Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

As they neared the building that enclosed the first mine head, Hoop signalled that they should spread out and approach in a line. The door seemed to be propped or jammed open. If one of those things emerged, best it was faced with an array of potential targets. All of them armed.

They paused, none of them wanting to be the first to go through.

“Hoop,” Ripley whispered. “I’ve got an idea.” She slung the charge thumper over her shoulder by its strap and darted quickly toward the building. Beside the half-open door she unbuckled her belt and pulled it loose of the loops.

Hoop saw what she was about to do. His heart quickened, his senses sharpened. He crouched low, ensuring that the gun’s nozzle was pointing slightly to the left of the door. If something happened, he didn’t want to catch Ripley in the acid spray.

Ripley fashioned a loop at the end of the belt and edged forward, feeding it over the top of the door’s chunky handle. She looked back at the others, acknowledging their slight nods. Then she held up her other hand with three fingers pointing, then two, one…

And she pulled.

The door screeched across accumulated grit. The belt slipped from the handle, and nothing emerged.

Before Hoop could speak, Ripley had swung the charge thumper from her shoulder and edged inside.

“Baxter!” Hoop said as he ran forward.

“No cameras in there!” Baxter responded.

It wasn’t as dark inside as Hoop had expected. There was a low level illumination coming through the opaque ceiling—artificial light borrowed from outside—and the lift’s internal lights were still powered up. The lighting was good.

What it showed was not.

There was a dead miner in the lift. Hoop couldn’t distinguish the sex. In the seventy days since they had died, bacteria brought to the mine by the humans had set to work, consuming the corpse. Environmental control had done the rest; the damp, warm atmosphere providing the ideal conditions in which the microorganisms could multiply. The result caused the corpse’s flesh to bloat and sag.

The smell had diminished until it was only a tang of sweet decay, but it was enough to make Hoop wish they’d kept their suits and helmets. The unfortunate victim’s mouth hung open in a laugh, or a scream.

“No sign of what killed them,” Kasyanov said.

“I think we can rule out heart attack,” Lachance quipped.

Hoop went to the elevator controls and accessed them. They seemed fine, with no warning symbols on the screen and no sign that there were any power problems. The small nuclear generator in one of the other surface buildings was still active, and doing its job well.

“It’s working?” Ripley asked.

“You’re not seriously expecting us to go down in that?” Sneddon said.

“You want to take the stairs?” Hoop asked. There were two emergency escape routes leading out from the mine, a series of rough staircases cast into holes sunk adjacent to the lift pits. Almost five thousand feet deep, and the idea of descending seven thousand steps—five hundred flights—appealed to no one.

“Can’t we at least move them out?” Ripley asked. She and Kasyanov went forward and started shifting the body. Hoop had to help. It didn’t remain in one piece.

With the lift cage to themselves, they all entered, taking care to avoid the corner where the corpse had been. Hoop found it even more disturbing that they couldn’t tell who it was. They had all known the victim, that was for sure. But they didn’t know them anymore.

What had happened struck Hoop all over again. He liked to think he was good at coping with emotional upheaval—he’d left his kids behind, effectively fleeing out here into deep space, and on some levels he had come to terms with why he’d done that—but since the disaster, he had woken sometimes in a cold sweat, dreams of smothering and being eaten alive haunting the shadows of sleep. His dreams of monsters had become so much more real. He thought perhaps he cried out, but no one had ever said anything to him. Maybe because almost everyone was having bad dreams now.

“Hoop?” Ripley said quietly. She was standing beside him, staring with him at the lift’s control panel.

“I’m okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“What are those things, Ripley?”

She shrugged. “You know as much as me.”

He turned to the others. There were no accusing stares, no smirks at his momentary lapse of concentration. They all felt the same.

“We go down to level 4,” he said, “get the power cell, then get out as quickly as we can.”

A few nods. Grim faces. He inspected their make-do weapons, knew that none of them were in the hands of soldiers. They were just as likely to shoot each other.

“Take it easy,” he said softly, to himself as much as anyone else. Then he turned to the control panel and ran a quick diagnostic on the lift. All seemed fine. “Going down.” He touched the button for level 4. The cage juddered a little and the descent began.

Hoop tried to calm himself and prepare for what they might find when the doors opened again, yet his stomach rolled, dizziness hit him, and someone shouted out.

“We’re falling. We’re falling!”

The elevator began to scream.

The old stone farmhouse in northern France, a holiday home for her family for as long as she could remember. She is alone right now, but not lonely. She can never be lonely with her daughter so close.

The silence is disturbed only by the gentle breeze, rustling leaves in the woodland far at the bottom of the garden, whispering in the few scattered trees that grow closer by. The sun blazes, scorching the sky a lighter shade of blue. It’s hot but not uncomfortable—the breeze carries moisture from Ripley’s skin, slick from the sunblock she’s been careful to apply. Birds sing their enigmatic songs.

Far above, a family of buzzards circles lazily, eyeing the landscape for prey.

Amanda runs to her through a freshly harvested field, the crop stubble scratching at her legs, poppies speckling the landscape red, and her smile countering even the heat and glory of the sun. She is giggling, holding aloft a present for her mother. Amanda is such an inquisitive little girl. Often she emerges from the small woodland with snails attached all over her arms and shoulders, small frogs captured in her hands, or an injured bird nursed against her chest.

As her daughter climbs the low wooden fence between garden and field and starts across the lawn, Ripley wonders what she has brought home this time.

Mommy, I found an octopus! the girl shrills.

A blink later and she is on the lawn at Ripley’s feet, shivering and shaking as the long-legged thing curls its tail tighter around her sweet throat, and Ripley is trying to hook her fingers beneath its many legs, prise it off, pull it away from her angel without tearing Amanda’s hair off with it. I’ll cut it, she thinks, but she’s worried that the acid will eat into the ground, and keep on eating.

And then from the woods there comes a series of high-pitched screeches. Shadows fall. The sun retreats, birds fall silent, and the buzzards have disappeared. The garden is suddenly plunged into twilight, and those shadows that have always haunted her emerge from among the trees. They are looking for their child.

It’s mine! Ripley shouts, kneeling and protecting Amanda with her own body. Whatever’s inside her is mine!

The shadows stalk closer. Nothing is beautiful anymore.

“Ripley!” Hoop shouted, nudging her. “Grab on to something!”

She shook her head. The vision had happened in an instant. And then it was gone, leaving only a haunting sensation.