Alien Infestation

by Peter Fugazzotto

  Engstrom's hand touched his and made him lower his gun. He turned shrugging his shoulder.

  Then he heard the cacophony of clacking from down the hall. Bugs. A swarm of them. He pressed his back against the wall willing himself to be invisible. He hoped the bugs could not see well in the dark. Engstrom was so close that her breath warmed the back of his neck. He felt as if his heart would pound so hard that it would crack his rib cage.

  The bug shuffled out of the room. In the gloom, he saw that it held something in its claws, something that dripped. He smelled the coppery tang of blood. The beast moved forward in the light. It held a gloved hand.

  Snake began to raise his gun again, but Engstrom's soft hand held him down.

  The bug stopped in its track and swiveled its ponderous head in the direction the marines and prisoners. Snake could not hear even a wisp of breath among them.

  The swarm clacked. The bug dropped the hand and scurried into the mass of aliens, which quickly vanished down the hall in the darkness.

  Snake's heart beat marked the time. His breath slowly returned. Body armor squeaked behind him. He smelled his own sweat.

  "We need to hide," said Engstrom.

  "Where the hell are we going to go?" hissed Snake. "I'm not going to sit here and wait for them to hunt us down."

  "We need to go. Find a secure area. A place with walls at our backs and barricades at our front."

  "We're in a prison barge. Not exactly designed for guerrilla warfare."

  "The watchman will know. He should know all the best places on the Acheron to hide. They must have panic rooms." Engstrom brought her hand to the earpiece in her helmet. "Roy, can you hear me? We need some help down here. We need eyes on the situation."

  Sharp static burst from her helmet. She quickly killed it. But it was too late. A sharp chittering from down the hall answered it.

  "Run!" said Engstrom. "Run!"

  Chapter Nineteen

  BIG T WAS running at a full sprint even before Engstrom told them to. He took off the moment he heard that headset screech. He was running before the bugs answered with their screams. He ran hard. He was not going to stop. He needed to put some distance between himself and the others.

  He charged through the dark hallways of the prison cell, axe in one hand, legs pumping. He didn't look over his shoulder to see that the others were staying close or even following him. Let them get caught.

  He knew the laws of nature. Everyone did from those early years of watching old footage of the extinct animals. The vast grass covered plains, the big wild cats, dark-maned or sleek, low in the grasses, tails flicking in annoyance, the herd of stupid unsuspecting antelope, heads down in the grass. So stupid. Then one of them would wise up and the whole mass of them would take off running, this way, that way. And in the end, it was always the same, the oldest or the smallest, dragged down from behind, claws ripping its flesh open, its final hopeless struggle. The law of nature.

  The slowest ones, the stupidest ones, they died.

  Big T may not have been the smartest of the fools trapped in the prison barge, no he couldn't say that, but he knew he wouldn't be the slowest.

  He ran wildly through the maze of corridors. His breath roared in his ears. A hearty chuckled escaped his lips. He could imagine how much distance he was putting between himself and the stupid lambs behind him.

  He ran and he ran, until his lungs ached, and his thighs burned. He rounded a corner and stopped, breath heaving, big meaty hands on his knees. Drops of sweat dripped between his feet.

  "Why are you stopping?"

  He looked up in horror.

  Hatt, the little religious punk, was right there behind him, and a moment later the others turned the corner. They looked fresh. They breathed hard but they looked ready to keep running.

  He tried to stand up straight, tried to say something, but his breath was a hurricane. Words could not form. He felt the room tilt. He lifted a hand. He just needed to catch his breath.

  The others began to file past him.

  "You don't get moving and that thing's going to eat your brains," said Fifi.

  "Give me a gun," Big T grunted back.

  "Just get your feet moving. This isn't a game."

  Before he knew it, the others were jogging down the hall. It did not even look like they were off at a quick pace. He willed himself after them. How could they look to be going so slowly but he could not keep up?

  He heard bits of conversations among them. Fragments. Words.

  They were planning to leave him behind. He was sure of it. Those sons of guns.

  He tightened his grip on the axe. He had no fear of doing what needed to be done. He never had. Maybe if he had been fearful and tentative, a lamb, he never would have found himself crammed into the stasis pod on the Acheron hurling towards the slow death of Telemachus-4.

  He heaved a breath.

  Maybe he should have shown some restraint.

  As he lumbered after the others, struggling just to keep them within sight, his mind wandered back to Terra and the mistakes he had made.

  Back then, he would not have considered the things he did mistakes. He considered what he did survival. The law of nature. The strong surviving.

  He had grown up in the heart of the slums of Los Angeles, the fourth son of an underemployed ironworker, one of the thousands whose bright futures were suddenly swallowed up by the workforce of robots that took the jobs that put the food on the table, paid for the clothes, and kept the winters storms from leaking through the roof.

  Big T had known hope for a short while. Laughter at the dinner table. Brand new sneakers, laces knotted, out of unscuffed boxes. Food to fill his jiggling belly.

  Then that all changed. Threadbare clothes handed down. Plates empty long before they should have been. A father whose mouth erupted with curses and the hot fire of alcohol.

  But Big T was a survivor. He had tasted what the world could once offer and he knew that he could get it again. But he also knew how quickly others could steal it away, and if others made fortunes stealing from the backs of the common man, so could he.

  Before he even finished high school, he found himself riding in the back seats of cars, a gun on his lap, sacks of meth and coke at his feet. One family replaced by another. Only this family fed him, filled his pockets with credits.

  Except in the end his family betrayed him. His "brother" and his woman. He remembered little but the long knife in his hand, the warm cleansing blood coating his skin, the screams morphing into the sound of sirens.

  Big T should have known that no one else would stand for him. He should have known to put himself before the others.

  Here on the Acheron, even creeping through the gloom with the others, he was still alone. He still needed to come out as the survivor. He needed to survive the betrayal by his own. The halls were dark and the shadows of the prisoners and soldiers stretched ahead, slipping away, always just around the next corner.

  "Trying to taunt me," he muttered. "Playing a game with me. I'm not the old antelope. I'm not the slowest."

  A high-pitched chittering echoed in the halls behind him. He shot a glance over his shoulder. The shadows seemed deeper, darker, as if the path he had walked crumbled into blackness. The bugs were behind him, unseen, but close. His eyes widened. His chest trembled.

  "Keep moving," he said to himself. "Don't stop for nothing."

  Suddenly he came to an intersection. The shadows of his companions had vanished. He stopped and listened. Which way had the others gone? Betrayed again. He craned his head. Was that them shuffling and sliding? A cold draft touched the back of his neck. He shivered. Or was that the sound of the bugs?

  A shadow separated from the wall. Big T lifted the axe to his shoulder. He'd show these mothers the law of nature. He may have been the slowest but he was not the weakest. Not big a long shot. His hands ground a squeal out of the handle.

  Hatt's face emerged in the gloom. "Eternal payback for a life of gluttony and sloth.
He that walks in the shadows wait for the faltering steps of the sinner."

  "Gluttony and sloth are the least of my sins. And I still got some more sinning to do."

  Hatt squinted, licked his lips, his tongue flicking out like a snake. "A sinner will pay for straying from the path."

  Big T followed the little man further down the hall. "For a man that acts so righteous, you gotta think that you weren't being sent to Telemachus-4 for all the good deeds you've been doing."

  "A sinner can accept the light, the body, and turn back towards the path." He pointed a finger at Big T's chest. "But it must be a true rebirth, not driven by fear of the burning fires of hell, but by the glorious shedding of old skin."

  "What'd you do, Hatt? I can't imagine that whatever you did was an accident. You don't seem like the type. Had to be something planned out and vicious. Revenge, hot and bloody."

  The little man shook his head.

  "Oh, that's it, isn't it?" Big T chuckled but then swallowed his voice back down for fear of letting the bugs know where he was. He did not want to draw them towards him. Not yet. "Revenge. Must have been over a woman. Why else does a man kill? Your type, though, who knows, passions suppressed, could have just as likely been over some smooth-cheeked boy with pretty little lips."

  "No redemption for you," Hatt barked. "You will burn in the fires of hell for eternity. Even now the beasts stalk you. The shadow lord comes for you."

  "You self-righteous religious types are all the same. And the only thing I know is that if I'm burning in the flames of hell, you'll be there right alongside me. Crispy critter."

  "Your time will come."

  They rounded a corner to find the others waiting.

  Sergeant Engstrom was fiddling with the earpiece on her helmet. "Static. I can almost hear him but the words are lost."

  "We should keep moving," said Snake.

  Big T's chest rose and fell, heaving still from the effort. When had he become such a big, fat slob that he could not run when he needed to?

  Engstrom spoke to him. "It's the stasis. Coming out of it is hard. Different for different people. With you, it looks like it went straight to the lungs."

  "How long?" said Big T between gasping breaths.

  She shook her head. "Honestly, weeks to get back to feeling completely normal."

  "Oh, man!"

  "We'll find a place to dig in. By now the Poros must have been alerted to my not reporting back. They'll send in more marine teams. They'll extract us. We don't leave any behind."

  Big T listened to them talk. Too much talk. He had finally slowed his breath down enough where he could keep moving. So he did. He needed to get a head start. If he allowed them to get ahead of him, he was going to end up being that antelope caught mid-stride from behind.

  Big T was a survivor. He had survived the streets. He had survived his time on his prison on Terra. He had survived the gangs who had come after him.

  And now he sure as heck was not going to die on this prison barge.

  He moved ahead down the hall, the voices of the other prisoners fading a little. But even as he started to jog ahead, he could feel the itching sensation in his lungs, the burning in his thighs. God, could he not move any faster?

  Hatt was there alongside him. Annoying little punk.

  "You can't even wait for the others?" asked Hatt. "Another sinner racking up. Are you so selfish that you would put others behind you so that you would survive?"

  "You don't know anything about me. You don't know anything about survival."

  Hatt laughed. It was an explosion of noise like a mule braying from between his lips. "And you think you know anything about me?"

  "I don't care."

  "You are not my judge. He watches from above. He knows what we have done. Our mortal sins in this life. Judgment Day comes. Comes for you and me. Comes creeping and clacking down the halls."

  Big T had a hard time concentrating on what Hatt was saying. He drew in large breaths but they never seemed to fully fill his lungs and already he was feeling light-headed. God, how he wanted to stop.

  But he knew he had to just stay ahead. He could not fall behind again. He could not be the last one. He could not be the one with the target on his back.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the others had stopped talking and were jogging after him, slowly eating up the distance. It would be only a matter of moments before they had caught up and passed him.

  He wondered whether they would even wait for him this time.

  He rounded a corner and saw an open door. The door to one of the containment rooms that sat between prison blocks.

  "We should wait for them here," said Hatt as they reached the door to the containment room. "All get through together and then seal the door. This can be where we bide our time until help comes."

  "This is where I get away," said Big T. He swatted Hatt across the jaw and sent the little man skidding across the floor, and then he turned and dashed inside the containment room.

  The door was heavy, and the hinges seemed stuck, and it took all his strength, but he was able to drag the thick metal door shut behind him.

  In that last moment, before the door shut, he saw the others turn the corner, stop for a moment to help the stunned Hatt to his feet, and then shout at Big T.

  The door made contact with the frame. He grabbed the wheel handle with both hands and cranked. It slowly moved. His breath exploded in bursts. His palms burned. His biceps felt like cramping.

  The sergeant was at the other side of the door, fists pounding, her voice muffled through the glass. If he had more time, he would have let her through. She was pretty. He could imagine himself with her.

  The wheel reached its end point, and Big T threw a manual catch over the handle.

  The others were all cranking at the handle, and the wheel on his side of the door turned, but it clanged against the catch. They would not be able to open the door. He looked past them at the shadows. Did he see something move? He was no longer the weak one at the end of the herd. Let them figure this out on their own.

  When the other marines came, he would just say that he had outrun the others and got separated. They would not need to know what happened. He just hoped that this was enough to keep the bugs sated and they would slow down their hunt. All he needed was time and he thought that he had bought that for himself.

  Then he heard the chittering. From behind.

  He froze. He did not want to turn around.

  But he did.

  The opposite door in the containment room was open. Just a crack. He had not noticed it before. He smelled the foul odor of the bugs. He reached out and grabbed the handle of the door and pulled.

  Something pulled back.

  Then the door handle was ripped out of his grip, and Big T screamed.

  Chapter Twenty

  ROY WATCHED THROUGH the video feed in horror. He was glued to the screen, swiping through different feeds on the main screen. Several times he had tried to connect through the comms system with Engstrom to warn her about bugs around the next corner or closing in from behind, but she had turned off the audio.

  The feedback and static had been too strong. He had shouted his warnings but watching the feed, he could see that his words fell on deaf ears. Something had gone wrong with the wireless comms system in the Acheron and his words were lost in waves of static.

  It had been bad, all bad to watch.

  The killing of one of the twins, the decimation of the Space Marines, and most recently the murder of the big prisoner who had locked himself in with those beasts. What the hell had he been thinking?

  Roy shivered. What madness had been unleashed on the Acheron?

  He could not clear the echoes of the attack by the beasts from his mind. Unlike those in the prison cells who just ran, he had switched video feeds following those who had been taken. Maybe that had been a mistake. He could not unsee what he had witnessed.

  The bugs were vicious. He recalled the last of th
e prisoners to fall. The big man had fought hard. After all he had the axe in his hand. But he had nowhere to run and the bugs, so strong, stronger than that giant of a man had ripped the door free of his grip and then dragged him out into a pack of them. Like wild animals. He had fought with heart. One blow with his axe had killed the bug right in front of him, the sharp blade cutting through the carapace right down to the middle of the creature. But that had also been the problem. He had swung so hard and so quickly that the axe head got lodged in the torso of the bug. The big man could not pull it out.

  That was his end.

  The bugs swarmed him. Roy had tried to turn his gaze to not witness it, but he was glued to the screen. They had battered the man quickly, their long arms raining down, and then one of them simply tore his belly open, and it was a bloody feeding frenzy. They had completely gutted him in a moment and then after feasting on him, one of them dragged his carcass off into the vents. The others filled the containment chamber.

  Roy had switched the video feed and saw that Sergeant Engstrom too had been watching the slaughter, her face pressed to the small glass window of the containment room. She had stood frozen there but when the bugs filled the room, she and the others ran.

  Roy tracked their progress. He ran an overlay map on one screen and marked their progress and at the same time, tried to see where the bugs were. The aliens were slowly filling the level on which the surviving prisoners were. He did not know how much longer they had.

  A sharp blast of static made him jump.

  "Acheron? Acheron? This is Admiral Kronos from the destroyer Poros. I need to speak to my sergeant."

  "She's in there. I told her not to, but she's in there."

  "I know. We've been taking over your video feeds."