Weaver studied the figure and realized that it had not moved or done anything since it had sat down.
“What do you want?” the soldier asked it, confused.
Weaver knew there would be no reply and that someone might do something, and might do something stupid and fire their gun there, and he rushed over before anyone could and slowly lifted the faceplate of the spacesuit, and stood back shocked!
It was the soldier that had been killed when the gunmen had attacked them, and they stood staggered, and the others that could not see its face rushed over see there.
The dead soldier was lifelessly dead and sat without moving in its seat, and they examined him in every detail and saw that his clothes were identical, and they wondered how it had moved!
“We cannot leave this!” Commander Craven finally moaned out loudly, showing his annoyance. “Great! How am I going to explain this in my report?”
While most of them sat down confused, trying to explain how the body had moved there, they watched it fade away and vanish!
Chapter 6
The Hauntings
The events were staggering afterwards! Some of the soldiers seemed to get crazy thoughts about what occurred and they gave accounts of there being something supernatural!
Weaver thought it was something to do with the scientists!
Scientists openly talked about their work researching it at the dinner table, and about mysterious occurrences in the corridors at night. They actually warned them about them, claiming that they regularly occurred in my regions of the ice station.
The way some of the soldiers there talked about it and warned them left them as unexplained deadly occurrences.
Yet the deaths there were worse and major scientists, as well as solders, had been found dead all over the ice station, but the vast majority were outside.
They gave detailed accounts of a group of scientists whose bodies were found scattered throughout a lower corridor, where nobody usually went, and now avoided after the incident.
Weaver was confused more than ever! Would the professional gunmen that attacked them carry out such an attack? Yet he had not heard anything like it! He was not sure if he believed that they had even entered the ice station! He and the others seemed to be protected from them there! Though there was a chance that they could enter by a hidden entrance! Yet they had not seen them or had one clue as to what they were like! Any manic could be given a gun and carry out what they did!
They could be trying to cover their identity, which they had done and he had proven it, and they could have panicked when they had seen their team of highly advanced soldiers coming down from the plane, and had attempted to annihilate the threat against them. But just what the hell was their motive? Maniacs never attacked military ice stations out in places like the Antarctic!
It also surprised him to hear that many of the scientists had been chased by swift-moving lights that had been seen shifting through metal walls, which they never had any knowledge of being possible.
Eventually Commander Craven took the soldiers out to get the dead soldier’s body and to check it, and prove it had not risen from death or whatever they had claimed.
It was far easier in sunlight and out of the blizzard, and they had men surround the area with guns and communicators ready to inform them of any attack, and Weaver wondered why they were not contacting the outside world of the occurrences as they had a form of communications to a satellite at least! Then he discovered that they had to put up a large antenna over the top of the ice station, which was folded away so the station remained strictly hidden away, which they only used when they gave out their communications and for extra supplies to be brought.
The soldiers eventually found the body under snow and soon realized that it had not been moved since the soldier had been killed, and they took it back to the ice station.
Chapter 7
The Scientists
He was glad that their investigation of outside for the gunmen had never revealed anything, as he knew it would have ended in many deaths by them, as they were not equipped to carry out such an operation, and he was sure that it would still have done so!
It had amazed him that they could not find any traces of them anywhere and that they just concluded that their base was miles away, and perhaps buried away underground.
Yet he could still not conclude what they were doing there with so many gunmen and who they were, and why the people running the ice station never acknowledged that they were outside. There were a vast amount of deaths and they were in an immense and major military ice station at the Antarctic with many soldiers and they had gunmen running around outside, who had attacked and killed their soldiers and they ignored it!
After discussions with the leader of the soldiers at the ice station they had found out little other than the fact that the soldiers there surely had nothing to do with the deaths and that they had been at the station too long and many of them had turned useless as soldiers, and others drank crazily into the night in loud parties into night!
His investigations for his intelligence mission had him all over the place meeting different people, and getting suggestions of other things that still never added up, which he was sure he was being denied as it would be dangerous. Something was being hidden and they were all avoiding telling him, and some even showed deep fear of something, which he never grasped! Were people being killed for saying too much? If so he may be able to find one!
The problem was he never knew what he was actually investigating, and he entered many laboratories and drank with many of the scientists and tried to work out what they were working on, but they normally just told him about what they were doing, and he would realize that there was nothing there. Yet there was always a suggestion that work was being carried out somewhere else, which they refused to say anything further about, and many times they belied he knew about it.
He knew there were scientists that knew something and he had to find a way to get them to tell him what he wanted!
He had some scientists show him around the ice station and tell him what was happening there, and in various laboratories, and he started removing things from a list of things he wanted to investigate.
The large aerial communication tower and a satellite disc for satellite communications, which were folded down to make the place hidden, were finally raised up to transmit communications.
It surprised him that the commander of the ice station at breakfast announced that a supply plane would arrive that day and he wondered why they had to parachute down when they could have arrived in it, and he later went up to see it land on a flat region, where their small vehicles had cleared a landing site, which looked just like a frozen lake.
Yet the thing he was surprised the most at was the size of the plane and incredible amount of food supplies that was taken from it into the ice station, and in the end he explained it as them building up their supplies perhaps for the dark polar winter.
None of the scientists ever mentioned the lower floors and he tried to question them and received little so he decided he had to go there and see what was there for himself.
Technicians fixed up a small vehicle for him and two scientists, which they used to transport themselves around the ice station, and they finally persuaded them to go to the lower floors of the ice station.
They went down different floors at a specially designed region for the vehicles, away at the end of a main central corridor, and when they started to get near the lower floors he started to see the deterioration in the corridors and rooms, and it was as though he were traveling in a time machine into the past, and at the bottom two floors there was so much deterioration there that rubbish and rubble, collapsed walls, dampness and rot was covering the entire corridors and rooms, and only a few lights were still working. And he started to realize that the killers, who surely had a highly desperate and ongoing motive to kill, could be outsiders and be hidden away there, and that they could be part of the gunmen group t
hat had shot at them.
When he got out the vehicle he watched everywhere for movement and evidence showing that anyone had been there, and he and the two scientists marched through the bottom corridor and connecting corridors searching for anything, and anything lurking in shadows. The place was vast and went out to quarter of a mile forward and sideways.
Weaver had his gun, and army clothes on, and led them along occasionally entering rooms studying everything and things of interest, while curiously watching the reactions of the scientists to things, and he sensed that they had not been there and had been warned about the dangers of the killers.
He noticed that his surroundings suddenly seemed to get dirtier and dirtier and seemed to remain clean in the central region for some reason, and it became clear someone had cleared everything away from there to make a pathway.
There were too many unsolved mysteries! Another main one emerged and what the place was to do if a war broke out and it was to be used, as it had no real use in a war anywhere, and he could not see it even carrying anything out! They built such a massive building and kept the place going for nothing as far as he could see. Occasionally he heard loud deep thuds below and realized that the thick Antarctic ice was under there.
Further in he had to sweep away webs to enter rooms, and some hanged down from the roof overhead going across to the walls, and he would study ancient laboratories and apparatuses with deep interest wondering what they had been for, and what highly confidential discoveries they were researching and creating.
He wondered if they would have anything left to discover someday, and tried to find any books with details of the work and found little, other than old tattered sheets of paper with useless scribbles on them.
He even started considering if the place could be revived someday, and if the world in the future, hundreds or even thousands of years from then could increase their transportation and civilization to the Antarctic, and if they would have cities at the region and if they had to defend it in future world wars, and he realized that he was underestimating the future.
He realized that no real dampness and water had entered that area recently, and there were cracks in the outer places where the outer ice was.
“Well!” one of the scientists conclusively announced, breaking his silence. “We have searched! The rest of the place must be the same, as it is throughout the complex!”
They entered deeper into it and he turned on lights in some of the rooms to see there in more detail, and it looked incredible, and he realized that he had started to enjoy exploring there! It looked entirely different to anywhere he had normally been, and mysterious things kept him intrigued. It had preserved itself and it held all the past secrets, and perhaps hidden military secrets, and he wondered what kind of secret weapons they could have discovered that might not have been revealed to the world, and he wondered what the whole structure might have originally been like when built.
Then while approaching a corridor going sideways at his front, a white shape seemed to jump out, and he then saw a scientist in a white laboratory jacket march out in front of him, and mutter something to them and march off towards where they had come from, and the scientists with him shrugged and he watched the scientist curiously go to a spiral staircase to walk up to the higher floors, and he wondered what he had been up to, as the place should have been deserted, and he saw that he clearly had been actively at work at something somewhere.
Chapter 8
The Hidden Structure
The incident of the scientist’s appearance stuck in his thoughts for days and he kept going over it trying to grasp some clue and something that he had missed that he could not realize!
It baffled him as he sensed that he had been up to something and there was nothing there and all he came up with was he could have some animal hidden away there that he fed, as large animals were banned from being kept in the ice station, and going by many ice stations the isolation and environment made some inhabitants do strange things.
The scientist had clearly looked like he had been doing work though, but what had he been doing?
He investigated everything that he could about him and the main thing that he found was he was born in Russia, which surprised him, and he wondered why such places employed people from places that spied on them! So he decided to watch the scientist and he observed that he regularly left his normal work at the same time and went down the spiral staircase, which he was sure was to the bottom floor, and some times he did not return until it was late in the evening, which grabbed his curiosity more than ever, as what the hell was he doing there? The incredible thing he never grasped was why nobody actually missed him and asked why he was not doing his work!
In the end he returned to the bottom floor by himself and waited near the bottom of the staircase at the time he normally arrived, and was not surprised to see him stroll down smoking and head straight towards somewhere.
What the hell was he up to? This case was really fascinating him! There were things that did not add up and make sense everywhere, and he could not think of any equivalence! He had never even heard anything take place at an ice station, and the normal ones were nothing compared to this one!
He watched the scientist enter a nearby corridor and he rushed over to the corner, where he hid at the corner and glanced at him move along it, and waited until he got to the end of it, and watched the way he smoked and got ready to throw away his cigarette, and Weaver got ready.
When he looked again he was going around a corner and as he did Weaver moved out and rushed down the corridor not wishing to miss anything and he started to see the amount of footprints there that were visible!
At the corner he stood staggered as all there was there was a dead end! The corridor went ten feet sideways and came to a wall!
He stood staring at it in disbelief, resting, trying to realize what he had missed! The corridor was a dead end! For some reason it went sideways for ten feet and came to a dead end!
The scientist had to have gone somewhere and he saw the floor had no prints and was clear of any dirt and rubbish for some reason.
He clearly had not moved a trapdoor or anything on the floor and the roof was solid and fixed, as well as the two side walls, so he knew that he had gone forward and he examined the front wall and it felt as solid as the other walls.
He did not know what to do, because if he did find a way to move the wall what would be there! Was it just a room? Was he able to defend himself if the scientist was one of the gunmen and had a gun?
It had to be the most desolate and darkest place he had seen in a modern building, and it was even more still, silent, and empty as was possible! Should he go and get help from the other soldiers or at least tell Commander Craven! At least he would not die in vain!
Even with the lights on there were strange haunting dark shadows and glows that held secrets and dangers!
He started thinking of if he could catch him doing something and whatever he was doing there, and he removed his handgun from his bag and prepared it and himself, and started trying to find a way in.
At the edge of one side of the wall he saw a large crack that he examined and found light shining out from it and concluded it was the side that opened out, and by the fact it was in the same place as all the doors, and he searched for something there at the level of where there would be a door handle or lock for something to open it, and tried just pushing and pulling it first but that did not work. So he searched for something!
Eventually he recalled there was a flattened metal bar in the other corridor and went and got it and when he arrived back he discovered the door open, and saw a more modern and clean corridor behind it, which had clearly been cleaned by a cleaning machine like the corridors at the top of the ice station, and he examined the lock on the door and realized that he could easily have broken it open.
He swiftly moved through it wondering where it went and what the use of having it was, and he wished that he had informed someone
where he had been and made sure his gun was ready.
The cost of it proved that if there was something there that it could have value!
He remained silent and wandered along the corridor in the one direction, going away out from the ice station and going directly under the ice, and found the entrance to an elevator and entered it.
He stood even more confused when it kept going down the depth of floor after floor!
At the bottom he gasped at the depth and watched the doors open and darkness appear outside and he walked out trying to see about him and saw nothing, and as his eyes adjusted he watched the elevator doors shut and the elevator return to where it had been, and in the darkness that engulfed him he tried unsuccessfully to find where the buttons were located for him to reuse the elevator when he wanted to return.
His eyes searched the abyss above, as he walked away from it.
A deep thud echoed down, from high above somewhere, and he wondered why whatever he was in was so large, and he could scarcely grasp the concept and he wondered if he was on the Antarctic land beneath the ice!
The depth by far exceeded his comprehension, and he could not justify there being just one compartment and not corridors. Sounds took strange tones everywhere as he started trying to hear more, and he strained his eyes more trying to see further beyond an area in front of him and he started to see a dark shape, but there were no features that he could recognize, but it seemed immense. Its shape vanished into darkness everywhere!
A swift explosion of light exploded out like a laser blast in blackness, silencing him, and all about him the darkness was lighted, and he saw more lights appear about him and scientists and soldiers started appearing.
Their abnormal antics captivated him, as well as mystifying him, and he only recognized a few from the ice station above. He repetitively studied everything, preparing himself for whatever happened!
The Thing: from the Depths of Hell Page 12