Aliens

RIPLEY
(voice over)

Anything?

BEEP. Hudson's tracker lights up, a faint signal.

HUDSON

There's something.

He pans it around. Back down the corridor. It beep again, louder.

HUDSON

It's inside the complex.

VASQUEZ (V.O.)

You're just reading me.

HUDSON

No. No! It ain't you. They're inside. Inside the perimeter. They're in here.

RIPLEY

Hudson, stay cool. Vasquez?

ANGLE ON VASQUEZ

Swinging her tracker and rifle together. She aims it behind her. BEEP.

VASQUEZ

(cool)

Hudson may be right.

INT. OPERATIONS

Ripley and Hicks share a look... "here we go."

HICKS

(low)

It's game time.

RIPLEY

Get back here, both of you. Fall back to Operations.

INT. CORRIDOR

Hudson backtracks nervously, peering all around. He looks stretched to the limit.

HUDSON

This signal's weird... must be some interference or something. There's movement all over the place...

RIPLEY (V.O.)

Just get back here!

Hudson reaches the door to operations at a run, a moment before Vasquez. They pull the door shut and lock it.

INT. OPERATIONS

Hudson joins Ripley and Hicks, who are laying out their armament. Flamethrowers. Grenades. M-41A magazines. Hudson's tracker beeps. Then again. The tone continues through the SCENE, its rhythm increasing.

HUDSON

Movement! Signal's clean.

He pans the scanner. Stops. The range display reads out, counting down.

HUDSON

Range twenty meters.

RIPLEY

(to Vasquez)

Seal the door.

Vasquez picks up a hand-welder and moves to comply.

HUDSON

Seventeen meters.

HICKS

Let's get these things lit.

He hands one flamethrower to Ripley and begins priming the other himself. It lights with a muffled POP. Ripley's lights a moment later. Sparks shower around Vasquez as she begins welding the door. Hudson's tracker is beeping like mad now, as fast as their hearts.

RIPLEY

They learned. They cut the power and avoided the guns. They must have found another way in, something we missed.

HICKS

We didn't miss anything.

HUDSON

Fifteen meters.

RIPLEY

I don't know, an acid hole in a duct. Something under the floors, not on the plans. I don't know!

She picks up Vasquez' scanner and aims it the same direction as Hudson's.

HUDSON

Twelve meters. Man, this is a big fucking signal. Ten meters.

RIPLEY

They're right on us. Vasquez, how you doing?

Vasquez is heedlessly showering herself with molten metal as she welds the door shut. Working like a demon.

HUDSON

Nine meters. Eight.

RIPLEY

Can't be. That's inside the room!

HUDSON

It's readin' right. Look!

Ripley fiddles with her tracker, adjusting the tuning.

HICKS

Well you're not reading it right!

HUDSON

Six meters. Five. What the fu –

He looks at Ripley. It dawns on both of them at the same time. She feels a cold premonitory dread as she angles her tracker upward to the ceiling, almost overhead. The tone gets louder.

Hicks climbs onto a file cabinet and raises a panel of acoustic drop-ceiling. He shines his light inside.

HICKS' POV

A soul-wrenching nightmare image. Moving in the beam of light are aliens. Lots of aliens. They are crawling like bats, upside down, clinging to the pipes and beams of the structural ceiling, not touching the flimsy acoustic panels. They glisten hideously as they claw their way forward in silence. They cover the ceiling of the operations room. The inner sanctum is utterly violated.

ON HICKS

Blasted by fear.

Something moves... he snaps the light around. It's a meter behind him. IT LUNGES! He drops reflexively, the claws raking across his armor.

Hicks falls into the room just as the creatures detach en masse from the handholds. THE CEILING EXPLODES, raining debris. Nightmare shapes drop into the room. Newt screams. Hudson opens fire. Vasquez grabs Hicks, pulls him up, firing one handed with her flamethrower. Ripley scoops up Newt and staggers back. Gorman turns to fire and Burke bolts for the only remaining exit, the corridor connecting to the med lab. In the strobelike glare of the pulse-rifles we SEE flashes of aliens, moving forward in the smoke from the flamethrower fires. They move like nothing human... leaping quick as insects at times or gliding with powerful, balletic grace.

RIPLEY

Medical! Get to medical!

She dashes for the corridor.

INT. MED LAB CORRIDOR

DOLLYING BEHIND HER as she sprints, the walls becoming a frenzied blur. Ahead of her Burke clears the door to the med lab. HE SLIDES IT CLOSED. Ripley slams into the door. Tries the latch. Hears it LOCK from the far side.

RIPLEY

Burke! Open the door!

NEWT

Look!

Behind her an alien is moving down the corridor like a locomotive, a graceful skeleton shape as lethal and inhuman as you can imagine. Strobe flashes backlight the demented silhouette. Shaking, Ripley raises her rifle. She squeezes the trigger. NOTHING HAPPENS. The creature HISSES, baring its teeth as it advances. Ripley checks the SAFETY. The safety is off. The DIGITAL COUNTER. The magazine is full. Newt begins to wail. Ripley's hands, slick with sweat, are trembling so much she almost drops the rifle. Panic screams in her brain. The thing is almost on her, filling the corridor, when she remembers. She snaps the bolt back, chambering a round. Whips the stock to her shoulder. FIRES. FLASH-CRACK! A FLASHBULB GLIMPSE OF shrieking jaws as the silhouette is hurled back, screeching insanely.

Ripley is slammed against the door by the recoil, blinded by the flash and deafened by the concussion.

INT. OPERATIONS

Hicks looks up. Fires POINT-BLANK at a leaping silhouette. SCREEEECH! The fire-control system has tripped, with sprinklers spraying the room and a mindless SIREN wailing. Total pandemonium.

HUDSON

(hysterical)

Let's go! Let's go!

HICKS

Fuckin' A!

Hudson screams as floor panels lift under him, and clawed arms seize him lightning fast, dragging him down. Another skeletal shape leaps on him from above. He disappears into the subfloor crawlway. Hicks, Vasquez and Gorman make it to the med lab access corridor.

INT. CORRIDOR

Stunned, Ripley sees through dissipating smoke the creature rising to advance again. Flinching against blast and glare she drills it POINT-BLANK with a BLINDING BURST that carries the M-41A's muzzle right up toward the ceiling. Newt covers her ears against the CONCUSSION.

HICKS (O.S.)

Hold you fire!

The troopers seem to materialize out of the smoke.

RIPLEY

(indicating door)

Locked.

HICKS

Stand back.

Hicks snaps the torch off his belt and cuts into the lock. Inhuman shapes enter the far end of the corridor. Vasquez hands her flamethrower to Gorman and unslings her rifle. She starts loading 30mm grenades into the launcher, like oversize 12-guage shells.

GORMAN

You can't use those in here!

VASQUEZ

Right. Fire in the hole!

She pumps a round up and fires. The grenade EXPLODES and the blast almost knocks them down. Hicks  Hicks the door open, molten droplets flying.

HICKS

(shouting at Vasquez)

Thanks a lot! Now I can't hear shit.