Aliens

by Jonathan Maberry

  Gunfire erupted from the tunnel.

  Haywald and Michia stumbled into the room.

  Chevelon came next, firing and screaming, her face bloody, her left arm hanging dead.

  “Shut the door,” she cried. “They’ve got the others.”

  Haywald shoved his shoulder against it and Michia joined him.

  When it latched, Sykes locked it.

  Albright and Franks hadn’t made it. That made four marines Sykes had lost, if you included Shire and Phillips.

  Sykes put a fist to the side of his head and held it there. Shire! He’d left her out in the tunnel. And Phillips. Where was he?

  Haywald and Michia came to him.

  “What are your orders, corporal?” Haywald asked.

  Sykes looked at each of them. What were his orders?

  “Your orders?” Haywald repeated.

  Sykes cleared his throat. “You and Michia see to Chevelon. Make sure she’s okay, then post a sentry by the door.”

  They looked at each other, then obeyed.

  Sykes was struck by the simplicity of it all. The mine was as much a trap for the miners as his game had been for the consortium. Each was a perfect setup. The only difference was that the game was just that, a game. Had he been thinking about the real live posting on LV-666 as he had the game, he might have been able to anticipate that a place so remote and played out might be an experiment waiting to happen. Now, here he was, as much a victim as the miners. He received one final remote notification, the game notifying him that all of his assets had been seized and that he was no longer capable of gameplay.

  Sykes laughed silently, remembering when such things mattered. He righted a few of the overturned chairs, eying the dead miners. Eventually, they’d have to stack the bodies against one wall. They’d also have to be careful not to become infected. He turned, looking at the wall behind him, then spied the other door. He’d forgotten about that. Perhaps it was a way out. According to his tunnel diagram, it opened into another section of the complex. If they were lucky, they could escape. He moved to the door, checked and found it unlocked. Then, he cautiously pulled it open, and saw—Phillips!

  The Colonial Marine stood there.

  Had he hidden here when confronted with the miners in the room?

  Sykes was about to pull him out when he registered the blankness of the man’s stare.

  Before Sykes could back away, Phillips reared back and spit. An immense orb of saliva hit the center of his faceplate and stayed there.

  Sykes took a few backward steps.

  Phillips followed him, spitting again and again.

  Sykes fired from the hip again, hitting Phillips in the stomach, the rounds blowing clean through. Phillips fell dead as Michia and Haywald ran over.

  Then Sykes watched as the saliva began to move. Like a hyper amoeba, it grew appendages and pulled itself from the center of his mask to the sides, sliding under the faceplate and towards his face. Smaller sputum rivuleted around the edges, seeking a way through the faceplate.

  Sykes dropped his rifle and struggled to remove his helmet. When he did, he hurled it across the room.

  Had any gotten on him?

  Was he infected?

  He vigorously wiped his face with his gloved hands and the right hand came away with a small wet stain. Was that it? Had he gotten it?

  Later, he didn’t know how long later, because he must have blacked out, he found himself standing. He could just see them, Michia and Haywald, standing on either side of him. He wondered if Chevelon was standing behind him. He moved to turn, but found he couldn’t. He tried to lift his hand and discovered that was impossible. It was like it wasn’t there. But he knew it was, but that part of the nervous system that governed non-autonomous muscle movements had been turned off.

  It wasn’t lost on him that he wouldn’t be in this predicament and still be in command of seven systems in Charity Rock if he’d just done as Haywald had offered. Why had he done it? Why hadn’t he stayed behind? Sykes had developed a finely-honed sense of cowardice and he should have followed it.

  Later, he wondered if his view might change. He was getting tired of staring at the closed door. He felt like a video game character waiting for the game to be turned on so he could do something.

  Anything.

  Even later, he began to laugh, not out loud, because he was incapable of it, but inside… in his mind… where he still felt normal. Uproariously, he laughed for days, especially when he repeated the phrase, at least you’ll die a hero, a hundred thousand times like it was punishment.

  Much later he craved to spit and felt it pool in his mouth.

  Then… he didn’t know how long it had been, he began to feel his body shutting down. Haywald and Michia had long ago fallen. His legs were wobbly. He knew he was dying and welcomed it. No water. No food. It was only a matter of time. He tried to fall, if only to change his view, but still couldn’t move anything non-autonomous.

  And damn it, he still wanted to spit.

  If only someone would open the damned door.

  DARK MOTHER

  BY DAVID FARLAND

  Sometimes we can wake from dark dreams into a deeper nightmare.

  Carter Burke pounded the lock mechanism on the door and felt a surge of relief as it bolted shut. Ripley, on the far side of the door, had had death in her dark eyes. Stupid sheep, he thought. She could have been rich. Yes, he’d tried to impregnate her and Newt with aliens, but he’d imagined that once they got to the bio-weapons department at Weyland-Yutani, the creatures could have been safely removed. Sort of like a C-section. Ripley and the girl would have been fine, and they’d all be rich.

  Instead they were trapped in the tunnels under Hadley’s Hope, with Xenomorphs filling the tunnels.

  Some people have no imagination. Stupid freaking cow. Now to get out of this place.

  He whirled, fled through a storeroom, glanced back to the locked door, and heard Ripley banging at it. He drew a sliding panel shut between them, then heard chitin scraping the floor behind him and a hiss. Burke whirled to see a Xenomorph warrior in the doorway.

  Terror spiked, sharp as a spear in the heart. He screamed, reached back to grab anything with which to arm himself.

  The alien bared its double jaws, displaying rows of teeth dripping with white foam, but to Burke’s shock, the creature did not bite. Instead it grabbed him, slammed him painfully against the heavy metal door.

  Everything went black.

  * * *

  Air rushed past his face, under his arms. I’m flying… I’m Superman.

  He was a child again, flying through his house in his imagination. His parent’s multimillion dollar flat had glowing white walls on a dim nightlight mode, with vast archways overhead—like a heavenly cathedral.

  No, he realized, I’m being carried. He felt strong hands gripping his ribs, holding him.

  An odd thought struck him. Think before you scream.

  Flying through the house was a vivid memory, one of his earliest. His mother had carried him to the bathroom. She’d pulled him from bed, still wet from urine.

  His mother dropped him roughly to the bathtub and turned on the water before he could begin to dress. Burke must have been about four. He peered up to her beautiful face. Even as a young woman, his mother had a sculpted look. His father was a plastic surgeon after all, and like the other surgeons at his country club, he’d made his wife stunning, inhumanely beautiful.

  She changed her appearance from time to time, and on this occasion she appeared almost Latina, with a light coffee skin dye, black hair, and fiery black eye dye.

  Burke’s father pushed his head through the bathroom door and warned, “Be gentle with him, hon.”

  “He stinks,” his mother said. “God, children stink.”

  In this memory, Burke hardly recognized his mother. He remembered her better with bright blue eyes and golden hair, or as a redhead with wider cheeks. Like many women who had had too many surgeries, her face lost its plas
ticity, became curiously unanimated, more as if she’d been carved from marble than flesh.

  Her assertion stung him. Burke was a bed-wetter. No matter how much he bathed, his mother claimed he stank.

  As a smaller boy, he’d longed to hold her, had dreamt of cradling his head between her firm breasts. But he’d never been able to.

  She was a goddess, cool and untouchable.

  Burke trembled, felt pain in his sides, and realized that someone was still carrying him.

  Think before you scream.

  He roused his sluggish eyes open enough to see: he was racing through a dim hall. The alien held him under the armpits, lurching and jostling at incredible speed as it went down a long corridor.

  He struggled to breathe, took a mental inventory. He was in the grip of a Xenomorph, taller than him and stronger than him. He knew where it was taking him.

  It carried him as his mother had, and with embarrassment he felt a familiar warmth between his legs. He hadn’t wet himself since he was a child, and the thought flashed, The alien thinks I stink.

  He had no weapons. He’d been forced to flee Ripley and her marines without one. But his father had taught him, “Your mind can be a powerful weapon.”

  Burke had nothing to lose, so he spoke cautiously. “Wait a minute,” he offered. “Let’s talk about this!”

  His heart pounded and he waited for an interminable instant to see if the Xenomorph would respond. “Can you understand me? Are you open to negotiation?”

  The Xenomorph stopped running, threw him in the air a little, and turned Burke to face him.

  It understands me! He thought hopefully. Or is it like a dog that just responds to tone.

  Without skipping a beat, the creature hissed and pounded him against a plasteel bulkhead, as if he were a baseball bat, and everything went dark.

  * * *

  Burke woke to sirens in a fetid room, tensing instantly. He could not move his arms or legs. Think before you scream. He let himself go limp, played dead. He could taste blood in his mouth, and his right cheek felt swollen.

  He tried to recall a fleeting dream—about a girl he’d seduced in college. What was her name? Ah well, it didn’t really matter. He’d seduced lots of girls. He was good-looking, after all, and rich, and people will fall for any lie you tell them.

  He opened his good eye and peered about in the dim light. Brownish-gray material covered the walls, looking for all the world like the interior of an animal’s ribcage. He’d once killed a neighbor’s dog as a child, and knew those shapes. Other shapes seemed just as organic but impossible to define.

  He recognized this place: the Atmospheric Processing Plant, down in its lowest levels. The alien hive.

  His heart lurched and he tried to move, but his torso, legs, and arms felt stuck in some resinous substance. Everything smelled hot, and the resin had an unidentifiable odor—like human vomit mixed with decay and… sex.

  Around him, he saw the shadowy shapes of other men. They stood encased in resin, frozen, their faces twisted in horror, arms and fingers out-stretched. He didn’t recognize the closest man. He must have been a settler.

  There was a gaping hole in the man’s chest, where an alien’s spawn had burst its way out.

  That’s where the rot is coming from.

  Human carcasses were everywhere, as if plastered one above another.

  Resin covered him, too. Only his face was free. He could breathe the fetid air, but could not move.

  He experimented, tried swiveling his hips. The resin was thick around his legs, like cement boots, but the resin felt more viscous next to his body. The outside material had hardened like glue.

  He tried shaking his head, managed to force the resin back a bit, but could not break free. He experimented with his hands.

  The casing around his right hand was hard as stone, but on the left it must have been fresher. It still felt viscous around his fingers. He fought and twisted, till he managed to break the thin outer crust.

  He imagined that if he worked fast enough, he might free an entire arm, then break open the rest of the crust inch by inch.

  He heard a splat, then spotted movement through a partly obscured archway, saw the head and part of the body of an enormous Xenomorph, one that stood at least fifteen feet tall. It had a vast abdomen attached to it, taller than a house, longer than a bus, and she had just deposited an enormous white egg onto a pile of crap-like goo.

  Her abdomen rippled as muscles in it moved, like a piece of worm’s gut, and then she lurched forward slightly.

  Burke recognized that… body part, dredged a word from a forgotten biology class. It was an ovipositor, like the ones on a carnivorous wasp, or a queen termite.

  A smaller Xenomorph came into view, picked up the egg on its little goo pile, and peered toward him.

  “Wait, no!” Burke shouted, and tried to wriggle his hand.

  The huge alien mother made a soft growl, peered toward him. The smaller Xenomorph set the egg aside, and Burke felt some relief.

  But the Xenomorph drone hurried over to another egg, one that had been laying there, and carried it close to Burke, set it at his feet.

  Burke felt scared witless. No plans would come.

  He tried to wriggle aside, to break his casing. He fought to free his hand, but the Xenomorph hissed and whipped its tail, then thrust its teeth in his face.

  “Calm down,” Burke said. “I get it. You don’t want me to move.” Yet he couldn’t just sit there.

  The Xenomorph backed away. Above its shoulders, dead men peered down, and Burke suddenly remembered a huge Nativity scene that his mother had put up one Christmas. It had Mary and Joseph peering down at a baby Jesus in a cradle, while the Wise Men stared on and angels flew above.

  In this scene, Burke was Joseph, and the baby Jesus was an egg with one of those creatures—a facehugger—inside. The hovering angels were horrid corpses, and once the egg hatched, the vaguely crablike creature would climb to his face, insert a tube down his throat, implant some kind of embryo.

  “Look,” he said to the Xenomorph. The worker peered at him ignorantly, but the queen in the other room turned her head, as if studying his gaze.

  Her face was rigid, chiseled and sculpted, and he saw his mother’s calculating, unfeeling gaze behind those eyes.

  “What do you want?” he called to her. The room was hot, fires were already blazing. This whole place was going to go up in a mushroom cloud. “I work for Weyland-Yutani Corporation. I can get you anything. What do you want? A new world? You want cows to eat? People? I can get them for you!”

  The queen mother peered at him as if trying to decipher what he said, then turned away as she pooped another egg.

  Burke felt sweaty all over, had huge rivulets running down his face. He felt sick to his stomach, and choked on vomit.

  The egg began to quiver and shake, and a crack appeared. His heart hammered wildly and his mouth felt drier than he’d ever imagined, drier than the toxic sands of the Gobi. He struggled to break free, rocking wildly, and the Xenomorph drone hissed a warning.

  “Screw you!” he shouted as the facehugger oozed from its shell, a beige nightmare.

  The Xenomorph drone hissed encouragement to the facehugger, then peered up in satisfaction, like a midwife caught in the throes of admiring the miracle of birth.

  “Screw all of you!” Burke shouted. “That ain’t no baby Jesus, and I ain’t no…”

  Loser.

  He raged and struggled for one more moment. Think before you scream.

  There’s still a way to turn this around, he realized. He’d hoped to smuggle one of these facehuggers off-planet inside Ripley and Newt.

  It will still work! he realized. This creature could be a goldmine. If he carried one inside him, he could get on ship, put himself in stasis, and leave instructions for those who found him.

  All he lacked was time. The whole processing plant was going to blow soon. He’d need to break free after the attack, get out before the cr
eature ate him from inside.

  All too soon, the creature leapt at him, covered his face, with its soft crab-like body, and tried to insert something down his throat.

  Burke struggled to keep his teeth clenched, to twist his face aside, but realized that every second he fought, was another second wasted.

  Swallow it down, he told himself. Just take it.

  He opened his mouth wide and let the facehugger do its work.

  The facehuggers suppress the immune system and ALSO pacify/knock out the host. He MIGHT have thought, but he’d be SCREAMING inside.

  Oh god, what have I done?

  But it was his only chance. He didn’t have a gun, nothing to even the odds. He didn’t have the strength to break free.

  He couldn’t breathe. He fought the creature for a breath, but couldn’t get air. His face and muscles all strained and began to burn, as if he were drowning.

  Just take it, he told himself.

  And as he faded from consciousness, he remembered.

  As a teen he’d walked in on his mother once, the famous realtor, as she “entertained” a client. What the man did to her looked more like rape than lovemaking.

  Burke had kept the incident secret for three days, worried what would happen. Would his father be furious? Had his mother seduced the man or been raped? Would she leave his father?

  Secretly, he hoped that she’d leave. She ran the house with an iron hand.

  And so at a Sunday dinner, he told his father what he’d seen, hoping that… mom would confess, that she’d be freed by it, that maybe things would work out better.

  Heavy silence followed. Burke’s father, a stern man who seemed never to grow old, simply spread his hands above his plate, winked at his wife, and said, “We all do what we must in this family.”

  “What do you mean?” Burke asked, lips trembling.

  “Your mother brings in a lot of money in this family,” his father said. “I’m a famous surgeon, but I only supply 18% of our income. Your mother gets the rest.”

  His mother was in her redhead phase, with wide-set cheekbones and skin bleached to ivory. “Don’t you understand, son? I put on different faces for my clients. I target them. They wouldn’t pay a normal realtor much, but a beautiful woman, one who could sue them into oblivion, who could expose them for what they are, lead them to arrest or divorce—they pay me very well.”