Hannah was freezing. Primarily sliding down the mountain meant that a lot of snow had gotten into her parka and soaked into the two layers she had underneath. The unconscious monster stayed in front of her most of the time, being heavier and so was dragging her down, and she was acting like a break. She had taken all the coats of the dead Weyland grunts and packed them on top of and around the alien, which she had just managed to get up onto the collapsible sled by burying it up to the flat surface and pushing the thing onto it. She tied it down with the provided chord and began her descent.
Now she was almost home, struggling very little to pull the heavy weight along the more level ground. She was shivering, though; the only part of her that wasn't wet was inside her boots. She would have to get the house warmed up quickly, and not just for her benefit.
The creature, whatever it was, was mostly reptilian as far as she could tell. Its skin, while leathery, had scales much like what dinosaurs used to have. It was warm-blooded, producing its own body heat on epic levels, but being in the cold couldn't be good for it. On top of everything it was wounded, and not just from the fight. Its leg was broken, the bone of which was protruding outside the calf, which had only been aggravated by its fight with the men. Other wounds it had, including other bullet wounds, were already healed over to a point.
She drew two conclusions from this: it had previously been in a fight with people, and it was the thing that crashed into the mountain the previous night.
Which made it an alien.
The cabin soon came into view and she gave a short panting sigh of relief. Wrapping the chord around her shoulders she stomped and pulled the monster to her front door. She turned the sled at the stairs so that its head was towards the door, and as carefully as she could, struggled to get it to slide easily up the stairs.
She curse at the locked door and fumbled with the key, her hand shaking and wet fingers slipping against the metal that she couldn't feel. She shouldered the door open and dragged her guest to the floor. She shut the door and ran over to the fireplace, throwing a couple logs on and lighting the fire with much profanity. As the fire flickered to life she unbound the monster and removed the parkas. Not a single one was free of thick green blood that was slowly losing its glow in places.
The wound on its abdomen was the most glaring, still glowing brightly. Every rise and fall of its chest caused a noise that was painful to listen to; she couldn't imagine how it felt. Cold fingers stung from its heat as they traced over the other wounds. She knew only basic first aid, things she figured would keep her alive in an emergency if one occurred. Surgery was not on her repertoire of skills.
She thought quickly and began rushing from here and there in her house, depositing things by the sled until she had a pile of whatever she thought she might need. Having since regained feeling in her fingers, she washed her hands and doused them in rubbing alcohol before kneeling by the wounded alien. She really, really, hoped it would stay unconscious as she removed its armor, weapons, and mesh body wrap, which required the removal of the creatures metal thong thing and the loincloth underneath, revealing that it was a he.
The first thing she did was take a pair of needle-nose pliers, cleaned thoroughly with rubbing alcohol and began to dig out the bullets. Luckily, the creature's skin and muscle were thick, and none of the ten bullets she removed had penetrated deeper than an inch and a half. This made her concerned about what was making him wheeze, and began to worry that he might have a broken rib that was puncturing a lung, maybe occurring in the crash. She found no more bullets in the massive wound area. She dug bullets out of the other wounds on his body, taping bandages over all of them, then turned to the leg next.
From what she could see of the protruding bone, it was at least a clean break, but trying to push it back with her hands alone was futile. No matter how she grunted and pressed, it didn't budge. She ran to her kitchen and pulled out of a closet there a vice clamp. It wasn't gentle, and with every crank she whispered to the creature to not awaken. Once the bone finally set in, she tightly bound it with two thick wooden spoons and ace wrap.
She turned again to try to find the source of the monster's wheezing, putting her ear against his chest, hearing an odd waltzing beat from beneath the muscle. She furrowed her brow and leaned away, kneeling before the creature with a despairing look. There was nothing she could do for that kind of injury save for cut the thing open, and she sure as hell didn't want to do that.
Then, as she watched, he stopped breathing. Her eyes turned wide and she looked him over. She put her hands against the alien's chest but it didn't rise.
"No no no no no!" she reached for his face, fumbling with the mask which didn't give to her pulls and prods. She finally found what was catching and removed two tubes which hissed with a warm vapor. She then removed the mask and flinched, dropping the heavy metal piece that clanged to the wood floor loudly. Three clawed mandibles fell loosely away from a lipless pink fleshy mouth ringed in sharp teeth.
"How the hell do I give CPR to that!?" she cried to no one. She reached for, and flinched away from, the disturbing orifice before whimpering and bending down over it. Though she tried, she couldn't make a tight enough seal around the strange mouth, and she pulled away gagging. She looked around, trying to think of what to do. She then ran outside and around the back of her house, making sure to shut the door, where an old blue rusting Chevy sat covered in snow. But she was headed for the small shack it was parked next to. She hurled open the door and picked up a small red air compressor.
She hauled it back towards the cabin, pausing only start up a generator. It roared to life as she struggled back inside. She plugged the compressor into an outlet in a wall and started it up. Waiting for the pressure to build was torture, and once it reached 40 psi she turned to his face and winced again, "my God you are one ugly motherfucker," she scrunched her nose twitching her fingers. She grimaced as she made a seal around his mouth with her hand and inserted in the air compressor tip. She pulled the trigger and saw his chest rise but only a little. She continued to increase the psi until his chest rose the same way as it had been breathing. She threw all her weight on her elbows onto his chest, incapable of performing proper compressions.
She did this four times before the monster jerked violently and coughed, some glowing blood splattering up onto his face. He made coughing-esque noises and she repeated her prayer to stay asleep like a mantra. His head fell back down to the sled without resistance, and his eyes remained closed. Thanking God she touched the blood that had come up. Something was definitely wrong with it internally, but it wasn't like she could take it to the doctor.
She was at a loss for what to do next. She shivered and rubbed her arm. She got up in a hurry and ran to the thermostat on the wall which had blinked to life now that the generator was running. She turned the dial up to as high as it could go and ran to the furnace. She lit it easily and heard the system roar to life. Running back she retied the alien to the sled and carefully, and with much difficulty, pulled it up the long set of stairs. Her arms were shuddering violently from the strain by the time she made it up. She pulled the alien into her room and started the fire in there.
Pulling the monster closer to the bed she puzzled about how to get him up onto the mattress, before giving up, untying the thing and piling the comforters over him. She then ran down the stairs and apologized to the creatures on the wall as she took away all the red lights and the battery they were attached to, and ran them back upstairs, directing them all onto the thing. She moved away, walked in a small circle, lost, then shut the door of her room and collapsed to the floor, staring at the wall.
She breathed heavily, already feeling the sweat roll down her back. She looked over her shoulder at the still unconscious alien.
She had really thought about leaving it there in the snow and getting on with her life, but she would be damned if the first extraterrestrial to come to earth would have a horrible experience with humans and then die on her property. She didn't need to be blamed for interplanetary war.
She turned towards the alien, her back falling against the wall and just stared at him for countless minutes. Eventually she got up and went down the stairs. She took all of his things from the floor and took them down into her cold storage, hiding them behind the shelves before moving back upstairs.
She emptied out then threw the parkas into the fireplace, which caused a horrible smell, but she ignored it. She locked the door of her home, drew all of the curtains on the windows, and meticulously relocated all of the glass cages into the room with the alien. She then took a set of dry clothes into the room across from hers to change. She wasn't sure what he would think of a human, or if he even cared, but it felt better to change away from the obviously sentient creature that may wake up any second.
The room she was in was her work room. It was equipped with a reloading station, a work table, a waste bin by the table and another bookcase with nothing but informational texts. She put on a pair of jeans and a tank top. Taking the clothes she moved back into the room, dropping them off into a pile in the corner and resuming her place against the wall, handgun in her lap. She didn't take her eyes off of the sleeping alien.
She sat for hours, watching, waiting. Only when her legs began cramping did she stand up. She moved back downstairs to the pile of belongings of the now deceased Weyland punks. Among them she found what she was looking for, a thin phone, black. She found the number she was looking for, labeled under 'Frederick Smith."
"Mr. Jones?" said the voice on the other end after a single ring.
"Nope," Hannah stood and walked over to her door, "your people tried to kill me Smith. The deal's off," the phone was silent on the other end, "and the thing you were after, the 'meteor,' it's gone. It killed your men, spared me for whatever reason, and left on its ship, you can come back and get your people, but I want to be left alone, you understand? Alone, forever."
There was a sigh, it sounded disappointed, "I'm sorry that happened Miss Rousseau, it was not my intent—."
"I don't care Smith, I had a gun in my face and something paint the side of my mountain red with your men's blood. I don't know what's going on, I don't want to know what's going on, okay? Just get up here, get your bodies and get the hell out of my life."
"Yes Miss Rousseau, I understand. I'm very sorry—."
She hung up the phone, looking at it and frowning. This man, Jones, he had other names in his contacts, including one under 'Wifey.' She felt her stomach twist and set the phone down, going back upstairs to check on her guest. She looked at the alien with doubts, wondering why she was even bothering really. He was still breathing evenly, his crab-like mandibles still loosely hanging about his face. She stepped into the sweltering heat and dropped down in her spot next to her gun.
The windows gradually grew dark. A wind had picked up and was rustling the trees, nearly drowning out the generator and the heavy breathing of the creature. A storm was brewing, which might bury the bodies in snow, but she wouldn't have been able to make the trek up and back five times before it got dark.
The digital clock read a little after ten by the time she actually looked at it with the notion of wanting to know what time it was. Otherwise her eyes were aimlessly wandering around. She looked over at the seven tanks of her various pets, most of which were in hibernation, though the heat might trick them out of it. Her eyes also wandered over the pictures on her wall, she could recognize her own face in most of them easily, and another woman with short spiked hair, fake blond, but with her eyes.
Then her eyes would move back to the creature, continuous back and forth, thoughts of turning the alien over to Weyland and get her life back to normal, but always convincing herself that it was better this way. She would take care of him until he was healed enough to leave. She wasn't stupid though, she had seen how easily he had killed the armed men. It was possible she was only alive because the second to last man had severely wounded him. Who knows what he might have done if he had lived to her being the last one standing.
This was dangerous, and she knew it, like taking care of a wounded tiger, or any predator for that matter, that knew no gratitude, only hunger. She wouldn't sleep that night; she didn't want to wake up to claws around her throat and sharp teeth at her face.
Outside, it began to snow.