Sometimes, I wonder if everything I do is just "the next thing". At least, I wondered that as I stepped back inside Mrs. Kreski's apartment and took cover beside the door, just after I'd unloaded a full clip into the horrible winged things that lived in that huge, clinging, folded wasps nest up on the side of her pillar.
The same things we'd seen on the road; that hive was pretty clearly where they'd come from. They were human-shaped after all, but only as a sick parody. Rail-thin and spindly-limbed, they had something very much like mottled grey leather for skin. Perched on slim necks, they had heads without any organs beyond a forest of curling horns. Their hands were of a kind - long, slim, and tipped with what seemed to be too many curlicues of talon.
Ray slammed the door, and held onto it as I reloaded. He was babbling. Or maybe he was saying something important, something useful. I didn't actually hear any of it; he was making noises, and was slamming another clip into place. Gina, meanwhile, had reached into her jacket, and pulled out her little gas lighter. Ray paused in his noise, and I paused in my preparations. Her turn to shrug.
Door open, gaunt things boiling up towards us, and one shot after another until the gun clicked empty. Then, a shout to Ray, as one of the things, wounded as it was, jumped. I just caught sight of another couple of blurring motions, down low, as the creature hit me, and the door closed.
There's no lack of pain when you're fighting, there. The way wounds are made might not be quite right, but it's real enough to spatter the wall and feel your arm burning. Real enough to go down wrestling, trying hard to hold to the forearms of something with far-too-sharp claws. Certainly real enough to feel relief when a friend of yours hammers your opponent across the back of the head with, I kid you not, a cast iron frying pan. The sound of horns cracking is a fairly memorable one. I rolled the limp thing off me, and Ray finished the job with a few further crackling strokes.
Gina wasn't there, and I remembered seeing motion down low, as the door had closed. A moment of hesitation, and with one eye on the thudding, jerking door, I ejected my clip and started to load another.
"Get the door, Ray."
Gina was on the other side, crouched with her back to us. She had been pounding at the door behind her with one fist, nursing what was now a quickly-growing fire ahead of her. Beyond the flames, though, was a roiling brawl. It was the cat, grown panther-sized, fighting at least two of the things in a snarling, roiling mass.
I pulled Gina back and took her place, crouching with the rifle, hoping for a clean shot. The moment I arrived in that position, the cat flattened out against the ground, eyes on mine. I fired twice more, and then the papery floor I was on tore open, and I fell.
I have mentioned that when you die in a dream, you wake up, didn't I?
The apartment was cool, and I was drenched in sweat, with new bruises blossinging on my chest and legs. I stumbled to the kitchen table and reflected on how old Abe never would have given up, no sir. He was a stiff-upper-lip guy, that Abe. That's when I realized I still had the bundle of Mrs. Krenski's memories and thoughts that had come with the gun, and felt myself mouthing, Oh Shit. But I had other problems.
I showered, as hot as I could stand, and stood looking in the mirror, wiping fog away over and over, learning new lessons about psychosomatic injuries and the power of the mind over the body with every twitch.
About half an hour later, Ray and Gina came out of their dream states, and I triggered the alarm to wake them. Getting hugged by people who are that glad to see you alive, just while you're still discovering new places and ways to be sore... it's not an exercise I'd recommend.
They told me about how I'd been pulled into the floor, the fire spreading faster and faster, and the cat had gone after me into the hole. They'd been forced back into the apartment by the heat. The looks they shared told me there was a little more to it than that, but I didn't have the stamina. Anyhow; the hive had burned, and ultimately torn free from the side of the pillar and fallen to the ground, splitting open in flames. They had gone down outside, looking for any sign of me or the cat, and found neither. The flames had died just enough to let them start searching the blackened pile when the dream had faded into grey, and then waking.
