guilty pleasures
The thing about writing self-indulgent fic is that self-indulgence tends to snowball. I have such a weakness for h/c, and I know this about myself so I do try to give myself firm limits for what I'm allowed to include in a single story. But with sci-fi exploring there's such endless potential, and there's so many characters that it kind of feels
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There is something red and gloppy dripping slowly down the lizard’s snout. Mikey’s heart is hammering so hard in his throat that he thinks he might be sick from it. He takes another step backwards, and the lizard takes two steps forward. Mikey falls over.
The heat of the room is making him stupid. He thinks maybe that’s the only reason he’s still alive, because the lizard is warm and slow, blinking and sated, and God, that’s blood, the lizard is dripping blood from his mouth. Mikey scrabbles frantically behind him and comes up with a screwdriver (Phillips head, tiny, and what he wouldn’t do for a fucking sonic screwdriver) and a converter he had pulled out of the grav system earlier.
The grav system. He’s not close enough to do anything real to it - and anyway, what could he do that wouldn’t be as much a disadvantage to him as to the lizard? - but he reaches in and pulls on a wire, sets some of the gears in motion until they whirr and tick.
The lizard makes a sound - not a growl, a deep low wheezing sound, like a manatee or a movie troll or something - and starts towards the machine. Mikey leaps out of the way, towards the door, and then he’s in the hall, the door slamming shut behind him.
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The lizard makes a sound - not a growl, a deep low wheezing sound, like a manatee or a movie troll or something - and starts towards the machine. Mikey scrambles out of the way, towards the door, and then he’s in the hall, the door slamming shut behind him. He doesn’t know how he got out, thinks he was lucky the lizard was so warm and sleepy, and that’s when he looks up and sees the body, the blood on the wall, and then he’s on his knees throwing up.
When there’s nothing left in his stomach he stumbles to his feet. There’s a lizard in the engine room, he thinks, he has to tell someone that there’s a giant lizard in the engine room and that someone - Johnson, he thinks, or Brewer, he can’t even tell from the body - is dead. He half runs, half lurches through the corridor, towards the stairs up to the main level, and that’s when he finds the second body.
There’s not anything left in his stomach to throw up, but he tries anyway.
There are two lizards in the upper corridor; Mikey turns and runs the other way. He pauses for a moment at the window where they had gathered only yesterday to watch their first sunrise on the new planet.
When he left to go down to the engine room, the expedition - apart from the exploratory teams - had been mostly spread out across the moss around the spaceship. They had been setting up equipment, lying in the sun, eager to be outside after their long confinement. Now the green expanse is full of blood and screaming and lizards. Mikey turns away and runs down the corridor. He’s near the bio labs; he opens a door into hydroponics and three lizards stare back at him, so he keeps running.
Turning a corner he comes face to face with another lizard, all yellow eyes and hard scales. There’s no place to go, lizards in front of him and behind him, and he’s going to die, this is the end. He closes his eyes and presses himself back against the wall, thinks of Gee, waits.
Nothing happens. He opens his eyes. The lizard trundles by, uninterested, slow and sated and heavy. He thinks, it’s already fed, and then, If I make it out, it will be because they’re not hungry anymore.” It’s the worst thing he’s ever thought, that he’ll live only because everyone else got eaten first.
He wonders if he’s the only person alive on this whole ship. He wonders where Gerard is, if there are lizards there, too. Bob will be able to take down a lizard, he thinks. Two lizards. Probably.
People are still screaming outside, but in the ship it’s perfectly quiet.
There’s no way he’s getting to the shipgate; through the window he can see more lizards spilling towards the ship, attracted by the heated metal, the high temperature. He’s going to be trapped in here, until the lizards get hungry again, waiting.
Then he thinks of the repair hatch and changes direction.
He’s almost to the hatch when there’s a sound off to his left, a dark shape. He turns and raises his wrench, though he doesn’t fucking know what he’s hoping to do with it, but it’s not a lizard, it’s Pete.
“God, Mikey, oh my God,” says Pete, grabbing at him.
“Pete,” says Mikey, or tries to - his voice has gone all scratchy.
“I thought,” says Pete, “I fucking thought everyone was fucking dead, I thought,” and they’re kind of clutching at each other, all sweaty and panicked and not alone anymore.
“There’s no one else?” asks Mikey.
“Hammond’s dead,” Pete says, “and Lewis, and the med bay’s full of fucking lizards. I don’t know, I don’t know who was inside, I was asleep and then the alarms came on and then I came out and everyone was dead.”
“Gerard’s team isn’t back yet,” says Mikey, because they can’t be out there on the field, they can’t be.
“How do you know?” asks Pete.
“Gee would have come found me,” says Mikey, “the moment he got back, he would have, he’d have wanted to tell me all about the fucking alien spores, I know it.” He doesn’t think about Gerard’s team coming back into a den of lizards, charging in to save him, going out guns blazing. He doesn’t. “They’re still out there.”
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Pete looks like he doesn’t believe him, but then he nods and says, “Fine, then, we’ll go find them. If we can get out of this fucking ship.”
“Repair hatch,” says Mikey, “come on.”
They make it to the hatch. Mikey would call it a miracle, if he hadn’t seen so many people die today. He didn’t believe in miracles before, and he sure as hell isn’t going to start believing after this.
The repair hatch is for in flight repairs, to be used all suited up in outer space - it’s not really built for easy access to the ground. They climb through, closing the airlock behind them - not that the lizards can follow them here, because fast as they are, Mikey doubts that they’ll make it up a ladder. They close the airlock anyway.
From on top of the ship they have a better view of the field. “Don’t look,” says Pete, after a minute. “Mikey, don’t,” and pulls him away. They slip and stumble across the smooth surface of the ship, down a few repair ladders, and Mikey gasps when his feet finally hit the mossy ground, because he had thought he would die in there.
Pete grabs his hand and they run. Mikey nearly stumbles over the body of an officer - Peters? Patterson? - but Pete pulls him past, yelling. Mikey can’t figure out what he’s yelling about, until he tears his eyes from the body and looks up to see a lizard coming towards them. This is no gorged, heat-sleepy monster, this thing is running like Mikey never imagined a lizard could run, charging at them on its giant legs. Mikey throws his wrench at it - before he’s even remembered that he’s holding a wrench - and amazingly hits it right on the nose, but it doesn’t even slow down. Next to him, Pete is yelling and tugging at his hand, but he can’t move, can’t stop staring at it.
Then the sharp staccato of gunfire breaks out; the lizard slows, wavers, turns. Mikey follows its new path with his eyes, and Saporta is standing there, on the edge of the jungle, gun raised. The lizard starts charging for him, but Saporta fires again, and finally the lizard stops.
“Good to see you, Way, Wentz,” says Saporta, though the strain around his mouth belies his cheery tone.
Behind him, Suarez pokes his head out of the bushes. “Gabe, we got a few more people off the field, one in pretty serious condition.”
“I’ve got two more for you,” says Saporta, and Suarez nods at them before disappearing.
“There’s people alive?” demands Pete, breathless. Mikey’s breath catches too, because after what they’d seen, he finds it hard to believe that anyone could possibly be left.
“Sure,” Saporta says, and although his voice is casual he looks like he understands.
“Stumph, have you seen him? Or Trohman?”
Saporta shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry. There… there wasn’t anyone else left on the ship?”
Mikey thinks that if there is still anyone on the ship, they aren’t getting out now, whatever heroic missions Saporta is envisioning. “Hammond and Lewis are gone,” says Pete, “and Johnson and Brewer and Peters, I think, I don’t know who else, there were too many. The med bay was totally overrun, and the bio labs.”
Saporta’s mouth tightens. “You happen to see any sign of the captain? Or Dr. Beckett?”
Mikey hasn’t seen the captain, and he barely recognizes the second name, but Pete is shaking his head in mute apology. Saporta jerks his shoulders back, points his thumb behind him. “Better get back,” he says, “we’re gathering up everyone still alive, heading to someplace safer.”
Pete nods and turns; Mikey’s about to follow, but then he pauses. He’s almost afraid to ask. “You heard from Bryar’s team?”
“No word,” and Mikey’s heart sinks, but Saporta’s not done. “I haven’t seen them back, but the radios are out - we think the lizards must have knocked up the transmitter. All the signs are that they’re still out exploring - no news is good news at this point, right?”
Mikey think that’s the stupidest aphorism he’s ever heard, but he doesn’t say anything, just turns and follows Pete into the trees.
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I love the feel of danger pressing in. The bodies and blood and Mikey all alone. And then Pete, and they're running and pretty much looking death in the face when they're saved.
But Gee and their team! They need to be safe!
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They are fine! They are having adventures of their own.
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I'm sort of wondering if the only thing I need to do to get you to keep writing more of it is to keep asking "and then?" You obviously have so much to write about this world. What I think should happen, actually, is that you should keep writing it, and possibly email me bits of it as you go, about when Pete and Patrick found each other again, or how Ryan finds a use for his theoretical degree (what is it?) or the time Tom climbed a tree to work out their position relative to the space ship, and then couldn’t get down again, or the funky non-lizard native fauna that get into their sleeping bags. Or something. I want this story to keep going kind of a lot.
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Ahahaha, you have me all figured out. I will stare at my computer for hours without writing anything, but all it takes is someone saying, "tell me about the time when..." and I'm off. Which is why I've been doing so much commentficcing lately.
If you give me your email I will totally send you stuff, though you should be warned, I will probably bombard you. (Though I'm not going to be able to write anymore until next week when my exams are over.)
That is exactly what happens with Tom. I had been wondering what to do with him!
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I enjoyed our conversation this morning so came to check out your journal, and you had this gem, so I had heart-eyes.
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There is more now!
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