Wickerman Cove

Part 24: Attack of the Angry, Shirtless Henry Cavills

If you were a Military Science consultant, spending half your life researching and comparing the training methods of special forces units in a hundred countries, modelling their effectiveness and going to conferences, then you probably had a three hour Powerpoint presentation about the flaws of the US Marine Corps' combat training.

It was probably part of your PhD, and you'd consulted with the State Department over ways that it could all be changed if the budget could be released.

Steph was willing to bet there was one thing that wouldn't have made it into any of those highly educated recommendations. A single fact that not only had nobody brought up, but that if someone had ever included it, it probably got them fired and locked in a rubber room.

Right now, in this cute little meeting hall, full of tranced-out rural New Englanders, it had reared its ugly head.

Everything the Marines taught about fighting relied on some variation of the human body. Sure, they'd done a little stuff about guard dogs, and a safety course about bears (most of which involved making a loud noise and remembering that they climb trees) but in all her time in the Corps, nobody had mentioned mucus-covered sea slugs that looked like a random collection of sacks and tubes.

Of course, Steph's training did give her a selection of educated guesses – grenades and shotguns would probably work. In full battlegear, with a platoon backing her up, that would be fine.

At this moment, she had six bullets, and twenty feet of fallback space.

The molluscs moved at a slow walking pace. They'd made a surprising amount of ground during her fight with the Guide – if you could call it that. Behind her, there were a pair of locked white wooden doorways, and a music-stand-come-lectern that she could probably pick up and start swinging before she inevitably died.

"Okay," Steph said, shoving Penny towards the back of the room. "I don't know what you did there, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on those things. Plus, I think I'd have, like, an aneurysm if you tried again."

Penny let herself be shoved, but kept watching the things. Renard joined in, nosing away as she walked backwards, her face locked in an expression of concentration.

The molluscs mounted the stage easily, pouring themselves from one level to another until they were upright and moving forward. They didn't speed up, but there were three, then seven, then ten, filling the stage. They ignored obstacles, semi-absorbing them, leaving chairs toppled, the lectern covered in transparent slime.

"You know," Steph said, moving backwards with Penny as Renard circled anxiously, trying to protect both of them. "We haven't seen any sign they're actually dangerous. I mean, it's just that they're big and weird looking. They might be vegetarians."

As if on cue, the closest mollusc lashed out with a barb-covered tongue. Stephanie leapt back with a yelp, shoving Penny aside, who – by some miracle – stayed upright. The tongue caught one of the stage's curtains, tearing it off the rail with the sound of ripping cloth and tortured metal. It dragged the whole catch into the thing's mouth. It paused for a second, almost comical as it sucked in nine yards of red faux velvet.

On the bright side, this brought the now-dangling curtain rail into Steph's reach. She grabbed the bottom and wrenched it the rest of the way free. If six nine-millimetre rounds didn't somehow – against the odds – kill (twelve? fourteen?) giant mollusc things, she at least wanted to have a hand-to-hand option that didn't involve actual hands.

Backstage (if you could call it that) had a small flight of stairs that went down to the exit. Penny had turned now, and was punching Steph urgently in the shoulder.