Dallas Howard was a Gunnison, Colorado native and ex-convict played by Steven Pasquale in Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Released after three years in prison, he came home in October 2004 on the same day a crashed Yautja scout ship loosed Xenomorphs on the town, and he spent the night protecting his younger brother Ricky. He sided with Kelly O'Brien on the hospital escape, took the plasma pistol lost by the cleaner Wolf, and survived the nuclear strike as one of only four known survivors of Gunnison.
Biography
Previous Life
Dallas grew up in Gunnison, where he and a young Eddie Morales got into trouble together often enough that both men still joked about it years later. Morales went on to become the town sheriff, while Dallas drifted further into crime and was eventually sent to prison for three years. The film never states his offence outright; a later jab about breaking and entering hints at it, and the charge is generally given as burglary.
Those years away kept him apart from his younger brother Ricky and from the household they had shared. In his absence Ricky slid into his own trouble around town, and Morales later admitted he had been seeing the teenager far too often. Dallas came home with no job, a record that followed him everywhere, and a brother who had grown up largely without him.
Return To Gunnison
Sheriff Morales met Dallas at the town line and gave him a ride in his cruiser, the two old friends falling back into easy banter about the times they had shared the back seat. When Morales asked whether he regretted what he had done, Dallas said he did not, though the sheriff thought three years was a long time. Morales admitted he was still struggling to convince people he belonged in the job, but promised to ask around town for work on his behalf.
Dallas asked after Ricky, who was by then a high-school student delivering for Pizza One. That evening Ricky came home beaten and furious, and he snatched up a baseball bat to go after the boys responsible. Dallas forced the bat out of his hands and got the story out of him: Dale Collins and his friends had jumped him over Jesse Salinger and thrown his car keys into the sewer.
Keys And The Sewer
Rather than let Ricky walk back into another fight, Dallas offered to help him recover the keys. The brothers went down into the storm drains beneath the town, trading insults about who would dig through the filth while Dallas pressed Ricky about the girl he had been beaten over. The tunnels reeked of something dead, a sign of the infestation already growing among the vagrants and hunters taken below the town.
They found the keys in the drain, but a noise in the dark rattled them both. Dallas tried to pass it off as a rat, yet movement on the far side of the channel, later understood as a newborn Chestburster, and a hiss from the end of the tunnel sent the brothers hurrying back to the surface. It was their first brush with the creatures that would overrun Gunnison within a day.
Ride-Along
The next morning Dallas was looking for honest work, fielding dry remarks about which of his skills an employer might value. Morales, meanwhile, had found the skinned body of his deputy Ray Adams in the woods and was struggling with a case that made no sense. When a report came in of a small gas explosion in the sewer under 16th Street, Dallas offered to help and talked his way into riding along with the sheriff.
By nightfall the emergency had spread far beyond the sewers. An explosion at the nuclear power plant forced Morales to call for a town evacuation and for the National Guard from Colorado Springs. Then Ricky and Jesse burst into the police station after an attack at the school pool, and Dallas, Morales, and the teenagers learned that the station itself was no longer safe.
The Gun Store
With the power out and people dying across town, Dallas told Morales the survivors needed guns and could not wait for the Guard. The group, now including Darcy Benson, raided a sporting-goods store, where Dallas armed himself with a shotgun and crossed paths with Kelly O'Brien, her daughter Molly, and other refugees. Xenomorphs and the cleaner later named Wolf struck the store, and Dallas saw the Predator for himself as it killed the creatures around them.
Morales raised the arriving Colorado National Guard unit by radio, and the survivors listened as the soldiers walked into an ambush on Main Street and were wiped out. The fight at the store also cost the group Dale, whose face was burned away by acid. Whatever help Gunnison had been promised was gone, and the survivors would have to make their own way out.
The Stryker And The Choice
At the abandoned Guard position the survivors took weapons and a Stryker armored vehicle. Morales reached Colonel Stevens by radio, who promised an airlift from Gilliam Circle in the center of town. Kelly, a soldier home from deployment, argued that the army was thinking about containment and that the airlift was a trap; she proposed the helicopter on the hospital roof instead.
Dallas sided with Kelly, reasoning that anything that kept them alive meant leaving town rather than driving into its heart. Ricky, Jesse, Kelly, Molly, and Pizza One manager Drew went with him, while Morales led Darcy and the others toward the circle; the old friends parted hoping they were both wrong. Dallas drove the Stryker toward the hospital, trading a parting jab with Ricky about not crashing it.
The Hospital
Before going in, Dallas made clear that Kelly was the one person who could not be lost, since she was the only one able to fly the helicopter. The hospital had become a Xenomorph hive, and the corridors filled with creatures and with Wolf fighting through them. A shuriken meant for a Xenomorph killed Jesse, Drew died in the hive, and the Predalien drove its tail through Ricky's shoulder.
When a Warrior tackled Wolf down an elevator shaft, the Predator's plasma pistol was left behind, and Dallas took it as his own. He got Ricky back on his feet and pushed the group toward the roof. When Xenomorphs cut them off on the way up, Dallas used the pistol to blast a hole through a wall and opened a path to the helicopter.
The Rooftop
On the roof Dallas ordered the others to the chopper and stayed behind to buy them time, refusing Ricky's protest that he did not have to do it. Firing the plasma pistol, he killed several Xenomorphs and was nearly overwhelmed as Kelly started the helicopter. Kelly insisted they would not leave without him even as the others urged her to go. As the helicopter prepared to lift off, Wolf reached Dallas and tried to reclaim the weapon. The Predalien attacked the Yautja before he could, and the duel between the two let Dallas break away and climb aboard. Kelly flew clear just as an F-22 dropped the nuclear weapon that erased Gunnison and everything left in it.
Final Fate
The shockwave threw the helicopter down into a forest clearing, but all four aboard survived the crash. Camouflaged troops surrounded the wreck and ordered them to drop their weapons; Dallas accused the soldiers of killing the entire town, and they answered that they were only following orders. He surrendered the plasma pistol in exchange for a medic for Ricky.
As the troops secured the site, Ricky reminded Dallas of his warning about crashing, closing the night on the same brotherly needling with which it had begun. Dallas, Ricky, Kelly, and Molly were the only four people known to have escaped Gunnison, and Dallas was alive as of that October 2004 morning in army custody. The pistol he handed over was later delivered to Miss Yutani.
Personality And Traits
Dallas was blunt, unrepentant about his past, and quick with a sardonic line, yet he came home with no illusions about how the town saw him. His first instinct with Ricky was to stop a revenge beating rather than join it, and that protectiveness shaped every choice he made through the outbreak. Under pressure he thought clearly enough to become the unofficial leader of the hospital group. He was willing to break with his oldest friend when Kelly's reasoning made more sense, and he volunteered to stay behind on the roof so the others could reach the helicopter.
Weapons And Equipment
At the sporting-goods store Dallas armed himself with a pump-action shotgun resembling a Winchester Model 1200. In the hospital he carried an M4A1 carbine taken from the Guard position. His most notable weapon was the plasma pistol Wolf lost in the elevator shaft. Dallas used it to blast through a wall, to hold the roof against the Xenomorphs, and to cover the crash site until he gave it up to the special forces team in return for medical help.
Behind The Scenes
Steven Pasquale played Dallas opposite Johnny Lewis as Ricky, under directors Colin and Greg Strause from a screenplay by Shane Salerno. John Ortiz played Eddie Morales, Reiko Aylesworth played Kelly, and Ariel Gade played Molly.
Dallas's first name is widely read as a nod to Captain Dallas of the Nostromo from Alien. His order to get to the chopper on the hospital roof echoes Dutch's famous line from Predator. Unused material reportedly had Dallas serve his sentence for a crime Ricky committed, which would have deepened the brothers' bond, but the finished film leaves the offence unspecified.
Famous Quotes
- "Yeah, I usually ride in the back."
- "Give me the fuckin' bat."
- "Relax. It's just a rat."
- "I'm considering whatever keeps us alive."
- "Get to the chopper!"
- "You bastards killed the entire town."
- "We need a medic for my brother."
Conclusion
Dallas Howard came home to Gunnison an ex-convict with no job and a brother he barely knew, and he left it as one of four people to survive its destruction. He pulled Ricky out of a fight, followed Kelly's judgment over his oldest friend's, turned a Predator weapon against the hive, and bought the helicopter its last minutes. The film leaves him alive in army custody, a reluctant leader whose loyalty to his family outlasted the town itself.
Appearances
- Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
Tag Categories: Avp Lore | Alien Universe Characters | Predator Universe Characters | Predator Hunt Survivors | Xenomorph Encounter Survivors
