Antarctic Ice Beasts, page 6
Sherm bounded into the room, panting. “Radio communication is out.”
Nichols gritted his teeth. It wasn’t a shock, not with the storm coming their way. Or maybe one of those things had taken out the communication tower. He pulled up the video feed for the tower. It was clear of the pale men and still standing. “Of course it is,” he grumbled.
“Wait. Look,” Holli exclaimed.
The bat men snapped their heads in the same direction, looking over their right shoulder. It was a quick, simple act, but it made Nichols’ skin quiver and his spine alight with sharp prickles.
Like a flock of birds, the men ran.
Nichols grabbed his walkie, “Dallas! North! They’re coming your way!”
“How many incoming?” Dallas asked.
“Too many. I’ll be right there.” He tapped C-Rod. “Come with me. The rest of you stay here. Keep trying the radio and keep watching those monitors. If these fuckers break up, I want to know where they’re headed.”
Jeannie tugged on his sleeve and the look in her eyes nearly melted his resolve. “We can’t let them in,” she said gravely.
“I know.” He kissed her hard and cupped her cheek.
Armed with only a butcher’s knife he’d taken from the kitchen, Nichols and C-Rod ran to the entrance. Nichols wondered if he’d ever see Jeannie again.
Racing down the narrow corridor, both men nearly lost their footing when something struck the base with the fury and power of the hammer of God.
Chapter Eleven
Dr. North watched the mob of black-eyed men barrel toward them. Dallas’ face was pressed close to his as they peered out of the window set in the door.
“Fuck me sideways,” Dallas muttered.
North was having a hard time catching his breath. How on Earth were they supposed to hold the door with one gun and a mop handle?
He grabbed Dallas by the arm and pulled. “Back away from the door!”
The men hit the stairs, launching their bodies against the door with reckless abandon.
Wha-whump! Wha-whump!
The door shook but held. Hell, the entire building was rocked.
“Quick,” Dallas barked, grabbing the shelves where they stored their gear and dragging it against the door. North got hold of the other end and pushed.
“That’s not going to be enough,” North said.
Wha-whump!
The next assault made the hinges of the door cry out in distress.
Nichols and C-Rod made it to the entrance. They were breathless and confused.
“I thought Sherm said the earthquake was over,” C-Rod gasped.
North pointed at the door. “That’s no earthquake. It’s them.”
Wha-whump!
Again, everything rattled.
“That door’s not gonna hold much longer,” Dallas said.
“We need to fill the room,” Nichols said. The entrance to the base was comprised of a small prep room.
“With what?” C-Rod said.
“Anything solid. Create an impenetrable wall.”
North knew exactly what he meant. If they jammed the room full of stuff, even if the hinges broke, the door wouldn’t be able to open.
“Let’s go,” North said to Dallas. They hustled to the supply room just across the way, grabbing more heavy shelving. Under normal circumstances, North would have a hard time moving them, complaining about his bad back all the way, but adrenaline was making easy work of it. Nichols and C-Rod lugged a steel file cabinet and chairs. The four men went back and forth, dragging the heaviest, sturdiest furniture they could find, the haphazard pile growing fast.
All the while the pounding on the door and the wall around the door continued. North desperately wanted to look through the window to see if any of the men had been wounded or even better, killed, in their lust to get inside. Getting to the window in the door was impossible now, thanks to the tangle of debris filling the room.
Sweating profusely (I don’t think I’ve broken a sweat since I got here, North thought), North wedged the last item that would fit into the room: Holli’s dresser. The entrance/prep room was filled wall to wall and floor to ceiling – a solid block of scrap.
Dallas leaned against the wall, his gun pointed into the room. “Think that’ll keep them out?”
North arched an eyebrow. “We better hope it does.” His heart slammed so hard, he could hear its wild beating in his ringing ears.
Wha-whump.
“Sounds like they’re running out of steam,” Nichols said.
He was right. That one barely shook this part of the base.
“Jeannie, what does it look like out there?” Nichols said into his walkie.
“They just took out the camera mounted by the entrance,” she replied, her voice high and worried. “Before they did, we watched them drag some of their men away, past the light. They looked hurt.”
“I don’t doubt it,” North said. “They attacked like battering rams.” He imagined broken bones, internal bleeding, massive head wounds. All of them richly deserved.
“Can you spot them on any other cameras?” Nichols asked.
There was a pause. “No.”
“Have Holli and Sherm check the windows. We’re coming back.”
“What about the door?” Jeannie asked.
Dallas put his walkie close to his mouth. “Darling, they’re not getting in that door without dynamite.”
Everyone remained glued to the monitors, with C-Rod doing rounds, checking windows. The remaining bat men, and there were plenty, had ceased their assault. Dallas kept watch on them by the window with nothing much to report. They had ceased all movement, heads bowed, shoulders slumped.
“Like toys that had their batteries removed,” Dallas said.
Through it all, the winds picked up, the distant rumble of the storm not so distant anymore. Jeannie had stopped checking on it because what was the point? They had a far greater concern out there, seemingly waiting for them.
“I don’t even care what they are at this point,” Holli said. “I just want to know where the hell they came from.”
“It’s snowing men?” Sherm said. Even he looked disgusted with himself for trying to make light of their situation.
“I’m not giving a hallelujah on that one,” C-Rod said as he entered the room. “You ask me, they’re from space. I bet there’s some crashed ship out there under the ice where they’ve been hiding out.”
Nichols was dead tired. The rushes of adrenaline had left him in total crash mode. He swiveled his chair and narrowed his eyes at C-Rod. “That’s the movie, The Thing. You better hope it’s not like that.”
“Never heard of it.” C-Rod poured himself a coffee and opened a pack of Twinkies.
Nichols didn’t have the strength to explain. The ground snow was swirling, making it hard to see anything. Those men could be everywhere, but the building winds were giving them perfect cover.
They were all clinging to the hope that the storm would be too much for the bat men to endure. If there was anyone listening to their prayers, they would be gone, carried away by the freakish winds.
Something told Nichols that wasn’t going to happen. Dallas confided to him that he felt the same way. Those things were perfectly suited to Antarctica. The cold and dark and high winds were, to them, the same as a day on the beach to the humans inside Freedom Base.
But what did they want?
Obviously it wasn’t shelter. Was it food? They looked well fed and healthy, despite their pallid flesh. Unless they didn’t crave food in the traditional sense. The succeeding thought made Nichols visibly shiver.
“Sherm, Holli, C-Rod, why don’t you all try to get some shut eye,” he said. “We’ll take turns keeping watch.”
“Like hell I will,” Jeannie said. “You look like the one that needs a week of sleep. I couldn’t close my eyes now if you drugged me.”
He looked at his wife and her squared posture and knew there was no bucking this bull. Nichols raised his hands, palms out. “Okay, me, Holli and C-Rod will hit the hay.” The other two didn’t protest. “We’ll set our alarms for three hours from now. Sound good?”
Jeannie squeezed his arm. “The only thing that would sound good right now is a rescue plane.”
“Or a tank,” C-Rod said.
Nichols’ back cracked as he rose from the chair. He glanced at North, who looked pretty beat. “You want to knock off now? You look like you could use it.”
North waved him off. “I’ll be fine. Not doing much other than sitting anyway. I’d offer you each a sleeping pill, but it wouldn’t wear off in three hours.”
“Suit yourself.”
The walk to their rooms seemed longer than ever. The wind kicked into high gear, wailing at the walls of the base. C-Rod trudged to his quarters without speaking a word, which was very unusual for him. Holli lingered beside Nichols.
“Where do you think they’re from?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“Not from Mars,” he replied. “Other than that, one guess is as good as another.”
“You think they’ll get in?”
He was tempted to blow smoke up her ass, but the way her eyes were piercing his own, as if she were scouring his soul, he knew it was better to shoot straight. “If they want to, they will. They don’t seem to even care how much it would hurt them or worse. We just have to be grateful they don’t have any weapons or tools.”
Holli broke away, staring down the empty corridor. “Weapons,” she said before shuffling off to her room.
Nichols closed his door behind him and collapsed on the bed. His brain was on fire but his body was done. He fell asleep in seconds.
The rattling of the storm woke C-Rod up. He checked his watch. He’d only been asleep for an hour.
“Son of a bitching storm,” he muttered, turning over.
The cacophony was impossible to ignore. Each rumble of wind made him think those naked assholes were launching another assault.
He needed sleep. They all did. If they had to fight to stand their ground, they would be at a major disadvantage if they were delirious and weak from exhaustion.
C-Rod reached under his bed for his laptop and powered it up. He went to a folder labeled CLASSICS and opened it, revealing file after file of old school porn. He preferred the classics from the 80s and early 90s. The porn stars today always shaved themselves to within an inch of their lives. He preferred his porn to be a little more natural. He found one with Christy Canyon and Jennifer Stewart, two of his favorites, and pulled his pants down.
At times when he was wound up and couldn’t sleep, C-Rod found a quick jerk session was all he needed to drift off to slumber land. Truth be told, he jerked off when he was tired, happy, sad and angry. It was better than drugs and he wasn’t hurting anyone, except himself on days when he was short on lube.
Christy and Jennifer were about to get on opposite ends of a dildo the size of a pogo stick when something struck the base so hard, one of his shelves came crashing off the wall.
C-Rod jumped too, his laptop hitting the floor with a loud crack, Christy and Jennifer’s moans instantly silenced. Tucking himself in, C-Rod stood in the middle of his room, waiting.
The wind was loud and constant. Someone could have been calling to him through the door and he might not have heard them.
His muscles tight, insides coiled like a snake in a charmer’s basket, he waited for the other shoe to drop.
It didn’t take long.
Chapter Twelve
Dallas had lost sight of the men through the driving snow. It wasn’t until they were less than ten feet from the base that they became visible, silent wraiths emerging from the white out. They leapt and hurled their bodies at the outer wall. As the first line of men fell, the next line took their place, hammering the structure like lemmings.
“Oh no.”
His first instinct was to smash the window and start shooting. They were so close and tightly packed, it would be impossible to miss. He squeezed the handle of the gun, tempted, but common sense won out. He didn’t have anywhere near enough bullets to take them all out, and if he shattered that window, they were all fucked in a very different way.
“It’s them!” he shouted down the hall.
Jeannie, North and Sherm came running to him.
“I was hoping it was the storm,” Sherm said.
They gathered by the window, jumping back when the next barrage hit, shaking the wall.
“Hope is starting to become a four letter word around here,” Dallas said.
“They may have been waiting for the storm to make their attack,” North said. “The combined forces should be enough to cause a breach.”
Dallas looked at Jeannie, the both of them flushed with dread.
Sherm looked outside again. “How are they even able to stand upright? The wind should be tossing them around like dolls.”
“They may be heavier than they look,” Dallas said. “From what I can see, they’re solid muscle.” So solid, he wondered if a bullet from the Glock would even do much damage. If he did have to shoot, it would have to be headshots, preferably getting them in their oversized eyes. That wouldn’t be easy to do with moving targets. “Like zombies,” he muttered.
Thankfully, no one heard him.
The bat men rammed the outer walls over and over. Even though this part of the base was elevated, they were still going to eventually crush the part they could reach.
“What’s happening now?” Nichols said, his shirt unbuttoned and shoes in his hand.
Jeannie ran to him. “They’re at it again and they won’t stop.”
Nichols looked out the window, steadying himself when they slammed into the wall.
“Between them and the wind, this place is going to break apart,” Dallas said.
C-Rod came in, followed by Holli who held an armload of sharp, pointed sticks.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “So I made these.” She had gathered every mop, broom and shovel she could find, whittling them down to make sturdy spears.
As the base vibrated, all eyes were on Nichols.
“Everybody, suit up,” he said. “We have to be ready if they get through. It’ll get deathly cold in here in seconds.”
“And then what?” Sherm asked. “We can’t ride out the winter wrapped in layers.”
Unlike those things, Dallas thought.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. Now hurry up!” Nichols grumbled.
Everyone left to get their gear but Dallas and Jeannie.
“You want me to stay here until you’re all suited up?” Dallas asked.
“No. Go get dressed. They’re going to keep at it whether you’re watching them or not.”
“I’m scared, Rob,” Jeannie said.
He hugged her. “I know, honey. We all are. I’ll find a way out of this.” Nichols didn’t sound so sure of himself because he wasn’t.
Jeannie mercifully didn’t ask him to make it a promise. The couple left the room hand in hand.
Dallas took one last look out the window. He saw open wounds on the heads of some of the bat men. They hit so hard, a tiny spider web of a crack etched itself in the glass.
It was a race now to see what would get in first – the bizarre men, or the brutal storm.
Holli had given a spear to Sherm, North and C-Rod before they headed to their rooms to layer up. She was thankful she had gone to the entrance room to get her clothes out of the dresser that had been stuffed in there earlier. With everything on the floor, it was easy to see what she needed.
She shimmied out of her jeans and slipped into thick long johns.
Whittling the spears had calmed her. When she’d first started working on the shovel, she could barely hold her knife. But the more she shaved away at the wood, the more her hands steadied themselves. And with that came a wave of, if not placidity, at least quiet.
“I am not going to die down here,” she said, pulling two shirts and a sweater over her head.
She opened her night table drawer and took out her flashlight along with two spare batteries. Light was going to be as essential as a weapon if they had to go outside.
“I am not going to die down here.”
Her Big Red coat was draped over a chair, a balaclava on the seat.
Holli remembered the day she’d finally stood up to her stepfather, telling him that if he hit her again, she was going to first hurt him, then report him to the police. The son of a bitch had laughed, his cigarette and coffee teeth belittling her bravado. He’d patted his belt and took a step towards her, only too happy to show her the error of her logic. At least until she’d brandished the carving knife she’d hidden behind her back.
“I hear there’s a major artery by your balls. How about I make you a eunuch? You won’t have to mourn the small, very small, loss for long though. You’ll bleed out before you get to really cry about it. Not that it would be much of a loss.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Holli strode across the room and pushed the tip of the blade into his crotch, the denim a thin wall between life and death. “I wouldn’t have, at least until you came into my life.”
She couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth, nor the strength and self-assuredness behind them. The sudden flash of fear in his cold, dead eyes only encouraged her more. She pushed the knife a little further. As he stepped back, he tripped over the edge of her bed and fell, his head thumping against the floor.
“Now get the hell out of my room!” she shouted. “And don’t ever think of coming near me again. In fact, get the fuck out of my house. If you so much as touch my mother, I’ll kill you.”
She’d expected some sort of protest, but he simply got up and left. A half an hour later, Holli watched him load his bags in his piece of shit Corolla and tear ass down the street, never to return.
Her mother had been devastated at his leaving them, even knowing that he’d been taking his hands to Holli on a weekly basis. It was then that Holli had decided her mother was just as toxic as that abusive slime ball. After she graduated high school, she left and never went back. The following years had been filled with adventure, fear, revelations and moments of loss and terror. But she persevered.
