Part Two
The helicopter ride back to MacReady and Cooper’s
research station lasted for enough time to process what they, Gumball, Darwin,
and Cara had seen outside the burned-down Norwegian camp.
It was definitely alien – or at least Cara believed it
could be.
Gumball figured it to be some type of mutant.
Darwin thought it could have been both scenarios.
Their answers would come once they arrived at the
station, with the humanoid corpse and some videotapes MacReady and Cooper
salvaged from the ruins.
“What about the T.A.R.D.I.S.?” Gumball asked Cara.
He spoke loud enough to carry his voice over the
deafening rotors, yet all the passengers – even MacReady and Cooper – could
hear him.
“T.A.R.D.I.S.?” MacReady questionably repeated.
“A Norwegian project that’s safe where it is.” Cara sharply eyed Gumball on those last few
words, as if to remind him to never speak of their space-time vessel for the
remainder of their helicopter ride.
“Hey, there’s somethin’ I gotta warn ya about before we
land at the station,” MacReady told Cara. “There’re guys there who hadn’t seen
a woman in centuries. So you might wanna, uh…”
“Watch my tail before they
do?” Cara starkly finished for him.
MacReady smirked. “You speak our language really well.”
Finally arriving at the station, the rest of the crew
greeted them; and, as MacReady predicted, some were swooned by Cara.
“Alright, alright, keep it together, boys,” MacReady
said. “You won’t be so hot and bothered once after we show you what we found at
the Norwegians’ camp.”
Indeed, all the flirts on Cara had taken a backseat at
the uncovering of the humanoid, two-faced corpse they lugged into the
laboratory of the team’s resident biologist, Blair. The stench of the freshly
singed remains was unbearable in the confined space, prompting a few –
including Gumball and Darwin – to run and vomit in the nearest lavatory. For
the presence of the two adolescents in the station, MacReady encouraged his
team to occupy their time with games and television.
Cara kept Blair company during the autopsy of the corpse.
“So, boys, your mom single?” One crewman (Windows)
jokingly asked Gumball and Darwin.
Gumball awkwardly laughed off the inquiry. “So, uh…got
anything to drink around here? Any sodas or…?”
Another man (Bennings) looked in the fridge. “Beer, beer,
and more beer.”
Darwin felt something warm and furry rub against his
skin, seeing it to be the Alaskan Malamute that came to the American station
earlier before their arrival.
“Hey, buddy,” Darwin friendlily greeted the Malamute.
“What’s your name?”
“Hadn’t given him one yet, but I’m settling on ‘Roger,’”
said Clark, caretaker of the kennel where other sled dogs like “Roger” were
kept.
He led Darwin there to lock Roger in with them.
“Is it cool if I took one with us?” Darwin requested. “Mrs.
Mom says they scare Mr. Dad too much to keep one.”
Clark’s face turned at the peculiar
fish-boy, considering his wish. “Sure, kid. I’ll see if I can arrange one of
‘em for ya. We got plenty as it is with this
new guy now part of the pack.”
On this assurance, a delighted
Darwin departed the kennel with Clark.
-----------------
“It’s got to be
alien.”
“Or just a heavily-deformed man.”
“No man that
deformed could live past infancy, dude. Besides, do you want to be the one to call Ripley’s?”
Cara and Blair’s back-and-forth in the lab went on for
nearly an hour.
They circled the humanoid corpse, analyzing every inch of
the conjoined muscle tissue and bone structure, parts of which were sliced open
to reveal another lifeform beneath the layers. After being near it for so long,
Cara wondered if curiosity got the better of his human constitution.
“O.K., so say you’re right about it being extraterrestrial,” Blair challenged her theory. “Where’s the
spaceship, hmm?”
Cara shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe those tapes have the
answer.”
“If I may ask, where is your field of investigation to
have such strange beliefs like alien
origin?”
She knew he was going to go there after all her crazy
conjectures.
And she was well-prepared to answer him before the
station’s fire alarm suddenly sounded off.
They rushed out of the lab and followed Gumball and the
other men to the kennel.
“What the…?!” Gumball gasped at the sight of the
abomination attacking the other sled dogs in the kennel. “Is that the dog?!”
Cara and the others only realized it to be when they
noticed the traces of fur on the grossly mutated Malamute. Childs incinerated
it with a flamethrower right away, not giving it the chance of attacking any of
the people outside the kennel.
Unfortunately, the other dogs were lost.
Recalling how much of a liking his brother took to the
sled dogs, Gumball cautiously asked, “Where’s Darwin?!”
“Here I am,” spoke the bubbly fish-child, who approached
the group, oblivious to the horrifying scene that had taken place. “What was
that alarm all about? And why does it smell like bad barbeque in here?”
“Childs just burned—” Windows began before having a hand
slapped down over his mouth by Cara.
Gumball did his best to shield the inferno of dead,
burning Malamutes from his fish brother. Laughing nervously and sweating
profusely, he told him, “W-We were just having a campfire, buddy. Heat’s on the
fritz, so we just said, ‘What the heck! Why not have a campfire!’ Isn’t that
right, guys?”
Cara and the men (minus Windows) all followed suit,
nodding and murmuring in agreement to Gumball’s little white lie.
Darwin found them all to be acting strange – except for
Gumball, who acted stranger than usual. Regardless, he accepted their
trumped-up story, “O.K. Anybody up for sandwiches? Just found some really
delicious bologna, cheese, and bacon past all that disgusting beer in the
fridge. I can really go for a nice, tasty…”
He stopped as soon as he heard the man known as “Fuchs”
retching.
“Is it that out
of date?” Darwin curiously inquired.
Gumball himself tried to keep his stomach down. “No,
dude. It’s just…None of us might want to have anything to eat for another century.”
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