# Logan vr. Aliens



## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

I totally changed the end. I added almost two-thousand words and added more of the bloody scenes that my work is known for. 



Logan

The year is 3384 and I’m feeling old; I should feel old. My body still heals well enough and the bones haven’t been broken in over, hell, I don’t even remember any more. My body isn’t the problem. It’s my aching mind and soul.


Yea, I still believe I have a soul, although it’s as old and twisted as a soul can be. It should be after all the things I’ve seen… done. 


The weight of years is upon me. I remember when I was young and fresh, animalistic, before the adamantium. It’s all hazy like a deep fog. I had fought for years to regain the memories that had been stolen from me. The mad scientists that played around with my body also downloaded new memories into my brain…gave me a new life and identity that was meant to control me and direct me into being the perfect puppet, the perfect soldier. 


They had found out about my ability to heal and decided to take advantage of my little gift. They tried to break me; pumped me full of a new type of metal that once hardened could never be melted down again, broken or cut. They molded it to the inside and outside of my bones and allowed for proper blood flow and circulation so the marrow within would continue to stay healthy. I don’t remember much of the process because they had me sedated…most of the time.


When the tranquilizers wore off I would feel the pain. Even after all this time if I close my eyes I can still remember the pain, still feel the molten metal pouring through my body, molding to my bones. The memories are hell. There are times I still wake in the darkness and have to regain my senses…remember where I am.


After nearly two hundred years and most everyone I had known or had come into contact with had died from old age, I gave up trying to put the pieces back together. Most of my memories had been erased and replaced with new ones and I finally had to except the fact that the majority of them would never be uncovered. But I was able to find out what memories had never been mine. You would’ve thought that would’ve helped…It didn’t. It just pissed me off. 


In the years to come my body adjusted to the weight of the adamantium. I had always been strong, had to be. My kin would always be there to harass me, kill the ones I loved and beat me to a bloody pulp. That happened once too much and after cutting off his head he didn’t seem that interested in haunting me anymore. Others called him Saber Tooth, now he’s just a memory, dead and gone. 


There had been others there to haunt me through the years. At the time fighting for my life with animalistic fury had been the only way to survive. They would bring me so close to death that all sensors would signal the absence of brain waves and heart beat. But I always came back. I’ve been shot, burned, blown up, smashed and pulled apart, but I just keep coming back. Now after all these years those who plagued my life are nothing more than dust in a coffin and a bad memory. I suppose that if my head had separated from my body that I would only be just a bad memory as well. 


Of all the things that have happened to me, something so simple as decapitation could have been the end of me. I laugh as I think about it. Those at the bar just look at me as if I’ve drunk too much. I just stare back at them and smile, baring my teeth. ‘What of it, bub?’ I ask. The fellow dressed in a deep weather suit that’s black and gray with a company logo just turns his bald head and bearded face away not really bothered by me, but not wanting any trouble anyway. 


This is a strange world I’m in. There’s war all the time and all kinds of new ways to find yourself dead. Earth has discovered space travel and other races that are as alien to us as we are to them. There’s new weapons being made in order for us to wage these wars and new planets to wage them on.


The bar I’m in is on a strange ice ball called North Bail. Where in a star system nearly two hundred solar systems from earth and its bitter cold here. There’s never a day that the light from the two suns can break through the deep reddish pink cloud cover. 


Music’s playing, if you can call it that. The noise is coming from the two large speakers that are hanging in the corners. One of them is vibrating too much because some clog had the base up too high and blew the frakking thing. The other keeps fading in and out like the light over the first table as you walk into the place.


Nobody likes to sit there. Not because of the light but because of the bitter cold wind that rips through and plagues anyone dumb enough to be there when the door opens.


In the distance I can hear the mining machines boring into the side of some mountain to the North in search of some new ore that’s supposed to be the greatest thing since dynamite. The machines are huge. Their each the size of a small mountain and sit on massive treads that slowly advance the beast into proper position to strike the side of the mountain with a massive drill that hammers violently and turns slowly into the hard rock. 


Boulders begin to break away from the area nearest the drill and collect at the base of the mountain where they’ll be collected later by the dozers and dumped into the crushing units located at the base of the massive machine.


What’s not used is released out of the back end and dumped like so much refuse. It takes nearly two-thousand people to man all the systems in the Bore. I’ve been in the thing before. It was nearly twenty years ago. I worked there for nearly two years in the sweltering heat. 


I remember the first time I walked into the Bore. The corridors were nearly dark and stank of old sweat, burnt tires and motor oil. I could also smell the putrid, sickly sweet smell of rotting corpses that wafted like bad cologne and infused itself with the thick dust that blanketed every wall, floor and person unlucky enough to enter. 


The floors were thick mesh that I could see through. Sure enough, there were at least thirty bodies in various states of decay piled in one on top of the other. Worms and maggots along with hundreds of thousands of flies infested the corpses. It was truly rank.

I asked the foreman about it. He said, ‘The Bore never stops. You fall, you die. You get crushed by something or ripped to pieces by something or simply faint from the heat, you die. We don’t have time to stop the Bore. We won’t make time to stop the Bore and if you get lost… well, don’t get lost. You understand me son?’ Yhea, I understood. The Corporation wanted its ore and frack the casualties. 


I was assigned to the third deck. The Bore itself was six levels high and nearly a quarter of a mile wide. The welders’ deck was nearly two stories high and nearly the length of a death-ball field…fifty-five yards. The smoke from melted steel and iron from the plasma torches and the cutting lasers burnt the sinuses and dried out the eyes almost instantly. 

It was a struggle just to breath. Some wore respirators or filters that dripped a black tarry sweat from the pollutants in the air, but most of us didn’t have the stamps needed to be able to afford such extravagances. 


Blue sparks streaked out from the wire welders as they bonded massive sheets of steel together in rotating spirals that created one of the many teeth of the mighty Bore drill. I hated everything about this place, the smells; the sounds of steel on steel, electric arcs that blinded the eyes so fast many didn’t even have time to turn their heads. 


Some would panic as they lost their sight and ran like terrified children, screaming in the night until someone wrestled them to the ground and called for the only medic that attended the Bore. Many more just walked about in a stupor until finally falling over the rail and disappearing in the darkness below. A few days later we would begin to smell them. A few days after that we would have to wear them in the form of dust that clung to our bodies and entered our lungs.


A body decomposed much faster in the Bore than outside because of the dryness and the heat. Someone dies outside, they just freeze in a matter of seconds and that’s that. A thousand years from now and someone may come to this place and find that same body buried deep in the snow or incased in sheets of ice, like a caveman that had once been found three thousand years after his frozen demise.


On the Bore there was no such thing as night or day. It was always dark and always brutal in its relentlessness. What light there was, was dim or flickered badly from loose connections. Nobody talked to anyone else as friends or partners. The conversations were always coarse and demanding, much like a prison world I had endured for nearly thirty years…that’s another story. I may tell it sometime but for now this one will have to do.


I remember the first time I walked onto deck three. There were three parts to it. The welders deck, the machinist deck and the parts distribution deck. Each area were called decks even though all three areas were squeezed together on the third level. Me; I just called it the third level of hell. 

If I had known what I was getting into when I signed up to work for the Corporation, I would have told the recruiter to go straight to hell and then poured on the fuel myself.


For the job, I would be paid two-hundred-thousand stamps. That’s a lot of money now days, enough to retire on and go to some backwater planet away from prying eyes. All I had to do was work for two years securing deck three and protecting the Corporation’s primary investments. 

Those investments were certainly not the men and women. They were the machines, the computers and the various tools of the trade. “It couldn’t be that bad,” I had thought as I signed the contract and turned my life over to the Corp.


I’ve seen some bad stuff before and fought in some of the worst environments in existence. I thought nothing could be worse than my time spent at Hollenfeuer Concentration Camp…than world war three and Armageddon happened. 


Back then the whole world had been worried about the environment and global warming, but after the nukes turned civilization into ash, that movement abruptly came to an end. 


It’s sad that of all the memories that came back, the memories of what happened then is what I got. 

‘Do you have any good memories?’ The man in the deep weather suit that’s black and gray with a company logo asks. 

I look up from my drink and look straight into his dark brown eyes and just stare at him.

‘You ever have good memories?’ He asks again. ‘You Know. From back home, family, friends, maybe a long lost love just wait’n for you to come home again’? The man just stared at me as if he expected me to answer. 


Finally I figure out what’s going on. Guess I had been talking out loud again. The big man thought I had been talk’n to him. He’s a big man and his skin color is as black as the grave. I see a couple of scars on his bald scalp and notice that part of his right ear is gone. His right hand is holding his drink and I notice the scars that overlap upon his knuckles. They stand out a reddish pink against the backdrop of his darker skin.


I inhale through my nose and quickly separate the odors that mingle together from the bar. I smell the alcohol and the food, the smells of sweat and of frustration. I smell the smoke from a thousand sigs and take in the lingering scents of perfume from the working girls as they walk by. 

‘What’s your name?’ I ask him. ‘Dominik.’ The man answers. His voice is heavy, like a great weight is on his chest. 


As he speaks again I take in the scent of his breath. It’s oily and smells of old sigs. I take a sip from the drink that I’m holding and slosh it around in my mouth a second before swallowing. The drink swirls around like a small whirlpool, dark and foreboding as the depths of a pit. 


Dominik just stares at me a second longer and takes a drag off of his sig. The smoke exits his mouth and nose like the smoke from a dragon’s mouth just before the fire bursts forth and devours its prey.

‘No.’ I answer as I finish off the rest of my drink. It burns as it goes down but quickly fades to the sweet taste of honey and apple. ‘No, I don’t have anyone waiting for me… no one to go back home to and nothing worth going home for.’ 

He just looks at me a moment longer and then stands up and walks away. A few moments later the door opens, those nearest its entrance groan because of the bitter cold and Dominik leaves the bar. 


I don’t think anything more about him or my drunken ramblings for the rest of the night. After about three hours longer and a bottle of liquor more, I stand up and stagger out of the place. I don’t know what time it is, all I know is that it’s Frakking cold and nearly pitch black because of the lack of moonlight and the heavy black clouds.


There are a few lights that shine dimly from some of the other businesses down the street. They have small halos around them caused by the moisture in the air. Everything begins to spin as the effect of the alcohol begins to take its toll.

My body starts to adjust as it begins to heal from myself inflicted crucifixion and as it begins to heal, my senses begin to return to their normal awareness.


From off to my right I can hear someone inhale the cold air, than a moment later exhales the breath he had just taken. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I can see every breath as it leaves the man’s mouth and nose and turns to an icy fog that floats upon the wind a while. The fog dissipates in a matter of moments never to be seen again, never to be remembered. 

How insignificant is a breath that it’s so easily forgotten, but at the moment one is taking it, it is the only thing keeping you alive… than the next one comes and goes and is lost forever. 

Off to my left I hear a man sniff as his nose runs and begins to drip. In front of me I catch the scent of smoke from a freshly extinguished sig. I can hear movement behind me from three sets of feet in the trodden snow and ice. 

That makes at least six predators stalking me. I can hear them as their breaths begin to shorten in expectation of the kill.


I’ve been around too long to react to such a simple threat. I figure I’ve got at least half a minute before I’m set upon. In that time I take in my options and blink away the last of the effects of my binge. Instinctively I flex my fists and stretch my neck by rotating my head from left to right and then back again. 


The steps of my adversaries grow more sure and urgent as they draw closer, to within striking distance. 

Quickly I roll forward and pull two short rods from my belt, press the releases and regain my footing. The rods extend and begin to hum with the electrical impulses that are now pulsing through them; their blue light aluminates the whole area in an eerie green glow. 


My action takes the aggressors by surprise and causes them to hesitate. In their moment of indecision I leap forward and strike the tall man in the side of his face. His jaw explodes into fragments and his teeth fly outward and to the left of him as he falls to the ground in violent spasms.


Blood and teeth spray the shorter man to the left in the face and he flinches at the contact. With the rod in my right hand I strike his left knee while striking the stocky black man across the forehead with the sparking rod that is held by my left.

The shorter man collapses to the ground and inhales a breath and is about to scream because of his shattered kneecap, but I kick him in the face and he falls backward and rolls in the snow, unconscious but still breathing.


The dead, heavier dark skinned man falls forward because of the momentum he already had gained in his attempt to attack me, his forehead blasted away by the powerful charge of the shock-maul. 

The warmth of the blood spilling upon the icy snow covered ground caused smoke-like tendrils to swirl along the frozen earth and along with it its unique scent that causes my thirst to grow until I can barely resist the urge to release the animalistic hunger it incites…but I choose to resist that hunger.


A bright red light flashes past my head in the blink of an eye and singes my hair. I drop to the ground and roll to my left, lunge foreword and regain my footing as I begin to run zig sagging towards the man I had heard sniffing earlier.


There was a buzz from his direction and a muzzle flash. A moment later my eyes cleared and found that I had fallen to the ground. For a moment I just felt numb, than cold. But by now my adrenaline was kicking and I rolled to my feet and stared into the shocked face of the shooter just before I struck him with both rods to the head. 

The man fell to the ground like a dropped rock, his head nothing but a smoking stump of bone and fried brain matter.


I fell forward as a laser caught me square between the shoulder blades and exited from my upper chest. Hell, I had been here before. I knew what would come next, but I fought it the best I could even as I crawled across the cold, ice covered ground.


I could feel the other two men as they purposefully walked across the clearing between the buildings. I could hear their hearts beating within their chests. I heard one of the men flick a lighter and the flame ignite as he lit another sig. The smoke hung in the air and floated upon the breeze.


‘Frish! The Gromits still moving.’ One of the men said. ‘You see the way he moved? I aint never seen nothing like that before.’ 

‘Nor have I.’ the other man answered. ‘That’s probably why the Corporation’s paying us so much for this job. He must have been a real pro to take out the others like that. Hell, they didn’t even have a chance to move before he done them in.’ The one with the sig took a drag on it and exhaled the smoke. ‘Well, the jobs done now.’ He said.


I heard the wine of his starlancer just before the laser pounded through the back of my head.


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## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*chapter 2*

Chapter 2


I woke up in complete darkness. My head hurt something fierce and I was achingly cold. It took me a moment to piece together the events from… sometime ago. 

The problem with being clinically dead is the fact that when I come to, I don’t ever know where I am or how long I’ve been out. 


I tried to move before I realized that I barely had any room to maneuver. ‘Oh, Frack!’ I thought. ‘Not again.’ I muttered to myself.

Slowly I extended my hand in front of my face and felt the rough texture of a wooden board. ‘I sure hope they didn’t bury me upside-down.’ I thought to myself. 

I knocked on the wood and knew that I had not been buried too deeply…only about three feet or so. That was good. It wasn’t the first time I had had to dig myself out of a grave. Not the best of memories, I know, but it’s all I got. 


With the twist of my wrists and the flexing of my arms I extended my claws for the first time in nearly twenty years, and plunged them through the hard wood. It splintered and gave way almost immediately and the frozen earth began to fill the casket that surrounded me.


Now I knew that time was running out for me. I didn’t want to suffocate before I reached the surface. If I died down here, my body would freeze and I would stay that way until next thaw. That would most definitely not be good. So with a renewed urgency I began to dig my way out of my shallow grave. 


It seemed like I had been digging forever as the dirt filled my clothes and mingled with my sweat. It clung to my body and filled my mouth every time I took a breath. I gasped for air but there was none to get. My lungs felt like the weight of the world was upon them and the ability to exhale was becoming harder and harder to do.


My body began to rebel against me but I would not be denied. With a final push my hand broke free of the earth’s surface and I extended my arms upward and pushed myself from the collapsed tomb.


The first breaths of air never felt so good. I spit out as much of the dirt as I could from inside my mouth. I felt like a fish that had just been returned to the water. Each breath was a gift and each one gave me a new sense of strength. 

But that only lasted for as long as it took my face to start to burn and my lungs to freeze from the minus one hundred degree wind chills that swept over me. 


My eyes began to blur almost at once and I could feel the blood in my veins begin to slow from the intense cold. As quickly as I could I stood on shaky legs and began to run, I had to do something to keep from becoming a human ice statue.

All the exposed skin of my hands and face were dry and cracked in a matter of seconds. I felt like screaming but knew better than to open my mouth and take the cold air directly into my lungs again.


It seemed that I had been running for hours when I noticed a light bobbing in the distance. It seemed small and far away but it was definitely there. At first it seemed to be moving in my direction but then it began to turn away from me. I ran for all I was worth but I just wasn’t fast enough. Not more than a few seconds from the time I had seen the light… it was gone. 


I stumbled over a frozen log and slid face first in the frozen snow. It felt like a thousand razor blades had just slammed into my face. I gasped and took in a quick breath of air in my shock. Instantly my lungs began to ache. My eyes were watering and each tear froze as they ran down my cheeks. My eyelids froze together and it was all I could to pull them apart again. 


As I stood up I saw in the moonlight that it wasn’t a log but a body that I had stumbled over. As I looked around I could see others as well. 

They surrounded me. The bodies extended as far as I could see in all directions. There were thousands of them here. They were totally frozen and had never begun to decompose. Their faces were stuck in looks of pain and horror and fear. 

There were men, women and children here; whole families. I had to move, had to run before I froze into one of these morbid poses.


I was numb and in agony even as I began to run again. Another light bobbed in the blackness. It seemed to be moving closer toward me, seemed to be swaying back and forth. I thought I could make out the sound of an engine over the gales. 

What would someone be doing out here in the dead of night in a valley of the dead? I stopped and allowed myself to fall into a frozen pose just as the six wheeled Explorator flashed its search light over where I had just been. 


My body throbbed as I lay there. The inviro suit I had been wearing when they thought they had killed me was already frozen stiff and frost had turned it icy white. The cold had begun to impose its will through its protective layers almost as soon as I was exposed. 

By now my face, scalp, ears and hands had become frost-bitten almost black and blood was freezing from the split skin that peeled like old wallpaper from my frozen skull and hands. 


The light grew brighter and the engine knocked nearby as the Explorator slowed and finally came to a complete stop not more than fifteen meters from me. There were voices in the distance and a panicked wail from a woman as she was thrown out of the cab. The men laughed and went back inside the cab and popped the Explorator into gear.


I was up as fast as I could and ran for my life and now for the woman’s as well. 

The snow car’s treads ran over frozen bodies as it made its way back to the road. It bounced as their frozen bodies, like speed bumps, kept it from reaching its full speed. Its slowness allowed me the time to climb aboard. 


There were three of them. Three big men in white inviro suits all looking out the windshield and laughing each time they ran over another body. They continued laughing until I opened the cab door, extended my claws and hurled myself at the closest one near me. At that point, laughing was the last thing coming from their lips… they screamed as they realized the dead had come to kill them. 

The first man lifted his hands to block my attack, but they fell from his arms in eight bloody, bony parts as my claws cut through them like a sharks fin through water. He opened his mouth to scream but lacked that ability as his head was removed from his shoulders in four pieces, as my claws did their work. 


As I stepped through the pieces of his arms, hands, skull and brain, the next one tried to pull a gun from a holster that was deep inside his inviro suit, but he was too slow. His eyes were wild with fear. I could smell it on him. 

Blood, bone and brain matter were all over the cab. I could smell the severed flesh and coppery fluid as the body parts released their bounty. My mouth watered and my senses turned feral like a beast deprived of its kill during drought season. 

As he struggled to grab his gun I slammed into him with all my might, like a bear brings down a deer.
My claws swept through his body from upward right to lower left, through arm, shoulder, ribs, sternum, spine and out the other side. 

His body collapsed into four parts that emptied themselves all over the cabs interior. His eyes stayed open a moment longer, the final seconds of the last thing he would ever see as his mind thought its last thought. 


The third man had wet himself and I grinned as he tried to jump from the cab window. He screamed in terror and pain as I cut his legs off of him and then pulled what was left of his body back inside and slowly drove my claws through skin, muscle, blood and bone. It had been so long since I had allowed the animal inside me, free reign…nearly twenty years ago.


The thought of that time in my life brought me back to my senses; allowed me to feel the torment and fear that now plagues my mind. 

I looked around at the interior of the cab. There was not a part that had escaped the blood bath. It dripped from the ceiling and ran down the walls. It covered the cab floor two inches deep. I was terrified and ashamed at my lack of discipline, at the animal lust that still dwells within me. 

At that moment I was not any different than those things that had truly taught me how to fear as I had never feared before.


It wasn’t till I calmed down enough to think, that I remembered the woman. I looked into the only mirror the cab had and saw for a moment what I had become and also what I longed to be. 

My body had already begun to heal like it always does; the outward scars from the frostbite would never be seen again, my flesh regenerating itself, turning from frostbite black to ashen gray to windswept red to its naturally tanned color within a few moments after finding refuge from the elements.


The Explorator had continued to crawl forward over the frozen corpses and I could hear their frozen body parts crunch and pop as they turned to crystallized dust as the weight of the machine rolled over them. Sickened, I stopped the Explorator, found the control for the searchlight and began to pan it slowly in a circle. 


The light’s beam punched through the darkness with the force of a distant sun. Its blue-white beam panned over the frozen, broken bodies of untold thousands. It was like a forest, a forest of the dead… there seemed to be no beginning or end. 

The faces of children, twisted, contorted and tortured looked into the faces of men and women; moms and dads, eyes open, mouths agape, cords of muscle still twisted in their necks as if they had frozen instantly, locked in horrible nightmares they would never awaken from.

All the exposed skin on the corpses faces and hands had turned rotten-potato-black and had split as the moister had been devoured by the relentless weather… I had to turn away; it made me sick to my stomach.

After a few moments I forced myself to look back into the lights revelations. In the distance, like a dream, the woman stumbled over one of the bodies. I knew she wouldn’t live much longer if I didn’t help her. As I turned the snow beast around, the cracking and popping of the tortured corpses began anew. 


It only took a few moments to make my way back over to where she had fallen. I thought about pointing the searchlight directly at her but managed to think again as once more its beam revealed another couple of hundred bodies.


In the darkness I ran. The moonlight was bright enough for me to see where the woman lay. It only took a couple of minutes to scoop her up and carry her back to the Explorator and bear her into the cab. She was shaking and barely able to breathe and after a few moments she passed out. I put my mouth on hers, tilted her head back and breathed into her. The warmer air from the cab along with the warmth that I could give her would quickly warm her lungs and bring her back.


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## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*Chapter 3*

Chapter 3


The cold is unforgiving and unmerciful. It is the cruel daemon that no one on this planet can escape; but for the moment there were two survivors that managed to hold it off for a few moments more. 

While the woman lay on the rearmost seat, I threw out the bloody, sticky body parts from the cab. Nearly frozen drops of blood dripped and made tiny splashes in the small lake of blood already on the cab’s floor.
I took the guns and extra power packs the men had carried and put them into the deep pockets of my weather suit. The woman stirred and I watched her for a moment. She had red hair and lightly frostbitten pale, milky white skin. Her chest rose and fell in time with her breathing; labored and stressed. She was beautiful to look at. 

Sunburn-like trails ran down her cheeks from where her tears had frozen in the cruel weather. She was still passed out. I didn’t know what had happened to her, but I could imagine, or so I had thought at the time.


Humanity is a plague; hateful, arrogant and cruel. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be. I had no pity for the three men that I had killed. When I considered the way they had abused the woman and then thrown her out like so much waste, I smiled because I had had a chance to exact the revenge they were due.


Turning from her I took my seat, placed the Explorator into gear and began to make my way back in the direction they had come from. There had to be a road out here somewhere.

The frozen bodies began to crumble and come apart again as the treads propelled the vehicle slowly forward; the sound like creaking, groaning, breaking branches after an ice-storm.


The searchlight played back and forth with each rise and fall of the Explorator, exposing many more thousands of people with each passing. I drove for nearly three hours through the field of frozen corpses before I finally found the road. 

The sun’s first light broke the hardened blackness of the night. It was like a super nova a thousand kilometers away; like the first eruptions of world war four. Those memories are with me like the air I breathe. 

The first light breaking through the clouds like a bubble of putrid gasses breaking the surface of a nearby swamp; its pinkish glow expanding over the continents like a rapidly moving fire…the screams of the dyeing and the plagued still fill my mind, shaking my very twisted soul. Emptiness surrounds me like the walls of a bottomless pit. 

A buzzer brings me back to the here and now. It’s like a shot to the brain. With a growl I flip the switch and shut the blasted thing off. The fuel gauge is at low, not more than an half an hour remaining. With a curse I stopped the explorator.

I had blacked out for a moment, an hour, more? I don’t know. I can’t tell. All I know is that now the sun is up, just over the horizon. Its light does battle with the clouds. It won’t win; the clouds are too many, too strong. 

Frost clings to the edges of the windshield. It forms a pictframe, a window into the past, into the future. 

My lover smiles at me. There she is standing in the door to our simple house. She is beautiful, stunning. She smells so good. Her eyes reflect the glow of her perfect soul. Her lips are moving but I can’t hear what she is saying. I struggle to read her lips; love you Logan. It’s all I can make out, all I need. 

The sun’s bright glow approaches from behind her… it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. 

Her coal black hair begins to move with the breeze. She’s laughing… I ‘m laughing too. 

It all turns black. It’s all gone. I scream but there is no voice to it. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. My home is gone! The woods are gone! My lover is gone! She’s gone and with that realization so is my hope. It’s all ashes, all blown away. 

I kneel in what used to be our living room, holding in my grasp the last thing that I will ever know of her.

At last even that is gone as the breeze blows the ashes from my hand. The buzzer goes off again and with it a woman screams.

I shake my head confused by the shrill of the buzzer. I flip the switch and stare out at the corpses that line the roadway. Their frozen, mummy-like poses of mourning, weeping and never ending torment. 

The screams seem so real, so alive. So close! The woman screams again and I look over my shoulder. A moment had passed but it was as if a lifetime had come and gone since I had rescued her. So long ago that I had forgotten she was there. 

She screamed again looking at the frigid congealed blood that lined the walls, the ceiling and had collected upon the floor. 

So long ago it seemed. ‘Woman, shut up!’ I growled. She looked up from the blood and saw me. She screamed again and backed away from me as fast as she could. ‘Woman, I’m not going to hurt you so shut up and calm down.’ 

She was in shock. I could see that but I couldn’t stop myself from sounding like the animal I was. The terror of all she had been through had to have had some effect on her.

Being abused, thrown out in the blackness of the night into a field of frozen corpses, passing out only to wake up in a charnel house of nearly frozen congealed blood and then being greeted by a blood covered brutal man had to be the makings of the worst nightmare a person could possibly have. But this wasn’t some fracked up nightmare; this was reality at its worst. 

I willfully calmed myself, bowed my head and whispered quietly, just above the growling of the engine and the blowing of the heater. 

‘Lady. I’m not gonna hurt you. Last night I saved your life and killed the bad guys, so scream all you want if it makes you feel better. But woman, my head hurts and we’re out in the middle of nowhere with no fuel. So we’re gonna have to walk. It’s cold out there so put this on.’

I toss her a inviro suit I found in an over head compartment. ‘It’s made for a big man but it’ll have to do. If you don’t want to die than get that thing on.’ 

I turn my back on her and try to get at least another kilometer out of the Explorator’s failing life span, but I can tell it’s not gonna go that far, not even close.

I can hear the woman behind me sniffling and crying, inhaling heavily through her mouth as she tries to calm herself. She’s doing a piss pour job of it. Hell, I ought to leave her; she’ll only slow me down.

I consider that line of thinking for a few seconds but dismiss it. She’ll slow me down but I won’t have the death of an innocent adding weight to my already twisted soul. 

The engine sputters and finally dies with a harsh kick and pop. The heater shuts off nearly a minute later. Almost instantly I can see my breath steaming out my mouth and the windshield start to frost over. It will be a sheet of ice two inches thick in nearly fifteen minutes. 

The outside shell of the Explorator begins to creak as the cold starts to lay pressure to the frame. 

‘Woman, we’ve gotta go or we’ll be dead in half an hour.’ I say. I look at her for a long moment. I try to get the measure of her, see if she’ll be dead weight or just a ball and chain. Her face is red and streaked with tears but her eyes are hard and butter, I can see she is trying to push her fear deep inside.

I pull out one of the plasma guns from my lower left pocket and an extra power pack. I watch her eyes as they register the threat; her lower lip begins to quiver. She’s a shell shock case if I’ve ever seen one. 

‘You ever fire one of these?’ My question comes out harsh and growling. She jumps a little, like an abused dog when its master shouts at it. I lower my voice. ‘Have you ever fired one of these?’ 

It takes her a moment to figure out that I’m not gonna shoot her and a moment longer for her to answer me. She nods her head up and down like a child afraid to give the wrong answer. ‘Good.’ I say. I place the gun and the extra power pack on the seat in front of her and turn away to gather up a few protein rations from the cab closet. 

I could hear her heart jump and her breathing change ever so slightly. I could smell the fear on her and the desperation. I knew what I would do given the chance if I were her. I hoped she would go for it. I needed to know if she was a fighter or a user. 

Two seconds passed before she lunged for the weapon. I smile as she goes for it. Slowly I turn to face her and the empty barrel of the gun that’s aimed between my eyes. Her hands are tight around the grip and shaking badly. ‘Easy lady.’ I say as smoothly as I can manage. But in the confines of the cab it sounds cruel and harsh. 

‘Woman, if I wanted to hurt you or kill you or have my way with you I could have done it any time I wanted. But I’m not like that. I kill the bad guys and just try to survive to see tomorrow, so I would rather you not shoot me… if it’s all the same to you.’ 

She just stares at me for a few moments. It’s getting cold in here. I can feel it now upon my exposed face. Slowly she lowers the gun. I turn away from her and continue gathering the rations. ‘Woman, you really need to put on that inviro suit. It’s getting real cold.’ 

She coughs and sniffs. ‘My name is Emilee Rose. Not woman or lady or anything else.’ She says defiantly. 

‘Frack!’ is all I can say to that. If there is a God in this fracked up universe and there’s any love in him, I know that none of it is directed at me… it couldn’t be. 

The memory of that name crushes my stony heart, pierces my tainted soul and cuts me to my very spirit. My lover’s gone and will never be again.


----------



## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*Chapter 4 & 5*

Chapter 4

Emilee Rose staggers because of a strong north wind coupled with seventy-seven minus temp. Her goggles are iced up and her inviro suit is stiff and barely workable, frozen almost solid from the time outside. 

I’m trudging along in front of her, watching for any sign of threat or any hope of safety. The frost is thick around the sides of my goggles but I can see reasonably well anyway. 

Each breath I take sounds like the rasping of two grip pads rubbing together lightly as the air comes in from the heated filter grill and exhales the carbon dioxide out from the back of my suit in a quickly freezing cloud that is caught and blown away by the wind. 

I keep waiting for the woman to collapse but she surprises me by her willingness to suffer and not give up. I’m impressed by her desire to live. She is a fighter, I’m pretty sure I’m glad I saved her life… pretty sure. 

It’s been nearly three hours since we left the safety of the Explorator. Our chances are piss poor but what we got now is a whole lot better than if we had stayed. We had to keep moving. 

I kept watching the woman out of the corner of my eye, aware of every time she stumbled and every time she stopped to catch her breath. 

The inviro suits were rated for ninety below, so as for right now we would be alright. 

The day was just beginning and the heat from the two suns would not begin to break through the boiling, grey clouds for nearly twenty-seven more years… that’s what the sci-guys say anyway. Well, twenty-seven years from now the heat from those suns might help someone, but I know we could use something a little more immediate. 

We fallow the road at a slow pace. I would move much faster but now I am responsible for the woman. Some would argue that I saved her, now my duty was done. But as far as I can tell she couldn’t last half a day out here. So for me to just leave her would be just like killing her myself.

I knew I would be damned for so many other things that I’d done, but for this one action maybe I might find just a little redemption. I hope so because she is sure slowing me down just like I knew she would and I’m starting to get real irritable... and hungry. 

After nearly four hours it finally happens, she collapses and falls face first into the icy, snow covered road. I stop and take a good long look around. Bordering each side of the road are the frozen corpses constantly reminding us that we won’t ever make it out. They seem to be laughing or crying. I can’t tell which. 

The constant wind flowing in and out of there gaping mouths produce a sound much like the laughing of the insane or the weeping of the damned. The feeling it stirs up is one that chills the soul more than the cold that seeks to claim the body. 

There doesn’t seem to be any type of structure around to take shelter in. if we don’t find something soon the woman would die and that would be just one more thing that I had failed to do.

After but a moment I turned and crouched down beside her and lifted her up. There was no way that I would leave her here. She had passed out from exhaustion. I knew she would, but it took longer than I had expected, she was strong and desperately wanted to live. Holding her close to my chest in my arms I carry her for upwards of three more hours. 

The suns are setting in the west and the south, the temp is really starting to fall. By now I’m all but spent. Frost has covered my suit so thick it’s as if a blanket had been set over me. My arms and lower back ached from the constant weight of the woman and now I am really irritable and very hungry. 

Up ahead I notice a slight glow. It is stationary and constant. The wind has picked up to nearly eighty kilometers an hour and with it the cold hammers us with its steely fist. 

I read the temp-meter built into the lower left side of my goggles. It registers ninety-one below. In a few more minutes it will be totally dark and the cold would plummet into the negative one-thirties. The woman will be dead and I will have failed again.

But there was a little hope; the light was still on and it was stationary. Where there was light there most likely would be heat. Sucking in another long rugged, raspy breath I continue on, the light my only focus.

Chapter 5

She was beautiful. I watched her for a long time as she slept and remembered what it was like to be with a woman; the fellowship of having someone nearby to talk to, to watch out for and to love. 

Her name was Emilee Rose. How the hell could I have ever found another person in this god-forsaken universe by that name I don’t know. It was clear that if there was a true literal God… he hated me more than words could say.

I had lived nearly one thousand-four-hundred years, maybe even longer. The year nineteen-ninteen was as far back as I could remember. It was hazy but sometimes felt like yesterday. Other times it felt as if I had lived for thirty lifetimes.

The wind howled outside and frost and ice covered the windows completely. There was no plumbing and the walls were bare except for a log of comings and goings that had not been maintained for nearly three months. 

She had been as cold as the dead by the time I got her inside. At first I was worried someone would be here and I would have to kill them too, but the place was as empty as my belly. 

The protein bars. Fracked if I didn’t remember them. I pulled one from the pouch on my thigh and consumed it as if I was a starving animal. It tasted of old chalky tooth-paste and chocolate, but at this very moment was the sweetest thing I could have imagined. 

The heater worked well enough to keep the coldest chill out, but not well enough to permit us to take off our inviro-suits. The light I had seen from outside was a lantern that was nearing the end of its charge. Other than that, there was not any electricity, running water or food rations. 

It was just a port in the storm meant to pull into in case of an emergency. For the moment we were safe enough, but for how long I didn’t know.

Emilee Rose stirred in her sleep and mumbled something from the nightmare she was having. I couldn’t make out what the words were but it sounded bad. I thought about waking her but knew that sleep, even restless sleep was what she needed right now. She had o sleep with her nightmares…I had to live with mine.

Emilee Rose. I both loved that name and hated it. It brought back to many memories… too much pain, opened old scars that I had thought I would never have to face again. Frack, but how I missed her.

I don’t remember everything, but I remember her. I thought I could never love anyone like I loved her. I knew I would not grow old and she would. I knew that someday she would pass away and I was content with that. She knew my secret and still chose to love me anyway…In spite of it or because of it I don’t know. All I know is she was the only one who could keep me calm in the night, she kept the nightmares away.

I had spent the last thousand years trying to forget her; what she felt like, smelt like and…

That was the year world war four started. The sun in the distance chasing the clouds away… her laughing as she teased me in the doorway of our cabin… her ashes blowing from my open hands.

I wake up with a start. It was dark in the safe house and I was glad of it. The darkness hid the tears that had been streaming down my face while I slept. 

I listened to the sounds around me, the winds howling through old pipe work that sounded like screaming, the creaking of the windows as they resisted the wind and cold, the sound of old tiles on the roof that lifted and flopped down again as they sought their freedom… the sound of the woman sleeping upon the old cot I had found in the side room.

I wondered how long it would be before the suns came up again. I would have to wake her up again and we would have to make our way along the frozen road again, the corpses our only companions. 

In the distance a light bobbed up and down as the vehicle it was attached to, made its way along the road we had so recently come from. 

Probably someone searching for those I had killed last night. I most definitely would help them find their friends.

It didn’t take long for the vehicle to make its way up to the safe house. The spotlight flashed in through the windows and light up the back wall. It was another six wheeler Explorator that looked like the one we had rode on the night before. It was almost identical except for the blood that wallpapered the cabin of the other one.

The Explorator slowed to almost a stand still as the men inside panned their light back and forth looking for any sign of life. 

Emilee Rose still slept inside, but I was not in there with her. From the side of the road I ran and climbed on board the Explorator and opened the door. Another group of three men as completely shocked to find a killer in their midst. 

I shot each one through the head before they even had time to form a thought of what to do with me. Quickly I pulled them from the cab and tossed them into the field to join the corpses they had helped to put there, climbed back inside and checked the fuel gauge. It was near full.


----------



## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*Chapter 6, 7, 8*

Chapter 6

Emilee Rose sat in the front and said nothing as I drove the Explorator back the way it had come. She ate a protein bar and seemed to space off like she was remembering something she didn’t really want to remember. I didn’t ask her what she was thinking about and she didn’t volunteer the information.

I was content to just be moving again. I didn’t have to wonder what kind of people could do this to all those people out in the fields, I already knew. It was the Corporation. They were to blame. They were the worst kind of animal and they were always hungry.

I had worked for them once about twenty years ago, back on the Bore. I remembered them well and I know they remembered me well too. I’m sure they think I’m dead, but I aint dead. The thing is they started a war with me and now I wanted to finish it. I don’t forget a wrong done to me… ever. 

‘They were going to leave you out there.’ I said as softly as I could. She jumped, startled. After a moment she nodded. ‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’ She said. 

I can smell a lie so fast it would shock most men and I knew she was lying to me now. I wanted to tear the truth from her lips, but the thought of her in pain stopped me. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, I wont hurt you.’

‘I am not lying.’ She said. 

She was. I knew it and so did she. But she was scared and seemed to be deep in thought, so I backed off and offered her another protein bar.

‘The Corporation did this. I know that, but what I don’t know, lady, is why.’


Emilee Rose leaned back in her chair and put her knees up to her chest. ‘If you keep going this way… you will find out.’ She said.

The suns had set again behind the rolling gray clouds and left the land as dead as it would ever get. 

In the distance fifty-thousand lights lit up the towers and buildings that made up the Rooksivile Electric and Research Nuclear Plant. R.E.R.N. was owned and run exclusively by the Corporation. If they owned it, I knew no good could come from it no matter what name you covered it with.

Emilee Rose was frightened to the point of shaking as we drew nearer to the plant. ‘What is it, Emilee? What scares you so much about this place?’

I can smell her fear and it does not spark in me the animal lust of predator and prey, but makes me sad that an innocent like this could even feel fear and terror… that someone or something could cause her to feel it. 

The com-radio makes a pinging sound and lights up two red and one blue lights. Someone didn’t check in and the Corp wants to know where they were. I smile, I know where they are.

‘You don’t have to go with me, but I gotta go in there and sort all this out.’ I say. She nods but says nothing. She knows what is in there and is doing all she can just to contain the torment within her tortured mind.

‘Do you have a place you can go from here…any family or anything?’ 

She just shakes her head, a tear running down her light red, windblown cheek. 

As I open the door to the cab of the Explorator, Emilee Rose says the last thing I will ever hear from her. ‘You won’t come back.’

That was a comforting thought. ‘Thanks for the encouragement, lady.’ I say to myself as I make my way past the security fences and behind a large corrugated steel building. 

The smell of sewage, oil, venting gas fumes and chemicals of all types was everywhere. A smokestack stood toward the far end of the plant, four-hundred feet tall. It billowed fire and smoke out of its top as it burnt the gas-waste, the flames lit up the underside of the gray, tumultuous clouds that passed by above. 

It reminded me of the German concentration camps back on Terra during world-war two. That was a very bad time of my life. 

Moving from building to building I watched for any signs of activity from guards, solders, grounds keepers or anyone else who could be out and about. The wind blew strong and the cold seeped into my very soul. It made me tired and slow. 

There was nobody out. No guards, no dogs… no nothing. Well I knew there had to sensors or cameras watching over the place so I did my best to watch for and avoid them. 

The wind sounded like it was screaming again. I’m tired of this planet. I think I will go somewhere warm when I get a chance. 

A door swings open and a man runs out like the demons of hell itself are chasing him. He screamed as he turned and fired his las-gun at the thing that hunted him… Alien. 

The alien moved like a shadow, raw power and predator intellect causing it to duck and weave past the bright lasers that the man fired at it. The man turned to run once more, raw terror causing him to scream again and lose control of his bowels. The creature was on him in an instant.

From the doorway it jumped and seemed to defy gravity as it rose in the air and finally fell back to the earth below. The man didn’t have a chance as the shiny black beast landed upon his back and slammed its razor tail through his spine and out of his chest. Bending forward in extended its inner jaws past its clear teeth and plunged it into the back of the man’s head. 

My nightmares came alive in the time it took to see the alien and the time it took for me to remember my time on the Bore. 

In a flash I remembered the hallowed out chamber in the depths of the side of a mountain and the greasy, green oval eggs that infested the place.

I remembered the Xenomorphs that ran on eight legs and lunged at anyone close enough to pounce on.

I remembered their snake-like tails as they wound their way around their hosts neck and squeezed until the person was gasping for air. I remembered the tubes the creatures would put down their throats and inject their larva into their chests. 

I remembered the men dying as their chests exploded and popped as their screams permeated the air and creatures blasted forth from them. 

I remembered death incarnate coming for me. I thought I had killed them all when I caused the Bore to self destruct. I guess I was wrong.

All at once it hit me. The Corporation wanted to rule the galaxy and in order for them to do that they needed a weapon that they could control and could not be stopped. They needed a vast amount of these weapons in order to dominate any given world.

I saw their plan and nearly collapsed under the weight of it.

The corpses frozen in the field had been inseminated by the aliens and placed out there where they would die and the aliens could not come to term. Later the Corp. would retrieve the bodies and ship them to a rival planet and leave them there to thaw.

The planet would be overrun within three months…every man, woman, boy and girl along with every beast and animal would become a feast and spawning ground for the aliens. 

The only problem with that was the aliens were predators. They were smart and had the ability to learn. They could not be controlled by man because man was prey… humanity was prey.

Chapter 7

There was no way that I was going into that place. I knew better than to mess with those things. I ran. 

The blood in my veins pumped quickly as my heart pounded in my chest. I knew that where there was one alien, there were more. They were like roaches… they infested everything. 

Stopping to catch my breath, I knew, would be a mistake. I made my way past the corrugated building that I had hid behind when I first came into the complex and ran to the fence that I had cut through. I had to get out, to save Emilee Rose. 

‘Oh, no.’ I said out loud as I ran. They had thrown her out in the field of frozen corpses because she was infected. There was nothing that I could do for her. If I could end her suffering quickly it would be a mercy.

I could hear them behind me, moving at speed. They ran faster than horses and stronger than rhinos. They would catch me… I would have to fight. If there was one I would win but if there were two or more I could not be sure.

Between the two security fences I turned. There was one in the air, descending on me like daemon rain. Its tail was lashing out behind it and the lights from the power plant reflected off of its black skin. I fired my las-gun and it dodged the blast with speed that could not be easily measured.

As it dodged the las-round it lashed out with its whip-like tail and cut the gun into two pieces, landed and rounded on me in one smooth motion. Its inner jaws plunged forth from its outer jaw-cage and ripped into my inviro-suit.

Falling beck I extended my claws and rolled away from it. It lunged at me and lashed its tail with its razor-like end. At that moment I struck and severed the tail into four pieces. It hissed and moved away from me for a moment. Its acid blood sizzled upon my adamantium blades and burned the skin upon my hand. 

We circled. It hissed again and revealed its clear teeth and inner jaw, long lengths of milky drool dripped down in ropy whips from its mouth. Its long arms and talons clicked with anticipation and bloodlust as it flexed its long hands and fingers.

Slowly we continued to circle. It lunged and I rolled out of the way and lashed out at it with my left hand, my claws ripping open its side. Acid blood shot out in torrential rivers and bathed me in its chemical taint. I screamed and fought to keep from passing out. Weakness in the face of this daemon would be the mistake it was looking for. 

It jumped back and hissed before whipping its tail like a striking snake. The acid blood slammed into my chest and face and immediately began to burn through the outer layers of its protective fibers. 

My face burned away as the acid connected with the skin. I screamed as it melted my flesh. At that moment it lunged at me and sank its teeth into my throat. With a vicious jerk it ripped out my Adams apple and most of the rest of my throat.

I gagged on my own blood and fell beneath its weight. My right arm was pinned, but with my left I repeatedly slammed my blades into its ribbed side. Slowly it faltered and finally died.

It took most of my strength to roll it off of me and rise to my knees. My flesh was already healing, but the pain was nearly all consuming. Slowly I lifted my head and looked at the creature I had just killed. It smoked from the acid blood and twitched from still active nerves, but it was dead… of that I was sure.

Gasping for air and drowning on my own blood I crawled along the frozen ground. My healing factor began its process and the pain began to recede. 

Slowly I stood upright and staggered to the rip in the second security fence. From the right side of me I heard it coming and turned to meet it. It was already in the air, its eight legs spread wide open and its tail lashing from right to left. 

With my right claws I sliced it into pieces, its blood covering me from head to toe. Falling to the ground I fought to keep quiet, but the pain of its defensive reaction caused me to roll and writhe on the ground as the acid blood ate through my skin, organs and around my adamantium bones. 

My nerves were on fire and my body was melting from outside in. Finally the pain ebbed and I crawled through the opening in the second fence. 

I was too tired to stand, I could barely move, but I had no choice. I had to get to the Explorator; I had to save her from a death she did not deserve.

From my left side I heard it coming… or was it my right? Panic. 

It hit me with enough power to roll me end over end and wrapped its tail around my neck. At the same moment, before I had a chance to strike at it, it plunged a fleshy tube down my blood filled throat. I stabbed it two times but it did not budge. 

The acid from its wounds tore away my resolve. My body shook and my lungs burned as the Xenomorph tightened its tail around my neck. Everything went numb and darkness descended upon me like a shroud. 

I woke up in the glow of red emergency lights, the smell of death was everywhere and the sound of screaming and weeping blended in with the sounds of emergency sirens and exhaust vents. I could not move.

All around me hundreds of green eggs sat in slimy, clear crystallized mucus secreted from the Queen’s distended fallopian tube. She moved slowly and thoughtfully in the shadows laying the future of the nest in circular patterns that covered the whole of the basement floor. 

Thousands of people, both living and dead lined the walls, nothing more that hosts for her young. 

Yea, if there was a god, I’m sure he hated me and everyone else here. I thought about Emilee Rose and knew she had met her end. She had been braver than I had given her credit for. At least I had saved her from becoming a frozen corpse I thought, or maybe it would have been more merciful to let her die quickly rather than to let her live remembering all of this.

She could have given me a little warning though. Maybe I would have listened to her and avoided this place all together and maybe I wouldn’t have… but at least I would have known what it was that I was walking into. 

The person next to me has been dead along time; his chest punched outward, dried blood coating every part of him. The person next to him was crying, having full knowledge of what would happen to him but unable to do anything about it. 

I feel for the guy. I really, for the first time in a long time, really feel for someone and wish that there was something I could do to stop his pain. 

I struggle to move, straining my arms and fighting for room, just a little bit of room. My arm breaks free of the crystallized mucus and I flex my wrist, extend my claws and begin to cut away at the bonds that hold me affixed to the wall. 

As I move, the eggs around me begin to open, the Xenomorphs stirring within. I gotta move and move now if I’m gonna make it out of here.

My adrenaline kicks in as I cut away the final strands that hold me stationary. I am free, but I gotta move. I quickly end the man’s suffering as I run past him. I am sure he was thankful.

They are all over the place. They are everywhere… I know I can’t make it to the upper levels before they are on me again. 

I can feel them all around me, running at speed, crawling along the ceiling, jumping from wall to wall; they are at my back and I can’t hesitate, even for a moment. 

An Alien sprints out before me and I gut it with both set of my claws. It dies quickly but I am covered in its blood. I burn and melt and scream, but don’t stop running.

A shadow collides with me and flips me over the railing of the stairs that lead into the lower levels. I feel its teeth set into my shoulder and tear muscle and flesh away. Its claws swipe my face and rips open my cheek, its tail slams through my gut and I am plunged into darkness.

I awake into a nightmare of pain as my guts rupture. I can feel something inside of me chewing frantically like a starving piranha on a bloody corpse. It worries at the inside of my rib cage but it cannot break through. It changes direction and comes out of my stomach with a welter of blood and fecal matter.

I swing my arm and extend my claws and catch the creature as it springs away from me. It falls to the floor in four acidic parts but does not die. Instead it begins to heal; its body coming together once again. It has become a part of me and I have become a part of it.

I am stuck to the wall again, held only by my torso. I cut myself free and fall to the floor. My healing factor is already starting to piece my shredded body back together. 

The baby alien begins to crawl away again but it is too slow. I cut it into as many pieces as is possible and toss them across the room. ‘Try healing from that!’ I growl. 

In the shadows all around me I see them unfold. Acidic drool splashes down onto the iron floor. Thousands of corpses line the wall and ceiling. Most of the victims are dead, but some are still alive and weeping. I know I cannot save them so I concentrate on saving myself. 

‘Bring it on you sons of bitches!’ I say. I can see them as they begin to advance on me. I reach into my pocket and am surprised to find a cigar still in its package and unharmed. At least one miracle. I can only hope for another. 

I bite down on it and flex my arms. My claws distend and I crack my shoulders and neck. I think there are four of them, but when the attack begins I find out there are many more. ‘I’m the best at what I do!’ I scream into the face of the first one. Its jaw shoots out and bites into my shoulder.

My claws meet it in the gut and I twist them until the creature in kneeling before me and shuddering in its death throes. The end of a tail slams through my leg and I crumble to the floor on one knee. I swipe behind me and sever the barbed black tail. The alien hisses and swings it back and forth bathing the pack and me in its defensive stream. 

I scream but lunge forth and gut another of the xeno creatures. The full weight of one of them hits me like a ton of bricks and slams me into the wall. It bites my face but cannot get through my adamantium skeleton. I swing my left arm and let out a howl of frustration and anger. The claws send its head flying away in four brain filled bloody parts. 

I can feel my skin and muscles being eroded away by the acid blood. I am covered from head to toe; the cigar is lost somewhere in the mêlée. It feels like I have been fighting for hours. Smoke is rising from my shredded bloody body, parts of my skeleton are showing but my body is numb. I no longer feel the pain and all fear of the aliens is gone.

I fight with nothing but brute animal instinct and scream in primordial rage. I stand on the bodies of the dead and dying and gut another one even as its tail punctures through the gaps in my ribs and tears out a lung. 

I cut off its tail and stab it in the forehead. It collapses like a sack of bloody stumps. I fall to my knees and tear out the alien tail. I fight the blackness from overtaking me. I grin through a lipless mouth and grab the cigar before me.

Slowly I crawl forward and roll off of the alien corpses. A Xenomorph hurls itself at me in is impaled by the alien tail I still hold in my left hand. ‘Is that all you got? I wheeze.

The queen stirs from her slumber as she hears my challenge. I can feel her children back off slowly into the shadows in obeisance and fear of their mother. She is a massive beast and terrible to behold. She tears away from her fallopian tube and shakes herself with a violent roar.

I stand slowly and begin to move toward her. ‘I hate you and I am going to kill you, bub!’ 

From behind me her tail strikes like a serpent beast and tears through my back and shoots up and out between my collarbone and neck. I am impaled on her tail and she shakes it with an evil twist. The barbs hook along my adamantium skeleton and keep me from flying off and into the shadows beyond.

There is no pain. The damage is too severe for there to be pain. Tears run down what is left of my face and my head sags. I find that I am looking down from the ceiling onto the corpses on the walls, the egg chamber below and the alien solders in the shadows. My cigar falls once again to the blood soaked floor. 

When I do look up I am staring into those inky, death black eyes. Her cranial bone ascends behind her skull like a crown and her mouth as slightly opened revealing clear iron hard teeth. I can hear her breathing and smell her acrid scent as she exhales from nostrils the size of dinner plates. 

I am aware of my healing factor trying desperately to extract the queen’s tail from within my body, but it can’t because of the six inch barbs. Calm comes over me as I see the hatred in the eyes of the alien beast. I smile as that hatred turns to fear and recognition. I am a predator worse than she has ever known and now I attack before she can react.

With both hands I strike upward and slam six blades up through her jaws. The queen reels away from me and swings her tail fiercely and violently. As she swings it I sever the tail and allow myself to fly across the room. 

I spit blood as I pull the queens tail from my torso. Lying on the pile of dead creatures I struggle to rise. I can hear them coming for me and they are close. I steel myself and run at the distracted queen. She was swinging her tail and acid was melting the columns that surrounded her and her nest. Acid blood was running down her chest and collecting on the floor below her. Smoke rose from the chemical mix. 

From the shadows and the smog I charged and stabbed into her stomach. I could hear its heart beating like a drum. She was scared and rightly so. I cut her deep and began to crawl into her guts. I sliced and chopped until I was face to face with that heart. ‘Now you die!’ I yelled. 

I awoke later. I have no idea how much longer, but enough time had passed for the queen alien’s blood from burning or melting anything else. I was still within her body so I had to chop my way out. Naked and tired beyond belief I made my way out of the basement. 

I could since the others around me, stalking me in the darkness, but they did not attack. I had killed their mother and fear now controlled them. Fear of a predator worse than them.

I smiled as I realized the fear that had once gripped me was gone. 

I made my way to the nuclear core of the plant and shut off all the safety switches. 


Quickly I made my way back to the Explorator. It’s out of fuel and blood covers the inside of the windshield. I know what I will find when I open the door, but I open it anyway. 

It comes for me as soon as the door opens, but I catch it in my palm and stab it through the brainpan with one of my claws. Revenge for Emilee Rose has been completed but it felt empty. 

From inside the cab closet I dawn another inviro-suit and make my way down the frozen road… the wind, the cold and the corpses my only companions. 

Three hours later the sky flees away and the darkness is replaced by an eerie orange glow. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it is long enough.

As I think about it I am awe struck. Maybe there is a God. And maybe He loves me very much. Maybe God made me for this very moment… to kill the beasts and avenge the lost.


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## dragonkingofthestars (May 3, 2010)

it interesting, i give it that much. well writen yes and very discrtive, but the plot is odd.

X-men,40k, alien cross over? though that is just me.

peronaly i think you need to spend a bit more time on the end game, as it were, you gloss over the big last fighting scean and just have Logan blow up plant. i would put a bit more detile in it.


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## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*I have changed the story.*

I took the critisism of the story ending too quickly and abruptly. Thank you for the truth. I added almost 2,000 words and added more stuff that I hope you enjoyed.


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## gothik (May 29, 2010)

wow...my favourite X-man in a 40k tale yeeehhaaa nice Adrian


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## Ambush Beast (Oct 31, 2010)

*hello*

Its been a long time since I've written anything. My dad passed on almost 10 months ago. I wrote some but it hasn't really been easy for me to think clearly, but it is getting better. So until I write something new I descided to put this story out there once again for everyone. Hope you like it.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

I'm sorry to here that, Adrian. My condolences to you and your family. Fully understandable in the circumstances. 

It's nice to see you posting again, and if you feel up to it, hope to see you around again more often.


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