Looks so Strong

Having a task helped to focus my mind. It helped me ignore everything that wasn't part of my mission: find shoes.

I kept my eyes low and searched for a pair of feet that might be close to my size.

The dim light was enough for me to find my bearings, but not much else. I tip-toed around the edge of the room, testing my steps before committing. The last thing I wanted to do was step in more of that acid and melt my feet off.

Acid. For blood. What the fuck kind of creatures were these?

It took a few painstaking minutes of checking boots before I found a pair close enough to my size and slipped them on. They were a little big, but they would do.

Next, I needed to find a way out of the room.

There had to be a door somewhere, but the walls all melded together. Whatever the hardened resin was, it was all over the place with only the barest hint of a metal wall beneath.

I wound up pacing the room with my hand against the wall, trying to find an opening.

Screeches in the distance made me go rigid.

Shit—the gunshots. All the screaming and shouting . . . The big ones were coming to investigate.

I cursed my lack of foresight and worked double time until I found an opening to a corridor and slipped out. There wasn't any resin outside, only the sleek industrial walls of wherever the beasts had taken me.

My plan had been to run through the halls, but the monsters were coming. I had no choice but to look for somewhere to hide and settled on a small cubby in the wall.

It seemed to be a sort of vent and hot steam wafted from it.

I ignored the initial discomfort and shimmied in as far as I could, crouching low and curling into a ball. I hid my face in my knees, every muscle tense and quivering. Sweat beaded my forehead.

Hissing shadows shot past several heartbeats later. Though I twitched at their initial appearance, I held still as a statue and held my breath.

Nothing was going to make me unravel from my ball; I couldn't mess this up, not after my victory.

They rummaged around the room, angry screeches battering my senses. I was certain that if they'd found me in that room with all the broken eggs and dead facehuggers, they would have killed me.

The creatures made an awful racket as they sprinted from the room in search for the murderer. For me.

Their noises disappeared into the bowels of the ship and I waited.

It seemed like forever that I huddled in that vent, biding my time. My legs were starting to cramp and there was an incessant itch irritating my left shoulder blade.

But I didn't dare move.

At first I counted to ten but chickened out. Then I counted to thirty and yet again couldn't bring myself to leave.

Not a single thing had made a noise since the creatures passed, but I was afraid. They could come back any second, and if they caught me with my pants down . . .

After five minutes of absolute silence, I finally peeked out from my hiding spot. I glanced about, making sure the coast was clear, then wiggled out and slowly stood.

Well, somehow I'd avoided dying. Now I had to figure out how to escape this place.

I picked a direction and headed down the hallway only to find myself back in the same room. It was empty, except for the bodies on the wall and the tattered eggs.

I hadn't meant to, but now that I was there I figured I'd make the best of it. Moving slower than was necessary in favor of silence, I slipped into the chamber.

There were plenty of military personnel, so maybe I could find a weapon.

More guns popped into my mind, but I brushed the thought aside: they'd almost caught me once because of the noise. What was I going to do if I ran out of ammo?

I wasn't even sure bullets would work against those things. The little creatures, maybe, but the big bugs looks tough.

Could a bullet puncture their chitin? I knew there had to be some sort of weapon that could do it, but maybe not a pistol. How would I know until I tried, though?

When faced with the task of looting corpses, though, I faltered. The cocoons covered most of their bodies, but what they didn't hide was a gaping, bloody mess.

Every cell, every nerve ending, every fiber of my existence told me not touch anything.

It had been easier when I was in mortal peril and running on my fight instinct. In the end I stood there, rubbing my hands against my jeans and fidgeting.

That was when I felt it: a lump in my back pocket. I pulled my phone free, hope swelling in my chest. There was large fissure that cobwebbed across the top corner, but that was the extent of the damage. 

"Everything's coming up Milhouse," I muttered.

A seed of hope planted itself inside me and I fumbled to wake up the phone. I was all too eager to forget the bodies.

"Come on, come on," I muttered, waiting for the black screen to come to life.

It brightened after a slight delay.

Excitement hindered my movements, but I was able to unlock the phone after the second try. I tapped on the phone app and brought up the keypad to type in 9-1-1.

They could send help. A search party, anything.

However, when I dialed and put the phone to my ear, I heard nothing. No ring, no voice asking me what my emergency was.

A big fat nothing.

"No, no," I muttered, staring at the phone. "Come on, just let me get through, just once. Just for a few seconds—I just need a few seconds!"

The second, third, and fourth tries bore similar results. I raised my hand as if to chuck my phone across the room, but thought better of it.

Groaning, I crouched down and perched on the balls of my feet, my hands to my head. No signal. I couldn't make any calls.

Of course not.

"Why would my phone get a fucking signal in this place?" I said sarcastically to myself, bumping my phone against my forehead. "That would just be too easy, wouldn't it? Has to be difficult!"

If I sat and thought about it, I'd realize there was plenty of things lying around to block the signal. Not only was I miles away from civilization, but I was in some sort of metal structure.

A pressure formed behind my eyes and I sniffed back frustrated tears. No matter how hard I stared at my phone, I couldn't will the reception to life.

Ditching the phone wouldn't help, either. It wasn't hurting anything from my pocket, and it still had battery life. If I did nothing else with it, I could use the flashlight feature to find my way around.

If I was lucky, I might be able to find a spot where I could pick up a signal.

One of the women on the wall twitched and groaned. I suppressed a scream and scrambled to my feet into a half-baked battle stance. She coughed and my head jerked in her direction.

I watched with fascinated horror as her body bucked, and the sound of her rib cage cracked like thunder.

Another body across the room from me started to lurch—but this man woke up.

He woke up screaming.

Not again. I didn't want to watch anymore people die. I didn't want to deal with the things that burst out of their chests like rocks through paper.

The sound of bones shattering and gore splattering the wall chased me into the hall. The man's screams came to an abrupt end.

Ahead of me, a dark shape hissed.

I didn't make it ten paces before I was face to face with one of the adult monsters. It stood in the middle of the hall, top lip drawn back and twitching. Even in the gloom I could see the glint of its silver fangs.

My breath caught in my throat and I backed away at a snail's pace, hands up and eyes locked on the beast.

It rose from its crouch to stand upright and followed me, keeping the distance between us. Its posture was raptor-like as it stalked and its tail dragged behind it.

Slowly, I was pushed back into the now-silent room. I hastened over to another soldier and snatched up their firearm. Their holster was empty. I was on my own.

I backed up until I stumbled over one of the shoes I'd tried on earlier. Without thinking, I snatched up the steel-toed boot and readied to throw it.

Not a weapon, but it was all I had. If anything, it might delay my death by a few seconds.

Teeth bared, the alien crouched low again and swung its head this way and that. It had no eyes, of that I was certain.

Yet, the irate hiss it emitted as it took in the room made me think it could see everything in it. Destroyed eggs, dead facehuggers . . . general carnage.

All caused by me.

Hissing through parted jaws, the creature rose to its full size and turned its smooth head toward me. I took a step back and it took a step toward me, its tail lashing over its head.

I was hyper-aware of every movement, every twitch and ripple of muscle, waiting for it to charge. It leaned forward like a snake about to strike and its leg muscles bunched.

I tensed in response, clutching my pitiful excuse for a weapon. Winner or not, I was going to go down fighting.

The sound of ringing crystal sang through the air. Acid blood spattered the air as the thing's exoskeleton crunched. A hole appeared in the creature's midsection and it stopped short, mouth agape.

It was almost comical if not for the fact that I was terrified out of my mind and utterly confused. 

I'd heard of spontaneous combustion but not spontaneous impaling.

If I squinted, I could see rivulets of blood dripping down an invisible force protruding from its chest. It created an outline of some sort of sharp blade.

Electricity charged the air and a new sound met my ears: a rattle. The nightmare black creature jerked as the invisible blade wrenched upward, cleaving its chest in two.

Behind it, the air shimmered and rippled like water as it fell to the floor. My breath caught when something large appeared, standing erect like a human.

Whatever it was, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger big. Maybe even bigger.

This new creature, basically a person, was muscular and imposing. Based solely on my own experience with body structure, I wagered they were male.

Uniform, black dreads fell into place around its head past its shoulders. A stern and impassive mask obscured its facial features.

Protruding from the gauntlet on their wrist was a dual set of curved blades. They showed no sign of corrosion from the creature's acid blood dripping from the tip the same way my skin and clothes had.

He wore scarce armor over his thighs, shins, and wrists. It didn't seem like he needed to wear even that much—like he was Superman and his immaculate pectorals would deflect any attacks.

A pair of knee-high boots protected his legs, and he wore an armored codpiece as well. Over his mottled torso was a mesh that reminded me of fishnets, though I couldn't discern its purpose. 

Despite my initial impression of him being bullet proof, I did note several wounds when I looked a little closer. Were it not for the radioactive-green blood, I would have missed them.

My heartbeat was thunder in my ears. Trembling started deep in my chest and radiated outward to my fingers and toes. Should I run? Stand my ground?

If the injuries bothered him at all, he didn't show it.

There was only one thought that came to mind as I looked at his armor, his scales-covered skin, and clawed hands.

He had strange weapons, foreign tech, and active camouflage. When I considered the insect-serpent creatures stalking the place, it seemed so obvious to me.

This person, those creatures . . . they were all aliens. I was trapped on a spaceship that had crashed.

With the way he had killed the serpent, I figured they were not on friendly terms. I couldn't imagine anything being on friendly terms with such a violently parasitic species.

An infestation was the only sensible conclusion.

Space pests.

After a brief second of staring at one another, he took a calculated step toward me. I mirrored his movement backwards.

His wrist blades retracted with a metallic hiss and I jumped three feet in the air with a sharp cry. Without thinking, I chucked the boot at his head.

/Fuck. I'm dead. He's gonna kill me./

With stunning dexterity, he snatched it out of the air without so much as a flinch. My heart fell into my stomach and the color drained from my face. It had been a knee-jerk reaction and completely futile.

Even if the boot hit, it never would have hurt him.

He studied the shoe, his head tilted to the side. His head cocked in the other direction when he directed his attention to me. Once more he made the rattling sound and I held my breath, waiting to see what I was going to reap.

Thin, red lasers swept across the ground until they came to rest over my heart.

Gasping, I staggered backwards and brushed at the front of my shirt, trying to rid myself of the dots. I knew it was pointless. I'd watched enough hitman movies to know a sniper bead when I saw one.

But I didn't know what else to do.

The boot thumped to the ground, dropped and forgotten. For a few heartbeats that stretched out to feel like hours, he appraised me.

I wished I could see an expression, understand what he was thinking. Something mounted on his shoulder turned to face me. A gun? Was this how I was going to die? I swallowed hard and my muscles tensed, ready to fling myself out of the shot.

Yeah, as if.

Ages passed before he shifted his attention away from me. The laser targets arched across the devastation that I had wrought upon the eggs. I doubted the scene would upset him, not after watching him kill an adult.

He turned away from me, making it clear he thought I was no threat, and chittered away in some strange language. His shoulders rotated and he glanced back at me, then growled.

Those weren't angry sounds, I didn't think: they lacked any real urgency. Was he impressed? Confused?

I moved a fraction of an inch to try to look at him better and that target snapped back to my chest. I immediately froze.

The dots remained for an agonizingly long time, then he turned away with a derisive snort.

The target flickered out of existence.

He . . . wasn't going to kill me. Had I not been against a wall, I would have gone weak with relief. As it were, I remained upright and my eyes locked on him, just in case I'd misinterpreted his actions.

I held my breath and watched him as he moved. It was as if every movement animated his whole body, even the thick strands of hair-like tendrils swung with a sort of grace as he turned. I caught the glint of metal bands around each lock, like jewelry.

Even though he seemed to have no interest in ending my life, I feared moving would provoke him into changing his mind. I had to remind myself to keep breathing.

He stopped by each unconscious person in turn and watched them. After a lapse of time, he sank his blade deep into their chests. Some were none the wiser, others who were on the cusp of awakening jerked and shuddered before falling still.

Gooseflesh prickled my skin and my stomach flopped. Whether he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart or just to stop more alien pests from being born, I was glad they were out of their misery.

It was still hard to watch. I had to look away.

As he went about his duty, I tried to wrap my head around it all.

An alien ship had crashed practically in my backyard. There was a parasitic species working on infesting the whole area. This guy, probably part of the crew, survived the crash and was trying to clean house.

Aliens. A-L-I-E-N-S.

They were REAL.

/Holy fucking shit./

When I was done having an existential crisis over the vast impossibility that I was faced with, I tried to decide what to do next.

I didn't want to move and set the alien guy off, so I waited for him to finish. Once he was done killing off all the infected people, he headed for the exit. Before he turned the corner, his body melted out of view.

Camouflage? A cloaking device?

Even though he wasn't going to kill me now, there was a chance he might cause me issue later. Would we meet again while I was trying to escape? What if he stopped me?

Wait . . . He would know where the exit to the ship was and how to leave. Should I have asked him? I brushed the thought aside soon as it entered my mind: there was no guarantee he could understand anything I said.

However, I didn't want to be alone. Maybe I should have asked to come with him.

We could have found some way to communicate.

Anderson had told me to escape, that the best chance for my friends' survival was to find help.

What could have been that help or at least my way to escape was walking away as I stood there, trying to decide what to do.    

Time was ticking and he was getting away. There was a single, straight hallway out of the room, so I was confident I could catch up.

My best bet was to follow him and hope he didn't try to kill me when he found me stalking him. I could ride in his wake and maybe get out alive.

Taking a deep breath, I took the plunge and chased after him.