fanfic: Stand
Title: Stand
Author: Athene
Fandom: Primeval
Pairing/characters: Becker, Connor
Rating: 12
Warnings: Character death
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Not mine. ITV and Impossible Pictures own them.
Word count: approx 960
Summary: All he had to do was hold the doorway.
The raptor lunged again and Becker stabbed the chair into its face, narrowly missing an eye with the chair leg. The raptor fell back, but not before Becker felt his skin rip open and blood begin to flow. Again.
“Becker?”
Becker really didn’t want to think too hard about how worried Connor’s voice sounded. Or what that implied about how bad he looked right then.
“Just hurry up, Connor.”
His hands were slick with sweat, and he gripped the chair tighter. He couldn’t afford to lose his only weapon.
Becker had come to the conclusion that he was going to be having words with Matt later about the reliability of the EMDs. With particular attention to their rather woeful performance on the guns vs. raptors scoreboard. And their inability to be used effectively as an improvised melee weapon at close quarters.
Two raptors rushed him at once, and he swung the chair in an arc that caught both of them across the chests. The blow utterly failed to stop either of them from reaching him. He felt hot breath on his face and his instincts screamed at him to fall back a step. He caught himself before his feet moved. Retreat wasn’t an option.
Behind him in the room, Connor and the teacher were trying to get the schoolchildren out through the window onto the fire escape, and away to safety. There was only one door into the room. The door itself lay off to one side, smashed. But the doorway was an effective bottleneck, and as long as Becker was blocking the opening it meant he could prevent the creatures from getting into the room. He knew it wasn’t a complex or elegant plan, but it didn’t need to be pretty, it just had to work.
Because if the raptors got into the room there would be a massacre.
He slammed his elbow up into a raptor’s jaw, and stabbed again with the chair at the second creature. Teeth closed around his forearm and Becker kicked out wildly. He felt his boot make contact with the raptor’s leg, and kept kicking until it let go. The second one slashed at his face with its claws and he resorted to the chair again, stabbing and shoving again and again until he had bought himself a couple of feet clearance.
At least the bottleneck had the added advantage that no more than two raptors could reach him at once. All he had to do was hold the doorway. It sounded easy, in theory.
Except that there were thirty panicking children, and one window. And six raptors.
And he was just one man with a broken chair standing in a doorway.
Becker knew he was bleeding. More importantly, the raptors knew he was bleeding. If anything, though, it seemed their attacks had become cautious. They were keeping more of a distance. Instead of trying to pounce on him, they now darted forwards with a single bite or nip or slash of their claws, and then leapt back out of the way before he could retaliate. Either they had learned not to get too close, or else they sensed that the hard work was already done, and now they only had to bide their time.
His vision blurred for a second, and he felt himself sway. Becker swung wildly with the chair, no longer aiming. No longer capable of aiming.
“Connor!”
“Just three more to go.”
Three children. Then the teacher. Then Connor. Another minute. Maybe two.
The chair connected with a raptor as it darted low and went for his leg. It screeched and whirled around, its tail catching the side of Becker’s head as it retreated. He staggered backwards. A single raptor lunged forwards after him, and Becker threw every bit of strength he had into battering it back the way it had come. Somehow it worked, and he followed it until he was standing in the doorway again.
One minute. Maybe two.
The left leg of his trousers was sticking to him, and something wet was squelching in his boot. Becker knew without looking what that ‘something’ was. So did the raptors, because one of them was now specifically targeting that leg. Had been for the last four or five attacks. The most urgent issue, however, was that Becker could no longer trust that leg with his weight.
One minute.
The chair made contact with another raptor, and Becker was momentarily gratified to see its head snap sideways from the blow. It yelped and went down.
“Clear! Becker, they’re all clear. Let’s go.”
“You go.”
“Not without you.”
Trust Connor to decide to be stupidly brave now.
“Once I’m out of this doorway the raptors will get into the room,” Becker explained, not taking his eyes off his enemy. “I need a clear run at the window to stand a chance of escaping. I need you to be out of the way when I do that.”
A raptor apparently took his conversation to mean he was distracted, and went for Becker’s face. Chair leg, meet eyeball. Becker’s grim smile was short lived, even as the raptor fled, screaming a horrible noise of pain. Another pair took the place of the fallen creatures. A fresh, uninjured pair.
“Okay. Clear.”
Connor’s voice sounded further way. Outside. It also sounded like he believed they could do this. It sounded like he wasn’t actually aware of the fact that Becker was no longer capable of outrunning a pack of raptors, even over a short distance. It sounded like he was blissfully unaware that Becker had no intention of even trying to do so.
Mission accomplished.
“Come on then, you ugly bastards.”
Becker swiped blood out of his eyes, and braced himself for the final attack.