The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 6

by Diane Carey

  The cat was there to catch and slash. Suddenly there was a spin of claws and talons, and an ear-splitting rass of snarls.

  Now, Ned had heard cats fighting before and terrible enough it was, but this—this noise tore open the hell of all noises. The cat snatched out with both its forepaws fanned, big as car tires, and caught the alien’s head and dug in as if clapping a set of concert cymbals. The alien shrieked and rattled, lashing its tail through the pile of spark tarps and taking Ned with them. He felt himself rise and turn in midair, cocooned by the tarps, his arms and legs flying. For an instant he was upside down, sailing over the cat’s broad back and the knotted engine of its hindquarters. Its tail whipped up and brushed him on the cheek, almost like a kiss.

  But the other tail, the bladed snake-tail of the dragon, was not so kind. The blade tore through the spark tarps, actually slicing them in midair, then grazed Ned’s left arm and opened a wound from his shoulder to his elbow. He felt the sting and the burn, and got the taste of blood in his mouth. He came down on his back—on the deck right between the two animals.

  Somehow the sabertooth had thrown the dragon off and they were again posturing at each other. The cat was bloodied across its neck and shoulders, but the alien was now missing an arm. Acid spurted from its shoulder joint, sizzling on the wall. Ned shrank away from it to avoid being burned, but there was nowhere to go. The sabertooth’s huge left forepaw blocked his way. He was under the cat’s chin. The jaws were fully extended in threat and he knew it could stab him with those fangs any time it wanted to. It was an expert at stabbing. For pound-for-pound aggression, the cat matched the dragon as evolution’s finest.

  The two creatures tore into each other, and there was nothing like the sound of it. Even a housecat could make a horrific noise when riled, and this cat was a mighty air horn of snarls and spits. The alien squealed its own nerve-ripping noise, and they tumbled across the corridor to the other side. Ned clamped his hands over his ears—

  Then he saw a narrow slit between the tangle and the wall! He scurried past them, stumbling twice, and slipped into the next chamber, and kept running. Through a hatch, and another he jumped, until finally he came upon a dead end—the ship’s lazarette. The repository of tools and miscellaneous storage was crowded to the ceiling with racks of almost anything he could’ve imagined that a ship might need. He’d only been here once, on a mission to retrieve a spot-welder. He moved forward toward the lazarette hatch, ducked down, and peered inside.

  And here he stopped, and there they were. Before him, one of the dragons hovered, hanging from the ceiling as if that were a natural pose for it. This one had glossy bronze skin, almost green, and somehow more hideous than if it were simply black. Beneath it, Pearl sat on a box with her legs swinging happily, singing a song with her raspy weird voice.

  “Playmate, come out and play with me… and bring your dollies three… climb up my apple tree… Swim in my rain barrel, slide down my cellar door… and we’ll be jolly friends… forever more…”

  Though her voice was a scratch and her legs swung in a different cadence, her pitch was perfect with every note— not something Ned would’ve expected. She even got the high notes.

  “Playmate… come out and play with me…”

  The freakish sight almost drove Ned shrinking. The viral savagery of the alien on the ceiling was enough to strike him to the heart and blunt his nerve.

  But then, he saw Adam.

  And sad it was. The other boy was a mere wisp of the confident young man who would stand up to anything and anyone. He sat on the cold deck, his white shirt now a matted gray, his wavy hair smeared with humectant, his face bruised and his lip bloody. He looked beaten, and was shaking visibly.

  Ned could’ve backed up, but never again could forgive himself for it.

  He moved forward, on hands and knees.

  “Come out and play with me… and bring your dollies three… tee hee hee hee hee heeee…”

  The creature hanging from the ceiling curved its head toward Ned. It saw him. Its segmented tail, moving like a hanging snake, made a figure eight and drifted toward him.

  “Swim in my rain barrel… slide down my cellar door… oh, hi!”

  His head throbbing, Ned cautiously looked up at her. She was beaming down at him with her snaggly smile. With the alien behind her, hovering over her like some kind of guardian ghoul, she was a true abomination of nature. Somehow the smile made things even more freakish.

  “Hi!” she said again when Ned didn’t respond.

  He found his voice somehow. “Hi, Pearl… hi to your friend there as well…”

  “We’re singing songs. There are twenty-nine million fourteen thousand and four songs to sing.”

  “That’ll take a while.”

  “This one’s my favorite… Playmate, come out and play with me… and bring your dollies three—”

  “Okay if I play with Adam for a minute, eh?”

  “He’s our audience. He likes our music.”

  “Sure he does.” Ned gathered his guts and crawled forward under the alien’s twitching lips and grinding teeth. “Adam, are you—”

  The giant wasp made a sharp hiss, hunching its spine, raising those arms from which hung those hands, those talons. The teeth parted, draining liquid resin. The second jaws came out and made a snap.

  Ned lowered himself to a conciliatory crouch. He could only hope that the creature, like all upper animals, understood the posture.

  On his hands and knees now, he moved to Adam, pivoted, and crouched, then took Adam by the forearm in a bridge of simple human contact.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m… just… petrified.”

  “Makes good sense. What’s happening?”

  “She’s been singing to me. Like… courting me.”

  Pearl smiled her bizarre toothy smile and nodded. “I want him to like me.”

  “He likes you,” Ned told her.

  Adam closed his eyes briefly, knowing that Pearl’s crush was the only reason he was still alive and not cocooned or slashed to pieces. “Your arm… you’re bleeding…”

  Ned glanced at the wound he’d forgotten about. Blood painted his entire left arm. “Not deep. Don’t worry.”

  Pearl played with her fingers and continued performing. “Playmate, I cannot play with you… my dollie has the flu… boo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo… Ain’t got no rain barrel… ain’t got no cellar door… but we’ll be jolly friends… forever more.”

  “How’s this happening?” Ned asked again. He kept his head down, making certain not to make visual contact with the creature.

  Shuddering violently, almost shaking himself to pieces, Adam struggled to answer. As he gripped the other boy’s arm, Ned felt the waves and waves of terror run through Adam’s body. His voice was almost reduced to nothing. “She turns off their ‘kill’ mode or something… that’s how evolution happens… out of billions of humans, one mutant turns up different…”

  Pearl nodded. “I belong with them. I was supposed to be one of them.”

  “Nature,” Adam murmured, “correcting its error…”

  Ned patted Adam’s arm. “Stand by. Eyes down.”

  Waiting to die, Adam was all too glad to keep his eyes down.

  Taking his courage in both hands and rotating to his knees, Ned rose to one knee in front of the girl.

  “Pearl… listen to me, girl. See this hand? Take my hand.”

  She looked at his fingers for a moment, extended between them.

  Above, the shifting alien peeled back its lips at Ned for reaching out to Pearl.

  It took every thread of courage he possessed to keep his hand out, fully expecting to have it bitten off.

  “Take my hand,” he insisted.

  “But they treat me like a queen,” she said.

  “I know you like them… they’re pretending to like you. If you stay with them, what kind of life will you have?”

  “I’ll be a queen.”

  Ned shifted
a little closer, locking onto her intense gaze. She was strange and drifty, but her eyes were focused and she drank in everything she saw and heard. He prayed she heard him now.

  “You’re not a queen,” he said bluntly. “Adam’s not a prince. And I, for pity’s sake, am no knight. Think, now… think!”

  She looked up at her befouled friend, or pet, or guard. “But we’re different. Alone and different.”

  “He’s not like you, girl. Nature created him to live and kill. He has no choice in the matter and wouldn’t take it if he did. You… you’re something special in this universe of animals and instinct. You’re a human being, and a diamond among us. You’re born to use your mind and heart. Now… think!”

  She stared down at him now. A true stare—looking deeper and deeper into his eyes, not an empty stare, but one of layered seeking. As if he were a book and she were reading him, sifting the flakes of revelation.

  His hand was still out between them. “You belong with us.”

  The scaffold of alien bones hung over them, tipping its long head and breathing through interlaced fangs. Mucus slathered freely, draining like some bizarre mountain stream over jags of rock, as it had done for eons. Its lips peeled back and it sizzled at him. It knew.

  Ned’s skin tightened all over his body. He kept his eyes on Pearl’s, searching for that human connection.

  Pearl looked down at him and raised her brows.

  “I’m not stupid, you know,” she said.

  And she took his hand.

  Despite everything, Ned found himself smiling at her.

  With new respect, he drew her down from the box she’d been sitting on.

  Above, the alien chafed but did not strike. Frustrated, it gnawed and rasped, not sure what to do.

  Ned pushed Pearl—gently so the alien would see that he wasn’t hurting her—through the hatch, hoping she didn’t catch her pigeoned toes. Then he turned back and got a grip on Adam’s arm, pulled him to his feet, and moved him forward.

  “They’ll follow us,” Adam uttered.

  “Pray they do.”

  “What?”

  As they moved into the corridor, he glanced back to see the alien climbing down from the ceiling.

  He herded the two others in front of him, keeping himself between them and the creature behind.

  There was no sign now of the sabertoothed cat and the other dragon it had been fighting, but there was plenty of sign of the fight itself. Blood and hair and black torn skin, bits of bone and sizzling streaks of acid all over the deck and bulkheads—it had been a monumental duel for sure. He wondered which one had run and which had chased. He couldn’t decide.

  “Dan, you copy?” he spoke quietly.

  “I think I’ve got it, but I’m not sure, not sure enough to bet your life!”

  “That’s all right, I’ll bet my own, thank you. Turn it all on. Everything, just like we said, but only in the starboard bay. Understand? The starboard bay! Do it now!”

  “What’s happening?”

  “You wouldn’t believe it. Start the noise, Dan. In the starboard bay—start that noise they make.”

  “Will do. Starting now. You think they’ll come?”

  “Either they come for the sound or they come for Pearl. I’ve got all the bait I can think of.”

  Pearl and Adam shuffled before him toward the starboard bay scaffolds. When they reached the walkway, Pearl shrank back. “I don’t like these. I can see down through them…”

  “Adam, help her! Go in front. Pearl, follow Adam. Go along, now.”

  Adam stepped out onto the scaffolding, then immediately put his hands to his head. “Aw—what’s that? My skull!”

  Ned reached out for him, then suddenly felt the pressure too. Pressure! Gravity!

  He tore off his headset, wracked with pain, and shouted, “Keep moving, Adam!”

  “My legs—”

  “Force! Push! Go!”

  Pearl looked at Adam. “What’s wrong with him? Oh—I feel funny… My feet are heavy…”

  “Keep on!” Ned insisted, pushing her.

  They were two levels up, two containers tall, and they had to make it to the ladder that would take them one more level down. But his arms and legs suddenly felt like pure lead and moving them was exhausting.

  “They’re coming!” Adam gasped and pointed. “Ned, they’re coming!”

  From behind, the glossy bronze dragon appeared where they had just been, watching them, moving toward them. On the lowest level, among a few remaining sheep and two mule deer, another of the creatures emerged from a hiding place and began to climb one of the containers as if it meant to get to them. The noise! That summoning sound Dan was broadcasting—it was calling them from all over the ship!

  How many were left? Ned tried to think, to add up the numbers correctly, but he’d lost track and now his skull felt as if it were in a vise. He choked and tried to keep his eyes from popping out of his head.

  Before him, Adam fell to his knees. Pearl wasn’t so affected—something about her funny little flat body—but Adam was being crushed by pain and pressure.

  Ned came up behind him, threw an arm around him, hauled him to his feet, and pushed Pearl on in front of them. The ladder!

  “Down!” Ned ordered, hoping the sound of his voice would drive them.

  Below, two more aliens appeared, but no more than that. Was that all of them? It was a good bet.

  Pearl tiptoed down the ladder, and Ned pushed Adam down next, then tried to find his hands and feet in the increasing gravitational pull that drew them downward. It wasn’t just increased pressure—it was actual directional gravity. They would be crushed!

  Ned’s feet now moved like rocks. He could no longer feel them, and he slipped on the last rung and fell hard onto the scaffold walkway, one level up from the deck.

  “We’ll never make it!” Adam tried to lift him, but Ned now weighed twice his normal weight. “We can’t get all the way out!”

  “Go!” Ruthlessly Ned shoved him along the walkway, by force of will pulling himself to his feet. He managed to drag himself along the rail, keeping his target in sight.

  Though Pearl and Adam were trying to reach the next ladder down to the main deck, Ned had other ideas. When they reached the place he wanted them to reach, he drove himself forward until he was between them, took hold of Pearl with one arm and Adam with the other, and shouted, “Deep breath!”

  And he made a furious push.

  Adam let out a strangled yell, and all three of them hit the water. The lagoon tank sloshed at their increased weight, but the second they were under water Ned felt the weight of his body relieved. Now hold your breath!

  Salt water burned his injured arm as they sank in the beautiful aquarium, relieved of their intensified weight, drawn downward by the artificially increased gravity. Against the clear wall of the tank, the four remaining alien dragons clawed and scratched to get at Pearl, to get at the boys, for whatever purposes their evolution dictated. They scratched and drooled and reached for the top, but were dragged down as they suddenly weighed a hundred times normal. Even through the water, Ned could hear their screams.

  Then the gravity hit the perfect level, a sudden boost, just as Ned’s lungs began to hurt. Outside the tank, unprotected, unable to take the Gs, one alien suddenly popped.

  Just like a soda can being crushed under a foot!

  And a second! Acid made a splat, but before it could eat through the container wall it was dragged down into a puddle on the deck, where it tried to chew through the metal but was not its normal self, and thus was crushed too thin to eat all the way through.

  Pop—a third!

  All that remained was the bronze guardian ghoul. Pearl, holding her breath, swam with unexpected grace to the aquarium wall, followed by a hundred fish in a cloud of blue and yellow colors. Like a mermaid in a story, she put her hands up to the transparent wall, against the claws of her savage alter ego.

  But just as her fingers touched the wall, the ali
en’s skull folded in upon itself and its ribs pushed through to its spine. It dropped to the deck, and was instantly flattened into a mash.

  Ned reached for Pearl—he had to get to the surface! His eyes began to go dark. He swept his arms frantically, trying to rise, and lost his grip on her.

  And lost sight of her. His orientation was gone—a dark tunnel closed in on his vision. His lungs screamed.

  All at once the pressure turned off like a switch and he shot to the surface, gagging and choking, splashing as if to continue climbing straight into the air. Somebody had a grip on him.

  “Breathe!” Adam called.

  Ned choked on the salt water and sputtered, “Where’s— where—”

  “She’s right here!” Adam said. “You all right?”

  Ned coughed and tried to nod.

  “How did you know that would work?” With a slap on the water’s surface, Adam seized Ned in a heartfelt embrace. “That was brilliant! Brilliant!”

  Grateful for the support, Ned blinked his salt-stung eyes. “We all have… our… offerings…”

  “Here.” Adam dragged him to the edge of the tank, where Ned could get a grip and stop struggling. “Are you all right?”

  “Half-drowned, thanks…”

  He was glad for Adam’s grip on his good arm, for his left arm was too weak to do much. Still sputtering, he peered down around the bay at the crushed corpses of the last few aliens and the sorry mess of dead sheep and deer that had unfortunately paid the price, too.

  But the three of them were alive, and the gravity was quickly returning to normal. Ned felt the pressure ease off his skull and hands.

  “Brilliant!” Adam gushed. “Pure genius!” He twisted his hand into Ned’s green shirt and shook him joyously.

  Beside Adam, Pearl hooked her little hands on the edge of the tank and kicked her feet, enjoying the sensation of the water, in which she was graceful and feminine.

  “Like swimming in a rain barrel,” she said.

  And she smiled at them, and together they all laughed.

  24

  “Now this, this, is the life!”