River of Pain

by Christopher Golden

  “Damn it,” she snapped, marching away. She turned to Andrews. “You coming?”

  He nodded. “Go. I’ll grab some food and water, and catch up.”

  When people started milling about, some tearing open crates of supplies, Lydecker held up his hands.

  “Calm down, folks,” he said. “I’m staying right here, but I’m not going to stop anyone who wants to leave.”

  As if you could, Anne thought.

  “We’re only opening this door once, though. After that—”

  “Out of the way, Lydecker,” Anne barked. “Tim, help Private Yousseff.”

  Yousseff and Tim started pulling the crates away from the door again, aided by a couple of other colonists. By the time the door was hauled open—the two marines darting out, weapons leveled along abandoned halls—there were perhaps twenty people with armloads of goods, ready to make a run for it.

  They’d barely gotten into the corridor and had the door slammed behind them when gunshots echoed from down the hall.

  “Go, go!” Lt. Paris shouted as she and Yousseff raised their rifles and sighted along the corridor, toward the sound of gunfire.

  Another marine came around the corner, limping badly and firing the last few shots from his plasma rifle before he ran out of ammo. Anne recognized Pvt. Dunphy, and cringed at the sight of the blood on the man’s left hand, realizing that his sleeve was soaked with it. He’d been one of the marines on the perimeter, so they weren’t all dead, but Dunphy didn’t look far from the grave.

  “Izzo’s down!” Dunphy shouted. “I’ve got three coming this way!”

  Julisa Paris turned and grabbed Anne’s arm, staring into her eyes.

  “Listen to me. Yousseff and I came from down there. That’s where we killed one already. If they’re coming from there, your path may be clear to the ops center. Go through the unwelded door, and we’ll lock it behind us when we catch up.

  “Go fast, and we’ll take care of this,” she added.

  Anne nodded. “We’ll give you five minutes before we seal the door to the ops center.”

  Paris touched Newt’s blond locks and then gave them a small shove.

  “Go! Tim, take care of your mom!”

  Tim gripped Anne’s hand tighter, and then they were running down the corridor, praying that the stairs up to the next level would be clear. Two minutes or less to get to the ops center, that was all they needed.

  Anne glanced back, just once, at the doors to the storage area, wondering how long they could hold out. Even if they welded those internal doors, there were too many aliens. She felt sure that somehow they would get in, but it was too late for the others to follow them now. She and her kids, Bill Andrews, Parvati, Gruenwald and the others who’d followed her… they would live or die together.

  She hugged Newt closer. Gripped Tim’s hand tightly.

  Live, she thought, almost a prayer. We’ll live.

  * * *

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1359

  The thing moving in the darkness had a human shape.

  Brackett stared at it, sighting along his rifle.

  “Who goes there?”

  “Captain?” the figure ventured as he emerged from the shadows.

  “Pettigrew? Shit, I thought you were dead.”

  The corporal had his rifle at his side as he rushed toward the elevators, moving urgently now that he knew Brackett wouldn’t shoot him.

  “One of them came for me two minutes after you’d all gone,” Pettigrew said, anxiously searching the shadows, alert and intense as the second elevator hummed and rattled on its way down. “I’d hit the hold button on the elevator and figured I didn’t need to stand there waiting to die. It’s not like the alien knew which buttons to push. I took off with the thing on my tail, managed to get into a maintenance closet just before it caught up.”

  “How’d you get away?” Brackett asked, glancing up through the cage at the descending elevator.

  “Didn’t have to,” Pettigrew said.

  Something shifted and scraped in the shadows above the nearest machinery. Pettigrew and Brackett both whipped around, taking aim. The lights flickered and Brackett saw the sleek gleam of something black, flowing like water in the darkness.

  “The gunfire started—you guys were under attack—and it took off, more interested in the fight at hand,” Pettigrew said. “I guess it figured it could come back for me later.”

  The elevator clanged as it descended, sliding into the cage right behind them and rattling to a stop.

  “I think it has,” Brackett muttered.

  As the elevator doors opened, the alien leaped down from atop the groaning generator across the floor from them.

  “Go, go!” Brackett said, firing at the alien as he backed into the elevator.

  Pettigrew opened fire as well, but his rifle jammed and he swore, turning to slap the button for level one. The alien sprinted toward them, arms outstretched, tail wavering behind it, ready to strike. Brackett pulled the trigger again and stitched bullets across its chest.

  The creature faltered and fell, blood melting into the floor only feet from the acid-ravaged body of Dr. Hidalgo. As the lift began to ascend, it hissed, whipped around to glare at them with that eyeless carapace of a head, and then lunged to its feet.

  It struck the cage beneath them just as the elevator rose out of range. Before they were lifted out of view, Brackett saw others gliding from the darkness behind it.

  “How do we live through this, Cap?” Pettigrew asked, slumping against the inside of the elevator.

  Heart pounding, Brackett turned toward him.

  “We get off this fucking rock.”

  Pettigrew narrowed his eyes in disbelief.

  “How?”

  “There’s a way,” Brackett replied, silently thanking Theresa Hidalgo. “We just have to get there before your buddy Draper.”

  * * *

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1359

  Dr. Reese carried the silver case and Dr. Mori carried the gun.

  They moved quickly and as quietly as possible, hoping not to be overheard by anyone, alien or human. Between the med lab and the research lab stood a single narrow door to which only the three primary members of the science team had access. On its metal surface were the faded words authorized personnel only.

  Dr. Mori wore his key on a chain around his neck and used it to unlock the door as both men glanced anxiously around the hallway.

  “I haven’t been down here since the day we arrived,” Mori whispered. “I never thought we would need to open this door.”

  Reese stared at him grimly, pleased with the weight of the case in his right hand.

  “It was always a possibility.”

  Mori pushed the door inward and then stood back, covering the corridor with the pistol—the gun feeling so insignificant to him—as Dr. Reese entered. The key had activated the lights inside, and they flickered to life.

  He frowned, glancing toward the research lab. Had he heard a sound there? The shuffle of footsteps? He listened for several seconds, and then convinced himself he’d imagined it. Stepping into the narrow passage, he pulled the door closed and flinched as it clanged shut.

  “Idiot!” Reese groaned, the word rustling along the featureless gray walls of the claustrophobically narrow space. But there was nothing to be done about it now.

  “Just move,” Mori muttered. Technically, Dr. Reese was his superior, but just then Dr. Mori did not care. In the quest to survive, to escape Acheron with their lives and their research, the two men were equals. The silver case held all of their data, as well as a single dead facehugger, and samples of an egg from the derelict and of the resin that came from the Xenomorphs’ mouths. If they’d had more time they would have tried to take a living facehugger, but as much as they wanted to bring their research back to the company and reap the rewards, they could not do that if they hesitated too long, and ended up dead.

  “Faster,” Reese hissed qu
ietly.

  Mori gritted his teeth. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  They shuffled along the narrow corridor, shoulders brushing the walls, until they came to a slight turn where the hall widened enough to give them some breathing room. A dozen steps brought them through a low doorway where they had to stoop to pass through. Then the hall began to curve off to the right, leading to a second set of steps that descended at a right angle. The colony’s first architects had designed this passage to be locked off and forgotten.

  “Please, my friend,” Dr. Mori said as he reached the bottom of the steps. “Give me a moment.” Dr. Reese turned to glare at him, but then his expression softened.

  “Only a moment.”

  Mori nodded. He’d been carrying the pistol, but there no longer seemed to be a need, so he clicked on the safety and slipped it into his rear waistband. When he glanced at the silver case in Reese’s hand, he smiled even as he struggled to catch his breath.

  He waited, nervously fiddling with a key hanging by a chain around his neck. The key they would need to get through the last door.

  “Thank you,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I’m all right.”

  Dr. Reese clapped him on the arm.

  “Good. I don’t want to go alone. It’s a long journey.”

  As they started off again, leaving the stairs behind, there came a scuffing sound from back along the way they had come. The scientists froze and glanced at each other in frightened silence.

  No, Dr. Mori thought. Not when we’ve come so close.

  He drew his pitiful little gun as they stared back toward the steps and waited.

  27

  READY TO FIGHT

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1400

  Jammed into the surveyors’ ops center, the colonists who’d followed Anne moved quickly. At the back of the center there was a shop for repairing the equipment, and Bill Andrews located a hand-welder within minutes of their arrival.

  Anne sat on a bench with her children and watched as Bill fired up the welder, the blue-white flame hissing as it scorched the air. She wetted her lips with her tongue, recognizing just how hard her heart had been pounding. They had made it here without anyone else dying, and now the sight of the welder and the box-like nature of the room made her feel immediately safer.

  But others had felt safe before, and it hadn’t helped them.

  Across the room, Stefan Gruenwald and Neela Parvati were checking over the case of guns they’d carried from the storage area, handing them out.

  “Tim,” Anne said, “you and Newt stay here a minute.”

  Newt grabbed her hand, looking anxiously at the door as Bill tested the welder on the hinges on the left side of the double entry doors. Then she peered at her mother.

  “It’ll be all right,” Anne promised her. “Protect Casey.”

  Newt glanced again at the welder in use, and then nodded and hugged the doll closer, kissing the top of its head.

  Anne hurried across the room, weaving through the frightened people who were trying to settle themselves in some way that they might be comfortable, locked inside that room for however long they would be there. What supplies they’d brought were stacked on desks, and chairs were allotted to the oldest among them. Others made camp on the floor.

  Anne glanced at the vents above the wall monitors, and though she felt sure the ducts were too narrow for the full-grown aliens, she wondered how many new ones might be bred. The one thing the colonists could not afford to do was cut off their own air supply.

  When she marched up to the group with the guns, Parvati glanced at her.

  “I want a gun,” she said quietly.

  Parvati arched an eyebrow.

  Gruenwald cocked his head and looked at her worriedly.

  “Don’t you think we’re all better off leaving the weapons with those who know how to use them?” he asked.

  “The creatures got my husband,” Anne said, then pointed across the room at her kids—at Tim, on the verge of tears, and Newt, clutching her Casey doll. “If things go bad, I need something to make sure they don’t end up the same way.”

  Parvati opened her mouth in shock, perhaps thinking that Anne meant to kill her own children, rather than let the aliens have them. Anne wondered if that might really have been what she’d meant.

  The question haunted her.

  Gruenwald handed her the gun. She turned without another word and walked back to the bench.

  The pounding on the doors began before she’d even sat down.

  “Mom?” Newt asked.

  Tim stood and came up beside her, ready to fight. A moment later, Newt did the same, and the sight of that six-year-old girl preparing to defend herself and her family broke whatever remained of Anne Jorden’s heart. She tightened her grip on the pistol and watched as Bill stepped back, welder in hand.

  Gruenwald rushed toward the door, Parvati just behind him, along with half a dozen others who were armed.

  “Lieutenant Paris?” Bill called. “That you?”

  “It’s Draper!” boomed a voice. “Let us in, dammit. They’re on our tail.”

  Gunfire erupted in the hallway.

  “Open the damn door!” Draper shouted, and the banging resumed. “Where are Mori and Reese? They in there with you?”

  “We’ve got to let them in!” Bill Andrews said, glancing around for support.

  “No!” Gruenwald snapped. “We can’t compromise our own security. They’ll have to make it on their own.”

  Another burst of gunfire, and then Parvati surprised Anne by pushing past Gruenwald and going for the door.

  “You aren’t giving the orders here,” she snapped at him. “We’re not leaving anyone to those creatures!”

  Two others rushed to help her.

  “You morons!” Gruenwald barked, rushing to stop them. “Think about the children we’ve got in here!”

  But Bill Andrews got in his way, pushing him back.

  “We’re thinking about the men and women out there.”

  Parvati and the others dragged the right-hand door open, its hinges not yet welded. Only then did Anne realize that the shooting in the corridor had ceased.

  “We’ve got it open!” Parvati called.

  “Oh no,” Anne whispered, tears springing to her eyes as she pulled her children close with her left hand, and aimed the gun with her right. When she saw Sgt. Draper coming through the door—slumped, pale and bloody, but alive—she exhaled, all of her strength draining out of her.

  Draper had bought them time.

  But then the sergeant staggered and fell, and everyone could see the hole in his back…

  …and the aliens barged in behind him, trampling the corpse and killing Neela Parvati before they were even through the door.

  Newt and Tim screamed, and then Anne joined them.

  They had nowhere left to run.

  Nothing left to do but scream, and die.

  * * *

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1400

  Lt. Paris and Pvt. Yousseff had killed two more aliens before they heard the worst of the screams, coming from the storage area.

  Yousseff broke into a sprint back toward the main doors. Anne Jorden, Bill Andrews, and a couple of dozen other people had left shortly before the aliens had attacked, and Paris couldn’t help but wish she had gone with them—that they both had. Now she ran after Yousseff, caught up to her at a turn in the corridor, and slammed her against the wall.

  “Don’t be stupid!” she shouted into the other woman’s face, hating herself as she did it.

  “But we’ve got to—” The private began to cry.

  “What, die? ’Cause that’s what we’re going to do if we go that way!”

  Then Yousseff laughed through her tears.

  “Lieutenant, come on! We’re dead anyway!”

  Something moved behind them and they both spun around, fingers on the triggers. They nearly shot Brackett and Pettigrew.

 
; “Shit!” Paris cried, heart crashing about in her chest.

  “Anne Jorden and her kids?” Brackett yelled, rushing toward them. “They’re in there with those things?”

  Paris shook her head.

  “No. A bunch of the colonists split off, went to the surveyors’ ops center.”

  Brackett hung his head, breathing deeply.

  “Thank God.”

  “We ran into Draper and a few others—they headed over there to defend that position,” Yousseff reported.

  “Of course they did,” Brackett snarled. “Son of a bitch.”

  “What’s going on, Cap?” Lt. Paris added.

  Brackett studied her.

  “Yousseff said we were all dead. Maybe not.”

  “Maybe not what?” Yousseff asked, moving away from the corner now, away from the screaming and toward Brackett and Pettigrew.

  “Maybe there’s a way for us to get out of here,” Pettigrew explained.

  “You better not be messing with us,” Lt. Paris said.

  “I’m not,” Brackett said, and his expression turned dark. He raised his plasma rifle, stepped away from the others, and opened fire as an alien came around the corner almost precisely where Yousseff had been standing moments before.

  “Take us there, now!” Brackett yelled. “Take us to the ops center!” And then the four marines were all running and firing, and Lt. Paris was leading the way.

  * * *

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1405

  Dr. Reese took two steps back, putting Dr. Mori between himself and whatever shuffled through the corridor at the top of the stairs.

  Behind him, the hallway narrowed again. If he remembered correctly, another fifty yards would bring him to a hatch through which there was a short set of steps, and then another hatch. Beyond that was the small hidden hangar where the six-passenger evac ship waited.

  He took another step. Dr. Mori had the gun—Reese could do nothing to help defend them.

  Run, he told himself, tightening his grip on the silver case. He had dedicated his life to scientific discovery—to the detriment of family, health, and any hope of real companionship. He had eschewed courtesy and personal grace for the quest for knowledge and advancement… for creation, regardless of consequence.