The E-Files: Chapter Six
Chicago County Hospital
9:46 p.m.
Gary Deckhart had become an orderly for the money. Not the pay, which was okay, but the opportunities that came with the job. A guy in his position could glean assorted expensive chemicals and then sell them on the street. Or so he had thought. Security around controlled substances was tighter than he'd expected. Until now.
They have just reopened the emergency wing of the hospital after the bombing and the investigation that followed. All kinds of wild rumors were flying about -- aliens fighting in the parking lot, a UFO cover-up, and even crazier tales -- but the important thing was that the second floor was still cordoned off. An enterprising guy might be able to find some valuable goodies in the area -- medical equipment at least, stuff that, if it went missing, would be blamed on the firefight or the investigation. So here he was, during his break, flashlight in hand, moving through the quiet rooms after stepping over the yellow police tape.
So far, he'd found nothing of value. Normally, he would have given up, but Gary was the sort of guy who would work harder at a possible scam than at a real job. It never occurred to him that he might have made more money just putting in some overtime than in wandering around off-limit areas, risking prison.
A cold draft made him pause. This was the area where somebody had punched a hole on a wall big enough to throw a horse through. Maybe he could find something interesting there…
Something large moved behind him.
Gary whirled around, waving the flashlight around. Nothing. Then he heard a strange, inhuman, inhaling-hissing sound rising from the ground behind him.
Oh, shit. Run! But his legs wouldn't move. As in a dream, he turned his head and saw what was behind him.
Gary's last thoughts of his life were consumed by a single image.
Teeth.
So many teeth.
Unnamed Facility, Montana
10:03 p.m.
The black helicopter was flying over a battle zone.
The Cigarrette Smoking Man observed the carnage below. Several guard towers and vehicles were burning, as was one of the buildings. There was still some isolated fighting going on -- flashes of automatic fire, and the more intense flares of energy weapons -- but it was mostly over. The real action, he knew, would be down below, in the underground facilities. The Predators had blasted through the defenses of the facility. He was disappointed, but not really surprised.
"I've seen enough," he said. The pilot, nodding gratefully, started to circle away from the war zone.
Something flashed from the ground. The smoking man saw the ball of light soar towards them. The helicopter shuddered like a ship running aground. Smoke and sparks filled the cabin.
"We've lost power! We're going down!"
Whirling chaos for several long seconds, then a shattering impact.
******
Alan Schaeffer thought of the Alamo and Little Big Horn as he scrambled for cover.
The perimeter had been overrun. Most of his men were dead. Overhead, a helicopter crashed to the ground not too far from his position. Probably the smoking man; he'd been on his way here. What a mess.
In all fairness, Schaeffer was sure his precautions would have been enough against one Predator. Or even three or four. Five might have been tough.
There had been at least ten of them.
Even so, his men -- thugs that they might have been -- had fought well, at least outside. He didn't know what was going on down below, where First and Second Squads had gone.
The last fifteen minutes had been a blur of violence and death.
The perimeter had been designed to deal with Predators. The snipers had been wearing special thermal uniforms under their body armor, covering them from head to toe. They disguised their thermal signature, rendering them invisible to Predators. They had also been equipped with infrared goggles that enabled them to see past the Predator's camouflage screens. Those snipers had shot two of them -- both of them hard kills, since they were using heavy .50 caliber rifles.
Unfortunately, the gun flashes had been easy to spot. None of the snipers had survived to fire a second shot.
Schaeffer had led his men outside. They were all dressed in thermal armor, but some had not made sure the zippers and velcro fastenings were all tight enough, and they had paid for it with their lives. And, again, whenever somebody shot, he became a target. An energy blast had barely missed Schaeffer when he scored his only kill of the night, a head-shot on a Predator who had slashed his way past a whole squad, cutting down five men in a couple of seconds. His rifle had been melted into slag, and his night-vision goggles ruined.
After that, it hadn't been much of a fight. Schaeffer had seen several Predators head into the facility, after blasting the barracks to smithereens. He thought a fourth Predator had been killed before his surviving men had broken and tried to flee.
None had survived.
Schaeffer readied his Eagle .50 caliber pistol and tried to move closer to the facility. If First and Second Squads had managed to take care of the aliens inside, maybe he could rally them. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was all he had.
Something slashed the air as it flew towards him. Schaeffer threw himself down, and the spinning blade missed his head by less than a quarter inch. Schaeffer twisted as he hit the ground, and squeezed a shot in the direction the blade had come from. The Predator roared in pain and rushed forward, wounded but not disabled. Schaeffer raised the gun. His finger tightened on the trigger. The Predator's blade sliced three inches off the gun barrel and knocked the weapon off his hand. Schaeffer felt his wrist spraining under the impact, but he ignored the pain. He rolled away, barely avoiding a back swing that would have gutted him like a fish. The kick that followed did not miss, however, and Schaeffer was catapulted several yards by the impact.
The soldier bounced off a tree, struggled to his knees. The Predator was upon him like a cat pouncing on a mouse. The alien backhanded him with casual brutality, and then pulled him to his feet. Schaeffer opened his left eye; his right was swollen shut. The Predator slowly brought its blade forward, readying the first flaying strike.
Someone shot it in the head.
The Predator's face mask leaped off the greenish mess that had been its face. The lifeless body collapsed, dragging the stunned Schaeffer down with it.
From the ground, Schaeffer saw booted feet come to a stop over him.
"Do not make any sudden moves," a cold, motionless voice commanded.
Schaeffer looked up slowly.
And saw himself, a younger version of himself, looking back at him.
*****
Terminators were not supposed to feel shock. In fact, they were not supposed to feel anything.
This particular one was no longer the same ordinary programmable killing machine it once had been. It had learned to care, and to feel pain.
Now, his cognitive functions experienced a 1.27-second discontinuity. His diagnostic systems reported the malfunction, but could not find a logical cause for it. Emotion had to be responsible.
The Terminator knew who the man on the ground was. His official designation had been Likeness #101. Hundreds of terminators -- the entire T-800, Model 101 line -- bore those features, modeled after a Special Forces officer with a commendable track record. One Major Schaeffer, a member of the human resistance, captured by Skynet's hordes in 2001, in the Terminator's timeline.
In some way, it was like encountering one's distant ancestor. Major Schaeffer's brain patterns and memories had been used as a model for the T-800's programming. And now, the Terminator was face to face with the man whose identity the Terminator's makers had stolen.
"Who the hell are you?" Schaeffer gasped.
John Connor, Mulder and Scully arrived at the scene.
"It's all clear," John reported before noticing who was on the ground. "Holy crap, it's your twin!"
Mulder nodded in recognition. "Colonel Schaeffer, I presume."
Schaeffer nodded back, still stunned. Scully knelt by his side. "You are injured," she said. "I'm a doctor; let me see what I can do to help you."
"I'm all right," Schaeffer replied, then belied his words with a wince as Scully probed the wounds. "Who are you people? Why is this kid here?" Schaeffer added, pointing at John Connor.
"We're here to kill the aliens," John replied.
Schaeffer thought about it for a moment.
"Good enough for me."
There'd be time for questions later, if he lived that long.
*****
There were no Predators outside. No living people, either. That left the underground facility.
"I can't contact the two squads that went down there," Schaeffer told the assembled Eternity agents. "But there are people trapped down there. Scientists, and prisoners. They were experimenting on humans." Schaeffer did not try to make excuses. He had not stopped it from happening, and he would carry that on his conscience until the day he died.
"There is something else," Mulder added. "I believe they were trying to find a cure for the black oil here." Krycek's comments about "winning the war" could only mean one thing, Mulder had decided. "We have to find it."
Sarah and Ripley looked at each other. "That would take care of all the alien threats to Earth in this timeline," Sarah said.
"So all we have to do is go in there." Ripley pointed towards the facilities. "With the aliens."
"I can get you down through the service tunnels," Schaeffer said. The soldier had forced himself to ignore this talk of timelines and multiple alien threats. "I doubt the elevators are working, and the Predators may be covering the main access corridors."
Ripley looked at her fellow agents, and at their newfound allies. They all looked determined to go.
A part of her had known it would be this way.
"Let's do it."
*****
The Cigarette Smoking Man finished climbing down the ladder and rested for a moment. He had cracked several ribs during the crash landing, but he had forced himself to leave the wreckage and head into the base. The outside world must to be alerted. Not too far away, orbiting in a holding pattern, a stealth bomber awaited orders. If he could reach a working telephone, this facility would be blotted off the face of the earth. It was a pity the attempt to find a cure would end like this, but at least one could always deal with the Colonists.
He had to send out the word. This area was too remote for anybody to know what was going on. If the aliens were released into the wild, they might multiply uncontrollably. At worst, that would mean the end of humankind; at best, the Colonists would intervene, and they would know their human servants had attempted to betray them. That could not be allowed to happen.
After regaining consciousness, he had managed to reach a hidden escape hatch that led into the underground laboratory. His goal was to reach a phone; his cell phone had been smashed by the crash. So here he was, one of the most powerful me on the planet, limping through a darkened tunnel deep underground. My kingdom for a phone. He would laugh, if it didn't hurt so much.
Through the pain-induced haze, he wondered if Mulder was dead already. Krycek's team should have moved by now. It had been a hard choice to make, but this situation demanded sacrifices of Biblical proportions. The noise the Cigarette Smoking Man made at that though could have been a chuckle, or a sob, or a strangled cough. He wasn't sure himself.
A light guided him for the last stretch. There it was, a watch post. There was a saucer-sized hole on the bullet-proof glass of the booth, and a very dead guard there. He ignored the body, stumbling towards the desk, unaware of the small form scurrying behind him. He grabbed for the phone. All he had to do was dial the right number, speak the right code word, and in ten minutes several bunker-buster 2,000-pound bonbs would turn the underground complex into a good imitation of Hell.
The line was dead.
Barely repressing a loud curse, he turned around to leave the booth. He'd have to find another…
The face-hugger's leap was so quick he never got a chance to scream.
*****
The last soldier died screaming under a Predator's knife.
The normal thrill that accompanied a successful kill was missing, however. Things were going badly for the pack. All of the Predators above the surface were dead, and their killers were coming down.
The Hunt Leader gave a curt order. One of the Predators opened a canister, and a yellowish gas started billowing out. It contained a hormone that would accelerate the Clawed Prey's growth, spurring their already fast metabolism. Within minutes, all embryos planted in a host would "hatch." In the same amount of time, all already hatched aliens would reach their full adult size. At that point, the pack would herd the aliens towards the new enemy. If the newcomers survived fighting dozens of warriors -- and the other -- the Predators would finish them off. And if that wasn't enough…
Another order was given, one obeyed by the entire pack. Five timers started beeping their warnings, and were quickly silenced. All their self-destruct charges were now activated. If the pack did not make it back to their ship, they would take their tormentors with them.
*****
They had divided into two teams. Ripley, Call and the Terminator were going straight down, to the holding cells. The rest of the group, led by Schaeffer, headed for the offices where the research data would be.
Sarah Connor led the way, phaser ready. She didn't particularly like the ray-gun -- most of her training had involved 20th century weapons -- but it did the job, and that was the only thing that mattered. A .45 wouldn't take down either of the two alien species they were dealing with. A part of Sarah just wanted to blow up the entire facility; coming down here, facing deadly aliens at close quarters -- it was a desperate, almost suicidal move.
And she was taking her son along.
The emergency lights gave everything a dull red shade. Sarah looked around a corner and saw the office. Somebody was there, a tall man. As she watched, he smashed a chair into a computer monitor.
"Freeze!" Sarah shouted. The man didn't freeze. He ducked behind a desk. "Damnit," Sarah hissed. She turned to her companions. "Cover me," she ordered, and rolled into the office.
The timing was exquisitely wrong.
Even as she came up from her roll. John screamed a warning down by the corridor. She heard shooting, and inhuman screeches. Something had attacked her back-ups just as she entered the office. She glanced back, and saw no trace of Scully or Mulder. A glance was all she thought she could spare. Going back to help the others meant turning her back to whomever was in the office.
As it turned out, a glance was more than she could spare.
The large man moved with uncanny speed, knocking the phaser out of her hand. Sarah tried a Judo throw, but the man shifted his weight and landed on top of her. She head-butted him. No result. The man held one of her wrists in an iron grip. With her free hand, Sarah pulled out her combat knife and drove it into the man's chest.
He smiled. Green, smoking liquid flowed from the wound.
Sarah gagged, choking on the fumes. Her eyes were burning. She couldn't see, couldn't breathe…
Her attacker flung her contemptuously aside. She was fading away.
"John," she tried to call out, but all that came out was a strangled whisper.
Chicago County Hospital
10:15 p.m.
"Have you seen Deckhart?" Dr. Greene asked Dr. Carter. They had a full house tonight: two car accidents, a guy with terminal emphysema, and the usual suspects. They needed everyone on board, and Deckhart, the new orderly, always seemed to be on break.
"He's on break, I think," Carter replied with a wry smile. Deckhart was going to be on a permanent break pretty soon, he guessed, more rightly than he knew.
Mark Greene shrugged and walked over to the cubicle where the next patient lay in wait. He checked the chart. Joseph Bustamante, age 43, a smoker since age 12. Despite his emphysema, he was still a pack-a-day man. Mark shook his head. "How are we feeling, Mr. Bustamante?"
"Can't breathe so good, doc," the patient replied, breathing oxygen through a mask. Mark checked the pressure gauge. It was still better than half full. Deckhart should have been doing the checking, not him, but…
Mark's nostrils flared. He turned towards the patient. "Mr. Bustamante, have you been smoking?"
The man's eyes wouldn't meet Mark's. "Uh, well…"
"You do realize you are lying down next to highly flammable, highly explosive oxygen, don't you?"
"Sorry, doc. Here, take 'em." The man reached beneath his hospital gown and produced a pack of Malboros and a Zippo. Mark put them in his pocket. That would have been just great, an explosion less than a week after the last one.
As he left Mr. Bustamante for his next patient, Mark pondered the events of the past few days. The implications of what he had seen were almost too overwhelming, too hard to contemplate. He wondered what had happened to the two FBI agents and their mysterious associates. Had they put an end to the – he struggled with a word to describe the things he had seen -- infestation? By unspoken agreement, none of the ER personnel involved had discussed the situation. Carter had started to, a couple of times, but it had been too hard. They were all exposed to enough madness in their lives. Still…
A scream cut through his musings, galvanized him into action.
He rushed out of the exam rooms. What he saw in the corridors froze him like a deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing truck.
Unnamed Facility, Montana
10:15 p.m.
The four aliens rushed them with uncanny speed. Schaeffer barely heard their initial approach, and by then it was almost too late. He whirled, interposing his body between the kid and the rushing monsters. His assault rifle – scavenged from a dead soldier – shredded the first alien with a long burst of autofire. Its acidic blood splattered the corridor, gouging holes on the floor and walls, and thankfully none of them had hit him. The two FBI agents joined in with their service pistols, and between the three of them they dropped the second one. The other two vaulted over the trashing bodies just as a Schaeffer's gun ran empty and Mulder's pistol jammed…
The kid saved their lives. He had shouldered his way past them and aimed the flashlight-like object he wielded. The wide beam had caught the two aliens and disintegrated them less than two feet away from Schaeffer. A normal gun might have killed the creatures – but not without raising enough acid discharges to kill the shooters as well. Schaeffer looked at the kid; he was too young to shave but his coolness under fire would have done a SEAL soldier proud. Who the hell were these people?
John Connor did not slow down. As soon as the aliens were done, he turned around in the direction his mother had gone. "Mom? Mom!" Mulder and Scully followed him, Schaeffer just a step behind.
Sarah Connor emerged from the office, looking grim and determined. John stopped, the beginning of a smile on his face. "Mom..?"
The smile disappeared as Sarah leveled her phaser at her son and his companions. She caught them completely off-guard; all clumped in a tight knot, all with their weapons down.
Sarah Connor changed, grew larger, became a tall, grim man. Mulder and Scully recognized him. "The bounty hunter," Mulder muttered.
"How many more of you are here?" the alien bounty hunter asked.
"What have you done with my mother?" John demanded.
"Answer the question."
"Why?" Mulder replied. "You're going to kill us anyway."
"You are right," the alien replied. His finger tightened on the trigger.
*****
He had awakened a few minutes after the attack. He had checked the time on his watch. Too soon. Much too soon. He should have been in a coma for hours, at least.
That meant his death was even sooner than he had feared.
The smoking man had rushed forward, trying desperately to reach a phone before the creature that had been planted inside him burst free. He had run into four aliens – and they had ignored him. Why not? He was serving as a host for one of them, after all.
The four aliens had charged past him, into a hail of gunfire and some energy weapon. Hidden in the shadow, the smoking man saw everything. Saw Mulder, still alive. He crept closer, uncertain of what to do next.
When the alien bounty hunter aimed the gun, the smoking man made his choice.
*****
It happened very fast.
The bounty hunter aimed the weapon, and Mulder briefly wondered what the energy blast would feel like.
The blast never came.
A newcomer came rushing from the shadows and grappled with the bounty hunter. The struggling figures twisted around, and Mulder recognized the newcomer. "You!" Cancer man, the nameless stranger who had been Mulder's nemesis all these years.
The smoking man's face contorted in unimaginable agony. The bounty hunter paused as he suddenly realized what exactly he was fighting with.
The alien inside the smoking man's body erupted forward, in a shower of blood and tissue. In the same motion, the clawing cat-sized creature burrowed into the bounty hunter's chest, chewing and clawing its way in, a mindless killing machine.
The bounty hunter staggered clawing at the thing buried in his chest. The greenish caustic blood of his inhuman physiology flowed from the wound. "Stay back!" Mulder warned. "Those fumes are highly toxic!"
Highly toxic, and something else. It reacted with the other alien's acidic blood, producing a violent chemical reaction. The two extraterrestrials burst into blue flames. Before anybody could recover from the shock, the flames consumed the bounty hunter and the small alien.
Mulder rushed forward. The smoking man had fallen to his knees, and then collapsed on his back. The wound the alien had made on its way out was clearly mortal, but the smoking man was still alive. He had time for a sentence. "Blood…calls…to blood, my son."
"What?" But the smoking man was no longer capable of answering.
*****
The had found nine uninfected people in the cells. Everybody else was dead. "Hurry!" Call had shouted, and she had led the survivors to the emergency exit, while Ripley and the Terminator covered their retreat.
Aliens had come after the group, over a dozen of them. Phasers were an ideal weapon against them, however. Wide beams had vaporized them before they reach the agents. Things were going very well.
"We are reaching the ladder," Call reported through her communicator. "It's all clear. I'm sending people out."
"We're right behind you," Ripley replied, firing her phaser one last time. The screeching alien, trying to crawl forward despite the loss of its hind legs, vanished in an acidic cloud. "All clear."
"Negative," the Terminator disagreed. "I'm detecting energy
signatures down the…"
Something picked the Terminator up and slammed him against a wall. Shocked,
Ripley realized the cyborg was stuck to wall, trapped by a wire net that was
cutting deeply into his flesh. She saw a blur of movement, fired her phaser,
and was rewarded by a roar of pain; a Predator, its stealth field destroyed
along with much of the left side of his torso, collapsed to the ground.
Unfortunately, that was the only shot she took. A razor-sharp flying disk cut off the tip of the phaser, turning the complex energy weapon into a useless collection of circuits and plastic.
The remaining four Predators turned off their stealth fields. Ripley was surrounded.
She smiled.
"Come on, let's play."
The Predators understood the challenge. The largest one, clearly the leader, nodded at one of the others. The chosen one stepped forward, wielding a machete-like weapon in each hand. These critters were downright sporting, Ripley decided.
Too bad for them. Fair fights were for suckers.
Blades flashing in a complex pattern, the Predator stepped forward. Ripley studied its moves in the instant before contact. When she moved, it was with the inhuman speed of her hybrid anatomy, combined with the best hand to hand training available in the Multiverse.
Duck under the first swing. Close in, deflecting the second blow with an elbow to the Predator's wrist. Deliver a stabbing strike to the throat, just beneath the facemask. Follow with a knee to the midsection. Grab the blades from the staggering monster. Slash, slash.
As the dead Predator toppled back, Ripley didn't pause. The first one had not been expecting her inhuman abilities; the others would not be overconfident. And she had no intention to fight three more duels. Fair fights were for suckers.
The corpse had not hit the ground when Ripley whirled and threw one of the blades at one of the Predators. The heavy sword spun into the hunter's chest and sunk most of the way in. The second Predator toppled with a surprised gurgle.
Ripley somersaulted and delivered a flying jump kick at the third Predator's head. But surprise – and her luck – had run out. The Predator's spear flicked forward, and Ripley grunted in pain as the point slammed past her force field and into her. Right through her. The Predator reversed its grip and slammed Ripley down, pinning her to the floor like a butterfly fixed in place with a pin.
The Predator stood over her. "Come on, let's play," it said, using Ripley's recorded words to mock her. The larger one moved forward, flaying knife ready.
Chicago County Hospital
10:17 p.m.
Death had come to the ER.
Dr. Mark Greene faced a coiled, leathery creature, claws and fangs and malice, surrounded by panic and chaos. At its feet lay the mangled corpse of a security guard.
Mark was human. He turned around to run.
And saw the two operating rooms, where the accident victims, still critical, were being worked on. Dr. Corday was with one of the patients, too involved in the operation to be aware of what was going on. Dr. Weaver was in the other one, also oblivious. They were helpless, too busy fending off death to see it materialized in the corridor.
Mark Greene stopped, and turned back to face the creature.
It looked up from the bleeding corpse, and hissed.
"What do we do?" said somebody right behind him. Mark looked and saw Dr. Carter, clearly scared out of his wits, but staying by his side.
"I've got a plan," Mark replied, his mind racing.
"It better be really good," Carter said in a broken voice.
Unnamed Facility, Montana
10:18 p.m.
Her children were dead. All she had left was revenge.
Her kind had very few feelings. Hunger, a relentless drive for survival, and hatred for all other living beings. But the Queens, the child-bearers had one more emotion: care for her newborns. She had sensed everything was wrong; the children were growing unnaturally fast. She herself had matured at an alarming rate. When the cells had opened, she had decided to hide. There were tunnels beneath this one, barely large enough to accommodate her size, but her strength was also huge, and she had managed to tunnel deeper beneath the ground. She had heard the death screams of her children, as one by one they were killed. And now she was alone.
She would kill them all. Then, after she was avenged, she would breed again.
*****
A normal human being would have been in excruciating agony, and halfway to bleeding to death at this point. The Terminator, of course, did not have to worry about either.
Even as he tried to extricate himself from the wire net, he dispassionately observed the fight. Ellen Ripley was a formidable fighter, but given the capabilities of the extraterrestrials, he had calculated the odds of her prevailing as 33% +/- 5%. Ripley had managed to exceed his projection, killing not one but two of the Predators, but she had been – inevitably -- disabled. If the cyborg did not free himself, she would be dead very soon.
The wire of the net was almost monomolecular in width. If the Terminator pushed hard enough, it might be able to cut even through his alloy endoskeleton. Getting out was a matter of finesse, not strength. Steady pushing, using the living flesh of his outer body as a cushion. The result would have horrified most uninformed observers, as blood soon covered the Terminator. But it was working. In 3.7 seconds, he would be able to slide free.
Projections are always subject to unforeseen circumstances, however. Exactly 1.3 seconds before freeing himself, the ground directly beneath the Terminator cracked and heaved. The floor and the wall crumbled, and huge alien emerged, lashing out with claws and spearing tail. The T-800 was freed from the net, but he was trapped under the collapsing wall.
Estimated time of release…
*****
The first claw strike cut the smaller Predator in half. The Hunt Leader did not fare any batter. The alien's stinger drove clean through his torso and lifted him off the floor. The Hunt Leader did not go quietly, however. As he was thrust into the alien Queen's jaws, he fired his shoulder guns. As the energy blasts gouged huge chunks of the alien's body, the Predator drove his knife into the Queen's eye. The guns continued firing even after the Queen bit off his head.
It was mutual destruction, brutal and cruel – and brave, for courage is not found only in the virtuous.
The Queen spat the Predator's head, and then sank to the ground, dying. She was avenged..
*****
Ripley lifted the largest piece of wall off the Terminator. "You're a mess," she said, looking down at the barely recognizable body. Most of the flesh had been torn off the Terminator's body, leaving behind a bloodied, grinning skeleton. Ripley barely repressed her disgust: she hated those reminders of the inhumanity of artificial life. Her friendship with Call had helped a bit, but she rarely got to see Call's insides, either.
"I am still functional," the Terminator said, getting up. "All hostiles have been terminated." He scanned the area. "Oh, shit," he added in a toneless voice. He was trying to talk more like a human, but he still was terrible at the delivery.
"Oh, shit?" asked Ripley.
"We have five self-destruct devices activated. The resulting detonation will utterly destroy this facility."
"Oh, SHIT!" Ripley's delivery was a lot more convincing.
*****
"Okay, I've downloaded all the files," John Connor reported. He gave his mother yet another worried glance. Scully had bandaged her eyes, using Mulder's shirt for material. She was still semiconscious, but she had suffered no permanent harm. "The vaccine against the black oil, the whole works."
"Good," Schaeffer said. "I think it's time we…"
"Hold one," John interrupted. "I'm getting a call on my communicator. Say again, Ripley?"
"Get out now!" Ripley shouted. "This place is going to blow up!"
Chicago County Hospital
10:18 p.m.
The alien pounced on a new victim, a relative of a patient who had panicked and tried to run past it. His screams were suddenly cut off when the alien tore out his throat.
"Go!" Mark Greene shouted.
Carter threw the oxygen canister at the alien; it hit its midsection.
Mark lit the Zippo lighter he had taken from Mr. Bustamante, and tossed it toward the open canister. He ducked for cover.
The explosion wasn't huge, but it was strong enough to shatter glass and knock people down. The alien roared, surrounded by flames. Carter sprung back, and threw bottles of alcohol and other flammables at the creature. Totally engulfed, the alien ran away, crashing through the outer doors. Mark and Carter ran after it.
An ambulance was just pulling in as the alien ran out. The vehicle hit the creature, and knocked it several yards away. The fire and the impact did the thing. The alien collapsed, its acidic blood melting a large hole in the asphalt and concrete of the lot.
The two doctors looked at each other. "Well, that's something you don't see every day," Carter said. Greene only nodded.
One of the paramedics in the ambulance hailed them. "Guy, I don't know what the hell that way, but we've got a hurt boy in here."
"Let's go, Carter," Dr. Greene said. "No rest for the weary."
Unnamed Facility, Montana
10:19 p.m.
The explosions devoured the entire facility, carving a crater on the ground and raising a flaming mushroom cloud that was seen for miles around.
Military units arrived at the scene shortly afterwards. They found no trace of survivors.