Chapter 9 The Unknown mutant

Chapter 9 The unknown mutant
As I walked, climbed and often stumbled through the tropical almost alien environment, I found myself spending most of my time looking at the innumerous varieties of new creatures that inhabited this strange new world. As we proceeded deeper into the forest I saw larger things than massive bugs I had seen when we had first ventured in. Some of them were bulky, slow moving, armored creatures. One I had seen appeared to be some kind of descendent of turtles. It looked roughly the same as before, except this one was as big as a large cow and its head was much longer than a normal turtles. It had a razor sharp beak that it used to eat entire bushes at a time. It just slowly drug it’s self along devouring one bush after the next. The rest of my friends didn’t pay to much attention to it apparently they had seen them many times before and new they were no threat to us. On the other hand I also saw some other things that appeared slightly less benign.
Some resembled wolves and large wildcats. These on the other hand my friends paid great attention to. Several of these creatures prowled above us in the branches of trees and tall roots. They stalked us for a while growling and drooling until Gohn raised his arm and shot three darts at one of the biggest ones. There must have been a different pathogen on that dart because instead of falling over into convulsion like the pig beasts had before this one let out a terrifying roar. The skin around where the darts had pierced the beast in its upper right leg melted off as if being burned by some extremely potent acid. The wounds opened and festered with a smell that burned in my nostrils. The creature’s leg burned clean off, but the acid continued up into the chest area. I began to feel almost sorry for the thing as it started to whimper in despair. As the skin around its chest dissolved I could see it vital organs. The girls looked away as it began to writhe in its torment. The acidic disease continued, after several of the internal organs had been destroyed the pathetic display ended and the creature finally laid still. Its pack had stood motionless and watched the death of their leader. They looked back at Gohn and then quickly bounded away back into the forest. “We shouldn’t have to worry about any of those attacking us for a while.” Gohn said.
“No kidding the way that thing died I doubt anything within a two mile radius is going to give us any trouble for the rest of this trip. Nice one Gohn.” Caulin said laughing.
I marveled at the display. It made me feel a little safer knowing how experienced these guys were out here. They all seemed to know what to do.
It seemed Caulin was right. After Gohn’s shocking display of force all the forest seemed to have emptied out of our way. We walked for another hour until finally, Scyll looked at one of her maps and said. “This is the spot that the unknown mutant was spotted by Janus’s patrol.”
Terry looked around and said. “ Okay, everyone keep your eyes peeled for a mutant that looks strange, and Caulin don’t kill anything until we know its not the mutant we are looking for. We need to find the thing alive and see what it can do then Gohn will sedate it and we will bring it back to the lab at the dome for testing.”
Caulin yawned bored by the whole thing. “ Yea, Yea, we know we were at the briefing too.” Terry just rolled her eyes.
“Okay, lets do this.” I said. Trying not to sound to excited, or nervous.
“Sounds good to me.” Gohn agreed. Scyll only nodded. We then continued on through the brush.
After a few minutes I stopped and scratched my head. “ Um, I just realized everything out here looks strange to me. What should I be looking for.” Terry smiled trying to hold back a laugh.
“How about you just follow us.” She said. “ You’ll figure this place out soon enough.” Scyll turned suddenly and pointed to a branch high above us.
“There is no way this is going to be that easy.” Gohn said in disbelief as he turned to look at the branch. He didn’t know how right he was. “ Unbelievably.” He added as he took aim with is right arm steadying it with his left as he had done earlier. “Looks like we are going to get home early tonight.”
The mutant was small. To be honest I would have sworn it was an oversized squirrel, except that the two front teeth that are on a squirrel were normally flat and the teeth on this thing were sharp. It’s tail wasn’t big and fluffy instead it looked like a rats tail naked and long, and finally it had claws. I mean its hands were claws. As I looked at it I almost laughed. We had stumbled onto the mutant squirrel from hell. It looked like the monster on a bad horror movie. One of those corny ones from the eighties.
Gohn aimed at it. The mutant just cocked its head looking at us in curiosity. Gohn fired, his darts flew like lightning toward the mutant, but the mutant was incredibly fast. It dodged to the left and the darts stuck harmlessly into the tree.
Caulin laughed “ Nice shot, ace.” He said. “ Now it is going to run away and we will never catch it.” But the mutant didn’t run, well not away at least. To our utter shock and surprise the mutant squirrel charged Gohn! None of us had time to react. Faster than we could move the mutant was down the tree and on top of Gohn. The thing began to dig its claws over and over again into his back and whenever he swatted at it, it would move to a new spot. It almost reminded me of a stupid British movie I had seen once, called Monte Python. Where a single rabbit kills an entire battlement of knights. It would have been hysterical if it wasn’t so serious. We rushed to Gohn, but the mutant simply jumped off him and onto Caulin. Caulin grabbed his staff and started smacking himself over and over in an attempt to get the rabid squirrel off. This thing was unbelievably vicious. After we all vainly tried to grab or even touch the squirrel beast it finally jumped off Caulin and into a tree. It then jumped from that tree to a different one. We chased after it. Gohn shot like a madman clearly furious, about the brutalizing he had received from the creature. The creature stopped finally in a branch out of our reach. It seemed to think it was safe because it knew Gohn couldn’t hit it with his darts. But Caulin had a different idea. He ran up to the tree and struck it with his symbiote. The staff released a huge pulse of electricity that ran up the tree even to the branch the mutant was on. He ran the current through the tree for several minutes. When he stopped the mutant fell lifelessly from the tree. Gohn picked it up by the tail.
“Well, its dead now.” I said looking the charred remains over. Gohn nodded with satisfaction. We all looked at the little thing then at each other. Minutes later we all broke out in laughter.
“That was the craziest thing I have ever seen.” Caulin said tears rolling down his cheeks because he was laughing so hard. “ I mean its only two feet long. And it was kicking our butts.”
It took us all several minutes to regain our composure. Then Terry said. “ I know we are suppose to bring one back alive, but I think this will have to do To be honest if that woke up in the lab there would be no stopping it.” she chuckled a little having a hard time trying to keep herself from laughing more. She rubbed her cheeks that were sore from laughing so hard. “ Ok, let me have a look at those wounds.”