SNAFU: Unnatural Selection

by Christopher Golden

  But after the pilot's comment, her distraction was even greater.

  "What's that about Vasily?" she asked.

  The comms remained quiet. A loaded silence, perhaps. Then a whisper, and the helicopter's turbines ramped up, the noise increased, and the green 'prepare for takeoff' light illuminated the cabin.

  Demidov hesitated, ready to throw off her straps and slip through to the cockpit. But she felt a hand on her arm. Budanov. He shook his head, then lifted what he held in his other hand.

  Without pause, Demidov nodded, giving silent assent.

  Private Budanov was their communications and tech guy. Just as heavily armed as the rest of them, he also carried a bewildering array of hi-tech equipment, some of which Demidov barely understood. There were the usual satellite phones and radios, but also web-based communication systems and other gadgetry, all designed to aid their mission and help them in case of trouble. He'd saved their skins more than once, and now he was promising something else.

  Sorry to hear about Vasily, Captain.

  As the helicopter lifted off and drifted north, Budanov opened a palmtop tablet and started tapping and scrolling. Three minutes later he handed it to Demidov, a map on the screen. He motioned for her to place her lover's last known position on the map, which she did – the scientific research base on the Yamal Peninsula. He took the tablet back, nursing a satellite phone in his other hand, and four minutes later he paused.

  None of them had spoken since taking off. When Budanov raised his eyes and looked at his Captain, none of them needed to.

  Demidov took the tablet from his lap and looked at what he'd found.

  * * *

  "This is all on me," Captain Demidov said. Her heart was beating fast, and a sickness throbbed heavy in her gut. Part of that was understanding what she was doing – disobeying orders and going AWOL whilst on a highly sensitive mission, as well as hijacking a Russian army helicopter. But most of the sickness came from the dread she felt about Vasily's doom.

  Science team missing... seismic readings from the area...

  "Captain, I can't alter course," the pilot said. She could see his nervousness. He and his co-pilot were sitting tense in their flight seats, and she could sense their doubts, their inner debates. They wore pistols, true. But they also knew who they carried.

  "I'm ordering you to," she said.

  "Captain, my orders—"

  "I'm not pulling rank," Demidov cut in. "This isn't about that. But I will pull my gun if you don't do what I say."

  "And then what?" the pilot asked. "You'll shoot me?"

  ... drastic landscape alteration... entire region quarantined...

  "Let's not discover the answer to that question. Yelagin, here with me." Private Yelagin squeezed through into the cockpit beside Demidov and behind the two pilots. "You know what to do," Demidov said.

  Yelagin leaned forward and started flicking switches. She'd been a pilot before being recruited into Spetsnaz, and she knew how to disable tracking devices and transponders, and where any emergency beacons might be.

  "Keep an eye on them," Demidov said. "I'm going to speak to the others. And Kristina... thanks."

  Yelagin nodded once, then settled against the bulkhead behind the pilots.

  Back in the cabin Demidov looked around at the others. She saw no dissent. She hadn't expected any – they'd been together as a solid core group for over four years, had seen and done many terrible things, and she knew their trust and sense of kinship went way beyond family. Yet she still felt a burning sensation behind her eyes as she met their gaze.

  "You know what we've done," she said, a statement more than a question. Of course they knew.

  "We're just following your orders," Zhukov said.

  "I can't order you to do this."

  "You don't need to," Vasnev said. "Vasily Glazkov is your friend, so he's our friend too. We all help our friends."

  "There'll be repercussions."

  Vasnev shrugged. Budanov examined his fingernails.

  "Right," Demidov said, sighing softly. "It's only an hour's detour. Our original target isn't going anywhere, and we'll finish our mission as soon as possible."

  "That's if the Major doesn't send a jet to blow us from the sky," Zhukov said. His voice was matter-of-fact, but none of them dismissed the notion. They were on dangerous, unknown ground now, and no one knew exactly what the future might hold.

  We're coming for you, Vasily, Demidov thought.

  * * *

  Anna will come for me, Vasily Glazkov thought. She'll hear about this, put her team together, and come to find out what happened.

  He could see nothing around him in the darkness. But he could feel them there, sense them, and whenever they moved he could smell them – rotting meat, and grim intent.

  If only I could warn her to stay away.

  * * *

  "Captain, you need to see this." The pilot sounded scared, and as Demidov pushed through into the cockpit she fully expected to find them facing off against two MI-35s. That would be the end of their brief mutiny.

  But the airspace around them was clear, and she saw from Yelagin's shocked expression that this was something worse.

  "What is it?" Demidov asked.

  "Down there." The co-pilot pointed, and the pilot swung the helicopter in a gentle circle so they could all see.

  There was a hole in the valley. Hundreds of feet across, so deep that it contained only blackness, it had swallowed trees and snow, ground and rocks. Two streams flowed into it, the waters tumbling in spreading sprays before being swallowed into the dark void. It was almost perfectly circular.

  It looked so out of place that Demidov had to blink several times to ensure her eyes were not deceiving her.

  "What the hell is that?" Yelagin said.

  "How far's the scientific station?" Demidov asked, ignoring her.

  "Just over a mile, north and over the valley ridge," the pilot said.

  "Take us there."

  She heard his sigh, but beneath that was a groan of fear from the co-pilot.

  "Don't worry," Demidov said. "We can take care of ourselves." She knew that was true. She commanded the biggest bad-asses the Russian army could produce, and they'd seen each other through many treacherous and violent situations. They had all killed people. Sometimes the people they killed were unarmed, more often than not it was a case of kill or be killed.

  They could definitely look after themselves.

  But none of them had ever seen anything like this.

  "Get ready," she said back in the cabin. The others were all huddled at the cabin windows, looking down at the strange sight retreating behind them. "We're going in."

  * * *

  Where the hell are you, Vasily?

  Demidov stood in the main recreational space of the research base and stared at the half-drunk cup of coffee that sat on the edge of a table. Somebody’d walked away from that cup. Maybe the coffee was shit, or maybe they’d been in a hurry.

  “Captain?”

  She turned to see Corporal Zhukov filling the doorway. His face told the story, but she asked anyway.

  “Any sign?”

  “Nothing,” he confirmed. “All three of them. Budanov and Yelagin are checking logs to see if there’s any record of what drew them out of here, but there’s no question they’re gone. Vasnev found nothing in the lab to give us any clue.”

  “They went to the hole,” Demidov said, thinking of Vasily Glazkov. Not her husband, but he might as well have been. Would be, someday, if he hadn’t fallen into that fucking hole.

  “Would they all have gone?” Zhukov said. “That doesn’t seem logical.”

  “Scientists. Every discovery’s an adventure. They know better, and protocol demands certain procedures, but it’s easy to get carried away when something new presents itself. Like ravens seeing something shiny.”

  Zhukov shifted his massive frame, his shadow withdrawing from the room. “I take it we’re going out there.”


  It wasn’t a question. He didn’t have to ask, and she didn’t have to tell him.

  * * *

  Vasnev moaned about the cold every step of the way. To be fair, it was cold enough to kill, given time. So cold that the snow refused to fall, despite the gray sky stretching out for eternity overhead. It was as if the sun had never existed at all.

  “My balls have crawled up inside my body for warmth,” Vasnev whined.

  “You’re confused,” Yelagin muttered. “They never dropped to begin with.”

  Demidov tried to ignore them. The wind slashed across the hard-packed snow and the bare rock and cut right down to the bone. They had heavy jackets on, thick uniforms, balaclavas and gloves. Their mission had been meant to take place an hour’s chopper flight from here, where it would still have been damned cold, but they’d never have been this exposed for this long.

  “This is idiotic,” Vasnev groaned. “They kept this from us for a reason. They’ve got to be sending a team. And you know damn well the pilots have probably already called it in… probably reported us the second we set off. We should just wait for someone else to arrive, someone with better gear—“

  Budanov slapped the back of his head. Vasnev whipped around to glare at him, and for the first time Demidov worried real violence might flare amongst them. They’d had their share of hostilities over the years – any team does, given time – but this moment had venom. It had teeth.

  “If we wait,” Budanov sneered, “do you really think they’ll let us help look for Vasily and his science friends? We’ll be hauled out of here, original mission scrubbed and this one along with it. We’ll be slammed into a room and made to wait while they decide on our punishment, and meanwhile someone else will be looking for Vasily and we won’t know how long they’ll take or how much effort they’ll go to.”

  Demidov stared at him. They were about the most words she’d ever heard Budanov say at any one time. His ugly face had twisted into something even uglier, but his eyes glinted with fierce loyalty, and she wanted to hug him. Instead, she trudged onward as if nothing had happened.

  Vasnev mumbled something else as they all started walking again. Demidov did not turn when she heard the sound of a rifle being racked, but she knew it had to be Zhukov. The Mountain.

  “Don’t think I won’t shoot you just for the quiet,” Zhukov said.

  Vasnev kept silent for a whole four minutes after that. It was a brief but blessed miracle.

  They reached the ridge above the valley and took a breather, staring down at the hole. The sky gave no hint as to the time, not up here in the frozen fuck-you end of the world, a place the world knew people had once been sent when they’d screwed up worse than anyone. Yet Vasily had been so excited to come here with his two research partners, to live in a prefabricated base smaller than a Soviet-era city apartment and freeze his ass off, all to prove what the world refused to believe. Yes, the planetary climate was changing. But Siberia was still cold enough to kill you.

  They slid and climbed and scrambled their way down into the valley. Demidov checked her radio. “Wolf to Eagle. You still reading me?”

  A crackle of static on her comms, but then she heard the pilot’s voice. “Eagle here. Still tracking.”

  “You might need to make a pick up in the valley later.”

  “At this point, why not?” the pilot said. Just as she’d expected. He might have called in their diversion from the mission already, but until someone came to shut them down, Eagle wasn’t going to abandon Wolf. Not a chance.

  They started across the hard-packed snow toward the hole. Even from a distance, the darkness of it yawned, as if it had a gravity all its own, drawing them in.

  “I’m going to be moaning along with Vasnev in a moment,” Yelagin said. “I don’t know I’ve ever been this cold.” Her teeth chattered.

  “Kristina, you’re Spetsnaz,” Demidov said curtly. But they both knew she meant something else. It wasn’t about their training, their elite status, their special operations. It was about being a woman in a field dominated by testosterone-fueled men who waved their guns around like they were showing off their cocks. They had to be tougher, she and Yelagin did. Especially Demidov, the woman running the show.

  “I’ll bear your disappointment,” Yelagin said. “My nipples are going to snap off like icicles.”

  That got a laugh, breaking the tension, and suddenly Demidov felt grateful to her. Their closeness had started to fray a little, but now they were a team again.

  “Captain,” Vasnev said cautiously, lagging behind.

  “I swear I will fucking shoot you,” Budanov reminded him.

  Then Corporal Zhukov echoed Vasnev. “Captain.”

  His voice gave her pause and made her turn. Vasnev had knelt in the snow. Zhukov stood over him, face as gray as the Siberian sky.

  Vasnev looked up. “We’ve been moving parallel to some markings I couldn’t make out, like someone dragged branches through here to obscure animal tracks.”

  “You didn’t mention the tracks themselves,” Zhukov said.

  “Bear,” Vasnev said. “And I saw some wolf tracks, too, up on the ridge. Same weird markings there, brushing the snow. But something happened right here, on this spot.”

  Demidov didn’t like the hesitation in his voice. It sounded a bit like fear. Vasnev might have been a malingerer and a moaner, but he’d never been a coward.

  “What ‘something?’”

  Zhukov answered for him. “The bear tracks stop. Whatever made those brush marks, it picked up the bear. Carried it off.”

  Vasnev stood, pointed at the hole. “It goes that way.”

  * * *

  Demidov stood at the edge of the hole, a few feet back, not trusting the rim to hold her up. Sinkholes had appeared in many places in the area but she didn’t think any of those on record had ever been this big. The hole seemed carved down into the permafrost and the rock and earth below. No telling how deep it went without doing a sounding. They had nothing to gauge the depth except two long coils of rope they’d found in the science team’s base. That seemed unlikely to help them.

  “Do you not just want to shout down, see if you get a response?” Kristina Yelagin said, standing at her shoulder.

  Budanov snickered. “Yes, let’s do that.”

  Yelagin shot him a death stare, but he ignored her, wrapped up in his own efforts. He had taken out the comm unit attached to his belt and begun searching through channels for any kind of beacon or signal. On each frequency, he’d broadcast the same message. “Research Unit one-one-three, please come in. Research Unit one-one-three, do you read me?” A few seconds, then again. With no answer, he’d move on.

  They were getting nowhere. Vasnev had stopped whinging, but the cold had gotten down into Demidov’s bones. Come here, Anna, I’ll warm you, Vasily would have said. And she’d have let him. As she had so many times before. Where are you, my darling? The loving part of her felt lost, but Demidov had spent a lifetime training to charge forward when anyone else would flee.

  Zhukov glanced around, nervous and on guard. He’d been more unsettled than any of them, and that concerned Demidov. If the Mountain worried, they all should.

  “I don’t hear a thing but the wind.” Zhukov shifted, boots crunching snow. “Don’t see a thing. Not so much as a bird.”

  “Enough,” Demidov said. “Private Yelagin, get those ropes out. There were a few pitons with them.”

  “We don’t have enough climbing gear for all of us,” Yelagin said. “Shall I radio Eagle, have them bring more equipment from the base?”

  Demidov wanted to tell her to follow orders. Do what she was fucking told. The woman made sense, but the problem was that it would delay their descent, and a delay would be costly if Eagle had really radioed the situation back to command.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “Meanwhile, get those ropes out and—“

  “Captain,” Zhukov said.

  “Fuck me, what the hell is that?” Vasnev whispered.
>
  Demidov narrowed her eyes. Her balaclava had slipped a bit and she tugged it away from her eyes. The others had begun swearing, lifting their weapons, taking aim. Demidov blinked to clear her vision, thinking somehow in spite of her team’s reactions she must just be seeing something. Spots in her eyes. The things moving across the valley toward them couldn’t possibly be real.

  But they were moving nearer, coming into focus, and in moments she could no longer doubt. They weren’t spots in her eyes or her imagination. They moved like some strange combination of tumbleweed and sea anemone, their flesh such a pale nothing hue that they blended almost too well against the snowy ground. Had they only stopped and kept still, they’d have been almost invisible at a distance. But they weren’t stopping.

  “Holy shit,” someone said. Demidov thought she recognized her own voice. Maybe she’d said it.

  They weren’t stopping at all. They came from all directions, perhaps ten or twelve in all, rolling or slithering or some combination thereof, and they did not come without burden. They seemed nothing but a mass of tendrils, but each of them dragged something else behind them – something more familiar. Animals, some struggling and some limp, some broken, some bleeding. A musk deer, some squirrels, a leopard. One of the things had wrapped itself around a wolf. The beast could not extricate itself but it continued to fight, clawing, attempting to escape. It snarled and howled, as if trapped between the sister urges to fight and to scream in sorrow.

  “Captain,” Zhukov said, his voice gone cold. That was when the Mountain turned most dangerous. The deader his voice, the more she knew he must be feeling. The Mountain didn’t like to be made to feel. “Give me an order please, Captain.”

  In the distance, Demidov saw something big and brown in the midst of a squalling twist of those white tendrils. Three or four of the things had surrounded a moose – a fucking moose – and were dragging it back toward the hole. A knot of dread twisted in her gut as it finally hit Demidov. Stupid, she thought. So goddamn stupid. Should have seen it instantly, should have understood. If they could drag down a moose, a trio of curious, unarmed scientists would be no problem at all.