CATTLE MUTILATORS
Pt. 2
The approaching headlights blurred in the distance, they were coming so fast. Stephen looked around them. Nothing but straight highway and empty desert for at least another thirty minutes in every direction. Nowhere to run.
As the Agents leapt back in the van, the little boy reached his hands up for Jo. She hesitated just a beat, then swept him up in her arms and jumped in. The van was already in motion as the door slid home and SLAMMED shut.
Ross and Andy crawled over the last bench seat so they could snug up against the rear doors of the van. Stephen floored the accelerator. Jo cradled the boy against one shoulder, Denis alternated between nervous glances back and forward – this wasn’t how field research was supposed to go …
The three pursuing vehicles were on them in a heartbeat. Two up front, one in back. Heavy, black four-door sedans.
“See, that’s what Men in Black should drive,” Ross pointed out to Andy. "Not like those SUV’s --“
BANG! The rear door window SMASHED out, and something SPARKED on the inner roof of the van. Andy peeked out. He couldn’t make out the men’s features, but they were all in dark suits. With big guns. The passengers of each car were leaning out and taking aim. Andy snapped his head back down as two heavy-caliber slugs PUNCHED against the reinforced door.
“Stephen! Feel free to speed up!” Ross called.
“We’re in a frikkin’ VAN hauling a TRAILER!” Stephen swerved back and forth.
Ross looked back – the trailer swayed behind them, keeping the Black Cars a few yards farther back, buying them some extra room. Two more FLASHES from the guns. Pieces of their camea equipment on the trailer SMASHED away. Ross looked back at Andy. “Now?”
“Now.”
The two men cracked open the rear doors of the van. Using them as cover, they fired back at the approaching cars. SPARKS shot off the grill of the left car, and two shots spiderwebbed the windshield of the right.
“Hold on, guys,” Jo called back. “I’ll be right – AAAAA!”
Warm blood surged over her shirt. She grappled with her young charge, and as she pulled him away his teeth gnashed at the flesh where her neck met her collarbone. “SONOV*B#TCH!”
Denis’ eyes widened when he turned back to see what was wrong.
The three year old boy thrashed wildly in Jo’s awkward grip. He snapped his jaws at her throat, his little hands clawed at her shirt. His eyes were wide and bright. He was screaming something, one word over and over again.
“YUMMY! YUMMY-YUMMY-YUMMY-YUMMY!”
He was hard to understand, because in his flesh-crazed feeding frenzy ...
... the child was chewing up his own tongue.
Stephen wrestled to control the car as the tyke’s kicking feet struck the back of his head. Denis instinctively drew his gun. A BURST of submachinegun fire sparked over their trailer – Ross leaned out, returned fire. Jo tried to get her knees up to push the vicious child-creature away from her.
Andy just stared as the three-year-old bared his teeth.
(DM’s NOTE: the absolute proudest moment I’ve ever had as a DM. Everyone was acting on their initiative. When we got to Andy, for his action he said: “Nothing. I’m just going to sit here and be f*cked up.”)
Denis took aim at the thrashing boy. “HEY! You could hit Jo!” Ross yelled back. He ducked as more submachinegun fire from the MiB’s raked their vehicles. The battered trailer groaned, then SNAPPED away. The three MiB vehicles swerved around it. Their maneuver let both Ross and Andy draw a bead on them. Both scored against the grill of the lead car. Steam and smoke erupted from under the hood, The car dropped back, the other two closing ranks.
Jo pinned the screeching child against the seatback. In one fluid move she shrugged off her shirt, wrapping it as in improvised straight jacket around the boy. It held him enough so that she could drop him to the floor and pin him there with one foot.
“Uh, guys …” Stephen yelled over the gunfire.
“Not now!” Ross took one last shot at the wounded MiB car. He scored – flames ERUPTED from under the hood. A beat later something EXPLODED, twisting the car end over end at sixty miles an hour. The flaming wreckage dropped behind the two remaining pursuers.
“GUYS!” Stephen yelled.
“WHAT!?” They yelled back.
Stephen pointed. There, dead ahead, in the sky above the dark highway, were lights.
Green and white flashing lights. Moving really fast, diving at an impossible speed to strafe low along the highway, straight at them.
MiB behind.
UFO ahead.