PULP! - Adventures in Bad SciFi

PULP! Episode #7 - How to use a Facehugger as a Blunt Weapon

PULP! Episode # 7 - How to use a Facehugger as a Blunt Weapon

Now alone, Erika clung to the wall of the corridor, slowly gaining ground. She'd passed the bodies of two Deep Ones, broken and bleeding into the deck plates, but it was too dark to know what killed them. Ahead, she could hear noise on the bridge, the shuffling of feet, the throaty, mucus-full wheeze of breath, and slipping into a kneel, she peered around the edge of the door, straining to see.

On the other side of the deck, down the long, oval corridor lining the ship, she could hear Nebis and Rosebud working at the airlock, a sharp claxon sounding before the first set of doors were opened, the shuffle of her magnetized boots on the steel. The indicator panel in the starboard hallway showed she was being sealed in...good.

Near one of her knees, Erika felt skitter of movement, tiny fingers tapping, touching, a long tail curling around one of her ankles and squeezing, a gesture of familiarity. Reaching down, she patted the slick little creature and picked it up, uncurling it from its choke-hold on her leg, putting it up on her shoulder, where the little beast hissed its discontent, coiling it's tail in a strangle-hold around her upper arm to keep steady.

"It's okay kitty-kitty," she whispered.  Still peering around the corner, she strained to see the Deep Ones still invading the ship's bridge, visible only as shadowy silhouettes in the dark, moving as shapeless hulks in front of the indicator panels. It was hard to make herself move from that place, knowing that hooked teeth and infectious claws awaited her.

On the other side of the ship, Erika heard the last shrill alarm as the airlock opened, then the muted thumping of Nebis's boots on the hull. There wasn't much time to re-take the bridge, she couldn't afford to leave her girlfriend unprotected on the outside of the ship for too long, they needed to get moving.

Gritting her teeth, Erika dashed from the corridor, dodging the pilot's chair, bulling into the closest creature, raising her pistols and grinding them into the Deep One's sticky flesh before squeezing both triggers.  The beast rasped against her before falling in a hulk, the reek of powder rounds filling the cabin as the second Deep One howled its rage, dropping to a crouch and leaping.

Erika skipped backward a step, scrabbling for her balance as clawed hands swiped in the dark, trying to get her guns between them. Stumbling in the dark, she hit the sensor panel, the jolt causing her to lose one of the pistols, the other she swung back toward the Deep One, but it was already reaching, clawed hands forcing the weapon away, not so much punching as bludgeoning her with its weight, leaving the pilot stunned and falling.

"Hoi!" A noise from behind them.  Erika turned just in time to see Rosebud bringing down a pressure-helmet on the Deep One's eyes, a high-pitched squall deafening them before it stumbled over Erika, who dealt it a kick to the legs, forcing it to the deck plates before the thorned near-human, Rosebud, finished it with his boots.

"Shit, thanks. Would you go check on Donu-"

"WWAAAAAAAAGHHHH!" Wild eyed and covered in ichor, the young man came barreling down the corridor, and seeing the Deep Ones, began bludgeoning their bodies with a telescoping rod. After a few swings with no response, the twitching, damaged man looked up toward both Pilot and Botanist, the rod still raised, as though he were uncertain.

"Must...protect...the women...." he wailed, then began stalking toward Rosebud.

"Get him kitty!" Erika said. Alerted by the sound of it's name, the Facehugger still clinging to her shoulder stiffened, its tail flexing as it worked to sense movement in the cabin. 'Kitty' coiled against her skin, chittering a warning before using it's tail to throw itself into the air, it's grasping fingers widening in dire preparation.  Seeing movement, Donut froze, his crazed, dilated eyes raising just as the facehugger came crashing down, grabbing his face, its tail wrapping once, then twice around the young man's panicked throat.

"That never gets old." Rosebud muttered, but there was no time for laughter. Grabbing her by the upper arms, he helped Erika up and watched her slump into the pilot's chair, shouldering into the harness and grabbing the controls, trying to get some power back on.

"Looks like they just knocked the ship into failsafe mode." Erika said, light filling the bridge, the mess of bodies and spilled ichor covering the panels and floor in a sickly black ooze. Underfoot, the engines began warming, and leaning forward, Erika tried to see what was happening atop the ship.

"I sent her out with the microwave gun." Rosebud said, answering her unspoken question just as one of the creatures was kicked from the hull, clutching its burnt face as it tumbled through open space and into the dark. Leaning forward, Nebis's goggled face peered into the bridge, pointing at her wrist and tapping her foot.

"Yeah, yeah..." Erika muttered, hauling back on the yoke, the engine revving uselessly, as it always did when trying to slip back out of the Abyss. Closing the shutters, she slowly ramped up the power, waiting for that eerie, slipped seeming to begin, trying to ignore the queasy feeling that warping space-time always seemed to give.

There was no great climax, no crescendo of noise - only a moment of dizziness and a single sigh of the engines - the bodies of the Deep Ones were gone from her bridge, left behind in the Abyss, Erika always assumed. Immediately the ship's panels began working to pick up the slack, signal traffic intercepted and catalogued, the sensors trying to keep up with the motion and pitch of the tiny ship, and the navigation computer momentarily freezing as it plotted stars, trying to discern where they'd come out.

"What do you want me to do with him?" Rosebud asked, walking a slow circle around Donut, admiring how efficiently the facehugger had rendered him completely harmless, not to mention unconscious. Leaning, the thorn-covered man picked up the telescoping rod and snapped it down to size, secreting it in a pocket.

"Take him to Medbay, I'll come get Kitty off him once I've got us on some kind of course. I still don't know where the hell we are...Abyssal travel is like a really scary version of Whack-a-Mole."

"Your metaphors never lack in art." Rosebud sighed, shouldering the young man and carrying him toward the lab. On the other side of the ship, the air-lock claxon sounded and Erika heard Nebis jogging up the corridor, finally looking somewhat like herself again.  The slipped seeming of the Abyss which showed her true nature had faded, and now the young woman looked mostly human again, aside from her sallow skin-tone and pitch-dark stare.  Erika shrugged off the harness and stood, climbing out of the cockpit and moving toward her.

"Are you okay? I was so-"

"Welcome back to normal space," Scrivener's voice sounded over the open communications, his shape coalescing on the room projectors as he approached the two women, considering them.  Erika, who had been reaching for Nebis, turned looking less than pleased. "Now that you're finished screwing around in the Abyss, I have work for you. Go see Mr. Maisel for your pay and instructions. I've approved payroll for your fourth crew member, he appears somewhat useful after all."

As quickly as the Scrivener intruded, he was gone again, leaving the two women standing on the bridge, watching the projection lamps cooling.

"What a douchebag." Nebis said, grabbing Erika by the waist and hugging her. "So...the microwave gun works, they react badly to being burnt, so we have that edge next time. It still takes a lot of power, but I can keep working on it."

"Well good." Erika said, stooping to kiss her girlfriend's forehead, turning to glance at the navigation computer, which was still struggling to figure out where they'd come up. "As soon as I know where we are, let's find a cushy space station to hide at for a few days?"

"I'm game. It'd be nice to see something aside from the SoHo. Get some real food instead of that textured protein crap, maybe see a movie or something...yeah, that sounds nice."

After a moment of thought, Nebis looked upward to consider Erika. "How did you avoid the brown note effect of Cthtonic speech and avoid going Axe Crazy(tm)?" Nebis asked.

"Are you kidding? Three years of you talking in your sleep...I'm over it already."

---

Last Words: So it's been about eight months since my last update, due in no small part to a manuscript I've been working on pretty heavily. I hope to resume semi-frequent updates, but I can't promise a time frame.

As always, I wish to reiterate that this is not my best work, it's intended to be written and read quickly, and intended to be bad. Don't take it, or me, too seriously. Enjoy.

- Suemii