Rhea slid the pistol from her hips and rolled forward in a single motion, sliding underneath that head and its hanging tentacles. She fired repeatedly at point-blank range into the exposed neck and underbelly. As usual the pistol couldn’t keep up with her inhumanly fast trigger pulls, and the weapon only discharged half the shots she intended.
Even so, the creature howled in pain, struggling to retreat beneath the deadly onslaught. The Karg only made it a few steps before it collapsed. Rhea ceased firing and watched the black blood pool onto the floor beneath it.
What have I done?
She heard frantic clicking and clattering outside; glancing over her shoulder, she caught side of the clearing through the window. Kargs raced en masse toward the farmhouse.
The cacophony from without was quickly superseded by heavy footfalls coming from the adjacent hallway. The lumbering clip-clops rapidly grew in volume…
She swiveled her torso toward the hallway, centering the pistol over the entryway. She realized she wasn’t in the most advantageous position and decided to risk maneuvering closer to the hallway. She leaped over the dead Karg in a move that was almost a somersault. She had never trained in such acrobatics—had to be some latent muscle memory from her past life.
When she hit the floor she rolled, landing on her back against the wall just beside the kitchen entrance. She aimed her pistol upward at the opening.
The Karg barged into the kitchen a moment later.
Rhea was ready.
She fired at the exposed underbelly, ripping through tentacles and smashing into the tender flesh of the soft tissue underneath. Gory chunks tore away. The Karg roared in outrage and spun to lunge at her with that segmented mouth. She rolled again, still firing, and several shots bit into the unfolding petals of its jaw, tearing a piece of its head clean away.
More bolts suddenly struck its underbelly—the attack came from the direction of the hallway. The creature stumbled forward under the combined attack for only a few paces before collapsing.
Will leaped over the corpse. “Buckle up!” He landed beside her and aimed his pistol at the far wall, above the countertop.
Rhea followed his lead. An instant later the wall sagged inward as something big smashed into it from outside. The cupboards bent outward, shelves and doors snapping. Windows shattered.
More walls sections buckled in the same general area, to similar effect. In moments three Kargs had plowed through the wooden walls and were scrambling inside, crawling over the rubble of broken windows and smashed cupboards.
Since the underbellies weren’t accessible at the moment, Rhea and Will aimed at the tentacles and opened fired. The shots caused enough pain to make the three creatures flee.
But the Kargs were promptly replaced by two more bioweapons that came leaping through the gaps in the wall. They cleared the debris and stood in the center of the kitchen.
Rhea had switched to a crouch, and she transferred her aim to these newcomers. Together they fired at the tentacles. The creatures grunted in pain but kept coming.
Other walls began to buckle around Rhea and Will.
“Into the hallway!” Will scrambled to his feet. “Now!”
He continued firing as Rhea stood up. She backed into the hallway with Will, then raced to a side room and took up a defensive position at the opening. Will followed more slowly, continuing to fire as he backed away, before finally turning around and joining her.
The two of them aimed past the doorframe, with Rhea at a crouch, and Will standing. Horatio stood at the doorway of another room across the way, and similarly targeted the kitchen. They opened fire at the Karg that had squeezed into the hall.
“Nice of you to join us,” Will commented to Horatio during the firefight.
“I was always here backing you up,” Horatio said. “Decided it was best to stay back: too many cooks in the kitchen…”
Will suddenly turned around and aimed in the opposite direction. Rhea glanced over her shoulder and saw another Karg had been attempting to sneak up on them from that direction.
The room’s far wall buckled as yet another bioweapon threw itself into the fray.
Rhea dove beside a couch next to it and fired up into its underbelly. The creature collapsed, blocking the gap it had formed in the wall.
She hurried back to the hallway entrance to support her friends. She fired at the forward Karg with Horatio, while Will concentrated on the bioweapon behind them. Between them, she and Horatio managed to sever enough of the tentacles to strike the underbelly with their shots; that, in combination with the damage to the creature’s head caused it to fall in short order. They joined Will in targeting the creature behind them, and it dropped a moment later.
The corpses of the bioweapons plugged either side of the hallway. But already she could see the creatures shifting as the bioweapons behind them began to tear them apart.
“We can hold these spots all day,” Will said.
“Uh-oh!” Horatio glanced over one shoulder and then leaped into the hall. Two appendages appeared from the doorframe behind and narrowly missed snatching up the robot.
Horatio shoved between Will and Rhea. “I’ll watch your backs.”
Rhea and Will fired at the new Karg, and their shots ripped into the tentacles. The creature screamed, and tried to retreat, but another Karg was apparently behind it, and forced it forward.
Rhea penetrated the tentacles, and her energy bolts struck the sensitive underbelly beneath. Will’s shots also aggravated the creature, until they killed it. The corpse filled the gap, so that all ways were blocked. For the moment.
She glanced toward the kitchen. The carcass blocking that route abruptly tore in half, and another Karg barreled forward.
At the same time the roof tore away just above. Rhea dove deeper into the room and swung her pistol upward in time to catch the upper Karg’s exposed underbelly. The creature dropped down lifelessly.
Will rolled away and the bioweapon landed with a weighty thud where the man had crouched only a moment before. The body filled the room’s opening,
