CHAPTER 8: BLACKOUT, PART II

Crested Butte, Gunnison County, Colorado. October 14th, 2004.

Dallas Howard downed another beer and slammed the bottle against the bar. It was the last one before going home for curfew. A hand landed on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Sheriff Eddie Morales pull up a stool and sit down next to him. Eddie sighed and combed his unkempt hair with one hand.

-"We found Ray's body in the woods," Eddie started with a grim look on his face. "He…" the sheriff stuttered, it was too much, "he was skinned alive."

Dallas looked down at the bar in disbelief. Skinned? He thought. A sudden macabre possibility formed in his mind. "Do you think it had something to do with the disappearance of Bud and his son?"

The grimm possibility that the same thing had happened to this man and his son hit his mind like a hammer.

Crested Butte was a quiet town, a vacation destination where city dwellers relaxed, ski and spend the holidays away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities. Of course there were accidents, some robberies and break-ins. Dallas had spent three years in the county prison for that last one. But Murders? Skinning? That kind of thing didn't happen in his town.

Although his mind explored all the scenarios, the isolation of the town made it the perfect place for a psychopath to carry out his activities unnoticed by the authorities.

Eddie hesitated, "I guess…" he paused, "I guess that sort of thing doesn't happen here."

Dallas nodded silently. "Carrie knows?"

Eddie shook his head. He should have notified her hours before, but he still couldn't find the courage to do so. Ray was his friend, and there were no words to describe what had happened to him. How could he tell Carrie her husband was skewered and skinned like big game?

The lights, like the music in the place, abruptly went out. A chorus of boos erupted from the table in the corner. The bartender reached over the bar and pulled out a flashlight. A burst of static on Eddie's walkie talkie interrupted the customers' babbling.

-"Sheriff, we have a report of an explosion in the electrical substation, over." The female operator called.

Eddie took the device dangling from his chest, and he responded, pressing the transmit button. "Roger. Notify the Fire Department, I'll see them there."

Eddie took his hat and put it on back. The day didn't stop giving.

-"Need some help?" Dallas volunteered. Sure had been a long day for his friend, and Dallas had nothing else to do.

-"I don't know." Eddie sighed.

-"Let's go," Dallas said, standing up, taking a bill from his pocket and depositing it on the counter. "I'll go in the back."

As they stepped out into the street, Dallas saw the orange glow of the flames silhouetted against the buildings and trees. It took them less than five minutes to get to the scene, the fire truck and an ambulance were already there. The substation maintenance crew was running around, shutting off the power so the firefighters could work safely.

-"The fire spread," The Chief fireman reported as soon as Eddie reached his side. "The maintenance team will take a few hours to repair the damage after we put out the fire."

-"Roger," Eddie said. It seemed that the situation was under control. They still had to investigate the cause of the fire, but he was confident in the fire chief's ability.

He turned to Dallas. There was only one thing left to do, he had already put off the inevitable long enough.

-"Sheriff!" A voice called out to him, it was an agitated Officer Joe Wallace. "You have to hear this!"

Now What? Eddie thought.

-"Dallas!" Ricky called out to his brother from the crowd.

-"Ricky!" Dallas frowned, between surprised and annoyed. "What are you doing here?" He asked. His younger brother should be at home, what the hell was he doing there during a curfew?

A blonde girl and another teenager joined him, they both looked agitated, as did his brother.

"S-something was following us!" Ricky said, snorting. He put his hands on his knees to keep himself from falling to the ground. "I do not know what happened! We ran here!"

-"What do you mean by something following you?" Dallas asked, "Who? Tell me who he was."

Ricky looked at him with terrified eyes, taking a deep breath. "I don't know." The teenager yelled and started sobbing.

-"Where were you?" Dallas asked.

-"At school," he replied. Dallas frowned, what could Ricky be doing at school right now? "Mark is dead...and Nick."

Dallas looked at Eddie. Had he said dead? he seemed to ask with his eyes. Dallas didn't miss the fact that Ricky had said 'something' and not 'someone'. "What was it?" he asked.

They hadn't managed to see their attacker in detail, everything had happened very quickly. He could only remember the screams of his companions and those teeth, shining in the dark like pieces of metal under an eyeless face."I don't know," he repeated.

- o -

Eager to resume the k'vvar, Vrka'yu activated the tracker again, and beneath a world of shades of green and black, he saw the white glow of one of the beasts, slipping into a rectangular construction beside a large open space. A vehicle was parked in the driveway.

Vrka'yu unslung his ki-cti'pa from his back, pressed the button on the hilt and the double tipped weapon extended. Growling, Vrka'yu jumped down the hill toward the building.

The glass doors were open. The ghomon sheltered inside - because otherwise the r'ksa would not have entered there - must have thought that the solid concrete building would make a good hiding place.

Vrka'yu stepped through the portal, carefully scanning the flanks to avoid being ambushed. The interior was spacious, dominated by a body of crystal clear water that covered almost the entire surface. At the edge of the artificial pool, a r'ksa was crouching over his victim. His inner jaw fired like a piston repeatedly at the corpse's head, removing pieces of matter with each bite.

The Yaksa readied his naginata and crept closer. He raised the gun with one arm and took aim, right between the spine and the head.

A sudden movement and the r'ksa fell to the ground, the sharp point of the ki-cti'pa passing cleanly through his jaws. Vrka'yu retracted his spear once more and the beast fell limp into the water. He looked at the bodies before him and kicked them, throwing them into the pond.

A shadow fell from the ceiling behind him. Vrka'yu reached out to one of the chakras on his belt as she sensed the presence. In a lightning-quick move, Vrka'yu spun around, ripping one of the r'ksa's arms off. The creature's boiling blood spattered onto the ground and a few drops fell into the water, causing it to sizzle. The beast sent him backwards with a sweep of its tail. The shuriken skidded across the polished floor away from him.

Without hesitation, the monster lunged at the fallen Yaksa, shrieking. Vrka'yu defended himself by grabbing the r'ksa by the throat, the creature's silver teeth snapping mere inches from his mask. A hand with sharp claws clawed at his chest and his tail reared up, the blade at the tip of him poised to pierce him.

At that distance, he couldn't use his vaj'ra cannon, he only had one chance. As he struggled to contain the vicious attack, Vrka'yu used one of his hands to reach for the ki-cti'pa slung across his back. He drew his legs up, placed his feet on the creature's torso and pushed it back, using the same momentum to push himself to his feet. The r'ksa screeched and charged again and the experienced warrior swung his ki-cti'pa like a samurai, lopping off his opponent's head with one blow.

Vrka'yu gazed for a moment at his fallen prey and, as with the first, dragged it toward the water.

He took the vial of bright blue liquid from his pocket and poured some into the pool. The water bubbled, reacted with the corrosive substance and evaporated at an alarming rate.

Vrka'yu picked up the r'ksa's head and raised it above his own, letting out a roar of victory, before unceremoniously throwing it into the boiling pool.

- o -

Dallas and Eddie entered the indoor pool. Morales aimed his gun with one hand and the flashlight with the other, so that the beam of light illuminated the possible target.

The place was empty, nothing seemed out of place except that the doors were open, and the truck of Mr. Collins, Dale's father, was parked outside, its lights still on.

After taking a few steps, he saw that the pool was completely empty. Not a single drop of water remained. Ricky had said that they had broken into the school to swim, how was that possible?

It was then that he saw it, in the light of the flashlights, a puddle of crimson liquid stained the floor, and occasionally, the tiles were corroded and broken. The trail of blood continued down the hall, to the window through which the boys claimed to have escaped. The glass was opaque from a spatter of blood. There was no sign of Mark or Nick.

-"Call for help," Dallas said. "Someone must know about this." But Eddie was staring at the thick red splatter that stained the lockers like a Jackson Pollock painting. "Eddie!" The sheriff snapped.

They walked back to the vehicle in silence and got in. In the back, Ricky, Jesse and Dale were looking at them scared. Morales took over CB radio.

-"Central, come in." He called the station. "Central, respond!"

-"What's happening, Sheriff?" the alarmed voice of the operator answered, "All emergency lines are flooded with calls! people saying...!" The garbled noise of static interrupted the transmission.

Morales insisted: "Central, come in!" Then he tried one of his men, "Joe, respond."

-"Wallace here!" The deputy officer responded. "I've arrived at the station."

-"Listen," Eddie started, "We're heading for the station. We had… I didn't know how to explain it. We don't know what's going on, but we need you to call the national guard."

-"Repeat?" Wallace responded, "I didn't hear… wait, something is-" Communication was abruptly cut off with a screech of static.

-"Let's go," Dallas suggested.

Eddie hit the gas and the truck headed back toward the police station.

A heavy rain broke out almost immediately, even with the windshield wipers it was hard to see the road ahead. Luckily there was no traffic, but the water would make repair work on the power line difficult.

-"Watch out!" Jesse exclaimed as a whitish flash crossed the street and the sheriff slammed on the brakes. The SUV came to an abrupt stop with tires screeching. Eddie rolled his eyes, the pale figure in the middle of the street was a woman sobbing with her hands in her face. Dallas recognized her as Darcy Benson.

-"Darcy?" Eddie descended from the vehicle and grabbed the woman by her shoulders, "Darcy? What happened?"

-"Sheriff…" Darcy gasped. "At the restaurant... Carrie..."

-"What's going on?"

-"She is dead!" the woman burst into tears, "Carrie is dead, something in her belly." Darcy covered her mouth with her hand, unable to describe the horror she had seen. "She's gone! She's gone!"

-"Ricky, take her inside her," Dallas, who had stepped out of the SUV, ordered his younger brother and turned to Morales, "Eddie, people are dying. We need weapons."

-"The National Guard will be here soon," Eddie said.

-"Not fast enough," Dallas told her seriously.

Morales was confident that Joe Wallace had followed his orders. It would take them about two hours to get there. Whatever was killing people, it wasn't alone: The substation, the school, and now the restaurant... By the time the military arrived, it would all be over.

-"Police station is on the other side of the town," he said.

Dallas thought for a moment. They wouldn't make it, he reasoned. They needed to protect themselves now, and the only weapon they had was Eddie's gun. A revolver for six people.

-"I know where we can go." Dallas said.

- o -

NORAD, Colorado Springs. 2000 Hours, October 14th, 2004.

The Airborne and Early Warning and Control reconnaissance plane flying more than three thousand feet over the Grand Mesa national park had arrived too late. The infrared cameras showed only an empty crater covered with water at the place where the alien ship had crashed. Although it was possible that the object was cloaked, the residual radiation indicated that the newcomer had already destroyed the evidence.

Stevens cursed. He didn't understand why Agent Garber was being so cautious; they had missed the chance to recover alien technology just because a CIA pencil-pusher bureaucrat didn't want to go into combat with a glorified tribal hunter.

Of course, Stevens hadn't witnessed the incident in Los Angeles, where a single such 'tribal warrior' had decimated a highly trained special ops team using just his spear.

The tech at the communications console listened intently, placing a hand over his right earpiece. "Understood," he said and got up from his place. "General," he called his superior and informed her of the situation.

-"We have confirmation," Stevens turned to Garber. "AEW&Cs intercepted several transmissions," he explained. "A police officer was decapitated and skinned in the Grand Mesa Forest." A slight smile spread across Garber's face. "And we're receiving distress calls from all over town. We must intervene now."

Although the murder of the policeman had the indicators of a yautja attack, the attack on the civilian population was a rare thing. Discretion was a fundamental part of their activities. Garber had only heard of one occasion when a hunter's rampage wreaked havoc on a town in New Jersey. It was a mess to cover up the whole thing.

-"Oh-right," Garber agreed. "Mobilize your men. Let's deal with our visitor."

- o -

A/N: And here's another one. As with previous chapters, this one is based mainly on the unrated edition of the film. But here I added some scenes from the original script, like Wolf's fight in the pool. In the original script, Eddie, Dallas, and a deputy officer interrupt Wolf after killing the alien, and Wolf would kill the officer in turn. Next, we would follow the scene where they decide to go for the guns at a Walmart store.
In the movie they just find the place empty, and Dallas mentions that "it was a bad idea to go to the police station." The scene had to be cut, because we never see them go in there. I had the officer go to the station and it is suggested over the radio that everyone at the station is dead and they need the weapons.
I hope you liked it and do not forget to leave your comments. New chapter of Prometheus: Pandora coming soon!