The Thing 3: Assimilation✔️

Chapter 12: Endgame

Blake revved the snowmobile and shot across the snow and ice. For once, the snowstorm was finally clearing up.

He took it as a good omen.

Which was nice, considering how shitty everything else had gone lately. Around him, four other snowmobiles raced across the dangerous terrain of the south pole. He'd handpicked his team: North, Davis and two more men he hadn't met but seem liked solid individuals. A huge man who had to be six foot six that had roughly the same build as a soda machine. He was a weapons expert in the Special Forces and bore the name Boyle. The final man was almost Boyle's opposite: average height, made of lean, wiry muscle, he was an engineer named Tennet. The man had eyes of frozen steel and the credentials to go with it.

This was his team.

The pressure was on and the final showdown was upon them. Blake let his mind clear, let all other thoughts, worries, fears and concerns fall away but the mission before him. Take the SAM site, shoot down the plane. That was his entire world right now. Wind tore past his face and his whole body jolted as the snowmobile hit a hump in the landscape and slammed back into ground. Judging by his rough calculations, he should be about thirty seconds out from the SAM site. All they had to was swoop in and hit it hard-

Gunfire from above ripped through the snow in front of him. A round punched through the nose of his snowmobile, shredding the engine and sending the vehicle wildly off course. Blake screamed as he was thrown free of the vehicle, hit the ground and skidded to a painful stop. He lurched to his feet, stumbling as he heard helicopter blades churning overhead. Where the hell had it come from?! Growing, he prepped his MP-5.

"Keep going!" he screamed at the four other vehicles. "Don't stop!"

He could see the SAM site in the distance. To their credit, they kept going. Blake turned and raised his MP-5, hoping to somehow deal with this new threat. The chopper hovered a good fifty feet above him like a black metal wasp. He could see the barrel of a chaingun sticking out the side, tracking him. Cursing, he aimed and opened fire while strafing. Gunfire chewed up the snow as the chaingun opened up again.

His own bullets pinged off the hull...and seemed not to hit anything important. Cursing, Blake ran through any ideas he might have to get his ass out of this alive. The chopper was lowering, the gunner twisting the chaingun back his way as he continued to dodge and twist and run. As it got even closer, eager for the kill, an idea suddenly crashed into Blake's head. Acting fast, before the advantage he had was lost, he pulled out a fragmentation grenade, yanked the pin out with his teeth and hurled it as hard as he could towards the chopper.

The frag sailed through the air...

...directly through the open side door the chaingun hung out of.

The chopper suddenly jerked up, then right, then back as the gunfire cut off abruptly. Mere seconds later, the whole thing disappeared into a brilliant orange-red fireball. Blake narrowly avoided the hail of burning metal that rained down from above like so much deadly shrapnel. Regaining his feet, he turned his attention to the structure in the distance. Gunfire rattled from that direction, the sounds echoing back to him.

Somewhere else, even more distant, an explosion ruptured.

MacReady's teams hard at work.

Hurrying on, Blake fully intended to do his own part of the job.

* * * * *

By the time he kicked his way through the snow and got there, the job was pretty much done. He called out a warning of his approach as he entered through a side door that was still open, a dead man in white camo gear half in, half out of the doorway. Stepping over the corpse, he came into a corridor, followed it to its end, passed through a security checkpoint and ran into North at the edge of the control room for the SAM.