Alien: Out the Shadows

The Samson remained untouched on the landing pad. Hoop climbed up the superstructure, brushed dust from the windows and checked inside. He couldn’t see anything amiss.

There was a moment of tension as they opened the external door and Hoop entered. Then he opened up the internal door and they boarded safely, taking great care when lifting the replacement fuel cell and securing it to the cabin rack. They relied on it completely, and any damage would doom them all.

Once they were all inside, Sneddon settled inside the small airlock, just as she’d promised. There was a window into that space, but no one looked. Not even Ripley. She closed her eyes as Lachance went through pre-flight checks, and didn’t open them again when they took off.

But she did not sleep. She thought perhaps she might never sleep again.

* * *

This is a real memory, Ripley thinks, but the division between real and imaginary is becoming more and more indistinct. If this is real, then why am I in pain? Why does she hurt from where an alien’s tail slashed across her stomach, a claw opened her shoulder to the bone? If this is real, then everything will be all right.

She is on a roller coaster with Amanda. Her daughter is nine years old and utterly fearless, and as she whoops and laughs, Ripley holds onto the bar across their stomachs so hard that her fingers cramp into claws.

I love it, Mommy! Amanda shouts, her words whipped away by the wind.

Ripley closes her eyes but it changes little. She can still feel the vicious whipping of gravity grasping at her, tugging her this way and that as the car slips down a steep descent, around a tight corner, twisting and ripping back toward a cruel summit. With every twist and turn, the pain shoots through her.

Mommy, look!

There’s an urgency to Amanda’s voice that makes Ripley look. There’s something wrong with their surroundings. Something so wrong, yet the roller coaster is traveling so fast now that she cannot seem to focus on anything outside the car.

People seem to be running across the park around them.

Screaming, dashing, falling…

Dark shapes chasing them, much faster than the people, like animals hunting prey…

Muh—Mommy? Amanda says, and because she sits beside her in the moving car, Ripley can focus on her.

She wishes she could not.

A bloom of blood erupts from her torn chest, a terrible inevitability. Amanda is crying, not screeching in pain but shedding tears of such wretchedness that Ripley starts crying as well.

I’m sorry, Amanda, she says. I should have been home to protect you. She’s hoping that her daughter will say that she understands, and that everything is all right. But she says nothing of the sort.

Yes, you should have, Mommy.

The infant alien bursts outward in a shower of blood that is ripped away by the wind.

As they reach the roller coaster’s summit the car slows to a crawl, and Ripley can see what has happened to the world.

* * *

“You’re crying,” Hoop said. He was squeezing her hand, shaking it until she opened her eyes.

Ripley tried to blink the tears away. This had been the worst episode yet. And with increasing dread, she knew it wouldn’t be the last.