Impregnated - A Sam Dunn FanFic

Ugh, my head.
It felt like an army of jackjumper ants were having a who's-got-the-biggest-fangs contest inside my skull and a pair had snuck into the backs of my eye sockets. Those two were winning. I clenched my teeth against the pain and reflexively tried to move my hands to hold the aching brainpan. When they didn't respond, I tried opening my eyes. That didn't work either, it was as if they were glued shut. I was pretty freaked out. I tried moving my hands again, and got some slight movement, but not much. I tried flexing my fingers – that worked, the digits clenched and unclenched sluggishly, as if something had stuck to them and dried. Blood, probably. So I could work my hands, it wasn't a lack of them or dead nerves – my arms were just stuck fast. That meant I was either restrained, or...nope, restrained was about the only explanation I could come up with. I used my tongue, which felt swollen and dry, to lick my lips and tasted something strange. It was like some kind of glue or clay, but strange. My body immediately rejected it, and I tried to spit the taste out. The spittle trailed swiftly down my chin. So I was vertical, then. Upright. Every clue told me more about my situation, so I started to try to find more. I fought through the pain and tried to figure out where the hell I was. It smelled like acid and rotting flesh, and it was far too warm to be confortable. Fear seemed to hang around me like an old sniper's cloak, and I couldn't shrug it off. I couldn't hear anything, the place was as silent as the grave, bar the endless soft patter of rainfall that I had become so accustomed to over the past week.

Rainfall...that forced my mind back. In the cockpit of the dropship, I remember looking at the co-pilots seat a little bit behind me, and to my right. Jarred had been attacked, some spider-like monster was latched right on his face and it looked like it was going to stay there for quite some time. He was strapped into the co-pilots seat, trying to scrape at the creature with his fingernails as it tried to choke him with its tail. A muffled scream touched my ears as Jarred cried in rage, trying to claw at the creature. It didn't do any good, the bastard was stuck fast. I wanted to go over there and rip the creature the fuck off of him, but I had to concentrate on keeping the dropship in the air, my hands firmly gripping the steering yoke as I glanced out the cockpit window and narrowly avoided a rocky outcrop with a sudden turn to the left. Then I had to avoid a second outcrop on the right. Eventually, I got the ship back under control and set it onto VTOL. It would stay where it was for now, I had to help Jarred. I was fumbling with the restraints keeping me in my seat when a second critter leaped out from the cockpit door right for my face.

I remember its sickly yellow skin and its fleshy underside as clear as I remember drawing my Python and ducking my head down and to the right, the hell out of the way. The little bastard sailed over my head and landed on the dashboard with a wet thump. It paused for a moment, perhaps stunned that it had missed its target. Turning back towards me, it coiled up its legs and tail to leap again. I didn't give it another chance – I put a .357 round straight through it. The heavy revolver bucked in my hand as it discharged its high-velocity round right into the creature's midsection and ploughed on through the flight controls. Oh. Shit. I remember that sickening ozone smell as its blood hit the flight controls. It melted straight through them. Through glass, plastic, wiring, metal mesh, everything in its way. I barely got my legs out of the way before it could burn through those too, and eventually clean through the dropship hull. I still have no idea how I didn't get any of it on me. Not that it helped any, without the flight controls the dropship was fucked like a billionare at a brothel. The crash and immediate aftermath was all a blur, but I somehow survived with a emergency survival backpack and my Python. I remember thinking that I'd failed the boys on the ground – there was no way they were getting back to the Gallipoli without the dropship that I'd just crashed.

All through the time, there had been that rain. That horrible rain. After I broke the bugger that got Jarred's spine and legs, he decided to get the hell out of the dropship – and ran out into the rain. I still remember that stench of burning flesh and his screams as the rain ate right through him. It was the third most horrible death I have ever seen. The rain just ate holes through him. The first one burned straight through his shoulder and all the way through his arm, before exiting through his wrist. The second one took his left ear. The third one took his nose. I hope he didn't live long. The rain disected him piece by piece. I couldn't take my eyes off the spectacle the whole time. In mere seconds, my best friend was reduced to a pile of melted goo. The third worst death I have ever seen in half a decade of war. The next...that one was even more heartbreaking.

Eventually I forced mind back to the presend, then my eyelids open and looked around me. There was a faint resemblance to a colony – looked like the interior of an Atmosphere Processing plant. I could see the large letters that told me I was on a floor marked B2, or Sub-basement 2. Down in the real grit of it then, right in the generator itself. Maybe even in the cooling plant. Yes, that'd explain the heat – the coolant would drive the heat outside the pipes into the room. Damn, I was sweating up a storm. There was something horribly wrong with it, though. The walls were slick, black and looked oddly organic, like they had been hand-moulded from clay instead of fabricated from metal in some factory. But from no design I could ever recognize, except from camera feeds taken from Bushranger squad just before they'd all gone MIA. This was no human construction. I kept looking, and started to notice shapes in the walls as my vision cleared. Coccooned into the walls were...people. Most of them wore the overalls of colonists, some had the tank top and jeans of a convict. Some of them were in the signature jellybean camouflage of Australian Marines. Oh god, there were Diggers cocooned in those walls. I immediately recognized Sergeant Jacko, our Section Sergeant. Jacko the Wacko. The pale skin and the playing cards painted on his armour were the only indication – one of those spider-things was attached to his face.

“S...Sarge?†I called out softly, knowing I was in enemy territory. He raised his head in my direction, then the creature on his face wrapped its segmented tail around his throat. He seemed to struggle, but after a few moments he went limp. The bloody drongo had choked him into submission. Next to him was Lance-Corporal Hughsey, from Bushranger. He was dead. His face twisted in an expression of agony that I remembered clearly on Jarred's face. There was a gaping hole where his chest should have been. One of those spider things was on its back at his feet. They were stuck into the walls by the same gluey-stuff that made up the walls. Resin, maybe? Some kind of substance like the stuff bees used in their hives, I guessed. So...the spider things eventually died...then you did? Okay man, think. What is the enemy's objective? Capture everyone in their way. That much was clear from the sheer multitude of coccoons...and eggs. So...so the eggs had something to do with it. Maybe the eggs hatched out those spider things, and the spider things got on your face...then something happened that I didnt know, and they died. Then, your chest exploded or your chest exploded and then they died. I wasn't sure.

I tried moving my head downwards and encountered resistance. That explained why I couldn't move, I was coccooned in too. I forced it, and a snap of something breaking could be heard as I looked down. Sure enough, on the floor was a dead spider. How long did I have left? Days? Unlikely, Hughsey looked like he'd been gone a while. Hours, then? Minutes? I tell ya, it's hard coping with the realization that you are dead, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I sighed to myself, and started to count away the seconds till the end of my life.