Attack of the Yetis, page 10
Heaving himself to his feet, Dobson left his shotgun on the floor. He was out of shells for it. Dobson ran to join the marine where she stood ejecting the magazine she had just emptied into the yeti that had been about to kill him. She slapped a fresh one home and looked at him expectantly.
“Let’s go!” Dobson shouted as another yeti came bounding along the corridor at them. Dobson and the marine ran for their lives, heading deeper into the ship.
****
Leah had received a hurried check over by the medics that had met her as the copter landed and then been rushed to the Hobart’s bridge where Captain Shoyer was waiting for her. The captain had actually been expecting Dobson, not her, but one of his officers had drafted Dobson into the defense of the ship. By the time Leah had reached the bridge, alarm klaxons were blaring throughout the ship and it was under attack by the aliens. Everything was chaos around her as bridge officers went about their tasks and she could hear the voices of several soldiers barking orders and shouting over multiple open comm. channels.
Captain Shoyer dropped whatever he had been handling and moved to meet her. “Doctor …?”
“Just call me Leah,” she told him.
“Right then. Leah, what can you tell me about these creatures trying to tear my ship apart?” Captain Shoyer demanded. “Do they have any weaknesses my men can exploit?”
Leah stared at him, somewhat overwhelmed by everything that was going on around her.
“Leah!” Captain Shoyer snapped.
“None that I know of, Captain,” she answered getting herself together. “I haven’t had the chance to study one up close. We know very little about what the creatures are beyond that they are not of this Earth.”
Captain Shoyer spat a curse and slammed his fist into the top of the console he was standing at.
“Fire seems a sure way to take them out fast,” Leah suddenly blurted out, remembering what she had seen during her escape from the mainland.
“Fire?” Captain Shoyer rasped. “Seriously? You’re aware that we’re aboard a nuclear-powered ship right? If we use fire against them and it gets out of control …” he let his words trail off.
“That’s really all I’ve got without having had the chance to cut one of those things up and see what makes it tick,” Leah said.
Captain Shoyer whirled on one of his bridge officers and shouted some orders to the man. Leah caught the word flamethrowers, but that was all. When Captain Shoyer looked at her again, she noticed the desperation in his eyes and wondered just how badly things had played out in the last few minutes.
“We’re losing the ship,” Captain Shoyer told her bluntly. “Both the forward and aft decks have been overrun and there are reports of those creatures moving about her interior corridors.”
“What can I do to help?” Leah asked.
Captain Shoyer shook his head and instead of answering her yelled at one of his security officers positioned at the bridge’s door. “Get Doctor Leah out of here! I want her back aboard a copter and airborne until this ship is secured!”
Leah started to protect, but the security officer moved to take her by the arm. “This way, ma’am,” he urged her, dragging her towards the door.
“Wait!” Leah yelled at Captain Shoyer, but if he heard her above the chaos, he didn’t give any indication of it. His attention was focused solely on trying to save his ship and not her.
Leah surrendered to the tugging of the security officer and allowed herself to be led off the bridge. Another security officer joined them in the corridor.
“I’m Steve and this is Garret,” the one who had taken her from the bridge told her. “We’re going to get you off this ship until it’s safe to be here again, ma’am.”
“Do you know how to use a weapon?” Garret asked, offering her the pistol he had drawn from the holster on his hip.
“I can manage,” Leah said, accepting the pistol and readying it like a pro.
The two men appeared to be impressed by her handling of it.
“Getting to the helipads isn’t going to be easy,” Steve commented to Garret. “Not with those things loose in the corridors.”
“You got a plan?” Garret asked.
When Steve didn’t answer, Leah did. “We go through them if we have to. I’ve fought these things before. It’s possible if we watch ourselves and we can get some guns with a bit more kick along the way.”
Steve laughed. “Lady, if I weren’t already married …”
Leah silenced the rest of his sentence with a glare that made him turn red.
Garret led, the three of them taking point as they headed for the end of the corridor and stairs that led up to the ship’s next level.
****
Dobson’s breath came in ragged gasps as his legs pumped beneath him. The Yeti was gaining on them with each passing second. It would overtake them and tear to them both to shreds in moments if he didn’t come up with something fast. Spotting an open side door along the corridor, he pushed his legs even harder sprinting for it.
“In here!” he screamed at the marine who was with him.
She was ahead of him in the corridor and had already passed the doorway. Dobson threw himself through the doorway as the marine raced for it. The Yeti bolted into her path, cutting her off. She swept the barrel of her M-16A2 up at the monster, squeezing the rifle’s trigger. It chattered as she hosed the beast with a point-blank burst of fully automatic fire. The creature accepted the pain ripping into its chest in order to get a grip on her. The beast’s hands closed on the marine’s arms, knocking her rifle from her hands. The weapon clattered to the floor as the yeti lifted her from it. The marine’s expression was filled with fear and pain as she cried out. The yeti’s fingers about her arms crushed the bones inside of them. Her feet kicked helplessly in the air beneath her as the marine struggled to free herself from the yeti’s hold on her. The monster was so much stronger she didn’t have a prayer of doing so, but she was trying anyway. Dobson wanted to help her, but he was weaponless. He had left his empty shotgun behind at the beginning of their mad flight through the corridors of the Hobart. His eyes scanned the room he had dived into searching for something, anything he could use to help her. There was nothing. The room was someone’s office. It contained only a desk with a computer on it and two chairs, one behind the desk and one in front of it. Dobson refused to just let the marine die though. A battle cry roaring out of his lungs, he charged the yeti, ramming into it with all the strength and force he could muster. He slammed into the beast and bounced away from it like a ricocheting bullet. The yeti took no notice of him at all. It continued to crush the marine. Blood leaked from her mouth as its hands came closer together, pressing against the sides of her body while its grip remained firm on her arms. Dobson heard the popping sound of the marine’s ribs giving way but still the yeti kept mashing her. Her body crumpled up, collapsing inward towards her center. The marine’s entrails were forced up from inside her to spew out of her mouth before the yeti had its fill and flung her corpse aside.
Dobson shook his head to clear it as he leaped to his feet. He stood in the corridor alone with the yeti and they stared at each other. The ape-like huffing of the yeti’s breath was the only sound as Dobson prayed to think a means to escape the certain death that faced him. The yeti began to move. It walked calmly, slowly towards him as if daring him to try to run from it. Dobson took a long breath and steeled himself, accepting his fate.
From out of nowhere, a crewman entered the corridor behind the yeti. The man screamed at the sight of the beast he had just stumbled onto. The yeti whipped around, its hands shooting outwards at the stunned crewman. Dobson took advantage of the moment and ran like a bat out of hell in the other direction as the man’s pained screams and the sound of him being slashed open by the beast’s claws filled the corridor.
Dobson rounded a bend in the corridor and kept moving as fast as his legs could carry him. He had to find a weapon. No human could face one of the beasts barehanded and live to tell about it. His crazed flight took down another corridor that came to an abrupt end. He stood in front of a thick bulkhead door, staring at it in horror. There was a keypad next to the door and he knew it was the door’s control. The body of a dead officer rested on the floor near the door. The top part of the woman’s skull was missing, as if something had taken a bite out of it and congealing blood pooled around her body. In her hand was what looked to be a key-card. Dobson hurriedly squatted next to the woman’s corpse, prying the card from her fingers. As soon as he had it, he raced over to the door’s keypad and noticed the card reader on its side. He slid the card through it and heard the thunking noise of the door’s inner lock opening. His time was up. The yeti came walking around the bend in the corridor and its blazing yellow eyes locked onto him. Roaring with rage, the yeti charged forward at him as the door opened. Dobson darted through it, hitting the mechanism on the door’s other side to make it close behind him. The door slammed shut in the yeti’s face. Dobson heard the yeti crash into its other side as he toppled onto the floor of the room he had entered. For a moment, he lay there watching the thick metal door shake as the yeti pounded on it, trying to get inside after him. The door wouldn’t hold for long, but that didn’t matter. Dobson was laughing as he got to his feet. The room was one of the ship’s weapons lockers. He looked around at the rifles hanging on its walls and the crates of ammo scattered about its floor. He quickly set to finding a weapon with the firepower to stop the beast when it managed to break down the door. Dobson found an automatic shotgun and slapped a fully loaded magazine into it. He readied the weapon and stood, waiting on the yeti to make its entrance. As an afterthought, he slung a second automatic shotgun onto his back. There likely wasn’t going to be a chance to come back here and having a backup was a good idea.
The door to the weapons locker burst inward and the yeti came snarling inside at him. Dobson met it with a blast of fire that tore its head, shoulders, and upper chest into a mangled mass of shredded meat. He emptied the entire magazine into the yeti in a single continuous blast. The yeti thudded onto the floor and laid there, green blood oozing out of what was left of its upper body as Dobson reached for another magazine. Once his shotgun was loaded up again, he took the time to grab some extra magazines and a surprise or two that he stuffed into his pockets before stepping over the yeti’s body and heading back out into the corridor. There was no way to know how the fight for the ship was going anywhere beyond the area he was in. He hoped that the Hobart’s crew had managed to fight back the bulk of the beasts or were at least holed up somewhere defensible and still fighting. The only way he was going to know for sure though was to get back out there and into the fight himself again.
Dobson didn’t remember the layout of the ship enough to know exactly where he was going, but he spotted a set of steps leading up to the level above the one he was on and took them. He figured the high ground was never a bad option. With any luck, the yetis might not have reached the upper levels of the Hobart yet and were still busy wandering her lower corridors, finishing off anyone they came across there.
His boots clanged against the metal of the steps as he hurried up them. The stairwell opened at its top into a new corridor. He looked left and then right, making sure it was clear of any of the yetis before stepping out into it.
****
Gunfire boomed outside the bridge, echoing in the corridors beyond it. Captain Shoyer had recalled all the personnel he could to help protect the ship’s control and commander center. He had known that sooner or later the creatures that had boarded his ship would make their way to it. They had and the men and women of his crew were giving their lives to protect those on the bridge. Captain Shoyer gritted his teeth in frustration. He wanted to be out there with them, but his place was on the bridge. The Hobart had finally cleared the ice. She was moving along out to sea and had switched over to her secondary engines. Captain Shoyer had made sure the ship’s reactors were powered down and taken offline. Securing them against any sort of chance of melting down had been a priority. The Hobart was ready to scuttle now if it came to that and he had the chance. He doubted he would though. Even switched over to her secondary engines, her speed continued to build, and she was currently pushing twenty knots as she splashed through the waves. Her slowness in cutting through the ice had doomed her though. The time it had taken her to free herself had given the creatures plenty of time to storm her. He couldn’t even guess at how many of the alien monsters were onboard rampaging through her. Their number had to at least equal that of his crew without even accounting for the number of his crewmen who had already been ripped apart by the creatures. His crew was fighting a losing battle and he knew it.
Captain Shoyer had broken his direct orders about the secrecy of the mission from the powers that be and sent out a distress call over open channels in the hopes of reaching any military vessels close enough to come to the Hobart’s aid. If he lived through this nightmare, his career would be over and he would likely find himself facing a court-martial, but he had seen enough of his crew die at the claws of the creatures. Even so, sending the distress call was the right thing to do. None of them were likely to survive if help didn’t come.
The sounds of the battle outside were drawing ever closer to the bridge. Captain Shoyer had ordered the bridge’s only entrance sealed and locked by the security officer who was guarding it. At best, the door would buy them some more time, not save them. In addition to himself and the guard, his comm. officer, helmsman, and two techs occupied the bridge. Of them, only himself and the guard were armed. Captain Shoyer had ordered an M27 be brought to him before things had gone totally to hell. His fingers were curled about the weapon in a white-knuckled grip as he paced the bridge, waiting on the inevitable to occur. He didn’t have to wait long. The gunfire outside the bridge fell silent, replaced entirely by the snarls of the creatures making their way to it. He told himself that those who had given their lives had succeeded in buying him and the bridge crew enough time to set a course for the ship that should keep it clear of the ice and sailing northward. Their sacrifice had also bought them the time to send out the desperate calls for help that he prayed someone out there in the cold waters heard.
Captain Shoyer flinched as something slammed into the door of the bridge. Another blow followed it shaking the door in its frame.
“They’re here, Captain!” the security officer yelled at him. “That door’s not going to hold them long!”
Captain Shoyer looked at the unarmed officers on the bridge with sorrow in his eyes. “It was an honor serving with you, each and every one of you. I mean that,” he said. “Let’s make sure we don’t go out easily.”
The unarmed bridge officers scrambled to find makeshift weapons that they could use against the beasts that would soon be among them. One grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall. Another snapped the leg from a chair and hefted it like a club. Another, much to Captain Shoyer’s surprise, produced a concealed .38 from her boot. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of it.
“Sir!” the security officer by the bridge door cried out in warning as he began to back away from it. The door was badly dented inward and was ready to give at any moment. From somewhere on its other side, a thunderous roar rang out. The door broke free from its frame and flew across the bridge. It struck one of the techs on its path towards the bridge’s forward window. The man was nearly cut in half by it as it lifted him from the floor and carried it along with it, its course through the air shifting to crash into the far wall. The man was crushed by its weight and his corpse lay twitching under it.
A giant monster so tall it had to duck as it came through the doorway entered the bridge. Its eyes burned a hot yellow and its snarl showed the rows of jagged, razor-like teeth that filled its mouth. The security officer opened fire on it, his rifle blazing. Spent casings clattered to the floor as he hammered the creature with unrelenting desperation. The monster whined in pain at the point-blank fire tearing into its side but didn’t stop moving. With impossible speed, its claws lashed out at the security officer. They severed his arms at the elbows in a single swipe that sent a shower of blood splashing through the air. The security officer was screaming as he stumbled backwards and the monster closed in for the kill. The stubs of his arms were still held out towards the beast as it plunged a hand into his chest and tore his heart out through his ribs.
As the giant creature moved aside to finish the guard, two more of the monsters entered the room. They were smaller than the giant but still much larger than a man in height and build. One of them leaped at the officers behind Captain Shoyer passing him by. The other came straight at him. Captain Shoyer didn’t hesitate. His M27 came up chattering as he held its trigger tight.
