Incubated
Chapter 4 — Extemporaneous Explorations
“Long periods between reports are to be expected. The agent must remain hidden.”
Halfway through the night Nora woke up Sophie to take over the watch, as she was the only other one of them who had used a gun. The tension of possible alien attack hid in the back of their minds, but nothing attempted to open the doors during the night. If anything, the lack of any attack was disquieting.
Nora had gotten a few hours of sleep, but had tossed and turned longer than that, leaving her cranky. Alys was soon stirring and faint rays of sunlight were filtering through the storefront windows.
“Rise and shine!” Nora announced, pleased with herself despite the poor sleep she had experienced. “I’ve found a rousing breakfast for you all. Cereal with milk from the fridge in paper bowls!”
Her face fell. “I couldn’t find utensils, so I guess we’re stuck slurping our way to full stomachs.” An odd thought occurred. “At least it isn’t colored green.” She made evil alien claw gestures with her hands.
Several more bad jokes later, and after some awkward and messy maneuvering, they had managed to eat their fill. For a brief moment, they gained a short respite from the horrors of the previous day. Their jovial mood quickly passed, however, and Sophie was the first to broach the subject that was on all their minds.
“Do we have a plan?” she asked, serious. “We’ve done well for ourselves so far, satisfied our basic needs for sustenance. But what do we do now?”
Nora shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. We still don’t know if there’s anybody else left who hasn’t been taken or killed. I think our first plan should be to explore, try to find out what the aliens are up to. Maybe we’ll find some survivors who can help us. Beats me.”
“She’s right,” said Alys. “We can always come back here if we need to, but we can’t hide forever. This place is not very defensible, and we know that the aliens have already been here before.”
“I suppose that settles the matter. Who wants to volunteer to explore the back rooms?” Neither of the other two moved. Nora laughed. “Okay, I’ll do it. As long as you two cleanup and raid the store for supplies.”
Alys raised her hand. “A small oversight. I need a weapon. Stabby or long range preferred.”
Nora thought for a moment. “Sophie, do you still have that knife? Maybe we can jam it on a broom or something. The poor woman’s pole arm.”
Sophie nodded, and handed Alys the knife from her bag. Nora put in her earplugs and retrieved the pistol from Sophie. She pulled the slide and checked the chamber to make sure it was loaded. “If you hear shots, don’t come running—be very careful when investigating. Better to cut your losses than to become one of those alien slime drones.”
Alys looked unhappy, but nodded. “Good luck,” she whispered.
Nora put on a confident face. “I don’t need luck, I have you two!”
She walked to the back door, wondering how long it would take for the two of them to start boinking.
The latch made a distinct clunk as it opened, leading to a small hallway. There was very little light in the back, but to her left was the stockroom and the bathroom. To her right was a short corridor with a door at the end of the hallway.
The stockroom might store extra goods that could be useful to them later, so she decided to clear that room first. It wasn’t much more than a large concrete box, pallets laid out nearly in a grid pattern with walkways between. At the rear were two large roll up doors, probably leading to a loading dock of some kind.
There wasn’t a forklift in the small warehouse, but her searching eyes skimmed over a pallet jack stored in a corner. Many of the pallets were still shrink-wrapped, waiting for an employee that never came. Would never come.
There wasn’t much room for an alien to hide, but she made sure to walk around the periphery of the room anyway, paying close attention to the small open area in the pallets where the forks for a forklift would go. If she had been a crawler, that would be an opportune hiding spot.
Despite her fears, there was nothing. Nothing hiding inside the pallets, nothing behind the pallets, nothing. Sighing with relief, she put the gun away and looked at the small sea of nondescript cardboard boxes. A few small emergency lights flickered in the ceiling, making the room feel oppressive.
Curious, she pulled open one of the boxes on top and peered inside. It was filled with beach towels and t-shirts with sappy slogans. “I escaped the Man at Arc of Sands.” “Tropical. Topical. Trees.” A bunch of palm trees were emblazoned on the front.
They were cringe-inducing, but her current shirt was still soiled with the nasty alien fluid. She stripped off her old shirt and tossed it into a corner. She grabbed the one with palm trees on it and slipped it on. At least it wasn’t an objectionable color.
She left the pallet and tried another. This one had boxes that hadn’t yet been opened. There were chemical symbols on the sides and various warning glyphs with sour faced men. She popped open one of the boxes. Inside were a bunch of round containers, each labeled separately with their own warnings.
Bromine, Muriatic acid, Borax, Potassium Peroxymonosulfate, and a bunch of others. Heavy-duty chemicals, but what were they for? And why were they in a storage room in a convenience store at a resort?
She read a few of the labels and their use soon became obvious—they were all pool chemicals. Bromine was being used instead of chlorine to kill bacteria in the water. The acids and bases were used to balance the pH of the water, and others were used to control algae and keep bacteria growth low.
She wondered whether they could use any of them against the aliens, but couldn’t see how. The chemicals were in liquid form, but would still need to be diluted with water to make a proper delivery system. They needed something like a chemical sprayer. She wasn’t certain what concentration would be needed, or if indeed any of the chemicals would hurt the aliens at all.
She filed their existence away in her mind, hoping something would occur to her later on. She moved on and checked a few more pallets, but nothing very interesting jumped out at her. Non-perishable foods, freeze-dried pineapple, and various other foodstuffs predominated.
She should have asked Sophie if she could have borrowed her knife; many of the pallets were still shrink-wrapped. On the other hand, maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t—there might be something else useful in the warehouse, but it would require more time to discover than she wanted to spend tearing boxes apart.
Satisfied for now, she left the warehouse and returned to the short hallway. She drew the pistol and approached the end of the hallway. Past the door to the bathroom on her left was a set of doors and a call button, leading to a levitator. Straight ahead was solid, steel door. There was a keycard security system on the door, but it had been left propped open by a wooden wedge.
With caution, she slipped through the door and looked over a blue iron railing. It was a staircase, leading downwards. Her curiosity piqued, she walked down a few flights to another door at the bottom.
She opened the door and looked out. A large tunnel curved away into the distance to her right and left. She couldn’t see anything before the passage curved out of sight, but bright lines in different colors were painted on the walls. Bold text with arrows pointed to the right: the two that stuck out for her were “Pump Room” in green and “Power Plant” in yellow. There was also a purple line for custodial and a few other colors for other destinations. To the left was a singular black line that indicated “Storage.”
Along the ceiling was a complicated arrangement of pipes. Some were marked steam, another seawater, and yet another designated as a standpipe. The steam pipe was wrapped with some form of spongy insulation. The floor was straight and level, with drains in the floor to deal with any kind of seepage.
Nora was surprised that the tunnel existed and marveled at its sophistication, but on more consideration she should have expected it. How else would a sprawling resort move supplies around when there were few level grade roads to get the job done? Ritzy resorts tended to want to keep their personnel as hidden as possible and this was a great way to do it.
The good news was that they weren’t trapped, and could leave via the tunnels at any time. The bad news was that it wasn’t obvious where they should go next, and they had no idea where the aliens were congregating.
She didn’t fancy going farther without the others, so she climbed the stairwell and pushed back through the ‘employees only’ door.
Alys and Sophie were embracing and making out with each other. They took no notice of their surroundings. Next to them, on the store’s counter, a broom lay. The kitchen knife had been taped to the stub end of the broom awkwardly. Nora harrumphed, interrupting their inept attempt at a tryst.
Alys looked embarrassed. “I couldn’t help it!” she squeaked. “She looked so cute, I just had to kiss her. And then she kissed back. And we kissed some more.” She stopped, her mouth finally running out of steam. Sophie’s face was red and she said nothing.
Nora looked at them, half amused, half irritated. “I want to put you both in a bedroom right now, until you get the fucking out of you, but we have aliens all around us. Alien invasion? You forget about that?”
They both had the good grace to look ashamed. “Never mind,” continued Nora. “I found more supplies in the back room, but I don’t think they’ll be all that helpful. Mainly more supplies for the shop, along with a pallet of pool chemicals. There’s a huge corridor system downstairs, probably for movement of staff and goods through the resort. I think we should explore there next. We can always regroup back here if we need to.”
Sophie and Alys nodded. Sophie jumped, blushing again as Alys groped her butt. She smacked Alys playfully. “Stop that!” Her protest didn’t seem too serious.
Nora looked at them both, a thundercloud growing on her face. “Did either of you do anything here besides play patty cake with each other?”
Alys cringed and pointed at the makeshift polearm. “I taped the knife to a broom?”
Nora turned away from them and put her face in her hands. Muffled screams of frustration came for several moments before she felt ready to face them again without stripping the flesh from their bones. “Anything else?” she asked, her voice too calm.
“I packed everything up and found an employee keycard,” volunteered Sophie carefully, not sure if her next statement might set Nora off again. She paused and looked at Nora’s new shirt. “Nice threads?”
“Fine, let’s get it together and go before the aliens decide to make it a foursome.”
Alys raised a hand. “Can I please go to the bathroom?”
“Yes, you may,” growled Nora, “but make it quick.”
Alys waddled over to the employee door as quickly as she could, making sure not to trip over any of last night’s camping gear. She heard Nora muttering something to Sophie but pretended that she couldn’t. Hopefully she would be able to escape any more rage from Nora by hiding in the restroom for a little while. Besides, she really needed to pee—that was no joke.
She wasn’t sure why, but she still felt terribly bloated. There was a slight ache from her stomach, and it felt like gas was still traveling through her bowels. Whatever she ate yesterday must have really done a number on her. Every hour or two she needed to hit a stall—something had to be pressing on her bladder. She did feel a bit too full, as if she had eaten a large steak.
As she let go in the toilet, she felt around her stomach, trying to pinpoint what was going on. Her whole abdomen felt hard and knotted. It was somewhat painful when she pressed on it, but otherwise it felt fine. It probably wasn’t anything to worry about, she’d had bad intestinal flu in the past and the symptoms hadn’t been too much different than this. Despite the pain, something in her enjoyed the feeling it made when she poked at it. Very inconvenient to have this weirdness during an alien attack, but when had anything in her life been convenient?
Oh well, she was sure it would get better soon. She might try to find some meds in the store before they left to see if would help the stomach upset. She found herself stroking her stomach, her eyes slightly glazed. Damn, she needed some personal attention. Maybe Sophie would be willing to give her some? Her hand crept towards her vagina as if of its own volition, but she stopped herself and slapped her left hand. That was a crazy idea. They needed to figure out how to escape the planet, the sooner the better.
She finished what she had originally came to the bathroom to do and sauntered back outside, pleased to find that Nora hadn’t strangled Sophie while she had been otherwise occupied. Instead, they had repacked their belongings. Nora handed Alys a backpack. “Here, we found another pack in the store. We’ve packed it with food and spare batteries. We didn’t find anything more useful for weaponry, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with the knife on a stick.”
Alys accepted it with a murmur of thanks. As she slid the backpack onto her back, Nora grabbed her rifle and Sophie her pistol. She gave the makeshift polearm to Alys, who rolled her eyes. There was no way it was going to be adequate if the little crawlers attacked again. A weapon of last resort, perhaps.
Alys wasn’t too put out when Nora insisted on leading the way to the stairwell with Sophie right behind. She admired the well put together curves of her two best friends and her imagination started to wander. What would it be like to be playing a more mature version of hide and go seek? Maybe she’d call it ‘hide and go peek?’
She bounced down the stairs after her friends, her breasts jiggling underneath her shirt. Did they seem a bit larger? No, silly, that was just her imagination. She was probably just being distracted by the fact that they had been unable to locate a more suitable outfit for her than yet another t-shirt. She had traded her white tee for a green one with an emblem of a white palm tree on it. The front read ‘Under a tree. Over the sea.’ Arc of Sands was written in small print with an intergalactic copyright near the bottom.
The phrase was a groaner, but the color made her feel a bit happier. It was strange, but she didn’t feel half bad. Not as bad as she should be feeling at this point with a bloated tummy and half burnt feet. Even so, descending into an unknown tunnel complex underneath a gigantic resort while alien creatures wandered around grabbing and dismembering people had a certain dampening effect on the spirit.
Her belly gurgled as she waddled down the steps at a measured pace, careful not to upset her digestion. She giggled internally at how silly she must look. As the stairwell opened up into the underground tunnel system, she gaped in wonder. This was no small, dank tunnel like she had imagined. Instead it was quite large, wide enough to fit two full size trucks side by side. The tunnel was dimly lit by a red emergency light every thirty meters.
“Do you know what’s stored down that way?” asked Sophie, pointing in the direction of the sign labeled ‘Storage.’
“No,” replied Nora. “Want to give it a look?”
Sophie nodded, so they all started walking down the tunnel, Nora taking the lead. It curved gently away to the left for a few hundred meters, then dead ended at a wall. On the left side of the wall was a locked door with a glowing red light. Backed up to the wall sat a forklift, a large power cable attached to its side. A few crates were stacked against the wall of the tunnel, along with piles of empty pallets.
Sophie walked up to the door and held the keycard over the pad. The door beeped and unlocked, and she pulled the door open and let it slide shut again. “We can get out here if we need to. I’m not sure where this leads.” She walked through the door and disappeared upstairs.
Nora was investigating the forklift while Alys watched, bemused. “Dammit, the battery is almost flat. Someone must have used it before the power went out and now it hasn’t had a chance to charge back up. Or it won’t charge on emergency power.”
Sophie popped back into the tunnel. “This door leads to the surface. Somewhere near one of the resort towers.”
“Okay,” replied Nora. “Maybe there’s something in one of these crates that could be useful?”
She tried to figure out how to open one of them, but they were nailed shut. Nothing they had on them could be used to break them open. “I guess there’s nothing we can do here.”
“Should we visit the power plant, then?” asked Alys. “If we could get the power back up we could use this forklift for greater mobility.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Nora. “That might also signal other survivors that not everyone is dead—or taken.”
“Might also draw the aliens to us,” Sophie said neutrally.
“That’s a risk we have to take. Without power we don’t stand a chance of being able to communicate with anybody else.” Nora sighed. “I wish we were still sitting on the beach sipping margaritas.”
They all shared the sentiment, but fell in line and started back down the tunnel in the other direction. They passed the door they had originally come out of and proceeded to follow the tunnel as it curved to the right.
Nora had set a fast pace, with Sophie following. After a few minutes, Alys started to fall behind. “Can we slow down a bit?” she asked, winded.
Sophie looked at her with concern and slowed. “How are you feeling? You doing any better?”
“It doesn’t hurt too much,” replied Alys, her breathing strained. “I still feel bloated, though. Something must be swollen, pressing against my bladder.” She could already feel the slight urge to go to the bathroom again.
“Hold on there,” replied Nora. “We don’t want to delay too much, but if we find another restroom on our way we’ll take a pit stop.”
Alys nodded with relief and they continued on, slower than before. She didn’t want to tell the others, but for some reason she wasn’t feeling very concerned about pretty much anything. Endorphins were flooding her body and more than anything else she couldn’t stop thinking about how wonderful it felt to be pleasantly full. This in turn was leading towards more erotic thoughts that her rational mind kept pushing back down. She had to remind herself that jumping Sophie in the tunnel to satisfy her needs wouldn’t make Nora very happy.
It would make her happy, though. Very happy. A strange smile was fixed on her face as she marched behind the others, her mind far away in a bedroom with pink chiffon lace and a willing body ready to indulge her every desire. Lost in her imagination, she almost rammed into Sophie, who had stopped in front of her.
Nora looked at them with amusement and gestured at a green steel door which had ‘Pump Room 03’ written on it in stenciled letters. A vague chemical smell wafted from the door. It reminded Alys of spending hours by the poolside taking in the afternoon air. Large pipes plunged into the wall directly above the door.
Sophie waved the keycard over the reader by the door and it beeped open. She opened the door and ushered the rest of them in. Nora went in first, tense and ready for action. Some of that tension eased out of Nora’s shoulders after she finished scanning the room, finding no alien presence.
“Clear!” She announced. The rest of them slipped inside, the door automatically locking behind them.
The room was small and bare. The large pipes wrapped around the sides of the walls and congregated at the back near a series of large hand valves and empty hoppers which had metal covers. In the corner was a rack with a series of mounted computers, a small desk, and a dusty old monitor with a keyboard. There was little noise in the room except from the soft whir of computer fans.
Sophie perked up at seeing the computer, and sat down in the swivel chair, clicking a few keys. “I’m not sure if this will be of any use, but let’s see if this computer has any information. Give me a few minutes!”
The monitor lit up. They were probably too cheap to install projectors, speculated Alys. Cheaper to use surplus equipment in areas that would never be seen by guests.
Sophie pointed at the screen, which had now lit up with primitive looking graphics. “It’s an embedded system, running a real time operating system.” She sounded disappointed.
“What does that mean?” asked Nora.
“It’s not connected to anything useful. It was created solely for maintenance of the pump system, and I can’t connect to anything else. There’s nothing to hack into.”
Alys wandered closer to the screen. Small blue spirals were spinning slowly next to rectangles and circles. Red lines connected the various shapes together. A yellow rectangle highlighted a section of the display. Below were printed several lines of text.
FLOW: 0 ft/sFEET OF HEAD: 0 ftPUMP RATE: 0 GPMRPM: 0WATT: 0ERR: LOW VLTERR: LOW FLWERR: LOW RPM
“I’m just guessing, but it looks like this is supposed to represent the pump system, and there’s no power to run it. The ‘LOW VLT’ error indicates low voltage, and the other errors are caused by that lack of power.”
Nora shrugged. “Not surprising, emergency power probably isn’t provisioned to run the heavy duty equipment.” She creased her brow. “Without power, can either of you think of any way this system might be useful to us?” The other two shook their heads. “Fine, let’s keep moving.”
Nobody objected to that statement, so they gathered together again, left the safety of the small room and continued their trek down the tunnel. They had only traveled a few hundred meters when the sullen overhead lights flickered and went out.
“Shit!” exclaimed Nora.
“Perhaps the emergency generators have run out fuel,” suggested Sophie. “It’s already been about a day.” Her voice echoed in the dark tunnel.
Alys said nothing, the glow in her belly making everything less worrisome. Despite the pitch-black darkness, somehow she had the feeling that everything would work out just fine. Her friends would figure something out and they would escape.
Alys dug into her bag and retrieved the flashlights they had salvaged from the store earlier. She snapped one on, highlighting her two friends blinking in the bright light. “Here!” she said, holding the other two flashlights out until they had both grabbed one.
Three flashlights stabbed out into the darkness, thin cones lighting the dark stretch of tunnel ahead. “I guess going to the power plant is no longer optional,” remarked Nora.
Sophie said nothing. They trudged along in blackness for a few more minutes, their footfalls echoing down the tunnel. Alys’ flashlight flickered over an alcove with a sign. The pictographs indicated that it was a bathroom. Alys felt the need to go again.
“Hey,” she said. “I think there’s a bathroom there, can you hold up while I go?”
Nora sighed and nodded. “We’ll wait out here for you.” They took up station outside the doors, Sophie watching the rear while Nora played her flashlight over the tunnel in front of them.
“Thanks!” said Alys, rushing inside, prodded by an uncomfortable throb from her bladder.
The room was large, with a long row of sinks and walled-in stalls. She blinded herself for a moment when her flashlight bounced off a mirror. No aliens here. Maybe they hadn’t penetrated down into the tunnels.
Unwilling to check every stall, she popped open the nearest one and propped her makeshift weapon on one of the walls, dropping her bikini bottom with relief. As she evacuated, she checked the lumpy area again. It was much larger now, but there was even less pain when she prodded it. Now it felt like she was rolling her fingers over an erogenous zone. After she was done using the toilet, she couldn’t resist pressing at the lump with one hand while gently rubbing her lower lips with the other.
She was close to an orgasm when a shriek ran through the bathroom, magnified by the tiled walls. The loud wail was cut off by organic noises, sending a frisson of terror up her spine. Something was in the bathroom with her.
Erotic thoughts abandoned, she pulled up her bikini bottom and grabbed her weapon. She slid open the stall door, watching for any movement. Her eyes caught a glimpse of shiny chitin and she let out a gasp, slamming the door shut.
There was no mistake, a crawler was in the bathroom with her. How was she going to escape it? Nora and Sophie would come running if they had heard the scream, but what if they hadn’t? How soundproof was the door to the restroom?
She waited a few more seconds, her breathing labored. She could yell for help, but there was no way she’d be able to yell louder than that scream. Or she could steel herself and fight. Stop being dead weight on the team. Everyone had been covering for her so far, making her feel inadequate. They hadn’t even given her something useful to defend herself with, for heaven’s sake! Time to prove she could do more than just tech support!
Her mind made up, she slid open the latch and pulled at the door again, leading with tip of her makeshift spear. The alien was only a few feet from her, the thin beam from the flashlight bouncing off its reflective exterior. Its four, sharp legs clicked along the floor, tail extended. Otherwise it made no noise, stalking new prey.
It was beautiful in its grotesque way. That someone or something would make such a weapon for the subjugation of a planet was abhorrent, yet she couldn’t help but be attracted to its brutal brilliance.
The alien had taken no notice of Alys, moving towards the door to the bathroom. Resolved to stop it before it got that far, Alys lunged with all her strength, spearing it in the center like a large fish. A jagged cut opened up, spurting green goo in a spray that landed right at her feet. The alien collapsed as if the string holding it up had been cut, its legs flopping out. Its body emitted a pitiable hissing noise.
Alys was surprised at its fragility; perhaps she had hit a vulnerable spot in its side. And it was also curious that it hadn’t turned to face the threat she posed—the flashlight should have given her away. Whatever the reason, it had died without protest, and now her weapon was quite soaked with alien goo. She navigated around the monster’s pool of goo and stuck the blade of the knife into the sink, washing it off. There must still be some water pressure left in the system, even with the power out. The goop slopped off the blade, but the broom handle was stained green.
She stared at the sad, broken monster for a moment, regretting the necessity of her actions. She felt a strange feeling that she ought to be cuddling it instead of killing it, but that was illogical. She should have no sympathy for the little horrors.
If there was one here, there could be others. Nervous, she moved to the first stall in the row, walking down the spotless blue tile floor. She gripped the spear in one hand with the flashlight, ready to thrust. Water dripped down the drain of the sink she had been using, the noise keeping her on edge.
The first few stalls were empty, the toilets sitting there like silent sentinels. It was about halfway down the row that she found a victim. It was a woman, in her natural mid-thirties, no rejuv. She was wearing a gray janitorial uniform with the name ‘Maria’ printed in cursive above her left breast. Her mouth was jammed full of alien tail, her shiny cap staring back at Alys like a polished bowling ball. Her chest rose and fell, the alien’s legs twitching, but she was otherwise comatose.
Alys was surprised that the sight had gotten her aroused again. Not something she had expected after killing a gross alien and finding more evidence of their infiltration. Moreover, seeing the infested janitor was giving her a feeling of rightness. It was disconcerting—she couldn’t resolve the strange cognitive dissonance.
She shook her head. Couldn’t do anything for the lady now, their best hope still lay with getting the power back. Backing away, she was about to leave when the tail of the alien started to withdraw.
There was a wet slurp as it pulled out, the poor woman’s neck bulging as the articulated tail unfurled. It curled around the woman’s neck like a necklace. The rough segments, wet with saliva, dangled with a latent threat. The last section popped out of her rounded lips with a spurt.
Her frozen mouth twisted into a smile. She started to speak with a slight accent, her voice rushing out in a whisper. “The Brood speaks...obey. Listen to the Brood...obey. Worship the Brood...obey.”
Alys was frightened, but also—intrigued. It was so hot to watch the alien manipulate the former custodian’s thoughts. Did the alien squirt an egg into her brain? Had it tunneled inside? What would it be like to wear an alien controller and have her mind trained for obedience? Her bad thoughts displaced with an obedient core? Her thighs clenched.
The strange thoughts frightened her as much as they intrigued. Both her mind and body were starting to agree that being enslaved by the aliens was very fun, almost necessary. She needed to get out of the bathroom before she stripped down and masturbated in front of the brainless custodian.
With no concern for any other possible victims in the bathroom, she hurried to the door. The aliens were really getting to her, and it was frightening. She was worried about how attractive the idea of finding an alien to submit to was becoming. A slide into blissful darkness only an alien anesthetic could provide. She blinked hard and shoved at the door, banishing the traitorous thoughts.
“Are you alright?” asked Sophie, looking over Alys’ frazzled demeanor and stained spear.
“Very much no,” she replied. “There are aliens in the bathroom. I killed one with my knife, and there’s a—host, for lack of a better term, in there. It looks like an alien is in control of her.”
“Damn!” exclaimed Nora. “We got complacent. Let’s keep moving.”
Sophie hesitated. “Should we—eliminate this victim? We don’t want aliens in our rear.”
“No!” blurted Alys. “No, that would be cold blooded murder! We can’t possibly consider it!” She looked at Nora, wild eyed.
Nora pursed her lips in consideration. “You make a valid point, Sophie, but there’s too many problems. We can’t kill every alien. We don’t know if we’ll be coming back this way. If we shoot it, the noise might attract more, and we have limited ammunition. If we use the knife, one of us might get hit with that alien goop and go comatose. We can’t afford to be dragging someone through these tunnels if the aliens attack again.”
“In that case, let’s leave quickly,” said Alys with a shiver.
Her strange attraction to the alien infestation was scaring her. It was like spotting a full box of chocolates and trying to avoid the temptation of tasting just one. Her self control wasn’t that good. Especially if the box had the one with the caramel center.
In agreement, the three pushed their way through the darkness at a fast walk. Their lights pushed back the blackness, but only in a short radius. The pipes hanging from the ceiling seemed more sinister without light to illuminate them, their long lengths becoming indistinct outside their little circle of light. Several more lines had been added to the wall, pointing to various pools, towers, custodian rooms, and other destinations. Their goal fixed in their minds, they ignored these new destinations and followed the yellow line.
Up ahead loomed a crossroads, tunnels branching off in several directions. Nora noted the different colored lines, then pointed in the direction of the tunnel containing yellow. Alys’ eyes briefly flitted over the labels on the other paths. Most of them meant nothing to her, but the one that stated ‘Pool Complex C’ jumped out at her. How many pool complexes were there? She tried to think back to the glossy map she had gotten when she arrived, but it was too long ago. She didn’t even remember the layout of the resort—it hadn’t seemed important at the time.
They trudged forward, the monotony of the tunnel giving them little to talk about. It was hard to figure out how much time had passed. Had the excitement in the pump room and the bathroom happened a half hour ago? An hour ago? Was it midday? Impossible to know while they were underground, and the longer they remained, the more claustrophobic it was becoming. With only their footfalls for company, the situation was becoming too grim for Alys. An irrational feeling that she needed to be above ground was growing. Not even Sophie’s swaying butt was sufficient to distract her.
“So—do you come here often?” she asked, to break the silence. “If so, your choice of venue is a bit—below my standards.”
When she didn’t get a reaction, she tried to raise the ante. “It’s not exactly—above board. It doesn’t make me—piping hot. It looks like we might be in some—hot water.” She cringed at the last one.
Nora let out a loud sigh of exasperation. “I appreciate your—attempts. But I don’t think levity is what we need at this moment.”
Subdued, Alys stopped trying. They really were terrible jokes, but she was a little hurt that she had been shut down.
Sophie had slowed down until she was walking next to Alys. She watched Nora warily and whispered to Alys. “I liked your jokes,” she said, blushing. She sped back up before Alys could reply.
Alys smiled, tears in her eyes. Everything was so shitty, it was nice that someone sympathized and understood her stupid instincts. She blinked the tears back, sniffling a little. If she let go now, she’d probably have a complete emotional meltdown, and that wouldn’t help anyone. This invasion was playing havoc with her emotions. She was having awful mood swings.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and soldiered onwards, cramming her emotions into the smallest ball possible. She wasn’t going to mess things up for everyone else.
Nora raised a hand. “Slow up, do either of you hear anything?”
There was a low scraping sound, as if something was being dragged. They all held their breath, and Nora readied her rifle. Through the grim darkness of a cross passage, several shiny capped figures came marching.
Alys recoiled in horror. The infested women were walking with a shambling gait, green alien slime encrusted on their crop tops. As they walked, the alien tails hanging off their heads swayed like elephant trunks, articulated lengths dangling. They walked with the same cadence, in lockstep.
Nora moved back and ushered Sophie back too as the droned women started to pass them. Behind them they were dragging pasty white, bloated—somethings. It took Alys a moment to realize that the things were being dragged by their legs. The three petite women dressed in beachwear were moving corpses.
Alys felt nauseous, bile in her throat. She gulped and gasped, trying with difficulty to keep down the cereal she had eaten just a few short hours ago. She lost the battle when she got a closer look at the larger body two of them were pulling. It had an anchor tattoo on one arm, but the body’s head was missing entirely, terminated in a gory, misshapen hunk of flesh.
As Alys emptied her stomach on the hard, concrete floor, Nora watched the eerie parade with an eagle eye. She kept her vision on the infested women, ready to fire if any of the alien appendages decided to take a shot at them.
Toned legs walked delicately, a shuffle step, a grunt. A corpse sliding along the floor a few inches. The one in the red top halted and turned her head to look at them. A satisfied smile curved on her face. “The dead also serve,” she remarked. “In time, so will you. When you get tired of running from your fate, come meet us at the Pool.”
Her diction seemed clear, better than the mute, freshly infested victims they had seen earlier. Perhaps the alien beings gained more control over their victims as time went on?
The infested women made no attempt to approach them or say anything more. They continued their slow, gruesome task with an air of inevitability. As soon as their shuffling step had cleared the passage, Nora motioned her companions to continue.
Nora and Sophie made a careful step over the area where the corpses had been dragged, even though nothing remained on the ground to mark their passing. Alys stared after them with horror, but obeyed Nora’s gesture to continue on. She kept her flashlight pointed at the slowly vanishing procession, her mind still not quite conceiving reality.
Her flashlight washed over another sign, ‘Pool Complex C.’ The infested were following another cross passage going to the same destination she had seen earlier. She felt a sudden urge to follow the infested women. To meet them at the Pool.
“Hey,” she said softly in a timid voice. “Can we check out what’s going on in Pool Complex C when we’re done with the power plant? The aliens have to be doing something there.”
Sophie chimed in. “I concur. Without knowing the goal of the aliens, or what they need with corpses, it will be very difficult to come up with a plan of action, or to avoid them in the future. If we can discern their motives we should stand a better chance of surviving without becoming slaves.”
Nora shrugged. “I don’t like the idea too much. It feels like the only reason we haven’t been taken yet is because the aliens haven’t been trying that hard.” She reached up to scratch her head. “Fine, we’ll take a quick peek, but we are not going to expose ourselves.”’
Alys ducked her head. “Thanks,” she squeaked. Normally she would have been more assertive, but she had taken a battering the last few hours and had found herself shattered. It was all she could do to gather herself together and continue to follow the others without breaking down. Her mind kept replaying the image of dead Captain Dan’s arms sliding along the floor of the tunnel. Could she have saved him?
She needed to break the mental loop, but all she could think of was sliding her hands over a shiny carapace while her tongue glided over a blank smile. The two opposing images overlapped each other until she made a concerted effort to banish both. She concentrated on her footsteps, watching her battered feet taking one step after another. She let the droning beat of footsteps carry her away from the terrible thoughts and frightening fantasies.
“I think we’re here,” announced Nora. She was shining her flashlight on a large bronze plaque with ‘Annebruck Solar Power Tower Facility’ etched into it.
With the power down, the door’s electromagnetic lock had failed. Even then, the backup lock should have kept the door shut, but marks on the door jamb indicated that something powerful had sheared off the entire mechanism. The group slipped through and Nora tried to find a way to keep it shut. “Looks like we need to get the power back on,” she remarked.
Sophie and Alys continued forward, trying to take in the vastness of the plant with their tiny flashlight beams. Large pipes were everywhere, an incomprehensible tangle of plumbing. The plant itself was a huge room. Six large, squat steam turbines dominated the center of the floor, with ladders leading to their tops. On the far wall there was a huge battery bank with thick cabling. On the near wall was a metal staircase leading up to a large boxy structure suspended from the ceiling. There were large window panes in the box overlooking the plant.
Nothing was spinning, nothing turning. It was quiet as a tomb, their footsteps echoing from the walls. It was like stepping into the shadow of an ancient behemoth, with every shadow a possible menace.
“I don’t like it here,” shivered Alys. “Too many places for aliens to hide.”
Sophie concurred. “This looks like the generation room. We need to find the control center and see if there’s any way to rectify the problem.”
Nora wandered over to the staircase. “Maybe up here?” She bounded up the stairs, forcing the others to follow.
At the top was another inoperative security door with the marking ‘CONTROL-02,’ and a scene that was more than a little unsettling. Blood had been splashed over the floor near the foot of the consoles, dried and spattered elsewhere. An obvious struggle had taken place, but the only evidence left were the blood and some drag marks on the floor. Of the previous occupants there was no sign.
“Be ready,” announced Nora.
She took extra time to survey the room, but, like the pump room, the long and narrow control room was empty. Sophie and Alys squeezed in behind her, looking in curiosity at the rows of dark control panels, gauges, and switches. The wall opposite them had a heavy steel door. At the end of the room there was also a bank of full length blue lockers, possibly to store the personal possessions of the plant operators while they were on duty. Finally, there was a heavy duty breaker box at the back complete with ‘HIGH VOLTAGE’ sign and pictograph of an unlucky victim being electrocuted.
“Uhhh, we might have a problem here,” said Alys, her eyes blurring as she took in the sheer volume of instruments and buttons. “I didn’t take a course on power plant management.”
“Wait,” said Sophie, “there’s something still working here.” She pointed to the end of the console, on the side nearest the lockers.
Sure enough, some of the gauges were lit, and a small closed circuit projection screen was operative. Alys leaned over the display, propping her spear up against the console.
It displayed dazzling arrays of shiny panels arranged in a semi-circle. They were all standing vertical. Something clicked in Alys’ mind. “This has gotta be a solar power station! The generators are underground, but the solar panels are somewhere on the surface!”
“It looks like these gauges are measuring some current stats in the plant. There’s a temperature gauge, one for pressure, cooling flow rate, etcetera. Seems like something is working here!”
Sophie nosed in to take a look. “The temperature in the storage tanks is nil, a gauge over here is labeled DSL, almost no pressure in the system, and the PNL angle is 90 degrees. I don’t quite know what this all means. I think this plant had an emergency shutdown, but why?”
Nora chimed in with a theory of her own. “What would happen if you set off an EMP in the atmosphere? You cause a major power surge, disrupting ground equipment. Could that have caused the plant to go into shutdown.”
“Possibly,” replied Sophie. “It might also have permanently damaged the power plant. Not that invaders would have really cared all that much.” She looked back at the console. “We’re dealing with a black start, possibly with some battery backups. We need some kind of checklist or manual to get the procedure right. We don’t want to accidentally have an overpressure scenario and blow the place up.” Her expression became grim. “Unless we do.”
Alys raised her hand. “Can we avoid getting a case of the kablooies? I still like being a collection of cohesive atoms!”
She managed to get a small chuckle out of the other two, which made her happy. Then one of the lockers started to rattle with a muffled noise.
On the alert, Sophie drew her pistol and Nora aimed her rifle. Sighing, Alys picked up her broom and menaced the door with the kitchen knife. The locker rattled a few more times before Alys raised the courage to open the latch with one hand. She stepped back, ready to stab, but instead of a shiny carapace, a woman dropped out of the locker.
Her slender arms were raised in the air, brushing the edge of a yellow hard hat. She stared at them with piercing blue eyes, her auburn hair tucked neatly under the helmet. She was well endowed, wearing work overalls and a long sleeve shirt. “Uhh, hello? How do you do? My name’s Kate!”
Alys flat out stared at her assets, a sudden desire to feel them in her hands blooming in her mind. She squeezed her eyes shut and backed off, trying to wipe the desire from her mind.
Kate waggled one hand in the air, as if offering to shake. “Howdy!”
Nora looked at her with skepticism. “How did you get in that locker? What are you doing here?”
Kate rolled her eyes to one corner, thinking. “I started my internship at the plant a few weeks ago. They don’t quite trust me to touch anything yet.” She lowered one hand to cup the side of her mouth. “That’s totally not because I managed to blow a steam gasket my first day on the job!” she whispered with a sly grin.
“Anyway, there was a huge electrical snapping noise and everything went black. The emergency lights came on, but the turbines spun down and everybody ran around making sure the emergency shutdown went okay. When the emergency lights came on, big old nasty brutes came through the doors and started knifing people with their legs.”
Her face was shadowed. “Lost most of my mates in the first few minutes, so I made the executive decision to lock myself in that locker!” She gestured behind her.
“I’ve been in there for at least a day, if not longer, and my stomach is growling so can I drop my arms and have something to eat like a peanut and jelly special with a dill pickle before I pop please?” The last thought came out in a complete jumble.
Nora sidled over to Sophie and spoke out the side of her mouth. “Do you think the aliens took her brain?”
“Hey! I heard that!”
“She’s probably telling the truth,” remarked Sophie. “The locker doesn’t open from the interior.”
She looked at Kate, who had tilted her hard hat low and was doing impressions of a gruff construction worker for Alys. “I change my opinion. She was probably always this insane.”
Nora lowered her rifle, set her flashlight on the control console, and dug in her pack. “I suppose it is time for lunch. Hey! Would you settle for preassembled tuna fish sandwiches?”
Kate looked at them with sad eyes. “They were probably made in a factory.” She snatched one and started eating it at top speed. “Tastes like bearing grease. Another?”
Nora gave her a second sandwich, then handed more out to everyone else. She reached her hand back into the bag. “There’s juice too.”
She handed the juice to Kate and introduced their little group. “Hi, my name’s Nora. I shoot things. Over there is Alys, your IT help desk tech, and Sophie, programmer extraordinaire.”
Kate slurped her drink down as if she was lost in a desert, then looked at the rest of them with questions in her eyes. “So what are y’all doing here in a dark power plant? Shouldn’t you be rescued or eaten by aliens by now?”
Sophie spoke around bites of her sandwich. “We don’t really know what we’re doing, precisely. We’ve been running away from aliens and trying to link up with other survivors. We’ve seen no rescue attempts yet, and I doubt we can contact anyone without power, as the comm net is down.”
Nora swallowed, then looked at Kate. “What we’re asking is—do you have any idea how to get this power plant running again?”
“Well,” she drew out the syllables in an elongated fashion. “Do you have any idea what time of day it is? Cause if it’s midnight, we’re screwed.”
“It’s midday,” replied Alys. “Probably.” She shrugged. “We woke up and ate something at breakfast, and now we’re hungry again. Probably lunchtime. Also, that display on the console appears to show sunlight.”
“In that case,” Kate continued, “it depends on whether there’s any reserve power left to get the turbines started. Looks like the emergency lights are off, so we’re already living in the danger zone!” She sung the last few words.
She sprung to the console, sounding excited. “Wait a moment,” called Alys. “Have you ever actually done this before?”
Kate scrunched her eyes. “Kind of? Okay, not really. I know the theory, though.”
“Died of a theory will be my epitaph,” remarked Nora dryly. “Okay, do you need our help in any way?”
“There’s a circuit breaker panel over there in the corner. The one with the heavy duty ‘you’ll die if you touch anything’ pictures on it. Someone should open the panel and locate the button that says ‘Push to Close.’ Wait for my command, then—” she paused dramatically “—push the button. I have to stay here and monitor the system when the power comes on.”
Sophie walked to the box in the corner and pulled open the cover. “I think I have it located,” she said, dryly.
“Great!” said Kate. “Let’s see what we have here. No system pressure, solar panels are not set, no reserve tank heat, feed water low, spectacular!” She peered closer at the console. “Luckily, it appears that the diesel backup generators still have a teaspoon of fuel left.”
She twisted a dial. “First we have to wait for the solar panels to realign. At midday the sun is overhead so we need to wait a little longer for them to rotate to a more oblique angle. Anybody know any show tunes?” She began humming a bawdy chorus from a ribald musical.
A loud bang reverberated through the power plant. Nora stared at Kate. “Was that you?” she whispered.
Kate was wide eyed and stuttering. “N-no! We shouldn’t hear anything yet! We’re underground!”
Nora made a shushing gesture and continued in a harsh whisper. “We’ve got company. Keep working on getting the plant back up, and be quick about it! Sophie and Alys—cover that door! Douse your lights or keep them away from the plant floor!”
Kate stopped humming, her eyes wide. Sophie and Alys took up positions at the door, shouldering it shut. Nora kneeled and braced her rifle on a console at an acute angle from the door and slipped in her ear plugs. Alys was starting to feel the need to use the restroom again, but terror had gotten hold of her guts again and she wasn’t willing to speak up. She was really regretting this vacation now.
“Solar panels aligned,” whispered Kate. “Storage temperature rising.”
The others didn’t acknowledge, their full concentration on the smallest of sounds. Their fears were realized when sharp pinging noises filtered in from the plant floor. Their minds started imagining big, black bugs hunting in the darkness. They didn’t seem to need light to hunt their prey.
The noises were getting louder, and now there were more of them. A hunting party?
“Kate, we have to get that power up now or we’re going to be hunted like vermin!” Nora’s voice was stressed.
“Working on it! If we get a blowout we’ll never have power again!” Kate continued muttering to herself while twisting and flicking switches. “Main valve A open, cooling loop activate. Pump startup. Feedwater flow increasing.”
A few tense moments passed while no one dared to breathe. The clicking noises continued, ranging near and and far. A grid search pattern? They would find and climb the staircase eventually.
Alys was sweating buckets, her t-shirt feeling sticky. The underground tunnel temperatures had been fairly cool, so this was probably another side effect of the illness she was suffering. It was so unfair to be ill and on the run. All she wanted to do was relax and pillow her head on top of Sophie’s breasts. Her mind started manufacturing another fantasy before she could stop it. Better to be anywhere but here.
A loud ping came off the foot of the stairway. Everyone froze except for Kate. “Temperatures nominal. Pump RPMs climbing.”
“Hurry up! Hurry up!” Nora hissed.
The noises were coming louder, tapping at regular intervals as one ascended the stairs. The monster was in no hurry. It seemed to know they were trapped.
“Got it!” shouted Kate at the top of her lungs. “I am a mechanical master!” She flicked a switch and the entire room creaked.
A low rumble was followed by a slow whirring noise. The noise started to escalate, the whine penetrating the control room. The door took a sudden hit, pushing Sophie and Alys inward for a moment until they could muscle it back closed. The sound of chitin hitting the steel door was painfully loud, and it came again. Gasping, Sophie was able to hold it shut, but Alys was flagging, her mind feverish.
“Just a few moments! We have to build voltage!” shouted Kate. The hum of the generators was louder now, the banging on the door coming at more frequent intervals.
Sophie slumped, exhausted. The door pushed open, half a foot. Nora fired a round through the crack. A short alien shriek and the door slid back shut. Sophie and Alys clapped their hands to their ears.
Kate seemed unfazed at being deafened by gunfire, and was yelling loudly. “Push to close! Push to close!”
Nora cursed and lurched to her feet. The noise of the plant was a bone-rattling background hum. She rushed over to the corner and looked over the panel. There was an array of buttons and switches, but her eyes quickly fell on a big round, green button.
She pushed in the button with more strength than required. There was an electrical buzz and the panel lit up with red LEDs. A vertical strip was labeled with different parts of the resort. Guest houses, bungalows, towers, lighting, pump rooms, tunnels. It would be a perfect mental map of the complex if she had any idea what all of the places were.
It didn’t really matter. Turn it all on! She started flipping protective covers and pressing buttons, having very little idea of if she was doing the right thing. After she had pressed several buttons, the lights flickered on, a ghastly white light illuminating the plant and control room.
Kate stood facing the window. “Fuck me,” she said, far quieter than before. Packed onto the plant floor were over a dozen of the big, black monsters, crawling over the equipment. Nora gasped, but kept hitting buttons.
The door was starting to inch open again, but with a gasp of anger and another hard push it slid back shut. Nora reached a button titled ‘door locks’ and pressed it with excess vigor. A buzzer sounded and a light on the control room door changed from red to green. There was a loud clunk and a deadbolt slid into place. Sophie and Alys collapsed in a puddle on the floor.
Nora finished with the breaker box and slammed the door shut. “No time for relief. We need a way out of here. Now!” She looked at Kate and gestured at the other door. “Where does this door lead?”
A smile lit Kate’s face despite the sight outside. “I’m glad you asked! That’s the secondary entrance to the inspection tunnels! We should be able work our way back to the main tunnels from there.”
“Great, let’s move out.” Nora started gathering their bags, jamming the flashlights back inside in case they were needed later.
The pounding continued on the door, but this door was made of sterner material than the door in the bungalow and it showed no signs of deformation. Alys remained crumpled on the floor, her eyes full of tears. Sophie took the tinnitus as a matter of fact and moved to comfort Alys. “How awful,” Alys murmured, over and over.
Kate stooped down and held her hand. “There, there,” she said. “I’m sure we’ll all be captured and forced to clean the bathrooms soon. It won’t be so bad. I’m sure alien drones don’t smear shit all over the walls.”
Alys giggled at the dark humor and was able to pull herself together. “Thanks Kate,” she said from underneath Sophie’s arms.
Sophie looked at Kate with cold eyes and said nothing.
“Hey Kate!” asked Nora. “Do you ever stop making bad jokes?”
Some deep emotion appeared to well up in Kate, but she tamped it down. “If I laugh I don’t cry. If I don’t cry we don’t die.”
“How cheerful,” replied Sophie, swinging her bag onto her back.
Kate helped Alys back to her feet, stroking her arm. “It’s more cheerful than the alternative!” she replied with gusto. “Are you okay?” she asked, looking at Alys with more than passing interest.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay.” She ducked her eyes. She was lying, but she didn’t want to be a burden on the team. The addition of Kate to their small team was making everything really confusing. And all she wanted to do right now was take a piss.
Alys picked up her pack, subdued. She followed the others as they opened the secondary door and left the control room, leaving the frustrated aliens to continue bashing at the main door. Her feelings had been stirred into a maelstrom, and now she was more unsure than ever about what she wanted.