SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

by Christopher Golden

He checked his skin, feeling the blood drain from his face. A tiny spine was stuck in his wrist.

  Taine’s heart scudded. Fuck.

  He concentrated, slowing his heartbeat as he slid his knife from its sheath and scraped the barb away. It lifted off as if it was nothing more than a bee-sting.

  Don’t die, don’t die. You promised Jules.

  He dug into his wrist with the knife, slicing away a layer of flesh. There was nothing else he could do. If the spine had done its work, he’d be dead in minutes.

  Taine slumped to the ground, his back against the rock wall, and watched his wrist begin to swell, resisting the urge to itch it. How could such a small thing be so lethal?

  He thought of Benoit’s mother, of Le Cannu, Tatou, and Bruno. The peluda had caused some cruel deaths, and Taine’s would be next. He couldn’t let his body be eaten by the maggots already setting up camp inside him. If he did that, the peluda would be unleashed and the whole unnatural life cycle would start over…

  Taine unclipped a grenade and juggled it gently from hand to hand. Fire killed them. It was the last thing Jules had said to him. Taine’s heart contracted when he thought of her. He’d promised her he’d be careful. He’d promised himself so much more. Their life together had barely started. After this holiday, he’d hoped… it didn’t matter now.

  Hang on.

  Jules had said acid calmed them. That the acid put the crawlies into some sort of hibernation. Taine had pocketed a drink when he’d kitted up earlier. Maybe there was enough acid in it to dull the maggots? Enough to get him to the surface before they consumed him? If he could reach the canal, maybe Jules or someone could get eggs and the grubs out, possibly without having to amputate his hand…

  And wouldn’t that piss off Alcouffe?

  Taine gripped the knife, slicing a wider chunk out of his wrist where the barb had entered. He poured the drink into the wound. Slowly. Drenching it. In his night goggles, the liquid ran black, seeping into the grit.

  Was the itching slowing? Or was that wishful thinking? Maybe it was, but Taine had always liked long odds. Gave you something to play for.

  Splashing his field bandage with the remainder of the liquid, Taine wrapped it around his wrist. Then he got to his feet, and ran.

  A Hole in the World

  Tim Lebbon & Christopher Golden

  Vasily Glazkov was warm. He reveled in the feeling, because he had not been truly warm for a long time. His fingers and toes tingled with returning circulation, and he could feel a pleasant stinging sensation across his nose and cheeks. Beyond the open doorway Anna held a steaming mug out to him. She was grinning. Around her was the paraphernalia of their mission – sample cases, laboratory equipment, tools and implements for excavating, survival equipment and clothing. As he entered the room the door slammed shut behind him, the window shades lowered, and they were alone in the luxurious warmth. Nothing mattered except the two of them. He took the mug and sipped, the coffee's heat coursing through him and reaching even those deepest, coldest parts that he'd believed would never be warm again.

  Anna started unclipping her belt and straps, popping her buttons. She dropped her rifle and pistol, her knife, shrugging out of her uniform to reveal her toned, muscled body. He felt the heat of her. He craved her familiar warmth and scent, her safety, but he still took time to finish the coffee. Anticipation was the greatest comforter.

  "Vasily!" A hand grasped his arm and turned him around. He frowned, stretching to look back at his almost-naked lover. But however far he turned she remained out of sight.

  "Vasily, wake up!"

  Glazkov's eyes snapped open. His breath misted the air before him, and he sat up quickly, gasping in shock as his dream froze and shattered beneath gray reality.

  "Amanda?"

  Amanda Hart stood in his small room, bulked out in her heavy coat. There was ice on her eyelashes and excitement in her eyes.

  "Vasily, you've got to come."

  "Where?"

  "Down into the valley. It's stopped snowing, the sun's out, and you have to come. Hans is getting ready."

  Glazkov looked around and tried to deny the sinking feeling in his gut. His room was small and sparse, containing his small supply of grubby clothing, a few books, and a single window heavily iced on the inside.

  "You've been out alone again?" he asked. They had all been warned about venturing beyond the camp boundary on their own. It was dangerous and irresponsible, and put all of them at risk. But Amanda was headstrong and confident, not a woman used to obeying orders. He wondered if all Americans were like that.

  "That doesn't matter!" She waved away his concerns.

  "So what's down in the valley?" Glazkov asked. The cold was already creeping across his skin and seeping into his bones. He wondered whether he would ever be warm again, even when he and Anna were together once more. It was only twelve weeks since they'd last seen each other, but the inimical landscape stretched time and distance, and the sense of isolation was intense. In this damned place the cold was a living, breathing thing.

  "Come and see," Hart said, and she grinned again. "Something's happened."

  Outside, the great white silence was a weight he could almost feel. It always took Glazkov's breath away – not only the cold, but the staggering landscape, and the sense that they might be the only people alive in the whole world. There were no airplane trails to prove otherwise, no other columns of smoke from fires or chimneys. No evidence at all that anyone else had ever been there. Old footprints and snowcat trails were buried beneath the recent blizzard. The three interconnected buildings that formed their camp – living quarters, lab and equipment hall, and garage – were half-buried, roofs and upper windows protruding valiantly above the white snowscape.

  "We taking the snowcat?" Hans Brune asked.

  "It's only a mile," Amanda replied.

  The German tutted and rolled his eyes. His teeth were already clacking, his body shivering, even though he was encased in so much clothing he was barely identifiable as human.

  "Come on, Hans," Amanda said. "I've already been down there once this morning."

  "Stupid," Brune said. "You know the rules."

  "You going to report me?"

  Hans shook his head, then smiled. The expression was hardly visible behind his snow goggles.

  "So if we're going to walk, let's walk," he said. "I'm freezing my balls off already."

  "You still have balls?" Amanda asked.

  "Big. Heavy. Hairy."

  "Like a bear's."

  They started walking, and Glazkov listened to the banter between his two companions. He knew there was more than friendship between them – he'd seen creeping shadows in the night, and sometimes he heard their gasps and groans when the wind was calmer and the silence beyond the cabins amplified every noise inside. None of them had mentioned it, and he was grateful to them for that. On their first day here they had all agreed that any relationship beyond the professional or collegial might be detrimental to their situation. While they weren't truly cut off, and their location was less isolated than it usually felt, there were no scheduled visits to their scientific station for the next six months. Hart and Brune probably knew that he knew, but there was comfort in their combined feigned ignorance.

  He knew Amanda had a husband back home in America. Hans, he knew little about. But Glazkov had never been one to judge. At almost fifty he was the most experienced among them, and this was his fifteenth camp, and the fourth in Siberia. He'd been to Alaska, St Georgia, Antarctica, Greenland, and many other remote corners of the world. In such places, ties to home were often strengthened by isolation, but sometimes they were weakened as well. Almost as if such distances, and the effects of desolate and deserted landscapes, made the idea of home seem vague and nebulous. He had seen people strengthened by their sojourns to these places, and he had seen them broken. He knew the signs of both. Most of the time, he knew better than to interfere.

  Amanda led them away from the research station and tow
ard the steep descent into the valley. The trees grew close here, hulking evergreens heavy with snow, and beneath their canopy the long days turned to twilight. But once they were into the thick of the forest the snow was not so deep, and the going was easier.

  Glazkov, Hart and Brune were here as part of an international coalition pulled together to study the effects of climate change. While politics continued to throw up obstacles to meaningful action, true science knew no politics, and neither did the scientists who practiced it. Sometimes he believed that if left to real people, human relations would settle and improve within a generation. Sport, music, art, science, they all spanned the globe, taking little notice of politics or religions, or the often more dangerous combination of the two. So it was with their studies into climate change. Deniers denied, but Glazkov had seen enough evidence over the past decade to terrify him.

  "So what were you doing out here on your own?" Brune asked.

  "Couldn't sleep," Hart said. "And I heard a noise. Felt something. Didn't either of you?"

  "No," Brune said.

  "Not me," Glazkov said. "What was it?"

  "A distant rumble. And something like... a vibration."

  "Avalanche," Brune said.

  "It's possible," Glazkov agreed. "Temperatures are six degrees higher than average for the time of year. The snowfalls've been less severe, and there's a lot of loose snow up in the mountains."

  "No, no, it wasn't that," Hart said. "I've seen what it was."

  "What?" Glazkov asked. He was starting to lose his temper with her teasing.

  "Best for you to see," she said. They trudged on, passing across a frozen stream and skirting several fallen trees, walking in silence for a while. "I thought it was an avalanche," Hart said, quieter now. "Wish it was. But the mountains are ten miles away. This thing... much closer."

  Glazkov frowned. For the first time since she'd woken him, she sounded nervous.

  "Should we call this in?" he asked.

  "Yeah, soon," she said. "But we need photos."

  "We can do that afterward."

  "Not if it goes away."

  They walked on through the snow, emerging from the forest into a deeper layer, grateful for their snow shoes. Brune shrugged the rifle higher on his shoulder, and Glazkov glanced around, looking for any signs of bears. There was nothing. In fact...

  "It's quiet," he said.

  "It's always fucking quiet out here," Brune replied.

  "No, I mean... too quiet." He almost laughed at the cliché, but Hart's and Brune's expressions stole his breath. Heads tilted, tugging their hoods aside so they could listen, he could see realization dawning in both of them.

  Far out on the desolate Yamal Peninsula, three hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle, there were few people, but they were used to hearing the calls, cries and roars of wildlife. Brown bears were common in the forests, and in more sparsely wooded areas there were elk. Musk deer were hunted by wolves. Bird species were also varied, with the great eagle owl ruling the skies. Some wildlife was dangerous, hence the rifle. Yet after twelve weeks here, not a shot had been fired.

  "Nothing," Brune said. He slipped the rifle from his shoulder, as if the silence itself might attack them.

  "I didn't notice before," Hart said. "Come on. Not far now, and we'll see it from the ridge."

  "See what?" Glazkov demanded. Hart stared at him, all the fun vanished from her expression.

  "The hole," she said. "The hole in the world."

  * * *

  Oh my God, she's right, Glazkov thought. It really is a hole in the world. But what's at the bottom?

  "I didn't go any farther than this," Hart said.

  "I don't blame you," Brune said. "Vasily?"

  "Sinkhole," Glazkov said.

  "Really?" Hart asked. "It's huge!"

  "It's inevitable. Come on."

  They started down the steep slope into the valley and the new feature it now contained. Glazkov thought it might have been over five hundred feet across. With the sun lying low, the hole was deep and dark, only a small spread of the far wall touched by sunlight. At first glance he'd had doubts, but there was no other explanation for what they were now walking toward.

  A melting of the permafrost – an occurrence being seen all around the globe – was releasing vast, stored quantities of methane gas. Not only a consequence of global warming, but also a contributing factor. In some places such large quantities were released that these sinkholes formed overnight, dropping millions of tons of rock into vented caverns hundreds of feet beneath the surface.

  "We'll need our instruments," he said. "Methane detectors. Remote camera. Everything."

  "So let's go back and get it all," Brune said. "And we need to call this in. We really do."

  "Yes," Glazkov said.

  "Yeah," Hart said.

  But they kept walking toward the hole, hurrying now, excitement biting at their heels.

  It took fifteen minutes to descend to the valley floor. It would take a lot longer to climb back up, but Glazkov didn't care. He could already detect the eggy trace of methane on the air, but it didn't smell too strong for now. It started snowing again, and as they followed a stream across the valley floor toward the amazing new feature, visibility lessened. The stream should have been frozen at this time of year, and much of it still was. But a good portion of the water flowed. Approaching the hole's edge, Glazkov heard the unmistakable sound of water pouring down a rock face.

  "What was that?" Brune asked. He was frozen behind them, head tilted.

  "Waterfall," Hart said.

  "No, not that. Something else."

  They listened. Nothing.

  "We should head back," Brune said. "We need breathing equipment, cameras."

  "Not far now," Glazkov said. He was unsettled to see that Brune had slipped the rifle from his shoulder.

  "What are you going to shoot?" Hart asked, laughing. "Monsters from the deep?"

  Three minutes later, as they emerged from a copse of trees only a hundred feet from the hole's edge and saw what waited for them there – the crawling, tentacled, slick things pulling themselves up out of the darkness, skin pale from lack of pigment, wet mouths gasping in new air – Amanda Hart was the first to fall.

  * * *

  Captain Anna Demidov and her team were ready. Fully equipped, comprehensively briefed, fired up, she was confident it would be a straightforward search and retrieval without the need for any aggressive contact. But if the separatists did attempt to intervene, Demidov's small Spetsnaz squad was more than ready for a fight. Either way, they would return with the stolen information. In this day and age a printed file seemed almost prehistoric, but the habits of some of Russia's top intelligence operatives never ceased to amaze her.

  With her squad milling in the helicopter hangar, she took the opportunity to assess them one last time. Her corporal, Vladimir Zhukov, often teased her about being over-cautious and paranoid about every small detail. Demidov's reply was that she had never lost a soldier in action, nor had she ever failed in a mission. It was something he could not argue with. Yet the banter continued, and she welcomed it. The good relationships between members of her five-person unit was one of the most important factors contributing to success.

  "All set, Corporal?" she asked.

  Zhukov rolled his eyes. "Yes, Captain. All set, all ready, boots shined and underwear clean, weapons oiled, mission details memorized, just as they all were five minutes ago."

  Demidov appraised the corporal from head to toe and up again. A full foot taller than she, and a hundred pounds heavier, some knew him by the nickname Mountain. But no one in their unit called him that. He didn't like the name, and none of them would ever want to piss him off.

  "A button's undone," she said, pointing to his tunic before moving on. She heard his muttered curse and allowed herself a small smile.

  Private Kristina Yelagin was next. Tall, thin, athletic, grim-faced, she was one of the quietest, calmest people Demidov had ever met.
She had once seen Yelagin slit a man's throat with a broken metal mug.

  "Good?" Demidov asked. The woman nodded once in reply.

  "I don't like helicopters," Private Vasnev said. "They make me feel sick."

  "And when have you ever been sick during a helicopter trip, Vasnev?" Demidov asked.

  "I didn't say they make me sick, Captain. I said they make me feel sick."

  "Feel sick in silence," she said.

  "It's okay for you, Captain," Private Budanov said. He was sitting on a supply crate carefully rolling a cigarette. "You don't have to sit next to him. He's always complaining."

  "You have my permission to stab him to death if he so much as whispers," Demidov said.

  Budanov looked up at her, his scarred face pale as ever, even in the hangar's shadow. "Thank you," he said. "You all heard that? All bore witness?"

  "See, now even my friends are against me!" Vasnev said. "I feel sick. I don't want to go on this mission. I think I have mumps."

  A movement caught Demidov's eye and she saw the helicopter pilot gesture through the cockpit's open side window.

  "That's us," Demidov said. "Let's mount up."

  Professional as ever, her four companions ceased their banter for a while as they left the shadow of the hangar, boarded the helicopter, stowed their weapons, and cross-checked each other's safety harnesses. Demidov waited to board last. As she settled herself and clipped on her headset, and the ground crew closed and secured the cabin door, the crackle of a voice came through from the cockpit.

  "We've got clearance," the pilot said. "Three minutes and we'll be away."

  "Roger," Demidov acknowledged.

  "Sorry to hear about Vasily, Captain,” the pilot said.

  Demidov froze. The rest of her squad, all wearing headsets, looked at her. Corporal Zhukov raised his eyebrows, and Vasnev shrugged: Don't know what he's on about.

  Demidov's mind raced. If something had happened to Vasily and she hadn't been informed, there must be a reason for that. Perhaps the general would assume that such a distraction would affect her current mission, and he'd inform her of any news upon her return in six hours.