Antarctic ice beasts, p.1
Antarctic Ice Beasts, page 1
ANTARCTIC ICE BEASTS
Hunter Shea
www.severedpress.com
Copyright 2019 by Hunter Shea
This icy dish of terror in the scariest place on Earth is dedicated to Kimberly Busse and John Kilgallon. Thank you for taking a ride to the ass end of the world with me.
THE SOUTH POLE
JUNE
AKA – WINTER OF HELL
Chapter One
The winds howled like millions of worried wolves, the walls of the base groaning and shuddering. Those walls were the only things between the winter skeleton crew and instant death by freezing. They never felt as paper thin as they did right now.
Dallas Kazmir stared at the cards in his hand but couldn’t concentrate.
“You want we should switch to Go Fish?” Chris Rodriguez – C-Rod to everyone at the base – asked irritably. He’d been the hot hand for once and he was anxious to keep the streak rolling.
Dallas chucked two cards into the center of the table, not caring what he’d given away or drew. His eyes darted to the ceiling, the hanging overhead light swaying uncomfortably. A hard gust shook the floor. The stack of poker chips in front of C-Rod collapsed.
“This is ridiculous,” Holli Sorensen said before raising the pot. “How long did Jean say this storm would last?”
Swallowing hard and dry, Dallas replied, “Couple days.” Just hearing it said out loud made his stomach churn.
C-Rod chuckled. “Dude, you’re whiter than my Irish girlfriend’s ass. You need to go see North and get one of his special chill pills before you shit yourself.”
The snow pelted the base like fastballs.
“Lay off him,” Holli said, concern etched on her face. Dallas was the veteran of the maintenance crew. This was his fourth winter and he’d seen it all. If this storm had him tenser than a piano wire, they should all be worried.
“I’m just kidding,” C-Rod said, taking a swig from his beer.
“You should take it easy with that,” Dallas said to him.
“Why?”
“Because you might need a clear head. Storm like this, anything can happen at any time.”
The Freedom Base was the only permanent base on the South Pole, built five years after a massive storm destroyed the original Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Thirty-seven people had died that winter, their bodies, and the demolished station, not found until September when the sun rose and the weather made it possible to fly a recovery crew in. Not all of the bodies had been recovered. Eight were missing, presumably dragged off by predators, never to be seen again.
Construction on the Freedom Base began several years later, engineers working tirelessly to anticipate even the worst storm so there would not be a repeat of the tragedy. Freedom Base was built on an ice sheet at an elevation of over nine-thousand-three-hundred feet. The raised facility was designed specifically to withstand everything nature could throw at it. It was, as Dallas had said many a time, a brick shit house series of connected structures. Long and boxy, they were nothing much to look at. Better Homes and Gardens wouldn’t be knocking on their door anytime soon. Their form and function were perfectly suited to the harsh environment.
A night like tonight – night being relative, since they were going to be in darkness for the next several months – Dallas couldn’t stop thinking about the remains of the Amundsen-Scott Station and its inhabitants. The twisted wreck and pale, petrified bodies had been removed, but their spectral presence remained. At least they did in Dallas’ mind.
“Call,” Holli said, trying to take his mind off the gale force winds.
Dallas threw down his cards and got up.
“Read ‘em and weep,” C-Rod shouted, sweeping poker chips his way.
Walking across the room, Dallas went to the bulletin board where they posted each day’s to-do list and put his palm flat against the wall. It was as if he and the base had become one, the violence of the storm flowing into his bloodstream, riding his central nervous system and flooding his brain with images of slashing white fury.
“You’re only winning because we don’t give a shit,” Holli said. “Besides, you’re so deep in debt to us, you’re still working this season for free.”
“Few more nights like this, maybe not, Hols.” He shuffled the cards and called out to Dallas, “Hey Texas, I’m not done with you yet.”
It’ll hold, Dallas thought over and over, a mantra against his rising fear.
“I think we’re done, buddy,” Holli said, rising from her chair and heading for the coffee maker.
“Sore losers,” C-Rod muttered.
It’ll hold.
It’ll hold.
“We should walk the base, make sure everything’s okay,” Dallas said to the wall.
During a storm like this, it was best to do hourly interior checks to make sure there were no cracks in the structure. If the biting winds found even a pinhole, the temperature would plummet and turn anyone nearby into a popsicle. Snow driven with unrelenting power would rush through the gap and pile up with alarming speed. With everyone else asleep – though Dallas suspected most had to pop a pill to get some shut-eye – it was important that he and his crew watch over them and make sure they would wake up alive and well in what passed for morning here.
They were, all of them, nothing more than glorified caretakers. Freedom Base needed someone to help it survive the long, dark winter. What little science occurred during the season was of minor consequence. A lot of money went into building the compound. These four, shuddering walls were worth more in the eyes of the US government than the seven lost souls sent to live within them. Only misfits, outliers, would willfully choose to winter down here. They were expendable. Dallas had served ten years in the Marines. He knew all about expendable.
“We can pick up where we left off after,” C-Rod said.
“Or not,” Holli replied, taking a long sip of coffee.
“Whatever. I got a couple of zombie flicks I wanna watch, anyway.”
“You and your zombies. Why do you waste your time?”
“It’s better than chick flicks, I’ll tell you that. Why don’t you come cuddle with me one day and we can watch one together, show you how much fun they are.”
“In your dreams, creepo,” she said with a smirk. “Now, do what Dallas said.”
Dallas removed his hand from the wall and turned to her, appreciative that she was on his side, but upset with himself for causing the flickering of apprehension in her eyes. He had to get his shit together. “Let’s go. And take your time. No rush jobs tonight.”
Holli nodded, heading off to her assigned sector. C-Rod flicked the bill of his Cubs baseball cap and moseyed out of the rec room.
Taking a deep breath, Dallas put his hands on his hips and looked around at the mess they’d made. There was popcorn on the floor, magazines tossed all over the couch, and a pile of sawdust on the shuffleboard table from when Hols went to sprinkle more and the cap fell off. If not for the howling storm, it was the picture of normalcy.
But there was no ignoring what was going on outside. Dallas had paid his dues in Antarctica and had lived through more squalls than he could count during his travels around the world in the military and as a civilian. This one was different. It felt to him as if it was sentient, its ire focused on Freedom Base and the vulnerable, weak humans inside.
“Stop making yourself crazy,” he muttered.
He was about to head over to the science lab when the floor began to rumble.
Chapter Two
“Did you feel that?”
Jeannie Nichols sat up in bed, instantly awake. Her husband snored beside her. She jabbed him with an elbow and slipped out of their bed.
“What the hell, Jean?” Rob said, rubbing his eyes.
She was in the corner of the room struggling into her pants. As if on cue, the room shook, a pair of paperbacks tipping off the shelf above the computer table and thumping to the floor.
That woke him up. Rob looked about the room. “Where are my clothes?”
Jeannie was tucking her shirt into her pants and donning a cap to cover the mass of red, bed head curls. “I don’t know. Wherever you left them. Meet me in seismology when you find them.”
Without waiting for a reply, Jeannie burst out of the room, running down the darkened, narrow corridor to the base’s science pod. She stopped dead in her tracks when the overwhelming cacophony of what sounded like a dozen freight trains colliding filled the air. It was so loud, for a moment she irrationally thought the power of the sound waves alone would be enough to shatter the reinforced walls.
“What the fuck?”
The terrifying noise stopped. Her heart went into overdrive. Jeannie waited, expecting to feel the slight vibration of an aftershock through the soles of her booted feet. What she did feel was the pounding of footsteps coming up behind her.
“You okay?” Earl Sherman said as he pulled up alongside her. He was still in his boxers and sweatshirt.
“I was until I heard that.”
Sherm attempted a feeble smile. “It almost made my dreads stand on end.”
Having Sherm with her broke Jeannie’s paralysis. Together, they ran the rest of the way to the science pod. Dallas was already there, ashen-faced.
“Please tell me that was nothing,” the head of maintenance said.
“I can if you don’t mind being lied to,” Sherm replied, settling in front of a row of monitors that were never turned off.
Jeannie took the chair behind him and logged into he
He exhaled loudly. “Not as bad as it sounded. Only a 5.9 on the scale.”
It was funny, or not so funny being that they were in the literal middle of nowhere with no way to get help should they need it, that Sherm had talked about the sound of the earthquake and not the rocking and rolling. Jeannie had been present for dozens of earthquakes and had never, ever heard anything like that. She looked to Dallas, who was standing by the door with his eyes popping out of his head. “You should meet up with Rob and do a full assessment.”
Dallas shook his head and his eyes went back to where they belonged. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” He buzzed Rob on the walkie. “Nichols, where you at?”
Her husband’s tinny voice responded quickly. “I’m in the kitchen now. Everything looks all right. Meet me in storage.”
“Be there in a few.”
Dallas hustled out of the science pod.
The storage room. Jeannie knew that the initial compromise of the Amundsen-Scott base had been in one of their storage rooms. It was nothing but chaos, destruction and death after that.
She opened a dozen programs spitting out a slew of flashing numbers, rising and falling bars, alerts and reams of data. Her eyes ran across the screens, her brain on fire, taking everything in and mapping out what was going on beneath them.
Just think, she was in bed not five minutes ago dreaming about a simple summer barbecue with friends in the yard.
The wind returned, knocking to be let in.
There’d be no barbecues down here.
Two hours later, everyone was gathered in the science pod. Normally, team meetings were held in the rec room, but it seemed appropriate to be in the one place that could provide answers.
Since there were only seven of them here for the winter, there was plenty of room for everyone. Rob Nichols drank from his mug of coffee, the black X-Files mug a gift from his sister many moons ago (underneath the logo, it said ‘The brew is in here’, waiting for the nervous chatter to die down.
Seven people.
The previous station would typically be staffed with up to forty men and women, hunkering down for months of endless glacial night. Both the Amundsen-Scott and Freedom Bases were run by the USAP (United States Antarctic Program) under the auspices of the National Science Foundation. When the Amundsen-Scott Station had been destroyed, the USAP decided to make the next station smaller, more compact and able to weather any kind of storm. Nichols knew that another riding factor behind shrinking the size of the base was to limit the potential death toll should something go wrong. Seven people dying in a place and season where only crazy people dared tread was far more palatable than three or four dozen. There was bad publicity and bad publicity. Nichols often compared them to the early astronauts – men (and now women) taking incredible risks, knowing their lives were at stake, but fostering just enough invincibility to still think death was something that happened to other people.
We’re all a little bit broken in our own ways, Nichols thought. Rational people with stable lives would never entertain a winter on the Pole. It was no shock to him that several of the crew had brought black Misfits t-shirts. The eighties punk band certainly embodied the spirit of those who dared to winter at the Pole.
The crew was a tad excitable at the moment, but there wasn’t an air of dread hanging over the room. Well, maybe not Dallas. The guy looked completely wigged out. He wasn’t joining in any conversations, just staring at the walls and ceiling every time the base was hammered by a gust of wind. The earthquake may have passed, but the storm was still raging, and would be raging, for another day or more.
“So, what’s the deal?” Rob asked his wife and Sherm, the only scientists signed on for the winter. During the summer and spring seasons, the eggheads far outnumbered the grunts. Now, with darkness and killing frost, most of the science was about recording weather patterns and seismology, the two very things his wife and Sherm were experts at.
“Looks like the worst of it is over,” Sherm said, his long arms folded behind his head. His fingers played with one of his dreads. “The aftershocks have died down to the point where we can’t even feel them.”
Exhaling, Rob said, “Good. We got through the worst of it with no structural damage. Though I am sorry to report, Hols, that your old school McDonald’s glass didn’t survive the fall from the kitchen counter.”
Holli made a sad face. “Oh no, not Grimace!”
“You want a glass with a purple blob, or to be alive?” Dallas said.
“I was just kidding,” Holli replied.
Dallas looked away.
C-Rod patted the maintenance chief on the shoulder. “You need to take it down a notch, Texas. Crisis is over.”
“Get your fucking hand off me.” Dallas stepped away from him. “And unless you’re deaf, dumb and blind, the crisis is not over.”
“What, you’re now the earthquake whisperer?” C-Rod joked. No one laughed with him.
The room shook a bit, but not from an aftershock.
Dallas pointed at the ceiling. “You think that’s not a crisis? Tell me, what’s the color of the sky in your world?”
Rob looked to his wife. This was their first winter down at the end of the world. He looked to Dallas as their resident expert and if the man was worried, well, that was nothing to shrug off.
“Jean, what about the storm? We still have another day to go?”
Rob’s wife glanced at Dallas and looked like she wanted to slink out of the room. “Yes. It’s going to sit on top of us for a few more hours, then slowly move on to the west. But…”
If there was one thing Rob didn’t like, it was buts.
Biting her lip, Jean said, “It looks like there’s another storm right behind it. And that one is worse. The predictive systems are saying we could be facing seventy mile an hour winds or more.”
The continent of Antarctica was known for its high, punishing winds, some reaching to almost two hundred miles an hour. But because of the topography of the South Pole, that region rarely saw anything over fifty. At least until the storm that ripped the Amundsen-Scott Base to shreds. At least that’s what the recovery team assumed.
“Jesus,” C-Rod said, dropping into a chair. “My mother’s house got wrecked by Sandy when it hit Jersey, and the winds were the same.”
“Good thing this isn’t your mother’s house,” Terry North, the facility’s sawbones, said. North was over fifty, a widower and two-time cancer survivor who proclaimed to have given up the fear game years ago. He could be a bit of a know-it-all, but he did stay cool as a well digger’s ass under pressure.
“Cut the smug act. This is some serious shit,” C-Rod spat, pointing a warning finger at North.
“Put that finger away before you hurt yourself,” North said, smiling.
Rob Nichols jumped in before things escalated. The last thing he needed was a brawl in the science lab. The equipment was expensive as hell.
“What’s the size of it?” he asked Jeannie.
“Um, I guess massive would be the best way to describe it. Oh, and growing.”
Dallas abruptly left the room.
Adjusting his cap and tugging on his beard, Rob shook his head. “How is it we didn’t see it until now?”
“It must have formed while we were sleeping.”
“Something that big just popped up out of nowhere?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. It wasn’t there four hours ago, and now it is.”
Holli rolled her eyes. “Sure, climate change doesn’t exist.”
North countered with, “The question really isn’t whether climate change is real or not. The planet is in a constant state of shifting climate patterns. What puts a bug up everyone’s ass is the old blame game. As self-hating humans, it makes us feel better to hold ourselves responsible because it gives us hope we can patch up the boo-boo and make it all better. Truth is, the Earth doesn’t need us to alter the weather. It and the sun do just fine all by themselves, and when they decide it’s time to mix things up, there’s nothing we can do about it. If we face that fact, we feel helpless and weak and no one can step in and make a lot of money off the misguided intentions and fear mongering that man made it and can un-make it.”
