Alien: Out the Shadows

His leg hurt, a deep-seated, white-hot burn that seemed to smolder in his bones, surge through his muscles, filter around his veins. The whole of his lower right leg felt as if it had been dipped in boiling water, and every step was an agony. But there was no choice but to run. He knew that the damage was minimal—he’d looked—and the wound was already likely cauterized by the glowing globule of molten stone that had caused it.

So he did his best to shut the pain away.

His son had visited the dentist once, terrified of the injection of anaesthetic he’d require for a tooth extraction. On the way there, Hoop had talked to him about pain, telling him it was a fleeting thing, a physical reaction to damage that he knew would do him no harm, and that afterward he wouldn’t actually be able to remember what the pain had felt like.

Pain was a difficult concept to conjure in memory, Hoop had said. Like tasting the best cake ever. Such thoughts only really meant anything when the tasting— or the pain—was happening.

He tried it now, repeating a mantra to himself as they ran across that strange cavern’s floor. It doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t mean anything. He tried to analyze the sensation, take interest in it instead of letting it take over. And to an extent, it worked.

Kasyanov and Sneddon went ahead, Sneddon aiming her spray gun in front of her. Baxter and Lachance were bringing up the rear, Baxter looking determined through his own agony. Ripley stayed with Hoop, glancing frequently at him as she kept pace. He did his best not to give her cause for concern, but he couldn’t hold back occasional grunts or groans.

Responsibility weighed heavy. That he couldn’t rationalize away. He was in command, and although the Marion’s survivors, with Ripley in tow, were acting more like a leaderless group, he still felt in every way responsible for their fate.

Even as they ran he racked his brains, trying to decide whether he had made all the right decisions. Should they have remained on the Marion for longer, spending more time preparing? Should he have assessed both elevators, before deciding which one to take down into the mine? Perhaps if they’d taken the other one, they would be on their way back to the surface already, precious fuel cell pushed on a trailer between them. But he couldn’t deal in “what if” and “maybe.” He could only work with what they had. The definitives.

They had to reach the other elevator, and soon.

And yet the aliens were behind them, pushing them forward. Hoop hated feeling out of control, unable to dictate his own destiny, all the more so when there were others relying on his decisions.

He stopped and turned around, breathing heavily.

“Hoop?” Ripley asked. She paused, too, and the others skidded to a halt. They were close to where the craft’s wing rose out of the ground, though the distinction was difficult to discern.

“We’re doing what they want,” he panted, leaning over.

“What, escaping?” Kasyanov asked.

“We’re not escaping,” Hoop said, standing straighter.

“He’s right,” Ripley said. “They’re herding us this way.”

“Any way that’s away from them is fine by me,” Baxter said.

“What do you—?” Ripley asked, and for that briefest of moments Hoop might have believed they were the only two people there. Their eyes locked, and something passed between them. He didn’t know what. Nothing so trite as understanding, or even affection. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement that they were thinking the same way.

Then Sneddon gasped.

“Oh my God!” she said. Hoop looked back over his shoulder.

They were coming. Three of them, little more than shadows, and yet distinguishable because these shadows were moving. Fast. Two flitted from somewhere near where the survivors had entered the cavern, the third came from a different direction, all three converging.

Lachance crouched, bracing his legs, and fired his charge thumper. The report coughed around the cavern, lost in that vast place.

“Don’t waste your time!” Baxter said. “Maybe if they were a few steps away.”

“If they get that close, we’re dead!” Lachance said.

“Run!” Hoop said. The others went, and he and Ripley held back for just a moment, again sharing a look and each knowing what the other was thinking.

They’re driving us forward again.

The surface underfoot changed only slightly as they headed up onto the craft’s huge, curving wing. It still felt to Hoop as though he was running on rock, although now it sloped upward, driving a whole new species of pain into his wounded leg as he relied on different muscles to push himself forward.

Over the time this thing had been buried down here, sand and dust must have dropped onto it and solidified. Boulders had fallen, and this close he could see a series of mineral deposits that formed sweeping ridges all across the wing, like a huge ring of expanding ripples, frozen in time.