Ekron

Maria's Cats - 3

An alarm communication came from the station to Maria's helmet, so she putted her suit back on and ran inside. Nine of the twelve members of the military section had been blinded and mutilated trying to contain the alien breach on the new wing, and all scientists had been put in quarantine for possible contamination. Maria saw a small thermonuclear bomb in the hallway as she was guided by a soldier to a small living room to join the rest of the scientists quarantined in there. The soldier locked the door after she entered. Theresa Wittel, a redheaded chemist with eyeglasses was sitting on the floor and Maria sat next to her.

"Do you know what's happening?"

"I think they want to blow up the entire station, and it doesn't seem like they intend to evacuate us first."

Lights went off, and a strange smell filled the room coming from the ventilation slits. In less than a minute all scientists fell asleep, narcotized by the remaining three soldiers, that were executing an extreme decontamination protocol. In a dream, Maria saw a black dog approaching her in that same room, walking as a human, his right eye was bluish white, and the left one was made of black crystal.

"No, not again," said Maria to the dog, recalling strange nightmares.

"I see you have dreamed of me, of course, you are so sensitive."

"What you want from me?"

"A pact, transitory for you, but eternal for me, because you see, we will not always be allies, but we are today."

"But I feel such evil in you, that is overwhelming."

"Am not hiding it, there's no point with someone like you or your mother."

"Did you know my mother?"

"No, how could I? But I'm knowing you now."

The dog stretched his hand and took a mug from a table by his side, bit his wrist and poured thick black blood into the mug.

"You can free yourself from evil and just die today, or you can join me and live enough to see the reach of your actions."

"What are really those creatures, in the trees?"

"Gods and demons, beyond myth, they are reality in its humble and terrifying simplicity."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Don't do it, live and see it for yourself, as you will never be able to trust me as much as I have trusted you. All you have to do is wash your eyes in my blood, and you will understand, all of it."

The black dog left the mug on the table, and Maria approached it.

"Wait, you have to wake up first."

Maria looked back and her body was still on the floor sleeping next to Theresa. All went dark, and she opened her cat eyes laying on the floor. She stood up and walked towards the table. The dog was gone, but there was a dark liquid in the mug waiting for her. She soaked her fingers in it and washed her eyes with the unholy blood of Anubis. Blood remains in the mug disappeared like black ash in the air, but the drops filling her eyes and rolling down her cheeks stayed liquid until her skin absorbed them. They mixed with her tears as she slowly fell to her knees and then laid down on the floor, embracing her legs and acquiring fetal position, crying, and choking like if the weight of all death in the worlds was on her. After that, she felt released, free, and furious at the same time. She stood up and took a chair, then blasted the door handle, opened it, and ran towards her lab. Behind her, electromagnetic bullets aimed to her body whistled and collided with the hallway walls; followed by rushing steps from the soldiers pursuing her. She got to her lab and grabbed her chrome-vanadium scythe. Then a scream came from the hallway. She approached silently and saw how a Macsk had the palm of its hand pointed to a soldier, as the soldier twitched and touched his helmet before falling to the ground. A second soldier was firing his electromagnetic rifle in all directions, as if he would had been blinded. The combat suit of the soldiers had metallic plaques in all places except articulations, that were covered with thick rubber, one of them on the neck. Maria came from behind and nailed the blade of her scythe on the blinded soldier's neck, she pulled it and the soldier fell to the ground. The Macsk walked towards her, and then she realized that the beast was walking in two legs, and that its eyes looked like human brown eyes. She left her scythe on the floor and removed the helmet from the head of the soldier laying on the ground, then she saw that his eyes had become white, almost transparent. The Macsk took her hand and they walked together. She could hear the drowning screams of a third soldier, laying on the floor a couple yards behind the hallway corner, blinded and stripped of his suit; while three Macsks sucked blood from his arms. He finally died when there was no more blood in his veins. Maria went to check the bomb, it wasn't activated; the soldiers hadn't turned it on before they were killed. Then she and the Macsk went to visit the scientists, still sleeping in the living room.

Maria gently woke up Theresa and took her out of the room.

"What is happening?"

"Nothing, don't look back."

And of course, Theresa looked back at the room and saw how the little beasts chewed on the flesh of her fellow scientists. Some of them woke up from the pain, opened their eyes in horror just for them to be bleached with the slight move of a Macsk hand; some others never woke up and died in nightmares that never ended. Theresa let go a scream that was more like a sob and a series of little shrieks before Maria would gently drag her away from there.