Xenophilia -- Melissa -- Part 1
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This is part of a project to touch up and publish an older series of works I had done in the past, placing them on Literotica. There are quite a few parts, so they will seem repetitive as more are updated, and since they are not being completely revised, they will show their age. There will also be some questionable content, and due to said age, may be presented in the most palatable manner, as much as I may have believed I did those years ago. Please keep this in mind.
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Melissa pounded down the grated floor, panting as she pushed herself harder than she'd ever done. In hindsight, taking a turn into this maintenance tunnel might have been a bad idea, but she couldn't stop. If she did, those...
things
, they would've caught her for sure.
Steam hissed above her, a pressure valve releasing some pent-up exhaust. The pipes that lined the walls, ceiling and ran beneath the grating that served as the floor all for the plumbing and heating, along with various conduits for power transfer, as well as liquid coolant to keep some of the machines in Victor's Post -- like the terraforming facility -- from melting down.
But none of that mattered now. Over several weeks, people had been going missing, one by one, then several by several, until they were just disappearing by the dozens, and then... whatever was taking them decided they didn't need to be so discrete, and though they maintained their stealthy approach, they didn't care so much about snatching people in broad daylight, with numerous witnesses. So everything went to chaos.
People were scattered, picked off rapidly, dragged away to god knows where, kicking and screaming, and then silenced. People tried to band together, what few were left, others lost their minds and lashed out at anyone in paranoia and fear. But that didn't stop the creatures. They were everywhere, and worse, they could hide
anywhere
. The only thing one could do was keep moving. If you stopped, tried to barricade yourself in somewhere, and hold out, they'd get you. They'd find a way in, and they'd get you. If you stayed mobile, and vigilant... well, maybe they wouldn't get you.
But there was nowhere else to go on this rock. The planet had no other facility for hundreds of miles beyond distant, isolated monitoring stations that were automated, only ever occupied by scheduled maintenance staff that hardly stayed there for long. No place was truly safe, so in Melissa's mind, the only option was to keep moving around, until the next scheduled supply ship came... and then she would make a run for it, and plead with the crew of said ship to leave, leave and not come back.
She grimaced, feeling a pang of guilt wash over her; she knew it was selfish, wrong, to leave any of the other survivors behind, but what choice did she have? If they didn't get to the ship, waiting would mean the end of everyone, the creatures would surely overrun it within moments. They were swift, and agile like that, able to appear when you least expect them. And even then, you didn't get a good look at them; Melissa had only seen vague, black humanoid shapes, tall and gangly with elongated heads and very long tails. She'd seen them use their tails to snatch people, wrapping the prehensile, chitinous appendages around their victims and hauling them into the shadows, power outages they no doubt caused giving them more darkness to hide within.
Melissa then skidded to a stop, almost toppling forwards; in front of her, one of the grating panels looked like it had been melted through, and below it, a vertical maintenance shaft. There were several tunnels like them branching off these maintenance passages, the tubes that ran beneath the floor often dropping down into these shafts to belowground structures usually meant to regulate the conduit and piping system. Normally, workers would remove the panels to get at leaking pipes or access these vertical shafts... but Melissa knew no human had melted the grating in front of her.
She considered turning back, but quashed that idea; those things were likely hunting for her, and going back was a death sentence for certain, there being no other branching path the way she came besides the vertical shafts, and they led nowhere safe. She whimpered in frustration, before calming herself.
'
It's okay, it's okay Melissa. You can do this',
she assured herself. '
Just keep moving, that's it, keep running.'
Part of her wanted to stop, to rest, but she couldn't. That was when they caught you. She
had
to keep moving.
Melissa steeled herself, and after a short shiver of her body, feeling light and shaky from fatigue, she took her marks, and made a short running leap over the melted hole.
The moment both her feet landed on the opposite side, a dark hand shot up from the shaft below, grasping bony fingers around her ankle. Melissa shrieked and fell forward, managing to cushion her fall with her hands, no doubt putting horizontal marks on her palms from the grating. She twisted around, the creature's hand fortunately twisting with her, but not easing its grip. Melissa began to scream, and saw the creature's elongated head rise up from the hole. She struggled and squirmed, and began to kick at the thing's skull with her other foot, her boot glancing off the domelike top that stretched the length of its cranium, until one managed to smack square against the top of its face.
It growled and hissed in pain, and its grip on her ankle weakened.
"Let me go!" Melissa screamed, kicking again and this time aiming for its hand, forcing it to let go. She managed to free herself, and began kicking against the grating, pushing herself away frantically. She scrabbled at the floor, trying to find purchase to stand up and start running.
'
Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop, don't stop,'
she chanted in her head, those two words her only fuel right now.
The grating clanged and shivered from her footfalls, but it was the sound of claws scraping against metal that Melissa dreaded, the creature already pulling itself out of the shaft. She could hear it following; in this space, it had nowhere to branch off to for an ambush, but that also meant Melissa could only go one direction. All it needed was to be faster.
She reached into one of her coveralls' deep pockets, and produced a heavy pipe wrench, her only weapon. She would've preferred a revolver, or one of those pulse rifles the local security uses -- even though she'd never fired a gun in her life -- to a glorified plumbing tool, but it was long and heavy, and she really didn't have much else to work with right now. She didn't dare turn around, not even to see how close it was, not wishing to do anything that might slow her down.
Up ahead, she saw an open door, and beyond it a wall illuminated by a light lined with tool-filled shelves, the tell-tale sign that ahead was a maintenance shed. She felt some hope bubble up within her, a way to put some distance between the creature and herself, and buy her some time. She poured on the effort, her muscles beginning to burn. She swore she could feel heated breath against the nape of her neck, but she could only focus on the door. With one last burst of energy, she leapt through the threshold, and immediately tried to slam the door. Melissa saw a black hand briefly pop past the frame, but recoil right before the door closed, as though it didn't want to have the heavy hatch slam closed on its wrist.