Subhuman

by Michael McBride

“You don’t have a choice!”

  He pulled her out onto the slick pipes and guided her past him to the next vertical cable before offering his hand to whoever was next, but Friden was already crawling past him on all fours with Anya right behind him.

  Roche made the mistake of looking down and quickly closed his eyes, but the damage was done. Long icicles hung from the pipes and formed a crystalline lattice over the supports of the arch, beyond which the ground only intermittently appeared through the blowing snow, so far down that the jagged rocks jutting from the windswept accumulation looked like a broken beer bottle.

  A brutal gust nearly wrenched him from his perch.

  “Hurry!” he shouted, and grabbed Kelly’s hand as she lunged for him. Her foot slipped, forcing him to grab her around the torso and pull her to him. He’d barely regained his balance when Evans dove past his feet and slid across the pipes.

  Roche looked back in time to see the creature emerge from the icy tunnel.

  “Go,” he said, and eased Kelly across his body, toward the opposite side.

  “Not without you.”

  “Please,” he whispered, but the howling wind stole the word from his lips.

  He turned his back to her and faced the creature as it stepped down from the ledge and onto the frozen pipes.

  Clack.

  Clack.

  “Don’t come any farther,” Roche said, although he knew it was a hollow threat.

  He planted one foot on each pipe and grabbed the cables to either side. It was going to have to go through him to get to the others. He hoped they were taking advantage of every second he was able to buy them.

  It lowered itself to its haunches and advanced in a loping crouch.

  Clack-clack.

  Clack-clack.

  Its nails bit into the ice and scratched the metal underneath.

  Roche took several quick steps backward and caught the cables again.

  The creature effortlessly matched his retreat.

  The clanging of footsteps on the pipes behind him was swallowed by the screaming wind, which hit him hard enough to make his feet slide on the ice. He struggled to maintain his traction. The creature used the opportunity to halve the distance between them. It was now well within striking distance.

  A hideous smile formed on its misshapen face. Within its eyes, Roche saw a being of pure evil, one not only well aware of its nature, but one that fully embraced it.

  Roche had to stop it. Right here. Right now.

  Regardless of the cost.

  He staggered backward and braced himself for what he had to do next. He wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Clack-clack.

  Clack-clack.

  Its muscular form tensed in anticipation, ready to strike.

  “I have one question for you.” Roche locked eyes with the creature and prayed his expression didn’t betray his intent. “Can you fly?”

  He dove straight at it. Wrapped his arms around its slick skin. Drove it to the pipes.

  Roche held on for everything he was worth and rolled over the edge, taking the creature with him.

  56

  EVANS

  Evans was maybe a quarter of the way across the chasm when he glanced back and recognized what was about to happen.

  He whirled and sprinted toward where Roche tackled the creature and dove the second he had solid footing. He hit the pipes on his chest and slid across the ice. His legs swung outward and rebounded from the vertical supports, nearly throwing him off the other side. He grabbed a cable and wrapped his arm around it as tightly as he could as he careened out over the open air. With his other hand he reached for Roche and managed to grab the hood of his jacket as he plummeted into the storm.

  The other man’s momentum nearly pried the cable from his grasp.

  Evans shouted in agony as the metal braids bit into his palm and biceps. He wedged his leg under one of the brackets binding the pipes together and wrapped the other around their combined girth.

  “Hold still!” he yelled.

  Roche thrashed as though in an effort to take Evans with him.

  Evans looked down and saw that it wasn’t Roche at all, but rather the creature, which had managed to bury its claws into Roche’s thigh. It tried to pull itself up, but only succeeded in tearing Roche’s pants to the knee and darkening the fabric with blood in the process. Crimson droplets dripped from Roche’s foot and joined the blowing snow.

  “Let me go!” Roche shouted.

  Evans’s reply came out as a pained bellow. There was no way he was letting go. He didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to hold on, though.

  Roche reached up and took him by the wrist. Craned his neck to see around his hood.

  “You have to let me go.”

  “You go,” Evans grunted. “I go.”

  The distant ground momentarily materialized from the storm, more than a hundred feet down.

  Roche looked away and reached for the zipper on his jacket.

  “No!” Evans shouted.

  He pulled on the cable with everything he had, but didn’t rise in the slightest. There was simply too much weight.

  The creature thrashed and scrabbled. Released a high-pitched scream.

  Jade threw herself to the ice in front of Evans and grabbed him by the back of his jacket. Pulled as hard as she could. Friden joined her and together they were actually able to raise him far enough that he could readjust his grip on the cable.

  The creature jerked against them and nearly took them all over the edge.

  Kelly picked her way around and over Jade and Friden. It looked like she was going to go back into the mountain when she stopped, carefully knelt, and picked up an icicle. It was easily two feet long, and although its tip was broken, looked sharp enough to do serious damage.

  She crawled to the edge beside Evans, worked her feet into the gap between the pipes and the bracket, and leaned out over the edge. Her eyes widened in terror and she screamed with the pressure on her knees. Swung the icicle. Hit the creature squarely on the shoulder.

  It looked up at her, scurried around to Roche’s back, and started to climb again.

  Roche shouted in pain as the claws punctured his flesh from his thighs up his buttocks and to his back—

  The shift of weight caused Evans to lose his grip. The cable burned his frozen hand, and were it not for Jade and Friden, he would have been halfway to the bottom of the canyon.

  Anya knelt beside the cable, wrapped her arm around it, and grabbed a fistful of his jacket with her free hand.

  Roche tugged at his zipper, but could only jerk it downward in tiny increments thanks to the weight pulling against the teeth.

  The wind gusted and assailed them with snowflakes the size of moths.

  The strain was more than Evans could bear. He could practically feel his rotator cuff tearing as his shoulder separated.

  Kelly swung the icicle like a bat, but the creature managed to ward off the blow with its forearm.

  Evans cried out and dropped several inches. He looked up and saw the strain on Jade’s face. She wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer.

  He realized what he needed to do.

  Jade saw it on his face.

  “Don’t you dare! Do you hear me? Don’t even think about it!”

  The metal braids sliced through his palm as he slid another couple of inches. Rivulets of warm blood trickled down into his sleeve.

  Searing pain in his ankle.

  The creature’s claws cut through his boot and skin alike. He felt them inside of him, against the bone.

  It was trying to crawl from Roche to him.

  He had to do something now. Before it was too late for the others.

  “I . . . go,” the creature said. “You . . . go.”

  The sound of its voice was worse even than the pain. Evans stared down at it and into the eyes of the entity that was responsible for the abandonment of Akhetaten and so many other primitive societies, and finally understood w
hy the alien remains had been entombed where they never should have been found. The petroglyphs in Egypt and Peru hadn’t been left as a record, but rather as a warning.

  It narrowed its eyes and seemed to look straight into him, its stare like needles prodding his flesh.

  “We . . . know . . . you . . . now.”

  The icicle streaked across Evans’s peripheral vision and struck the creature in the head.

  Thunk.

  The icicle shattered.

  The malevolent expression vanished.

  Its mouth went slack.

  The claws tore down through his boot and disengaged from his foot.

  Evans fought through the pain and clung to the cable.

  The creature toppled backward and vanished into the storm.

  His burden lightened, Evans pulled with everything he had left. Roche grabbed onto his legs and transferred his weight to the supporting arch.

  Evans got one leg up and used it to pull himself onto the pipes. He buried his face between them and hugged them for dear life while the others dragged Roche up beside him.

  Jade knelt in front of him and lifted his chin, forcing his eyes to meet hers.

  “That was the stupidest thing anyone’s ever done. You know that, don’t you?”

  She kissed him on the forehead and set about helping the others cross the bridge.

  Evans leaned over the side and looked down, but he couldn’t see a blasted thing through the blowing snow.

  57

  JADE

  The pipes led to an orifice on the far side. Like the one on the adjacent mountain, it took some work to break through the ice, but they managed to get out of the elements before any of them lost fingers or toes. The pipes divided and went straight up a shaft to either side of an iron ladder, the rungs of which were so cold they threatened to absolve Jade of her fingerprints. The garage was reasonably warm, all things considered. At least the structure was intact and shielded them from the storm, which was about as much as they could hope for under the circumstances.

  Jade breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the makeshift medical kit was still where they’d left it. It was probably the only thing that had gone their way in the last forty-eight hours. The wounds on Roche’s legs had been so deep they would have needed stitches under normal conditions, but the best Jade could do was clean, bandage, and cover them as tightly as possible with whatever scraps of fabric she could find.

  Evans’s ankle had required additional immobilization and threats of violence if he didn’t sit down and take his weight off of it. The others exhibited varying degrees of shock. The focus required to treat them helped her to suppress her own.

  The silence in the garage was interrupted only by the howling gusts of wind that shook the structure hard enough to rattle the tools hanging on the walls and in the cabinets leaning against them. Eventually, she and the others would have to talk about their ordeal, but for now it was enough to be warm, safe, and in the presence of other human beings.

  Jade made sure everyone was comfortable before ducking through the door between the massive garage bays and out into the storm. It wasn’t snowing nearly as hard as it had been, although it had somehow managed to get even colder. She had trouble manipulating her hands well enough to chisel the ice from the handle of one of the arctic vehicles while balancing on its tank-tracks, but the door opened easily enough once she managed to do so. After trying a dozen keys on as many key chains, she found the one she needed and cranked the ignition. The engine roared and blasted her with heat from the vent in the dashboard.

  There was probably enough room for them all to squeeze inside, but she didn’t relish the prospect of trying to drive down whatever nightmare of a road led to Troll Station any more than she liked the idea of attempting to belay down the elevator shaft in hopes of using the submersible to reach Snow Fell. She was just fine killing time in the garage until the helicopter from McMurdo was able to reach them, thank you.

  The console looked more like the control panel of an airplane than any vehicle she’d ever driven. The inset digital monitor featured readouts for functions she didn’t immediately recognize. She found the knobs that controlled the headlights, windshield wipers, and the heater, which she dialed up as far as it would go and turned every vent so that it blew into her face. She found what she had prayed would be there affixed to the side of the dashboard and attached by a coiled wire to what looked like a car stereo. She turned it on and the cab buzzed with static.

  Jade pressed the button and spoke into the transceiver.

  “Can anybody hear me?”

  She released the button and held her breath. Whatever bandwidth was already dialed in was undoubtedly set to a channel designated for routine communications, although likely one only the station used. She prayed the transceiver was powerful enough to reach Troll Station.

  Jade dialed through the channels, one at a time.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Antarctic Research, Experimentation, and Analysis Station Fifty-one. We have an emergency. Does anyone out there copy?”

  Only static replied.

  “Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Antarctic Station Fifty-one. We have several dead. Others are wounded and in need of medical attention. Do you copy?”

  Surely there was someone out there. Anyone. There had to be somebody monitoring their situation.

  Again and again she tried. Channel 13, 14, 15.

  She was in tears by the time she reached 16. The desperation in her voice was palpable.

  “Please. Someone. This is Antarctic Station Fifty-one. This is an emergency. We need help.”

  “Copy, AREA Fifty-one. This is NGD. Acknowledge.”

  Jade sobbed in relief and talked so fast she could barely keep up with her own thoughts. The man on the other end listened dutifully and patiently and only interrupted for clarity. By the time she was done rambling, the adrenaline had fled her. She felt a level of exhaustion beyond anything she’d ever experienced, as though she could simply close her eyes and sleep right there, but something prevented her from doing so. She had a mental tip-of-the-tongue sensation, an elusive thought of seemingly great importance that she couldn’t quite grasp.

  And then it hit her.

  Snow Fell.

  She remembered the archaic German communications equipment and the question she had asked.

  Why would anyone in their right mind put a communications outpost all the way out here?

  It had been Roche who answered.

  They wouldn’t. There were no satellites back then. This is all short-range VHF equipment.

  The lettering above the display read: VHF MARINE.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “NGD, ma’am. McMurdo Station.”

  “No, it’s not.” It felt like the ground fell out from beneath her. “This is a VHF transceiver and McMurdo is two thousand miles away.”

  “You just sit tight and stay warm, ma’am. We already have a bird in the air. It ought to reach your location in under thirty minutes.”

  “Who is this? How did you know—?”

  A click preceded the eruption of static.

  Jade dropped the handset, killed the engine, and headed back to the garage as though in a trance. She found the others huddled for warmth, but separately from one another, as though proximity were an unwelcome reminder of everything they’d survived.

  Roche glanced up from where he was sprawled on the tabletop they’d cleared to serve as an examination table. He read something in her expression and raised his eyebrows to ask the question.

  She nearly broke down again, but regained her composure before speaking.

  “I found a radio in one of the cars and contacted someone who claimed to be at McMurdo.”

  “McMurdo’s on the other side of the continent,” Roche said. “You couldn’t raise them from here on a remote transceiver.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “What did he say?”

  “They already have a helicopt
er in the air and it’ll be here in under half an hour.”

  “Half an hour?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Did he identify himself?” Roche asked.

  “No.”

  “Could it have been someone from Troll Station?”

  “He didn’t have an accent and he terminated the connection as soon as I started asking questions.”

  “I don’t like this.”

  “You and me both.”

  Evans stood and tested his weight on his bandaged ankle.

  “I don’t care who sent the chopper as long as it takes me with it when it leaves.”

  “A helicopter can go maybe four hundred miles on a full tank of gas, at the most,” Roche said. “And I can’t imagine it being able to sustain speeds much greater than a hundred, hundred-ten miles an hour in this weather. So we’re looking at a point of origin within a two-hundred-mile radius and a dispatch time potentially as long as an hour and a half ago.”

  “Connor said it would take a minimum of eight hours to get here from McMurdo. Maybe they got ahold of someone closer and arranged transport for us.”

  Friden wrapped himself like a pupa in his tarp and shuffled over to them.

  “Why does everyone look so grim?”

  “We’re being evacuated within the half-hour,” Jade said.

  “No way. They must have some of those MKUltra psychics up there at McMurdo to get a chopper up here that fast.”

  “Or they were monitoring us the entire time,” Roche said.

  “Who?” Friden said. “McMurdo?”

  “It’s impossible to say for sure.”

  “You think someone tapped into the feed from the security cameras?” Evans said.

  “Trust me.” Roche hopped down from the workbench with a grimace of pain. “It’s not that hard to do.”

  “So what does it matter?” Evans asked.

  “Think about it. There’s no way anyone could get a chopper off the ground and up here so quickly, least of all from the opposite side of the continent—”

  “Unless they already had one ready and standing by for just this contingency,” Jade said.

  It all made sense, but if Roche was right, that meant that not only had someone known what they were attempting to do in the station, they’d been prepared for them to succeed.