Crashed

by Eric S. Brown

  John rolled to the right to avoid being crushed by the second monster’s massive feet as it entered the rear compartment. The rifles of the two remaining soldiers of John’s squad clicked empty. One of them drew the pistol holstered on his hip as the other frantically ejected the spent magazine of his rifle and tried to reload it. The monster plowed into the soldier with the pistol before he got the chance to use it. It knocked him against the wall of the rear compartment that Hawkes could hear the man’s bones breaking inside of his body even from where he crouched. The soldier bounced from the wall to land sprawled out and unmoving in the floor. John was on his feet again behind the monster as it went after the soldier in the process of reloading his M-16. Taking careful aim, John put a burst into the backside of the monster’s skull. The impact of the bullets caused the monster to stagger forward. John didn’t see if his shots had killed the thing or not because its wounded companion came roaring at him. It took a swing at him with a massive, white fur-covered fist. John ducked the blow. The monster’s fist smashed into the wall of the rear compartment and dented the metal where it made contact. How fragging strong are these things? John wondered as he scurried to get away from the beast.

  Blood poured down along the back of the monster John had shot in the back of the skull. It was still standing though. The other soldier had finally managed to reload his rifle and jerked its barrel up at the monster. The monster grabbed the barrel of the M-16. Its metal twisted and bent from the pressure of its grip, rending the weapon useless. Even as the soldier let go of the broken rifle, the monster drew closer to him. A single swipe of its claws ravaged the soldier’s face beyond recognition, reducing it to a mass of mangled and torn meat.

  Hawkes didn’t have a clue what the monsters were or where they had come from. What he did know though was that the soldiers were losing the battle. John was the only one still alive and he was facing two of the things alone. Hawkes didn’t have a weapon. There was nothing he could do to help. He was a pilot, not a foot-soldier like John. All he could do was wait his turn to die after the beast had taken down John.

  John ran full-out to the rear door of the copter, putting as much space between himself and the two monsters as he possibly could. As he reached it, John turned about with the intent of pouring fire into them as they came at him. The things were too fast though and were already on top of him. John cried out in pain as one of the monsters plunged a white, furred hand into his stomach. The hand came back out, drenched in the red wetness of his blood, holding several strands of his intestine. The pain was so intense that John could barely move. He did manage to pull the trigger of his rifle though. His shots were wild and desperate. They pinged against the doorway leading into the pilot’s compartment, missing the monsters entirely as the barrel of his weapon was between them.

  The other beast finished John. One of its massive hands closed over his face and smashed his head backward into the door behind him. His skull fractured from the impact, leaving a mess of brain matter behind where it had struck the door as the monster released its hold on him and his body flopped into the floor.

  Hawkes was crying out into the radio of his headset, screaming for help as a third monster came into the copter through the window above him. He looked up into its burning yellow eyes and knew he was dead. It dropped onto him, crushing him beneath its weight before its claws went to work, stripping away the flesh from his bones.

  ****

  Lee drove the Snow Beast through the storm. He kept the heavy vehicle’s speed low. His visibility through the forward window was utter crap and some strange interference rendered the Snow Beast’s nav. useless. Sergeant Lopez rode in the passenger seat next to him while Jim was in the rear of the vehicle with the wounded. Of all those aboard the Hercules when it went down, only two dozen had survived, most of them wounded, but only four critically so. Three of the worst off had been loaded into Lee’s Snow Beast before it had departed from the downed transport plane. Lee was feeling the pressure to get them to Zulu Base before it was too late. Other critically wounded soldiers had been loaded onto the other Snow Beast which was being driven by Kurt.

  The two Snow Beasts had parted ways as they left the Hercules. Though both were headed in the same direction, they spread out in the hopes of increasing their chances of being spotted by any search-and-rescue birds that Zulu Base had launched. The Snow Beast’s headlights shone through the waves of falling snow from the storm. Lee hoped that any pilots looking for them had more visibility from the air than he had on the ground. Everything in front of him was like a giant wall of white.

  Being new to the unit, Lee was still learning names. The three men in the rear of the Snow Beast were Thomas, Mays, and Whitiker. Thomas had a head wound and was in a coma-like state. Mays’ leg had been bashed badly in the crash and he was on the verge of bleeding out despite Jim’s efforts. And Whitiker had lost his right arm from the elbow down as some of the cargo had come toppling onto him in addition to having a broken leg. The poor guy had been moving about as the plane went down and hadn’t been able to get strapped in before the crash. Jim was doing his best to keep all of them alive, but one medic with limited supplies could only do so much.

  Sergeant Lopez cradled an automatic shotgun in his lap as Lee drove. Lee found it unlikely that they were going to run into any trouble as they were in freaking Antarctica but somehow the weapon made him feel better anyway. There was something really spooky about the storm that had rolled in on them. The whole mess was like something out of a bad horror flick. Lee had certainly watched enough of them growing up to know. His favorites were the monster ones, the ones where aliens or supernatural creatures just ripped their way through small towns. He was also a big fan of kaiju stuff. His dad must have regretted introducing him to Godzilla at times as the years went by because Lee’s room had become a shrine to monsters in all their forms. At school, he was the kid dressed in black, carrying the latest issue of Rue Morgue. Lee’s mom had tried to force him to give up his monsters as he grew older, but Lee never had. Even now, his apartment waiting for him back in the States was filled with horror toys and its walls lined with creepy posters of things that shouldn’t be. Thankfully, his wife was into horror too and tolerated his near obsession with monsters. Her favorite horror film of all time was C.H.U.D. Lee could understand that. It was a movie that went beyond its genre. And those scenes in the sewers with the cops armed with flamethrowers and M-16s were epic. His favorite horror film though was Dawn of the Dead. Lee had lost count of how many times he had watched it in his life. He had all the various cuts of it, several different printings of the film’s novelization, the comic books, and even the board game, which he often tried to force his wife to play with him. She just wasn’t a zombie person though. The only zombie films she had ever enjoyed were Train to Busan because it made her cry and that zombie take on Romeo and Juliet. He thought it might be titled Warm Bodies but wasn’t sure. He couldn’t honestly remember. It wasn’t a bad film, but it was no Dawn of the Dead, not either version of Dawn. The storm had him thinking about monsters and Lee couldn’t help but smile despite how terrible their situation was. What was life without the good things in it?

  “What are you grinning about?” Sergeant Lopez demanded from the passenger seat.

  “Nothing, sir,” Lee answered, keeping his eyes ahead of him and doing his blasted best to see through the waves of falling snow.

  “What’s our estimated time of arrival at Zulu?” the sergeant asked.

  “I don’t have a clue, sir,” Lee told him. “With the nav. offline and the lack of visibility, your guess is as good as mine.”

  “That’s unacceptable,” Sergeant Lopez growled. “Those men in the back are counting on us to get them help and you’re up here grinning like a village idiot.”

  “I’m doing everything I can, sir,” Lee said, glancing over at Lopez.

  He paid the price for taking his eyes away from what was ahead of the Snow Beast. The heavy vehicle slammed into something. Th
e impact shook both Lee and Lopez in their seats. Lee jerked his eyes back around just in time to catch a glimpse of something huge and white out in the falling snow before the Snow Beast rolled on by it. The forward window was smeared with red. The blood, that was the only thing it could be, was steaming in the cold, but it quickly stopped and froze to the glass.

  “What the heck was that?” Jim yelled at them, coming forward from the Snow Beast’s rear.

  “We hit something,” Lee answered. “That’s blood on the windshield.”

  “That’s impossible,” Sergeant Lopez protested. “There’s nothing out here to hit expect ice and rocks.”

  Lee pointed at the frozen blood. “Then explain that, sir.”

  “Stop the vehicle,” Sergeant Lopez ordered.

  “What?” Lee couldn’t believe he had heard the sergeant right.

  “You heard me!” Sergeant Lopez snapped at him. “Stop this thing now!”

  The Snow Beast wasn’t moving that fast but Lee slammed on its brakes anyway. Despite its slowness, the heavy vehicle still slid several yards before coming to a complete stop in the snow. Lee wondered what in the devil the sergeant was thinking.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, sir,” Lee cautioned.

  “I didn’t ask you what you thought, soldier,” Sergeant Lopez snarled.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Jim complained. “We need to get to Zulu and get help for—”

  “Shut up, Jim!” Sergeant Lopez ordered. “I am well aware of what our needs are.”

  Sergeant Lopez got up from his seat, carrying his shotgun with him. As the sergeant pulled his parka tighter about him and slipped gloves onto his hands, Lee stared at him in disbelief.

  “You’re going out there?” Lee asked.

  “I am,” Sergeant Lopez told him. “There shouldn’t be anything out here for us to hit. There are no large animals native to this region that I know of. We can’t take the chance that we hit someone and just leave them here to die.”

  “You seriously think we hit a person?” Jim apparently couldn’t believe what the sergeant was doing either. “That’s insane.”

  “Do you have another explanation for the blood frozen to the windshield?” Sergeant Lopez asked, staring down the medic.

  “I think I caught a glimpse of whatever it was we hit, sir,” Lee admitted, though he didn’t want to. “And I can assure you that it wasn’t human.”

  “Keep the engine running, Lee,” Sergeant Lopez told him. “Jim, gear up. You’re coming with me.”

  Jim went pale. “Sir, I—”

  “That’s an order, frag it!” Sergeant Lopez raged. “If we hurt someone, they may need medical attention before we can move them into the Snow Beast.”

  Jim sighed. “Yes, sir.”

  A blast of cold air blew into the Snow Beast as Sergeant Lopez threw open its side door and stepped out into the falling snow. Jim gave Lee a last look of concern before following Lopez out.

  Lee thought the sergeant was an idiot. What he was doing was just plain stupid and dragging Jim with him only made it worse.

  ****

  Sergeant Lopez was ticked. He clutched his automatic shotgun tightly in his gloved hands. Only a fool of a newbie like Lee could manage to hit something on a freaking continent where there shouldn’t be anything to run into. Jim shuffled along behind him as they first moved forward to check the front of the Snow Beast. Its heavily armored front was dented and smeared with already frozen blood. Sergeant Lopez stared at the mess. He had to admit that Lee was likely right in that whatever they hit surely hadn’t been a human being. A human body would have been crushed and flung aside by the heavy vehicle without doing any real damage to it. Whatever they had hit had enough mass to it to damage the Snow Beast. There wasn’t supposed to be in bears or the like in Antarctica, but in this moment, Sergeant Lopez doubted that fact. They were too far from the coast for them to have hit a sea lion or large mammal that was supposed to be native to the region. Nothing about what had just happened made any sense. He knew time was not on their side, but he couldn’t let his frustration go. Lopez had to know what they hit.

  “Frag me,” Jim said as he moved up next to Lopez and saw the front of the Snow Beast himself. “What could have done that?”

  “We’re going to find out,” Lopez said gruffly. “Follow me. From the looks of the Snow Beast, whatever we hit has to be messed up pretty bad too. It can’t be too far behind us.”

  “Sergeant …” Jim chose his words carefully, “we really need to get back on the way to Zulu.”

  “This shouldn’t take long,” Lopez said, brushing aside Jim’s concern. “Come on.”

  The two of them walked through the falling snow. It was hard to see through but their visibility was better than it had been through the Snow Beast’s window. The partially iced snow crunched beneath their boots. Jim shivered as the wind ripped at them. His nose was already running from the cold. Night was falling quickly and what little sun there was that made it through the falling snow was barely enough to see clearly in. Jim didn’t see the claws coming at his face until they made contact with his flesh. He screamed as they raked over his cheek from its bottom upward to take away his right eye. His body was sent flying backward from the force of the blow. Jim landed on his back with a loud grunt, his breath knocked from his lungs. Blood poured from the mangled tissue of his face and ravaged eye socket. Jim tried to get up but a massive, white-furred foot fell onto his chest, smashing his ribs inward.

  Sergeant Lopez saw the monster as it tore into Jim. It came out of nowhere like a ghost. The thing was entirely white and blended into the falling snow. Had it not been for the red splashes of Jim’s blood that sprayed onto its fur and its movements, he might not have seen it at all. The thing easily stood over eight feet tall. Its eyes were yellow and almost seemed to glow in the dimness of the dying rays of the setting sun. He heard the crunch of the medic’s ribs collapsing inward as the monster finished the medic by stepping onto his chest. Sergeant Lopez didn’t have a fragging clue what the monster was but he’d be damned if he was going to let it take his life too. Jerking up his automatic shotgun to level its barrel at the monster, he opened fire. The automatic shotgun thundered in rapid succession, hosing the thing with a three-round burst that opened up its side in an explosion of red. The monster staggered sideways, strands of its intestines spilling out to be dragged along after it. There was no way in hell that Lopez was giving the thing a chance to recover. He emptied the rest of his automatic shotgun’s magazine into it, blowing a watermelon-sized hole in its back. The monster collapsed into the snow and lay there as a circle of warm red oozed outward from its corpse.

  Tearing the spent magazine out of his weapon, Sergeant Lopez shoved a fresh one into it. Then and only then did he approach the monster with his shotgun pointed at it. It looked to be very dead, but he wasn’t taking any chances. As he drew closer to where the monster lay, he could see that it was roughly man-shaped. It made him think of a giant ape. The thing had the arms and legs of a man but its arms were overly long and the muscles beneath the white fur that covered the whole of its body looked as thick as combat armor. The fingers of its far-too-human-like hands were tipped with razor-sharp claws. Even seeing it this close, Sergeant Lopez still didn’t have a fragging clue what the thing was. It hit him suddenly that the thing hadn’t been hurt at all before he had opened fire on it. That meant it couldn’t be whatever the Snow Beast had plowed into. There was likely another one of its kind still lurking about in the snow with him. Maybe more than one. Lopez backed away from the monster’s corpse and turned toward the Snow Beast. Its headlights made it easy to locate even in the falling snow and growing darkness. Before heading for the vehicle, he paused to check on Jim just in case the medic had survived somehow. He hadn’t. The sight of his crushed chest with jagged tips of his shattered ribs protruding through his red-stained clothes where his parka had fallen open, combined with what little was left of the right side of his ripped-away
face, was enough to make even a veteran like him sick. Sergeant Lopez stayed on his feet but tilted his head downward to the side and vomited onto the snow. As soon as he stopped heaving, Lopez sprinted for the Snow Beast. If there were more things like the one he had killed, he had no desire to engage them. As camouflaged as their fur made them, he might not see them coming at him until it was too late. His legs pumped under him and his breath came in ragged gasps as he ran.

  Reaching the Snow Beast, Sergeant Lopez threw its side door open and leaped inside the heavy vehicle. Lee jumped up out of the driver’s seat, startled by his sudden entrance, as Lopez slammed the door closed behind him.

  “Get this thing moving!” Lopez yelled.

  “Where’s Jim?” Lee asked.

  “Dead!” Sergeant Lopez answered, wiping at his mouth with the backside of his hand. It came away slicked with the remnants of his vomit.

  Lee gawked at him for a quick second before snapping into action. The newbie whirled about and plopped himself back into the driver’s seat. He floored the Snow Beast’s accelerator. The all-terrain tires of the heavy vehicle spun and dug into the snow before finally finding traction. When they did, the Snow Beast lurched forward and kept going, building speed as it went.

  ****

  Major Dixon paced the floor of Zulu Base’s command center. Alpha one was in route, driven back by the storm that had picked up speed and rolled in faster than anyone had expected. There was no word from Alpha two. Considering how garbled Alpha one’s close-range transmission was, there was nothing surprising about that though. The strange interference continued to show no signs of slacking up. Alex and Clay hadn’t been able to pinpoint its source either. Major Dixon prayed it would end shortly though. She needed the comms fully online and operational.