Aliens at 04:38
I'm walking around the outside of a big university campus at night. Block after block, it resembles a desolate Communist Moscow, hard-edged and uninviting, lit in an eerie, cold, green-blue street-light in which flurries of snow are descending. I soon come to the main college building, which is a huge, grey, brutalist tower, with smaller concrete bunkers around. There are functional signs everywhere, which, as well as pointing to campus locations, also show distant cities. This is puzzling, especially as it says it is only 6 miles to Glasgow and 7 to Edinburgh - but I know I'm in London and these places are hundreds of miles away. Then I realise these signs don't show the actual distances to these places, but the distance to the motorway junction that will take you there. Useless.
There's an entrance at the bottom of the tower which ramps slightly downwards and disappears into a murk-enshrouded middle distance. It's desperately cold and my breath clouds in front of my face. As I descend the ramp into the entrance, the atmosphere becomes so chill and forbidding that I almost feel physically sick and can't go any further. So I decide to make it back to the halls where I think a party's going on.
At the entrance to the halls of residence, however, I see a lot of SWAT-type people with automatic rifles pulling up in assault vehicles. They seem to be getting ready for some sort of assault. I wonder if I'll be able to get back in the building, but there is no problem. By now, everyone is in the building's cinema, watching Aliens, so I go to join them. The SWAT crews start to section the building off, and people start to realise there is something wrong, and begin to filter out.
Then a squad of SWATs come in. They tell us there is no danger, and that we can carry on watching, but we should move back away from the screen. K and I move back to the rear of the auditorium. There's only a few other people left. They don't tell us why they're here or what's happening. The gunmen take position and aim at the entry doors.
Then I realise there's no point in staying in the cinema as the film's end credits are already rolling. We leave the auditorium.
Outside in the corridors, people are milling around in a state of confusion, being shepherded to safety by more soldiers. K and I go down a side corridor and into a men's loo. Inside, there is a group of people hiding, who have found out what is going on. The building has been infiltrated by a xenomorph; a group of alien creatures. The troops are in here to try and kill them before they "inseminate" us.
We say, 'oh', and are about to leave when a huge brown form appears behind the frosted glass of the toilet door. One of the aliens is in the corridor outside, yapping and barking (?) savagely. Quickly, I bolt the doors. We can't see it clearly because the glass is frosted, but it appears to be a large St.Bernard. It starts to hurl itself against the door. We retreat behind another pair of doors and wait, terrified.
After a time, we hear shouts in the corridor. "There it is!" "Quick, fire! Fire!" A volley of shots follows, and the creature lets out a horrible roar then lies still. We emerge from the toilet. At the door is a small boxer dog, covered in blood. It's quite dead.
"They can change their shape", says the SWAT trooper in charge. "We got another one back at the cinema. There's one left, but he's the dangerous one, the leader. He could have changed shape into any one of us. Could be you. Could be me." He smiles grimly. I feel that he would quite like it if it were me.
K and I decide we've had enough of this and leave. A bunch of troopers and the captain come with us. As we're walking down the corridor to the entrance, we get this intense feeling of being watched, followed. I look up.
The alien leader is on a gantry above us, vaguely humanoid, but mottled orange, green, covered in octopus-like suckers, staring at us with burning eyes. "Their real shape," I mouth to K, who nods, eyes wide with fear. Reflexively, the troops fire. The alien writhes in the hail of bullets, then drops in a pool of orange blood, breathing shallowly. He looks at me, dying. Above, there is a strange shriek. We look up. The alien's mate, similar, but more slender and blood-red in colour, is looking down in horror, its hands up by the sides of its head, like Munch's The Scream.
"Looks like we missed one," says the captain, raising his automatic.
"Don't-" I begin to say.
But they fire. The alien falls to join her mate. Both are quickly dispatched with bullets to the head.
K and I walk out, feeling sickened, and drive off.
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