Chapter Eleven


Trevor Avery swallowed hard as he stared at the creature. Its eyeless face stared back. He felt his skin crawl with goosebumps, felt his knees tremble. He was going to die.

Again, the alien hissed, swinging its tail to and fro. Its inner mouth had stopped moving forward and remained still, two inches from Trevor's sweating face. Trevor felt the blood pounding in his ears, could feel his breath coming in shallow. He was going to die.

"You fucker," he croaked. "You killed Fred, then you killed Donald. I'll see you in Hell."

More drool dripped from the alien's mouth. Trevor suddenly felt stronger, more confident. Suddenly, before he even realized he had done it, Trevor swung out with his right fist and punched the creature in the side of its head. Trevor was surprised at how hard and tough the alien's exoskeleton was, and he had felt two of his fingers break as he hit it.

Exoskeleton or not, the alien definitely felt the punch. It let out a squeal as its head jerked violently to the side and it lost its balance. Trevor fell to the floor, holding his wounded hand. The creature also fell to the floor, and began thrashing its tail violently, whipping Trevor across the chest several times, tearing the front of his shirt, drawing blood.

Trevor rolled away, groaning. The alien slowly got to its feet and hissed again. Trevor knew what that hiss meant. The thing was pissed. It grabbed his feet and began pulling him across the floor. He tried to grasp on to something, but could not manage.

Then he spied a rather large wrench lying discarded on the floor. It was one of Donald's heavier wrenches. The two of them had been doing repairs in here a few days earlier. As the creature continued to drag Trevor, he grabbed a hold of the wrench with his good hand, rolled onto his back, and struck the alien's arm. Trevor definitely heard a snap as the wrench fractured the creature's exoskeleton, sending a small spray of its blood across the cargo bay.

Trevor watched in facination as the blood splashed against an electrical cable in one of the cargo bay's walls. The blood immediately began melting the thick cable, sending out a shower of sparks. As the cable continued to spark loudly, the creature drew back a little, holding its wounded arm.

Trevor got to his feet and staggered over to the cable, watching the sparks flying from the severed end. How many volts were running through that? Trevor wasn't an electrician, but he had a pretty damn good idea that it was a hell of a lot. He grabbed the cable (making sure he didn't touch the sparking end) and wrenched it out of the wall. The cable he held in his hands was about three feet long, and it was still throwing off sparks.

The alien turned its head in his direction, jaws gaping. It started forward, slow at first, but then it was running full speed. Jesus it was fast! And a split second before it collided with Trevor and the wall, Trevor lashed out with the cable, and rammed it right into the creature's open mouth.

There was a loud popping sound, like a firecracker, and then there was the burnt smell of ozone. Trevor leaped away from the thrashing creature as a couple thousand volts surged through its body, boiling its insides. Sparks shot out of the thing's skull like fireworks as large chunks of its outer shell split apart and fell to the floor with a thud.

Trevor could only watch as several minutes went by. The alien had been electricuted so badly that it was now just a black, burnt mass on the cargo bay floor, still smoldering. A few minutes earlier, the cable had shorted out, along with a few lights throughout the ship.

But there was no doubt in Trevor's mind. The thing was dead. He went to it and touched its burnt skull with the toe of his shoe. The skull crumbled and fell apart, resembling large chunks of burnt ash. No acid spilled out.

Trevor knew that he would never be able to climb into a sleep chamber without first disposing of the body, so he dragged what was left of the alien into the ship's only airlock. He jetisoned the body into the darkness of space and returned to the cryo-tubes.

He stared at the same tube he had been ready to climb into when the alien had come back to him. For several minutes he stood staring. Then he smiled, closed his eyes, and whispered one word: "Home."

Trevor got into the cryo-tube and sealed it. In the three weeks that followed, he slept more soundly than he ever had in his entire life.






THE END