"Stalked and Stalker" Pt. 5 (Patreon)

I entered, and won, Dean Spencer's story contest for one of his pieces of art. I'm now completing it with (theoretically) weekly entries. This is part three.

Part One can be found here, Part Two here, Part Three here, and Part Four here.

Paying Patrons can instead go here, for a compiled, slightly more edited version of the story-to-date, along with my thoughts and author's notes about each section.

(Low res image. High res will be used for the final product. Art by Dean Spencer)

5

MacKenzie let his mind go blank for a second, not panicking, not allowing his focus to narrow on any one detail. He had a single heartbeat before he had to act, and he sensed this was an inflection point. Blaze was still pouring lighter fluid into a pickle jar she’d stuffed a cloth into. Doctor Soloman was still bolting up the steps of the stairwell. And Alec was still on his back, using a ruined machine rifle to keep the claws and lashes of a bramble wolf from eviscerating him.

Alec was the most lethal fighter MacKenzie had ever met… but he would not last long against the horror upon him now. Blaze clearly had a plan, she but needed time to complete it. Time Alec did not have. Time MacKenzie had to buy.

Mac was marching toward Alec and the bramble wolf before he consciously knew what he was doing. His hands dug into his parka, grabbing a Very Pistol, and a flare cartridge to fit in it. He flipped the pistol open, slotted in the flare, and snapped the pistol shut in quick, precise flicks of his hands. He stopped, just beyond the reach of the plant-beast’s lashing thorns, and fired the bright red flare deep into its chest. The creature recoiled, howled, and lunged for MacKenzie.

Its claws flashed toward Mac’s throat before suddenly stopping short. Alec had grabbed it by the a hind leg and, muscles bulging, face flashing in rage, was hauling it away from Mac. The thing screamed, twisting to bite Alec’s head off. MacKenzie flicked another flare into place as Alec twisted the monster’s body so its jaws slammed shut just short of him. Its lashing thorned vines coiled to tear at Alec, ripping his parka apart and tossing him to the ground.

MacKennzie shot a flare into its head.

The flare lodged within the mass of thorns, teeth, and twisting roots and bark, causing it to shed flickering crimson light in all directions. Sizzling smoke boiled out the top of its tangled shrub of a skull, illuminating with what looked like actual bones and teeth flashing in the red glow. It raised itself high on its hind legs, one of its vines catching MacKenzie on his shoulder and throwing him to the ground next to Alec. The smoldering mass of angry tooth, claw, and bramble screamed and prepared to smash down on them both.

Then Blaze jumped over them both, hurling a pickle jar full of lighter fluid at its exposed underbelly. The jar was trailing a burning rag stuff into its cap, and when it smashed into the bramble wolf the jar shattered, creating a spray of flame within it. Rather than the pinpoint burns of the machine gun fire or the localized char of the flares, the flash of lighter fluid going up lit the creature on fire in a dozen places.

It staggered back on its hind feet, thorned vines flailing well above their heads. Before it could drop back to all four, Alec had rolled to his feet and smashed it in its chest with his FM MAC 24, swinging the ruined weapon by the barrel like a crude, lop-sided, meter-long club. It tipped over backward, landing on its flank in a confused mass of burning bark, vine, and thorns.

Blaze flung a jug of lamp oil she had in her other hand into the mass, close to where her pickle bomb was still burning. The oil was in a glass container with a metal mesh around the outside, which Blaze had clearly hoped would break on contact. But the glass was too thick, and designed to survive the rigors of a wilderness expedition. The jug’s metal mesh caught in the bramble-wolf’s matted-plant-innards, but did not crack or burn. Having loaded a third flare into his Very Pistol, MacKenzie shot that at the jug, The flare bounced off uselessly, its brightly visible arc taking it thirty feet from the creature into the snow building on the frozen beach.

Alec appeared in front of MacKenzie, still holding his ruined machine rifle like the world’s most misshapen baseball bat. The bramble wolf twisted and rolled in the snow for a moment, apparently trying to extinguish the flames burning it, but the nature of its body—made of entangled vines and roots and bit of bone, allowed the flares and lighter-fluid-fueled fires inside it to survive the effort. It struggled to its feet, swinging its still-red-limned head to focus on Alec and MacKenzie. Mac slammed his fourth and last flare into the Very Pistol.

Blaze walked past the two of them toward the monstrosity, her snub-nose revolver in hand, spitting lead. The first two rounds had no visible effect, but on her third shot Blaze managed to shatter the lamp oil jug still trapped in the monster’s guts. The jug didn’t explode, but the gnarled, churning branches all around it were already burning from the lighter fluid, and wherever the lamp oil splashed on the fire, the flames leaped much higher. The patchy fires through the creature’s body flared into roaring life, a wave of heat striking MacKenzie’s face… though he noted as he raised a hand to shield himself that both Blaze and Alex were glaring intently into the writhing bonfire with no difficulty.

The bramble wolf as clearly done, though it still twitched and flopped. Blaze emptied her revolver’s next three shots into it without getting any closer to it, and without having any obvious effect. MacKenzie realized Blaze had shed both her parka and gloves when she flipped the cylinder of her pistol open, loaded six more rounds, shut it with a flick of her wrist, and emptied it into the still-burning mass. If the arctic cold bothered her, she showed no sign of it.

There were no more sounds to be heard over the crackling fire, except the howling wind of the blizzard as driving snow rapidly built toward whiteout conditions.

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