Chapter 6:

Two Alphas' Foolish Mistake

Not long after Garth had made love with Lilly to get over the shock of what happened in the lake of black slime, a younger alpha wolf came to Garth.

The reason he approached Garth was simple: "I want you to come to Rabbit Poo Mountain me," he told his uncle-in-law.

"Why would you want to go there?" Garth asked Fleet, with a bitter tone in his voice because he knew what most of those wolves had done to Daria and her family, without looking directly at him. Ever since ingesting that black slime, he had felt ill and swore he could see smaller forms of some of those worms within his eyeballs when he stared at his reflection in the water. He did not want anyone else to know about them.

"And why me?" Garth added.

"I've always wanted to meet Lois and Noel," Fleet explained, "since their sister is now my mother-in-law now. And, well, Daria does not want to go back there because of her bad memories. And Dad wants to stay with Daria. Magril, she's busy setting up her new den with Liam's help after she moved out of our father's den."

Garth took a minute to think about it but when he finally came to a decision, he said, "Fine. But at the first sign of any trouble, we will leave immediately."

"Where are they all?" Fleet asked his uncle-in-law as the two alphas arrived at Rabbit Poo Mountain.

There was not a sign of the few southern wolves who lived here and that was a cause for concern. Even a pack of wolves as small as this one was just did not disappear without a trace.

"I don't know," Garth replied, "but we should follow their scents. I couldn't begin to think of a reason why, but all twenty of them went into this cave at once then only one came out."

"I smell blood," Fleet interrupted.

"Hurt wolves," Garth whispered. "It must be. We have to get in there and help them."

Fleet ran in first and Garth followed but they both froze in their tracks when they saw the hive-like structure littered with cocooned wolves. Most of them were dead, showing signs that something had ripped its way out of their chests from inside of them. There were a few seemingly unconscious yet still-living wolves whom had spider-like creatures plastered to their faces. And the cave floor was littered with massive eggs, some of which had already hatched or were about to hatch more of those things that were on the wolves' faces.

"What is all this…?" Fleet asked in a shaky voice.

"It looks like something right out of a nightmare…" Garth said, his voice shaking just as much as Fleet's was.

"We have to look for other survivors before they end up like those wolves did," Fleet said in reference to the wolves with their chests ripped open. He suddenly sounded more confident, Garth thought.

"Don't go too far," Garth cautioned. "We don't know what this all is or what did it."

"I won't," Fleet responded as he went around the bend of the hive-like structure. He found more blood there, all belonging to more dead wolves, who seemed to have had something burst out of their chests as well.

A feeling of dread came over Fleet and it was not just because of the sight of all these dead wolves that caused it. He felt as if something much larger than him was watching him. And that something was just emerging from one of the tunnels within the hive. Fleet was not aware of the large creature right behind him.

Fleet did not see, smell, nor hear it coming until he noticed saliva dripping on the ground before him. It burned a hole in the stone as it made a loud sizzling sound. Fleet looked up to see one of the "drone" aliens, which having at built this hive, looking down at him. It screeched loudly and then spit all over Fleet, who screamed as the acidic saliva melted his face to the bone in a matter of seconds. It also burned Fleet's skull away just as quickly as it had melted his flesh.

"No...ahhh!" Fleet's agonizing scream carried through the cave before fading away in only a matter of a few seconds.

"Fleet?" Garth called out but received no answer from his nephew-in-law. No answer of any kind. Just dead silence, now that Fleet's screams had faded away. "Answer me!" Garth called again, only this time much more loudly than he had before.

But that louder call seemed to alert all of the eggs of Garth's presence. One-by-one, they opened up at the top like four large flower petals. And before Garth knew it, he was being chased down by eight of the "facehuggers," all of which resembled a horrific hybrid of a spider and horseshoe crab. Each of them ran rapidly after their new prey on eight finger-like legs, even running over each other sometimes because of how frenzied they were.

"No!" Garth screamed at the facehuggers as he fell off a ledge that was at least ten feet but he had not seen it as such until he fell. And Garth screamed for a second time when all four of his legs snapped upon impacting the hard ground below. All of this happened as he heard eight sets of eight legs scurrying closer and closer with each long second that went back.

And, as Garth attempted to crawl away with his broken legs, the eight facehuggers appeared over the ledge, still in frenzy. One lunged down at the crawling wolf with a screech, provoking the other seven to follow suit. While not one of the facehuggers managed to attach themselves to Garth's face in their first attempt, none of them was hurt by the fall either, unlike Garth.

"Get away!" Garth almost begged as the mob of facehuggers kept on scurrying after the broken wolf. "Get…away!"

Then it happened. One of the facehuggers lunged at Garth using its tail like a spring. And, for the third time, Garth screamed when he saw the vagina-shaped mouth of the facehugger coming toward him rapping, with its legs extended to the sides, and a proboscis coming out of that mouth. As soon as the facehugger collided with his face, Garth felt its eight legs wrap around the sides and back of his head. He let out another brief scream that was cut short by the proboscis being forced into his snout and down his throat, as the facehugger began the egg laying process. The eight legs' grip became so tight on Garth's face that any attempt to remove it would take his face with the facehugger.

And as the facehugger went about laying an egg inside of Garth's chest cavity, a larger breed of the species crawled out of an even larger egg that looked much different from the others. It had a whip-like tail with a barb on the end and an armor-like shell, as well as a webbed membrane between each of its eight legs.

This was the "royal facehugger" from which the egg of a queen of this species would be laid along with a regular drone egg. This special facehugger had the intention of leaving the cave rather than waiting around, so it could find not one but two hosts. One to lay the queen egg within and another to lay the drone egg within.