You Go First

A sudden, shattering shriek burst over the intercom, the pitch and tenor cutting through the sullen
shadows surrounding the two men cowering in the corner of the corridor in a desperate attempt to
clutch at the meagre cover available to them.

” Oh shit! Who was that?” exclaimed the first. Giler, his name patch read.

“Lambert. I think it was Lambert,” his comrade, Bannon’s voice cracking at the implication of his
utterance.

“It got Lambert? Lambert’s dead?”

“Yeah. Yeah, they’re dead...”

“Oh fuck,” an incipient tremor cracking Giler's voice, “Oh fuck, if it’s gotten Lambert then we’re next.
We’re next!”

Bannon swung round, flamethrower spluttering in the breeze of its passage.

“We don’t know that,” he hissed.

“We can fucking guess!” Giler's panicked imprecation bounding off the cold metal bulkheads
enclosing them.

Bannon’s hand flew out, slamming over Giler’s mouth, stifling his incoherent babble as he closed the
gap between them.

“We. Don’t. Know.” He hissed, biting off every syllable, his eyes attempting to burn conviction into
Giler’s breaking spirit.

Giler writhed, briefly, under Bannon’s grip, the other man’s strength enough to pin him in place as
he leaned in and snarled his next opinion: “Also, screaming your lungs out while an enormous alien
monstrosity is loose on the ship and killing everything it sees is not the best idea you’ve ever had,
got it?”

A slow, only slightly hesitant nod was indication enough that the point was made, so Bannon’s hand
slowly unclenched from around Giler’s jaw, the pair relaxing in synchrony as far as circumstances
would allow.

“Ok, ok...” Giler’s rapid, ragged breathing slowed gradually as the sense of Bannon’s words stuck
him. “So, since we’re stuck on a ship with an enormous alien monstrosity on the loose and killing
everything it sees, what’s your bright idea?”

His colleague sat back onto his haunches, the effort of subduing another man’s mania seemingly
draining the last of his remaining reserves of will. Fixing Giler with a stare, he spat out his tired
response: “Well I think we can agree the main idea is to not die, right?”

“Oh, well that’s just genius, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that all by myself.”

Bannon sighed, Giler’s caustic commentary subtly suggesting that he’d done too good a job of
restoring his comrades previously flagging spirits.

Slumping slowly into the shadows of a nearby conglomeration of pipework, Bannon clamped the
bridge of his nose firmly, the tension of the terrifying circumstances the two found themselves in
merging with his rampant frustration at Giler’s petulant panicking.

Taking a sigh that seeped deep into his bones, Bannon sat up and stared straight into the truculent
face of Giler, bracing himself for the inevitable snarky riposte.

“Well...” he paused briefly, fully expecting the man opposite to burst forth with his own brand of
bitter, biting sarcasm in the face of their shared situation. “Well, as I see it, based on where Lambert
was stationed...,” his voice trailed off like a cartoon coyote careening off a cliff as he looked up to
Giler’s angrily exasperated expression.

“Go on,” Giler said slowly and sullenly, as he fixed him with a cross-armed glare of his own.

Bannon bit his lip before continuing, his fist clenched white-knuckle tight to help suppress the
venomous vitriol bubbling up inside him. “We’re five decks away from the thing, ‘the bottom of the
barrel,’ the captain said. And it’s still got Parker, Brett and...”
The intercom screamed again, the sudden shriek piercing the pall of placidity that had descended,
however briefly.

Giler shot straight up, his head immediately impacting the bulkhead above him in his haste. Bannon
shot forward, as much, if not more, in alarm at the sudden cessation of silence that could lure the
crew-killing creature in their direction.

Bannon’s hand found the hunched over shoulder of his comrade, as he sunk back from the collision
with the ceiling, his hands clutching at his concussed cranium.

“Fucking heeeelll...,” Giler hissed through tightly clenched teeth, “who was that?” he demanded as
alarm swept pain from the playing field of his perceptions.

“Can’t tell,” Bannon gasped out, “maybe Ash. Who the hell knows over the damn intercom?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I would quite appreciate some indication as to just how fucked
we are,” Giler ground out through gritted teeth.

“Oh for – Ok; we’re one-more-crewmate-dead level of fucked. Happy?”

The glower Giler gave Bannon in the very next heartbeat should have served as a sign that his
comrade’s glib assessment of their shared dilemma was somewhat unappreciated, but a sudden
explosion of sound sent both men scurrying for the shadows.

A swift glance in each other’s direction confirmed the mutual suspicion that they were both still
alive. The two turned in terror towards the source of their upheaval, expecting fully to confront the
calamity that had swept through their crewmates like a scythe.

The flickering flames of Bannon’s weapon cast the image of the creature before them as a jagged
shadow on the bulkhead behind, when the realisation struck them:

“Oh, Christ, “sighed Bannon, slumping forward stuck somewhere between relief and despair, “it’s
the fucking cat.”
Giler made a sound best described as horrendous hybrid of laughter and sobs, the twisted offspring
of the grim catastrophe that had befallen them bursting forth from the depths of his chest. The
creature gave them a look of confused contempt, as only a cosseted cat can.

Burying his face in his hands as he hunched over, Giler let the last throes of panic out in a low, raw-
throated howl. Bannon satisfied himself with venting his impotent frustrations in flame form
towards the feline nuisance with a brief burst from the flamethrower.

“YOU’D BETTER RUN!” Bannon yelled, allowing himself the luxury of an excess of volume while his
blood still thundered through his veins. “Always hated that spiteful little bastard,” he muttered as he
settled back from his prior panic, an acrimonious hiss the only response from the aggrieved animal.

Giler roused himself from his despair, his previous urgency for escape surging back to the surface of
his psyche.

“Christ, never mind the bastard cat, WE’D better run. Preferably far, fast and immediately.”

“Well at least we’re working towards being on the same page,” Bannon said, running his hands
through the greasy mass currently impersonating his hair, “but there’s one small problem.”

Giler froze, bolt upright, his compatriot’s words colliding head-on with his recent clarity of course.

“Do I dare even ask?” he almost groaned, bitter resignation dripping from every syllable.

“Well,” Bannon began, “you remember the captain put us at the very bottom of the ship, right?”

“I vaguely recall words to that effect and I infer a degree of relevance to our situation is lurking in
ambush right about now...” the words dragging grudgingly out of Giler as his eyes narrowed in
suspicion.

“Yeah, well,” Bannon’s tone just dripping with reluctance as the words crawled forth, “the issue is
that that means the escape pods are above us.”

“Right”
“As is the enormous alien monstrosity that’s on the loose and killing everything it sees.”

“Ah.”

“Yeeaaah...”

Giler sunk back against the bulkhead behind him, his frown somehow deepening in the gloom. “So,
our best bet for getting out of danger involves aggressively flinging ourselves directly into the path of
even greater danger?” he mused.

“That looks to be about the size of it, yeah.” drawled Bannon. “As I see it, this is probably our best
chance. It’s still working its way down through the ship and the rest of the crew...”

“Are you for real?” Giler barked in outraged surprise. “Those people are our friends and you just
want to throw them to the-”

“Ash was sleeping with your wife,” Bannon blurted out, cutting Giler’s pleading in mid-stride. The tilt
to Bannon’s head, coupled with the rakish tilt to his eyebrow was remarkably eloquent in its
persuasive properties.

“We all knew.”

The pause lingered in the air like the bitter tang of burnt toast.

Giler was stiff as the sheets of steel that made up the hull. “Please continue.” he ground out through
a tightly clenched jaw.

“Happy to.” Bannon leaned forward, resting his forearms on knees as he began to sketch out his
plan.

“So, as I figure it there’s still at least Captain Houston and Ridley between us and the enormous alien
monstrosity killing everything it sees, right?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” intoned Giler dully.

“Now,” said Bannon, raising a finger by way of indication, “they’re still three decks above us. The
escape pods, on the other hand, are a mere two decks above us. You with me?”

Giler cast a quizzical stare at the other man, positively radiating cynicism from every pore.

“So,” he began hesitantly, “what you’re proposing, unless I have in the last 20 minutes managed to
lose the last tattered remnants of my mind, is some kind of half-assed race between us and the
enormous alien monstrosity that’s killing everything it sees? Have I got that right?”

Bannon bit his lip before answering, Giler’s intransigence giving him pause. “Look, we have the
benefit of an entire deck and two people that neither of us will exactly miss between that thing and
safety. The way I see it, if we move now, we can be in the pod and out of the way before it’s even
finished killing everyone.”

Giler relaxed somewhat, Bannon’s words almost visibly careening around his cranium. “Ok, you
might be onto something there....”

“Ok!” Bannon blurted out, his enthusiasm for getting the hell out of there almost boiling over,
grabbing his flamethrower and readying himself to run.

“But,” Giler’s hand snapped up, calling a halt to Bannon’s train of thought, “what if you’re wrong? I
mean you’re assuming it’ll keep ploughing through the others in a straight line. What if it skips a
deck or two? Hell, maybe it kills the last two clowns faster than we can clear the next two decks!”

Bannon’s fingers flew to his temples, massaging in time to the pulse pounding through his veins.
“That’s not impossible,” he grudgingly ground out, “but if we stay here it’s only a matter of time till it
gets down here and does to us what it’s already done to all but two-”

The intercom screamed again, just like the crew member being brutally slaughtered on the other
end of it.

“One. All but one crewmember above us,” Bannon almost yelled through gritted teeth, his
frustration echoing around the cramped corridor along with his voice.
Giler clasped his head in his heads in panic, his last shred of hope dangling by a thread, just like their
odds of survival.

“We’re down to one! Oh god, it’s going to get to us even faster! We’re even more doomed than we
were!”

Bannon’s hand slapped into his face at speed, his compatriot’s obstinate refusal to accept the
inevitable being the cause of both this action and leading his second hand to lash out with vigour
and aggression towards the other’s face. The same pair of appendages then proceeded to come
together with significant acceleration on either side of Giler’s already abused face.

Leaning in to Giler’s manually compressed visage, Bannon, wild-eyed and borderline frantic in the
face of their mutual imminent demise, leaned into Giler’s face and snarled; “Look! We are THIS
close,” the fingers of his right hand flying directly into the others immediate eyeline, the tips
compressed to a hairs breadth, “to that thing being not only on top of us, but rooting around inside
of us and spreading what it finds across the walls!”

Bannon relaxed slightly, grip shifting to his comrade’s shoulders, albeit retaining an iron grip while
Giler shrunk back in alarm.

“I don’t know about you,” he began, the words stumbling haphazardly out of him, “but I haven’t
made it this far through this absolute screaming clusterfuck of a situation only to be mercilessly
slaughtered by an enormous alien monstrosity killing everything it sees at the final hurdle, go it?”

Giler, dumbstruck by Bannon’s borderline mania, could only nod lethargically in mute agreement
with the ferocious declaration being made mere inches from his face.

“Well ok,” he began cautiously, verbally tip-toeing around the increasingly frayed nerves of Bannon,
“don’t we then encounter another small problem?”

Bannon’s shoulders slumped as his scheme of escape ploughed into the brick wall of Giler’s
incessant obstinance.

“What. Problem?” he demanded tersely.

“Well, the layout of the ship being what it is, don’t we have to cross the entire length of this deck, to
get up to the next deck, and then back to the other end to get to the deck above that? The sort of
distance that might just give an enormous alien killing machine that kills everything it sees the
chance to add us to its tally?”

Bannon groaned, the simple accuracy of Giler’s assessment dropping an ice cube of reality down the
shirt of his hopes. Slamming his hands into the deck, Bannon growled, swept his flamethrower up
into his grasp and faced down Giler.

“That’s a damn good point,” he hissed, “but from what I saw while running like hell that thing has six
incredibly good points on each hand alone!”

Giler tried his best to merge with the wall to escape Bannon’s mounting fury.

“Now,” Bannon’s rant continued, “we might well have the slimmest odds ever encountered in the
history of human civilisation of getting to the escape pods before it does, but we both know for
damn sure that if we wait for it to come to us our odds somehow manage the staggering feat of
getting markedly worse, correct?”

Giler’s hands flew into the air, palms out, affecting acquiescence to Bannon’s vociferous questioning.
Wid eyed and nodding he stammered out, “Yeah, yeah, that’s about the size of it...”

Bannon grabbed his fellow by the shirt and pulled him close till they were virtually nose-to-nose.

“Then I think we can agree,” he snarled, “that this is our single solitary remaining chance of getting
out of here in one piece, yes?”

“That’s what the man with the flamethrower says....” Giler muttered.

“Yes!” exclaimed Bannon, “The man with the flamethrower knows what he’s talking about, and he
says we should run like hell.”

He dragged Giler in front of him and shoved him down the corridor, keeping close behind as they ran
towards their collision with calamity.

“I’ve opened all the intercom channels,” Bannon yelled, “we’ll hear that thing wherever it goes.”
“And whoever it kills!” Giler screamed back over his shoulder, “Who’s even left anyway?”

“Who cares?” Bannon snapped back, “we only have to worry about it killing us!”

The two scrambled along the corridor, conduits crowding around them, the occasional collision
barely even denting their progress.

Gradually their frantic efforts brought them to the end, and the crawl way up to the next deck.

Bannon, looked up, warily.

“Ok, looks clear, but why take the chance, huh?” He pointed the flamethrower towards the narrow
shaft and released a jet of flaming fuel ahead of them. The flames lit up the shaft above, chasing the
darkness from them and meeting no resistance.

Both men sagged noticeably, the relief palpable in the air around them.

“Ok,” breathed Bannon, allowing himself a brief remission from terror and nodding to the ladder
before them, “you go first.”

Giler jolted at the suggestion.

“What do you mean, “you go first?” he wailed, “you’re the one with the flamethrower! You get up
there!”

Bannon gave him a look of exasperated disbelief.

“Are you for real?” he demanded, “You do realise if I go first and that thing’s up there, you’re in a
pretty pickle, right?”

Giler’s eyes widened as he was struck by a sudden revelation.

“Oh my...” he stammered, “You want me to go first so it’ll kill me, don’t you? Admit it, you son of a
bitch!”

Bannon spun round, shock and frustration locked in desperate struggle for supremacy on his face.

“Listen you-” he was cut off by a sudden violent squall over the intercom, a frenzied riot of crashing
and smashing that jolted both men out of their mutual recriminations.

“What the hell?” Giler yelled, mingled awe and astonishment writ large over his face.

A torrent of barely intelligible invective surged across the intercom, desperation sparking from every
fragmentary syllable.

“Holy shit! That’s Ridley!” Bannon cried, “She’s actually holding it off! Quick, up the ladder!”

Giler scrambled up the ladder, an inarticulate murmuration leaking from his lips as he ascended,
Bannon and the whispering hiss of the flamethrower in close pursuit.

He found Giler at the top of the crawl way, plastered firmly into the shadows at its apex.

A burst of flame into the corridor before them lit up the path ahead of them. The hissing of the
incinerator mingling with the ongoing conflict between Ridley and the beast above them.

“Ok, We’re halfway home.” Bannon breathed out, the effort of speeding up the ladder weighing on
him.

Giler poked his head out of the cranny he’d crammed himself into. “Fantastic. Now, YOU go first,” he
growled.

Bannon scowled as he begrudgingly trod forward into the gloom ahead of them, the flickering light
of the incinerator barely piercing the shadows that loomed all around them.

Giler followed close behind, peering into the looming darkness as the advanced, eyes shifting from
side to side for the faintest hint of threat.
“You think we should worry that we haven’t heard anything over the intercom in a while?” he said?

Bannon paused long enough to cast a glance back over his shoulder, “Well if it makes you feel any
better, we haven’t heard anyone die horrendously,” he spat back caustically.

They both snapped to a sudden halt as the intercom shouted out yet another unspeakable burst of
agonised demise.

Giler leaned in and glared at Bannon over his shoulder; “I think that’s called ‘tempting fate.’” he
sneered, acidly.

Bannon spun round and grabbed him by the collar, leaning in close enough to fling his own rancid
breath into the other’s face as he spoke.

“Then how about we move a little fucking faster then, eh?” he snarled in anger, dragging Giler out
from behind him and shoving him down the corridor at a run.

Giler stumbled forward, arms flailing wildly as he was flung against his will into the open arms of
freedom of movement, the darkness of the corridor he proceeded into the ink-like blackness that
engulfed them both.

Their breaths blended together as they bounded towards the end of the poorly lit passageway they
plunged headfirst into, Ridley’s demise spurring them to extra effort in the interests of escape.

The two of them practically collided at the bottom of the climatic crawl space between them and the
final fling towards escape. They hung, suspended like insects in freshly leaked amber, at the bottom
of the last ladder that would lead them to freedom.

Bannon grabbed the rung nearest to him, taking an exhausted breath before turning to Giler and
urging his ascent with a nod upwards.

Giler glared, pausing for a brief second before giving way to the urgency of their flight and casting
caution out the nearest airlock, clambering towards the opening above that promised their
salvation.
He wavered at the top of the ladder, discretion making an unexpected return from the void, as a
sudden realisation rammed into Giler’s consciousness.

“Oh, what now?” pled Bannon, trapped by his partners timidity, his hopes for escape evaporating in
the face of Giler’s obstinacy.

“I can’t do it!” Giler yelled, “It’s up there, I just know it!”

“For god’s sake, man!” Bannon screamed at him, “It’ll be down here with us if you don’t move your
ass! The escape pods are up there and I’m down here with a flamethrower, so get going!”

Faced with Bannon’s aggressive urgency, Giler gave in to the more immediate risk and pulled himself
onto the deck above them. The escape pods were tantalisingly close, the darkness draped around
them cloaking the peril that had torn through their crewmates like a hot knife through butter and
was waiting to claim them.

He jumped despite himself as Bannon clambered up the crawl way behind him, the clang of the
incinerator echoing across the empty space before them. The two crouched, their torsos almost
skimming the deck, jaws clenched in horror at the resounding clang that threatened to betray their
location.

The two glanced at each other, then back out into the dim void ahead of them. Reluctance dripped
off them like the sweat off their brows, splashing onto the metal beneath them in unison, mingling
every bit as much as their mutual dread.

Bannon spoke first, “Well, we’re nearly there,” he breathed out shakily. “Just one last push...”

“One last push,” Giler echoed. He turned to look at Bannon, his body beginning to tremble like his
voice. “It’s out there though. I just know it’s out there...”

Bannon gritted his teeth, steeling himself for the final surge to freedom. “We don’t have a choice,”
he ground out eventually, tension dripping from every syllable.

“We know that thing’s out there somewhere, but the escape pods are right in front of us...”
He swung the flamethrower up in front of him and depressed the trigger, a bright burst of flame
burning the gloom from their path, before sputtering and dying as they watched.

The two stared at the now useless hunk of pressed steel and plastic, it’s unexpected demise
seemingly a grim foreshadowing of what awaited them mere metres away.

Bannon set his shoulders firmly, steeling himself for the effort to come.

“The path’s clear. We would have hit it if it was there. It’s now or never,” he almost whispered.

Giler’s gaze was fixed ahead, seeing not just the corridor and the promise of freedom in the escape
pods, but every possible grisly demise he’d imagined for himself since the nightmare began.

“Now or never. Now or never,” he chanted, mantra-like under his breath.

The two of them raised up as one, taking on a crude approximation of a sprinter on the blocks,
waiting for the race to start, but their opponent today was death.

Bannon turned to Giler as he reached out and grabbed the other man’s forearm, attempting to
impart some of his own resolve into his comrade. “One last push,” he breathed, “on three, ok?”

Giler sagged, the weight of their task bearing down on him like the last moments of the condemned.

“On three,” he agreed.

Bannon released him, staring straight towards the escape pod. He nodded once, then began the
count: “One.”

Giler’s breath was coming rapid and shallow, mere inches away from the verge of panic.

“Two.”

He was almost vibrating as the terror rippled through him like an earthquake.
“Three!”

The pair lurched forward before the last word fully left Bannon’s lips, fear firing them forward like
bullets at their target, the escape pods. Seconds stretched out into eternity as they sped into the
shadows, every inch as taxing as a hundred metre dash.

Finally, the two slammed to a halt at the nearest pod. Both nearly collapsed at their sudden
cessation before relief overwhelmed them.

Giler bent over, laughter and tears blurring together into a tangled morass of emotions, as Bannon,
clapped his hand on his fellow’s shoulder.

“We did it!” he exclaimed, “We did it, you hear? We’re safe, ok?”

Giler could only nod, tears running freely from his face to the deck, great wracking sobs tearing loose
from his throat as he reached for the access panel, relief shining out through the tears as he did.

The escape pod door opened with a soft hiss, closely followed by the alien’s as it lunged towards
them from the pod. Their blood hit the deck before the rest of them did.