Antarctic Ice Beasts, page 10
He got back down on his stomach.
“What are you doing?” C-Rod asked, not relinquishing his grip.
“There they are,” he said.
He could see under the beast. The only thing illuminated was Sherm. The light bounced all around, as if someone was holding Holli back and she was struggling to break free.
It must have been Dallas.
Jeannie called out for him.
“We’re here!” Nichols shouted.
The men who had Sherm so far hadn’t done anything. It was as if they were awaiting a command from someone higher up. Whenever Sherm tried to wriggle free, they must have tightened their grip because he would cry out in agony.
“Let’s kick their asses,” C-Rod said, tugging on Nichols to get up.
The animal standing guard over them roared. C-Rod got back down.
“I don’t think it’s going to let us,” Nichols said. His mind whirred in a million directions. Jeannie had stopped, which meant she must have heard him. How the hell were they going to get to Sherm? And even if they did, what happened next? And why was the temperature rising?
He heard Dallas shout, “I’m coming for you, Sherm.”
Sherm shot back, “Don’t! Aggghhhh!”
“You see the light?” Nichols whispered to C-Rod.
“Yeah.”
“We’re going to have to follow it, but to do that, we have to crawl under this thing. And fast.”
He hoped it was as blind as they were in the dark but doubted it. This creature didn’t survive out here without being able to adjust to the light and temperature changes.
However, there was no other way to get to Sherm…or Jeannie.
“I’ll go first,” Nichols said. “If it tries to stomp me, use the distraction to run around it and get to the others.”
What he didn’t tell him was that there may be other animals waiting around to stop them, but that was a bridge they’d burn when they got to it.
“This is insane,” C-Rod said.
“Everything is at this point. Now let’s go.”
He felt the pressure release from his arm and lunged forward, using the slick ground to propel him like when he was a kid and would ski down the reservoir hill on his stomach when it was his brother’s turn to use the toboggan.
Miraculously, he made it through unscathed and was up on his feet, once again running toward Sherm. He heard C-Rod cry out in pain behind him. Sherm matched it with his own wail of agony.
C-Rod felt like he’d been dosed with some major acid. How was any of this happening? He liked horror movies as much as the next guy, but he had no desire to live in one.
His body ached in more places than he could count. He’d once been jumped coming out of a bar because he’d made the mistake of buying a drink for a pretty brunette with impressive cleavage that looked to have been there alone. He learned, too late and painfully, that she had been there with her jealous husband and her thug brothers. C-Rod had held his own for a while, but eventually, the four drunk assholes overpowered him. He thought he’d never be as sore as he felt the next day, debating whether or not he should go to the hospital. This had that night beat by a country mile.
And now he had to somehow will his battered body to skate under one of these beasts –a creature he really couldn’t even see to judge how he’d make it – and tear ass toward the rest of the crew.
Sure, no problem.
“Fucking white people,” he said, spitting into the snow. How many of them surrounded them now? C-Rod liked a good schoolyard scrap, but this was ridiculous. Even if those albino assholes and their ugly monsters suddenly went away, they still had to face the Antarctic winter without shelter.
So, might as well go for broke, son, he thought. There ain’t gonna be a tomorrow to worry about. There was an odd, unsettling freedom in that.
Nichols had made it through and urged him to follow.
C-Rod lunged ahead in the dark and smashed his face into the hide of one of the creatures, shattering his nose and loosening his front teeth. A massive paw swiped at him, rolling him onto his back. He put his hands up to protect himself. His palms flattening against the underbelly of the beast.
“No!”
The belly slowly descended, intent on crushing him. He put his hands down and rolled to his left. His shoulder smashed into what felt like a brick wall. He quickly rolled to his right, with the same result.
They had boxed him in.
The monster was going to suffocate him.
His claustrophobia took hold of him and roared.
Not like this! Please, not like this!
His legs and arms twisted like a crab in a boiling pot as the beast steadily and inexorably crushed him, his fear only doubling his agony. With a frenzied push, he managed to extricate his upper half from under the creature.
C-Rod screamed, his mind fracturing seconds before his legs.
And suddenly, all of the bat men opened their mouths and started their own supernatural chorus that drowned out all of the screaming and shouting.
The crack of thunder, a near sonic boom unlike any Nichols had ever heard, sent everyone, man and beast alike, to their knees.
Chapter Twenty-One
“And then there was light,” Jeannie whispered, recalling hot afternoons in summer Bible school.
On the not too distant horizon, the world was on fire. They could feel the heat of it. It melted the snow on the ground and made the layers of clothes around them feel like being encased in hot, wet blankets.
Jeannie tried to blink the tears from her eyes. The sudden brilliance was painful to behold. Her head throbbed.
And in the impossible light, there was silence.
She tried opening her eyes, her thin lids unable to provide adequate shade from the searing light, but it hurt too much. So she kept her face to the ground, using her hands as blinders on either side of her face. Slowly, her eyes began to adjust, but she didn’t dare look up.
“Christ, I’m burning up,” she heard Dallas say.
“Don’t take your coat off,” North warned him.
He needn’t have said more. As quickly as the light and heat came, it could be replaced by the Pole’s regular darkness and icy cold, or worse, in an instant. All the rules had been broken today. There was no telling what was next. What they couldn’t be was lulled into thinking the latest development would last.
Where was Rob? Jeannie ached to have him near. He could be right beside her, but there was no way she could look to find him.
“Holli, are you all right?” Jeannie said.
“Aside from feeling like my brain was cut in two and seeing spots with my eyes closed, yeah,” she replied. She sounded close.
“Rob?”
There was a long, painful pause. She called for him again.
“I’m here, honey. Keep talking. I’ll follow your voice.” Thank God he was all right, though not as near as she’d like.
She was at a sudden loss for words when she needed them most. It seemed impossible to come up with something as banal as common blather so her husband could home in on her. Not when they had been overwhelmed by something so inexplicable, there was no word combination that could adequately give voice to it.
“Jean?”
Her lips moved soundlessly.
Think, you idiot, think!
An image came to her, a recollection of a lazy day on her back porch back when she and Rob were first dating. She hadn’t thought of it in years. The fact that in her moment of paralysis, this is where her mind would take her made her laugh.
Once her laughter started, she couldn’t stop. She must have sounded as if she’d lost her senses.
“I’m coming as fast as I can,” Rob said, clearly alarmed.
She took a breath and steadied herself. “You remember the food fight we had?”
“Of course I do. Keep talking.”
Jeannie was no longer surrounded by colleagues and bizarre men and terrifying creatures. Across the glaring void, it was just her and Rob, connected by the tether of their voices.
“You looked too peaceful sitting on that beach chair,” she continued. “I wanted to do more than sit in the sun. My mother had bought that chocolate cake from Lang’s Bakery so we could have it after dinner that night. She knew I hated chocolate cake, but she got it just the same. I was pissed at her and wanted to get you off your ass. Next thing I knew, it was in my hand. Then it was on your face. You sat up so fast, the cake went everywhere. I don’t think I’d ever laughed so hard.”
“Yeah, until I grabbed a handful and threw it at you,” Rob replied, his voice closer.
Jeannie giggled. “You got me right in the chest. Stained my new bikini top. Naturally, I had to return fire.”
“And that’s where I learned cherry Kool-Aid burns when it gets in your eyes.”
“You took the bowl of chips I’d set out and dumped it on my head. So I ran inside and swiped the grapes out of the fruit bowl.”
“You had a cannon for an arm, at least in close range with grapes,” Rob said.
“Remember all the whipped cream we got on the kitchen floor? And the peanuts and chocolate sauce? When we were done, we both looked at the mess as if someone else had done it.”
A hand fell on her shoulder and Rob touched his forehead to hers. “Fastest clean up job of all time.”
Jeannie dared to open one eye and was overwhelmed by the increasing brightness. She used her hands to shield both of their eyes now. His skin was so warm, and wet.
“My mother would have killed us,” she said.
She bit her lower lip. The word ‘killed’ shattered the moment, bringing their reality to the fore.
“You’re the climatologist,” Rob said, knowing her well enough to switch gears. “Any idea what’s happening now?”
“Other than the Earth suddenly flipping on its axis, or the sun hurling toward us, I haven’t a clue.”
“Nothing I like more than consistency.” At least he hadn’t lost his sarcasm.
No one else spoke a word, all of them enduring the increasing heat and light, trying to ride it out in protective huddles, yet frightened of what would come next. Jeannie was startled when she felt a tap at her back.
“It’s just me,” Holli said. “I’m melting under all these layers.”
They all were. Jeannie’s throat was drying up faster than a desert plain in July. She thought of scooping some of the slushy snow into her mouth, but stopped herself when she imagined those creatures stomping around in it, fouling it.
Rob said, “Hey, it’s not so bad anymore.”
Before Jeannie could open her eyes, he cautioned, “Just take a quick look.”
She did. He was right. The light was still as brilliant as a lurking sun, but it had dampened a bit. She tasted sweat as it ran down her face and into her mouth. Rob’s breath was hot and sour, with hints of copper from the melting blood in his beard and on his face.
Keeping her eyes on the ground, she found she could open them for longer and longer periods of time before the pain stabbed her in the forehead. It was probably only minutes, but felt like days, before she could keep them open. She didn’t dare look up for fear of going blind, but it was an improvement.
She heard North say to Dallas, “This reminds me, you never returned my sunglasses.”
Dallas didn’t reply.
The bludgeoning heat also began to abate. It was still warm, but not stifling.
The creatures came alive around them, grunting and pawing at the ground. Rob’s head pulled away from hers and he said, “Holy crap.”
Jeannie pulled her hands away from her face and dared to look around. Her heart tumbled into her stomach.
With the darkness momentarily hastened away, she could plainly see the base for the first time in months. It was utterly and truly demolished. She recalled photos taken of the Amundsen-Scott Base, the memory making her shiver.
But there was worse.
The bat men were legion. Interspersed within their still and silent ranks were beasts of dizzying countenances. She saw what looked to be polar bears, only with horns sprouting from their narrow heads, muzzles black as tar. Penguin-like animals sat on their heavy haunches, their bellies bloated and distended, with massive, misshapen beaks and plumed wings that looked as if they could actually take flight. The thought of those things circling above them terrified her. The penguin things, like the men, were devoid of pigment. If not for their black, blinking eyes, she might have missed them against the alabaster backdrop.
There were other quadrupeds that were just too perplexing to contemplate. They all had two things in common – they were pale, bordering on albino, and menacing.
“You should have saved the bullets,” Dallas said. He and North had slowly crept toward them.
She knew what he meant and it pained her. Had they really come to that?
Sherm was still held by two of the men, but he appeared to have passed out. Jeannie saw a tiny tendril of steam escape his mouth.
When her eyes alighted on C-Rod, she gasped. Rob turned to where she was looking and bolted.
C-Rod’s left leg was pinned by one of the chimeras. The ground was splattered with blood as it exploded from the pressure. His leg from the knee down was flat, like a deflated balloon.
And somehow he was still conscious.
Dallas ran after Rob, followed by Holli, all three hollering at the animal in an attempt to at least get it to move off of C-Rod.
The beast lowered its head and glowered at them, dark lips pulled back, jagged teeth flashing. Jeannie wanted to help, but the moment she went to stand, she fell back down. She was sure she had a concussion, her stability severely limited. North held onto her.
“They should let him be,” he said. “What do they think they can do against that monster?”
“Rob could never.”
It would end horribly. Jeannie forced herself to watch. She owed being a witness to his death to her husband. She was sure she wouldn’t have to live with it for long before joining him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Nichols had no clue what he was going to do to get the creature to step off of C-Rod. It did not look the least bit frightened of their screams and wild gesticulations. This was not some house cat or a raccoon in the yard.
C-Rod looked up and their eyes met. Despite what must be excruciating pain, C-Rod shook his head, asking them to stop.
With a sudden lunge, C-Rod sat up and grabbed the creature by the nose. He’d taken his gloves off, his fingers digging into the dripping, black organ. It howled, rearing back, releasing C-Rod’s leg. Rob’s gorge lodged in his throat. C-Rod’s leg was essentially gone. What was left in its place no more resembled a leg than an ear or a kidney.
“How do you like that, asshole?” C-Rod shouted. He held onto the creature’s nose for all he was worth. It lifted him off the ground, his shattered leg flopping, spraying blood and bits of bone. He punched at its eye with his other hand, cursing with anger and defiance.
The closest bat men looked on with indifference.
Oddly enough, C-Rod seemed to be winning the battle. Nichols heard the eyeball pop, saw the viscera come tumbling out in a waterfall. The beast snapped its head and C-Rod was airborne. He landed by Nichols’ feet, nearly knocking him down as if he were a bowling pin.
Holli was already taking off her Big Red and pulling off a sweater. She used it to tie a tight knot around his thigh.
Nichols watched from a safe distance as the creature bashed two of the bat men, its blind agony sending it into a desperate gallop. The men’s bodies snapped in half like dry timber, their black eyes staring at the bright sky.
“I don’t think that’s gonna help much,” C-Rod said, staring at the makeshift tourniquet. He was panting hard, his complexion like wax.
“It’ll stop you from bleeding to death, you dummy,” Holli said.
His eyes fluttered. “I think…I think that ship has sailed, Hols.”
One of the bat men suddenly sprang toward C-Rod. Nichols darted between them, blocking the man from getting to him. His skin was cold, the muscles underneath hard as stone. They landed in a pile, Nichols on top. The man’s mouth opened in a silent scream. His gums were gray and withered, the stench coming from his bowels horrid enough to make Nichols lightheaded. He reared back to deliver one hell of a haymaker to the man’s nose when he was tackled, rolling into C-Rod who wailed in agony.
Nichols tried to get up, but he was swarmed by bat men. They pinned him to the ground. He was just able to turn his head to see them do the same to Dallas and Holli. It was like being buried under steel beams. He couldn’t so much as squirm under their powerful weight. It was getting harder to breathe.
“Get the fuck off me!” C-Rod shouted.
One of the bat men crouched by his squashed leg. It grabbed his coat and pulled him closer. C-Rod kicked at him with his good leg, his boot bouncing harmlessly off the thing’s mid-section.
Two other bat men scampered forward to hold C-Rod’s shoulders down.
The bat-man used one hand to tear C-Rod’s pants free, exposing smashed muscles and bone. The thing got down on its belly and latched its mouth onto the stub of C-Rod’s knee.
“What the fuck are you doing?” C-Rod screamed, writhing to pull away.
It slurped hungrily at his leg. Nichols watched in revulsion as its throat pulsed with each draught of C-rod’s blood. Another bat-man came and joined in suckling on C-rod’s leg.
“Get the hell off of him!” Holli shouted from under the pile of bat men.
C-Rod’s protests turned to sobs as helplessness set in.
“Get off me, you fucking freaks,” he blubbered. “Get off my fucking…gahhhhhh!”
His eyes rolled up in his head and his chest heaved once…twice…slowly settling down after the third breath and rising no more. Holli’s scream was heartbreaking.
When it was done, the men stepped away, allowing Nichols, Holli and Dallas to stand.
The husk of C-Rod lay on the floor, cooling.
Blood ran down the chins and chests of the two bat men who had feasted on him.
