Last Stop to Nowhere
A cold spell blew through the Jeep's open windows, triggering a wild rush of goosebumps up and down my arms. The chill felt good against my feverish cheeks. I could tell I wasn't as bad off as when I woke up yesterday but whatever bug I'd caught still had me in its grip.
I kept thinking back to the hunter. I'd bitten him. Aside from radio static, I had no alternative companion but my thoughts. Oh, what dangerous company I keep. So I'd had ample time to break down the events that took place and ponder things such as: had biting him been a neurochemical reaction? Instinct? Or was it a signal from deep within the primal cortex?
I found it endlessly fascinating that as humans we hold ourselves so much higher than other animals, yet when faced with overwhelming odds we exhibit those same innate reactions. Now I worried my impulse to bite might've led to some bizarre otherworldly flu. I could vaguely recall the warmth of his blood filling my mouth... moldering earth and pungent sweetness like peaches left out in the sun still lingering in my back molars.
Survive an alien apocalypse only to die of alien herpes? Yep, that would be my luck.
I touched my shoulder. It hurt, but not as severely as it should've after a bit of unkind prodding. The scabs were beginning to flake more. My brain may be about to boil out of my ears, however, the rest of me was on the mend... rapidly... like this was some comic character superhuman shit. Not Wolverine healing, but the hemostasis and platelets were throwing out the human biology book here.
Was it because of the blood I ingested? It sure had looked radioactive to me.
Strange. Typically bioluminescence presents itself in an external form, such as in the case of fireflies or deep-sea fish. Bioluminescence gave an organism the ability to attract food and mates. So what would the purpose of glowing blood be? Interal and unseen.
Maybe a vestigial remnant of some kind. Or perhaps just something I haven't seen yet...
I blinked. A bit taken aback by the budding curiosity. And that was a bad thing. Very bad. Curiosity breeds temptation. Like a kid who just has to touch the fire for themselves to see if it truly will burn them. I'd been down that road. It's like a compulsion.
No. No. No. I am not curious. I want him dead—end of story.
Maybe just a quick looksy under a microscope- after he was dead. I could live with that... if I was still alive after the fact.
Ahead, the winding road grew more rural. The trees were no longer held at bay by passing cars and the occasional government trimmer. Saplings grew wild, not tall enough to cause problems for the Jeep, I even felt guilty when there was nothing to be done but mow over them, but they got a few good knocks in.
Every turn held a pensive moment. I'd been white-knuckling the steering wheel so long my fingers were stiffer than a corpse in full-blown rigor. So far I hadn't seen any sign of xenomorphs which I guess made a sort of sense. It meant their primary food source within a core area containing a substantial population nucleus hadn't run dry yet, i.e. humans in urban and metropolitan areas.
However, I had begun to notice a dispairing swell of silence. Life had not ceased but it had quieted. Well, all except the insects. They never shut up. But then, what did they have to worry about? Unless garden skinks or robins were somehow impregnated with xeno larvae, the insects had it made in the shade compared to us mammals.
In the distance, I noticed a slightly squarish outline sticking out of a recess of overgrown woods. Its geometrics were too perfect to be anything but man-made. It took me a moment to place it, then I remembered a scrawny ten-year-old with a shock of red hair and a star spray of freckles similar to my own.
Nick. That was his name. Nick and his father, Scott Miller, ran the last gas stop before hitting the trails.
"The last stop to nowhere." Nick had joked, though the slight pinch at the corners of his eyes suggested he was terrified it was true.
Blek. Family business. That weird family expectation that their children should enjoy working for their parents. How dare children have ambitions of their own. It's fucked up. Luckily, I'd never had that kind of problem. Even if any of the numerous fosters who raised me had a family business, aside from nickel and diming the government, they wouldn't've shared it with me.
Bullet dodged.
As I drew closer, a subtle sag to the building became more apparent. I pulled in and saw why. A tow truck had smashed into the opposite side nearly collapsing part of the structure. A halloo of grim tidings.
I kept my foot on the brake whilst taking it all in with a critical eye. Whatever happened here took place ages ago. The tow truck tires were flat and beginning to show signs of rot. Layers upon layers of forest detritus obscured windows and piled high against every structure bolted to the ground.
Caution breathed down my neck as I slid the gear into park. The (P) notification on the console glared red as if to say: Here? Really? Are you really sure you want to lock the driveline?
Seemed a bit like backward-ass logic to stop when even in broad daylight it appeared ransacked and potentially haunted... or infested.
Haunted. Definitely haunted. Or some dude with a hatchet wearing a pig's head sat inside gibbering nonsense to himself. No aliens though. Pretty sure those alien cockroaches would've been scuttling out of the woodwork by now if they'd been about.
And the hunter?
Well, if that Typhoid Mary prick was here, then my one advantage was that I knew what to look for. Sort of. Whether I'd see the mirage of his active camouflage was a different beast entirely.
I took another half minute to look around anyway before exiting the Jeep, slipping the Reaper axe out of the backseat. But I left the engine running just in case. So long as neither alien species could drive stick, I was in good shape.
Nerves prickled my scalp like a thousand marching ants. I didn't feel threatened as though the shadows would break away and leap at me, but there was a definite wrongness I couldn't interpret.
I checked the pumps first. There were two of them, the archaic type that still pumped out gas with a mere lift of the handle. An implicit trust that the customer would enter and pay. Scott Miller knew the faces of everyone who used the single road in and out of these parts. The only folks he likely had to worry about were the out-of-towners during hunting season and the occasional hiker. Funnily enough, he once told me the pumps were so ancient that the younger generation hadn't a clue they paid after and always came in to pay upfront and he would pretend to flip a switch so they could fill their tanks.
One of the pumps gave nothing more than a drop or two after tucking the cradle down. I had gas cans stored on the small trailer that hauled the four-wheeler, so I wasn't hurting yet, but I'd rather fill up without using my reserves. I checked the other pump and with a few convincing cranks, the handle vibrated with a whoosh of gasoline turning in the tube. The familiar scent permeated the air. It was the benzene. The chemical compound gave off a sweet fragrance which was in part why so many people liked the smell of gasoline.
As gasoline sloshed into the tank my eyes drifted back to the darkened windows. Jagged glass sat like rows of teeth in the perimeter of the seal and a pall of seamless shadow lurked beyond. Wind scuttled across the ground to skate up the backs of my legs. The gas pump kicked off with an audible pthunk giving me a bit of a start.
A low droning hum came from inside. Not the buzz of electricity, it was too frenzied. One I'd heard many times before. Subtle awareness tightened the skin against my skull. I returned the handle to its cradle without looking away from the window.
I hefted the axe over my shoulder, flexing my fingers around the grip.
There had better be Twinkies.
The dull murmur became louder and more chaotic as I neared. Sunlight cut like a scalpal blade across the floor through the cracked door. Fresh air leaked in and nicked the bowel of stagnation and it dragged with it the flyblown battlefield reek of death, accompanied by the telltale pungent sickly sweet funk of fruit left to rot under the sun. Hopefully, it was just the chemical putrefaction of so many processed sugars lying around... but I wasn't that lucky. I also knew from experience that Hostess Cakes were still edible six months past their expiration date. Hurray for preservatives!
Unfortunately, there was only one animal whose putrified flesh whiffed of something like char siu and cough syrup...
I peeked in. Coin-bright disks of light shafted through holes in the ceiling, peppering the floor enough to illuminate shopping racks toppled over and a thick layer of grime lacquering the peel-and-stick vinyl tile.
With the pads of my fingers, I applied a gentle presser to the door. The stiff henges gave a bone-jangling c-tchunk and eeeeee. Might as well have been a Klaxon for all its subtlety. Shadows mishappen by sudden cruel light became monstrous as they scurried along the walls. Eyeshine, red and beady leered out of the catacombs of the beverage case directly in front of me—tiny claws tik-tik-tiking as it scuttled back into the black vault of the cold storage behind.
If only rats were my biggest worry. Fortunately, nothing else came out to greet me as I fully stepped inside. My shoulder began to burn, the tautness of new skin tugging away from the sizable scabs. Flakes rubbed free as they caught the inside of my shirt. I ignored the little pins and needles, refusing to loosen up until I'd done a thorough check.
The hum had grown into a characteristic and distinguishable drone of flies—hundreds of them. Stragglers late to the party zipped past me as I toed my way around the fallen shelves in an awkward ballet to avoid broken glass and the occasional desiccated vermin carcass.
I checked the shoebox-size office first. A table slapped together with a metal sheet and crates acted as a desk immediately to my left, one side toppled to the floor, its crate smashed to kindling. There was a tin box gaping open on the floor, a screwdriver beside it. A money box? Who the fuck needed cash anymore? Though, I suppose it could've just as easily held a gun. Or perhaps something a little less grim like Pokemon cards.
Several months' worth of dust had built up enough around the room for me to see the disturbance of the tin where it had slid across the floor, an additional film of dust now filling it in. A fight broke out. There were other scuff marks and a nearly perfect grime angel scraping off several layers of filth before being partially snowed in with grey.
I left the office and checked the bathroom. Locked. I contemplated breaking it open, the ol'Reaper could use a workout, but decided it wasn't worth the bleating screech of pain that would arise from my shoulder. Besides there wasn't anything the flies seemed to want from inside it.
The cold room.
The tiny storage area sat behind the refrigerators with sliding doors so the stock could be replenished without disturbing the customers. The freezer had petered out a long time ago, yet a coldness swept through me nonetheless as I toed the ajar door open further. Inside the air vibrated to the tune of thousands of blowflies. The sound was deafening. They rose around me as spectral smoke. Thick and pitch-black.
So I did exactly what I would do in a fire without a firesuit. I lowered myself to try and get below the smoke. This really shouldn't have worked if the body had been on the ground but it wasn't. For a half-cocked second, I thought I was witnessing some weird supernatural phenomenon. Metatarsals. Middle phalanges. Ditsla phalanges. Strung together by withered and chewed strings of skin and sinew all floating two feet off the ground.
Ha! Two feet...
I quickly sobered as I saw the chair flipped on its backside- kicked away. Understanding frosted my tongue to the roof of my mouth, the muscles in my throat convulsing around the ice block of crystalizing breath lodged there.
The feet... they were too small to be an adult's...
A/N: I think I'm finally starting to get into the flow of writing again. I forgot how much fun it could be. BTW, for the readers who haven't read the comics let me just say that the bit about Yautja blood is canon and I'll be going into it more as the story unfolds. Lol, of course, future love interests are not canon... sadly. The Alien and Predator franchises have come a long way but they are both for the most part hard military sci-fi.
Special thanks:
angel897: Thanks, angel! :)
NeverNeverLady: Lol, yes, I have plans. Oodles of them XD