by Tim Curran
“It must lead somewhere,” Biggs said. “I’d like to know where and why.”
Warren just shook his head. “You wanna go down, be my guest.”
And the totally insane part was that, for a moment there, it looked like Biggs was actually considering it. Biggs. Nihilistic, cynical, selfish, fuck-you-and-yours Biggs. A man with no curiosity that did not directly involve saving his own skin. It was amazing. But there were many amazing things today, not the least of which was actually getting Biggs to come down here at all. And now that he had, he did not seem as frightened as he should’ve been. In some twisted way, he almost seemed to be enjoying himself.
He worked himself closer to the tunnel mouth.
“Careful,” Warren said.
Beeman made a funny moaning sound in his throat and Biggs smiled at him, winked at him, as if it was all part of some big joke now and only they were in on the punchline. “HEY!” Biggs called down the shaft. “ANYBODY DOWN THERE? ANYBODY HOOOOOME? WE’RE UP HERE WAITING! WHY DON’T YOU COME AND SAY HEY!”
“Knock it off,” Warren said.
“HELLOOOOOO DOWN THERE!”
Warren couldn’t take it anymore.
He grabbed him and yanked him away from the opening, almost threw him on his ass. But the sound of his voice echoing down there in those subterranean depths . . . it was just too much. It made something rip open inside him. The echo of that voice bouncing around, going deeper and deeper and sounding low and guttural the further it went . . . God, he thought he’d rather slit his own wrists than have to hear it again.
“Take it easy, man,” Biggs said.
“Just knock it off,” Warren warned him. “This isn’t a fucking game.”
But how could he make him realize what that echo had done to him? How he did not want something down there to hear them up here. Because he was certain there was something down there, something loathsome and awful that was listening to them. In the back of his head, he could almost hear the fleshy thudding of its heart.
He let go of Biggs and at that moment, a rumbling, inexplicable sound came rolling up the tunnel. It sounded almost like the grumbling of an empty belly.
Warren backed away, pressing a mitten to his mouth so he did not cry out. He kept backing away until a little dip in the ice almost put him on his ass. His stomach was roiling and he thought for a moment there he might vomit.
Breathing hard, he said, “Beeman . . . show us that crevice. Show us those goddamn bodies.”
Beeman did not hesitate.
He lumbered off past one crevice mouth and then another that had been taped off with yellow film by Dryden and probably led to a crevasse. He brought them over to the crevice that Dryden had found the creature in. The very one Warren had been down before and saw . . . saw something pulling away from him.
He put his flashlight beam in there.
Crystals of blood were still iced on the blue irregular walls, appearing a shocking scarlet that looked nearly black when you pulled the light away. Warren knew they had to go in there just like he knew they wouldn’t all be coming back out again.
“Shall we?” he said.
6
POLAR CLIME
THE AFTERMATH?
Well, for starters, putting out the fire was a real job. By the time they had doused the creature down, Special Ed, Gwen, and the others came through the doorway to the tunnel that led back to the dome. They were a merry lot with their axes and clubs and other improvised weapons. Smoke was rapidly filling T-Shack by then. They tried CO2 fire extinguishers on the burning jellied gasoline, but they had the same effect as in the Community Room: they spread the fire around, but that was it. As head of the Firefighting Team, Frye sent his troops off for chemical foam extinguishers. That did the trick. The fire was contained, though the living quarters were beyond hope, just a smoldering wreck.
After that, there was nothing to do but shovel out the smoking debris, some of it belonging to the creature itself. Shin’s swollen body was removed and put in an unused Jamesway hut near the runway with the remains of Stokes. Hopper was put there, too. It took a couple hours to clean out the room and then the door was closed on it, though T-Shack and its tunnel would forever stink of smoke and worse things.
When the last of the blackened debris was heaped out on the snow and the door was repaired, Coyle and Frye returned to T-Shack. Everyone but Special Ed and Gwen had returned to the dome. The radio room was relatively unscathed despite a bit of smoke damage. The door to the living quarters had been shut and a sheet of plywood placed over the gaping hole in the wall the creature had made. Ed was on the radio telling McMurdo that they’d had a fire, but it had been contained.
He kept everything very formal, very PC.
When he was done, Frye said, “You left out the part about our monster, Ed. Funny you forgetting that so quick.”
7
“RIGHT NOW, MORE THAN ever, we need to stay calm.”
That was how Special Ed opened the little impromptu all-hands meeting in the Community Room. Famous last words.
“Calm, eh?” Gut said. “Tell you what, Ed, you get our asses out of here and we’ll all just be calm as you please. Until then, I don’t think so.”
“Not with monsters running around loose,” The Beav piped in.
And that pretty much summed up the atmosphere. It was equal parts denial, confusion, frustration, and animosity. Already, cliques had formed. Gut had appointed herself the mouthpiece of her newly-formed clique: herself, Ida, The Beav, Hansen, Koch, and, surprisingly, Harvey. Gwen and Zoot sat away from Gut’s people, with Coyle, Frye, and Locke. Eicke, fresh from Atmospherics, sat by himself. Horn was enjoying it all, of course. The one-man anti-everything clique as usual. There was nothing as amusing as open insurrection in his way of thinking.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Frye demanded, getting right in the middle of things as was his way. “What’re you people whining about now?”
Gut put her hands on her expansive hips. “Whining? You maybe got me confused with someone else, Frye. I don’t whine, I bitch.”
“We got six people either missing or murdered in the last two weeks,” Hansen said. “And if that ain’t something to bitch about, I’d like to know what is.”
Locke stood up then. His arm was in a sling. He looked a little rough around the edges from what attacked him, but he seemed okay. He’d live. “What we’re discussing here, Frye, is our options. And they’re limited. We all know what’s going on down here–”
“No,” Eicke said, “we do not. We know absolutely nothing.”
“Sensible,” Special Ed said.
Locke was undeterred. “Yes, well, I think we have a fair idea of what’s happening and it doesn’t look good. Like the rest of the world, we’re in grave danger and we have to come up with some sort of plan. That thing you killed, Horn, is probably not the only one of its kind. Those that made it are down here in numbers as they always have been. We are seeing the final stages of an ancient blueprint in operation. And that blueprint is aimed at harvesting the human race.”
Eicke just shook his head. “And your evidence is . . .”
Frye smirked. “You want evidence, Doc? C’mon, I got some evidence for you. It’s out in the snow. The remains of a fucking monster. You want to see it?”
Eicke hung his head, brooded.
“There’s a name for it, you know,” Locke said.
“Name for you, too, son,” Frye told him, “only I’m too polite to say it.”
Gut grunted. “Yeah, you’re about as polite as my middle finger.”
“Well, we ain’t here to discuss your sex life, Gut,” Frye told her.
That got a few laughs. At least from the crew. It was not shared by Special Ed. Eicke looked more than a little offended as did Harvey.
“Listen to me, everyone,” Special Ed said, his face just blank. “The NSF cannot pull us out of here which means we’re on our own. More now than ever we have to put aside petty disagreements and grievan
ces. If we want to stay alive, we need to act like a team. And don’t give me that look. This is not some half-assed, company-approved pep-talk. We’re way beyond that and I think we all know it. One way or another, we have to come together. We’re trapped down here and there’s no way out until spring. Now, obviously, there are things happening down here and maybe in the rest of the world that are simply beyond human understanding, but there’s no sense in getting paranoid. What is happening is happening. What we have to do is come together and take care of ourselves. There’s no other way.”
“I think we need to consider the bigger picture,” Locke said.
“Maybe that’s the last thing we want to do,” Gwen said. “The picture it paints is not very nice.”
Gut gave her a look. “Well, not everything in life is clowns, balloons, and cupcakes, Gwen. Maybe if you’d get your face out of Nicky’s lap you’d see that.”
“Shut your hole, you fucking pig,” Gwen told her.
“Kiss my ass.”
“I would but I don’t want to get a mouthful of hair.”
Gut stood up, her face red.
Coyle insinuated himself in there now. “Jesus Christ, Gut. We’re all in this together. Quit acting like a fucking bully.”
She laughed. “Well, I’d expect that from you, Nicky. You ain’t been right since you started plowing her field.”
“That has nothing to do with it.”
“I’m thinking it does.”
Frye started laughing. “Don’t mind her, Nicky. She’s been the playground bully ever since she first got hair on her nuts.”
“Nobody asked for your opinion, wiseass,” Gut said.
Gwen slammed her fist down on the table. “All right, all right! Quit acting like children! Christ, Gut, act your fucking age!” When that brought silence, she said. “What I mean is that swapping ghost stories won’t get us anywhere. I think we’re all pretty scared, but working our imaginations overtime is a little counterproductive.”
Gut made a snorting sound and nobody there was sure whether she did it with her mouth or with her ass. “Say what you want, Gwen. All of you, say what you want. We’re in danger here. Avoiding it won’t help. We either take this on our feet or on our knees.”
That brought silence: nobody could disagree with it.
Ida began to sob into her hands.
Gut coughed and all eyes were again on her, the way she liked it. “Listen. You all know me. I don’t tiptoe around—”
Frye laughed.
“—and maybe I ain’t the most sensitive of women–”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Frye said.
She turned on him. “Yeah, well, fuck you! Why don’t you shut your piehole and let me talk?”
Special Ed sighed. “Please, people. Go ahead, Gut.”
She cleared her throat, some of the redness fading from her cheeks. “Now, I been hearing the same shit you all have. Aliens and monsters and dead cities. Well, it’s probably true. At least the monster part of it. But none of that shit matters. What matters is us. We’re here and what are we going to do about it? Well, I have a suggestion. Out in the garage we got Sno-Cats and Sprytes and a Delta. I say we load up and make for Pole Station. That’s sensible, way I see things. Anybody don’t wanna come along, then you stay here. Stay here and let those things have you. I’m ready right now to take a trip and I ain’t waiting for NSF approval either. Who wants to come with me?”
“That’s ridiculous,” Special Ed said. “You can’t cross the polar plateau. Not in the winter.”
“You watch me.”
Horn started laughing. “You think you can reach Pole?”
“I’m willing to bet I can.”
He just shook his head. “Gut, you might be a real whiz pushing snow around, but you’re not up to the plateau. None of you are. Out there, you play for keeps. You break down and you got about an hour before you freeze to death. No, Gut, maybe Coyle or Frye could try it, but you know the plateau and polar navigation like I know tampons.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Frye chimed in.
Gut was red-faced again, practically foaming at the mouth. “What? You think because you got something swinging between your legs, Frye, you’re better than me?”
“No, not better, just smarter,” he said.
“Fuck you! Just fuck you, you goddamn asshole!”
Frye was enjoying it. “See, boys? If there’s a slit in the bottom, the brain always falls out.”
Gut was just beyond herself. Balling her hands into fists, she said, “Goddammit! I know my job! I know machinery! I know all there is to know about this fucking place! I’m the equal of any man here!”
“Well, we ain’t talking about the size of your cock or the hair on your chest, Gut,” Frye said.
Special Ed got in front of her so she didn’t launch herself at Frye. And from the way she was looking—ready to chew pig-iron and piss staples—that’s exactly what she was planning to do.
“This is pointless,” Eicke said.
“And it’s been that way since the beginning,” Horn told him.
Seeing that Frye’s particular brand of sledgehammer diplomacy was failing, Coyle told the lot of them to quiet down. “Listen to me. All of you. Nobody’s going anywhere. We got shelter and food and we’re going to stay right here. That’s the only alternative there is. Just the one. Crossing the polar plateau is suicide.”
“Yeah,” Gut said, “and who died and made you king?”
“I did,” Special Ed informed her. “Nicky is talking sense. Nobody’s leaving this station and that’s the way it is.”
Gut looked to her clique for support and got none. Finally, she just threw her hands up and walked over to the coffee pot and poured herself another cup, swearing under her breath the whole way.
What the lot of them needed, Coyle knew, was sleep. Nobody had gotten much tonight. It was nearly five in the morning and they were all slugging back Ida’s coffee which was just this side of paint varnish. They were all afraid and thinking rash, confused, out of sorts.
“Okay,” Coyle said. “We have to stay. But that don’t mean we have to sit on our asses and wait for something to get us. We arm ourselves. We stay together. And that goes for you, too, Dr. Eicke. No more hiding out in Atmospherics. We stay together. We bunk-in together. We stay alive, we stay on guard. We keep the ball rolling and our skins in one piece. It’s the only way to handle this.”
“Damn straight,” Horn said. “Now I know you people don’t like me and I’m fine with that because I think you’re all a bunch of greedy, self-serving assholes–”
“Horn, please,” Special Ed said.
Frye said, “No, no, let him go, Ed. He’s telling it the way it is.”
“Thing is,” Horn told them, “I was the guy that toasted our monster. Everything Coyle and Frye said is true. But it wasn’t a ghost or a demon or something. It was flesh and blood and it died just fine. That’s my point. I got four flamethrowers made and I can make a fifth. I’ve got three electric prongs hooked to battery packs on handcarts. These babies can put two-twenty into anything you stick ‘em into. So we’re not defenseless.”
“Exactly,” Special Ed said.
Coyle watched the reaction to that. A lot of grumbling, not much else. After what they’d all heard howling in Medical and what Frye, Horn, and he himself had been saying, none of them liked the idea of playing monster-hunter. For if any of what Locke had been whispering about for weeks was true, they were seriously outnumbered even with Horn’s toys.
“It’s the only logical thing to do,” Coyle told them in all earnestness. “I think you all know that. As I said, we arm ourselves. We sleep in shifts. We post guards. We follow the buddy system: nobody alone at any time. We lock down all the doors to the outside, the tunnels, everything. And we remain vigilant. Maybe there’s no more of those things out there. Maybe we’re in no danger at all, but we have to act like we are. That’s all there’s to it.”
Gut didn
’t like it. Not in the least. You could see that. “So we sit and wait and hope for the best? Yeah, that makes great sense. Tell that to Slim and Doc Flagg, Cryderman and Shin. I’m sure they’d approve of sitting here with well-oiled thumbs shoved up our asses.”
“It’s a plan and it’s sensible,” Special Ed told her. “And it’s what we’re going to do.”
“Fucking bullshit,” Gut said.
“Oh, for chrissake, Gut,” Frye said, getting sick of the sound of her voice. “Put your fucking wiener away, we’re tired of looking at it.”
Gut shook her head and stomped from the room, making for C-corridor. Everyone watched her leave.
Horn said, “Hey, Locke. You said my monster had a name. Want to share it with us?”
Locke looked around at those worn faces. “I can’t be entirely sure. But there is a story of a beast called a Shoggoth.”
“Hell’s that?” Frye wanted to know. “Sounds like something you eat at a Pakistani restaurant with a side order of curry and chic peas.”
Locke ignored him. “A Shoggoth is something that has been whispered about for thousands of years,” he explained. “According to primal myth, the Shoggoth was the first life form the Old Ones engineered on this planet. All life was supposedly developed from them. They were created as sort of a servitor race, a slave race.”
“So we all descended from monsters? Least that explains Gut,” Frye said.
“I’m not saying that this thing was a Shoggoth exactly. Supposedly, they’ve been extinct a long time. But perhaps something like one . . . an evolved form or something developed from the Shoggoth.”
Eicke stood up and walked over to the coffee pot. “That’s absurd. Utterly absurd.”
“Maybe not, Doc,” Frye said. “It had to be something and it sure didn’t look much like a penguin or a leopard seal.”
“Absurd, maybe,” Locke said. “But certainly not impossible. I think—whatever it was—it was the same thing that wiped out NOAA Polaris. I think it was brought there on purpose just as it was brought here on purpose to do the very thing it did.”