Alien: Out the Shadows

An alien’s curved head forced through the melted doorway. There was no warning—none of them could see beyond, and the opening itself was all but obscured by the melted structure. The creature’s smoothed dome pushed through the hardening material, its teeth stretching and gnashing. It seemed to struggle for a moment, shoving forward, and at either side its long-clawed hands sliced through.

But then it was held fast, the cooling material steaming where it bit into its mysterious hide.

“Everybody back,” Hoop said, and he aimed his spray gun.

Ripley backed away across the gallery and held her breath, fascinated yet terrified. The alien was still struggling to move forward, and all around it the melted and re-set material stretched, changing color and tone as the tension changed. Perhaps five seconds earlier, and the monster might have burst through, catching them unawares and causing chaos.

But now the creature was held fast.

Hoop fired a burst of hydrofluoric acid directly at the head.

Smoke, steam, sizzling, hissing, screeching. Everything was obscured by clouds of vapor, but Ripley had the definite impression of frantic, thrashing movement.

“Back,” she said. “Hoop, get back!” They all retreated across the gallery, and Ripley felt the waist-high barrier against her back. She edged along it toward the far end. The others were going in the same direction, and Hoop turned and ran toward her.

Behind him, something exploded.

He’ll be splashed with it, the acid, and I’ll have to watch him die, Ripley thought. But though Hoop winced and ducked down as he ran, the spattering remains of the alien’s head splayed across the gallery in the other direction. Part of it bounced across the floor, leaving sizzling patches behind, and dropped down into the pit. What struck the surface floated there for a moment, then sank with a final angry hiss.

Hoop reached them, grinning.

“Well, at least we know they don’t like this acid,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out. Baxter—”

“Don’t even ask,” Baxter said. “The way things are going, I’d beat you in a race. I’m fine.”

He was far from fine, though. He couldn’t touch his left foot to the floor, and if it weren’t for Kasyanov, he’d fall. His face was strained, damp with sweat, and he couldn’t hide his terror.

He’s still afraid we’ll leave him behind. It was a horrible idea, but one they all had to be contemplating.

“Don’t know how long that will keep them back,” Sneddon said, nodding back at the melted opening. It was still smoking. They couldn’t see any remains of the alien, but the place where it had forced through was seared with acid scars.

“Come on. This way,” Hoop said. He headed for an opening at the far end of the gallery, as far from their entry point as they could get. He fixed his flashlight to the spray gun’s strap so that he could aim both in the same direction. They all followed, none of them questioning him.

Entering a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel, Ripley couldn’t escape the idea that they were being swallowed once again.

* * *

They entered areas that the miners had not lit. They ran, flashlights held out in front or strapped onto their weapons, shadows dancing and retreating. And not long after leaving the gallery, they found the first bodies.

The tunnel-like corridor opened up into another wide space, and there was something different about it. The smooth curves were the same, the non-regularity of something biological, but the sheets and swathes of material hanging across walls and from the ceiling didn’t belong here. Neither did the things hanging within it, like horrible, rotting fruit.

There might have been six bodies there, though Ripley found it difficult to tell where one ended and another began. The darkness, the decay, the way they’d been hung up and stuck there, fixed in place by that strange extrusion that had filled one of the mining tunnels far above—it all blurred the edges of what they saw. And that wasn’t a bad thing.

The stench was awful. That, and the expression on the first face upon which Hoop shone his flashlight. It might have been a woman, once. Decay had shrunk the face, drawn in the skin, hollowed the eye sockets, but the scream was still frozen there. Clawed hands stretched on either side, reaching—unsuccessfully—for what had been happening to the victim’s chest.

The hole was obvious. The clothing was torn and hanging in shreds. Protruding ribs were splintered.

“Birthing ground,” Sneddon said.

“They just hung them here,” Kasyanov said. “It’s… a nursery.”

On the floor in front of the hanging, dead people stood a group of egg-like objects, upright and shaped like large vases. Most of them were open. No one stepped forward to look inside.