Marc Cerasini - AVP - Alien vs. Predator

Lex ignited a flare—startling the Predator, who snarled at her angrily.

“It’s just light. Light,” she said, placing it on the floor.

Scar made that same clicking sound in his throat that Lex had heard these creatures utter before. It reminded her of a frog’s chirp. Meanwhile the Predator continued to tear off segments of armor plate.

Lex dropped her backpack and squatted in the corner, as far away from the dead Alien as these narrow confines would permit. In the wavering light, she observed Scar’s behavior and tried to deduce the creature’s origins.

The Predator’s hide was reptilian, but not scaled. At least not scaled the way terrestrial reptiles were. But it was still possible that Scar’s epidermis had tiny, near microscopic scales on it. If only she could get close enough to see. Of course, she had no intention of trying. His flesh tone was a pallid gray with a green tinge, though in the flickering light of the bright yellow flare colors could not be easily discerned.

The humanoid’s eyes were close together and set forward in its skull. They were the eyes of a hunter. Terrestrial prey—small birds, rodents, deer, oxen—possessed eyes on the sides of their skulls. Earthbound predators—felines, owls, and humans—all had forward-looking eyes that enhanced depth perception and hand-eye coordination.

Scar’s eyes were set deep in its massive skull, with a bony forehead to protect them, an evolutionary feature that most reminded Lex of dinosaur anatomy.

The “dreadlocks” that framed either side of Scar’s face were puzzling. He never removed them, yet the dangling appendages didn’t appear to be natural, either—they had metal tips, for one thing. Perhaps they were some sort of biomechanical aid, a fusion of flesh and technology. Or perhaps they were just what they appeared to be—the Predators’ version of hair.

The crablike mandibles around the Predator’s mouth were an evolutionary riddle as well. They resembled a feature on an aquatic animal more than the feature of an animal that walked on land. Was Scar an amphibian? If he was, that still wouldn’t explain the mandibles. Insects chewed with mandibles, but Scar had teeth for that. Some insects—or was it arachnids?—also used their mandibles as sensory organs, but that didn’t make sense to Lex either.

Were they an atavistic trait that had outlived its biological usefulness, like the human appendix? Or perhaps the mandibles were necessary for reproduction or mating rituals—an unsettling thought, but from her knowledge of biology, Lex knew that violence during copulation was not uncommon among Earthbound species.

The Predator’s hands certainly resembled reptilian appendages—long, slender fingers, partially webbed, with two central digits that were much longer than the others. But there were differences, too. Reptiles had nostrils, though they lacked noses, and many species of reptiles had olfactory organs in their tongues. Scar had a flat, hard ridge where a nose should be, with no breathing slits that she could discern, and she wasn’t sure the Predator even had a tongue. Predators also lacked tails. And despite their formidable skills as warriors, Lex doubted they were capable of regenerating lost limbs or digits, like a salamander.

Lex noted that Scar wore a kind of mesh underwear under his plated armor and that the Predator was careful to discard as little of that material as possible, though Scar did detach a damaged bit of it, discarding it within Lex’s reach. When he was otherwise occupied, Lex casually lifted the mesh and fingered it. It was made of some kind of flexible metal and was quite hot to the touch. Even more peculiar was the fact that the material remained hot long after it was separated from its power source and, presumably, from Scar’s body heat—if indeed he had any. All this led Lex to the conclusion that the mesh was some sort of heating source and was probably as vital a piece of equipment to Scar as an Aqua-Lung is to a human deep-sea diver.

If the Predator’s species had evolved from some type of extraterrestrial reptile, then they were most probably ectothermic—meaning their body temperature was regulated by external climactic conditions.

Mammals generated their own body heat, but reptiles depended on external temperatures for thermoregulation and maintaining a balanced metabolism, which was why most reptiles thrived in hot climates and eschewed places like the polar regions. In fact, weird things happened to some species of reptile if exposed to a cold environment: They became sluggish and less aggressive, and females sometimes gave birth to live young instead of laying eggs in a nest and hatching them externally.

Reptiles could also die in cold that was too intense or sustained, and Lex noticed several patches of rough, cracked hide on Scar’s hands that resembled the chilblains that appeared on humans in icy weather. While Lex was no expert in the fields of extraterrestrial biology or herpetology, it didn’t look as if Scar was holding up well in the brutal climate of Antarctica.

Soon Lex began to wonder about her own health.

For one thing, she knew she had the “Martian Effect” to contend with—a phrase coined by a Carnegie Mellon University professor of extraterrestrial biology in homage to H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds. Both the Predators and the Aliens could potentially carry dangerous toxins or exotic strains of virus or bacteria to which they were long immune but humans were not. Ancient structures like this pyramid could also hold peril—a long dormant strain of bacteria found in King Tut’s tomb decimated the archaeologists who discovered the place and gave rise to the legend of the mummy’s curse. And even close contact with earthly reptiles carried some degree of danger—there were species of toads and lizards that secreted toxins capable of paralyzing or killing, and many reptiles carried the salmonella virus on their skin.

Of course, Lex realized that if she lived long enough to actually catch salmonella poisoning, she would feel truly blessed.

And creatures like Scar were far from safe to be around even if she had made peace with him. Predators lived for the kill. The ritualistic slaughter of another being, sentient or not, was an intrinsic part of their cultural makeup. By all indications the Predators’ civilization was built on cruelty, with the ceremonial hunt as the central tenet of their religion—important enough, in fact, for them to coolly and cynically manipulate a primitive culture, get themselves elected to godhood, and then compel generations of humans to build their pyramids and populate them with “game” hatched out of their own chests.

It was viciousness on a near-genocidal scale, and Lex was suddenly filled with rage toward Scar and his ilk for how they’d manipulated her primitive ancestors, and for what they’d done to Sebastian, to Max Stafford and Charles Weyland—and probably Miller, too.

Lex noticed that Scar had turned his back on her and was busy with a new project. He drew the ceremonial dagger—the one she’d watched him wield as he’d bloodied himself and gathered his first trophy. Now Scar dragged the Alien carcass to a corner of the chamber and yanked out the spear. Scar showed Lex the melted tip of the spear, then cast it aside. Using one arm, he splayed the dead creature out on its belly on the stone floor. With a grunt of effort, he plunged the blade into the small of the Alien’s back and pried open the armored shell at the torso until the entire chitin shell split like a cooked lobster.

Black bile, steaming in the frigid air, and slimy green ooze gushed onto the flagstones and immediately began pitting the rock. A vile stench filled the small chamber. Lex retched and covered her nose and mouth with the edge of her scarf. Careful to avoid the gore sizzling on the floor, Scar stepped around the carcass, lifted the Alien’s elongated head, and severed the exoskeleton and internal veins and tendons with a sickening crunch. The legs and hips fell away, and more guts spilled out.