Hive

by Tim Curran

  At the far north end of Targa House, at the end of the corridor that split off the community room, you could find the radio room and supply lockers. You kept going, just around the bend, you’d find an Emergency Supplies Room that held extra radio parts, survival gear, freeze-dried food, ECWs, just about anything you’d need if the going got tough. You’d also find a weapon’s locker there.

  And if you wanted to get into it, then it was only a matter of kicking through LaHune’s door across the hallway. Maybe going in there with three, four tough boys with liquor in their bellies and taking the keys.

  LaHune never really saw them come in.

  He was sleeping and about the time his eyes started to flicker open and register a vague shape standing over him, a fist had already collided with his temple. There was about enough time to cry out and then another fist caught him just above the eye and the lights went out. LaHune fell into blackness and his last sensory input was of pain and the stink of cheap whiskey, body odor, and machine oil . . . a very working man kind of smell.

  “Tie that fucking puke up,” St. Ours said, toying with a flap of skin at his knuckle that he’d torn on LaHune’s head.

  Rutkowski and the others — a couple maintenance jocks named Biggs and Stotts—just stood there like toys waiting to be wound, maybe considering for the first time that they were involving themselves in some real deep shit here. The sort of shit you could and would drown in when the whiskey left your brain.

  “With what?” Rutkowski said.

  “Cut up some of those bed sheets,” St. Ours said. “Tie and gag him, then we’ll get some guns and kerosene and have ourselves a wienie roast with Gates’ pets out in the hut.”

  And maybe the others weren’t crazy about the idea of hurting LaHune or being an accomplice to an assault, but they liked the idea of torching the mummies. Yeah, they liked that just fine. Using pocket knives, Stotts and Biggs trussed LaHune up and that poor boy was out cold as a salmon steak in a freezer. When they were done, they were sweaty and maybe even a little confused.

  “C’mon,” St. Ours told them.

  In LaHune’s desk, they found keys for every lock at the station, but all they wanted were the keys to the Emergency Supplies Room and the gun locker in there. When they had them, they went across the corridor and let themselves in. The room was about the size of a two-car garage. Crates and boxes, medical supplies and laboratory equipment marked fragile, drums of fuel, just about everything else. Because down there at the South Pole during winter, if you didn’t have it and you needed it, you had to make it.

  In the gun locker they found flare guns, .22 caliber survival rifles. They were hoping for some bigger hardware, but they figured the rifles would be enough. They found the shells easily enough and loaded the guns. Then they stood in a tight little circle, holding up those guns and liking the feel of them . . . their weight and solidity, the way weapons always made a man feel somehow more like a man. A hunter. A warrior. They stood there looking at each other, seeing the lights in each other’s eyes, but not knowing what it was, only that it was strong and necessary and good.

  It was all up to St. Ours now.

  They would do what he said.

  “All right,” he told them. “We’re going to get ourselves some kerosene in the Equipment Garage . . . maybe gas or even diesel fuel, then we’re going over to Hut Six and you know what we’re going to do then. Anyone gets in our way . . . “

  They seemed eager a moment before, but now something in them was weakening and wavering and St. Ours didn’t care for it. “What? What the hell is it?” he put to them.

  Rutkowski opened his mouth to say something, but the words didn’t want to come. He’d been feeling something the past few minutes, but he wasn’t really sure what it was. Only that it was in his head.

  Biggs was rubbing his temples. “Damnedest thing . . . got me a headache, I’m thinking.”

  “A headache? So take a fucking aspirin already. Jesus.” But St. Ours was looking at the other two and seeing it on them as well. Something was afoot. “Well? Are we going to do this or sit around pissing about our heads?”

  Stotts, tall and angular and lantern-jawed like some stock New Englander, kept licking his lips. “It’s in the back of my head . . . I can feel it back there.”

  “Oh, for chrissake.”

  Rutkowski shook his head, too. There was something there and it wasn’t to be denied. The more he tried to ignore it, the more it raged, the more pain it brought with it. Maybe this wasn’t a migraine coming on him, but it lived next door.

  “Fuck is with you people?” St. Ours wanted to know.

  But they couldn’t really say because they were having trouble stringing words together and the pain was uniform and disorienting. Like something had woken up in their heads. Woken and stretched and started clawing up things. Rifles were lowered and then dropped and eyes went from being confused to being dark and shifting like simmering oil. Those eyes stared and rarely blinked and there was something very strange about it all.

  St. Ours had been thinking maybe these boys had been affected by a leaky gas furnace or something because headaches were sure as hell not catchy. But what he was seeing in their eyes and beginning to feel along the nape of his neck was not gas, it was . . . it was a sense of visitation. Something was in that room with them, something unseen and nameless and malefic was filling the empty spaces between them, making everything and everyone just go bad to their cores.

  Rutkowski kept trying to talk, but his mouth wouldn’t seem to open and his head was filled with a thick, black down and he couldn’t seem to think around it. His belly was filled with spiders and he could feel them in there, crawling up his spine and along his nerve ganglia making him want to fold-up or scream and -

  “Fuck’s with you people?” St. Ours was saying, flat-out scared now. What was in their heads wasn’t in his, but he had enough other bad stuff going on to make up for it.

  About then, they all became aware of the most peculiar vibration that seemed to be traveling through the floor beneath their feet and up into their bones, making their teeth ache. It was subtle at first, but growing, rising up now like some generator amping into life, that rhythmic thrumming passing through all of them and making them tremble and shake. And, Jesus, it was getting louder all the time like having your ear up against the metal casing of a hydraulic pump.

  St. Ours tried to say something, but that thrumming drowned out his voice and the others were completely in thrall to it now, lost in a fog, their bodies moving now in cadence with that awful vibration. Noises began echoing around them . . . pinging sounds, whispering sounds, metallic sounds echoing down long pipes and brief squeals that almost sounded like human screams inverted or played in reverse.

  And then there was a crackling like static electricity, a discharge of energy that made the hairs stand up on their arms and St. Ours wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t. He still had the .22 in his hands and he wanted to open up on something, drill something, anything to make it stop before his head flew apart. Maybe the others didn’t see what he saw then . . . and it was hard to say because they looked empty and dumb like window dummies . . . but it made him want to run.

  Except, he didn’t think he could.

  The far outside wall of the room was getting fuzzy. It was made of bare concrete blocks, except now it looked like it was made of smoke. Something almost diaphanous and insubstantial. It was fluttering and glowing now as if it were backlit by some enormous burst of energy and you could see the mortaring between the blocks standing out lividly.

  Yes, St. Ours wanted to run away, but all he did was stumble forward, a weird sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach. But he still had the .22 and he was going to use it . . . use it when whatever was out there melting through the wall made its appearance.

  Because it would.

  And then it did.

  It came through the wall as easily as smoke through a window grating, insubstantial and ghostly, yet gradually gaini
ng solidity. And at that point, a ghost carrying its head tucked under its arm would have been welcome. Because this . . . well, this was something else.

  St. Ours knew it was one of those things from Hut #6 and the sight of it filled him with a terror that was dream-like and blank.

  It was obscene to see it in motion, to see it gliding forth on those thick and muscular snakelike tentacles at its base. It should have been sluggish, but it moved with a marked fluidity, grace, and ease. Its body was like some oblong barrel, the flesh gray and oily and ribbed, some sort of wriggling parasitic podia hanging from the lower quadrant. When it got within five feet of St. Ours, it opened up its wings, almost seeming to inflate them, fanning them out like the collar of a frilled lizard. It sounded like wet umbrellas being snapped open.

  St. Ours could see a black vein networking in those wings. They looked membranous and rubbery. He tried to scream and could not. He was horrified and sickened, knowing it was not truly there physically, could not possibly be, yet smelling its stink which was like a poisoned carcass slowly decaying on a hot beach.

  It stood before him, towering over him, wings fanned out like the sails of a hang-glider, stinking and evil and offensive. Those appendages at its middle were reaching out for him, quivering, looking much like branching dendrites and synapses of a brain cell. But the worst part was that starfish-shaped head with those glaring eyes like red glass. These, more than anything, are what made St. Ours start shooting, seeing those slugs pass harmlessly through the creature and punch into the concrete wall behind it.

  The thing allowed him this one act of defiance and then those eyes stood out at the end of their stalks, looked at him and in him, showing him the pain of refusal, of raging against its kind. He heard a high, shrill, almost musical piping in his head like some distorted and trilling antique harmonium. And suddenly he was nothing and no one. His mind was bleached white and he was just a doll forged from warm plastic with a beating heart and staring eyes. He fell down before the thing, whimpering and giggling, and there was an intense wave of agony in his skull as his brain went to bubbling hot wax and his eyes exploded from their sockets and splashed down his face like wet vomit.

  And then the thing began to fade, pulling away from the broken and sightless creature before it.

  And back near the door, the spell broken, Rutkowski and the remaining Glory Boys began to scream.

  24

  Like the wreckage left by some horrendous traffic accident, just about everyone at the station came by to look upon the remains of Tommy St. Ours. They bustled in the corridor, poking their noses through the doorway and asking questions and whispering and then leaving as quick as they could get away. St. Ours was like some horror kept in a jar at a roadside carnival and people had to see what was left just to say that they had, that such a thing could be. Because most of them had never gotten a good look at Meiner sitting in that chair out in Hut #6 with his eyes sprayed over his face like slime, but they weren’t going to miss this.

  Few actually saw St. Ours, though.

  After five, then six and seven people circled in like turkey buzzards, Dr. Sharkey threw a white sheet over him like a corpse in an old movie. What more could really be done? Later, they would wrap him up in a tarp and ship him out to join Meiner in the cold house where was also kept the station’s meat and perishables, but for now at least they didn’t need to look upon him. So, yes, only a handful saw his grim cadaver, but to listen to them later, you wouldn’t have thought so. For they all had stories to tell that seemed to get more gruesome with the re-telling.

  And then, after a time, there was only Sharkey and Hayes and La-Hune.

  “What’re you going to log as the cause of death?” LaHune said, gently touching a great red knob over his left eye where St. Ours had hit him.

  She looked over at him like maybe he was kidding, making some sick joke, but she saw he was dead serious. “Well, I’ll have to do a post, won’t I? But, chances are, I’ll be writing it up as another cerebral hemorrhage.”

  “Yes,” LaHune said. “Yes.”

  Hayes felt sorry for the guy . . . a little bit anyway, because nobody should’ve had to put up with being slugged and then tied up, but the guy just didn’t seem to be in touch with mother reality here. He knew what killed St. Ours, just as they all knew it, but he wouldn’t admit it.

  Christ. An hour ago, Hayes had been sleeping alongside Sharkey and then Cutchen was at her door saying there had been another death and now he was here, looking at this and listening to LaHune.

  Which was worse?

  Of course, this death had a lot of drama tied to it. Rutkowski and the boys had gone screaming into the community room and the dorms beyond, banging their fists against doors, wanting help or salvation. Maybe both. That was how Cutchen and some of the others had untied LaHune and got a look at St. Ours. Now Rutkowski and his Glory Boys were sedated, because none of them were sure what had happened. They were raving about ghosts and monsters, saying that one of the Old Ones was traipsing about camp.

  “I don’t think, at this point, that we need to be so concerned with how St. Ours died, but with what killed him,” Sharkey said. “Can we agree on that?”

  “Well, yes, we need to know that. If you have any ideas, I’m listening.”

  Sharkey just stared at him like he was an idiot.

  Hayes said, “Doc’s right, chief. Don’t matter what happened, so much as who did it.”

  “If you have any ideas . . . “

  “Oh for chrissake, LaHune, what the fuck’s wrong with you?” he wanted to know. “You know same as me what happened. Those things out there . . . Gates’ fucking fossils . . . they aren’t exactly dead as you and I understand dead. Their minds are still active and if we don’t do something about shutting those minds down again, then who knows how many of us’ll be left come spring.”

  LaHune swallowed. “I’m not about to accept any of that nonsense. There’s simply no real proof. I expect that from Rutkowski . . . he’s hysterical, but not you, Hayes.”

  “Oh, really? You think because they’ve been frozen a million years or whatever that they can’t wake up again?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “All right, then. We’ll say it’s not the frozen ones, okay? Maybe it was them down in that lake, LaHune, because I can tell you that those bastards are not anywhere near dead. So let’s not fuck around here, all right? I know you saw the videotape by now. You know what’s down there.”

  LaHune looked uncomfortable. “Yes, I’ve seen the tape. But I tend to think what’s down in that lake and what’s up here are two different situations.”

  Before Sharkey could hope to stop him, Hayes grabbed LaHune and slammed him up against the wall and with enough force to knock a few things off their shelves. “Listen to me, you pretentious fucking fool,” Hayes said. “Those things are physically dead, but psychically very much alive. They killed St. Ours because he was going to burn those bodies up and those things don’t want that yet. He was dangerous to them, so they squashed him. Those minds out there . . . I don’t think they’ve cycled up all the way yet, but when they do, when they fucking do, we’re all toast and you know it. If anybody’s left in this camp by spring, I can guarantee you of one thing, they might look like men, but what’s going to be in their heads will be anything but.”

  25

  “He said he would be online at six. That’s what his email said,” Sharkey was saying. “Let’s give it a little longer.”

  They were sitting in the infirmary, Sharkey and Cutchen and Hayes, staring at her laptop like it was some oracle that would divine their future when it decided the time was right. Nobody was speaking and it was pretty much like that all over camp: just go about your duties and lose yourselves in your work and when you had to talk to others, keep it light and filled with fluff. Talk about how long the winter was and how this was your last one, what you were going to do when you got back to the world. Regardless, don’t talk about what was happening and what was s
till to come.

  So they sat and waited, waited for Gates to come online. He was still up at the tent camp, at the excavation, and he had emailed Sharkey that he wanted to talk to her, but not on the radio. Hayes thought that was funny, odd . . . but then again, he was seeing everything a little off-kilter these days. For him, there were spooks and conspiracies behind every tree.

  Good healthy paranoia, he liked to tell himself, sometimes it’s all that can save your bacon.

  When he thought about it, tried to get a handle on things and balance them out in his mind, he could not be sure anymore just when the knowledge that things were fucked up at Kharkhov Station had come to him. True, he had had a bad feeling in his gut from the first moment he had arrived at the camp. And there had been no real reason for it, none whatsoever. But it had lingered on like a summer cold, annoying him and, at times, making him think that he was losing his mind. It wasn’t until word had come about Gates finding those mummies and those ruins, that whatever was in his belly really started chewing at him and when he’d seen those awful things in Hut #6 that day —the day Lind had gone mad — he somehow knew they were all in dreadful danger. And that was the funny part of it all, the things he knew. Sometimes when he started talking, he said things that he did not know to be true, but was certain of nonetheless. For example, he did not know that there was a direct link between the mummies and the living ones down in Lake Vordog, yet he was sure there was. Just as he was sure that the Old Ones wanted their minds and that men knew them from the dim past, that the hatred and terror they inspired was carried inside him and the others as some sort of race memory.

  Christ, a therapist would have had a field day with him and he knew it, yet the certainty of these things remained.

  Hayes was having the dreams like everyone else, but it was more than that for him. He had had that thing out in the hut invade his mind and nearly destroy him, but unlike Meiner and St. Ours, he had survived the invasion. Maybe this gave him an edge and maybe some of that telepathy was still cooking in his head. Regardless, he knew there were connections here between all these things and they were the sort you could hang yourself from.