All of that was long gone. Now the place was a charnel house. Or rather, he guessed, it had been nearly seventy years before when whatever had gone down in the labs at the fjord had spread its madness to these shepherds. Now it was a mass grave for the score or so bodies that had been torn to pieces and scattered, discarded like broken dolls across all available floor space.
The bodies—or rather, torsos, for few had any limbs still attached—were dried out, almost mummified in the cold dry air of the glacial valley. Internal organs and guts had been ripped roughly from torsos and draped, as if in some manic impression of artistry, up and through the roof joists above so that the desiccated remnants of them now dangled like obscene party ribbons. The heads had all been brutally separated from the bodies and were stacked like cannonballs in a frozen pyramid in the hut’s center hearth, empty eye sockets staring from gray, dried faces set in screams of horror.
“There’s not enough bits,” Private Davies said, his face almost as gray as one of those frozen stares. It took Banks several seconds to realize the import and then he remembered the gnawed bones they’d found up in the cave.
“What are we into this time, Cap?” Wiggins said. “This is fucking Sawney Bean fucking cannibal territory, isn’t it?”
Banks forced his gaze away from the staring, frozen heads before replying.
“Whatever it was that did it, it’s long dead. We’re just here to clean up its mess. Burn this fucking place to the ground; it’s as much of a funeral as these poor buggers here are going to get.”
*
They stood at the edge of the settlement and watched the place burn while having a mug of coffee and a smoke; it hadn’t taken much to get the fires going, just their Zippo lighters and a few dried sticks. The huts took to the fire as if eager to be finally gone from this place. Banks thought someone should say some words over the dead but no one else spoke up and he couldn’t bring anything to mind that wouldn’t sound trite and glib. So they watched in silence as plumes of black smoke drifted upward in the still cold air, the eagle weaving in and out of sight high above them screeching a funereal dirge.
Hynd was the first to turn away and so the first to take note of the weather at the north end of the valley above the glacier.
“That doesn’t look like fun, Cap,” he said and Banks turned to see a black wall of clouds gathering and rolling slowly in their direction. He looked from that back to the huts that were now all almost completely burned to the ground.
“Okay, lads,” he said. “I’d call this place well and truly sanitized. Fun time’s over. Back down to the shore, as quick as you like. We might even have time for a dram before we head for the boat.”
As they turned away, there was a rumble from high up the slope. A small avalanche of debris tumbled down from where the cave had been but when Banks had a last look back before following the squad, he saw only a small cloud of dust rising and that quickly settled, leaving the valley still and quiet at their back.
- 7 -
It didn’t take them long to realize it was more than a bit of bad weather at their backs; the wall of clouds was coming on faster now, bringing with it a biting wind that forced them all to raise their hoods. It wasn’t long before sleet and hail drummed against the material around their heads. Banks could only be thankful for the small mercy that the weather was at their backs, for this wasn’t anything they’d be able to easily plough through face on.
The sleet turned to snow while they were still traversing the dips and hollows of the lower glacial valley. It accumulated fast, filling their footmarks almost as soon as they made them. They quickly lost sight of the trail and had to stay close together to avoid losing each other in the growing gloom and blowing snow. Banks realized with dismay that they had several hours of walking still ahead of them.
We’re not going to be able to keep ahead of it.
Banks made a decision when they climbed out of yet another hollow and felt the wind tug hard at his jacket and hood. He looked up to see that they’d reached the high end of the long wooded valley beside the river.
“We need to hole up ‘til this passes,” he shouted. “Head for the trees. Find us somewhere we can hunker down.”
*
They got lucky and found a rocky crevice not far inside the tree line that was already well overhung with trees. They were able to quickly cover it with snapped off branches and foliage to make a rudimentary shelter with an opening downwind so that they were safe from all but the strongest of gusts. Wiggins got the camp stove running near the open entrance and they hunkered around, taking turns in stirring a pot of field-ration dried soup mixed with snow while they had a smoke.
While the soup was thickening, Banks stood at the entrance and put a call through on the sat phone to the supply boat.
“We’ll be offshore in a couple of hours,” the skipper said.
“We won’t,” Banks replied and laid out their situation to the man on the other end of the line, having to shout to be heard above the wind that had risen to a howl in the past five minutes.
“Well then, you’re not going to like the weather forecast,” the skipper said. “The storm’s coming all the way from the polar region and it’s going to blow hard for most of the rest of the day. Find somewhere you can ride it out.”
“Way ahead of you there. Looks like it’ll be tomorrow before we’ll get back to the shore. Can you wait?”
“I’m not about to leave you there for the rest of the winter,” the skipper said and his laughter came loud and clear down the line. “We’ll find a secluded harbor in the lee of the wind for ourselves for the night and be ready for you sometime in the morning, Captain. Get in touch if anything changes; I’ll have someone monitor this line.”
Banks put the phone away as Wiggins passed him a mug of steaming hot soup.
“Settle in, lads,” he said. “We could be here for a while.”
*
Snow piled up fast outside their makeshift shelter but they’d made sure they had enough interlaced branches above them to prevent any snow getting down to where they sat huddled around the camp stove. The wind whistled in a wild howl outside and kept conversation to a minimum. It felt like night already; the gloom had deepened so much that the tips of their cigarettes shone like fiery red stars under their canopy.
Banks spent his time mulling over the scene inside the cave and at the settlement below it, trying to square it away with what he’d learned in the journal. The only theory he came up with, impossible as it might seem, was that almost seventy years ago the scientists had succeeded in turning the man McCallum into some kind of monstrous hybrid, part man, part…whatever the things were that they’d seen fused in the rock.
Then they had lost control of him. He’d broken out of the cell, gone on a rampage down by the fjord, then headed for the hills. While the site on the shore was being given up as a lost cause, McCallum, or what he’d now become, had by some unfathomable instinct found his way up to the high settlement where he’d, presumably, killed the villagers in a murderous, cannibalistic rampage.
And then he somehow got merged into the rock in the wall? I’m having trouble believing that part.
Then again, he’d had trouble believing many things on their recent missions. That hadn’t stopped them being real, hadn’t stopped the unbelievable things from killing his men. As he sat in the gloom finishing his smoke, he resolved to be open to any and all possibilities.
They had sanitized the cave and the settlement—they only had the huts on the shore to do and they could go home. But his gut still remembered the feeling of imminent danger he’d felt before they’d blown the cave to buggery and it still hadn’t settled. He fought the premonition down and concentrated on trying to peer out the entrance into the snow.
Nobody dies on this trip.
*
The storm showed no sign of abating and the gloom deepened further, almost as dark as night under their canopy. The cold crept through their heavy snow gear and eve
n with hoods up and goggles on, ice cracked at their lips. Banks kept them moving, rotating them around the tiny camp stove; he knew Wiggins had several spare fuel canisters in his pack but whether they would be enough to get them through a night wasn’t clear.
It’s going to have to be. There’s no way we can go out in this.
They were lost, a tiny dark bubble inside a sea of swirling howling white. Wind gusts tugged at their roof but the weight of new snow on top was holding it down for now. If that weight got too heavy, they would be in danger of it collapsing in on them—just one more thing to worry about as the storm continued to rage.
Time seemed to pass infinitely slowly; several times, Banks checked his watch only to find mere minutes had crawled by. They smoked too many cigarettes and drank so much coffee that after a while they were forced to take turns venturing to the open end of the shelter to take some bladder relief. Banks heard Wiggins shout something about the dangers of getting ‘your knob frosty’ but that was about the extent of any conversation as the hours crept along.
Finally around ten o’clock at night, the wind dropped several notches and although snow continued to fall, it wasn’t coming down with so much force and the howling abated enough that they were able to talk. Sergeant Hynd joined Banks at the entrance for a smoke and a coffee as they looked out at the weather.
“Good enough for a walk?” Hynd asked.
Banks shook his head.
“Not yet. I think it best to wait out the night if we can. We’ll be able to make good time once the sun is up.”
“More coffee and Wiggo’s farts it is then,” Hynd replied. “But you’ve been awfy quiet, Cap. What’s on your mind?”
Banks shared his theory of earlier, as to the nature of the thing they’d found in the cave.
“You think yon was a man, a soldier—one of us? And the scientists did that to him?”
“I think so. I don’t have another explanation that fits what we’ve seen, do you?”
“You mean they went and got themselves a fucking cave troll?”
Banks smiled, felt fresh ice crack at his lips that he melted away with coffee before replying.
“It certainly seems that way.”
“I can see why they wanted it hushed up; we can hardly get all high and mighty about the Nazis experimenting on folk when we were doing the same ourselves just a few years later. What were they trying to achieve?”
“Beats me. Some kind of super-soldier if I’m reading the clues in the journal right—something that would have put us out of business and have us retiring early to our pipes and slippers.”
Hynd laughed and waved a hand out at the weather.
“Right now that doesn’t seem like a bad idea, Cap.”
*
Wiggins made up another pot of the dried soup—Banks noticed that he had to replace the fuel canister in the stove. The corporal saw him looking.
“Three cans left, Cap,” he said. “Should see us through ‘til breakfast then that’ll be that.”
Banks had Davies and Wilkins check the canopy for any dry wood that they might use for a fire but he already knew, having checked earlier, that all the branches and foliage were too damp to burn; his order was more to keep them moving about than anything else.
Now that the wind had dropped more of the heat from the stove was being trapped inside their shelter and for the first time since taking refuge he started to feel, if not comfortable, at least not in danger of freezing solid.
He was on the point of relaxing when the attack came out of the night.
- 8 -
They heard it before they saw it, a roar like rocks clashing together somewhere out in the storm. Banks had enough time to unsling his rifle off his back, swing it ‘round, and point it towards the entrance before a looming shape filled the opening, plunging them into almost complete darkness. Instinct took over and Banks fired three quick shots into the thickest part of the shadows, the noise almost deafening as he hadn’t had time to put his plugs in. The thing in the entrance howled, a gravelly, rasping screech, and reached inside under the canopy. The next thing Banks knew, he was flying through the air, having been pulled out of the shelter, gripped by the left arm by something that felt like cold iron, and tossed aside. He was lucky to hit a snow bank; if there had been any rock at all when he landed hard, he’d have broken his neck and most of the small bones in his body. Even then he was badly winded, having to take a few seconds to catch a breath he thought would never come.
He managed to roll, amazed to find he still had his weapon in his right hand, and looked back to their shelter from a distance of almost ten yards. The snow obscured his view. The darkness made it more difficult still. Wavering dancing beams from three rifles was the only light but Banks saw enough to know that whatever the attacking thing was, it was huge. It loomed high above their makeshift canopy, tearing the foliage and branches apart, strewing them far and wide as it attempted to get at the men underneath.
Gunfire cut through the wind, muzzle flashes showing up bright in the gloom directly ahead. Banks ducked and rolled quickly as several rounds blew up puffs of snow just in front of him and kept rolling to his left until he was sure he was out of the line of fire.
That took long seconds and by the time he got himself up into a kneeling position to provide supporting fire, the attacker, still little more than a looming, dark, roughly human-shaped figure in the night, had torn most of their canopy apart. It reached inside, pulling one of the squad up and out, dangling the man by a left leg, shaking him around like a rag doll. Banks switched on his rifle light, hoping to illuminate a target he could aim for but the light had little effect against the swirling snow. He got to his feet and moved forward as fast as he was able through snow that reached up towards his knees, stopping only when he was sure of a clean shot that wouldn’t hit one of his men.
Even then he couldn’t risk a headshot, for the thing had the dangling man held up in front of it. Banks put three rounds into the attacker’s back in a line down the length of the spine. It didn’t even flinch. Banks saw more muzzle flashes, heard the crack of more gunfire, more concentrated now as if the defenders had got themselves organized.
And finally, the weight of fire had an effect. The captured man was tossed aside as unceremoniously as Banks had been seconds earlier and the attacker lumbered away, quickly lost in the swirling storm.
*
Banks quickly made his way over to where the discarded man lay sprawled in a snow bank. It was young Wilkins and he hadn’t landed as lucky as Banks had; the lad’s left leg lay at an impossible angle below the knee. Davies was over quickly, kneeling at the private’s side, and he quickly confirmed what Banks already knew.
“The leg’s broken, Cap,” Davies said. “The skin’s not pierced thankfully but it’s a bad one nonetheless. We need to get him off this hill and somewhere warm fast.”
Hynd and Davies set to getting a makeshift splint on the leg; Wilkins was awake, pale-faced and haggard with pain but he gave Banks a thumbs-up when asked how he was doing.
“Wiggo,” Banks said. “You’re with me. We need to make a litter for the lad; we can’t carry him all the way back to the shore from here.”
They used the remnants of their shelter, using long strips of bark to patch together two long straight branches and a thick bed of foliage. While working, they covered each other, the lights on their rifles trying vainly to pierce the snow, straining to hear anything beyond their own shouts in the wind.
“What the fuck was that?” Wiggins shouted. “They don’t have fucking huge bears here, do they?”
“That wasn’t a bear,” Banks replied but said no more, concentrating on the work at hand.
By the time they’d got the litter built, Davies had finished strapping up Wilkins’ leg as best as could be managed and every man was showing signs of being affected by the cold, the skin on their cheeks taking on a bluish tinge. Banks knew how they felt; he couldn’t feel his fingers and ice crackled at his lips a
nd nostrils with every breath.
“No faffing around,” he said. “We need a stiff walk to warm us up. Kit up, we’re getting out of here. Sarge, you and Davies break the ground; Wiggo and I will take first shift on the pulling. If that fucker comes back, put it down hard and fast. Let’s get this lad to safety.”
It took them no more than a minute to retrieve the camp stove and the rest of their kit then they were ready to move. Despite the wind and snow, Sergeant Hynd had a cigarette stuck firmly between his teeth as Banks gave out the orders.
“You all remember the way. We go down the side of the tree line here for a few miles so we shouldn’t get lost on this stretch. Yon plateau is going to be another thing entirely but we’ll worry about that when we get there. Lead us out, Sarge.”
He was thankful that nobody had any questions; he wasn’t sure he had any answers.
*
The hastily built litter worked about as well as could be expected; the two long branches dug grooves into the snow as they pulled and poor Wilkins, facing the rear, was getting a face full of snow with every step. But at least Banks and Wiggins had the wind at their backs while pulling, because otherwise the task might have been beyond them.
Banks walked, head down, following the steps in the snow made by Davies some six feet ahead. The snow was almost up to their knees but luckily it was powdery and dry at this altitude. It still proved to be heavy going and his back and shoulders were already complaining both from the weight of his rucksack and the effort of pulling the litter along. At some points, the slope helped them out and made things easier; at other points, the slope made things worse as they had to work hard to stop the litter careering downhill of its own volition.
Operation Norway (S-Squad Book 7) Page 4