Bray appeared overhead and started swinging with the saw, but it had no effect on the hard shell.
“The tail!” Hawkins shouted. Despite shoving up with all his strength, he could feel the tail constricting, pulling the body—and stinger—closer to his gut. Once that stinger got close enough to strike, Hawkins would be finished. “Cut off the tail!”
Bray adjusted his aim. He swung hard.
And missed.
Hawkins’s hands slipped across the blood-covered carapace and the creature lowered into striking range. The tail tightened, squeezing Hawkins’s stomach. Hawkins shouted in fear, knowing that in just over a minute he’d be dead and giving birth to yet another of Bennett’s chimeras.
And then it happened.
With a quick twitch, the stinger rose and struck three times.
41.
The stings felt like little more than dull thuds. For a moment, Hawkins wondered if the stinger was coated in some kind of painkiller so the victim might not even know he was stung. Then he registered the sound that came with each stinger thrust—a dull clunk of metal.
“Got it!” Blok said.
Hawkins hadn’t even seen the man appear at his side, but there he was, holding a metal tray between Hawkins’s stomach and the stinger.
A surge of adrenaline flowed into Hawkins’s veins, courtesy of nearly being implanted with a fast-growing chimera embryo. Instead of pushing the spider thing away, Hawkins wrapped his arms around the shell and squeezed, pulling the chimera close and wedging the sheet of metal securely between them. “Charge the defibrillator!” he shouted at Blok, who nodded and ran for the equipment cart. He looked up at Bray. “Get that tail off!”
When the jagged teeth of the bone saw bit into the base of the creature’s tail, the thing started twitching. By the second stroke, it struggled to break free from Hawkins’s embrace. He could feel the tail struggling to unwrap from his body, but it was pinned beneath them, and the spider legs, while strong, were no match for Hawkins’s rage-filled grip.
The high-pitched whine of the defibrillator charging filled the air. A moment later, Blok shouted, “Charged!”
“Bray?” Hawkins said.
“Almost there!”
Hawkins looked to his left and saw Blok, live defibrillator paddles in his hands. “Get ready!”
With a grunt, Bray pushed hard and cut through the forearm-thick tail.
The creature convulsed, lost in a torrent of pain. Hawkins let go, slid his hands beneath the carapace, and shoved. The forty-pound monster flipped through the air and landed on its back. Eight legs twitched madly, searching for purchase that wasn’t there. Its oozing stump of a tail shifted pitifully back and forth. Then Blok descended on the creature, placing the paddles on its softer, blood-soaked underside and triggered the shock.
All eight legs went straight and riqid for the duration of the jolt. The overloaded paddles began to smoke and Blok pulled them away. The legs fell flat on the floor.
The monster was dead, but there was no time for back patting. Jones’s belly looked ready to burst, but he looked different than DeWinter. Where she had one bulge, Jones had three smaller ones. Hawkins’s mind replayed the attack. Jones had been stung three times, with each sting inserting a new parasite into the host.
One of them was bad enough. He didn’t think they’d survive three.
Hawkins scrambled to his feet, picked up the machete, and ran for the door. He tried the handle, but it was locked. Bray arrived and started viciously kicking the door. Despite putting all his weight into each kick, the door held.
“They’re coming!” Blok said.
The door and its frame were solid. “The door is steel,” he said to Bray. “You can’t kick it down.”
“We have to try,” Bray said.
“I have a better idea.” Hawkins reached into his cargo shorts pocket for the captive bolt stunner and was surprised to feel several spare cartridges still in his pocket. Kam left us a way out. He pulled the bolt stunner from his pocket and placed the muzzle against the flat inner-door lock. He pulled the trigger. Two inches of stainless steel exited the barrel traveling at the speed of a bullet. The impact didn’t sound like much—just a cough of air and a single whack, like a hammer on the head of a nail—but when Hawkins stepped back, the lock was gone, launched into the hallway on the other side.
Hawkins flung open the door and ran into the hallway, thinking there might be at least a chance they would survive for at least a few more minutes. That hope disappeared when he looked to the right and found the long, white corridor filled by the immense and deformed girth of Jim Clifton.