AVP: Alien vs. Predator Page 18

  They shared a startled look, and before Scar raised the disk in his hand, they heard the angry hiss.

  Together they turned to see more Aliens—four of them—scrabbling across the floor and along the ceiling. One, who was tossing masonry stones aside, lowered its head and seethed at them. Lex realized the purpose of the troops were to free the alpha-Alien, who had become trapped by the avalanche of debris.

  Meanwhile the Predator attached the plasma gun Lex had brought him to its shoulder mount. With a flurry of energy that blinded Lex, Scar drove the Aliens back with blast after blast from that powerful weapon.

  When they were fully out of sight, the Predator lowered the smoking disk and dropped it onto the floor. Then he deactivated the weapon on his shoulder and looked at Lex, who stood hypnotized by the sight of the retreating Aliens flowing over rock and along the walls and ceiling.

  Without a sound, the Predator turned its back on Lex and stalked away.

  “Hey! Hey!” Lex yelled. “I’m coming with you.”

  She ran up to the creature and grabbed his arm. The Predator turned sharply, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  “You hear me, you ugly son of a bitch,” Lex cried. “I’m coming with you.”

  The Predator stared at Lex.

  For a long moment, nothing happened. Then Lex simply opened her hands. The Predator stared at the human, arms outstretched. Then, with a grunt, Scar reached into its armor, drew out a knife and placed it into her hand.

  CHAPTER 27

  In the Labyrinth

  No sooner had Scar handed Lex the weapon than the Alien horde swarmed out of the dark in a second attack. Hissing angrily, scrabbling over broken masonry, and running along the walls and ceiling like giant insects, they advanced on Lex and Scar.

  Lex backed out of the chamber, into the passageway where she’d killed her first Alien. Its carcass was still there, the melted spear sticking out of its guts.

  Lex looked up at the Predator. “A short partnership, but a sweet one.”

  If Scar heard her, he did not respond. Instead the Predator’s long-fingered hands traced the elaborate hieroglyphs running along the side of the doorway.

  Lex watched as he tapped several symbols in quick succession, obviously entering a sophisticated code. Each character Scar touched began to glow with an inner light, just like the buttons on an elevator or the features on the star map in the sarcophagus chamber.

  Lex glanced up from the ancient keypad to see the Aliens hurling toward them, hopping over one another as they approached. The alpha-Alien, now freed from the rocks that had buried him, was in the lead. Its hide was ripped and pierced and seeping battery acid blood. Out of all of them, he looked the most pissed.

  “If you’ve got a plan, you better damn hurry,” Lex said, taking a step back.

  The Predator seemed to understand her meaning, if not her words, and redoubled his efforts until practically the entire wall was illuminated.

  “Very pretty. But what does it do?”

  Then she heard a now-all-too-familiar rumbling within the walls. The Predator took a step back, pulling her along. With a deafening crash, a huge stone slab plunged out of the ceiling and slammed down in front of the Aliens, just as the alpha’s raking claws were about to close around Scar’s throat.

  Lex blinked, amazed to be alive.

  There was a loud crash on the other side of the slab as the Aliens slammed into it and beat the stone with their claws. Although they couldn’t penetrate the walls themselves, their demonic cries of rage and frustration did.

  Lex listened to their shrieks and shuddered. Fearing the dark, she drew her fading flashlight and played the feeble beam around the passageway. Her heart sunk when she realized the corridor was a dead end. Lex was trapped. Her only companion was a savage hunter from the stars, and the only way out appeared to be through an angry Alien horde.

  “Great idea you had locking us in here.”

  Scar grunted.

  Unceremoniously, the Predator began stripping off his pitted body armor, some of it still smoking from the Alien’s corrosive blood. As each heavy piece clanked to the ground, more of Scar’s strange, reptilian anatomy was revealed.

  “Whoa, slow down, tiger,” said Lex.

  Of course she didn’t expect Scar to get the joke. Like most of the males she’d known, Scar had a mind of his own, and a temper, too. He was definitely the strong, silent type.

  Lex ignited a flare—startling the Predator, who snarled at her angrily.

  “It’s just light. Light,” she said, placing it on the floor.

  Scar made that same clicking sound in his throat that Lex had heard these creatures utter before. It reminded her of a frog’s chirp. Meanwhile the Predator continued to tear off segments of armor plate.

  Lex dropped her backpack and squatted in the corner, as far away from the dead Alien as these narrow confines would permit. In the wavering light, she observed Scar’s behavior and tried to deduce the creature’s origins.

  The Predator’s hide was reptilian, but not scaled. At least not scaled the way terrestrial reptiles were. But it was still possible that Scar’s epidermis had tiny, near microscopic scales on it. If only she could get close enough to see. Of course, she had no intention of trying. His flesh tone was a pallid gray with a green tinge, though in the flickering light of the bright yellow flare colors could not be easily discerned.

  The humanoid’s eyes were close together and set forward in its skull. They were the eyes of a hunter. Terrestrial prey—small birds, rodents, deer, oxen—possessed eyes on the sides of their skulls. Earthbound predators—felines, owls, and humans—all had forward-looking eyes that enhanced depth perception and hand-eye coordination.

  Scar’s eyes were set deep in its massive skull, with a bony forehead to protect them, an evolutionary feature that most reminded Lex of dinosaur anatomy.

  The “dreadlocks” that framed either side of Scar’s face were puzzling. He never removed them, yet the dangling appendages didn’t appear to be natural, either—they had metal tips, for one thing. Perhaps they were some sort of biomechanical aid, a fusion of flesh and technology. Or perhaps they were just what they appeared to be—the Predators’ version of hair.

  The crablike mandibles around the Predator’s mouth were an evolutionary riddle as well. They resembled a feature on an aquatic animal more than the feature of an animal that walked on land. Was Scar an amphibian? If he was, that still wouldn’t explain the mandibles. Insects chewed with mandibles, but Scar had teeth for that. Some insects—or was it arachnids?—also used their mandibles as sensory organs, but that didn’t make sense to Lex either.

  Were they an atavistic trait that had outlived its biological usefulness, like the human appendix? Or perhaps the mandibles were necessary for reproduction or mating rituals—an unsettling thought, but from her knowledge of biology, Lex knew that violence during copulation was not uncommon among Earthbound species.

  The Predator’s hands certainly resembled reptilian appendages—long, slender fingers, partially webbed, with two central digits that were much longer than the others. But there were differences, too. Reptiles had nostrils, though they lacked noses, and many species of reptiles had olfactory organs in their tongues. Scar had a flat, hard ridge where a nose should be, with no breathing slits that she could discern, and she wasn’t sure the Predator even had a tongue. Predators also lacked tails. And despite their formidable skills as warriors, Lex doubted they were capable of regenerating lost limbs or digits, like a salamander.

  Lex noted that Scar wore a kind of mesh underwear under his plated armor and that the Predator was careful to discard as little of that material as possible, though Scar did detach a damaged bit of it, discarding it within Lex’s reach. When he was otherwise occupied, Lex casually lifted the mesh and fingered it. It was made of some kind of flexible metal and was quite hot to the touch. Even more peculiar was the fact that the material remained hot long after it was separated from its power source and, pre
sumably, from Scar’s body heat—if indeed he had any. All this led Lex to the conclusion that the mesh was some sort of heating source and was probably as vital a piece of equipment to Scar as an Aqua-Lung is to a human deep-sea diver.

  If the Predator’s species had evolved from some type of extraterrestrial reptile, then they were most probably ectothermic—meaning their body temperature was regulated by external climactic conditions.

  Mammals generated their own body heat, but reptiles depended on external temperatures for thermoregulation and maintaining a balanced metabolism, which was why most reptiles thrived in hot climates and eschewed places like the polar regions. In fact, weird things happened to some species of reptile if exposed to a cold environment: They became sluggish and less aggressive, and females sometimes gave birth to live young instead of laying eggs in a nest and hatching them externally.

  Reptiles could also die in cold that was too intense or sustained, and Lex noticed several patches of rough, cracked hide on Scar’s hands that resembled the chilblains that appeared on humans in icy weather. While Lex was no expert in the fields of extraterrestrial biology or herpetology, it didn’t look as if Scar was holding up well in the brutal climate of Antarctica.

  Soon Lex began to wonder about her own health.

  For one thing, she knew she had the “Martian Effect” to contend with—a phrase coined by a Carnegie Mellon University professor of extraterrestrial biology in homage to H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds. Both the Predators and the Aliens could potentially carry dangerous toxins or exotic strains of virus or bacteria to which they were long immune but humans were not. Ancient structures like this pyramid could also hold peril—a long dormant strain of bacteria found in King Tut’s tomb decimated the archaeologists who discovered the place and gave rise to the legend of the mummy’s curse. And even close contact with earthly reptiles carried some degree of danger—there were species of toads and lizards that secreted toxins capable of paralyzing or killing, and many reptiles carried the salmonella virus on their skin.

  Of course, Lex realized that if she lived long enough to actually catch salmonella poisoning, she would feel truly blessed.

  And creatures like Scar were far from safe to be around even if she had made peace with him. Predators lived for the kill. The ritualistic slaughter of another being, sentient or not, was an intrinsic part of their cultural makeup. By all indications the Predators’ civilization was built on cruelty, with the ceremonial hunt as the central tenet of their religion—important enough, in fact, for them to coolly and cynically manipulate a primitive culture, get themselves elected to godhood, and then compel generations of humans to build their pyramids and populate them with “game” hatched out of their own chests.

  It was viciousness on a near-genocidal scale, and Lex was suddenly filled with rage toward Scar and his ilk for how they’d manipulated her primitive ancestors, and for what they’d done to Sebastian, to Max Stafford and Charles Weyland—and probably Miller, too.

  Lex noticed that Scar had turned his back on her and was busy with a new project. He drew the ceremonial dagger—the one she’d watched him wield as he’d bloodied himself and gathered his first trophy. Now Scar dragged the Alien carcass to a corner of the chamber and yanked out the spear. Scar showed Lex the melted tip of the spear, then cast it aside. Using one arm, he splayed the dead creature out on its belly on the stone floor. With a grunt of effort, he plunged the blade into the small of the Alien’s back and pried open the armored shell at the torso until the entire chitin shell split like a cooked lobster.

  Black bile, steaming in the frigid air, and slimy green ooze gushed onto the flagstones and immediately began pitting the rock. A vile stench filled the small chamber. Lex retched and covered her nose and mouth with the edge of her scarf. Careful to avoid the gore sizzling on the floor, Scar stepped around the carcass, lifted the Alien’s elongated head, and severed the exoskeleton and internal veins and tendons with a sickening crunch. The legs and hips fell away, and more guts spilled out.

  Working with speed and precision, Scar stood the head and torso up and sliced the edge of the rubbery, translucent flap that covered the Alien’s head. Peeling the thick membrane back, the Predator exposed the Alien’s brain, which was—amazingly—still throbbing with life. Finally, the Predator lifted the armored external skull away from the Alien body and placed it aside. The bony shell was completely hollow. The elongated brain remained connected to the torso and still twitched and pulsed.

  Both intrigued and repulsed, Lex moved closer, carefully avoiding the acid blood that stained the cell floor. As she watched, Scar removed one arm and began stripping away the muscles from the Alien’s shell. While he let the gore slide to the floor, he set the bony armor down next to the hollow skull.

  “What are you doing?” Lex repeated.

  Once again Scar stood the gory torso up and began to probe the creature’s brain with his knife. Even without its skull and its missing left arm, the Alien looked menacing.

  Lex watched the brain flop about and wondered, How do you really know when one of these things is really dead?

  At that instant the Alien’s right arm shot out and raked the air just inches from her face. Lex literally jumped backwards with a yelp.

  But the Alien made no further movement, and Scar sat passively behind it, prodding and picking at a lobe of its brain. The Predator looked up at Lex, then plunged the knife into a cluster of nerves. The Alien hand lashed out again. She realized that Scar had frightened her deliberately—and now Lex could swear that the Predator was laughing.

  “Ha, ha, very funny.”

  So Predators do have a sense of humor. Gallows humor, sure, but any kind of humor is better than none at all.

  Fun time over, Scar went back to work, stripping away the organs and muscles and keeping only the shell, which he stacked in a pile near the empty Alien skull.

  “What are you doing?” Lex asked again. This time she laid her hand on Scar’s arm, firmly enough to get his attention.

  With an impatient snarl, the Predator threw down the half-mangled arm he’d been working on and held up his knife, as if displaying it. Lex leaned closer and examined the blade. Only then did she realize that it was not forged of metal but carved from some bony substance like ivory, and honed to a sharp edge.

  “Okay,” Lex said. “It’s a special blade…. So what?”

  Very deliberately, Scar dipped the tip of the sacrificial blade into the Alien’s seeping brain pan and covered it with the acid blood. Then he shook the blade over a segment of battered Predator armor. As soon as the drops splashed the surface, the acid went to work, melting the armor.

  Then the Predator shook more acid blood off the blade—and onto a segmented piece of the Alien’s shell. Nothing happened; the acid just rolled off.

  The Predator gave her a look that clearly meant, Get it?

  “Of course!” Lex cried. “The Aliens are immune to their own bodily defenses. A porcupine can’t stab itself.”

  And obviously the sacrificial blade the Predator carried was made of the same substance—Alien exoskeleton, carved and shaped and honed to a razor-sharp edge, like the whalebone blades nineteenth-century whalers used to fashion out of the bones of their prey.

  Lex nodded vigorously. “I get it, I get it. We’ll keep it together and make it to the surface.”

  Scar reached out and touched her arm, then lifted his hand and touched the mark on his mask.

  “Keep it together… Make it to the surface…” Lex was startled to hear the Predator speak to her using an electronic recording of her own words.

  Lex smiled, then she slapped the top of his giant fist with the palm of her tiny hand. “Deal,” she said.

  Suddenly, an unearthly cry unlike any other they’d heard before literally shook the walls. The cry was more than loud enough to penetrate their chamber, so surely it could be heard all over the pyramid.

  Lex and Scar exchanged anxious glances, then Scar snatched a ch
unk of Alien armor from the pile and slapped it against Lex’s chest hard enough to knock the wind out of her. Holding it in place, Scar sized the piece, then tossed it aside in favor of a smaller segment.

  Lex understood his plan immediately, and to show him she got it Lex lifted a heavy piece of armor and placed it on his forearm.

  The Predator tensed at her touch but allowed Lex to fit the piece of chitin to its arm without protest. As Scar picked through the Alien shells for other usable components, Lex drew her survival knife and started cutting the straps off her ruined backpack.

  As they worked side by side for the common purpose of mutual survival, Lex and Scar—human and Predator—began to function like a team.

  In the Queen’s Chamber

  For endless hours, the Alien Queen, powerless to act due to the wicked barbed chains that held her captive, had been compelled to watch helplessly as one after the other of her precious eggs were tipped into the roaring furnace. Only a few of the eggs had been given a chance to yield life, and they had all been spirited away to another part of the pyramid where she could no longer watch over them.

  Even now the Queen sensed that some of her offspring were alive and well.

  Foam flecked the Queen’s long, eyeless muzzle, and her abdomen convulsed as another pulpy egg dropped onto the slide and was automatically carried away by the vast machines that pumped and churned behind the walls.

  The female thrashed and bared her teeth in rage when her egg failed robotic inspection and was consigned to the furnace. But before the conveyor reached the fiery chamber, the skin of the egg peeled back, and a pale white face hugger emerged, eager to escape its leathery cocoon. But the machine was pitching the rejected egg into the fire. Extending a robotic arm, it shoved the struggling infant into the conflagration, along with its leathery pouch.

  Mewing piteously, the newborn face hugger was instantly consumed.

  Witnessing this atrocity, the Queen went berserk. She thrashed and strained at the metal chains, testing their tensile strength to the limit. Even though chunks of masonry and the dust of millennia had been dislodged from the walls and vaulted ceiling by her furious convulsions, the indestructible chains would not give.