This short section is from a book that I started in late '95. Unfortunately, the book has long been lost, but the following I had even over the unfinished product was astounding...
Just to set things up a bit, this section was from a part earlier on in the book. A crew of several people had landed on a planet for the purpose of surveying the land for possibilities of future populization. Unfortunately, they realized that this planet had previously been inhabited, also by humans, by a small facility, stumbled upon while running away from strange creatures that have already killed off more than half of their original crew. Separated from the ship, they decide that the facility would be safer to stay in for the night before heading back to the ship in the morning. The following occurs during their exploration of the building, and the discovery of a room containing decomposed human bodies.
Kawalski realized why the bodies had not been sucked up into the ventilation--there was none except for a small register, no bigger than two of his feet held together. The register was bolted into the floor making it impossible for anything to get in. Anderson and Davvins joined the two. "I guess they were pretty much safe in here," Anderson said as she studied the tightly fused room. Burke, her breath now regained, pushed Davvins out of the way.
"I'm going for a shower. I suggest the rest of you guys do too. You all stink like pigs," she snickered.
"You smelt it..." Davvins called after her. "You know,she does have a good point. A shower would feel good right about now. You should definitely get cleaned up too," he nodded at Anderson. "I found some stuff to clean your cuts with. There's clean clothes too." He and Kawalski started back to their new headquarters, while Anderson bolted the door shut again.
Burke reclined in a chair, hair dripping and wearing nothing but a towel. Her body, now scrubbed clean, glistened white and smelt of the fresh floral soap she'd used to clean herself of the red-brown dust from the surface of the forsaken planet. Anderson soon joined her, and Davvins cleaned out her wounds of leftover dirt and blood. Kawalski finished off his chocolate bar and washed it down with muddy, lukewarm coffee.
"So, what're we going to do now?" Burke asked with a hint of impatience. Nobody answered her right away, each pondering their position.
"I suppose if we went back to the ship, perhaps the radio still works." Kawalski muttered past his coffee cup.
"What, are you nuts?" Burke piped up from her chair.
"Look, the radio is here is broken, quite obviously. I can't see that there's any place else around here to call from. Now I say we spend the night here, see what we can find in this place that might be helpful, get back to the ship and call for help. I doubt the captain even had time to send out the S.O.S"
"But what about those things?" Davvins paused from cleaning a cut on Anderson's arm.
"Well we know they can't climb, so I guess we can stay to the rocks. The smaller ones are a bit easier to take care of than the adults."
Anderson interrupted. "Wait a minute. It's quite obvious there's nobody human left around here but us. This facility would hold several dozen people. So why were only six people left? Surely these colonists weren't stupid enough to let a few dozen people get killed before they figured out these things were dangerous."
Burke joined in. "Maybe they all got picked up by a rescue ship."
"Then where did they radio from, and why didn't those other six leave with them?" Davvins continued cleaning Anderson's cuts.....
As I said, this section is from the start of the book. As it continues, they realize that the facility was built and inhabited sometime during the VERY early 2000's. Meaning as you read this, the past events in this book were taking place. The remaining crew goes through a fantastic adventure including going back to the ship, and losing another crew member when it crashes, and waiting in cryo-sleep for an Earth Military Organization to come rescue them. And even then, when the military comes for them, the story begins to unfold as to why these strange creatures are here. Not to spoil the story, but the few survivors of a sabotaged attempt to catch the creatures, whom I have dubbed as I.E.H.A.'s (pronounced e-haw) reveal why humans were experimenting with the creatures in the first place and explain that a severe biological reaction in the ieha's DNA made it impossible to contain their savage instincts. When the facility was terminated by the creatures, the leader of the project destroyed all evidence, including the location of the planet. While the military used their forces to try to find out the location, in hopes of using the creatures as biological weapons, the leader died, taking all the information with him. Nevertheless, the group manages to get off of the planet, but now they realize that one of them is infested with an alien...
