Parasite Lost

Parasite Lost Chapter 11

The gap between the door and threshold was quickly widening as black spiny talons and gnashing teeth squeezed through. Panic spread instantly. Some women went into nearby offices and barricaded them shut while others hid under desks or ran to the back laboratory toward the second exit. Anything to make them feel like they had hope for survival.

Displaying courage no one else felt, Dante squared off with the widening door, grabbed one of the desks he had used to barricade it, and started using it as a colossal club to beat back the limbs clawing their way in. The surgeon helping Bren detach his cranial bomb dropped her tools and ran.

"Oh c'mon it's almost off! Son of a bitch," Bren shouted. The bomb started beeping. "Yeah, yeah I know you stupid piece of-"

"What's your backup plan if this room is compromised?" Apate asked Dr. Vilmonroe.

"This is the backup plan," she replied.

"You don't have another place to fall back to? Somewhere to hide or defend yourselves?"

"That's what we were doing before you showed up!"

Apate bit her lip and tried to think. With their refuge compromised, they were all destined for a painful, gruesome death and everyone knew it.

"All right, everyone move to th'back of the lab. Try to remain calm and grab any supplies y'can carry with you," Alistair said as he ushered panicked women through the lab.

It probably wouldn't save them, but at least it gave them purpose and kept everyone moving in one direction.

Dr. Vilmonroe and Apate retreated to the back laboratory to discuss how Apate would find her child and recover the data necessary to create an antidote given this most recent unlucky turn of events. Bren was frustrated and in searing pain from the incisions made around his scalp to remove the cranial bomb. Then he got an idea. He wasn't sure if it was a good idea but it was an idea.

"Dante, move!"

Dante looked back at him and dropped the desk he was using as a club as Bren ripped the cranial bomb from his skull and threw it, along with a generous amount of his scalp, at the doorway. Bren's agonized scream covered the steady increase in beeping that warned the wearer it was about to explode. The bomb landed on top of a desk barricading the door with a wet thud, blinking rapidly before it lit up solid and sounded a high-pitched beep that signaled detonation.

Dante and Bren shielded their eyes for the imminent explosion while everyone else was corralled into the other lab and unaware. They waited. The beasts outside squeezed through the door and tore through the metal desks as if their talons were made of torch swords.

They waited. Dante put the pieces together in his head and scrambled away from the door. He got up and ran for the refuge of the back laboratory. Bren stared at the cranial bomb still attached to a fist-sized chunk of his scalp and winced as the tender nerves screamed behind his head. Hot blood dripped down the back of his neck.

"That bastard!" he shouted. The cranial bomb attached to his skull was just a scare tactic. He was never in any immediate danger, apart maybe from ripping the device from his flesh and the resulting blood loss. "I'm gonna kill that frakker! I am so damned pissed right now," he growled, gritting his teeth against the pain as he slapped some pain gel he had on standby over his seeping wound.

"C'mon chief, we gotta go!" Dante shouted. He stood at the threshold to the back office and waved Bren in. A giant spiny raptor tore through the doorway and sprinted toward Bren, which encouraged him to follow Dante's instructions. Bren ducked under Dante's chainsaw bayonet as it came up and met the pouncing raptor with messy efficiency. Black blood and entrails sprayed everywhere as Dante carved the creature in half. He watched a horde of smaller creatures pour in from where the towering reptilian had entered as two halves of the beast fell away with a splash of thick ichor. Dante ducked into the next lab and shut the door behind him. Alistair stood next to the door with an inferno pistol and started using it like a welding torch to seal the door and buy them a little more time.