Hell's Gate(49)

January 28, 1944

Six beams of light probed the edges of a steep trail leading away from Nostromo Base. Colonel Wolff had decided to investigate the screams coming from the hill for himself, and, while the horrible sounds had instantly put everyone in the camp on alert (and on edge), the colonel found that his overriding emotion was inquisitiveness. What could cause someone to scream like that—and for so long?

He also perceived that Sergeant Schr?dinger and the four soldiers accompanying him were anything but inquisitive as they followed the shrieks to their source—a small hut.

How had my sentries not noticed this place before? he thought, as they approached the structure. His flashlight beam paused at a pile of empty cans. And what else have they missed?

The colonel gnashed his teeth. Too many mistakes.

Wolff noted that one of the men with him was the corporal who had been on the deck of the Nostromo that morning. Now this same man had been ordered out of the camp and into the dark forest where an unknown killer lurked, a killer he might actually have seen. Wolff allowed himself a small measure of satisfaction. Corporal Kessler is having a difficult day.

They stopped just outside the simple dwelling, the cries from within having now settled into a prolonged moan.

At Wolff’s signal, three of the unnerved soldiers rushed in, flashlights secured to their MP-43s, which they each held at waist level. Wolff entered next, with Schr?dinger backing in behind him, his flashlight scanning the borders of the tiny clearing that surrounded the hut.

For several moments the Germans played their lights around the interior of the circular room, each attempting to understand the scene before him. They had all seen their share of horrors, and to varying degrees they had become numb to all manner of human mistreatment. But none of them had ever seen anything quite like this: a young woman, hysterical and clutching a pale, catatonic child . . . an older woman seemingly asleep in a pool of her own blood, too much blood for her to possibly be alive. Then there was the smell, the horribly incongruent smell.

Wolff gestured toward the withered figure of the old woman. “This one will be autopsied.”

Then he turned to the mother and her child, a boy of perhaps four. “And these two—” He moved in closer, squatting beside them. The woman shifted her position, shielding the loose-limbed figure from the glare of Wolff’s flashlight, but not before he had glimpsed the boy’s eyes—alive but blank and unfocused.

Without warning, the child began shaking uncontrollably, his small body stiffening in his mother’s arms. At the sound of a wet cough, Wolff took a reflexive step backward just as the boy vomited a mouthful of blood across his mother’s back and onto the floor. Another low moan escaped from the woman as the child completed its transformation into a bloody rag doll in her arms.

The colonel was fascinated. This is exactly how my men died.

“Don’t disturb these specimens,” he said, never taking his eyes off the dying child. “Corporal Kessler, bring some body bags from the lab. I want this boy bagged and on Dr. Kimura’s examination table in fifteen minutes.”

Corporal Kessler gave Wolff a puzzled look, “Sir, but he’s still—”

“Now, Corporal!” the colonel shouted. It was the first time any of them had heard Wolff raise his voice.

Kessler bolted from the hut, careful to avoid tripping over the cans that lay scattered in the blood.


From their perch on the hillside, the twins tracked the chaotic comings and goings of the bipeds. Four of them were now half-stumbling down the steep incline, burdened by their weapons and by the weight of a prize the bats had earned.

FOOD, the female signaled with the ultrasonic equivalent of a human sigh. She could still taste it, though most of the liquid was currently soaking into the ground. And if they waited much longer—

The four bipeds struggled past the trees where the twins hung in silence. The siblings could smell it—even through the thick material that covered their prey. The smallest meal was still alive, and they could feel the lingering liquid heat and the turbulence as the food drained out of him and sloshed inside the membrane in which the intruders had wrapped him.

The female sensed a vibration that ran through her brother’s body into the tree trunk from which they hung. She could feel his claws tearing deeply into the bark.

The male roared in ultrasonic silence.


MacCready awoke from a dream about cool mountain streams to the sound of the outer door being opened. He was expecting to see Wolff or the SS giant, back to finish what they’d started. But instead, he watched a pair of German soldiers carrying a hysterical and blood-covered woman toward one of the cells. Scott’s old cell, he thought, suddenly remembering the lieutenant’s mad song.

MacCready sat up. “She win a date with Sergeant Frankenstein?”

Both of the uniformed men seemed startled by the sound of another voice.

Relieved to see that it was only a prisoner, one of the soldiers shot his companion a puzzled expression. “Was sagte er?”

“Er scherzt darüber,” the other replied.

Although MacCready’s ear for German speech had grown a little rusty in recent years, he did notice that, unlike his earlier handlers, one of these guys was actually being quite gentle as he ushered the woman into a cell. He also noticed that the blood staining the woman’s clothes was apparently not her own. Still, she slumped to the floor even before the soldier backed out of the tiny cell.