CHAPTER THREE ~ HALLOWEEN STORY TIME **CLAWS OF TERROR** A BRAND NEW BASIL AND THE B TEAM ADVENTURE FOR 2023

 

Claws of Terror is an action-packed and immersive adventure that takes mew on a journey through a world of danger and excitement. With vivid and detailed descriptions of the intense battles and spine-tingling encounters, the story draws mew in, making mew feel as though mew are right there with The B Team, fighting for survival.

HANG ON TIGHT GUYS, THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE WILD NIGHT!!!

If mew missed the start of this brand-new adventure click the link below:

Chapter One   Chapter Two

 

~ Chapter Three ~

The Mist 

Parsley grunted as all the air whooshed out of his lungs when he hit the damp ground with a hard thwump. Thick ice spread along the ground, and a thing was looming over him. At first, I couldn’t make out what it was, and then the fog cloud vanished, revealing a creature so disgustingly foul, and with a stench even fouler than a thousand rotting eggs, I almost gagged.

It looked like a red feathered velociraptor with wings. Its elongated head had glowing yellow eyes and a maw of teeth that would make a great white shark jealous.

Spiky feather plumes protruded down its neck and back, and its yellow razor-sharp claws, well, let’s just say the claws were utterly terrifying.

I ran forward just as Parsley’s lethal pantherene claws glinted in the moonlight, and in a blur, the creature was gutted and headless, and Parsley was covered in yellow fetid goo and entrails.

“Dude!” I yelled. “What the fluff was that?”

“Dead!” he replied coldly, getting up and shaking the stinking yellow goo off his fur. “Awww Basil, mew know what this means?”

“Yep, a full water bath for mew!”

“Mew know how much I detest being fully submerged!”

“Well, it’s either that or mew go around stinking like a hell spawn creature. The choice is yours, as mew know mew can’t lick that stuff off your fur.”

Pandora looked at the creature and spat on it. “That thing is a Red Wing Raptor. I have seen them in an ancient tome I have called, Evil Mythical Creatures from Other Dimensions by Dr. I. Peedmipantz, a famous explorer.”

Miss Warts and Mogs came to inspect the dead creature. She hissed, Mogs hissed, and they seemed to confer telepathically.

“Commander Basil, this is much worse than we thought,” she said as she glanced around at the other fog clouds, which were getting denser by the second, with red lightning bolts fizzing wildly inside. “We need to leave before those clouds burst and more of those things emerge.”

I nodded, and we ran like the hounds of hell were chasing us down Main Street, which in about ten seconds would be true! We skidded in the driveway, along the wall and into the BBHQ garden through the reinforced side gate. Closing it, I dropped the heavy iron bar into place, tapped on a keypad recessed into the brickwork, and manually activated the infrared perimeter alarm.

“This way,” I beckoned to our visitors and ran towards the back of the summerhouse.

The bunker door slid open, and we darted inside. Pandora hit the emergency door close button, and the metal door banged shut in a second.

Parsley activated the internal alarm, and a siren screeched out through all the tannoy speakers on every level of the bunker. Pressing the comms unit on the wall, the alarm stopped, and I said. “B Team, this is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill! All paws to the Control Room stat, Mewton-Clawson is under attack by an unknown foe. Zombie cats are amassing and heading this way!”

“Why didn’t mew mention the raptors?” Pandora asked.

“I’m saving that as a surprise!”

We ran down the main corridor and into the Control Room. Posie and Snowie arrived quickly, as they’d only been on the next level down. A few minutes later, Humphrey, Fudge, Melvyn, Smooch and Amber appeared, ascending from Level 11.

The Control Room burst into life as everypawdy took their stations. Snowie sat at her comms desk, Posie fired up the monitors, which burst into life all around the room until every wall was illuminated. Humphrey’s station was in charge of the drones, and he deployed them from the drone chute, located in a bunker offshoot further down the field.

“Drones are up Basil,” he said. “Live footage in three… two… one… live feed is now active. Night-vison and thermal cameras are activated.”

We stared at the multiple Control Room monitors, watching as the drones flew out on a pre-mapped route above the village.

Miss Warts came and stood next to me. “Commander Basil, this is a most impressive set-up you have.”

Thank mew," I said as Parsley tapped me on the shoulder and whispered. “Basil, I have to go clean up.”

“Oh my cod, is that vile, rotting egg smell mew, dude?” Fudge asked, his nose wrinkling in disgust.

“Yeah, what the fluff is that?” Smooch added with a mock gag. “Mew need to use a different deodorant, dude!”

Parsley glared at them, flipped them the bird with one of his lethal pantherene claws, and stomped out of the door.

“Oooooh, somepawdy’s not happy!” Amber murmured.

“I did tell him to stop eating all that protein,” Melvyn added. “Especially that new protein powder he just brought!”

“Guys, enough!” I snapped. “it’s not Parsley, it’s what’s on Parsley!”

My team all stopped what they were doing and stared at me. “What do mew mean Basil?” Posie asked.

“Parsley stinks because one of those attacked him,” I jabbed my paw at monitor ten as a drone zoomed in on a Red Wing Raptor emerging from one of the fog clouds in a sizzling red light show. “It ambushed him, but luckily he killed it before it killed him!”

My team looked a little ashamed, and Fudge said. “Oh fluff me, why didn’t mew tell us that first?”

“Mew never gave me a chance!”

“Is he ok?” Posie asked.

“Yes, he’s fine, apart from being covered in some vile, stinking entrails and raptor plasma.”

Another drone caught another raptor bursting onto Main Street right near our driveway.

We watched as the vile creature stopped and sniffed the air, its head jerking with each snort, and it exhaled a plume of hot fetid breath in the chilly night air.

Mogs hissed as he watched it. “Do mew think it caught our scent?”

The drone was only a few feet above it. Luckily Humphrey had designed our drones to be silent-running with the ability to cloak, so they were completely invisible and undetectable, which right now was a good thing.

“Humphrey, raise the drone quick,” I said.

Using lightning-fast reflexes, Humphrey did as I instructed, and the drone skyrocketed up and away from the raptor as the camera zoomed in from its higher elevation, and we watched in horror as the raptor lunged upwards to the exact spot the drone had been hovering.

“That’s not good,” I murmured.

“How can that be?” Snowie asked. “There’s no way that thing should have been able to detect that drone!”

“That’s impossible!” Humphrey gasped. “My drones are using a technology that is far superior to anything in this realm.”

Miss Warts conferred silently with Mogs before she said. “It is because those creatures are not of this dimension, either. They must have some sort of technology.”

I thought about this for a moment. “Humphrey, send a drone down the Main Street to the old schoolhouse.”

“Screen five,” he advised. “Zooming in now.”

We all looked at the screen, and as the camera swept just above ground level, we saw it.

“Fluff me, what the fluffing fluff is that?” Fudge asked.

On the ground were the remains of the Red Wing Raptor, which had ambushed Parsley only minutes ago. The dead flesh and goo were slowly dissolving and had revealed a partial metal skeleton glimmering in the moonlight.

My blood ran cold, and my fur quivered in all kinds of disconcerting ways, and I gulped. “This is so very bad,” I murmured.

“What’s that Basil?” Amber asked. “What aren’t mew telling us?”

I squeezed my eyes shut; I hadn’t ever wanted to reveal what I was now going to reveal, as my great, great, great, great etc… nephew Melvyn had no clue about what I was about to say. He thought his mum had sent him here to join The B Team, but in actual fact that couldn’t be further from the truth. And to protect him from the horrifying situation he was in, I’d asked Camomile, the Nisse who we rescued from The Clockwork Labyrinth, to remove those terrifying memories and replace them with much kinder ones to give him the best chance of a normal life.

Opening my eyes, everypawdy in the Control Room was staring at me. They knew I knew something, and waited expectantly.

Shaking my head, I took a huge breath and said. “I’ve seen hybrid creatures like that before, but in cat form.”

The Control Room erupted with questions, as The B Team hadn’t been on any missions in weeks. And the only place I’d gone alone was to pick up Melvyn from the Fuskerton Train Station a few weeks ago. However, that wasn’t the actual story at all, but to save and protect Melvyn, I’d had to go alone.

I held up a paw to silence the room, and everypawdy quiet fell. They stood waiting for an explanation. And for the life of me, I didn’t know how to begin, when Melvyn said quietly. “Basil is talking about the Purrminators!”

We all turned and stared at the youngest cat in the room. He wasn’t much more than a kitten. He said, “They are A.I. robots disguised beneath organic matter, and by that I mean, they look like real cats, but they are like nothing mew could ever imagine. They are lethal killing machines which, as I saw first paw, are harder to kill than anything mew’ve ever encountered before.”

He pointed a little white paw at screen five. “Look, even now, it’s re-assimilating.”

We watched in horror as the metal head and skeleton began to ever so slowly move towards each other.

A collective hiss resounded around the room as the A.I. robot re-adjusted its body so the severed spine and head were in total alignment, the drone zoomed in even further, and we all watched in horror as red glowing tendrils eked out from the head and spine until they finally met and bonded as a small burst of light erupted, fusing the tendrils together, and then the head snapped into place. The raptor’s eyes glowed brightly as it jumped upright and assessed its current situation; taking in its position, sniffing the air, pacing and turning until it looked straight down the Main Street in our direction and appeared to lock on to our invisible tracks.

“Basil, we have activity down the field,” Snowie said urgently. “It’s not those red things, but…”

“It’s the dead cats!” Pandora snarled. “The zombie cats are coming in the back way.”

Humphrey turned to me. “Basil, how do mew know what those A.I. things are?”

I closed my eyes for a second, took a breath and said. “Because, as Melvyn said, I’ve encountered them before. Though…” I turned to Melvyn. “I hoped mew wouldn’t remember little one. I wanted to spare mew the trauma of that nightmare when I came to rescue mew in the future. Camomile said she had taken the horror from your mind.”

My great, great, great, great etc… nephew approached me and placed his tiny paw up to my cheek. “I know Great Uncle Basil, but some memories are just too deeply rooted to be erased, and I am grateful that mew did what mew did for me.” He gave me a hug and kissed my cheek. “I am so lucky to have an uncle like mew!”

I patted him gently on the head and smiled at him. How could I tell him that his life would always be fraught with danger, and it was because he was my last living relative and the one who would lead the resistance one day? It was such a burden for such a small kitten to carry; I wanted to cry for him, but I swallowed down that bile and fought back my tears of anger and frustration.

Clearing my throat, I said. “I’m sorry I lied. I didn’t fetch Melvyn from Fuskerton station that night. Though I went to the station, but when I got there, a hooded messenger met me who told me that Melvyn was in great danger and that if I wanted to save him, I needed to travel to the coordinates he gave me. So I snuck back to BBHQ and hopped in the Time Travelling Telephone Box, punched in the numbers, and six seconds later, I was in the year 2033.”

**AND CUT**

Guys, mew know how we roll, so many apologies to cut it right there, but we will say, mew'll never guess what happens next - sorry to be a tease! MOL

If mew would like to read Chapter 4, let us know in the comments, as OH MY CAT, this is evolving into one fluffing crazy adventure!  If mew want to keep seeing where it goes, we'll gladly continue a chapter a week, but that is up to mew.

Don't forget to check out yesterday's brand new Cats Have Purroblems Too post, and we'll be back tomorrow with some more Midweek News.

In the meantime...

Wing Commander Basil & The B Team 

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