I raced away from that awful place, careening down hallways and stumbling through open hatchways. I ran away from any sound I heard with no idea where I was going. The ship was a maze of hallways, and when I finally screeched to a halt in another big open room, my mind came rushing back online.
Hide. Don’t get caught.
This room was the familiar glowing blue-green, the smooth walls and floors extruded by the vines. Movement in my peripheral vision sent me scampering behind the first thing large enough to hide me.
It was our shuttle.
I had stumbled into the hangar where our ship had come to rest when the alien vessel swallowed it. I shimmied along the wall behind it, looking for a way in, but the hatch on this side was butted up against the wall of the alien ship. No way to open it.
Our shuttle sat on wheels, and I crawled underneath it. What are you going to do if you get inside? Even if you could get it out, you don’t know how to fly it. And where would you go? Logically, I knew there was no point, but to the bottom of my soul I craved the familiarity of the smelly interior.
I lay underneath it, peering out from behind one of the wheels.
Aliens were loading crates into the other shuttle.
They were going somewhere.
Anywhere is better than here. Maybe wherever they were going, I could find help. If my headlong flight through this ship had shown me anything, it was that I had no idea at all how to rescue my people from the livestock hold they were prisoners in. And it really was a livestock hold, I realized. For whatever purpose, they were going to be fed one by one into that hideous, toothed mouth-pit.
Get out. Get help.
The aliens shoved a large white crate up a ramp and into the other vessel. It was a long, round craft, made of a metal that looked similar to the hull of our shuttle. Not made out of the smooth, white, extruded material. Another “rescue”? Had it been full of trusting people like us; not humans, but some other species? Had I unknowingly looked into their faces mirrored on some of the aliens’ heads? I had no idea how the vine-things worked. How the new aliens were being made to look like us. And if I didn’t hurry, no one else would ever know, either.
The green creatures filed out of the other shuttle and through another hatchway.
Now. Go now.
I skittered out from under our shuttle and bolted across the empty floor and up the ramp. Just as I crossed the hatchway, there was noise behind me. The aliens were back, pushing another crate.
Hide.
I was in the cargo area of this ship, surrounded by crates of all sizes. Some were the smooth white I expected. Others were made of metal, and still others of something I didn’t recognize. One of the metal crates’ lids was slightly ajar. When I heard the aliens’ feet on the ramp, I shoved the lid open and jumped inside the crate.
Instantly, I regretted my choice. I landed on a soft surface of something brown and furry. My landing made thick brown dust poof out of whatever the crate was full of, and I choked and gagged on the grit. It filled my nostrils and eyes, and tasted like old mold.
Drool poured out of my mouth, and my nose ran, further gluing the sticky green algae all over my face. When I tried to wipe it, I realized my hands and face were now covered with the brown dust as well, mixed in with the crusty algae. My hair was stiff with it, sticking straight up.
Light disappeared as the aliens slid the lid closed.
I wanted to bang on the top. The air inside was choking, and every move I made released more of the brown dust. But I hunkered down, trying to gag and spit as quietly as I could.
There were tiny slits in the side of the crate, but pressing my eye up to the side just showed me fleeting shadows.
The hold went dark and silent when the aliens closed the hatch. The door locked with a squeal of metal. I wasn’t sure if I was alone in the hold. When they attached to the vine, the aliens could go dormant and silent. If I shoved the lid off, would they be sitting all around me? Would they see me? Would they drag me out and throw me into the spiked, acid-filled hole?
I sniffled and drooled, my throat closing around the dust.
A roar of engines split the air, and the whole ship vibrated. In seconds, the hold lost gravity. I floated up against the top, which bumped open. My body drifted out, along with the brown fuzzy surface I’d landed on, which turned out to be some kind of squishy fruit or, possibly, fungus.
There was nothing to grab and nowhere to hide. In the darkness of the hold, I couldn’t tell if I was surrounded by aliens. But no one came to push the lid back on, and the base was clearly secured to the floor. Nothing else was floating free. When I finally bumped into the ceiling of the hold, I flailed around, trying to grab onto anything. A thin ridge of pipe provided a grip, and I hauled myself down the side of the ship, grabbing onto the side of another of the metal crates. At some point, we’d land somewhere. I hoped it would be somewhere with gravity, and I’d need to be latched onto the floor so I wouldn’t crash down. I hoped it was somewhere with an atmosphere. Oxygen.
The ship hummed and vibrated, presumably flying through space. At some point, I realized I was hungry. The inside of the hold was full of the floating brown furry things, but I had no idea if they were edible or not. I tried licking some of the dried, crusted algae off my hands. It broke apart, and I chewed the coagulated slime, sucking my fingers as clean as I could. But as soon as I used my sticky hands to try and wipe the brown grit from my face, it just smeared into another sticky mess.
The interior brightened, and the ship bucked and shook. I clung to the straps holding the crate down. Gravity grabbed me, and squishy brown blobs rained down. The lid of the metal crate I’d been hiding in crashed to the floor.
My stomach heaved as the shuttle slewed through space.
We’re landing.
Soon the hull would be full of aliens, probably unloading all the stuff they’d filled this hull with. Were we going to their home world? If I survived this landing and somehow escaped, would I find myself in a land covered in vines and green creatures?
Won’t matter if they find you here.
I clambered back over the edge of the open crate and hunkered down, pulling the brown things still inside over the top of me. If any of me poked out, it would certainly look like the rest of the lumpy stuff. Every inch of me was covered in the sticky brown dust. My throat instantly filled with it again, and I hacked and wheezed, the noise covered by the shrieking of the shuttle’s engines.
We bumped down in a hard landing. My forehead smashed into the inside edge of the crate, and everything went black.