The fire burns so hot and bright in the gloom that it prompts a brief, instinctive recoil in Flint—some animal impulse cringing back from the acidic stenched gout of flame. Though he's hardly so close as all that, having scattered along a similar trajectory as Abby and sloshing now through the oily water at an angle from the thrashing monster in an effort to bring his long gun to bear.

At some point, the ugly machete at Flint's back is likely to come into play. Until then—there's six of them, and pinging the Rat King in circles in the dark between them while they try not to pepper each other with friendly fire and buckshot and errant debris sounds more promising than getting within arm's length to be shredded by the ripping, tearing, grasping fingers and screaming mouths seems the more promising play for as long as they'll be allowed it.

Networks of fungi along the Rat King's bloated exterior are transmuted to searing embers. The fire leaves a hot, blinding glare on the heavy acrylic of the mask. Flint's first rifle shot explodes the smashed car's rusted side mirror heretofore left miraculously intact despite the weather and wear and the adjacent impact of the Rat King's hulking body. A minor adjustment. The rasp of the bolt action drowned by the reverberation of a thousand other sharper sounds and the thud of his own pulse hammering in his ear; he can almost feel his heartbeat through his face against the sealed tight edges of the mask.

Presumably the next shots find their target. Burning motes of fungus spray into the dark air and are devoured by the heat before they drift far.