a shame. I was beginning to like them.”
Jelly carried on up the corridor and eyed Bay Seventy up ahead.
WHUMP.
Julie stepped into the corridor and shut the door to Bay Seventy behind her.
She was surprised to find everyone had left. An overwhelming stench of death and sulfur drifted into her nostrils.
Whoa,” she gasped and held her hands out at Jelly. “Hey, girl. Where are you going?”
“I need to get my daughter out of here. There must be a back door here, right?”
Julie pointed at the fork at the end of the corridor.
“Take a right at the end of the corridor. It leads out back.”
“Okay.”
Julie spied the cute cat-girl in Jelly’s arms, “Hey, Furie.”
“Hello.”
The girl was more preoccupied with the pink glow in her own chest than the woman standing before her.
“We have to go,” Jelly said, hoping Julie would see sense. “Are you going to stop me?”
Julie ran her hand along Jelly’s shoulder.
“Call me Jool.”
“Jool,” Jelly whispered.
“All my friends call me Jool. And, no, of course I’m not going to stop you,” she said, nodding at the USARIC mercenaries pushing through Alex’s spider-shaped corpse, “But I am going to stop them.”
Jelly’s ears lifted, “Huh?”
“You don’t have much time. Honey.”
Julie offered Jelly and Furie a conspiratorial smile.
“I don’t know what happened to my sister,” she said. “But I know you looked after her.”
“She was a mother to me. Jool.”
“Good,” Julie nodded at Furie, “Now be a mother to this one, here. Do whatever it is you have to do. And good luck.”
Touched, Jelly wiggled her nose at the woman. “Thank you, Jool.”
Furie pointed at the woman’s spectacles, “Friend.”
“Yes,” Julie said. “I’m your friend.”
She waved at Furie as Jelly ran up the corridor and made for the double doors.
SCREEEEEEEE.
Riddled with bullets, the Shanta’s limbs weakened as it suspended itself in the middle of the corridor.
“Is it dead?” one the mercenaries asked Brayn.
“It is now.”
He moved forward and buried the barrel of his gun in the creatures midsection.
“Open your mouth.”
Its beady eyes opened and stared Brayn in the face. Its slit opened out and closed its lip-like opening around the end of Brayn’s barrel.
“Atta boy, Hughes. Suck on this.”
BLAMMM — SCHPLATTTT.
The ball of flesh exploded and crashed to the floor in a bloodied heap. Its limbs collapsed on top of it.
The creature previously known as Alex was dead.
“Have some lackey come in and clean this asshole off my floor,” Brayn ordered to a team member.
“Yes, sir.”
“The rest of you, follow me.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brayn reloaded his gun as he ran over to Julie at the end of the corridor.
“Where did Anderson go?”
Julie pointed to the left walkway, “She went that way.”
“Okay, thanks,” he said as he and his colleagues made after Jelly.
Julie bit her lip, hoping they wouldn’t return.
WHUMP.
Jelly booted the emergency back door and ran out of the building with Furie in her arms.
She surveyed the scene in front of her.
A long metal fence prevented easy entry to the waters of the Gulf of Mexico dead ahead of them.
Jelly caught sight of the tree that wasn’t a tree in the middle of the water. Its summit throttled a thick pink stream crashing beyond the clouds.
“Honey,” she whimpered. “We’re here.”
FIZZZZZ — SPARK.
Furie’s whiskers shuffled and spewed orange, electric sparks. Her heart raced faster and faster, enabling the glow in her chest to seep through her fur.
“Mommy.”
“Yes, honey?”
Furie wriggled free from her mother’s clutches and hopped towards the fence.
“There it is.”
&nbs
p; Jelly crouched down and released Furie onto the wet grass, “Yes. It is.”
Furie stood up straight and aimed her chest at the structure in the middle of the ocean.
Biddum-biddum-biddum.
“Ever since I woke up, Mommy. My heart. It wants to go there. It’s dying to go there.”
SCRAAPPPEEEE.
Her hind paws magnetized and screeched across the mud, taking her towards the fence.
Furie ducked her head and growled.
“I have to go.”
She turned to her mother. Jelly covered her mouth with her hand as she saw her daughter’s pyramid-shaped pupils turn a urine-colored yellow.
“It’s time, honey.”
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Wait, wait—” Jelly ran after her daughter and held her by her shoulders. “Honey?”
“What do I do when I get there, Mommy?”
She looked into her child’s eyes one, final time.
“Do what your instinct tells you to, okay?”
“Will it love me, Mommy?”
“It loved me,” Jelly whispered. “It gave me the greatest gift of all.”
“Who?”
“You, silly.”
Furie wiggled her nose and lifted her ears at the view of the sea, “But, Mommy, I d-don’t like the water.”
Jelly stopped short of revealing her similar adventure on Pink Symphony. She pressed her infinity claw on Furie’s glowing chest.
“And now, you must return the gift.”
“I don’t know why.”
“You trust me, don’t you?”
The bizarre, pink spectacle lit up Furie’s pupils. She calmed down and took a deep breath.
BANG — BANG — BANG.
The back door to the facility pushed open. Brayn and his fellow mercenaries pushed through and looked around.
Jelly had no time to waste.
“Honey, go.”
“But, Mommy—”
“—No buts, honey,” Jelly slid her hand across Furie’s face and stared her dead in the eyes. “Star Cat. Forever.”
“Star Cat. Forever and ever and ever and ever.”
“I love you.”
Jelly pecked her daughter on the forehead, softly.
“I love you, too, Mommy.”
“I’ll see you when it’s over.”
A final smile, and a maternal knock on the shoulder was all it took to wrap it all up.
“Go.”
“Over there,” Brayn screamed from the Research building back exit, “She’s over there.”