The Complete Aliens Omnibus

by B. K. Evenson

  “Are you sure?” asked Kramm.

  “Yes,” he said. “Even here. There’s a camera up near the light sconce.”

  They all looked at once. The camera was disguised a little, a kind of small white box that looked like it might be serving as a power relay for the light itself, but now that they were looking for it they could see the lens. Kelly stood on the table for a closer look, and then, so as to reach it, put a chair on the table and stood on that.

  “Shall I disconnect it?” she asked.

  “By all means,” said Bjorn.

  She reached out, tearing out the wires in the back. By working it back and forth, she broke it out of its bracket and brought it down for the others to examine.

  Duncan and Kelly took it apart to see if there was anything useful inside. As they did, Kramm couldn’t stop himself from saying to Gavin, “I don’t know how you managed to see all of that out the window.”

  “I have very good eyes,” said Gavin. “And I waited in the dark and let them adjust.”

  Kramm started to say more.

  “The glow of the moons must have been just right,” Gavin said quickly.

  Kramm nodded. He’s hiding something, he couldn’t help but think.

  “One more thing to report,” said Gavin, louder this time, to the whole group. “There’s a man dead in the bathroom upstairs.”

  * * *

  The man was lying in the tub, nude, hands crossed over his chest, both his wrists slit. A knife lay near the drain, covered with blood and with the circular corrosions of rust. The blood had flowed down his chest, slipping to either side to pool between the side of his pelvis and the tub wall, though all that was left of it now was a black, brittle shell. Another path of blood had spilled over his belly and down the drain.

  “How long has he been dead?” asked Frances. “Anybody know?”

  The body was emaciated, had a desiccated look about it. The lips had tightened and pulled back from the teeth so that it looked like it was smiling.

  “Long enough for his corpse not to smell,” said Duncan.

  “Who is he?” Frances asked. “Is there a pile of clothes around here anywhere?”

  “Just a minute,” said Kramm, and knelt down beside the body. He reached out and pressed on the stomach, which caused a blast of foetid air to sigh out of the mouth. He felt it there, in the man’s belly, a hard round lump.

  He flicked out his knife and in one motion slit the stranger’s belly open. When he pushed on it again, the head of an immature dead chestburster leered out through the opening. With the tip of his knife, he coaxed it out of the stomach, flicked it into the tub.

  “Here’s why he killed himself,” said Kramm.

  * * *

  They searched the common building from top to bottom, everyone a little tense now. There were four more cameras which they disabled and removed one by one. There was no clothing, nothing that might have belonged to the man except, beneath the mattress of one of the bunks, a single piece of paper, yellowed, words inscribed on one side of it in a spiderlike hand. It was numbered “5” at the top of the page, and began in the middle of a word:

  ginning to fear there is no exit. Sarval in fact gone now, last of the eight to go save myself: a quick sortie out in search of a way to navigate the crater undetected. She has not returned and I do not expect her to return. I myself made a quick trip through the halls, eyes open all the time, and down the chute. The creatures seem more at ease now, and I managed to get to the end of the chute safely. There are more eggs now and they are protecting them better, either putting them in places where it is harder for the machine to harvest them or setting up decoy caches, willing to sacrifice a few eggs so the majority can live on. I have, unlike some of my erstwhile compatriots, no illusions about why I am here nor regarding my chances of survival. There is, to put it bluntly, no way out, no exit. Or if there is I will not be the one to find it. All one can choose, in such circumstances, are the parameters of one’s own death, whether to face it with dignity or with howls of execration. Shall it be suicide or murder? Or, with something stirring under one’s skin, a combination of the two?

  Then back here to the bunkhouse. Why is the bunkhouse here? Why a house? A last illusion for us to hold on to as we prepare to die. A little food left still. Will they come for me tonight? Or shall I take matters into my own hands? No matter how bad the creatures are, must remember that this particular death trap is the result of human minds, a human hell populated with the nightmares that populate the sleep of reason. A slow journey unto death, a

  The page ended there. Not enough of it to do us much good, Kramm realized. Nothing much learned, if anything.

  “All right,” said Frances. “There’s nothing else to be done now except to get some rest and try to get out of here in the morning. Duncan and Kelly have first watch. Kramm and Jolena, you’re up next. The rest of you, try to get some sleep.”

  * * *

  Kramm lay down on one of the bunks and closed his eyes. I won’t be able to sleep, he thought, I can’t manage it. But before he knew it he was out cold.

  He dreamed that he was back in his settlers’ prefab, just outside the compound’s walls. There was his wife, there was his daughter, all of them together at breakfast. The wind was blowing hard outside, in great gusts, dust and sand whipping up against the walls of the house. He could hear the gentle hiss of oxygen, the prefab’s controller regulating the climate, keeping them sane. Outside, through the window, was the small spread they had surrounded with a tall fence to try to keep the wind out.

  “Maybe we should move inside the compound,” he was saying.

  “And live in common rooms?” she said, and made a face. “In shared space? No privacy? No thanks.”

  In the dream, he knew that if they stayed where they were his wife and child would die. But the dream wouldn’t allow him to tell his wife that. All he could do was to make casual suggestions to move and then shrug when his wife shook her head and turned them down flat.

  And then he saw that his wife and daughter were taking spoonfuls of the oatmeal they were eating and instead of raising the spoons to their mouths were bringing them down below the edge of the table, near their stomachs. The spoons would go down full, and come away empty, clean.

  “Maybe we should talk about moving off-planet,” he said. “Chuck all this in and give something else a try.”

  “We like it here,” said his wife’s voice.

  “And so do we,” said his daughter.

  There was something odd about the way they were speaking, he realized. Something odd too about the way they were eating. That wasn’t the way they usually ate, was it?

  Slowly he stood, swaying, and leaned across the table toward them. He could see now their open bellies, the gaping holes into which they kept inserting spoonful after spoonful of oatmeal. He kept leaning further over the able, trying to get a clear view inside of them.

  And then suddenly, without warning, they began screaming, both of them at once, a strange scream coming not only from their mouths but also from the holes in each of their bellies, almost more than he could bear. And then it became more than he could bear and he woke up.

  But the screaming still continued to come, even once he was awake, echoing up the staircase, the others around him starting to stir and reaching for their guns. He was up and crouched, gun drawn, and halfway down the stairs without thinking about what he was doing. He was, because of the dream, still expecting to see his wife and daughter again, expecting to watch them being dragged away from him again, so was a little surprised to see that the body being dragged across the table and toward the door by one of the scaled creatures belonged to Duncan.

  He raised his gun to fire but the creature slid between the tables, Duncan screaming now in an unearthly way. He fired once and missed, burning a line across the tabletop, and then the creature was at the open doorway and out of it, Duncan’s white and startled face begging him for help as he disappeared.

  He
ran the rest of the way down the stairs and out the open door; there it was, a little way ahead. He fired again, burning the creature’s haunch but hardly slowing it down. And then it scuttled through the opening leading to the large chamber.

  Bjorn was beside him now. Kramm kept running, the large man effortlessly gaining on him and beginning to pass him. They entered the large room in time to see its tail disappearing down the smooth round tunnel in the far wall. Kramm slowed a little but Bjorn kept running and, when he reached the tunnel, without hesitation threw himself in.

  Oh hell, thought Kramm, and desperately followed.

  It was only once he was scrambling down the tunnel, trying to keep from slipping and sliding forward down the slope, that he realized he didn’t have his flashlight. He could see, in the gray light filtering from the room behind him, Bjorn lumbering forward ahead of him, a dim silhouette bleeding into the tunnel’s sides and top. He kept his eye on what he could see of Bjorn’s shape, telling himself it’d be okay as long as he could see Bjorn.

  They kept on as the tunnel leveled out and widened a little. Bjorn, on his knees before him, rose swaying to his feet and rocketed on, half bent over, knocking against the sides of the tunnel.

  And then there it was, behind him, a scuttling sound there, in the dark.

  He turned and looked back over his shoulder, could make out a vague shape, little more. “Who is it?” he cried, already aiming his gun, certain an Alien had followed him in and was planning to set upon him from behind.

  But what rang out was a human voice. “Kramm,” Frances said. “It’s me. Don’t shoot.”

  He cursed and turned forward again, continuing his crouched run, trying to transform the scuttling he was hearing into human footsteps. Ahead now, standing fully erect just shy of the end of the tunnel, was Bjorn. Kramm couldn’t help but run into him.

  The shock of the impact was enough to knock Kramm off his feet. But it didn’t seem to have any effect on Bjorn. He hardly even seemed to notice it.

  “Hush,” he said. “We would do best to be quiet.”

  Kramm picked himself up off the ground and looked out past Bjorn’s arm, Frances beside him now.

  In the gray light of near sun coming down through the dome, they were looking into the crater that Kramm had caught a dim glimpse of from the top floor of the common building. Before them was a field of eggs, eight symmetrical rows of eight. A narrow path led around them in one direction; to the other was the edge of the crater. A little farther along was an open stretch, the ground shiny and covered in secretion, honeycombed with holes. Moving in and out of these holes, and across the surface of the crater itself, were swarms of Aliens.

  “Do you see them?” asked Frances. “Duncan and Kelly, I mean.”

  “No,” said Kramm. “They seem to have vanished.”

  “Perhaps he was pulled into one of those holes,” said Bjorn. “As for Kelly, I never saw her at all.”

  “Me, neither,” said Kramm.

  “Maybe she’s okay after all,” said Frances. “Maybe she’s still back in the common building. How many do you think there are?”

  “A lot,” said Kramm.

  “Perhaps one hundred,” said Bjorn. “And this is a small one.” He displayed to them a long-barreled pistol about the size of Kramm’s forearm. “It was the first gun I grabbed. Maybe I will kill about eight of them with it. Maybe twelve.” He turned toward Frances, his eyes calm, steady. “Would you like that I do this?”

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” said Kramm.

  “No, I would not like that you do this,” said Frances. “There are many more than twelve.”

  “Yes,” said Bjorn. “I can kill maybe eight, maybe twelve.” He showed them the pistol again, apologetically. “With me, I have only this one gun.”

  There was a strange sucking noise and when they glanced back at the field of eggs they saw that two near to them had opened.

  “Maybe we should leave, then,” said Bjorn, agreeably.

  They slowly began to back their way down the tunnel. One of the two eggs began to pulse, a thrumming sound coming from within it. A moment later, the facehugger appeared, creeping up over the egg’s lip.

  “This cannot be called an attractive creature,” said Bjorn.

  “No,” said Kramm. “It can’t.”

  With a little fillip, the facehugger propelled its way out of the egg and toward them, but the distance was too great. It struck the ground near the tunnel entrance, a few meters distant, where it struggled to right itself.

  “Don’t shoot it,” whispered Frances as both Kramm and Bjorn took aim. “They’ll hear.”

  Kramm started to lower his gun, stopped. “What are we supposed to do with it, then?” he whispered back.

  It had righted itself and was scuttling toward them. It gave a sudden leap and was on Kramm’s thigh. He tried to hit it with his gunbutt but only succeeded in nearly breaking his own knee. It clung to his gun, then his hand, then spidered along his arm toward his face.

  He tried to knock it off, succeeded only in knocking it onto his back. He felt it scrabbling about between his shoulder blades, and pushing into his hair, one of its lower tentacles groping for his neck.

  And then that tentacle latched on and began to strangle him. He felt the creature ratcheting its way around to the front of his head, its proboscis prodding his cheek.

  He clenched his teeth, tried to disentangle himself, but each time he worked a tentacle loose another replaced it. And then suddenly he was being lifted off his feet, really choking now. He dropped his gun and pried at the tentacle, saw that Bjorn had the facehugger in one hand, was lifting both it and Kramm up.

  Bjorn raised his arm, slammed the creature against the tunnel’s ceiling, Kramm knocking against it as well. The tentacles suddenly loosened, Kramm falling into a heap on the floor. Bjorn slammed the facehugger up again, harder this time. It was still wriggling, but weaker this time.

  “No,” said Bjorn meditatively. “This is not an attractive creature.”

  “Don’t look now, but here comes another,” said Frances.

  This one went straight for Bjorn. He dropped his gun, catching it on his foot to keep it from clattering hard against the ground. He let the second facehugger come up his leg, then nonchalantly scooped it up in his free hand, smashing it twice hard against the wall.

  “They are only stunned,” he said after a moment. “I will take them with us and we will kill them in safety. Perhaps you, my friend Kramm, will take my gun?”

  “Of course,” said Kramm, still slumped in mute astonishment on the floor. He got up, picked up the gun, and they all started up the tunnel.

  “I’m glad we brought him along,” he said to Frances.

  “It was worth the hop,” said Frances.

  “I am very hungry,” he heard Bjorn saying behind him. “For pancakes.”

  Up ahead, Kramm heard Frances start to giggle. He couldn’t help but laugh as well.

  “What is funny?” Bjorn asked. “I do not understand.”

  * * *

  They killed the facehuggers just outside the door to the common building, Bjorn first crushing them against the wall a few more times and then dropping them for Frances to shoot. The door was still open, Gavin and Jolena near it, dressed now, weapons drawn.

  “Any luck?” Jolena asked.

  “None,” said Frances. “They’re both gone.”

  “Look at the touchpad,” said Gavin.

  They did. No rest for the weary, it now read.

  “I suppose they’re not happy about our removing the cameras,” said Frances. “So they opened the door and let the monsters in. Time for a council of war. But keep one eye on the door.”

  They explained to the others what they had seen: the tunnel going down, the crater, the matrix of eggs.

  “And we have to get to the other side to reach the transmitter,” said Frances.

  “If there still is a transmitter,” said Jolena.

  “I only
had one gun,” Bjorn explained apologetically. “I could kill maybe eight, maybe twelve. But now I am ready.”

  “Here’s what I suggest,” said Frances. “We check out the other corridor, see what’s there, if there’s another way around the hive. If there’s not, then we go in, Bjorn throws a few grenades, we try to rush across and into one of the tunnels in the far wall as quickly as possible.”

  “How do we know which tunnel?” asked Jolena.

  “We don’t know,” said Frances. “We just give it our best guess.”

  Gavin shrugged. “Why not?” he said. “What else is there for us to do?”

  “What about Duncan and Kelly?” asked Kramm.

  “What about them?” said Frances.

  “Shouldn’t we try to rescue them?”

  “Isn’t it too late for them?” asked Frances.

  “Yes, probably,” said Kramm, thinking again of the ex-marine he had left behind. “But what if it’s not?”

  “Can we take the risk?” asked Frances. “Is it worth it?”

  “You always claim that Planetus is different,” said Kramm. “Now is your chance to prove it.”

  Frances stared at him a long moment, unabashedly. “All right,” she said. “What do the rest of you think?”

  “I think our chances of dying are good either way,” said Gavin. “I don’t know that it matters what we do.”

  Frances looked at Jolena. “I don’t like to leave somebody behind if I can help it,” Jolena said. “That’s not how I was raised.”

  Frances nodded, turned to Bjorn. He stayed silent a long moment, looking up at the ceiling, turning the question over in his head. “You see,” he finally said, “I have all my guns now. And there is the queen, as you call her. It is not a good idea to let this queen survive, no?”

  “All right,” said Frances. “First the other hallway then, just to make sure there isn’t anything that will be coming at us from behind. And then we go after Duncan and Kelly.”

  3

  At first, the second hallway seemed identical to the one that had led them to the common building: same rusted metal walls and floor, same traces here and there of hive activity, although those traces were older than in the chamber the hallway led off from. But then, instead of coming to a door, the hall opened simply into another chamber.