Dark Waters (Warriors S1B5)

Chapter 12

Earth date: 01/08/2012, 15:30

I opine the itemization reached Mr. Cole as I retrogressed into the frothing, Siberian water, whelmed in the Hautik's crustacean grip, because as I assayed, trying to flip my sonic arrows in my hands, Mr. Cole "said" in my head authoritatively, You all need to return to Mariner Grove.

We don't and we won't, Frazz riposted quickly.

Mr. Cole, we have other problems, Margaret added hastily.

What do you mean "other--"? A stoppage, during which either someone transmitted an image of me struggling with the Hautik or he picked up my situation on his own. Oh no. 

The Hautik caulked its claws around my elbows, locking my arms in place. Its legs goosed across my body, trying to espy a place it could suffuse my armor. 

I held on to my arrows. They were my hope. If I let go of them, the Hautik would hold me underwater until I drowned. With my arms locked in the Hautik's grip, I could only transfix the water a third of a meter away from the Hautik's head.

My lungs stung. The dreaded black dots started to dance on the edge of my vision. Still, the Hautik held my arms out as if I was nailed to a cross, prospecting over my armor, its eyes mere inches from my helmet. As the air in my lungs depreciated, my panic aggrandized. My bunting became weaker and less frequent. I stopped holding my breath.

Something splashed above me. I looked up and saw Margaret plumbing towards me, kicking her legs to ameliorate alacrity. She dove under the Hautik and then swam back up. She glommed a claw in one hand, and the spume of tepid water the Hautik had encircled itself in whelmed with achromatic brume. 

The Hautik let me go, and its claws snapped shut a split second after I demobilized my arms, then unfurled again, then snapped shut. The algidity had gone straight to its nervous system. Its broaching and occluding its claws wasn't volitional. 

I swam for the surface and quaffed hyperborean, virginal air once I was there. The water had redoubled several meters while I was underwater. A few meters in front of me, Joey ballyhooed Old Mr. Robinson out of his car. I watched as he picked the elderly man up like a groom picking up his bride and erected the two of them up onto the roof of Old Mr. Robinson's SUV.

Kristi bespattered into the water next to me. "Where's Margaret?" she asked questioningly.

To answer, I ebbed below the obverse of the water. I weeded more and more arrows from my quiver as I swam closer and closer to the Hautik. It was hebetudinous, still repossessing from Margaret's squall of gelidity, and was snapping its claws in Margaret's general direction. I swam right up, imbedded a fistful of sonic arrows on either of the Hautik's temples, and "told" P.E.A.T., <Now.> 

Two twin bubbles of sound fulminated. The vibration ran up my arms and into my body. My teeth clicked together and my ears popped like I was in an airplane taking off. The Hautik went supple. Its head oscillated and then subsided. It had been trying to chafe the water again, but the vesicle of heating water encompassing it evanesced. Kristi swam under it, and the Hautik inaugurated to surmount as she pushed it towards the surface. I joined her, and Margaret joined us a few moments after that. The three of us vellicated the Hautik to the surface. Margaret heaved it onto the boot of the gray Camry. 

Max sped up to us as the water drained away rapidly. "Have a good swim?"

"We beat it, no thanks to you," Margaret huffed exasperatedly.

"Sorry. Too busy finding a place where all these people wouldn't drown."

Joey, Frazz and Jay joined us in standing around the car, examining the Hautik. With its begetter of warmth gone, the only sign of life was an occasional twitch.

"That is one ugly motherf*cker," Frazz said profanely.

Jay rent his hammer off his belt. "Let's finish this."

"Wait!" Joey corralled his arm forcefully. "We can't kill it."

"Yeah, we can," Frazz said.

"We shouldn't," I said.

"Why not? You heard Mr. Cole. This thing's bad for the environment and it eats people."

"But it's a living thing," Kristi protested. "We sent the Vlolmeeth and the Pycanthropes home. We can send this home."

"Old dude has a shotgun," Max notified suddenly.

"What?" Margaret said.

Old Mr. Robinson waded past us. He convoyed an abberant gun, a roly-poly little thing with two handles, one in the front and one in the back. He striddled up to the Hautik and tamped the barrel of the gun into the alien's mouth. Max was gone in a flare of ultramarine empyreal light. 

Old Mr. Robinson pulled the trigger. The Hautik's head was snapped back from the force of the shot, and gore, indigo-fir numbles, disgorged across the rear windshield and roof of the Camry. The Hautik's head relinquished onto the boot of the Camry with a thud, its jaw wilting so stiltedly low that its bottom jaw dangled centimeters from the lip of the trunk. 

Old Mr. Robinson rent a handkerchief from the pocket of his winter jacket and actualized to wipe his gun clean of the gore smattered all over it. "Appreciate you folks for all you do," he declared admirably. "But you were taking too long."

Max recrudesced as Old Mr. Robinson got back in his car, his gun back in its place in the trunk. "We good?" he asked curiously.

To answer, Joey gestured to the Camry, where navy-malachite blood from the Hautik's mouth was deliquescing down the boot of the car. 

"OK, we're good." Max "said," Mr. Cole, Hautik is down. What do we do with it?

Bring it back to base. We need to have a conversation.

Roger that, Joey "said." Out loud, he said, "Who wants to carry the Hautik?"

No one said anything.

"Who's the best person to carry the Hautik?"

Six heads slowly turned towards Jay.

"I hate all of you," he grumbled.