The Thing: Zero Day

by Lee McGeorge

“Hans dragged Pederson away,” Oyvind gasped. “I searched for him. I could hear him screaming, but I couldn’t find him. It’s a near white out.” Oyvind leaned back against the wall, his chest heaving under the exertion of fighting a snow blizzard. He rammed his elbows against the wall. “I can’t lose another friend to the snow,” he said, imploring to the gods with his emotions.

  “Oyvind,” Strand said slowly but firmly. Oyvind’s eyes moved to the commander. “We are in a survival situation. Focus on what is necessary… Did you move the tractor?”

  Oyvind nodded, “It’s outside, but we’re going to need fuel drums lashing to a sled. At least six, but I would like ten for security.”

  “Alright, we need fuel. We get that and we roll out of here,” Strand said. He paused for a moment with his mouth in a grimace, struggling with something. “I need to tell you about what happened to Norstad and I… When we turned on the power, we were attacked by Moller.”

  “Attacked?” MacCloud said with a gasp.

  “Hans attacked Pederson,” Oyvind reiterated. “They’ve gone crazy in there.”

  “No, this is worse… You need to hear what happened next.”

  ----- X -----

  Strand explained briefly the story of Moller. He spoke in facts. What he saw. What he and Norstad did in response. Although he pared the story down to its essentials he spared nothing, nor left out any horror, from shooting and impaling their friend, to setting him on fire, to what he became.

  “Whatever that thing in the ice is, it’s done something horrific to those men, something alien that we cannot understand. We cannot trust them and we will not stop to reason with them or help them should they ask. The six of us will go to McMurdo Sound in the tractor and raise the alarm. From there, a prepared rescue can be put in place. Our friends here will be alone for no more than one week and they have every chance of survival.”

  Oyvind hugged the rifle to his chest and stared at the ceiling. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  MacCloud and Kleppa had three boxes of provisions. Strand looked over them. They seemed to have a good spread. They’d even remembered to include toilet paper. “Is this everything we need?” he asked. MacCloud nodded. “Alright. Load this into the tractor then you guys go with Oyvind to build a fuel tow. Leave the tractor here, I don’t want the sound of the engine to bring them until we’re ready to go. Build the fuel tow then come back. Norstad and I will try the radio again. If we can’t get it working in five minutes we’ll come and help with the fuel.”

  ----- X -----

  Oyvind opened the door to less wind but a thick Arctic mist. The snow was still falling and the visibility was cut even lower, but the wind had died and the howling weather had been replaced by a serene silence.

  The men stepped outside. Strand hugged the shortwave set to his chest. “Alright, you guys go for the fuel, we’ll be with you as soon as we know this works or not.”

  The teams separated and slowly vanished into the mist. The view in every direction was what life must be like when viewed through Tupperware. Oyvind searched side to side. “Keep me in your sight, you two,” he said. It took a minute but eventually he spotted the green flag tied to a post. A guide rope to the fuel dump. Like the explosives, fuel was kept at least a hundred meters from camp, the drums stacked in pyramids of six barrels not less than twenty meters apart. The rule was, when one was required it was taken from the back, but the furthest fuel was over three hundred meters away. Today they would take the closest.

  Oyvind looked behind to ensure Kleppa and MacCloud were still with him. They were, gripping the guide rope and fighting to raise their knees against the fresh snowfall. Oyvind looked to Kleppa who turned and looked to MacCloud. MacCloud, seeing the others look back instinctively turned his head also and caught sight of a fourth man in the mist.

  “Hey, who is that?” the cook called out.

  Oyvind turned again and also saw a figure moving through the mist. They were barely visible but another man was following them. Oyvind raised the rifle and stood his ground, beckoning MacCloud and Kleppa past so he could take the rear.

  Who could it be? Could it be Hans? Or perhaps it was Pederson trying to find his way back… Oh, God. Pederson was lost out here and part of him wanted to call out, turning his voice into a beacon on which the man could follow; but after the insane story told by Norstad and Strand he was frightened enough to bite his tongue and keep moving.

  Oyvind continued along the guide rope, walking backwards until he bumped into something. He turned sharply to find MacCloud and Kleppa standing still, frozen in place by the sight before them.

  Something in the mist was moving… and it was huge.

  As big as a tree with dark spindly branches feeling through the air as it glided past ahead of them. Norstad took hold of the guide rope to steady himself and felt it tighten and strain as the mysterious walking thing broke across the line between them and the fuel.

  It hadn’t noticed them, but it was heading to their right; and if Oyvind had his bearings correct, it was heading straight for the dog shed.

  ----- X -----

  In the dog shed the lights were back on. Strand positioned himself to help Norstad climb onto the beam above the dogs. The huskies were on their feet, prowling the enclosure, waiting to be let out for exercise and anxious for a run in the snow.

  Norstad hoisted his body to the ledge and swung his legs across as last time to straddle the beam. Strand passed him the radio and ran back to shut off the lights. “You don’t need to shut the power off,” Norstad said. “The transformer is already hooked in.”

  The pilot plugged the shortwave set into the power transformer and began twisting the antenna leads to the radio when the whole building shook with a solid thud. It was as though someone had driven a car into the side of the building. Norstad and Strand looked to one another then suddenly the shortwave lifted into the air out of his hands and flew towards the ceiling, ripping out the power cable as it went. The set was dragged to the rafters by the antenna cable that was being pulled back through the roof of the shed until it hit the woodwork and the whole roof began to splinter and crash down.

  Norstad threw himself to the side, falling awkwardly, but having the sense to throw his weight towards a pile of hay in the dog pen.

  Strand unfastened the bolt to the pen to rescue Norstad as the entire roof was whipped aside as surely as it would have been in a hurricane. The force of action and sudden shock sending the dogs into a screeching and barking cacophony. Strand grabbed Norstad and both men looked up to see the dark descending shape of…

  What in holy hell…

  It was Bjorn. Twisted and mangled Bjorn. The doctor, his limbs now long and thin, his hands and feet claw like, his ribcage half the size of normal whilst his head had become bulbous and bald. He was floating, descending into the space. “Norstad…” he breathed as he lowered into the dog shed. There was something attached to him, or rather, something that Bjorn was attached to. A huge, tree like shape of biology, with writhing tentacles of sinew and arteries feeling through the air. From its largest bough hung Bjorn, suspended like a hanged man, connected from the back of his head to the mass of sinewed horror bending over and lowering itself into the dog shed.

  The dogs were in panic as the biological feelers touched the walls and floor, feeling their way.

  Then the feelers began shooting forth, impaling the dogs, touching the mutts and wrapping around them with shocking speed to suffocate them as the men ran for their lives. Strand paused only to slam the door closed behind him and saw Bjorn suspended a meter from the ground. The doctor was floating with his arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross, his biological feelers were holding up the melting and crying dogs to either side of him.

  In the split second that Strand looked at the doctor’s face, he would swear the man was smiling.

  ----- X -----

  Kleppa, MacCloud and Pederson could hear the dogs barking, then crying. They’d heard the sound of wood splinteri
ng and crashing. Now all they could hear were the whines of tortured and helpless animals.

  “Keep moving,” Oyvind said. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  Then MacCloud called out, “Look!” as a man barrelled in towards them. Out of the mist, the man was staggering. It was Pederson. Alive. Lost in the snowstorm but somehow alive. MacCloud stepped away from the guideline to hold his hands out as though to catch him. Pederson was in a bad way, stumbling forward, fighting against fatigue until almost upon the three men. Then Pederson reached forward with hands that looked as though they were turned inside out. Fleshy red muscles and arteries on the outside reached as hands onto MacCloud, gripping him and pushing him to the snow.

  The cook screamed as he was set upon by the gruesome hands of Pederson. Oyvind raised the rifle and fired hitting Pederson in the head but the impact made no difference. The thing was wrapping veins of flesh around MacCloud’s neck, flowing into his screaming mouth, threading into his ears.

  Oyvind dropped the rifle and went to his pocket for a thermite charge, he pulled the pin and tossed it beside the grappling thing atop the cook, then picked up the rifle and ran. The heat came a few seconds later and even though wearing protective clothing he felt the scorching radiated heat of the thermite burning the skin of his back and legs.

  From behind he heard the screaming of MacCloud change from the terrified wails of a man fighting for his life into an ungodly blast of alien pain.

  He didn’t turn to look. Nor did he think of Kleppa or where he had gone. He continued forward, faster, harder, running for the fuel dump and away from the burning thing behind and whatever was left of MacCloud that he’d just burned to death.

  ----- X -----

  Kleppa ran away from the fuel, running the whole length of the guide rope faster than he ever imagined possible. As the base faded into view the relief of escaping the mist was given a new horror in that the tree thing was stalking the entrance way. There was no way into the base, not without getting too close to the mass of veins that was sweeping through the air.

  The workshop was the other entrance, but that seemed too risky. He had to. He had to get back inside.

  Oh, God… Pederson. He had… his hands were… oh, God in heaven, this alien thing was turning people into monsters. It was melting people. Absorbing them and growing in size. Driving people into madness.

  Kleppa could barely breathe as he swung his little fat body in through the open workshop door. He saw the block of ice, hollowed out where they had gotten the thing from, but there were no men in there.

  The door… the door from workshop to corridor was open.

  Kleppa rushed back into the base and spotted Hans and Rolland at the far end of the corridor. They turned towards him. Hans was holding a fire axe. The men looked at him with dispassionate eyes and spoke no words before beginning their walk towards him.

  Kleppa pushed into the science laboratory and slammed the door. He pushed a desk as hard as he could to get it over the entrance and by providence realised he could tip a bookcase into the intervening space that would wedge the desk in place and make access impossible. He pushed it hard, squeezing his hand behind the furniture, fighting with all his strength to get leverage until the unit swayed forward and toppled, emptying its contents on the floor as it went.

  That door was sealed. It opened only a few centimetres as the two men outside pushed against it. Rolland looked through the gap with a single eye.

  “Leave me alone!” Kleppa screamed.

  The other door. There was a second door to the laboratory but nothing else he could move against it. A chair. There was a chair to wedge under the handle to stop them opening. He did it just in time as he heard the boots pounding the boards towards it. The handle moved as the men outside tried to lever it, but the chair brace held. He’d done it. He’d locked himself in… Then came the crash of an axe against the wood. The force was so strong the whole room shook. Experiments in test tubes shook, the noticeboard fell from the wall. A weapon, he needed a weapon. Kleppa rushed to his cutting tools and found a scalpel, too small… he found his cut throat razor, non-scientific but the best tool for peeling layers of ice cores.

  The axe crashed against the door again… and again… and again.

  He was trapped. Locked in a room with an axe man coming through the door. Was Hans insane? Did he want to kill him? Probably not, he probably wanted to do to him what Pederson had done to MacCloud. He probably wanted to melt him down and absorb his body.

  Oh, God… Oh, God... Oh, God

  The axe smashed against the door.

  There was no escape.

  Kleppa sat in the chair with the cut throat razor in his hands. Was there another option? They say suicide is the coward’s way out, but any right minded person would be a coward in the face of this horror.

  The axe smashed against the door.

  He would wait. Strand would come. Yes. The commander would come and rescue him and they would all go to McMurdo together and…

  Suddenly the building shook with a fiercer hit than any axe. Holes punched in the walls and the whole structure skewed as though it was being sat on by a giant. Kleppa looked up to the ceiling skylight and saw the tentacle shapes from the huge tree creature as it felt across the roof. A tentacle smashed down on the rooftop and slithered away, then again, this time finding the skylight and smashing the glass.

  Men at the doors. One smashing his way in with an axe. A monster crashing against the ceiling… But Strand would come. Surely Strand would come.

  Then Kleppa looked up to see the bulbous bald head of Bjorn grinning at him through the broken skylight, “Kleppa…” it hissed. Then as though imbued with the power of levitation, the figure of Bjorn lifted upright above the skylight and began descending into the room feet first, suspended by the head from the tree and lowered through a hole in the roof.

  There was no time. Kleppa held the blade in his left hand and slashed at his right wrist with the cut throat. “I’m not going to become one of those things,” he whispered. “I’m not going to become one of those things. I’m not going to become one of those things.”

  There wasn’t any pain, only a slow shock of light headedness; but it wasn’t fast enough. Kleppa moved the cut throat to his right hand and fighting against severed tendons he managed to hold the blade sure enough that he could press his left wrist against it.

  The Bjorn creature descended fully into the laboratory and stretched out its spindly fingers towards Kleppa. For a moment they made eye contact and for the briefest instant the man who used to be a doctor seemed to understand the situation. Kleppa was killing himself. Driven to suicide by fear. Bjorn’s body jerked back and his talon like hands turned inwards as the doctor looked to his alien palms and contemplated what was happening.

  With a roar of anguish, Bjorn cried out in horror. Amongst the mess of cells that he had become there was one last moment of humanity. A final and fleeting touch of remorse.

  Kleppa was bleeding out, terrified and unable to be saved. The doctor, in his last thought as a human being looked at his friend and recalled his deepest desire to help people, then did the only thing he could. With a single swipe from the back of his hand, he slashed Kleppa’s throat with a protruding claw that spilled so much blood it sent the peaceful biologist into unconsciousness within seconds.

  ----- X -----

  Oyvind had continued towards the fuel until he saw a figure emerging from the mist towards him. There was a man already there, waiting. The fuel was an obvious target. They needed fuel to escape and it was the perfect place for an ambush. Whoever the man was, he began moving forward. Oyvind fired one shot directly at him which either missed or had no effect.

  Oyvind turned and ran. He let go of the guide rope but kept it within view to his left. He didn’t look back. He ran as fast and hard as he could. He passed the charred remains of MacCloud and Pederson, burned to black charcoal in the snow, their bodies somehow fused to a contorted non-human shape and locked into
place as a dark statue.

  He saw the base emerging from the mist much earlier than he felt he should have. The weather was lifting. There was no wind, the snow was lighter and the mist was thinning.

  “Identify yourself,” came the voice of Strand.

  Oyvind looked around him but couldn’t see anyone.

  “I said identify yourself.”

  “Oyvind. It’s Oyvind,” he replied. “There’s someone behind me, I can’t see you.”

  From below the station, literally underneath the structure, Strand and Norstad emerged. “Who is behind you?” Norstad asked.

  “I don’t know. They were waiting at the fuel dump. MacCloud is gone… we got attacked by Pederson. Kleppa is gone too. He ran away when we got attacked. I didn’t see what happened.”

  “DON’T MOVE!” Norstad yelled, pointing his pistol out past Oyvind to the figure emerging from the mist. It was Ingvar, the dog wrangler. Ingvar continued forward, ignoring Norstad’s command. “Stop where you are. This is your last warning!”

  Ingvar continued but slowed, raising his hands. “Strand?” He called.

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  “Don’t shoot. Please, don’t shoot.”

  “I shot at him,” Oyvind said. “He was out there waiting. In this weather. He was at the fuel waiting for us. I shot at him but he didn’t stop chasing.”

  Ingvar continued walking. Oyvind raised his rifle. “That’s far enough, Ingvar.” The dog wrangler took a few more steps, but slowed with each one. “What were you doing out there?”

  “I was looking for you guys. I wanted to…”

  Oyvind opened fire. Two shots right in the chest. He passed the rifle to Strand and went to his pocket for his second thermite grenade. Ingvar was flat on his back, his eyes open, blood coming from his chest. Oyvind tossed the thermite right onto his body and began running.

  The heat burned as fiercely as ever and threw out a golden light as bright as looking into the sun.

  “You killed him,” Norstad whispered.

  “Trust me…” Oyvind said. “Trust me over trusting him.”

  As the men turned their attention back to the burning body a strange and eerie sound began whistling through the mist as a looming shadow blocked the sun.

  Coming towards them was the walking tree of nerves and tendons. Seemingly now even bigger. At its roots stood Hans and Rolland and floating above them and seemingly part of the mass was Bjorn.

  ----- X -----

  “Split up,” cried Strand as he ran towards the tractor. “I’ll take on the creature.”

  Norstad and Oyvind needed no extra instruction. Both men readied their weapons and fired at the two men walking towards them. Hans fell forward into the snow, seemingly hit, but a moment later and he was back on his feet.

  “Thermite, I’ve got more thermite inside,” Oyvind said.

  Both men turned and ran hard, chased down all the way to the exit.

  They burst in through the door and Oyvind went for the case of grenades he’d left there. He passed the rifle to Norstad who checked the clip. About twenty rounds left. Oyvind lifted the case and ran back along the corridor, trailing Norstad. He heard the exit door pulled open and knew it was Hans and Rolland. He dropped the crate and grabbed a thermite charge, pulled the pin and tossed it backwards down the corridor. It hit close to the bottom and rolled. Hans and Rolland saw it and ducked aside but the charge erupted with a flash of intense light and a blast of heat that burned from even as far back as they were.

  Hans and Rolland appeared from the blast with their clothes on fire, but both of them still pushed forward. Norstad fired a few shots to hold them in place. He definitely hit Rolland but the bullets had no effect other than making the men stand still for a few seconds.

  Decanite. Oyvind pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it, then pulled the pin on a second grenade and tossed that too, then a thermite round, pulled the pin… and the first decanite exploded throwing a blast of air to pop the eardrums and burst the edge of the roof off the corridor as the seam of the building burst. The decanite cans were made of foil. They had huge power, but little shrapnel.

  The thermite… Oyvind saw the canister rolling away, the pin was pulled, too close to them, rolling away too slowly. Norstad saw it too and kicked it hard, raising it into the air and into the face of Hans and Rolland. The second decanite charge blew, lifting the roof clean off on one side. Then the thermite popped sending blinding shards of light from behind the burning men. Hans fell forward onto hands and knees and his limbs extended, raising him up like a man sized spider.

  Rolland’s hands exploded into mushy streamers of flesh that swung forward like a whip, searching out for another living thing to grasp whilst Hans scurried forward in his flaming spider form. Norstad dropped to one knee and aimed the rifle well. He fired again and again into Hans’ face as the climatologists mouth spread wide and opened like his head was cleaved in two.

  ----- X -----

  Strand got into the tractor and powered at the swirling tree of flesh, pushing the vehicle to its limit. He hit the base and saw that it had root like appendages that moved across the snow in a ripple effect like a sidewinder snake. The tractor pinned the roots and began rolling up the trunk, tipping the vehicle back.

  Through the windscreen he watched as the tree monster swung around to position what was left of Bjorn to the front. The doctor, it seemed, were the creature’s eyes. Its flailing limbs and tentacles of veins and arteries blind feelers.

  The entire mass came crashing down onto the tractor, wrapping itself around the vehicle. Bjorn’s leering face and spindly body passed in front of the windshield as the tentacles of flesh began working the glass, smashing against the sides of the tractor as the mass of the creature pushed back and upended the vehicle, tipping it vertical until it rested almost on its back doors.

  Strand saw one of the bigger boughs reach back in anticipation of punching forward onto the window and dove back over the seat to fall into the rear compartment as the window imploded. The vehicle rolled over, tipping the contents against him. He rolled like he was in a tin can, tossed around by the monster.

  Then he saw Bjorn, climbing across the nose of the vehicle, his claw like hands pulling him inside, his leering face smiling at the destruction he was about to do.

  There was no option for Strand, this was the end. He held his face stoic as the alien claws of the former doctor wrapped around him. He felt its acid like secretions begin burning into his flesh and he was brought face-to-face with his old friend the camp doctor.

  Bjorn, whatever was left of him, smiled.

  Strand brought his fists ahead of him and smiled wider, then opened his palms to show the grenade ring pulls to the decanite that had been left in the tractor since yesterday.

  ----- X -----

  Oyvind tossed another decanite grenade as he pulled the box backwards. Norstad was still on his knee but every few seconds he shuffled backwards.

  Hans and Rolland had slowed, but they weren’t stopping.

  Then came the boom.

  In an instant they were flailing through mid-air and back outside as the walls of the building came away, the entire corridor blowing apart into its component boards and sheeting. Norstad saw a caterpillar track fly by his face in the moment before he hit the snow. He felt heat. He heard a screaming, ungodly painful sound and looked up to see the monster, at least ten meters tall, completely engulfed in flames like a tree stripped of its leaves and burning. The fireball rose up its trunk along with an acrid cloud of dense black smoke.

  The creature fell towards him, collapsing on top of the base. Crashing through what was left of the rec room.

  A second screaming sound came from lower down. Norstad looked around him and found the rifle. He picked it up. Checked it. Checked himself and walked forward. The screaming came from spider Hans, half trapped beneath the bulk of the flaming monster which was now beginning to set fire to the rest of the base. Moments later and Hans was engulfed in
flames.

  From the distance came a faint voice. “Norstad,” it called. “Norstad?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.”

  He scoured the debris field. Burnt biology, hunks of metal, pieces of the base. Smoke and flames rose from the ruins. The whole base was virtually destroyed. All the living quarters and rec room were gone. The only part left standing was the science lab and workshop.

  Oyvind emerged from the snow. “Is it dead?”

  “No, something is still moving underneath it, over there.”

  Oyvind staggered up to Norstad and saw what he was looking at. The final movements of flesh trying to crawl away. They watched it for a few minutes as it withered and died. Then took stock of their situation. The creature was dead. Hans and Rolland were presumably crushed and burnt in the fire.

  There was no sign of Strand and, considering the tractor was in pieces, they didn’t expect to find him.

  “Hello,” Norstad yelled across the debris field. “Is anyone else alive?”

  There was no response.

  “I say we walk the perimeter. Check everything to make sure there are no other survivors,” Norstad said. “Weather is clearing. We can take the chopper to McMurdo.”

  Oyvind scanned the debris field. He said nothing.

  ----- X -----

  The men walked the perimeter, keeping warm from the burning remains of Fafnir Station until coming to the science laboratory where they were shocked by a sudden human scream. Both men raised their weapons as they rounded the corner to make a horrifying discovery.

  The monster was still alive, partially.

  The bulk of the monster, the trunk had collapsed onto the buildings and was burning into dust, but one end looked active and was growing into a yellow sack of fluid almost as big as a man. It wasn’t the yolk sack that had screamed though. It was Bjorn. The withered body of the doctor had detached from its host and lay in the snow with spindly stick thin arms and legs and a face that had been cleaved into two.

  “Help me,” it whispered. “Please, help me.” Beside the science lab was a drum of kerosene. Heating oil for emergencies. Norstad unscrewed the cap and pushed it on its side. The kerosene glug, glug, glugged out of the drum and pooled around the spindly doctor. Bjorn’s eyes rolled in his bulbous head, watching him. “Help me, Norstad,” it said. “Help me.”

  Norstad went to his pocket for the lighter, flipped the lid, made a flame and touched it to the pooling fluid. A sudden rush of heat erupted with a fireball as Bjorn waved his withered limbs for a few seconds within the flames.

  Oyvind and Norstad didn’t examine the remains after the fire. They stepped away as their former friend and doctor burned alive and continued their walk of the perimeter.

  “Oh, God,” Oyvind said looking in through a hole in the science lab. He walked away and sat in the snow, cupping his hands together and hiding his face in them. Norstad didn’t ask what it was. He looked in himself to see Kleppa sitting in a chair with his throat cut.

  Norstad rested his back to the shed and looked out into the Antarctic wilderness. The sun was shining and the mist had almost lifted. It was going to be clear. The typical extremes of zero visibility to perfect weather in the space of a few hours. “We can get the chopper up,” he said. “We can fly to McMurdo.”

  Then came the bursting.

  It was a strange sound, like a rush of water from a stream. It was odd enough that both men perked up and looked back to where it had come from. It was around the corner of the lab where they had set fire to Bjorn.

  Norstad readied the rifle and began leading with the gun, letting its barrel point his direction. He rounded the corner to see the smouldering remains of the doctor where they should be. Then he noticed the egg sack on the end of the trunk had burst. Yellow goo was mixed with the snow… that dragged away to the right… that culminated in tracks…

  “There’s a dog,” Oyvind yelled as he pointed. “A damned huskie.”

  “It’s made itself into a dog,” Norstad yelled. He aimed the rifle and looked through the scope, but the huskie was leaping in the snow, vanishing periodically and already at a greater distance than his trembling hands could aim at.

  “I know where it’s heading,” Oyvind said. “If it keeps going in that direction it’s going to Outpost #31. We’ve got to stop it.”

  ----- X -----

  It took fifteen minutes to get the helicopter airborne. To hell with safety checks. A quick spray of de-icer and a hope that the warmth of the burning Fafnir Station had warmed the machine. Oyvind demanded they circle the camp first looking for the remains of the explosives shack. They landed briefly that he could grab a new case of decanite and thermite from the ruined shed.

  “We’ve got to get that thing. If it makes it to #31 this whole thing starts again,” Oyvind said.

  “Don’t worry, the Gods are on our side now. Odin has cleared the skies. We know where it was, we know where it’s heading. We’ll find it.”

  Within minutes they had the dog spied. Oyvind leaned out with the rifle as Norstad flew in closer. He fired… missed. He dropped decanite… missed.

  The looming structures of Outpost #31 appeared and the stress of seeing the alien dog nearing more humans was causing more stress than anything. It would get there. It would absorb more people and turn itself huge again. They had to… they must…

  He fired. He fired again… Every time he missed.

  The dog made it to the camp.

  The Americans were emerging from their huts. Oh Jeepers, the dog was running to them.

  “I’m going to land,” Norstad said.

  He touched the helicopter down as Oyvind grabbed a decanite charge. He had to throw it before the dog was too close to the Americans. He pulled the pin and reached back to throw but the grenade slipped from his grasp and buried itself in the snow by the helicopter.

  “RUN!” he yelled; but Norstad got to his hands and knees digging through the drift to find the grenade.

  It was too late. The canister exploded with ferocious force, the metal cap blasting through the fuel tank of the Bell Jetranger and turning the helicopter into a blazing inferno in seconds. Norstad… Norstad was lost.

  The dog ran up to an American, it jumped at his chest, its paws up.

  Oyvind raised his rifle. "Get the hell outta there. That's not a dog, it's some sort of thing! It's imitating a dog, it isn't real! Get away, you idiots!" He fired, hitting the American in his leg. His colleagues dove to the side, clearing a path. The dog ran further in, heading for an open door. It was a frame. It was going for the door. An aperture on which to train his sights. Oyvind raised the rifle to his shoulder, steadied the sights. He heard breaking glass to his left. The dog was going for the door, he had it marked, he would shoot, he would kill it and this whole thing would be ov………………………………………………………..

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