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 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.
In the meantime...
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