Gargoyles (The Terror Within)

"Adios Motherf**kers"

- David before killing the last two Gargoyles

The Gargoyles are the main antagonists in the 1989 cult classic The Terror Within.

History
Following a devastating plague that left civilization in ruin, mutations began to roam. Possibly once human and able to reproduce with human women, the creatures lived for just two reasons: to mate and dominate. The small pockets of humanity that managed to survive the global outbreak were unable to fight back, thus huge numbers of the vicious, so-called Gargoyles were able to spread like wildfire. The Earth was theirs and they knew it.

A small lab, running lower and lower on rations every passing day, uncovered a camp of the dead and one female fleeing for her life from a pack of the mutations. She was rescued and discovered to be pregnant, but nobody knew the dark secret behind the spread of the beasts. When it was discovered the fetus was growing abnormally fast, they tried to abort it. It was too late. The creature burst from the woman’s belly just as they cut into her stomach, killing her in the process and escaping into the air vents where it quickly grew to maturity. The others began a hunt for the monster, but it was too powerful to be stopped even by their laser weaponry.

After killing two men, the creature abducted one of the women. During its attack, the beast was interrupted by the others coming to her rescue. They managed to save her, but she somehow knew it was too late. Unable to believe that the process could have been so fast, they believed the pregnancy was normal. She tried aborting it herself via drugs, killing herself in the process and revealing the fetus inside her was that of the mutation. With just two remaining, David and Linda realized the creatures were highly sensitive to sound and prepared to fight the creature once and for all. However, their plan of playing a looped recording of a dog whistle blowing backfired when the tape broke.

While extinguishing a fire caused by the monster’s thrashing, David was attacked and injured. He managed to crawl away when Linda repaired the tape, allowing him to set up his own trap. He quickly fashioned a spear out of a pole and his knife, but the blade did little but enrage the creature. As it threw him about, Linda interfered and battered its skull with a crowbar. As it recovered, David grabbed a nearby flamethrower and set fire to the beast, seemingly killing it. The two survivors prepared to leave, but the monster suddenly resurrected! Its wounds completely regenerated, the battle for survival was once again waged.

Chasing after Linda, the beast followed her into the air vents. She blasted the dog whistle, but dropped it in the chaos. As it reached for the woman, she grabbed a pair of exposed electrical wires and shocked the mutation, causing it to fall down into the vent fan. Its stomping caused the metal fencing to break and its body to spill into the spinning blades, cutting its body to pieces. The pair was safe, at least for now. With nothing left for them at this location, the pair readied to travel by foot across the Mojave Desert to reach the Rocky Mountains complex. Before they left, they waited for several of the surrounding Gargoyles to swarm the open hatch before detonating explosives, destroying their previous home and the first wave of mutations that would have harassed them on their long journey.

During the journey, David lost Linda and rescued another woman, Arial, from the clutches of the mutations. The two quickly fell in love, but Arial was raped by one of the creatures after being impregnated. David managed to rescue her and the pair reached the Rocky Mountains lab, but the horror of the mutations had only just begun. A severed finger from one of the beast’s outside regenerated into a new and when Arial had her child after only a few weeks of pregnancy, it too was a mutation. Now facing two killers, the scientists of the lab were forced to fight back, using David’s previous experience in the Mojave tragedy to survive. Both monsters were slain soon after, electrocuted and impaled in the underground complex’s control center, but again leaving David and his new love alone in the dangerous world.

Weaknesses
The Gargoyles have extremely sensitive hearing and can be easily harmed by High Frequency sounds.

Special ability
The Gargoyles have an enhanced regenerative ability, allowing them to heal fatal wounds in just a few minutes. Severed body parts, such as a finger, can also rapidly grow into another Gargoyle mutant.