"Thing From Another World" - Part Five

Part Five

            Cara and the boys remained deathly silent in the shed.

            Sometime passed since the gunshot rang in the station; they knew it was too dangerous to escape, so they stayed.

            MacReady and his men arrived to deliver Blair.

            Apparently, he was the one responsible for the gunshots, his paranoia having reached at an all-time high, according to MacReady. He was given a sedative and left locked with Cara, Gumball, and Darwin for an undetermined amount of time.

            “So what’re you in for?”

            “Gumball,” Cara reprimanded.

            “I’m guilty for knowing the truth,” Blair told them. He set his sight squarely on Cara and added, “You were right. That thing is a parasite that can assimilate the entire population of the Earth within a few years. And, as much as Mac wants to disagree, I believe it’s gotten to Clark.”

            “The kennel dude?” A disbelieving Gumball remarked.

            “But he’s such a nice guy,” Darwin discredited.

            “It can take on all of the characteristics of its host, sweetie,” Cara told Darwin. “But what I don’t get, Blair, is why you’re specifically ruling out Clark.”

            “Because he was the one with the dogs!” Blair roared in a terrifying tone that startled Cara, Gumball, and Darwin. “He was with the dog that started this whole mess in the first place!”

            “But I was with the dogs, too!” Darwin alarmingly noted. “Does that mean I’m going to be assimilated soon, too?!”

            “No, dude,” Gumball comforted. “You would know you were assimilated by now.” He then questioned to Cara with the utmost uncertainty, “Wouldn’t he?”

            Cara could only shrug. “From what we’ve seen, the levels of what this thing can do are ambiguous.”

            “In that case…” Gumball said, taking a step back from Darwin. “Better keep your distance, buddy.”

            Offended, Darwin folded his flippers, giving his brother a cold glare.

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            The next night felt colder than the previous.

            Gumball and Darwin were basically huddled close to Cara, fighting to generate whatever heat their shivering bodies could.

            They were forced to dine on the food storage supplied to them.

            “I wonder how MacReady and his crew are dealing with the thing,” Gumball pondered aloud.

            “Oh, I’d say about now they’d be gettin’ about as paranoid as I was earlier,” Blair nonchalantly depicted. “That’s the thing’s best defense. It feeds on human delusions. It’s how it survives. Mac thinks he’s got the situation entirely under control, but the reality is that he doesn’t. By now, those boys are tearin’ each other apart, one-by-one. It’s in the nature of humans.”

            Gumball shoved his half-eaten plate away in disgust. “O.K., I’ve lost my appetite.”

            “Me, too,” Darwin followed in his brother’s gesture.

            “Hey, Blair, how ‘bout you stop with the crazy talk,” Cara suggested.

            “Oh, we won’t stop – we’ll never stop ‘til every single one of you is consumed,” Blair threateningly declared.

            Cara’s focus on him hardened, realization setting in on what the man sitting before her was. “Oh, no…”

            “You ready to call Ripley’s?” He jeered.

            She shot up from her seat, forcing Gumball and Darwin out of theirs to shield them behind her.

            With an unnerving grin, Blair imposed to attack the Time Lady and her companions…until a knock came over the door.

            “Blair!” MacReady’s voice called on the other side.

            Opening the door’s peephole, he peeked in find the stilled group of people in the shed looking his way.

            “Have you seen Fuchs?” MacReady asked.

            “I don’t wanna stay out here anymore,” Blair calmly told MacReady. “I wanna come back inside. I’m not gonna harm anybody. There’s nothing wrong with me. And if there was, I’m all better now. I’d like to come back inside. Now you’ve got my promise.”

            “Don’t believe him, MacReady!” Cara warned. “It’s that thing talking, not Blair!”

            “Yeah, you should’ve heard him a second ago,” Gumball said. “He said they won’t stop ‘til every single one of us is consumed!”

            Blair scoffed at their accusations. “You see what I’m talking about, Mac? These freezing temperatures are messin’ with these kids’ minds. Now you’ve gotta let us come back inside.”

            For a moment, MacReady considered.

            “We’ll see,” he finally decided, closing the peephole.

            His plan foiled, “Blair” viciously snarled.

            He swiftly turned, clasping Cara by the face.

            She could feel his fingers beginning to mesh with her skin, stretching it.

            Gumball was quick to act, coming to her rescue by clocking “Blair” over the head with a wrench he found in a nearby toolbox.

            Cara was freed, her face seemingly undamaged from the attack.

            She grabbed hold of a container filled with gasoline and doused “Blair.”

            With a single flare, she set the assimilation on fire.

            As it flailed around the room in agony, Cara manipulated the shed door open with her trans-temporal sonic screwdriver, releasing her, Gumball, and Darwin from their prison. They stumbled out across the snow into the cold night.

            “We have to warn MacReady and the others,” Gumball insisted.

            “No,” Cara refused. “If Blair’s copy was right about one thing, it’s that paranoia has already outweighed their judgment. We step one foot inside that station, MacReady would shoot us dead on sight!”

            She aimed her sonic in one direction.

            Its whirring was shortly drowned out by the familiar humming and grinding of the T.A.R.D.I.S. as it materialized right where Cara pointed the sonic.

            “We’re leaving?!” Gumball shouted in surprise, trailing Cara and Darwin inside the Gallifreyan ship. “We can’t just leave! Not with that thing causing all kinds of havoc in the station! Since when have we turned into cowards?!”

            Cara fiddled with the console, taking them back into the dimensional corridor.

            “It’s not cowardice to regroup when things are at their worst,” Cara told Gumball. “We need to figure a way to beat this thing.”

            Repelled at her stubborn determination, Gumball snapped at her, “Is this another Time Lady thing?! You got the irresistible urge to show off again?!”

            “You wanna go home?!”

            “I think I’m about ready to!”

            “Good! Because I’d be more than happy to get rid of—”

            “CARA!”

            She looked to Darwin, whose face registered intense, sweat-induced horror, gazing directly at her right hand.

            Following his gaze, she learnt the source of the fish-boy’s terror…

            A human eye formed into her palm!