HUNTED
Chapter One
Trevor Avery ran.
All around him red emergency lights flashed brightly while the loud wail of a klaxon reverberated all throughout the walls of the colony. Every corner Trevor approached could be conceiling the enemy. From any dark corner one of THEM could spring. So he ran.
"You now have twenty-three minutes to reach minimum safe distance," droned the mechanical female voice drifting from loud speakers all over the colony.
Trevor was sweating, panting. His muscles were beginning to throb dully with pain. But he could not, and would not, stop. Somewhere behind him, a heavy metal pipe carrying some of the colony's water ruptured, and gallon after gallon of water spilled from the ceiling, drenching Trevor as he ran. His sneakers slipped in the water, and a few times he almost fell, but every time he would stop himself and keep going.
He ran into a cooridor marked "E" and contined to run until he saw the lift at the end. What he saw made him stop dead in his tracks. Only a few moments earlier he had been panting, dragging in his breath. Now, he dared not breath at all.
At the end of the cooridor, blocking Trevor's path, was a sleek black form crouching on the floor. Its body quivered silently, waiting for Trevor to come near. So it could pounce. The creature's head resembled a black banana with razor-sharp teeth, which were now dripping with thick drool. A very agile tail wound itself around a pipe leading up the wall and disappearing in the ceiling.
The alien hissed at Trevor. It then did a very peculiar thing. After a minute or two, the thing mounted the pipe it had a hold on and started up it, then disappeared into an open air vent.
Trevor was frozen where he was, his breath coming in shallow pants. He felt his knees buckle and he fell to them. The tears of joy came then, and he wept silently. But then something interrupted his weeping.
"You now have fifteen minutes to reach minimum safe distance."
In a second, Trevor was on his feet, and before he knew it he was running to the lift. He practically threw himself inside and slammed the keypad on the interior wall beside the door. There was a loud hiss, making Trevor jump. It was only the door sliding shut. Within a second the lift was making its ascent, toward daylight, out of Hell.