Antarctic ice beasts, p.12
Antarctic Ice Beasts, page 12
Consignment to her fate finally loosened her tongue. “This where you freaks live?”
One of the bat men looked up at her, his ebony eyes utterly unreadable.
“Looks about as cozy as an outhouse on a frozen lake.”
Again, no reaction. She was sure they couldn’t understand her. There was always the hope that they had a concept of sarcasm. A distant hope.
“Will you look at that.”
North’s voice took her by surprise. He and Dallas were to her right, staring in wild-eyed wonder at the city of ice. Nichols trotted up to her left on the back of one of the beasts, silent and broken.
“You think they’re having us over for a five course dinner and a tour of the whatever you call it down there?” Holli asked, less than earnest.
“Only if we were trapped in a H.G. Wells novel,” North replied. “I don’t think our hosts will be quite so aristocratic.”
Holli shivered. “It’s getting cold again.”
Dallas pointed at the shaft of light. “It’s starting to dim.”
He was right. Whatever gasses were released from the earthquake – if that’s what caused the powerful light – were dissipating. Sooner than they’d prefer, they’d be in the dark and freezing their asses off.
Holli had no intention of freezing to death. If she was going to punch out, she wanted it to be much grander than that.
As they got closer to the ice city, she made up her mind.
“I can’t just sit here and let them feed me to some crazy animal or worse,” she said to Dallas and North.
“What could be worse?” Dallas said.
“Them,” she replied icily, pointing at the bat men. As far as she’d seen, there were no women about. They had all the workings of a normal man, left out in plain sight. What if they decided to use the weapons between their legs against her? She knew for sure that she wouldn’t be able to endure it. Her stepfather had seen to that.
“I’m outta here,” she said, raising her heels under her buttocks.
“Wait,” Dallas said. “Don’t do anything crazy.”
She gave her boss a wink. “Too late for that.”
In one swift motion, she stood on the back of the beast and ran along its spine, past the top of its head and down its long, narrow snout. It jerked its head and tried to snap at her, but she was already airborne, arms pinwheeling as she free-fell into the snow ahead of the creature. The impact sent shivers of pain up her legs and into her hips. Holli rolled on the ground, letting the rest of her body in motion distribute the impact.
The men around the beast set after her, but she was already on her feet, legs pumping furiously, heading west of the ice city. Ahead of her were rows of more men and their freakish pets, but so what? She wasn’t going to stop until they stopped her.
Dallas and North cried out for her to come back, but she was past rational thought. She wanted one of the creatures to stomp her like they’d done C-Rod or bite her head off. Anything was better than being left a plaything for the bat men.
Tears stung her eyes. She ran as fast as she could under several layers of pants. It was never going to be fast enough.
The men parted, making way for her as the waters before Noah.
Why?
Just keep running, she demanded of herself.
The plain before her was flat and dead, offering no cover, no safe place to hide. She would run until her legs gave out, until her heart exploded. There was fat chance of that. Holli never thought she’d regret all the hours in the gym. If anything, her legs and side would cramp. That would halt her escape. She’d be left paralyzed and useless in the snow. Her heart would palpitate wildly, but it would not stop, would not erupt. Her treacherous, traitorous heart would leave her to endure the pain and humiliation.
Something galloped heavily behind her. She didn’t dare look back.
Holli knew what was coming.
The giant leader and his twisted steed were closing in on her. The back of her neck prickled, anticipating the giant’s touch.
He snatched onto her hood, yanking her off the ground, her legs moving as if still tethered to the ground. Her view of the world shifted, swinging crazily from the horizon to the illuminated sky, to the hard, unreadable face of the muscular leader. The beast didn’t break stride as she was carried aloft, hanging by the hood of her Big Red.
“Just fucking kill me!” she spat in the giant’s face.
His eyes were so black, it was like looking into the empty mouth of an endless cave. Nothing reflected back to her. Nothing human, at least.
Holli lashed out with her boot, connecting with his nose. There was no crack of cartilage. He didn’t even blink. A painful reverberation ran up her leg and into her teeth.
She kicked with her other leg, but the giant caught her by the ankle before she could connect. His grip tightened, harder and harder, until she thought her ankle bone would turn to powder. No matter the pain, she refused to cry out. They stared at one another, the wind whipping past them as they hurtled toward the ice castle.
“Get your freak hands off me,” she hissed, her teeth grinding so hard she knew they would start to chip any second now.
Her body swayed back and forth to the undulating rhythm of the creature. She had to stop the pain. Her foot had gone numb.
Holli reared back to punch the giant.
He released her ankle, her relief existing for the beat of a bird’s flapping wing. The giant punched her so hard, her head snapped back. She heard the crack more than felt it, a split-second before her world went mercifully black.
Chapter Twenty-Five
As terrifying as everything was, a small part of North couldn’t help marveling at the natural-yet-unnatural structure before them. He’d grown up on a steady diet of movies like Journey to the Center of the Earth, At the Earth’s Core and The Land That Time Forgot. For a spell when he was ten, he told everyone he was going to be Doug McClure when he grew up.
You got your wish, he thought.
Except these weren’t cheap special effects and they didn’t have a prissy Englishman as comic relief.
He should be too scared to think straight, but as they stopped at the foot of the monumental ice structure, he could only stare up to the tips of the spires, then back down at the strange gathering of man and monster, and feel his chest and head bursting with strange wonder.
“You ever even imagine anything like it? It’s…it’s beautiful,” he said, his voice hushed to a whisper as if he were in church.
“Have you lost your mind, doc?” Dallas shot back.
North slowly nodded. “I may have, Dallas. I wouldn’t rule that out. No sir, I wouldn’t rule it out.”
The returning army was greeted by even more of the identical men. They came streaming out of the various odd geometric breaks in the ice. With them came a menagerie of pale skinned and furred creatures of indeterminate origin. Some – the ones that circled around the bat men’s legs – appeared to be a variation of domestic pets. They were short, four-legged, with long, ragged ropes of fur. They had the long, drooping snouts of aardvarks with pink, active eyes.
A completely hairless animal that he could only think of as a mule walked past, its back loaded with sacks made of some type of reed or weed he couldn’t identify. It had no ears or tail, but its legs were thick and sturdy, designed to cart heavy weights. Its back was bowed. North didn’t realize he was reaching out to touch it as it lumbered by until Dallas shouted, “Don’t do that!”
“All this time, beneath our feet, there was a whole word,” North said. The bat men surrounded them, though there wasn’t a trace of curiosity on their stone faces.
“Yeah, but a world of what?” Dallas eyed the men coolly as if taking each one’s measure to exact revenge at a later date.
“I don’t know,” North said.
A chevron of alabaster birds angled between two of the ice spires. Their long, heron-like legs fanned out behind them.
“North.”
“Shhh. Just be quiet. Take it in.”
It was like stepping onto an alien world. North didn’t know…couldn’t know the intentions of the members of this newfound race. Yes, their actions had been violent and swift. But did that make them violent by nature? There was no way to know without an understanding of who or what they were. North felt it in his gut that they had to remove their all too human perceptions from the equation from here on in. As the Buddhists would say, they had to live in the moment, free from judgment and emotion.
There was no point telling Dallas this. He wouldn’t understand. North could hear him grumbling but had tuned out his words. Words would get in the way.
One of the bat men slapped the hide of the animal North sat upon and it began moving again, deeper into the city of ice.
As they slipped under the cathedral-like entrance, he could hear Holli’s protestations echoing within the icy walls. What he saw next took his breath away.
“Will you look at that,” Dallas croaked.
They entered what North guessed would pass for a town square. Within the wide open space mingled more of the bizarre men (yet no women), silently exchanging depthless glances. In the center of the square was a burbling fountain, the waters red as fresh drawn blood. The crimson water splashed onto the icy floor, staining it so it reminded him of the cherry snow cones he loved when he was a child.
The closer they got to the fountain, the deeper the mineral tang to the air.
“It’s like the Blood Falls,” North said.
“Blood Falls?”
He looked at Dallas, for the first time taking his eyes off the dizzying spectacle. “You never heard of them? It’s an actual red waterfall spilling out of the Taylor Glacier. They say it comes from a lake, buried deep under the ice millions of years ago. The high salt content kept the water from freezing, and the higher levels of iron have turned it red.” A light splash of water touched North’s face. The water was so cold, it felt like getting hit by pebbles. “They say watching the Blood Falls is like looking at the rushing waters from Hell itself. I’m not a religious man, so I wouldn’t go that far, but looking at this, I can see how it would touch people’s deepest fears.”
He wiped at the crimson water fleck on his face with his finger. When Dallas turned away, he touched his finger to the tip of his tongue. What was it? It certainly wasn’t water.
Dallas shook his head. “You think this is coming from the same lake?”
“I don’t know. I’d believe anything just about now.”
The beast shied away from the cold spray, trotting past it. North wished he could slow it down. He wanted to dismount and put his hand in the fountain, to taste the water.
Maybe Dallas was right and he had gone over the bend.
He looked back at Nichols who didn’t even so much as flick a glance at the red fountain. His eyes were downcast, fixed on a place that was far, far from here.
Many of the bat men had lined up on each side of the prisoner procession. They were rapidly approaching a tunnel of ice that appeared to open into a massive chamber. North speculated about what they could possibly be witness to next.
He didn’t have long to wonder.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Sherm awoke in agony. Every joint in his body felt as if it had been dislocated and roughly jammed back in. His ribs and head pounded. His vision was blurry. The air smelled funny.
Opening his eyes, he panicked, thinking for a brief flash that he was blind. Jerking his head sideways, he realized he had instead been face down on what felt like a rug.
Where was he?
What had happened?
He strained to remember, but his brain was wrapped in fog and forgetfulness.
Someone was shouting. Sherm caught snatches of choice curses. It was a woman. A woman in great distress.
Holli!
Sherm pushed himself up, and when he did, he wished he were back in the comforting black of unconsciousness.
Eyes casting about, searching for Holli, everything came rushing back, his mind reeling from the influx of new, startling images, scents and sounds. He’d been draped across the back of one of those strange animals, its funk making his nose hairs curl. He turned his face away from its ropy hide, his nostrils opening wide, taking in the metallic air that filled this…this what? It looked as if he was inside a skyscraper made of ice.
The second he moved to get off the creature, he was pushed back on by rough hands. The men with their giant ebony eyes stared up at him.
“Holli!” he croaked, his aching ribs making it hard to shout.
“Sherm! Are you all right?”
It was Dallas from somewhere behind him. He looked back to find the maintenance manager riding beside North, with Nichols looking lost and beaten a few paces behind them. “No, I’m not,” he replied, the cloud of smoke his breath created forming a wall of gauze, distorting his vision. “Where the hell are we?”
Dallas and North stared ahead, unwilling or unable to reply.
Sherm followed their gaze.
Oh shit.
Within the cavernous framework of towering ice lay a type of cave opening. It was tall and wide and as pitch black as the eyes of the men that had captured them. To the side of the opening lay a tumble of boulders made of ice. Sitting atop the scree was a man that looked like the others but was twice their size. He held Holli’s arms behind her back with one hand, her struggles failing to make the muscles in his arm even twitch. Their eyes met and she slumped back onto a sharp block of ice.
When they were close enough to speak without having to shout, Sherm said, “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head.
A warmer current of air trickled out of the cave. The cave terrified Sherm more than the bat men.
“Where are we?”
Holli tugged against her captor, the giant looking elsewhere, as if not concerned about them in the least. “I’m thinking home sweet home for these freaks. Or at least the front porch.” She nodded at the cave. “If you ask me, home is down there.”
Sherm took a moment to study the walls of ice around and above them. The layers of various discoloration told him this was centuries of buried ice, freshly exposed. This hadn’t been here when he first arrived. It would have been impossible to miss from the air. This was fresh which could only mean it had been given rise by the earthquake. These massive pillars of ancient ice had somehow pushed their way through to the surface. Even more impossible, they had assembled themselves to form what could easily be interpreted as manmade formations.
Had all of this always been here, a city in full, populated by strange life forms in the most inhospitable land on the planet, deep under the surface? It was preposterous, yet it was here.
The air emanating from the cave felt just warm enough to support life. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t the kind of cold that brought only death.
Their world had been thrust upon Sherm’s, spitting up like lava. They were as unprepared and possibly confused and confounded as the crew of Freedom Base. But what the bat men had over them was sheer strength and numbers. Here Sherm thought man was just in the learning stages of how to one day conquer the Antarctic, when the truth was, they were never going to be the alpha. It had already been done by a race that was, at least physically, far superior.
Being a scientist himself, it dawned on him why the men hadn’t simply wiped them all out back at the base.
Sherm and his companions were being brought to their world as a curiosity. And what did you do with curiosities?
You studied them. Sometimes, you did so in terrible, horrible ways.
Fear of death by freezing was one thing. What potentially waited for them at the bottom of that cavern nearly stopped Sherm’s heart from beating. Worst still, he would die an un-mourned man. He’d grown up in a succession of foster homes, immersing himself in school and studies once he was mercifully old enough to be on his own. There was no special woman waiting for him back home. No close friends. Just a smattering of acquaintances who would mark his loss with a sliver of reflection before moving on and resuming their normal lives.
“We can’t let them take us down there,” Sherm said.
“You have a submachine gun with endless rounds in your pocket?” Holli replied. This time, when she tugged on her captor, the giant slowly craned its head to peer at her. She dared to look into his eyes for the briefest of moments before whipping her face away in self-preservation.
Sherm barked, “Hey!”
The giant turned to him. Sherm felt as if he were going to fall into the void of its soulless eyes. Despite the crawling fear that scratched up his spine, he refused to break away, searching for something, anything he could latch onto. There was intelligence there, there just had to be, but those portals revealed nothing but the cold, emptiness of death. Sherm knew in that instant there would be no compassion toward them. The scant space between them may have been as wide as the gulf that bridged galaxies. Here were two species very much of this world, though so many worlds apart, it was too daunting to even begin to calculate.
Sherm wanted to escape the awful tractor beam of the giant’s steady glaring, but he felt immobilized, his brain and body gone numb.
“Sherm. Sherm!”
Dallas called to him from miles away.
Sherm wanted to speak, but his lower jaw merely fell open like Marley’s ghost.
“Sherm!” Then a moment of pressure on his arm. Yes, he felt that! His vision wavered under the shimmer of unbidden tears. Look away, damn you!
The pressure came again, followed by a heavy grunt and the sounds of a struggle.
He was saved by something as mundane as a blink, the cold air frosting his tears. Sherm looked over to see Dallas kicking at the bat men who were punishing him for daring to reach out to him.
“Leave him be,” Sherm said, reaching across and swatting at the arms of the so-called men battering Dallas. One of them punched Sherm in the side. It felt as if his kidney had been ruptured. The grip of pain that squeezed his back took his breath away.
