Mask

by C. C. Kelly

  He heard the dull bang of the punch and jumped, staring back along the hallway to the killing room.

  He turned and raced up the ladder, barely squeezing through the opening. Medical was one of the few spaces, besides the living quarters, that was not enclosed in glass. And although he couldn’t see them, he could hear the creatures moving about the Outpost. He crawled over to the corresponding control panel set into the floor and cranked the hatch closed.

  He didn’t have a plan, other than to survive for as long as possible and to see them — the aliens. He grabbed a stocked field bag from a stack and swung it over his shoulder. He then went to the medicine cabinets. He pulled out three syringes and began searching through the small bottles of serum.

  Pain killers and anesthesia had long ago been replaced by neural interfaces, which had been rendered useless by the alien signal jamming. But he did find some other concoctions that, in the right dose, would kill him if the need arose. The experience would be both painful and prolonged, but still a better alternative than to fall into the hands of the aliens alive.

  The solutions glowed green and orange and amber. He filled each syringe and placed them into the field bag. He heard something from the front office doors and ran behind the tall imaging control panel. A small service station was located in the ceiling above Medical and this was his destination. He hoped that, alone, he could remain hidden until the aliens departed. Unfortunately, that was as far as his plan went. He’d work the rest out later.

  The service hatch was a simple panel that had no lock. He pulled over a chair and stepped up and pushed the panel aside. He tossed the field bag inside and then leveraged himself up far enough to swing a leg over the edge. He rolled onto the floor of the service station and then quickly pushed the panel back into place before he collapsed, panting.

  He studied the small enclosure as he lay on his back. He had not been up here since the new imaging machines had been installed. He’d had to calibrate them from here, which meant the testing cables were probably still here, somewhere. He looked around and located them amidst a pile of other small testing equipment and wires tossed willy-nilly into an aluminum crate.

  He rolled and raised himself to a crouch and grabbed the cables, looping them through eyehooks that were welded to the back of the access panel and ran them down through the adjacent floor joists and then back up through the steel framing above and secured them. The panel wouldn’t hold out against an assault, but he thought that it would appear locked and hopefully they would not feel inclined to further inspect his small sanctuary.

  He dropped to a knee and sat. He could still hear them over in the Rec-room and moving down the main corridor. He hoped they would find the Outpost empty and move on soon. But then he heard the cries of pain — human cries.

  The voices wailed incomprehensibly. He tried to block them out and began to go through the field bag for some water, but the screams were becoming unbearable. Other colonists, from another Outpost, were less than fifteen meters away and being tortured beyond endurance.

  He dropped the bag and pulled the air ventilation grill away from the transfer plenum duct and peered in. He could see light from the other end, which opened up just below the glass dome, or rather where the glass dome used to be.

  He lowered himself to his stomach and then pulled himself through the narrow duct towards the Rec-room. As he neared the opening he could see that the blue sun of Paradigm Alpha had risen above the tree line and bathed the ruins of the Rec-room dome in a brilliant morning glow, the broken glass sparkled.

  He could not see the floor yet, or the occupants. He almost turned back, but couldn’t help himself; he had to know — to see. He pulled himself along noiselessly on his elbows. He could just make out dark shapes moving around the room, strange helmets — or heads? He pressed himself flat and listened. He lay for a long time, watching the shadows inside the duct recede.

  He heard a noise behind him, but couldn’t turn to get a good look, so he stilled his breathing and listened. He heard nothing for a long time, but he could feel a gentle vibration running along the floor of the ventilation duct, a vibration that grew steadily stronger.

  He was about to take his chances with the unknown vibration and scurry back to his hide-out when he felt something against his leg. He jerked in shock, flinching as he turned to look and saw a young face.

  A child.

  He began to push back with his elbows as the young girl crawled closer. He knew this girl, it was Polly. But she had been taken by her mother early last night. She should be far away by now. The enviro-suits would hold out for several days. She wasn’t wearing her enviro-suit now.

  She pulled herself along with one hand, sliding across his legs — reaching out, gripping his suit and then dragging herself closer, like climbing a ladder with one hand, one rung at a time. She weighed nothing as she slithered over his body.

  As the morning light caught her face he could see that she was bleeding, or had been, but the toxic atmosphere no longer had any ill affect on her. Still the hand pulled, closer and closer, black eyes stalking him. Even through his suit, he could feel those bloody fingers painfully digging into his arms.

  Besides the toxins, Larson realized the other reason why her missing suit wasn’t a problem, she wasn’t breathing. The duct began to push in on him, suffocating as Polly crawled and crawled. Something was off, somehow not as it should be. His enviro-suit became hot, constricting and binding. The duct grew smaller and smaller as Polly filled the space above his visor.

  At last she came into the glow of the morning sun. Her pale eyes nested in blackened orbs, boring into him as her mouth moved with whispering plaintive moans, blood dripping with every syllable, splattering onto his visor.

  Larson tried to push away from her, but she held on tenaciously. She fell upon his visor and he realized that she wasn’t whole. Only one arm and her head remained, and yet she screamed, her eyes filled with pain and terror.

  He pushed himself away, shrieking incoherently.

  He fell from the duct, landing on a melted table and collapsed to the Rec-room floor. The creatures stared at him. One stood nearby holding flexible tubes that sprouted maliciously pronged attachments.

  Larson tried to scramble away, but they had been waiting on him, Polly an unwitting accomplice. They grabbed him and jammed the prongs through the enviro-suit and into his throat. The pain was unbearable. He tried to push them away, but was shoved to the floor by a powerful boot. The creature stood on him, pressing his head to the floor as vile concoctions pumped into his body.

  As he lay there he noticed the others. Glenda, the Commander and other faces he recognized from other Outposts. They were dead, but yet their mouths moved, strands of saliva and coagulating blood stretching across their screams. Parts slithered around the floor, hands and feet, flopping like fish on a dock. Bodiless heads and headless faces stared with comprehension and terror. And they all screamed and screamed and screamed.

  He realized that he had made a terrible mistake in not joining Lane, because the screaming wasn’t just coming from the animated corpses that crawled and flopped around on the Rec-room floor. He began to drown in the fluids they were pumping into him and when the fluorescent purple goo splattered onto the inside of his visor, he knew that it was his own screams he would be hearing for eternity.

  He closed his eyes against the hellish vision and screamed, “Oh God, please, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know,” until the screams became gurgles. But, even then, the screams continued, rising in pitch and incoherence as they echoed throughout his undead mind.

  Author’s Notes

  Cover art and design by C.C. Kelly

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Gatekeepers Copyright © 2013 C.C. Kelly

  5 Minutes or Less Copyright © 2013 C.C. Kelly

  Suicide in the Third Copyright © 2012 C.C. Kelly

  Sometimes in the Light Copyright © 2012 C.C. Kelly

  Gamma Series Copyright © 2013 C.C. Kelly

  The Last Outpost Copyright © 2013 C.C. Kelly