by Неизвестный
The newborn horror expelled a reverberating cry from its myriad mouths, its breath like the stench of a charnel pit filled with thousands of decaying bodies. Realizing their danger too late, the assembled soldiers opened fire on the cosmic monster, but their bullets and rays merely sank into the beast’s flesh without harming it. In a rage, the creature threw out its tendrils and wrapped up its attackers two or three at a time. Wherever its skin touched them, it bit and chomped, nibbling them to bits and then moving on to its next prey. Several of the Martians ran for their parked ships. However, the behemoth appeared to understand their intentions and smashed their craft into smoking wrecks before snatching up the would-be pilots and devouring them whole. Moments after consuming the invaders, the mouths that had touched the aliens belched forth green ichor. Bellowing with pain, the monstrosity flailed its enormous arms in every direction. With a single strike, it crushed the compound’s west fence and obliterated the guard tower that stood at its crook. It then turned its ire on the warehouse.
Doubtlessly summoned back from their patrols by an emergency broadcast, several Martian ships sped on to the scene and strafed the creature with their blasters. Aside from a few scorched patches of skin, though, the beast seemed unhurt. Its fury piqued, it swatted at the buzzing craft with its rear tentacles, instantly knocking one out of the sky. As for its other arms, it used them to tear the roof off the bunker, with the ease of a child lifting away the foil cover off a frozen dinner. Like antediluvian serpents, the tendrils poked and prodded their way around the warehouse’s exposed guts. Upon sliding across the top of the Martian canon, the creature’s arms lingered a moment, and then entwined themselves around it. The beast tugged once, ripping the contraption off its moorings. As if wanting everyone present to see its furious might, it held the weapon aloft and squeezed its pseudopods, easily breaking the canon into three flaming pieces. Tossing each hunk of debris at least a mile away, the creature seemed to twist in place as if looking for something else to demolish. When it found only crumbling and smoking ruins, it sagged and dragged itself into the countryside, vomiting and salivating from a thousand orifices that had not yet had their fill of murder and destruction.
SHIPWRECKED
By David Lindblad
The sound of Hunter Noir’s footsteps echoed through the long dim hallway. Drab metal lights above caused his shadow to sway like a metronome as he moved beneath them. The meeting with the faceless higher-ups had been promising, and though he would never show it, he even felt a thrill through his grizzled and normally reserved frame. The war with those otherworldly freaks had been going on for so long it seemed there never had been a time without it. But this new intelligence? It had the potential to turn the tides in this awful and endless cycle of planetary skirmishes.
Hunter was holding the file that held all the specifics of this new mission. He halted his pace at a door and quickly thumbed through the file beneath the pallid yellow glow of the sickly green light fixture that hung listlessly above him. The sources of this new information weren’t as solid as he’d like them to be, but this was something he was willing to take a chance on. Closing the file and placing it in his long jacket, he leaned toward a small peephole in the door to see that he would not compromise the hidden exit from his superior’s stronghold. There was no sign of life outside, so he silently slipped from the building and exited to the same filthy alleyway he’d found himself in time after time. The door, disguised as the aged brick façade of the building, closed behind him with a quiet hiss of pneumatic locks.
The night air was tinged with a fog that made the sparse light coming off the street lamps appear as cones of wavering luminescence. The streets were deserted due to the late hour and the condition of this part of New York City. Hunter gained the sidewalk from the alley and pulled his hat lower. Danger was everywhere, and he trusted no one. As he passed by the ghoulish building fronts, he gripped his hidden firearms a little tighter. He’d parked his specially modified Lincoln Zephyr nearby, but not close enough to give away where he had been. Once in the seat of his automobile, he checked his watch. It was too late to round up the rest of the team that night, but the next morning, the Martian Killers would have a new mission, one that could be the tipping point for humanity. The engine roared to life and the Zephyr shot through the streets leaving only clouds of swirling vapors behind it.
Jack Paris walked through the huge hangar, blowing the steam off a hot cup of coffee. He cast a wayward glance toward the impressive bulk of the duel engine PBY Catalina flying boat, known colloquially as a Black Cat, which sat in ominous silence to his right. The coffee was terrible, but with the shortages caused by the war, and the even further scarcity from the invasion, everyone just had to make due.
Hunter was drawing characters and figures on a large board that also displayed a map. Josie sat sleepily in a hard wooden folding chair and shifted uncomfortably. Hearing Jack advance from behind her, she turned to him and offered the equally uncomfortable chair beside her.
“Thanks for joining the party, Jack,” Hunter remarked coldly without turning away from the board.
“Anything for you, Hunter. But seriously, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a cup of Joe around here.” Jack’s voice was slightly muffled by the mug at his lips.
“Can the wisecracks, we’ve got work to do, and I think you’ll wanna hear all about this.”
Josie looked around the massive space and then back at Hunter. “Where is Mr. Mask then? Don’t you think he’d want to be in on all this fun?”
Hunter finally ceased his scribbling and turned to face the two slumped figures before him. “You don’t need to worry about him; he’ll know what he needs to know when he needs to know it.”
“This cloak and dagger schtick is getting a little tiresome, Hunter. You’d think we’d all be on the same page, being on the same team and human…mostly,” Jack snapped.
“Damnit, Paris! We have had something big fall into our lap, so for once just shut up and listen!” Hunter banged the board behind him with his fist to make his point concrete.
Jack sneered slightly but remained quiet to keep things civil and allow the briefing to get under way. After a few moments of strained silence, Hunter turned back to the board and began his speech.
“We have received information that might give us an advantage against these three-eyed bastards. As it turns out, the Martians have come to Earth before the massive invasion back in ’44.”
Jack and Josie perked up immediately upon hearing this information. Before the onslaught in 1944, there had been no warning or contact with these creatures. They had attacked completely out of the blue in the middle of World War II, effectively catching both sides of the fighting with their pants down.
“It seems that in 1943, an American Naval detachment of fighters spotted something strange off the coast of Greenland,” Hunter continued. “This group of fighter jets investigated the ship under orders of the commanding officer, who was flying with the group that day. The object shot inland and came to a stop above a mountain range, when the group who was following it lost communications with home base. The last whereabouts of both the object and the detachment were unknown…until now. We don’t know what happened, but we always suspected they were just chasing shadows and got lost within frozen hills.”
Jack and Josie were staring up at Hunter with wide eyes. Their lives, and indeed the whole world, could have been in a very different place if things had not gone the way the had.
“I take it by the looks on your faces that you now know why this is important,” Hunter said quietly. “What we have here,” Hunter continued, “Are the closest coordinates we have to this site. What we are going to do, kids, is scour this area and see if we can’t dig up any little alien tidbits that can help us better understand and beat back these abominations!”
“This is incredible!” Jack blurted out. “So what we might have here is a downed hostile ship? Why haven’t we heard this until now?”
&n
bsp; “Back in ’43, this didn’t carry the importance it does now,” Hunter began, “Foo Fighters are a dime a dozen, and the military made every effort to find the lost fighters. Turns out, the search missed the targets completely.”
Josie looked up thoughtfully. “Well, then why didn’t the Martians come back for their ship or gather up the wreckage since then?”
“Best we can figure, Josie, is that a second attempt to retrieve the crash would have tipped us off before they were ready for the full throttle attack. Now, as far as not picking up the pieces since, might be because they didn’t need whatever is was, they lost it as well, or they just plain ol’ don’t care about it,” Hunter replied. “What we’re hoping is that there’s some sort of alien doodad in that pile that we can use against them. I’m not going to sugar coat things; there are no guarantees here. There might be untold treasures hidden for us or it could be just a snipe hunt. We are going to find out which it is.”
Jack and Josie studied the board behind Hunter with eager eyes, and the excitement mounted in them as the idea of this mission settled into their minds. As Hunter began to brief the group about everything they would need and how they were going to get there, they all masked a feeling of cautious optimism.
Several hours after the clandestine rendezvous, the hangar was abuzz with activity. Hands were loading the Black Cat with supplies, munitions, and communication equipment. Hunter stood outside the huge ship coordinating the movement of supplies, while Jack worked inside, organizing and directing boxes within the craft. He saw Josie testing the portable radio outfits and communicating with the tower to ensure nothing would ruin this mission the way a Japanese radio had fouled another instance.
The din of the hanger blocked out any words that weren’t shouted, as people clambered about. Thanks to the hush-hush approach to everything the military did, no more than three people in that tumultuous hanger knew the true reason for all the commotion. Jack figured it was for the best. This could be one huge exercise in futility, and there was no reason to get the boys’ hopes up if all they could bring home was their hat in their hands. So the movements continued, all the while three sets of fingers were crossed.
After a quick check of the systems, Jack had the Black Cat speeding down the runway toward uncertainty. Radio contact was clean, and the dual engines roared clearly through the metal hull of the huge bird. Knowing glances were exchanged between the three, but no words were exchanged for fear of putting a jinx on the whole operation. The three spent the freezing cold six-hour flight in silence.
Heaps of cirrus clouds obscured the view of the endless blue waters beneath them, opening in irregular patterns to expose the azure expanse. Jack dipped the controls to drop beneath the cloud cover for a better look. The edge of the titanic frozen island finally showed itself to the trio. Over an hour had elapsed and the flying boat was circling the target area.
Hunter walked into the cockpit and shouted over the thundering of the engines, “I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary down there. Can we get any closer?”
“Not unless we land this thing. We could end up like the first guys who came out here,” Jack shouted over his shoulder, his eyes still peering through the cockpit windows.
Josie’s voice rang from the cargo hold, “I think we’ve got something here boys!”
Hunter left Jack and joined Josie in the body of the plane. She was peering intently out the window using a large pair of high-powered binoculars. Hunter tapped her on the shoulder and gestured toward the window. Josie pointed toward an odd snowdrift and handed the binoculars to Hunter. He peered through the frosty window and quickly found what he was looking for. Something buried in the snow had created a ledge that protected the underbelly of what looked like a metal structure entombed in the frozen ground.
“Good eyes Josie, I’ll tell Jack to put her down as close as he can get it,” Hunter shouted over the engine noise. “This might be exactly what we’re looking for.”
Jack dipped the elevators and found a smooth spot in the snow somewhat close to the target zone that seemed big enough to land the flying boat safely, and which would allow them enough room to take off in a moment’s notice if need be.
The team were bundled up in their flight furs, but if trouble kicked up, they’d need more mobility than protection from the cold, so they stripped off the furs and dressed as warmly as possible without hindering access to their weapons. They deplaned, and all stood at the back of the plane as gusts of wind swirled about, whipping their long coats about them.
“Ok, gang,” Jack began, “In this cold we could get whited out by a snow flurry that could kick up out of nowhere, so keep a sharp eye on each other. And if we do get separated, hit the radio as soon as you can.”
They all nodded and Josie shot him a quick smile. They turned and headed in the direction of the thing they had seen from the sky. Judging by the distance from where they landed, it was going to take less than a half an hour to cover the necessary distance. As they crested a hill that overlooked the possible crash site, snow started to fall in delicate flakes, drifting slowly toward the already white ground.
At the bottom of a gently sloping hill, the team began digging through snowdrifts and pawing at any unusual protrusions. Rocks and frozen shrubs were uncovered from beneath any suspicious-looking mound, each successive discovery yielding nothing out of the ordinary.
“I don’t understand this. Hunter, you and I both know what we saw from the plane, right?” Josie shouted across the field.
The clang of metal stopped everyone in their tracks. The eyes of Jack and Josie quickly fell upon Hunter, who shot back a wry grin to the two of them. He bent down and lifted up a large piece of metal. When the sheet of steel was stood upright and the snow had fallen away from it, there was no doubt that what Hunter stood behind was a weathered section of what used to be an American fighter wing. Hunter kicked it flat to the ground and the team doubled their efforts at the task.
Before long, the three chilled figures stood before an oddly regular, metallic cave. It looked to Jack to be some sort of vent with strange alien writing etched around the perimeter.
“Looks like we hit the jackpot here, boys!” Josie said excitedly.
The trio spread out and began digging at the snow around the vent, looking for more of the craft. It became obvious after some searching that the ship had crashed here and embedded itself in the frozen soil. The American wreckage was spread around the site. Neither wreck gave any clear reason for the crashes. The metallic expanse of the alien ship hidden beneath the drifts spread out more and more, like a sliver tile floor with checker-patterned white patches of snow.
“This thing looks like it’s huge under here,” Jack started, “like most of it is either buried under snow or dirt. It probably crashed here in the summer months, when the ground was thawed and soft.”
“That’s for sure,” Josie said. “The more we dig, the more we find of this thing. How are the three of us going to find a way into this behemoth?”
It was then that Hunter suddenly dropped from sight. His disappearance coincided with a muffled clang as the escape hatch he uncovered fell against the snow-buffeted body of the ship. Jack and Josie’s eyes snapped to the vacant space that Hunter had just occupied and stared in confusion.
“If you’ll follow me, I think that this will probably get us where we need to go.” The echoing voice of Hunter floated out of the newly formed aperture.
The two still above ground gazed down into the square opening, which was only slightly illuminated in a short shaft of light from the afternoon sun. Jack leaned in for a closer look when he was startled back by the violent sparking of a flare Hunter lit in the hole.
“If you’re both ready…” Hunter said, motioning the two down into the hatch.
Jack lowered Josie into the opening and jumped in, hitting the floor with a loud thud. As he stood up straight, the flare cast dancing shadows of the three around a long hallway. Darkness stretched away from them
in both directions, and all three glanced back and forth trying to decide which way was the correct one.
“Well, I guess this way is as good as any,” Hunter said pointing along the corridor heading north.
Jack gave him a quick nod, and despite the deserted condition of the place, drew his six-shot Smith & Wesson from his coat. Hunter followed suit and pulled a Browning 1911 from his shoulder holster, leaving his C96 Mauser pistol hanging from the other side of his chest. Two more flares were struck, and the party began to move through the darkness, illuminated in their protective orb of brilliance.
Moving through the hallway, nothing seemed out of the ordinary or remarkable, despite the fact that they were walking through an alien spacecraft. They walked for yards, the scenery not varying from the drab metallic material with which the walls and floor were constructed. The violent flickering of the flares kept the darkness in a constant state of perpetual motion about the group, and then at a distance, there was a break in the monotonous veneer.
Hunter pointed ahead and said, “Looks like a fork in the road.”
They picked up their pace and soon came upon another long hallway bisecting the one through which they had been traveling. In the hallway to the right of where the explorers stood, something caught Jack’s eye, and he crossed the junction to investigate. He held his flare higher to get a better look, as Hunter and Josie joined him in his examination.
A small module protruded from the wall and held a slide beneath a row of darkened lights. Jack looked to his left and right at Josie and Hunter, who looked back at him. He reached up to move the slide. His hand rested on the grip, and he let out a low sigh and slowly pushed the knob from left to right. The first light in the row began to burn and a low hum broke the silence. Jack’s hand froze, and he shot another glance toward Hunter, who nodded, giving Jack the go ahead to continue. Jack’s hand once again slowly slid the knob. The further it moved, the more lights sprang into radiance, and the more the humming increased. Half of the lights were lit, and the only thing that had happened was the mysterious humming filling the empty hallway.