33
As Leo stepped onto the ship and was faced with a second ramp—this one a moving sidewalk—and another door, he wondered if this was how Alice felt in Wonderland, only he had alien murder on the brain, and she’d just smoked up with caterpillars. “No turning back now,” he said, half to himself, half to Teena and Evan. They stepped onto the ramp and were headed deeper into the ship, as if it were their unalterable destiny. After a few moments, the ramp deposited them onto the floor like groceries at the end of the cash-register belt. The strong scent of coffee loomed thick in the air, and they all looked around nervously. This part of the ship was empty, which was almost more unsettling.
They were in a long, white hallway that stretched out on each side of them in a circle. Looking down the corridor in either direction, Leo tried to figure out which way would lead them to the captives. If it weren’t for the lives-on-the-line factor—and his overwhelming need to find Sarabeth—it would have been cool to look around a bit. All that time thinking about aliens, and now he was on their ship.
“Should we split up, or stick together?” Evan whispered.
Leo pursed his lips. “If we go the same way, we could all die. If we split up, we could all still die. I don’t know.”
Teena sighed like she was annoyed with them both. “Look, I know I complained louder than anyone about the four of us getting stuck together, but we should stick together. I don’t want to lose you guys.”
Leo saw her look right at Evan as she said it, but Evan just looked down the corridor. Leo almost felt bad for Teena. “You’re right,” Leo said to her. “How about we go that way?” He pointed right, based on nothing more than a hunch. The ship was a circle, but he thought if he was leading prisoners on board, it would be easier to steer them into a right turn than a left one.
“Works for me,” Evan said. Teena nodded in agreement.
The corridor was gleaming white, like being inside an iPod. It surprised Leo. He’d been expecting something more … gross. Like maybe purple alien goo covering every surface of the ship’s interior. Or at least more darkness to set the mood. As it was, tube lights lined the walls, giving off green and purple glows. The ship hummed like the inside of a refrigerator and was almost as cold.
With every almost-too-easy step, Leo felt his nervousness increase.
“Where are they?” Leo said. “Don’t they need to go about their outer-space asshole business?”
“We did kill a lot of them,” Teena said. “Maybe there just aren’t many left.”
“Or maybe there’s a lot of them on the other side of these walls.” Evan gestured down the corridor. “The ship is big.”
“You know, they probably want us to find them,” Leo said. “Like, what’s behind door number two? Hey, you’re dead!”
“I don’t even see any doors,” Teena said, furrowing her brow.
“Yeah, that is weird,” Evan said, slowing down.
Leo hadn’t seen a door, either. He stopped walking and studied the wall. Teena and Evan stood behind him, like he had a clue. On closer inspection, he found tiny seams where it looked like the white walls opened in some way. But he couldn’t tell if they slid open into the wall or pushed open into a room. Maybe they even lifted up, like garage doors. Evan and Leo exchanged a glance. They positioned themselves on each side of one of the seams. They pushed. Nothing. They pulled. Nothing. They tried lifting up from the ground. Nothing.
During their feeble show of manhood, Teena had wandered away.
“Hey, what’s this?” She was pointing at a section of the wall that wasn’t smooth. It resembled a pair of white puckered lips, only vertical and tall enough for an alien to fit through.
“Not to be vulgar, but I’m seriously afraid this is some kind of alien vagina situation,” Leo said, poking the soft spongy door and watching it pulse in and out. “Ew, squishy.”
Before any of them realized what was happening, green tentacles shot out from the door and yanked them inside, dragging them along a cold, damp floor. Leo pressed against the constricting tentacles, but the more he resisted, the tighter they got. Just ahead of him, through the dark, he saw Evan kicking and Teena, caught by the leg, being dragged on her stomach.
Pfft! Pfft! Two bursts of sound punctured the air.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” The inhuman squeal pierced Leo’s eardrums.
He heard another Pfft! Pfft! behind him. Suddenly, the tentacles loosened, drooping down around his mid-section. Teena stood over him with a nail gun and gave him a hand getting up. Then she vanished into the dark. Then he heard the nail gun again, and another squeal of agony.
Teena emerged from the darkness with Evan in tow. Leo coughed into his sleeve, trying to regain his breath. “What was that?”
At their feet was the creature Teena had killed. It had no face, just a beach-ball-sized green center, now punctured with nails, from which the ropy tentacles emerged. The dead tentacles lay like tangled ropes of seaweed at their feet.
Ahead of them was a dimly lit staircase leading down into the bowels of the ship.
“What do you think’s down there?” Evan asked.
Leo had been hoping to stumble on the holding bay, but why would the aliens guard their prison with what was basically a plant? A violent plant, but still. “I hope something,” Leo said, brushing the end of a tentacle off his shoulder. It fell to the floor with a splat. “I’m starting to feel like this ship is empty.”
“Me too,” Teena agreed.
Leo walked first down the slippery ramp, stopping to listen for signs of danger. They could barely see ahead of them. On the last step, his body went rigid, like a panicked exclamation point.
They were in a dim, but not entirely dark room that was teeming with aliens. But unlike the ones they’d encountered before, these were slightly smaller, with deeper purple skin and long green tendrils sprouting from their heads like hair. Dead, dented sockets took the place of the other aliens’ fly-like eyes. The effect was as chilling as the chamber’s cool, damp air.
If they backed up the stairs before these things saw them or, really, sensed them, maybe they’d survive.
Leo took a step backward, knowing his friends would get the hint. But his foot lost traction on the stairs, and he slid off, landing with a loud splat on the gooey floor. The room of aliens collectively lifted their heads, their green snakelike hair swirling in mid-air.
As if on cue, the aliens opened their wide, gaping mouths. All at once, they let loose a barrage of greenies. The little flying aliens emerged from the aliens’ mouths in dense clusters, hovering in the air for a split second before releasing a massive, eardrum-breaking squeal. And then they flew right at them.
“They can’t puke greenies unless you shoot them!” Leo yelled over the din.
“These are the female aliens!” Teena screamed. “This is a nest!”
“Let’s not make it our tomb!” Evan shouted, as he raised his bat yet again.
Teena dialed up the pressure on her nail gun and let loose a storm of nails into chamber. As they met their targets, the nails pierced the baby greenies, which fell to the floor of the nest, writhing uselessly.
Leo pulled out his nail gun and started to shoot as four greenies, stuck together in a slimy ball as they flew, came at him. The first nail fell limply to the floor, as did the second and third. He dialed up the pressure. Still nothing. The nail gun was busted. A greenie dug its teeth into his armor, so he fumbled in his backpack, emerging with the paring knife he’d taken from Abe’s trailer. He swiped the air uselessly as the greenies began to surround him. He felt like he was standing in someone’s stomach and couldn’t get traction on the soft, slippery floor.
Evan was ahead, in the thick of greenies. He swatted away, and Leo could see the little hatchlings explode in mid-air. But even Evan was having trouble. His mid-section was covered in at least a half dozen of the creatures. Leo heard Teena fire her nail gun several times, and he hoped she’d come to Evan’s aid.
Leo could barely see as the greenies clung to his armor and buzzed around his head. With a good swipe of his knife, he cut a few down, and through the gap, he saw that another greenie swarm separated him from Evan and Teena.
“Use your nail gun!” Teena yelled to him.
“I can’t! It’s broken!” Leo yelled back.
“Piece of crap,” Teena swore. “I’ll use the Uzi.”
“You can’t see in here, Teena,” Evan said behind her. “You might fire right at Leo.”
“Yeah, no firing at Leo!” Leo yelled back. A greenie seized his upper inner thigh. Leo froze. It was going to bite his balls. He fucking needed his balls.
His trusty purple lighter. He had tucked it into the waistband of the spandex. Now he pulled the sweaty Bic out and flicked it into life. He held it to the ball-biting greenie, feeling the heat on his thigh. The little beast caught fire and let go. Sweet. He proceeded to ignite the rest of his greenie attachments. They squealed and dropped to the floor, forming tiny fire pits where they fell.
He had an idea. Pulling out his hair spray can, Leo yelled to his friends, “Take cover!”
Teena and Evan hit the floor just as Leo sprayed a stream of hair spray and set fire to it, making a torch. The giant ball of greenies ignited like something straight out of hell. Their mothers must have sensed the greenies’ pain because they writhed and screamed as if they were the ones on fire.
The greenies were burning, and through the flames, Leo’s eyes landed on another white puckered door, just beyond the mothers’ nest. If they could make it past the female aliens, they could get through that door.
Leo gestured to his friends to follow him, and they started to run through the smoky haze of flaming greenies.
“Why aren’t the big ones doing anything?” Teena asked, looking at the dormant female aliens. They were still, save for the snakelike movements of their green hair.
“Because they’re going to give birth again!” Leo shouted. “There’s a door back there.”
“You think it’s a holding chamber?” Evan asked.
“Whatever it is, it’s gotta be better than this,” Leo said as the mama aliens started to move and sway. He pulled his Phat Phil’s Pizza polo from his backpack.
Leo used his knife to cut the shirt in two pieces, then pulled Abe’s bottles of tequila and Jack Daniel’s from his backpack. He uncapped them and shoved each shirt piece down a bottle neck to make a wick. He soaked the cloth with Abe’s cheap gin.
He took a swig of the gin for himself and handed the Molotov cocktails to Evan.
“I’ll light, you throw,” Leo said. He looked at Teena. “Get ready to run.”
Leo ignited the first bottle, watching the flame take hold and crackle its way up to the bottle top. Evan hurled it toward the aliens, where they were clumped together most tightly. Even Leo could see it was hardly a perfect throw—the bundle was an odd shape and flew shakily toward its target. It landed at the edge of the ring of aliens. The bottle didn’t even break.
“Shit,” Evan said. Leo grimaced. The little fiery bundle hardly looked like it would do anything.
“Look … ” Teena pointed to the nest. The aliens were starting to open their mouths, ready to let loose with more greenies.
“That one was just practice,” Leo said encouragingly, giving the second bomb to Evan. He lit the wick. The bottle arced overhead, starting to fall right in the center of the aliens.
All at once, two things happened.
The mama aliens pulled back their mouths, regurgitating another swarm of greenies into the air.
And the second bomb dropped, the bottle bursting with a violent pop at the center of the nest. Shards of glass and balls of fire flew through the air, landing scattershot throughout the nest. A few of the aliens’ hair caught fire, and the tendrils whipped through the air, igniting greenies and other mama aliens. Meanwhile, the exploding fireballs were landing all around them, and the first bomb—the one at the edge of the nest—burst, sending glass into the air.
Leo, Teena, and Evan ran toward the door, trying to shield themselves from the whips of flames all around. They fought to get past the mamas, which were now trying to escape in an unorganized cluster. In front of them, the newly born greenies flew haphazardly, colliding with one another. Some were on fire, and the greenies that weren’t in flames set in on other greenies, gnawing and biting one another like little cannibals.
Leo cut a path toward the second door, his arms sticky with dead greenies. Evan was behind him but waiting for Teena, who’d stumbled over a dead mama aliens’ ropy green hair. “You go,” Evan said to Leo as he went back for Teena.
Leo shook his head. “Get her,” he said to Evan. “I’ll hold the door.”
Teena had broken free, and Evan pulled her up, nodding to Leo to go. Behind him, Leo heard Teena say sweetly, “You didn’t have to wait for me.”
It made Leo want to hear Sarabeth’s voice again.
He just hoped Door Number Two would get them closer to her.
Leo pushed on the spongy surface, and he, Evan, and Teena plopped out on the other side.