Macready joins her, grabbing her by her right hand and yanking on.
Behind them other thuds of the creature make the terrain tremble, accompanied by shots fired from Ironside.
The abomination has almost reached the incendiary canister, when machine-gun fire centers the articulation of one of the legs. The sound of shattered bones is loud, and the monstrosity stumbles, crumbling to the ground. While keeping firing, Ironside lowers his aim, directing another burst onto the explosive, which detonates with a loud roar.
The creature swoops down in a devastating fire barrier that completely surrounds it. The surrogate of napalm sticks like a gel on its body, burning violently.
A hellish roar echoes in the desert, as the monster burns.
This is not enough to stop the creature. Its broken leg recovers soon part of its functionality, and the burning monster takes on a ramshackle march towards the armored vehicle, now at less than twenty meters.
Macready and Moore reach the vehicle. With some agility despite her bandaged left hand, she gets inside and quickly hands to the soldier two incendiary canisters taken from the interior. Macready grabs them on the fly, moving to the front of the vehicle to throw them to the abomination that keeps approaching. From the chest of the flaming creature emerge new tentacular appendages, which detach from the main mass and fall writhing to the ground. The newly formed creatures then develop crude insect limbs, with which they begin to move snaking on the ground, heading for the vehicle with the three survivors.
Ironside fires a barrage at the main body, hitting one of its big forelimbs. This one breaks, collapsing the entire creature to the ground. The mass of screaming flesh stirs in the flames for some long moments, then it stands still, keeping burning.
The two yellow plastic containers launched by Macready fall a few meters in front of the vehicle, but the soldier is already back in the car, attempting to start it.
After a few moments that seem eternal, the armored vehicle has a start and begins to move backward.
Creatures like giant centipedes move zigzagging on the ground, getting near the two canisters.
Almost sensing the danger, the monstrosities stop their run, then move sideways.
Suddenly the machine gun jams.
«Shoot the cans!», Macready shouts, stopping the vehicle.
«The machine-gun is jammed. I think it has overheated"», Ironside answers from outside.
«Holy Christ», Macready curses between his clenched teeth.
Ironside looks at the movements of the creatures. They have stopped their run a few meters from the cans with the incendiary mixture.
Those that appear as horrific centipedes, but as big as a large boa, approach each other. A pattern of protoplasmic offshoots protrudes from the surface of each of them, intertwining to form new tissue.
The creatures begins a rapid melting process.
«Something's happening!», Ironside exclaims. «They have stopped a few steps from the cans. I think they're turning into something else.»
Macready mutters an obscenity, then he shoulders his assault rifle and checks the magazine, leaving the vehicle.
«Where are you going?», Moore shouts after him.
«It's a personal matter», his answer. The Major takes another canister and walks toward the mass of transforming flesh.
The being takes on the appearance of a shapeless lump. Macready looks while readying himself to shoot.
As the marine approaches, the ungainly plasma slowly forms the shape of a squatting human silhouette.
A figure with its head down, bowed on itself to the ground.
What the hell...
The creature rises slowly. Macready is a dozen meters and he can now make out more details.
The monstrosity evolves quickly. Its shapeless mass takes new details. New muscles, blood vessels and bones are formed. A strange feeling sneaks into the soldier, as he sees a face modeling right before his eyes. Fingers sprout like mushrooms out of rough shaped hands. A sense of hypnotic stupor and family warmth makes its way into him.
«What is he doing?», Moore asking to Ironside. «Why doesn't he shoot?»
The man doesn't reply, intent on watching the scene with binoculars.
While a person's body forms before the eyes of Macready, more nuances continue to emerge, as drawn by an invisible artist. Dark hair grows on its head, as quickly as a full beard on its face.
The heart of the Major seems to become heavier, while the creature's chest rises, taking a deep breath.
The transformation is completed, the being opens its eyes, looking around. Then it focuses its gaze on him, staring at him intently.
«You can't...», murmurs Macready. «R.J...»
Mesmerized by the figure materialized in front of his eyes, and pervaded by a sense of numbness that flows tempting in his veins, the Major doesn't notice the small movements of the sand in front of the creature. The sand bumps, as if something is making its way into the ground, snaking slowly toward him.
The being moves its head, as if to stretch the neck muscles. The features of its face, just meters from Macready, relax. Its mouth opens in a friendly smile, its eyes watching him with a mild stare.
«You look really messy, Albie...»
The sense of loss of the Major leaves space to a profound sense of sadness. Meanwhile the thing crawling in the sand is now two meters from him.
Hearing those words, many thoughts stir in Macready's mind. Memories come to the surface, almost violently, as driven by an external source.
Scenes of his childhood with his older brother. The moments lived when he came back from Vietnam, so changed and restless. The difficulties when he started drinking, until that day when he decided to take the job in Antarctica in a desperate attempt to escape his demons.
Suddenly, that moment of stasis gives way to a high-speed movie, taking Macready back to the present.
The machine gun on the armored vehicle unlocks, and Ironside doesn't waste any time. A burst centers in full one of the canisters launched earlier by Macready.
At the same time a tentacle squirts out of the sand, darting towards the Major's face.
The man has lowered his guard in those fractions of a second when his mind was a jungle of thoughts. He looks at the tip of one tentacle opening in a vertical mouth bristling with fangs of a metallic black.
The fireball and shock wave caused by the explosion of the incendiary mixture hits the creature, wrapping and throwing it to the ground a few meters away. At the same moment the tentacle that has almost reached Macready's face retracts, pulled away by the rapid movement of the creature on whose foot it is attached.
Macready keeps watching the thing that for a few moments had taken on the appearance of his brother, writhing in the flames. The monster lets out a terrifying roar that seems to resonate in a cavity of the earth, while the Major moves away running.
Other tentacles burst out from the sand, leaning in his direction, but they are short-lived. Another burst of Ironside hits the canister abandoned by Macready few moments before. The explosion forms a second burning cloud, which expands quickly reaching the first. The sand is burning, seething, while other tentacles struggle in the flames, whipping the air.
The horrendous groans issued by the flaming creature slowly become silent.
It stops squirming, almost simultaneously.
* * *
Slender black smoke plumes mark the places where the creatures are burning.
Macready, Moore and Ironside are under an open hangar. The massive roof of the structure protects them from the sun nearing the zenith.
The three people take stock of the situation, preparing for the arrival of rescue teams.
Macready thanks the other two for saving his life. Ironside barely nods.
«Why did you hesitate?», Moore asks. The woman watched from a distance the last transformation of the creature. She could not see the details, but the imitation seemed to resemble the older man in the picture she had found in the Major's
room.
Macready's gaze moves back, as if to look at his own memories with his mind's eye. «I had a brother. He was a very tough guy. One of the few to come back in one piece from Vietnam, at least physically. He raised me, and I must thank his stubbornness if I wear this uniform now. He was on duty at that damn American outpost in Antarctica, 1982.»
The man remains silent for a moment, then he goes on: «It was right before my eyes, I saw it forming, I knew it was one of those monsters, and yet... When he opened his eyes and looked at me... His look, the way he spoke and smiled... It was him, he was my brother. I felt his presence, it was not a simple imitation.»
«Ivanov said something about...», Ironside intervenes after a few moments of silence.
«Yes», Moore goes on. «He said that despite years and years of studies, they had not been able to determine whether the imitations were completely unaware of being so, or it was just a perfect acting by the creature.»
«I'm afraid we'll never know», Ironside adds.
«Not necessarily», Moore.
The two men raise their eyes, watching her uncertain.
«The test with the electricity has failed...», she continues the scientist, «...and the three of us have not been in sight of each other for all the time. We can't be entirely sure that all the three of us are humans.»
The woman waits, allowing time for the two to assimilate her words. The two men take one step backwards.
«We know that the creature is treacherous and clever at hiding. It has withstood the test with fire and with electricity and it has proved its capacity to sacrifice a part of itself to survive. The three of us fought to destroy it, but we can't rule out that one of us is pretending.»
«If we were all three of the creatures we wouldn't cooperate to eliminate it, and if two of us were of those beings, they would have already attacked the third. This means that one thing is certain: two of us are definitely human», Ironside exclaims.
«We can't be sure of anything», replies the woman. «Not until I can do sure testing of our blood in a proper laboratory.»
«We could use battery acid, as you said before», proposes Macready.
«The creature has learned to resist fire and electricity, it can't be ruled out for certain whether it has learned to resist the attack of acids or not», she says.
«Wait», Macready intervenes. «If you were one of those monsters, you could have infected me earlier when I've practiced artificial respiration, but I am sure of being human, so you have to be too.»
«And if you two were replicas, you would have attacked me», Ironside's conclusion. «I think we can rule out the possibility that one of us is playing, right?»
«Unfortunately it isn't so simple», Moore adds. «If imitations aren't aware of being such, none of us can be certain to be human, no matter how sure about that. The only thing we can do is to stay in sight of each other and tell the truth to the rescue team. Hopefully they will handle the situation better than we did.»
The three stay silent for long moments, each lost in their own thoughts. Moore speaks first, giving voice to their thoughts. «There are things of which Ivanov spoke to me. At first I thought he had invented it all, but you have also seen that in the end he was not lying when he talked about the metamorphic organism. We must think about it, work on it, but right now I wouldn't rule out that the rest of his story might be true.»
«Why? What else did he say?», Ironside asks curiously. Macready just contracts his lips in a grimace.
«He talked about expeditions to Antarctica, the discovery of vestiges of civilization so remote that make you dizzy. Maybe we'll talk about this. What now matters is another aspect. According to him the creature was not from outer space, or at least not from the extraterrestrial aircraft mentioned in the story of the woman who was found frozen to death. Ivanov was convinced that these beings dwelled deep underground in Antarctica, under the blanket of ice.»
«Are you saying that there may be other creatures like that?», Macready asks.
«It's a possibility», she replies. «According to Ivanov, the genesis of these beings dates back to very distant times, when our planet was young and today's Antarctica was a continent with a mild and lush climate. If that were the case – and I speak in the conditional because everything is yet to be proven – if they wanted to, they could infect the entire planet and any animal species would no longer exist.»
«Why didn't they do this then?», Ironside asks.
«Who knows. Ivanov was convinced that these creatures had developed intelligence and knowledge far superior than those of humans. Maybe they realized that the total destruction of all forms of animal life could also mark their end. You know... if you eat everything you just remain with nothing, and eventually you die of starvation. However, now that I think about it, when I was studying at the university I read of an inexplicable phenomenon. At different times and in different parts of the world there are stories or other types of recordings – also relatively recent – of mysterious mass disappearances. In some cases entire villages have disappeared, or the human and animal populations of remote islands vanished without leaving traces. Sometimes the fish suddenly disappeared in a large area of ocean. Some pre-Columbian civilizations disappeared suddenly without a trace.»
«Are you suggesting that all these disappearances might have been caused by occasional visits on the surface by those beings?», says Macready.
«I'm saying that what we know about this creature could be the tip of a much larger iceberg than what we imagine. It's impossible to understand what goes through the mind of something that has existed for hundreds of millions of years. The questions of the Norwegian and American camp in Antarctica and what happened here in the desert, for us are shocking tragedies but for those creatures could only be the equivalent of an old woman looking out of the window to see what happens in the street, and then going back to sleep by the fireplace. We don't know if they have a mind or common intelligence. We know they can communicate in ways that we can't even imagine. Ivanov believed that they are telepathic and can share information between them about the genetic makeup of similar species, along with memories and experiences of their preys.»
«If this is true», Ironside says, «then we should take into account the possibility that these creatures aren't exclusively confined to the depths of the Antarctic continent. There may be other, around the world.»
«Yes, indeed. And now all of them are aware that on the surface there is an evolved race able to kill them», Macready's conclusion.
«It's a hypothesis yet to be confirmed», Moore, «but we can't rule it out. According to what Ivanov told me, these beings have already faced in the past species far more evolved than ours, and they have survived. No, they don't currently believe that we represent a danger but a potential opportunity.»
«Opportunity for what?», he asks Macready.
«Who can say? Further evolution, new scientific achievements. Perhaps they await the development of a technology capable of traveling between the stars, so that they can infiltrate other planets and close still open issues with their creators. After all, time isn't a problem for them, they can wait.»
«These are the questions about which we'll talk again, Emily», Ironside. «Now about us, what should we do now?»
Moore shrugs, hinting a sign of denial with her head.
«I know what we have to do». Macready stands up with a deep sigh, heading toward the armored vehicle located a few meters away.
Moore and Ironside exchange a questioning look. The Major rummages in the interior, coming back after a while with three incendiary canisters, and as many rifles.
«What do you want to do?», Ironside asks alarmed.
Macready is silent, his eyes are tired but show a conspiratorial half smile. He puts the three canisters on the ground, at the corners of an imaginary triangle, distance a dozen meters, each with one of the assault rifles next to it and ready with a bullet in the chamber. Then he takes a seat next to one o
f them nodding to the others to imitate him.
Ironside and Moore squat on the ground, sensing the Major's plan. The scientist takes her rifle as one who picks up a baby for the first time.
«Rescue teams shouldn't delay», the Major exclaims. «When they arrive – if the sun won't roast us before – we'll tell them what happened, and we'll tell them also to put each of us in armored quarantine until you find a safe way to prove that we are human beings. I just hope not to become a guinea pig... or one of those things.»
Ironside nods, then without speaking anymore he approaches one of the two canisters prepared by Macready. With a sigh he sits on the ground, placing the container on its side, on which to lean his head.
«These ghost bases should have an emergency pub outside», Ironside crosses his legs to get more comfortable. «I hope that the rescue teams won't delay in coming.»
«I hope they have a beer!», Macready adds.
Moore doesn't seem to listen to them, she's deep in thoughts.
«When Ivanov told us about the American outpost... The two men found frozen to death, aiming their weapons at each other...»
«Because neither of them could be sure that the other was human or not», Macready's voice sounds tired.
«This brings us back to us. Until the help arrives, we will stay together, although at a distance, but on sight. And everyone will always bring with them their weapons and incendiary mixture. For now we can't do anything but wait.. See what happens...»
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T H E E N D
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Some thoughts and Credits
First of all, I wish to thank my wife, who has had the patience to read and correct this story despite the genre was not among her favorites.
Thanks also to my good friend Andrea, who has helped me a lot with the translation.
I love At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P. Lovecraft. I read that story many times since I was a child, and I'd really love to see a movie adaptation. I liked the novel Who Goes There, by J. W. Campbell jr. and The Thing from Another World. Those b&w science fiction movies have a timeless appeal for those who, like me, grew up dreaming about Flash Gordon and Doctor Who.
Cellular Activity- The Djinn Page 27