The Spawning

by Tim Curran

  One of Dryden’s colleagues who had spent two summers at a remote field camp at the foot of the Mulock Glacier said the early expeditions to Antarctica—and the Transantarctic mountains in particular—had whispered about these things and that during Operation Highjump in the 1940’s, they had secured several frozen corpses from mountain caves which were still locked away at secure cold storage facilities.

  Why perpetuate the bullshit machine?

  Kenneger was telling the truth.

  Paxton and Reese had come out of one of the crevices now, were staring at Beeman.

  “I’ve had nightmares ever since I looked at it,” Dryden confided.

  “You’re not the only one,” Paxton said. “We’re all having ‘em.”

  Dryden swallowed. “Let’s just cover it back up. I plan on keeping it frozen. At least until spring.”

  Beeman was staring at him. “Yeah, Doc? Well, maybe the thing has other plans. You ever consider that? You ever consider it might be–”

  “Alive?” Kenneger said. “Yes, of course, Commander. Because it is alive. Look at it. Look at it and tell me it’s not. Maybe not alive as we understand such things, but certainly capable of living again. And it’s aware. It’s looking at us. It’s looking right at us and thinking about us. Can’t you feel it–”

  At that moment, whatever was bubbling in Beeman ever since he set eyes on the thing just boiled right over. His eyes went bright and savage. His mouth hooked into a snarl and he made a guttural, growling sound that did not even sound remotely human.

  He charged right at Kenneger, the ice-axe raised to strike.

  Kenneger had time to cover his face and that was about it.

  But the axe never descended.

  Beeman was seeing the thing in the ice and nothing else, driven by a relentless and instinctual hatred. He knocked Kenneger on his ass and went right over him and right at the frozen thing. And then the axe was rising and falling as it bit into the block of ice, chips and chunks spraying as the blade cut into the block and he tried to get at what was inside.

  Paxton and Reese charged in, taking hold of him and he almost casually threw them to the ice.

  And when they were down, he stood above them with the axe raised to strike . . . then he tossed it away, covered his face with his hands and collapsed. His eyes rolled back white and that was it.

  Dryden quickly covered the thing up with the tarp.

  “Jesus,” Reese said. “Did you see that?”

  “He won’t be the last,” Kenneger said. “It’ll get to all of us like that.”

  And Dryden knew he was right.

  10

  POLAR CLIME STATION

  MARCH 13

  COYLE WAS IN THE Galley, listening to the wind shake the dome and pouring liquid eggs into an industrial-sized bowl. Standing there with a whisk in his hand that wasn’t much smaller than a baseball bat, Frye came in with Gut, both suited up in their ECWs from a brisk morning of plowing the roads and snowblowing the drifted walkways. Not true snow, just drift that blew around daily making a mess of things. True snowstorms weren’t as common as most thought in Antarctica. Mostly the snow was old snow. But now and again, a good storm could get born at sea or up in the mountains and bury the stations in a matter of hours.

  Frye had something he wanted to tell Coyle, but Gut was hanging around and he wasn’t going to say it in front of her.

  She had to fill them in on the woes of her daughter Trixie’s life back in Ohio. She’d finally filed for divorce from the scumbag she’d been married to, a carnie who’d quit the circuit and decided Welfare was a better way to make an honest living.

  “That sonofabitch, good riddance, I say,” Gut told them, the snow and frost melting from her Carhartt coveralls in the warmth of the Galley. “I got a precious grandchild from that union, but that was all. He shit on my Trixie like she had a toilet ring around her neck. He’s not family no more. Nothing but a sperm donor and that’s all. Good riddance. If I was back home, I’d be bouncing his fucking head off my knee. Screwing around with Janice Aberly, the mother of Trixie’s best friend yet. Good God, they can all be thankful I’m not there to set things right. I’d skull-fuck that smarmy little shit for doing that to my Trixie. I’d shit in his mouth and make him chew it. That sonofabitch.”

  Gut went on her way to tell Gwen and Zoot about it, over at the table towards the rear of the dining area where the Coven generally held court over Coyle’s cooking. Gut was okay. If you liked ‘em big and masculine with hair on their chest and a bulge in their pants, then she was your kind of girl.

  “I was on the radio with Art Fisher again,” Frye said.

  Art was his buddy at Pole Station. The antique car buff.

  “Yeah?”

  Frye narrowed his eyes, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Art was saying things . . . couldn’t go into detail, not over the air . . . but I guess there’s something brewing up at the Emperor Project.”

  That was Dr. Dryden’s deep-field project, the glaciology study of some ice caves up on the Beardmore Glacier. One of those winter field operations that had a lot of people spooked.

  “I’ll bet there is.”

  “Don’t know what exactly, Nicky,” Frye admitted, “but there’s some weird radio traffic coming out of there. That’s about all Art would say. He kind of hinted around at it. Some FUBAR shit coming down. DeFleur, that beaker that’s running Pole this year, is monitoring communications so that’s all I could get. For now.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Some beaker at McMurdo stabbed a guy, said he was a witch or something.”

  Coyle looked over at Frye. “Remember what you said? If something’s happening, we’ll start seeing the signs. Well, I’m seeing ‘em everywhere.”

  “About what I was figuring, Nicky.”

  Ida looked over the top of her Soap Opera Digest and stared at the both of them. “What’re you two boys whispering about over there? You’re like a couple girls telling secrets.”

  Coyle found that he simply could not fashion a lie, but Frye rose to the occasion. “We’re talking about you, Ida. Trying to decide which of us gets to have sex with you first.”

  She laughed. “Hell, don’t argue about that, boys. There’s plenty for both. Just hurry on and get to it, I’m not getting any younger here. Shit, it’s been so long I think my cherry grew back.”

  Good old Ida.

  She went back to her magazine, trying to ferret out the intrigue back in Port Charles.

  “You figuring we should do something here, Nicky? Or just sit on our hands and watch it go by?”

  Coyle shook his head. “No, don’t do anything and don’t say anything. There’s too much shit right now. These people are already wrapped tight. Don’t say anything about this unless it’s to me. We’ll wait and see what happens next.”

  Frye scratched his graying beard. “I’m thinking that won’t be long in coming, old boy.”

  And he was right.

  11

  B-142, THE DISPENSARY,

  MCMURDO STATION

  DR. MUNSE MADE IT his business to stop by on a regular basis since Polchek was put under sedation the day before, raving about witches and God knows what.

  Poor man.

  Brilliant, but deluded.

  It happened sometimes.

  “He’s been quiet, withdrawn,” the medic on duty, Sanbourne said.

  Munse went over to him, expecting to see him sleeping.

  But Polchek was awake.

  He was smiling and his eyes were black and glistening like wet pavement. A chill rolled through Munse as he took one faltering step backward.

  Thumping sounds came from the floor.

  Scraping noises issued from the walls like claws were dragged over them.

  The air temperature dropped and Polchek sat up, steam rolling from him.

  His restraints snapped one after the other.

  What in the hell is this?

  Munse stood there with his mouth hangi
ng open, feeling the energy build in the air like lightning was about to strike. It progressed until he could feel it crawling over the backs of his hands and down his spine and the entire room vibrated and shook.

  And Polchek, round and sandy-haired and once quite harmless, looked out at him with those black alien eyes and you could see haunted, cosmic depths in them.

  “What’s going on here?” Sandbourne said.

  The ancient hive has come out of dormancy . . .

  Polchek stood up and there was a sharp crackling of energy and he directed it right at Sandbourne. An invisible wave of irresistible force hit him, lifting him up and throwing him ten feet. Right into the door. He hit it so hard he put a crack in it.

  Munse didn’t get a chance to do anything but gasp. Then that same wave of force slammed him into the wall and he dropped senselessly to the floor.

  Polchek was floating three inches off the floor.

  Munse stared at him, wordlessly.

  They don’t need to possess us, we’ll possess ourselves.

  Impossibly pale, eyes black and kinetic, Polchek’s arms were held out straight to either side like Jesus on the cross. Then he drifted to the floor, his face twisting into an agonized mask. He made a gulping/gagging sound and collapsed.

  The raging phenomena in the room died out.

  After a moment of stunned silence, Sandbourne went over to him.

  Hesitantly, he put his hands on him.

  Polchek’s flesh was moist and hot. Blood filled his eyes and splashed down his face. It was coming out of his ears, too. Sandbourne frantically searched for a pulse, but he knew the verdict even then. Polchek had suffered an embolism or aneurysm in the brain that had burst.

  “He’s dead,” Sandbourne said. “What . . . what in the hell just happened?”

  “He was activated,” Munse said in a dry voice. “Soon it’ll happen to all of us.”

  12

  EMPEROR ICE CAVE

  IT HAD TAKEN DRYDEN, Paxton, Reese, and Warren to get Beeman back up the passage after he collapsed. They could have left him in the Polar Haven where Dryden and the others were staying most of the time, but Dryden felt it important to get him out of the cavern and away from the specimen.

  And everyone had to agree with that.

  They got him up to the Hypertat and put him in his bunk. He was barely lucid through it all and Stone, who was a trained medic, gave him a shot to put him out for awhile. Then they went back below to the cavern and that left Warren and Biggs alone with a crazy man.

  “Just call us if he causes trouble,” Dryden said. “He should sleep for hours, though. I think he’ll be more reasonable when he comes around.”

  Sure.

  That was yesterday. Beeman had woken for a few minutes here and there, that shocked and glassy look in his eyes, and once he’d used the head, but other than that he just slept.

  Warren didn’t even want to look over at Biggs.

  Didn’t want to see that look on his face, that sour and knowing I-told-you-so look that was probably going to be a permanent fixture until spring. Biggs had told him not to go down there, not to look at that thing because nothing good would come of it. And he warned him not to bring Beeman down there because Beeman wasn’t right in the head to begin with and what was down there would really fuck the old boy up.

  So Warren did not look at Biggs.

  He sat there on his bunk, feeling so loose inside he thought he might unravel. He watched Beeman sleep and tried not to think about what he’d seen in that ice yesterday or how far away spring was or how goddamned remote they were up on the Beardmore. Jesus, the closest occupied camps were Polar Clime and Colony and they might as well have been in Des Moines for all the good it did.

  Winter.

  Yes, they had told him when he volunteered for the project that this was not a summer Antarctic camp. This was an ice cave in a glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains. Compared to this, Siberia was like downtown Chicago. This was the end of the world, man, or . . . more precisely . . . the bottom of it.

  In Arlington, the NSF guy at the Office of Polar Programs had put it to him like this: We’re talking dead winter here, son. If you don’t think you can hack it, don’t do it. The isolation, the extreme environment . . . it can get to a guy. You boys will have everything you need and back-up systems to the point of redundancy to keep you alive. But if anything happens, you’re on your own. Think about it before you sign, okay? I was you, I wouldn’t want any part of it. We’re talking an ice cave up on the Beardmore Glacier. That place is desolate at midsummer with the planes flying. But at dead winter . . . God, I hate to even think what it might be like down there with the cold and darkness . . .

  But Warren had signed.

  And now he was marooned here.

  With Biggs and a crazy man and something they’d chopped out of the ice that he did not want to think about. He knew what it was, all right, but sometimes it was easier if you didn’t admit things. Even to yourself. Didn’t put a name to them.

  So he stared at Beeman.

  He forgot about X-Box.

  The winter was endless and whether they’d be alive or sane come spring was anyone’s guess. He looked up and Biggs was staring at him.

  “What? What?”

  Biggs just shook his head. “I told you, man. But you just wouldn’t listen.”

  “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  “That thing’s down there. And now this whole goddamn place is haunted and we’re haunted with it,” he said. “How does it feel, Warren? How does it feel to be a fucking haunted house?”

  Warren just looked away, thought he might start balling.

  Yes, how did it feel?

  He didn’t know, but he felt he would and soon. For down here, things were going to happen. Terrible things. The monsters were loose now and there was no getting around that. Even now he could feel a subtle and negative shift in the atmosphere of the Emperor. Something was happening. That thing down there was awake, filling the cave with its virulent memories and he could feel them flooding his world like poison.

  Haunted? God yes, he was haunted.

  13

  COLONY STATION

  IN THE DARKNESS OF his cell, Slim was not alone.

  He was never alone. Not really. If he shut his eyes very tightly, sometimes he could pretend that he was alone. But even in his mind there was no such thing as solitude. There really had not been for some time now, but it had gotten worse since he was brought to Colony.

  He did not remember how he had gotten to Colony.

  He only had a distorted, sketchy idea of what his life was like before. But he did know it had gotten worse. There had been some kind of crash a long time ago. A plane? A helicopter? He wasn’t sure. He had been there with other men and seen something under a tarp. Something that had also seen him, even though it was quite dead in the biological sense of the term.

  That had started it.

  That was the seed that had slowly blossomed into his secret garden of dread and horror and insanity. There had been dreams and visions, weird compulsions . . . and faces, faces of people he should know but could not honestly remember. It was all so blurry. The only thing he really understood now was this place.

  His cell.

  The dark.

  And Dr. Relling, of course. Her staff. The men and women in the white coats that strapped him to tables and injected him with things, sometimes dunked him into tanks of warm fluid . . . always asking him questions and making him tell them the things he saw.

  They wanted to know about the floating place that was a place in-between places, a dreamworld where there was no up or down or left or right . . . just drifting matter and shapes and the things, those awful things that liked to play in his mind. It was different there. You could not touch things, you could not feel them. Everything was like smoke. Objects or things like objects could pass right through one another.

  It had been like that for Slim.

  While he drifted there i
n the ether, he had become disjointed . . . his atoms had refused to stay together. His arms floated away. His head detached itself from his body. Though he was not connected, he could move his severed, floating limbs. And when he screamed, it had come not from his mouth but from a place far, far away.

  These are the things Dr. Relling’s people wanted to know about.

  They wanted to know about the things, the Old Ones, the Elder Things, though the creatures did not call themselves this. The word they used could not be translated properly from those buzzing voices and piping cries.

  Relling’s white-coated techies wanted to know where the Old Ones had come from originally. They wanted to know how they passed from this world to others. How they moved through solid matter and why when they died, their minds remained intact, bodiless and spectral, but alive and organized.

  But Slim would not tell them.

  The Old Ones told him things he would not dare repeat. They told him a lot about the physics and mathematics that made these things possible. Slim had screamed when they got in his mind with their cold, slimy thoughts and made him see what they saw and feel what they felt and understand as they understood. That had been traumatizing . . . but he had survived it.

  The Old Ones told him he would.

  That one day he would be like them and of them. But he must not tell Relling what he knew, for it was not time for Relling to know these things.

  Slim had purged it all from his mind, refused to remember it.

  Then that day Relling strapped him down and injected that drug into him . . . then he had to remember. And when he remembered, the Old Ones had touched him again. Mostly the undead ones that had no bodies. Relling had wanted to know about the hive, about the million eyes, and the undead ones did not want her to know...they had come through the walls and everything sank in a blue mist...things shook and trembled and crashed. Those minds that were not individual but like cells of the same awesome brain could have crushed Relling and the station, but they did not.

  They enjoyed watching men learn about themselves.