This one was different than the other two large chambers they had been in. For one thing, there were no corridors or tunnels leading off of it; for another, the back half of the room was separated from the rest of the room by a series of metal grids. In the middle was a gate, a touchpad next to it. The gate itself had slid up and was now open. Scattered on the floor inside were piles of moldering straw.
“What is it for?” asked Jolena, starting toward it.
“It’s a cage,” said Kramm, stopping her. “It’s a trap. Don’t go in.” He pointed to the touchpad. Fodder Gate Override Control it said on it.
“Fodder,” said Bjorn, the word sounding even odder in his mouth.
“It means food, Bjorn,” said Frances. “This is a holding tank to keep people meant to be given to the Aliens.”
Bjorn nodded. He carefully put down his big gun and approached the bars. Taking a bar in each hand, he strained, the muscles on his arms swelling large. The bars, slowly creaking, bowed, bent apart.
He stood back and admired his handiwork, then picked up his gun. “Now the fodder can get out,” he said.
* * *
They stopped in the tunnel, just where it started to level out.
“We all stay together,” said Frances, “moving as quickly as we can. Make for the middle and then cut down into the tunnels.”
“Maybe I will use a few grenades,” said Bjorn, and smiled happily.
“He likes his grenades,” Jolena explained.
“Maybe you will,” said Frances.
They moved carefully forward, the tunnel flaring wider, the view of the crater opening up.
“What’s that?” asked Jolena.
“What’s what?” Kramm asked, and then saw it, a pale shape just at the edge of the tunnel’s mouth, pressed back into the rocks.
“It’s Kelly,” said Gavin.
“Kelly?” said Frances. “How is that possible?”
Her face was smeared with dirt and grime. It had a strange sticky quality to it in places as well, as if someone had dripped threads of glue on it. Chunks of her hair had been torn out and her scalp was bloody. Her clothing was torn, one arm scraped bloody along the side.
“Kelly?” said Frances. “Are you all right?”
She looked up at them, her eyes baleful, and nodded dully.
“What happened?” asked Frances.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“She’s blocked it out. She’s in shock,” said Jolena.
“No,” said Kramm. “That’s not it.”
“I was back in the building keeping guard,” she said, and rubbed her head. “And then suddenly I was here.”
“Where’s Duncan?” Bjorn asked.
She gestured languidly. “Over there,” she said, pointing into the crater. “I saw him just a moment ago.”
“Can I speak to you a moment, Frances?” asked Kramm.
They moved back into the tunnel, putting a little distance between themselves and the others.
“She’s infected,” he said. “She has one inside her.”
“How can you know for sure?” asked Frances.
“By how sluggish she is. The way she’s moving.”
“Couldn’t that be simply posttraumatic stress?” asked Frances. “Wouldn’t anyone be like that after what she went through?”
“Look,” said Kramm. “Once these bugs get hold of you, they don’t let go.”
“But you got away,” said Frances. “You were down and weaponless among them and yet you got away.”
“That’s different,” said Kramm. “I’m different.”
“Maybe she’s different too.”
“You think she escaped? How? And how did she manage to wander through the crater unscathed, dazed as she is? Just lucky?”
Frances opened her mouth, closed it again.
“She’s a host,” said Kramm. “I’m sure of it. We should kill her.”
Frances frowned. “I don’t get you,” she said. “First you insist on going after Duncan and Kelly even though you say they’re good as dead and then, when we find Kelly, you want to kill her.”
“It’s the merciful thing,” Kramm said. “Much better for her than the alternative.”
“Frances?” they heard Bjorn say from the tunnel’s mouth.
“Not now, Bjorn,” she said. She turned back to Kramm. “She knows where Duncan is,” she said. “She’ll lead us to him.”
“It must be now,” said Bjorn. “I think I must throw my grenade.”
Kramm turned, saw that a dozen or more of the eggs had opened up, the facehuggers already scuttling to the tops of them. Bjorn had the pin for an incendiary grenade in his teeth, the grenade ready in his hand. He flicked up the safety lever, rolled it out into the field of eggs.
“And maybe we should have a few steps back,” Bjorn said.
They faded back into the tunnel. The blast when it came lit a good many of the eggs aflame where they burnt and crackled and smoked, the fire slowly spreading. The facehuggers that had survived the blast were in the tunnel now, scrabbling toward them. The thuck-thuck of Bjorn’s gattler began, Jolena’s smaller gun beside it making a similar noise. Then for a moment they were all firing except for Kelly who remained where she had been sitting, stunned, facehuggers passing by her without paying her any heed.
And then, just as quickly, it was over, the facehuggers dead and spread in bits all over the tunnel entrance, the eggs crackling and smoking.
“Soon I hope to use another grenade,” Bjorn admitted.
“Of course you do, darling,” said Jolena.
“Kelly,” said Frances, “can you take us to where Duncan is?”
“Of course,” said Kelly. She stood, her motions slow as a sleepwalker’s, and walked calmly out the tunnel entrance. This is unreal, Kramm couldn’t help but think. This is all a dream.
And then all hell broke loose.
4
They were moving slowly forward in a tight phalanx, Bjorn in the front cutting down the Aliens as they came, Jolena beside him, picking off the ones he missed with her careful, precise shots. Kramm and Frances and Gavin took care of the ones that came at the group from the sides or from behind.
At first the creatures came at them in droves, straightforward and aggressive, but as the corpses began to thicken around them, the creatures became more cautious, taking cover, waiting for the right moment. They had to stay careful, alert.
Kelly could walk right through them; they didn’t seem to pay any attention to her. Charmed, Kramm thought, and then realized that no, this was just further proof that she was a host. They wouldn’t kill one of their own. He kept firing.
And then suddenly he saw it—or him rather. Kelly was standing near the edge of the crater, pointing down, and there, at her feet, was Duncan. He was in a sprawl, lying on the ground, his face obscured beneath a facehugger.
Kramm fired twice, the first shot passing through the facehugger’s body and blowing out the back of Duncan’s head. The body shook, arms flexing and fingers flexing, and then fell still. The second burnt a hole through Kelly’s forehead. She fell down in a heap.
“Kramm?” yelled Frances, as she continued firing. “What the hell?”
“They were already dead,” said Kramm.
“What makes you think you’re the one to decide who’s alive and who’s dead?” she hissed. “You’re a monster.”
Then her clip ran out. He kept the beasts away from her, firing back and forth to left and right until she had reloaded. And then they were standing shoulder to shoulder again, firing, Frances so mad that she couldn’t speak.
The remaining Aliens, all at once, and all together, scattered away and rushed toward the center of the crater, slipping down into the honeycomb of tunnels. The eggs were still burning, some of them, but all the facehuggers seemed dead. The adult creatures too, the bits that were left of them, were no longer moving. How many had they killed? he couldn’t help but wonder. And how many were left?
In fro
nt of him, Bjorn was stooped over, stroking his discarded gattler. “You have been good to me,” he was saying. “I am not happy to leave you. Perhaps I will come back for you.”
Kramm turned to say something to Frances and found himself suddenly struck hard in the jaw, knocked off his feet.
He lay on the ground looking up at her. His jaw ached. She had hit him, he realized, with the butt of her gun.
“What gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?” she shouted.
“They were already dead,” Kramm claimed again, rubbing his jaw. “Would you really prefer to be the one to decide?”
“Maybe we could have saved them,” said Frances. “Maybe we—”
“No,” said Kramm flatly. “You have to trust me on this. There was nothing we could do but kill them before it was too late.”
She was weeping, he realized, and then she raised her gun, pointed it at his chest.
“Frances,” said Jolena. “Don’t.”
This is all a dream, Kramm thought again, but he knew that it wasn’t. Go ahead and shoot, part of him wanted to say. I’m already dead myself. Just not in the same way as them.
“How do you even know they were infected?”
“I just know,” said Kramm.
“But Kelly?” she said. “She was normal.”
“She was a host,” he said. “Otherwise they would have torn her to bits.”
“But—”
“—give me a knife and I’ll prove it,” he said, though it was the last thing he wanted to do.
And then she let the gun fall, turned dejected and weeping away from him. He got up and, not knowing what else to do, clumsily embraced her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
At first she pushed him away, but then she slowly gave in. He held her for a long moment until she grew calm. When he let her go, she seemed herself again.
“Don’t ever do something like that again,” she said. “Or I’ll kill you.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
She turned toward the rest of them. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go after the queen.”
5
There were a dozen tunnels leading down into the heart of the hive. Was there any way to know which one would be the best? the others asked.
No, Kramm said. No way to know. All the while he was thinking, This is suicide. They were going to slip down into these tunnels and never be seen again.
“All right,” said Frances, pulled together and in charge again. “That one,” she said.
Bjorn went in first, a pistol in each hand.
“Be careful with your shots,” said Frances. “No wasted ammo.”
Bjorn nodded, forcing himself down one of the shafts. Frances followed, then Gavin, then Kramm. Jolena brought up the rear.
It was dark in the tunnel. Kramm shook his flashlight, started the filament glowing. But with a body tight in front of him and a body tight behind it was hard to see anything at all except his own hands. What happened during those three days in the dark? his mind idly wondered, and he desperately pushed the thought down. No tunnels, he thought, No darkness. He tried not to feel the heat of the tunnel, tried not to hear the shallow breathing coming from before him and behind.
The tunnel plunged steeply downward and he slipped into Gavin, nearly bringing them both down. He felt Jolena touch his back lightly and briefly with one hand.
“Put out your light, Kramm,” Frances whispered from ahead.
“What?” said Kramm.
“Element of surprise,” she said.
He looked hard and long at the flashlight, finally flicked it off.
Immediately he could feel the darkness pressing too heavily around him, making it difficult to breathe. The sound of human noise began to slide and shift, becoming something more difficult and harder to take in. The movement of air behind and before him began to take on scales and teeth. He felt himself slipping away, becoming more and more distant from his own body, which continued on its own without him, leaving him altogether alone in the dark.
What brought him back was the sound of Bjorn cursing in a language he didn’t understand. There was a deep hiss too. Flashlights flickered on, including his own, throwing vast shadows around the tunnel. Kramm could not see well enough past Gavin and Frances to know what was going on, only caught brief glimpses of Bjorn’s back, hearing him grunt and scuffle ahead.
Behind him, two brief shots rang and he turned to see Jolena staring down at a dead Alien, the shots dead center through its head, acid blood draining out of it to puddle near her feet.
“Close one,” she said.
Kramm pointed his flashlight down the hall, back from where they had come. There they were, a solid line of Aliens, moving slowly forward, freezing momentarily when the light touched them.
She started firing into them, quick but careful shots, Kramm shooting just over her shoulder as well. The first two went down, and then the two after that, but others were already swarming over these, getting uncomfortably close.
“We’ve got to move toward Bjorn!” yelled Jolena. “They’re too close!”
“You can’t move toward us,” yelled Frances. “They’re here too!”
There came a loud cracking sound from where Bjorn was and then shots began up there as well. To the rear, the tunnel was mostly blocked by the dead, the living creatures forcing their way through, far too close now, the acid of their blood sizzling away. Kramm pushed back against Gavin, gaining a few more centimeters, tugged Jolena back against him. Acid had burned her hands, he saw, which were shaking. It was eating away at the casing of her gun as well. As they waited to see what would shift its way through the mangle of bodies next, he fumbled at his pockets, managed to get the neutralizer out, spray it on her hands.
“Thanks,” she said through gritted teeth. “My feet too.”
He tried to reach them but couldn’t bend down, the press was too tight. Another creature made its way through and Frances shot it in the chest and it was there, dead and dripping greenish ooze, just centimeters from her hips.
From Bjorn’s end there was still the sound of guns firing. And then suddenly Gavin surged back, pushing Kramm and Jolena against the hecatomb. Jolena screamed, and Kramm tried to push back, only succeeded in making Gavin gasp in pain.
“Forward, Bjorn,” Kramm yelled. “Forward!”
“There is no forward!” Bjorn yelled.
“Jolena’s dying!” Kramm yelled.
The gunfire ceased. Bjorn gave a bellow and suddenly Gavin was no longer tight behind him. Kramm dragged Jolena back a little, sprayed the bubbling flesh on her legs and feet.
“Thank God,” she said, and fainted.
He caught her, kept her from slipping. Bjorn, ahead, was still bellowing. And then, suddenly, he stopped. Gavin was pressed against Kramm’s back again, only not quite as hard this time.
“What is it?” asked Kramm.
“We’ve got a wall of bodies in front of us and a wall of bodies behind,” said Gavin. “Bjorn managed to compress the front wall nearly a meter to give us more space, but he’s a little acid burnt now.”
“Will he be okay?” asked Kramm.
“I think so,” said Gavin. “Frances is spraying him down.”
“Jolena?” Bjorn shouted out.
“She’s all right,” Kramm called back. He kept his eye on the wall of bodies, his flashlight focused on it, waiting for it to move.
“Jolena?” Bjorn called again, more desperate this time.
Kramm massaged her cheeks, slapped her lightly. Slowly her eyes started to move, flickering open.
“Can you stand?” asked Kramm.
“I think so,” she said. He pushed her back onto her feet. She winced, but remained standing.
“Jolena?” Bjorn called again.
“It’s all right, Bjorn,” she said. “I’m all right now.”
“Ah, well, okay then,” he said, his voice again growing soft and calm.
* * *
Kramm’s flashlight had started to go dim. He shook it to charge the coil.
“Now what?” Frances asked.
“We’re trapped,” said Gavin.
“We can’t go forward,” said Kramm. “We can’t go backward.” He tapped the wall to his left with the butt of his pistol, listening to the dull, heavy sound it made. He tapped the wall to his right, which made a higher pitched ringing. “We go sideways,” he said. “Here. This place is a honeycomb of tunnels. We just hop from one tunnel to the other.”
He placed his gun against the wall, pulled the trigger.
The force of the recoil nearly tore his arm off. It left a smoking hole in the wall, about the size of a thumbnail. He put his hand up near it, felt a slight breeze stirring the hair of his forearm.
“The way I figure it,” he said. “We shoot eleven or twelve holes, roughly in a circle, and then using the butt of one of the bigger guns we can—”
A loud crash came from near the front, the tunnel itself shuddering around them. It came again, accompanied by a creaking this time. Then a third time, an even longer crash.
“I have done a hole,” Bjorn said simply, matter-of-factly.
“Made a hole, darling,” said Jolena.
“Ah, yes,” said Bjorn. “Made a hole,” and Kramm could hear the shy embarrassment in his voice. And then he heard Bjorn grunt and imagined him working his way through the hole he had made. He held his breath, waiting for the sound of an attack to start up, imagining the way the Alien’s inner mouth would knock a bloody hole through Bjorn’s head before he was even out of the hole.
And then the crush in the tunnel loosened enough that he could manage to turn around, look to the front of the line. There was Frances, clambering her way out through a jagged hole in the secreted wall.
Gavin followed, then Kramm helped Jolena forward.
She walked very slowly, her legs blistered and burned, her feet—at least what was left of her feet—even worse.
“Are you going to be okay?” Kramm asked.
She nodded, lips tight. “I have to be,” she said. “There isn’t any other choice.” She forced a smile. “Besides,” she said, “I can always buy new legs.”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 39