Chapter 6 : The Awakening
The approach to Allen's gurney felt different from the others. Each step seemed to require conscious effort, as if the very air around the isolated corpse had thickened into something hostile. Carl's medical bag felt heavier in his hand, and the familiar weight of his instruments provided little comfort.
The smell hit him first—not the typical odor of decomposition he'd grown accustomed to over decades of practice, but something else entirely.
Something organic but wrong, like meat that had spoiled in an unnatural way. It made his stomach clench, though whether from the smell itself or some deeper, instinctive revulsion, he couldn't say.
Carl pulled back the sheet covering Joe Allen's remains and immediately understood why his deputies had refused to handle the body. The corpse was grotesquely swollen, the flesh mottled with patches of green and black.
But it was the face that was most disturbing—the features were slack and lifeless, yet there was something in the positioning, the slight upturn of the lips, that suggested satisfaction. As if the thing had died pleased with its work.
"God almighty," Carl whispered, pulling his handkerchief to his nose.
He circled the gurney slowly, making his initial external observations. The blast damage was extensive—massive trauma to the torso and extremities consistent with being at the center of an explosion. But underneath the obvious injuries were other signs, subtler anomalies that made Carl's trained eye pause.
The skin around Allen's mouth was stained a dark reddish-brown, and his lips were parted slightly to reveal teeth discolored with the same substance. Carl had seen enough violent deaths to recognize dried blood when he saw it.
"Preliminary external examination of suspect Joe Allen," he said into his recorder, his voice steady despite his unease. "Massive blast trauma consistent with proximity to explosive device. However, evidence of ante-mortem blood consumption..."
As Carl leaned closer to examine the staining around the mouth, he caught movement in his peripheral vision. Just a twitch, barely perceptible, but in forty years of working with the dead, he'd learned to trust his observations.
He stepped back, watching the corpse carefully. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then he saw it again—a subtle rise and fall of the chest, so slight it could have been his imagination.
"That's impossible," he breathed.
The dead didn't breathe. The dead didn't move. But as Carl watched, frozen between skepticism and fear, Allen's chest continued its shallow, rhythmic motion.
The eyes opened.
Not the gradual flutter of someone waking from sleep, but an instant transition from death to awareness. One moment the corpse lay still with closed lids, the next those pale, bloodshot eyes were staring directly at Carl with an intelligence that was unmistakably alive.
Carl stumbled backward, knocking over a tray of instruments. The metallic clatter sounded through the makeshift morgue as scalpels and forceps scattered across the floor.
Allen's head turned to follow the sound, the movement accompanied by a wet, grinding noise from the damaged vertebrae. When he spoke, his voice was a rasping whisper that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than his throat.
"Help me."
The two words hung in the air between them with a thick presence. Carl's rational mind insisted that what he was seeing was impossible. But the evidence of his senses was undeniable.
"What are you?" Carl managed to ask, his voice barely audible.
Allen's lips curved into what might have been a smile, revealing teeth stained with dried blood. "I'm a traveler. But not of Earth."
The casual admission hit Carl like a blow. After decades of dealing with the various modes of human death—heart attacks, car accidents, the occasional murder—he was completely unprepared for something that claimed to be an Alien.
"I don't..." Carl began, then stopped. What was there to say? How did one respond to the impossible?
"My true form is small," Allen continued, his voice slowly gaining strength. "My shape... hideous to you. I feared death. The cave-in."
Carl found his scientific training reasserting itself, even in the face of the extraordinary. If this thing was truly alien, if it had somehow survived what should have been fatal injuries, then there had to be an explanation. Biology, even alien biology, followed rules.
"Death was your escape," Carl said, the pieces clicking into place. "Maybe you don't need oxygen. A lesser component of our metabolism."
Allen's damaged head nodded slightly.
"Was the sphere..."
"My ship?" Allen finished. "Its destruction is our first duty facing discovery. There was no chance to re-enter. Leaving this takes too long. So in the shaft was my only chance."
The sphere in Allen's boarding house room, the one that had glowed with that sickly green light. It hadn't been a weapon or a tool—it had been transportation. A vessel that had carried this thing across the cosmos to Earth.
"Why must your ship be destroyed?" Carl asked, though part of him already suspected the answer.
"We must not be understood."
"Why not?"
Allen's eyes fixed on Carl like a predator.
When he spoke again, his voice carried a note of command that seemed to bypass conscious thought and speak directly to Carl's nervous system.
"Put down the knife."
Carl looked down, surprised to find that he had unconsciously picked up a scalpel from his instrument tray. His hand was gripping it so tightly that his knuckles had gone white.
"Do it now. For we are friends, Doctor."
The compulsion in Allen's voice was almost overwhelming, a psychic weight that pressed against Carl's will. But his forty years of experience with death had given him a certain immunity to intimidation, even supernatural intimidation.
"Livestock must not understand what devours it?" Carl said, fighting off the mental pressure.
Allen's expression shifted, the facade of helplessness falling away to reveal something calculating and hungry. "Oh, fret not. You will understand what devours you. That is essential."
The thing wearing Allen's face took a deep, appreciative breath, and when it spoke again, there was unmistakable pleasure in its voice.
"I can smell your cancer, Doctor. It is delicious."
Carl's blood turned cold. The diagnosis he'd received just months ago, the secret he'd shared with no one except his physician. How could this thing possibly know?
"Come, let me rid you of it," Allen continued, his voice taking on an obscenely intimate quality. "I will love you."
The words were accompanied by a sound that would haunt Carl's nightmares—if he lived long enough to have them. A sort of wet, organic noise that suggested movement under Allen's skin, as if something were stirring in the depths of his chest cavity.
Carl gripped the scalpel more tightly,tThis was no longer a routine autopsy or even an unusual case. This was a confrontation with something that viewed humanity as food, and him specifically as a particularly appetizing meal.
"That body will be your coffin," Carl said, his voice steadier than he felt. "I'll see you buried in it."
Allen's laughter was like the sound of wet leaves rustling in a graveyard. "Oh, Doctor. You still don't understand, do you? This body is just transportation. Just as yours will be."
As if to demonstrate, Allen began to sit up on the gurney—which was impossible given the extent of his injuries.
The compulsion in the creature's voice intensified, and Carl felt his consciousness beginning to slip away, as if he were sinking into dark water. The last thing he saw was Allen's ruined face smiling with satisfaction as the makeshift morgue dissolved into blackness.