It hurt to stand, much less walk, so bad she worried she’d broken something. Holli limped her way to Dallas, calling his name, hoping for some kind of response. If he was dead and she was left here on her own, she was sure she’d lose the tiny shreds of sanity she had left.

  “Come on, boss,” she said, standing over him and wondering how she was going to manage to crouch down to check him out. If he wasn’t breathing, she worried she wouldn’t remember a thing from the CPR class she’d taken ten years ago. A thin puddle of blood spilled out of his mouth. “If you die on me, so help me, I’ll kill you.”

  A wave of nausea hit her as she canted to one knee. Holli swept the snow away from his face. How could snow get down here? Maybe, she thought, it was tiny flakes of ice. Unless this place was large enough to have its own atmosphere. At this point, she’d believe anything was possible.

  She touched Dallas’ cheek. It was cold, but his closed eye flinched. She exhaled a great plume of fog with relief. “Time to get up.”

  She saw the shattered teeth and his split lips as she turned his head to the side. His groan, followed by, “What in the hell are you doing?” were the best sounds she’d ever heard.

  “You took a nap,” she said. “We don’t have time for naps.”

  Looking around, she didn’t see anything or anyone nearby. Where had the bats dumped them?

  Dallas coughed, spitting up a bloody wad of phlegm. “Hols, you were either hiding a pair of twin sisters, or I’m seeing triple.” He clutched the sides of his head. His eyes were dancing in their sockets.

  “I think you have a concussion,” she said. “I’ll take that over a broken ass bone.” When she shifted to stand, the pain practically paralyzed her.

  “It’s because you’re too skinny,” he said, the half-smile on his ruined face a sight to scare children. “If you had more padding, you’d be fine.”

  Together, they helped each other to their feet, one as crippled as the other. “You know a local all-you-can-eat buffet and I’ll keep filling my plate until I pop. I want to get out of here so bad, I’d even settle for a Golden Corral.”

  Keeping one eye closed, Dallas said, “So, where do we go from here?”

  A gust of wind, warbling like a lone owl, whipped overhead. There was nothing but the vast emptiness of pale, misty landscape as far as they could see. If Holli hadn’t known better, she would think they had been deposited right back at Freedom Base, minus the wreckage.

  “Whichever way points home,” Holli said.

  Dallas put his hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think there is a way.”

  Her molars worried at the inside of her cheek until her tongue tasted old pennies. “Yeah, I don’t think so either.”

  “We could always just rest a while and wait to see what they have in store for us next.”

  Holli shook her head. “I can’t. It’s not in me to just sit around and wait for some disaster to happen.”

  Wheezing, Dallas put a hand on his ribs. “If you were old like me and broken – think I might have fractured a rib or three – waiting has a whole new appeal.”

  “What we need to do is find North and Nichols.”

  A shiver rushed through her, making all the sore parts hurt even more. It was cold as hell in this underworld, though not so cold that they were in imminent danger of freezing to death. But freeze to death they would if they decided to just lie down and take a little siesta.

  Though dying in their sleep seemed the most appealing outcome to their situation.

  “You see which direction they went?” Dallas asked.

  “Nope. In fact, I didn’t see North at all. Nichols was beside me, at least until that freaking bat made its way down here.”

  Dallas pointed over her shoulder. “Let’s go that way, then. Seems as good a place to start as any.”

  Actually, it looked like every other place to start. Without a compass or anything to serve as a reference point, they could easily walk in circles until their bodies gave out.

  As they limped along, Holli said, “You still seeing triple?”

  “Only if I keep both eyes open.”

  They walked and walked, each calling out for Nichols and North from time to time. There was no way to tell how long they kept at it or which direction they were going. There was no sun in the sky to guide them. Just those illuminated birds, constantly swarming far above. Their light played against the growing fog, creating strange and wondrous light displays in the ground mist.

  Holli was hurt and hungry and running out of gas. If this was how it ended, taking the big cold sleep when her legs could no longer take another step, she would consider it a blessing. But until then, she was going to give every ounce of strength she had to finding those two men. Everyone may die alone, but it was always more comforting to do it beside another.

  Dallas’ breathing was sounding worse and worse. He was spitting up less blood as the wounds in his mouth dried up, but she worried one of his ribs had pierced a lung.

  “North! Nichols! Can you here me?” she shouted for the umpteenth time.

  The wind answered her.

  Dallas faltered. He latched onto her arm and as he fell, he dragged her down with him. Holli yelped as she angled her body so her thigh took the brunt of the fall.

  “I’m done, Hols,” Dallas panted. “Stick in the fork. Maybe this is what those things wanted. Just leave us to die.”

  “I can’t believe that,” she said. “I mean, why drag us down here in the first place? They could have killed us as easily as they did Jeannie and C-Rod at the base. It just doesn’t make sense.”

  He waved at the air between them. “There’s no point in trying to make sense out of any of this. We got in their way, they took an interest in us for a spell, and now we’re like all those shiny toys the week after Christmas.”

  “Especially the broken toys.”

  “Especially them.

  “Look, you can keep looking for them, but me, I can’t get up. My head feels like it’s going to split in two and I can’t see straight. Shit, I’m having a hard time remembering my address and my girlfriend’s name. If you find North or Nichols, come back and get me.”

  Holli knew if she found them, she’d never be able to locate Dallas.

  She was about to tell him to quit feeling sorry for himself and get off his ass when she spotted a snow-covered mound ahead of them.

  “Do you believe in miracles?” she said as she painfully got back on her feet.

  “Only if the day comes where I’m back in my lounge chair with a beer in one hand and cigar in the other.”

  Holli patted his chest and did the closest approximation to a run as she could muster.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ignoring the flaring pain in her back and hips, Holli slid to her knees. The Big Red jacket was covered in a fine layer of white flakes, the wearer’s back turned to her. She didn’t know whether it was North or Nichols, and she hesitated turning them over in case they had internal injuries. Then she realized even if they did, there was no way to call 911 here in the frozen bowels of the Earth.

  She grabbed the sleeve of the Big Red and pulled.

  “Nichols.”

  His eyes were wide open. She knew in an instant he hadn’t survived the fall.

  Or maybe his heart simply broke, she thought. Seeing Jeannie killed like that was the same as driving a dagger through his chest.

  She’d never encountered a couple so in love before. Coming from her fucked up home, Holli had no grounding for what a healthy relationship could look like. Even her own short-lived romances were always tainted by her mistrust and anger.

  Holli tried to sit, but the rockets of pain drove her onto her side where she fell into the cold grip of uncontrollable sobbing. She wept for Nichols and Jeannie, C-Rod and Sherm. She wept out of pain and fear and a well of hopelessness deeper than the inexorable end of a black hole.

  Through the shimmer of tears, she searched for Dallas, who had only been thirty or so feet from Nichols. She couldn’t find him. She had a feeling no matter how far or hard she looked, this place wouldn’t allow them to reunite. It had gotten what it wanted.

  In the end, she sobbed over her total isolation.

  Every time her chest hitched, her thinking went fuzzy as the pain in her lower back escalated. Still, she let the tears come, encouraged herself to cry and cry until her brain shut it all down.

  She should stop, try to find North.

  He was probably dead, too.

  Dallas would be soon, if he wasn’t already, wherever he was.

  Holli wiped her face, her hand having grown so numb, she couldn’t feel it at all anymore. Her tears melted the snow.

  She lay there, letting her emotions run free, unaware of the passage of time or the steady drop in temperature. Her toes burned with encroaching frostbite.

  It was a long while before she was all cried out. She’d never lost consciousness, coming close many times.

  “Fuck it,” she sniffled.

  She used the inside of her Big Red to dry her face. Her cheeks hurt like hell as the rough fabric brushed against them. She imagined her face was as bright as a freshly picked apple – raw and close to bleeding.

  “I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.”

  In the middle of her Dorothy-like chanting, she saw them.

  The bat men were coming. Hundreds of them. No, thousands. She placed her palm against the frozen ground and felt the beat of their syncopated march.

  They’d broken her, and now they were coming to devour the pieces.

  Dallas’ eyes snapped open when he felt the tremors.

  He looked around for Holli, hoping that North and Nichols were in tow.

  It wasn’t them.

  What he did see were those bald bat men heading his way.

  There was no fight left in him.

  Dallas lay on his back, hands folded across his chest, and waited. If they expected a struggle, they would be sorely disappointed. He’d been hoping he’d be a rock-hard popsicle by the time they found him, all his cares and worries gone into the ether. He should have known he wouldn’t be so lucky.

  One last indignity before I get to call it quits.

  “Come on!” he heard Holli scream.

  She sounded close. When she’d walked away to look for their missing comrades, it was as if the ground mist had conspired to swallow her up. She went no more than five feet from him before disappearing into the swirling mist. He’d assumed they’d never see each other again.

  “Hols!” he shouted.

  “Dallas?”

  “Keep talking. I’ll come to you.” He winced as he ordered his body to get up. “You find them?”

  “It’s Nichols,” she replied. “He’s dead.”

  He refrained from saying, lucky bastard.

  Eyeballing the men – they were a hundred yards out and steadily making their way – Dallas said, “Keep talking so I can follow your voice.”

  As if in answer to his plea, the fog thickened, rising up from around his knees to eye level. Dammit! This cursed place did everything in its power to make your life miserable.

  “You know what I could go for right now?” Holli said.

  “What?” Talking loud enough for her to hear him hurt like blue, black and white blazes.

  “A nuclear bomb. I’d drop it right on their asses and fry them where they stand.”

  “I’d go for that.”

  He stutter-stepped, homing in on her voice.

  “I don’t care if I get turned to crispy bacon in the process. I just ask that I get a few seconds to watch these fuckers melt,” Holli said.

  “It would be nice to incinerate this whole damn place,” he said. “Not sure we want what’s here getting out.”

  All along, that had been a growing concern. If the earthquake had set these things loose, how much destruction would and could they wreak? Would the other Antarctic bases be next? There was nothing in the bitter tundra that could stop them. Once they’d conquered Antarctica, would they advance north? Could they withstand the warmth of, say, Australia and beyond? He hoped not. He hoped they’d fry like ants under the Aussie sun.

  “But before all that,” Holli continued. “I’d kill for an In-N-Out burger. Actually, three In-N-Out burgers. With two large orders of fries, a vanilla milkshake and two Cokes.”

  “In-N-Out burger, huh? Never had one.”

  “Then you haven’t lived.”

  And I won’t much longer, Dallas thought.

  “Sorry,” Holli said.

  “No need to be, Hols.”

  And then he saw her. She was lying next to Nichols, his face turned to the false sky, eyes open and most likely a pair of frozen cue balls with pupils. He saw the bat men were now fifty yards off.

  Holli somehow managed to leap to her feet and wrap her arms around him. “Don’t let me go,” she said, her teeth chattering.

  He slipped his arm around her waist, one hand on the back of her head, pulling her to his chest. “I won’t. I promise.”

  The mist blew away even though there was no breeze. Dallas looked over Holli’s shoulder at poor Nichols.

  He went rigid.

  “Hols.”

  “What?” she said into his chest.

  “Look.”

  She pulled herself away to see what he was looking at. Her eyes fell on Nichols.

  And the wisps of vapor coming from his mouth.

  Dallas croaked, “He’s alive.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “Oh my God!”

  Holli broke away from Dallas’ assuring embrace. She put her hands on Nichols’ shoulders and gently rocked him. “Nichols. Can you hear me?”

  His eyes didn’t blink, didn’t so much as flick in her direction. They stared blankly up at the circling birds.

  “He’s still gone,” she said to Dallas.

  “Maybe it’s better that way.”

  The bat men were almost upon them.

  Holli whipped around, her heart racing. She’d been resigned to whatever terrifying thing they were going to do to them, defiantly so, but that resolve had dissipated like the fog in their menacing presence.

  Dallas reached down and grabbed her hand, helping her to her feet.

  The giant man wasn’t among them. These were just the anonymous minions. Not that that brought any sense of comfort.

  The men stopped several feet from them, their big, black eyes staring, mouths shut so tight, it almost looked as if they had no mouths at all.

  Holli and Dallas stood their ground. She could feel Dallas’ body shaking under his layers.

  The ground shook.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  BOOM!

  Holli turned around. They’d been so focused on the army of bat men, they hadn’t noticed the enormous man who seemed to have risen up from the ground itself.

  Her blood ran colder than the darkest winter night in the South Pole.

  The man before them was similar to the other bat men in that he was white as chalk with nary a hair on his body and eyes so large, entire armies could fall to their death in them. He stood at least fifty feet tall. Holli’s neck cracked as she tried to take in the vast behemoth.

  Oh the sides of his head were massive, curved horns. An evil, horrid smile split his wide face.

  On the tips of his fingers were nails the size of surfboards, the tips honed to fine, deadly points. She watched, her mouth agape, as he flicked the index finger of his right hand across the wrist of his left hand. The skin split wide open.

  Except there was no blood.

  What looked like balls of hail spilled from the open wound. They cascaded onto the ground. Holli looked in horror as the hail rolled, then sprouted eight sets of legs.

  Spiders!

  Thousands of spiders erupted from the rent in the giant’s flesh.

  Dallas said something that sounded like gibberish to her. What was there to possibly say before such a sight?

  The spiders skittered their way.

  Holli tried to scream, but her throat felt as if it had been stuffed with dry, dirty rags.

  She turned to run, but they had been hemmed in by the throng of bat men.

  The giant bellowed with laughter.

  “They want you…Holli.”

  Hearing her name spoken by the behemoth man nearly stopped her heart.

  Dallas tried to shield her, but she couldn’t move.

  Her eyes opened wider and wider as the pale spiders came.

  They want you, Holli.

  As they came closer, she saw they weren’t just spiders.

  She could see their faces.

  “No!” she peeled. “Nononononononononononono!”

  Her stepfather’s face, the molesting piece of garbage that had ruined her childhood, infected every waking moment of her life, was plastered on each and every one of the spiders. The faces licked their lips in anticipation, just as he would do before he slipped his fingers under the waistband of her Power Rangers pajamas.

  “You know you miss us,” the spiders cried in his voice times ten thousand. “You know you like it.”

  “Stop talking!” she shouted.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Dallas said beside her. She’d forgotten all about him. Her flesh crawled at the sight of her arachnid step-fathers.

  “Just take my finger and put it where you like it,” the spiders cooed, their spindly legs flittering as they came for her.

  One spider, faster than the others, quicker than lightning, was instantly at her feet. Holli wasted no time stomping it to paste.

  She felt it pop beneath her boot. But there was no moment of joy. There was no way she could squish them all. The demented fuck would have his way with her and worse.

  Holli screamed and screamed, drowning out the predatory babble of the spiders.

  Dallas didn’t know what to do. Holli had completely lost her mind. She was talking to the spiders as if they were speaking to her. They were terrifying to look at, but he hadn’t heard a thing from them, other than the tick-tick-ticking of their legs tapping on the ice.

  When the giant had said her name, though, even Dallas had swooned. In a world of the impossible, how could that be?

 

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