Hive

by Tim Curran

  He was having trouble putting it into words, but the feeling was always there. Like maybe the lot of them had already been assimilated into the communal mind of those things. That they were already lost to him. Whatever it was, it made his guts roll over, made him feel like he could vomit out his liver.

  “Good. I’ve been feeling that way all day . . . like there’s nothing behind their eyes,” she admitted. “And all over camp . . . well, something’s making my skin crawl and I’m not sure what it is.”

  Hayes stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m willing to bet we’re going to find out real soon. Because this isn’t over. I know it isn’t over. And I’m just waiting for the ball to drop.”

  35

  When the ball did in fact drop the next afternoon, Hayes was lucky enough ... or unlucky enough ... to have it pretty much drop at his feet. He and Sharkey and Cutchen had decided on a plan of attack which was to do absolutely nothing. Just to go about their jobs and to not even mention what had happened before and what might be happening now.

  But to keep their eyes open and their minds, too.

  For Hayes, there was always work to be done. The energy supply at the Kharkhov Station was supplied by no less than five diesel generators, two wind-turbine generators, grid reactive boilers, and fuel-fired boilers. All of which were run through a central power station control system. Most days he pretty much sat at his computer in a booth at the power station and studied read-outs, crunched numbers, and made sure everything was operating at peak efficiency. But then there were the other days that demanded physical maintenance. And today was one of those.

  He was glad for it.

  Glad to climb into his heated coveralls and get some tools in his hands. Get dirty and sweaty and cold, anything to be doing something other than letting his imagination have full reign.

  He shut the diesel generators down in sequence, changing their oil and putting in new fuel and air filters. He tested fuel injection nozzles and drained cooling systems. Inspected air cleaners and flame arrestors, checked the governors. When he had the generators back on-line, he went after the boilers. He checked fuel systems and feed pumps, he reconditioned safety valves and inspected mercury switches, recorded gas and oil pressures, checked the cams and limit controls. Then he shut down the wind turbines and made physical inspections of their alternators and regulators. He spent most of the day at it.

  It was demanding, time-consuming work.

  And when he was done, he was sore and aching and pleased as always after putting in a hard day’s work. There was something about a day of manual labor that steadied something in the human beast. Got it on an even plane. Maybe when the muscles woke up, the intellect shut down and that always wasn’t a bad thing.

  Especially at the South Pole.

  And especially that winter.

  Finally, though, Hayes called it a day and climbed into his ECW’s, which consisted of a polar fleece jacket and wool pants, wool hat and mittens, balaclava and goggles. As soon as he stepped out into the winter darkness, the winds found him. Did their damnedest to either carry him into that black, brooding sky or knock him flat. He took hold of the guylines and never let go.

  Cutchen’s prediction of a Condition One storm became a reality. The wind was rumbling and howling and moaning, making the structures of Kharkhov Station shake and creak. The snow came whipping through the compound, obscuring everything, knocking visibility down to less than ten feet at times. Three-foot drifts were blown over the walkways. Snow-devils funneled along the hard-pack.

  Hayes struggled along, the wind pulling at him, finely ground ice particles blasting into him. He could see the security lights outside the buildings and huts and the blizzard made them look like searchlights coming through thick fog. They glowed orange and yellow and murky, trembling on their poles.

  As he followed the guylines to Targa House, he suddenly became aware that faces were pressed up against the windows. He wasn’t sure at first, but the nearer he got, yeah, those were faces pressed up to the frosty windows.

  Was his plight that entertaining?

  The wind shifted and he heard what he first took to be the muted growl of some beast echoing across the ice-fields, then he realized it was an engine. He stopped and looked into the wind, snow spraying into his face. He could see the lights of the compound . . . the far-flung huts and even the meteorology dome . . . but nothing else. The blizzard hammered into him and nearly knocked him over like a post . . . and then it died out some, still howling and screeching, but sounding like it was old and tired now and in need of a rest.

  And that’s when Hayes saw those other lights, four of them in fact. Two below and two above coming out of the storm, coming down the ice-road past the meteorology dome. He was hearing the engine now, too . . . noisy, rattling diesel being down-shifted. The roar of the engine, the grinding of gears.

  Jesus, it was the Spryte from Gates’ camp. It had to be.

  The Spryte was a small, tracked utility vehicle for ferrying men and supplies back and forth. It looked roughly like a bright red box sitting on caterpillar treads.

  What in the hell?

  The storm was taking a momentary breather, but the wind was still strong, but not strong enough to stay Hayes’ curiosity. They hadn’t heard from Gates in days and now here came the Spryte. Hayes stepped over the guylines and walked out into the compound. The sound of that approaching engine was getting louder, the lights brighter.

  People were coming out of Targa House now, wearing goggles and parkas, straining into the wind. They were carrying lanterns and flashlights. Looked like a mob of angry villagers from an old Frankenstein movie.

  Rutkowski came up behind Hayes. “What the fuck’s going on, Jimmy?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  He stood there in the wind, watching the Spryte coming on. The others were circled behind him in a loose knot. It took a lot to get people out on a night like that, but something like this, well, it drew them like metal filings to a magnet.

  “Sodermark tried to raise ‘em on the radio, but they’re not responding,” Sharkey said as she joined the group out there.

  Hayes stared off into the night through his goggles. His beard was already stiff and frozen. His breath and that of the others billowing out in great, frosty clouds that turned on the wind. Cold-pinched faces waited and wondered. A light snow was coming down now, just as fine and white as beach sand.

  “Look!” somebody cried out. “You see that?”

  Hayes didn’t at first, but now he did.

  And seeing it, he had to stop and blink, brush snow from his goggles because he couldn’t really be seeing what he thought he was seeing. His heart caught in his chest, held painfully there for a moment like an animal caught in tar. This can’t be good, a voice in his head was telling him. As far as developments go, this is next door to shitty.

  Somebody behind him gasped and somebody else swore under their breath.

  What they were looking at was a lone form out there, running and stumbling before the Spryte, managing to keep just ahead of it, but barely. At first Hayes thought the Spryte was chasing the figure to catch up with it, but now it didn’t look like that at all.

  It looked like they were trying to run him over.

  “Holy shit,” somebody said.

  “Rutkowski? Go get me one of those rifles,” Hayes snapped. “And make sure it’s fucking loaded.”

  Then he was running, the wind propelling him forward and then doing its damnedest to pitch him sideways. He pounded through drifts, slipping on his ass only once. The others were coming, too, but staying behind him like they wanted him to see it first.

  “Hey!” Hayes called out as he got in closer. “Hey! Duck behind that hut! Duck behind that fucking hut . . . it’s almost on you!”

  The figure drunkenly zigged and zagged, went face down in the snow and crab-crawled frantically forward like a kid in gym class doing barrel crawls. But no kid ever had to plow through three- and four-foot drifts, keep his
footing on pack-ice while the wind screamed into him at fifty and sixty miles an hour. And no kid ever had to do this in a bulky parka with the wind chill dipping down to seventy below zero.

  Hayes was shouting at the lone man and at the driver of the Spryte, but it was doing him no good. With a sickening realization, he knew that the Spryte was going to overtake the man and was going to crush him beneath its treads. The figure got to his feet, moved off to the left and the Spryte compensated, its treads creaking as it came around. The Spryte was bearing down on him and Hayes was just too damn far away to do anything. People were shouting out behind him and he made one last valiant dash, but he lost his footing and went down in a drift, coming back up with his face covered in snow. He frantically pawed it away.

  The man fell.

  But he saw Hayes.

  He was shaking his head back and forth, shouting something, but Hayes couldn’t hear what it was in the racket of the Spryte’s engine. The lights of the Spryte were glaring and intense, snow swirling in their beams. Hayes could just make out a dim figure in the cab.

  Where in the fuck was Rutkowski with that gun?

  He heard Sharkey scream his name and then the Spryte rolled right over that lone figure in the snow, those jointed tracks crushing him with a popping, wet sound that was meaty, organic, and brutal. The Spryte lurched as it went over him, leaving nothing but a red and ripped heap in its wake.

  And then it was coming at Hayes.

  “Oh, shit,” he said under his breath, backing away now, preparing to break into a run.

  But the Spryte stopped dead. Downshifted, started in reverse with a jerk as whoever was in that cab worked the stick roughly. There was no doubt what was happening: this crazy bastard was going to roll right over the body again.

  The Spryte backed up and did just that and suddenly Rutkowski was there with the rifle in his hands, just standing there, speechless.

  “Shoot that motherfucker!” Hayes told him.

  But Rutkowski stood there, seeing that spreading red stain in the snow, smelling the blood and macerated flesh and he could not move.

  Hayes took the rifle from his hands.

  It was just a little bolt-action .22 survival rifle. He brought it up and popped a round through the cab. Worked the bolt and put another through there. He saw the bullet holes in the wide, sloping windshield. Saw the second bullet make the form in there throw its hands up and fall over.

  The Spryte stopped.

  Right on top of the body.

  Hayes scrambled around the side of the cab and brought the rifle up, ready to finish the job and knowing that if anybody even so much as got in his way they were going to get a rifle-butt upside the head.

  But nobody did.

  They came up, but stayed a good distance away. Cutchen was there with Sharkey. Koricki and Sodermark. Stotts, Biggs, and Rutkowski. A few of the scientists. Nobody was saying a thing. The engine died on the Spryte and the door to the cab swung open and then shut again as the wind took it. Then it slammed open again and whoever was in there stepped out and onto the treads.

  It was Holm.

  The geologist from Gates’ team. He just stood up on the treads like a politician preparing to make a speech. He wore a parka, but no hat. His white hair rustled in the wind. His face was the color of boiled bone.

  “Holm?” Hayes said to him, wondering if he’d really hit him with the .22 or not. For he seemed perfectly healthy. “Holm? Goddammit, Holm, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Watch it, Jimmy,” Rutkowski said. “There’s something funny here.”

  Oh yeah, there definitely was.

  Holm hopped off the treads, down into the snow and stepped forward even as Hayes stepped back. Holm was a skinny old guy in his sixties and Hayes could have broke him over his knee without working up a sweat . . . yet, at that moment it would have been hard to picture a more dangerous man than Holm. There was something cold and remorseless about him.

  “Holm . . . “ Hayes said.

  Holm was looking at him and his eyes were filled with a chill blankness. There was nothing in them. Nothing human at any rate. He surveyed Hayes with a flat indifference, that pallid face punched with two black eyes that made something go liquid in Hayes’ belly. You didn’t want to spend too much time looking into those eyes. They were like windows looking through into some godless, dead-end of space. You could see yourself there, suffocating in that deranged, airless void.

  Hayes swallowed.

  Those eyes drilled into him, sucking him dry.

  There was power in those eyes, something immense and malignant and ancient. The way Hayes was feeling at that moment was how he felt looking into those glassy red orbs of the aliens in Hut #6. They got inside you, owned you, crushed your free will like a spider under a boot. At some primary level, they consumed and swallowed you. And you could feel all that you were sliding down into some black, soundless gullet.

  Hayes made a squeaking sound in his throat, but that was it.

  What he was feeling was awful . . . gut-deep and bone-cold and he was powerless to refuse it. It was like waking up in a coffin and hearing dirt thud against the lid . . . but having no voice with which to scream.

  “Jimmy,” Sharkey said. “Get away from him . . . get away from him right now.”

  Her voice was like a slap across the face. Hayes blinked and stumbled backward, almost fell as his feet skated out in opposite directions. But his mind came back and the world swam into view. And as it did, he was remembering the night they chatted with Gates on the Internet. He could still see those threatening words on the screen:

  you are in danger if I or others return watch us close very close something not right with holm I think they have his mind now

  This was how Hayes knew the ball had dropped.

  He brought the gun up. “All right, Holm, no closer. Next one goes between your eyes. Where’s Gates? Bryer? The others? What have you done with them?”

  Holm cocked his head slightly to one side like a puppy, but the effect was hardly cute . . . it was offensive and loathsome like feeling a spider unfurling its legs in your palm. It gave Hayes the same sense of atavistic revulsion. It actually made him take a step backward. His breath caught in his throat.

  “Where’s Gates?” he said again, noticing how weak and puny his voice seemed in the icy blackness of the night.

  “Shoot him,” Rutkowski said. “Put that fucking animal down. Look what he did . . . just look at what he did . . . “

  But Hayes wasn’t going to look.

  He did not dare take his eyes away from Holm. Not for an instant. He was not looking at his eyes, but lower where the collar of his parka nestled against his chin. To look in those eyes was to see graveyards and misting hollows choked with bones. To look in those eyes was to feel the sweet poison of death pulling you down to sterile plains.

  Holm stepped forward, paused, looked at Hayes with an arcane sort of amusement. The way you might look at a dog that had learned to sit up and beg or one of those cute monkeys that could turn the crank of an organ grinder. It was something like that. No fear or concern about Hayes and the rifle in his hands, but just a profound and boundless amusement at it all.

  “Well somebody do something,” another voice said. “Before I lose my fucking mind here.”

  The night was bunched around them, huge and black and freezing. The wind was still blowing and that powder of snow was still falling, blowing over those gathered there, dancing in the beams of the lights they held and the dimming beams of the Spryte. Holm was breathing very fast, the sound of it like somebody drawing air through crackling, dry hay. Each time he exhaled a cloud of frost gathered and dissipated.

  Hayes could hear that wind moaning around the buildings, the sound of boots rocking uneasily on the hardpack snow.

  Holm took another bold step forward, as if daring Hayes to put him down. He moved quickly with an almost fluidic motion, a vitality an old man had no right to possess. Hayes figured that, even
though there was six feet separating them, Holm would have been on him before he even pulled the trigger. He was staring at Hayes and his eyes were wet and glistening, horribly dilated so that the iris and sclera of both eyes were swallowed by those fixed and expansive pupils. They were glassy and reflective.

  Holm opened his mouth in something like a snarl, showing those even white teeth that were probably dentures. A sibilant hissing came from his throat, gaining volume and scratching up into a voice: “Gates? Gates is dead... we’re all dead... “

  Hayes almost shot him right then.

  That voice was just too much. It was utterly inhuman, like the echo of subterranean water trying to form words. Holm smiled at what he had said and made a lunge at Hayes. He wasn’t as quick as he seemed at first and Hayes sidestepped him and brought the rifle butt down on his temple. Holm went to his knees immediately, but did not make a sound. Unless the howling wind was his voice, echoing off into the night, sweeping across that lonesome and ancient polar plain.

  “All right,” Hayes said. “Somebody get some rope or chain or something. We’ll tie him up and bring him inside.”

  “Just kill him, Jimmy,” Stotts said. “Do it, Jimmy . . . look at those eyes . . . nothing sane has eyes like that.”

  Rutkowski and Biggs came over, as did Sodermark and one of the scientists, a seismologist named Hinks, who spent most of his time out at remote tracking stations and was not privy to the majority of the madness at Kharkhov Station. Carefully then, Hayes handing off his rifle to Sharkey, they surrounded Holm.

  “Get up,” Rutkowski told him. “While you still fucking can.”

  Holm looked up at them with that same almost insipid blankness. His black eyes like those of a grasshopper considering a stalk of grass. That’s how they looked . . . unintelligent, completely vacant. At least at that moment. But Hayes knew those eyes and what they could do. One minute they were dead and empty, the next overflowing with all the knowledge of the cosmos.