Operation Siberia

by William Meikle

  “Fair enough,” Banks replied. “But if it keeps lions and wolves out, at least it’s good for something.”

  All three of them went through into the cave. The door shut with a satisfying click as they drew it closed.

  “Wait a minute, Cap,” Wiggins said. “Won’t we suffocate?”

  “The hairy orange guys managed while being locked in,” Banks said. “I think we’ll be fine.”

  They moved inside, and found the others in the central chamber. McCally had set his rifle light to shine on where Galloway sat with his back to the wall while the corporal bandaged up his ankle. The scientist smiled thinly, but looked pale and tired, and close to dismay.

  “We got your man put away in a safe place,” Wiggins said to him. “Yon beasties won’t be bothering him—or us.”

  Galloway perked up a bit at that.

  “Thank you. I felt bad leaving him there like that.”

  “Aye, you and me both, sir. But as the cap said earlier, he’s one of us, and we don’t leave anybody behind.”

  Waterston was sitting against the opposite wall of the chamber.

  “That shooting… you got the wolves?”

  “Most of them,” Banks replied, but didn’t elaborate. He turned to his men. “We need to take stock. We’ve got water, something to eat, and ammo. I need to know if we have anywhere we can set a fire in here without needing to open the door, but Galloway’s Alma survived in here without extra heating, so we should be fine in either case. I could murder a mug of coffee though.”

  McCally smiled as he stood from tending Galloway’s wound.

  “Way ahead of you there, Cap. We’ve got a wee stove, a kettle, and some cups, as well as some of the coffee from the plane. One strong brew, coming right up.”

  *

  They quickly discovered that the Alma sleeping area was the best-ventilated chamber in the structure, and were able to get a fire going using the bedding material and some dry wood they were able to forage from around the outside of the door. The smoke from the fire hung overhead and could be tasted at the back of the throat, but it seemed to be escaping slowly through the small crevasses in the roof, and it also did much to mask the enduring musky stench left by the Alma. A little smoke inhalation was a small price to pay.

  “There’s chairs, tables and stuff in the lab that’ll burn nicely, Cap,” Wiggins said. “I’ll go fetch some of it if you want?”

  “Nope, we’ve got enough for one night. And I don’t intend being here any longer than that, one way or the other,” Banks replied. “Besides, yon big dog is just waiting for us to make a mistake like that. I’m not going to give it the satisfaction.”

  Within half an hour, they had a fire going, coffee brewed, and they were all eating dry meat and hard biscuits. It wasn’t much.

  But it’s better than the alternative.

  Banks put Wiggins and McCally on first watch at the front door.

  “Shoot first, ask questions later, okay?”

  McCally nodded and led Wiggins away. Five minutes later, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the chamber. Banks began to relax for the first time in many hours.

  Galloway had fallen asleep on the far side of the fire. Hynd went out to join the other lads for a smoke, so Banks went over to where Waterston was studying the pictures on the wall, which seemed to achieve a primitive form of animation under the flickering firelight.

  “So, prof, do you still believe your man’s theory that these hairy beasties are locals, that Volkov didn’t make them, but found them?”

  “I do,” Waterston replied. “Even more so now I have looked at these daubings properly.”

  “It’s hard to credit such things could have survived here over such a vast stretch of time,” Banks said.

  “Vast? Nonsense, man, it’s but a blink in the eye of eternity. Let me explain it to you the way I do to students who can’t wrap their heads around it.”

  The man took out his wallet, and showed Banks a photograph he kept in it. Banks had to tilt it to get a good look in the flickering light and shadow. It showed an old woman in a backyard, holding a barely toddling child’s hand.

  “That’s me, in nineteen-sixty,” the prof said. “And that’s my great-grandmother with me. She was born in eighteen eighty. That’s nearly a hundred and forty years in one touch. Now imagine her as a baby, holding her great grandmother’s hand and take that back another eighty years. Two touches of hands, and we’re two centuries away, already back at the start of the nineteenth century. Can you imagine the generations, holding hands, backward into time? Can you see them, Captain?”

  Banks nodded. He could picture it all in his mind’s eye, a chain, his family, reaching back with each other into the gloom of the misty past.

  “I have a similar photograph of my own, but it’s great-granddad for me though. So, I see your point. Less than a hundred generations gets us back to the Pre-Roman Britain Era, does it not? I’d never thought it so close.”

  Waterston nodded in response.

  “Add just another couple of hundred generations, and we’re back here in the times of the mammoths, and whatever people originally hunted them across this tundra. The odds of them surviving across time to now don’t seem so steep, do they, Captain?”

  “No, you’re right, they don’t.”

  “And does it, perhaps, make you think of them as more human, more like relatives than mere mute beasts?”

  “You haven’t met some of my relatives,” Banks said with a smile. “But I get your point.”

  “I hope you do, Captain,” Waterston said quietly, “for I have a favor to ask. I’d like you to avoid killing them, if that’s at all possible.”

  “Even after they killed your friend?”

  Waterston nodded.

  “I’m not convinced that was intentional,” he said.

  “I am,” Banks replied, but the prof was insistent

  “This small population could well be the last remaining remnants of the species,” he said. “We have a responsibility to protect them.”

  “And I have a responsibility to protect you,” Banks replied.

  “I’ll gladly relieve you of that burden of you’ll promise the Alma will come to no harm.”

  “Unfortunately, that is not a favor you have the authority to grant to me,” Banks replied. “But I promise not to kill the Alma without undue cause. That’s the best I can do, for now.”

  “Then it will have to do,” Waterston replied, and went back to studying the paintings on the walls.

  *

  Galloway still slept, fitfully, by the fire. Banks left the scientists and walked through to the central chamber, then followed the dim light down the corridor to the main door, where the three men of his squad were gathered having a smoke.

  “All quiet, Cap,” McCally said. “No sign of the hairy beasties.”

  “The prof says there less like beasts, more like cousins,” Banks replied.

  “Aye, well, I’m still not shagging one,” Wiggins replied.

  The laughter rang loud in the narrow corridor… and was joined by an answering whuff from the other side of the outer door.

  - 18 -

  The squad reacted as one; smokes got ground out under heel, and weapons were raised and in position without Banks having to give an order. They all stood, silent and still, listening. The sound outside repeated, a double whuff this time, and Banks knew exactly what it was—he’d seen a chimp been shown a magic trick in a Lagos market years ago, and the laugh it made at the joke had sounded remarkably similar, just not as low pitched.

  The bloody thing liked Wiggins’ joke more than we did.

  The next whuff came, closer now, just beyond the door. Banks’ hand tightened on his weapon; he expected the door to be pulled open at any moment. But there was only a soft, almost gentle scratching, as if the beast pawed at the door asking to be let in. Then there came another whuff, a softer, more pleading sound, until that too was gone, and silence fell in the corridor.

/>   The squad didn’t relax for more than a minute after the last sound, and finally it was Wiggins who broke the silence.

  “What do you reckon, Cap? Has it fucked off?”

  Waterston answered, having come along the corridor while they were occupied with looking the other way.

  “Would you, if you came home to find somebody was in your house and had locked you out?”

  “Come on, Prof,” Wiggins said. “It’s just a fucking animal.”

  “It’s a fucking animal that can paint, that can make a flute, and knows where its house is. It’s as smart as you.”

  “Smarter,” Hynd said.

  When McCally laughed, there was an answering double whuff from outside again before everything went quiet.

  *

  There were no further noises from beyond the door for several hours. Banks had the men try to get some sleep as the evening wore on, and even managed to snatch a few hours of his own before McCally woke him near midnight.

  “Still all quiet, Cap,” the corporal said quietly.

  Wiggins was already getting settled down across the fire, and when Banks got to the front doorway again, he found Hynd already there, lighting up a smoke.

  “Do you reckon there’s another plane on its way, Cap?” the sergeant said.

  “I think it’s probably fifty-fifty, knowing the colonel. Despite the fact that you’re a bunch of wasters, he’s got this idea that we’re a crack unit, big boys that can fend for ourselves. I guess we’ll know by morning whether we need to test that or not.”

  “And if there’s no plane?”

  “Then we’ve got a yomp ahead of us; fifty miles to the nearest fishing town, if I remember rightly.”

  “And with some big hairy beasties chasing our arses all the way?”

  “I never said it was going to easy,” Banks replied.

  “Actually, you did,” Hynd said, smiling. “A cushy number. Those were your exact words, back in the mess.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Banks said with a groan. “I’ll never volunteer us for babysitting duty again.”

  “We volunteered?”

  “Aye, more fool me. Damn, it’s either the memory of my stupidity, the stink from the beasties, or your bloody fag smoke, but I’m getting a fucker of a headache. Can we crack the door open a tad?”

  “The lads said it’s been quiet for hours. Should be okay, as long as we’re careful. I could do with some air myself.”

  Banks stood, rifle ready, as Hynd heaved the door open, only by six inches, but enough to let a welcome rush of cool, fresh, air into the corridor. They let something else in too. Outside, distant but clear, two voices were raised in a wail that was almost musical. The wolf wasn’t joining in this time, but the Alma were carrying the tune just fine on their own.

  Banks saw a flickering light in the gap in the doorway, and remembered his past experiences in the Yukon.

  “Open the door, Sarge,” he said. “You’ll want to see this, I promise.”

  The flickering got more pronounced the further open they pushed the door, and the source was obvious as soon as they stood outside.

  The sky danced under colored silk that whispered and rustled as it moved in an aurora that covered the stars, shimmering with green and blue and yellow fires. Somewhere to the north beyond the domes, the Alma sang a song to its glory as cascading waterfalls of color lit the heavens.

  Banks and Hynd stood in the doorway in silence for long minutes as the Alma song rose and rose, almost operatic in its intensity.

  “Cap,” Hynd said quietly. “It was worth your volunteering, just for this. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, man,” Banks replied. “Hear that?”

  There were more than two Alma voices in the night; a chorus, distant, as if far off in a wind, raised to join those nearby. A choir, almost human, sang into the night sky, a discordant melody that was strangely apt for the ever-changing shimmer of the curtain of aurora.

  “What does it mean, Cap?” Hynd asked.

  Banks hurried them both into the cave system and made sure the door was heaved tightly shut behind them.

  “I think we’re in trouble,” he said, and went to wake Galloway.

  *

  “How many could there be?” Banks asked.

  Galloway was still coming awake, groggy and complaining loudly at the stiffness in his muscles and the pain in his ankle.

  “How many?” Banks asked again.

  “You’re sure of what you heard?” the scientist said finally.

  Banks nodded.

  “Sure as eggs is eggs.”

  Galloway stood, stretching his back, and groaned again before replying.

  “There’s really no way of knowing. It depends on how they get their food, how much shelter they might have, how long they’ve been here… there are too many unknown factors.”

  “Aye, you’re right there,” Banks replied. “Could there be a dozen of these buggers do you think?”

  “If it’s been a viable population all these centuries, then I think, yes, there would have to be.”

  “Bloody marvelous,” Wiggins said. “That’s all we need. A whole fucking rugby team of big ginger hairy fuckers.”

  Everybody in the chamber was awake now, and it didn’t look like sleep was going to be an option for anybody.

  “Wiggo, Cally, get some grub in you, and get a brew going. The sarge and I will be back at the door. Galloway, you and the prof put your heads together—see if you can come up with anything that might help us.”

  “Help with what?”

  “Getting out of here with all our bits intact would be a start.”

  *

  Banks and Hynd returned to the doorway. With the metal door fully shut, all sound from outside was dampened, but the song of the Alma was definitely still there, a whispering, ringing quality that was almost dreamlike, almost wistful.

  Think of them as relatives.

  That’s what the prof had said, but Banks knew that the ethereal singing, however seductive, wasn’t anything he could consider as familial. And he couldn’t afford the luxury of too much reflection on it; he had people in his charge here, and they were his first priority, far and above any qualms of the prof or needs of science.

  “We need to be ready to move fast,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “Another of your hunches, Cap? Are we betting your pension on this one again?”

  “My gut’s playing up,” Banks replied. “You know what that means.”

  “Trouble, usually,” Hynd said. “I’ll make sure everybody’s ready to go at short notice.”

  “Right. And if I shout, come running.”

  Banks was left alone in the corridor, and after Hynd’s footsteps receded, all he could hear was the song of the Alma.

  Everything went quiet. He strained to hear, but the hiss in his ears was only his own blood pumping, not the dance of the aurora outside. He moved closer to the door. At the same time, he felt—sensed—a similar movement on the other side, as if something mimicked his movements. Then the silence broke, and he heard a soft scratching on the metal on the outside, then a whimper of longing and loss.

  The Alma had come home.

  - 19 -

  He didn’t get time to call out. Hynd’s repair job on the hinges stood up to one sharp tug from outside, but the second pulled the door away from the frame completely. The huge lump of metal that had taken three men to lift got thrown aside like a discarded piece of card. Banks heard it hit rock and clatter, but by then his whole attention was on the thing that filled the doorway. He felt the heat coming off it, tasted the meaty odor of it in his throat and nostrils, and it seemed like he saw every single one of the wiry orange hairs riffle in the cold breeze coming in with it. He saw that this was a female; pendulous breasts hung among the russet hair at its chest. Above that were shoulders more becoming of a weightlifter, and a head, too large that seemed full of eyes and teeth. The teeth were yellow, the eyes were pale blue;
and they stared into Banks’ soul as deep as the wolf had earlier. It took a step forward.

  Who’s been sleeping in my bed?

  He fought back a laugh at that thought, and swung his rifle up as the Alma came inside.

  “Wait,” a voice came at his shoulder. “Remember, you promised.”

  Waterston stepped up, right beside Banks although the corridor was only just wide enough to accommodate both of them, and put a hand on Bank’s weapon. Banks saw that he held the bone flute in the other hand. The man put the flute to his lips and blew, three soft notes, almost musical.

  The Alma stopped, and cocked its head to the left, listening.

  Waterston struck up a tune; Banks even recognized it, a child’s nursery rhyme from back in his own childhood.

  Ring a ring of roses, a pocket full of posies.

  The Alma whuffed, laughing out loud twice, and its face opened in a huge grin. Waterston, as if encouraged by this, took a step closer to the beast.

  “No!” Banks said, but he was already too late. The Alma reached out an arm, fast as a straight jab from a boxer, and grabbed for the flute. The huge hand got what it was after—and also grabbed Waterston’s hand at the same time. It pulled the man directly into a hugging grip at its chest. His rib cage caved in with a crack of bones that echoed in the corridor like gunfire. Banks tried to get a clear shot, but the prof’s body was acting as a shield, even while the beast struggled to prise the flute from Waterston’s hand.

  It squeezed again, tighter. A gush of blood ran from the man’s mouth, blood and lung tissue aspirating out onto a caved-in chest. The Alma hooted in triumph, freed the flute from the dead man’s hand and blew a single, high note on it that threatened to take the top of Banks’ head off.

  But in doing so, it let the prof’s body fall aside, and gave Banks the opening he needed. He put three quick shots into its face, the last one hitting at the bridge of the huge flat nose and almost taking the top of its head off. It fell, a dead weight in the doorway, the flute giving out one last, querulous, note before everything fell quiet.

  Banks’ ears rang, loud bells going off, and he only knew his squad had come up behind him when Hynd put a hand on his shoulder.