Horror Sci-Fi Box Set: Three Novels

by Bryan Dunn

  Arctic bush pilot Harry McNills is minding his own business and dreaming of retiring to the Caribbean--when two scientists from Cryolabs Corporation charter his plane for a scientific expedition. The beautiful young biologist Amy Tyler and her boss, the avaricious Hayden Lockwood, want to explore for freeze-tolerant organisms. Harry gets more than he bargained for when he falls for Amy and discovers an ancient terror entombed in an iceberg. A Navy team is assembled to exhume the remarkable find. But before the job is completed, something goes horribly wrong...and Harry and Amy find themselves trapped in a desperate struggle for survival.

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  Chapter 1

  Five Thousand Years Ago, Somewhere In the Arctic

  A raw winter sky sheltered a monochrome world. A hunter walked purposefully across an endless sheet of ice, eyes alert, searching. Pushing harder he picked up the pace, then suddenly stopped, spotting a break in the ice. It was what he’d been looking for – a harp seal’s breathing hole.

  Moving again, he stealthily approached the seal’s hole. Dressed in three layers of animal skins sewn together with narwhal sinew and topped by a caribou parka lined with fur, he was blissfully unaware of the minus five degree temperature.

  Excitement built inside him as he stepped up to the edge of the breathing hole and raised his togglehead harpoon, the razor sharp ivory tip connected to a line he held in his free hand.

  The breathing hole was large and well used, and the icy sea was plainly visible inside. Every inch of the hunter’s body was now focused on the opening. He silently exhaled, and, as he drew in a breath, his eyes caught an almost imperceptible pressure ridge on the water’s surface.

  Adrenaline flooded his body: pupils dilated, muscle fibers twitched in anticipation. The water inside the hole suddenly rose, surging up the sides of the ice – and a harp seal’s nose broke the surface, flared its nostrils, and filled its lungs.

  With an explosive downward thrust, the hunter drove the harpoon into the seal’s neck. The razor sharp ivory toggle sliced through hide and blubber, finally lodging itself deep into the harp seal’s muscle.

  The stunned seal exploded upward, then bucked and writhed, desperately trying to flee beneath the ice. The hunter wrapped the line around his hand and, digging his sealskin boots into the ice and snow, began to back up, pulling the line taught.

  A violent game of tug-of-war erupted. Five minutes later it ended. In one fluid motion the hunter hauled the vanquished seal up out of the sea and onto the sheet ice, then lunged forward and plunged his knife deep into the seal’s neck.

  The fight was over. All movement stopped. The air was completely still and quiet except for the hunter’s labored breathing. He rose, kneeling over his kill. A crimson puddle spread out in a halo around the harp seal’s head – the only color in the otherwise black and white tableau.

  A gust of wind swirled across the ice, ruffling the fur that lined the hunter’s hood. He looked up, scanned the horizon, and saw a gathering storm – a massive anvil-shaped cloud had formed and was spilling out of the sky and flattening across the ice like black smoke.

  Lightning streaked across the sky. Thunderclaps shattered the silence. A second gust of wind, and another set of icy fingers brushed his face. Spindrifts of snow leapt off the ice, pirouetting around his body. The hunter turned his back to the wind and hurried with his kill. One quick movement with his knife, and the seal’s bowels spilled onto the ice. Another cut, and he began rolling off the thick, blubbery skin. Overcome with hunger he removed a bloody strip of flesh, and, hungrily pushing it into his mouth, began to chew.

  Darkness fell. The hunter turned his face toward the howling wind, and – illuminated by flashes of lightning – saw a perfect arctic storm raging across the ice directly toward him.

  Racing against the weather, he continued to dress out his kill. As he removed the last of the meat, he was suddenly aware of his own breathing. The storm around him had momentarily stopped. It was like someone had thrown a switch. A primal, musky smell filled the air. He snapped around, looked up – and a fifteen-hundred-pound polar bear rose and let out a deafening roar.

  The hunter instinctively yelled out, lunged for his harpoon, and missing it, pitched forward, scuttling away from the butchered seal.

  The bear charged, then abruptly stopped, drawn back by the smell of blood and fresh meat. The bear swung around and fell on the seal, greedily devouring chunks of blubber and muscle. The hunter staggered to his feet, watching helplessly from a distance, then turned and silently disappeared into the raging storm.

  The storm continued to build. The hunter appeared, then disappeared amid flurries of ice and snow. Bent forward, he moved against the wind, every step a fight for his life. He stopped, tightening his hood around his face. Moving again, he continued forward, and then from somewhere behind him, out of the shrieking wind, he heard a blood curdling scream – half human, half animal.

  Terror filled his face and he broke into a run – heart hammering, he struggled to keep his footing. Then he heard it again. Something was running at a terrible speed directly toward him. He turned, and the polar bear shot directly past him. He saw that its shoulder was torn open and red stripes ran down its side like it had been raked by metal spikes.

  Before the hunter had time to yell, he staggered forward and spilled onto the ice.

  Wind shrieked overhead. Snow swirled around him. He looked up, straining to see through the thick atmosphere. A lifetime of hunting told him something was out there in the dark. He could feel it. Another flurry of snow. Then it rushed toward him, something big.

  The hunter’s face was frozen with fear. Horrible wet footsteps raced towards him. Closer and closer. He held his breath, straining to hear – and a hand closed around his leg. Fingers like steel cut into his flesh – and suddenly he was being dragged backwards. He yelled. His screams were instantly gobbled by the arctic storm.

  The fetid stench of rotting flesh and congealed animal fat filled the air. The hunter was lifted straight up. Streaks of red crisscrossed the snow. He seemed to be suspended in midair. His hood was ripped off. His face was naked and twisted and tortured with terror. And then he was gone, swallowed up by a boiling cloud of white.

  Chapter 2

  Present Day

  Greenland’s West Coast, “The Iceberg Factory”

  A massive glacier surged forward. The air was alive with the sounds of groaning, grinding, shearing ice. There was a sudden loud explosion, then a violent popping – and a great block calved from the mother ice and dropped to the sea. The slab of ice plunged down, kicking up a thirty-foot wall of water – and a brand new iceberg settled onto the surface of Baffin Bay.

  * * * *

  Harry McNills gripped the yoke and applied a little right rudder, sending the DeHavilland Twin Otter into a slow arcing turn over Newfoundland’s jagged coastline and out across the North Atlantic. As the high-winged plane nosed into the weather, the airspeed dropped and Harry instinctively reached down and nudged the throttles forward.

  The two turbocharged Pratt &Whitney engines bit into the icy air, seeming to growl with delight.

  Harry glanced down at a lonely, ice-littered section of the Atlantic. A shiver ran the length of his 36-year-old spine and he zipped the front of his fleece jacket in response. He silently swore at himself for not adding another layer of polypropylene before taking off from St. John’s this morning.

  It had been exactly one year since Harry had left Florida and come to Canada to take control of Arctic Air Adventures. And since that day, he couldn’t remember ever feeling entirely warm.

  He had come north with a simple plan: make enough money as a bush pilot in the dangerous but lucrative Great North, then return to the Caribbean and start an island air charter business. He was all about palm trees and bikinis, not icebergs and parkas. If he didn’t freeze to death first, his plan just might work.

  Before heading north to assume control of Arctic Air Adventures, Harry had taken a trip
to Jamaica to see friends, and time permitting, scout around for likely spots to set up his charter business.

  On the day he was to return to Florida, he’d stopped at a little beachside bar in Ocho Rios to drink a couple of Red Stripe beers, and watch the sunset before joining his friends for a late dinner. The view from the bar had been spectacular. Harry was just thinking about ordering another beer when he was joined by a deeply tanned octogenarian, dressed in a straw hat and faded denim shirt bleached almost white from years of washing.

  The man slid onto a bar stool next to Harry, thrust out his hand and said, “Wilkie Collins – ex-pilot, angler, and world-class beach bum.”

  Harry shook his hand and said he was pleased to meet him, then he told Wilkie that he was a pilot too, and wasn’t it an amusing coincidence.

  A couple of sips of beer later, Harry learned that Wilkie Collins had been an Air Force captain who had spent his youth flying B-17’s on bombing raids over Germany, destroying roads and bridges and factories when most kids his age were chasing girls around college campuses.

  It turned out Wilkie was a natural raconteur, and it wasn’t long before he and Harry were talking and laughing like old college friends. For some reason, Wilkie decided to regale Harry with the highlights of his eighty-six years spent knocking around the globe. It may have had something to do with the open bar tab Harry was running – but he didn’t care – the stories were great.

  After the sun had set and more bottles of Red Stripe were emptied, Wilkie told Harry how he’d come to the Caribbean in 1958, on his honeymoon, and had never left. The same could not be said for his bride. As it turned out, three months later she returned to Texas, had their marriage annulled, and six months after that, she met and married an insurance salesman and moved to Houston.

  The way Wilkie put it was, “Some people need white picket fences – and some people need white sand beaches.”

  A year later Wilkie married again, but that didn’t last either. Wilkie was quick to blame himself. Said the married life just wasn’t for people like him. Then he went on to explain that the year of his second marriage, he’d taken up with a mistress – a 1949 DeHavilland Beaver float plane.

  From the moment he climbed into that plane, his fate had been sealed. It seems that Wilkie had spent the rest of his years – and most of his money – flying to every corner of the Caribbean, searching for and finding some of the best fishing spots in the world.

  Wilkie stopped talking for a minute to polish off his beer, and, after placing it back onto the bar top, said that the only reason he wasn’t out floating in some deserted cove right now was on account of a stroke that he’d suffered two years ago. He went on to explain how the stroke had left him with a slight limp and fifty percent blind in his right eye – and worse than that, unable to fly.

  Harry asked him what he’d done with the plane. Wilkie told him he still owned it. Said he couldn’t bear to part with the sturdy little true blue DeHavilland Beaver that had never failed him, that had never let him down. He said that after all those years, it was almost a living thing to him – like a trusty old bird dog that you’ve come to love and rely on. He went on to tell Harry that the plane was kept in a hangar at a small private airport not far from Ocho Rios.

  The moment Harry learned that the plane was close by, he told Wilkie he had to see it. That ever since he’d first learned to fly a little piper cub, he had dreamed of owning a float plane and flying to deserted islands and swimming on pristine beaches. Then he told Wilkie of his plans to move to the islands and start an air charter business.

  On hearing Harry’s plans, Wilkie turned and, with his one good eye, looked Harry dead in the face, trying to decide if this ‘kid’ really meant what he was saying.

  After a long silence, Wilkie nodded at Harry and said, “You can drive us to the airfield tomorrow morning. I’ll be waiting here for you at 9 a.m.”

  The next day, Harry and Wilkie drove up to the airfield and spent the next couple of hours poring over the classic float plane like two kids on Christmas morning.

  Four hours after first seeing the DeHavilland Beaver, Harry was the plane’s new owner. The deal was struck as both men sat in the plane’s cockpit with the midday heat beating down on the hanger’s tin roof – and both of them grinning and laughing and soaked with sweat.

  It was decided that the plane would be kept in Wilkie’s trust, there in Jamaica, until Harry could return, take possession, and put the plane back into running order.

  These were the terms of the sale: Wilkie would charge Harry exactly what he’d paid for the DeHavilland Beaver in 1959, almost nothing in today’s dollars. And even better, Harry didn’t have to come up with one cent until his business was up and running. Wilkie insisted on this point, telling Harry that many businesses fail for lack of start-up capital. All Harry had to do was agree to one condition: fly Wilkie to some of his favorite fishing spots whenever the urge struck him.

  Harry was overwhelmed by Wilkie’s generosity, and, of course, couldn’t grab his hand fast enough to seal the deal with a handshake.

  He told Wilkie that he knew a guy back in Daytona whose specialty was working on old radial aircraft engines, and that as soon as he could arrange it, he would bring the guy down to Jamaica and together they would rebuild the motor. Harry promised he’d keep the plane’s same red and white paint job and that the only thing he would change was the leather on the seats.

  Wilkie laughed and agreed that new seat covers were long overdue. Then he reached forward and removed an old color print that was taped to the instrument panel. It was a photograph of the DeHavilland Beaver sitting in a classic little horseshoe-shaped cove trimmed with a white coral beach.

  Wilkie looked at the picture, then handed it to Harry.

  “Where’s the cove?” Harry asked, staring at the picture.

  “When you come back for the plane, that’s the first place we’ll go fishing.”

  * * * *

  Sitting next to Harry in the right seat, Boots Dalton was studiously unwrapping a cream pie. Hirsute, disheveled, and of indiscriminate age, Boots sole mission in life was to fly shotgun for Harry.

  Behind the cockpit, seated in the cargo bay next to a funerary wreath, was a very pale-looking Albert Goodacre. Goodacre was with the Titanic Historical Foundation and had chartered the plane to conduct a private memorial service.

  Boots took a bite of pie, looked out the window, then pointed to an iceberg. “Wow, look at that one, Harry. Gonna be a busy year.”

  Harry looked to where Boots was pointing, momentarily letting his eyes pause on the old color photograph of the DeHavilland float plane sitting in the tropical cove that he’d taped to the Twin Otter’s dashboard, saw the iceberg, nodded, then called back to Goodacre. “Hold on, Mr. Goodacre…”

  Harry pushed the nose over and sent the Twin Otter diving toward the sea. Seconds later he pulled out of the dive, leveling off at 500 hundred feet. Dead ahead, looming on the horizon was a towering block of ice.

  Goodacre clutched his seat, grabbed for an airsick bag and retched into it. Boots looked over at Harry – a big grin was spreading across his shaggy face and he had to stifle a laugh.

  Harry turned, giving Goodacre a sympathetic look. “Sorry about that. But I thought you might want to see this iceberg.”

  Goodacre looked at Harry. “Iceberg?” he said, speaking in a whisper.

  Harry smiled, “Yeah, you’re in the iceberg capital of the world.”

  Goodacre managed a pained nod, started to speak, then lost his lunch again.

  Ocean flashed beneath the fuselage as the Twin Otter hungrily chewed up the distance to the iceberg. Just as they swooped over the blue-streaked block of ice, Harry said: “Get a GPS fix on that bad boy. The Ice Patrol is going to want to track that one.”

  Boots reached out, punching the way points into the satellite navigation system. “Roger that, Harry.” After he double checked the coordinates, Boots turned, looked at Goodacre and grinned. “How do you
like that iceberg, Mr. Goodacre?”

  Boots took a bite of pie. Some custard calved off the mother filling and dropped onto his sleeve.

  Goodacre stared at the hanging custard and, trying to swallow, found himself unable to speak.

  Boots flipped back around and looked over at Harry. “He’s speechless, Har.”

  Harry grinned and pulled back on the yoke. As they gained altitude, another object blipped onto the horizon. He reached for a pair of Nikon binoculars and adjusted the focus. “Well, well, well…”

  Boots leaned forward, straining to see. “What is it, Harry?”

  “Looks like Roscoe found himself a new iceberg.” Harry leveled the Twin Otter at 1500 feet and aimed the plane directly toward it.

  Less than a minute later, a ship chained by the stern to a large iceberg with massive grapples filled the plane’s windshield. The hull was painted bright orange and block letters on the bow read, “ICE MACHINE.” Protruding from the stern was a long auger with wicked steel teeth that tore into the ice, making it look like a giant Day-Glo parasite sucking the blood out of its translucent host.

  As they buzzed the ship, Harry waggled his wings and circled to make another pass. Harry called back to Goodacre, “There’s the future, Mr. Goodacre. Iceberg water.”

  Goodacre gave Harry a confused look. “I don’t understand, Mr. McNills,” he said in a thin, papery voice.

  “They’re mining that iceberg for its water, Mr. Goodacre,” Harry explained. “They say it’s the purest water on Earth. The meltwater is shipped back to Avalon where they’ll bottle it and one outfit is actually producing vodka with it. What do you think about that?”

  Goodacre rocked back in his seat as Harry came out of the turn and trimmed the wings. “I don’t drink.”

  Boots turned and looked at Goodacre. “What, water?”

  Goodacre shook his head. “Vodka,” he said in an exasperated voice.