Alien: Out the Shadows

Amanda is ahead, a slim and sleek teenager, darting between corn rows and barely seeming to touch the plants. Ripley isn’t so graceful, and her stomach feels as though it has been scratched to shreds by the leaves. But she won’t look down to check. She’s afraid that if she does she’ll lose track of her daughter, and something about this…

…isn’t right.

The sun shines, the corn crop rustles in a gentle breeze, there is silence but for their footfalls and Amanda’s excited giggling from up ahead. But still this is wrong. The lake awaits but they will never reach it. The sun is high, the sky clear, yet the heat hardly touches her skin. Ripley feels cold.

She wants to call, Amanda, wait! But the leaves slapping across her stomach and chest seem to have stolen her voice.

She sees something out of the corner of her eye. A shadow that does not belong in the cornfield, a shape too sharp and cruel. But when she looks it has gone.

Her daughter is further ahead now, pushing plants aside as she sprints the final hundred meters to the field’s edge and the welcoming water.

Something keeps pace with them off to the right, a dark shape streaking through the crop and smashing thick stalks into shreds. But looking directly at it means that Ripley can’t see it at all.

She’s panicking now, trying to run faster, trying to shout. Amanda has vanished ahead, leaving behind only swaying plants.

Ripley hears a high, loud screech. It’s not human.

Bursting from the crop at the edge of the field, she sees Amanda caught in a grotesque web between two tall trees, trapped there in the strange, solid material that appears to have held her there for an age. Her daughter screams again as the bloody creature bursts fully from her chest.

In her peripheral vision, Ripley sees those tall beasts moving out of the corn to pay homage to their newborn.

Amanda screams one last time—

* * *

“Ripley, fast!” Hoop shouted.

Ripley looked around, not shocked or surprised. She knew exactly where she was and why. The vision was a memory of a time that had never happened. But she still shed a tear for her cocooned, bleeding, screaming daughter. Terror mixed with anger, becoming a part of her, unwilling to let go.

“They can’t win, Hoop,” she said. “We can’t let them.”

“They won’t. Now run!”

“What are you—?”

“Run!” he shouted. He grabbed her hand and ran with her, but soon let her go again and fell back.

“Don’t be stupid!” Ripley shouted back at him.

“Argue, and we’ll all die!” Lachance called back. “Hoop knows what he’s doing.”

They climbed the ramp. It was steeper than the first, the turns tighter, and it seemed to grow narrower and steeper the higher they went. Soon there were steps built into its surface, and they had to slow down so that they didn’t trip. Lachance carried Sneddon again. Kasyanov helped, and Baxter was using his plasma torch as a crutch, lamming it down and swinging along on it with every step. She wondered what effect that would have if he had to fire it again. She wondered…

She turned and ran back down the ramp.

“Ripley!” Lachance called.