Horror Sci-Fi Box Set: Three Novels

by Bryan Dunn

  “Y-Yes,” Sloan stammered. “It was over by the chopper. Lieutenant Cushman and the two Navy guys are…” Overcome with emotion, he dropped to the ice unable to keep talking

  “They’re dead,” Wilbanks said

  “What?” Harry said, looking at Wilbanks.

  Nowhere Man grabbed Wilbanks by the shoulders and spun him so they were face to face. “Lieutenant Cushman… What about Cush?”

  “It’s just like Sloan said, sir. They’re all dead. That thing…” Wilbanks looked away, not wanting to remember. “Jesus, it took them all apart in seconds.”

  “Come on, show me where they are,” Nowhere Man said. But Wilbanks pulled away, then lurched forward, huddling on the ice with the sobbing Sergeant Sloan.

  “Amy, you stay here,” Harry said. “Don’t move.” Then he turned to Nowhere Man. “C’mon, let’s go find them.”

  Dawn was breaking and the first rays of light filtered through the heavy cloud cover as Harry and Nowhere Man cautiously approached the Black Hawk.

  Stopping about fifty feet short, they scanned the area for any movement or signs of the creature. When they were both satisfied that it was clear, they broke into a trot and slipped beneath the helicopter’s rotor boom, using the main cabin for cover.

  Nowhere Man took point and, they inched forward along the side of the chopper, hugging the body for protection. As they approached the nose, Nowhere Man put up a hand – then pointed forward to a bloody patch of ice fifty feet in front of the chopper. Just beyond that, they could see the twisted forms of three bodies.

  “Jesus Christ,” Harry whispered.

  Nowhere Man scanned the ice, looking for any movement or signs of the creature.

  “Cush,” Nowhere Man called forward, praying for some response.

  Nothing.

  “Shit.” Nowhere Man said, then he and Harry stepped away from the chopper and picked their way cautiously toward their three slain comrades.

  Harry and Nowhere Man stood looking down at their ravaged friends. Neither of them spoke, neither of them had the words. Arms and legs jutted out from ruined bodies at impossible angles. Blood soaked through their clothes, staining the ice and causing little puffs of steam to rise in the chill dawn air.

  The faces of the two Navy engineers were covered by slash marks. Ragged flaps of rubbery flesh hung open, exposing bloody bits of skull and bone.

  Lieutenant Cushman lay face down on the ice. The pool of blood spreading out from his face had already begun to freeze.

  Nowhere Man reached down, gripped Lieutenant Cushman’s arm, and with a quick pull rolled his body over. To his complete horror, the head didn’t travel with the body. It remained face down in the ice, connected to the torso only by a twisted strand of gristle and flesh, the bones in his neck having been splintered and crushed.

  “Oh shit, Cush…” Nowhere Man whispered, overcome with grief for his stricken buddy.

  Harry reached down and put his hand on Nowhere Man’s shoulder. “Come on, Nowhere, there’s nothing we can do – let’s get back to the others. I don’t want to leave Amy alone back there. We’ll have to deal with the bodies later – I want to make sure that son of a bitch isn’t doubling back on the far side of camp.”

  Chapter 36

  The remainder of the team – Amy, Harry, Nowhere Man, Sloan and Wilbanks –were huddled around a stove in the field lab, sipping coffee and trying to regroup after the pre-dawn attack. Everyone was on edge and even the slightest noise caused the group to jump.

  The sun momentarily appeared, then just as quickly vanished behind the dark wall of clouds on the edge of a fast-moving front. There had been no further signs of the creature and it seemed, at least for now, to have vanished into the interior of the iceberg.

  Harry moved around the group with a coffee pot, refilling mugs – and Amy ripped open a packet of sweet rolls and placed them on a work bench for those who were able to eat.

  “Okay, what do we know about this creature?” Harry said, looking at the group’s expressionless faces, then letting his eyes settle on Amy.

  “I can tell you one thing –” Nowhere Man said flatly. “It killed three men without even breaking a sweat.”

  “Ah, four men, sir,” Sergeant Wilbanks said, pointing at Lockwood’s covered body.

  “Right,” Nowhere Man nodded.

  “Okay, I think we can all agree that it’s dangerous and very hostile.”

  “We don’t know that it’s hostile,” Amy said, correcting Harry. “It could just have been terrified and all it was doing was protecting itself. Self-preservation is one of the most basic and primitive functions of all living things. I think it was terrified.”

  “You may have a point there,” Harry said. “If the first thing you saw after having been frozen in a glacier for five thousand years was Lockwood’s mug – you’d want to kill something, too.”

  “That’s not helpful, Harry,” Amy frowned.

  “No, but it’s true.”

  “Do you think that thing can swim, ma’am?” Sloan asked, obviously still rattled from the attack.

  “I don’t know,” Amy said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if it could. It’s very adapted to this environment.”

  “Well, what about polar bears? They sure as hell do,” Harry said, grabbing a sweet roll.

  “It’s not a polar bear, Harry.”

  “No, it’s a goddamn nightmare.”

  “That’s not just some animal out there, man,” Nowhere Man said, his voice anxious and filled with edge. “It’s more like a polar bear with a G.E.D. or something.”

  “A G.E.D.?” Harry asked, giving Nowhere Man a confused look.

  “Yeah, you know – a high school diploma or something.”

  “Look, getting upset isn’t going to help things,” Amy said, being the voice of reason and trying to calm frayed nerves.

  “I’m not getting upset, ma’am,” Nowhere Man said. Then he patted the M-16. “I’m thinking about getting even.”

  “Typical,” Amy said and took a sip of coffee.

  “Shit,” Harry said, then added, “Come on, you guys, this doesn’t help.”

  “Here’s a plan,” Sergeant Wilbanks said. “Let’s get the hell off this iceberg while we still can.”

  “That suits the hell out of me,” Nowhere Man said. “We’ve got about four more hours before that front arrives and shuts the weather down for good.”

  “What about the bodies?” Harry asked.

  “Like you said, Harry, we’ll have to leave them here on ice until we can return with help. In fact, we’ll have to leave everything here – I’m not waiting around to pack things up and take a chance on that thing coming back for seconds.”

  “You’ve got a point there, Nowhere” Harry said, glancing around the destruction inside the tent.

  Nowhere Man turned towards Sloan and Wilbanks. “You two go cover those bodies out on the ice. There are tarps in the chopper – and make sure you anchor them together so they don’t get lost.”

  “Oh, great,” Wilbanks complained.

  “Just do it,” Nowhere Man snapped.

  The two sergeants jumped up and hustled out of the tent, anxious to get it over with.

  Chapter 37

  Sloan and Wilbanks cautiously approached the Black Hawk, both of them acting twitchy and nervous, their heads snapping left to right for any signs of the creature.

  “Jesus Christ, it’s freezing out here,” Wilbanks complained. Then he looked up at the sky and added, “Feels like it’s going to snow.”

  “Shut up and keep your eyes open, Wilbanks. The sooner we get this bullshit assignment over with – the sooner you can be warming your sorry ass back in the tent.”

  Wilbanks scowled at Sloan and thought about telling him to fuck off, but decided to let it drop and continued to scan the area for signs of movement.

  Sloan was first to reach the helicopter, and, not wasting a second, hauled the cargo door open and jumped inside.

  Wilbanks was right
behind him. As he put a hand on the cargo bay floor to hop inside, he was suddenly pasted in the chest by a heavy tarpaulin.

  “What the fuck, Sloan?” Wilbanks yelled, letting it fall to the ice.

  “Take the tarp over to the bodies,” Sloan said flatly. “I’ll find some rope so we can secure the tarp around them.”

  “The hell you say… Why the fuck don’t you hump the tarp over to the bodies and I’ll get the rope?”

  “Because I thought of it first, that’s why,” Sloan said defiantly. “Now come on, Wilbanks – let’s do this thing.”

  Wilbanks stared in at Sloan, shook his head, then reluctantly picked up the tarp. “Chickenshit. You and this whole deal is chickenshit.”

  “Yeah, right,” Sloan mumbled. “Go tell someone who gives a shit.”

  Wilbanks tucked the tarp under his arm, turned, and slogged his way forward until he reached the bodies scattered on the ice.

  He stepped up to one of the Navy engineers, dropped the tarp next to the body, bent to grab the corpse’s legs in an effort to slide the bodies closer together, and as he lifted upwards, lost his footing. He suddenly found himself flat on the ice, nose to nose with the sailor’s wide-eyed and bloodless face.

  “Fuck!” Wilbanks screamed, rolling away from the dead man.

  Back at the helicopter, Sloan bolted out of the cargo bay, jumping onto the ice. As he looked to see what Wilbanks was yelling about, he suddenly stopped in his tracks, frozen with fear.

  Chapter 38

  “Harry, you come and help me preflight the chopper for dust off,” Nowhere Man said, policing up his gear and preparing to leave the tent.

  “Wait, we can’t just leave everything here,” Amy said, pointing to a laptop and a bank of monitors.

  “Yeah, watch us.” Nowhere Man challenged.

  “Well, I’m not leaving without the data we got on that creature – it’s invaluable.”

  “Fine, bring all the stuff you can carry under one arm. We’re outta here in ten minutes.”

  “He’s right,” Harry said, looking at Amy and shrugging apologetically.

  “C’mon, Harry, let’s roll.”

  As they moved toward the door, they heard Sloan yelling to Wilbanks. His voice suddenly changed pitch, taking on a new urgency – and at the top of his lungs he yelled –

  “Wilbanks! Run!”

  Harry and Nowhere Man bolted outside with Amy right on their heels. The first thing they saw was Sergeant Sloan scrambling back towards the Black Hawk helicopter.

  “Look!” Amy yelled, pointing to the right of the helicopter.

  Harry and Nowhere Man turned, and fifty yards in front of the chopper, they saw the creature closing in on Wilbanks who was still trying to get up off the ice and hadn’t seen the creature yet.

  As Wilbanks got to his feet, Sloan vaulted into the helicopter, turned, then called to Wilbanks. “Wilbanks. Don’t turn around. Run. Jesus Christ, run. Run for the helo!”

  Wilbanks, confused and still nauseous from his close encounter with the carnage, thought Sloan was telling him to turn around and run the other way. He looked at Sloan and shook his head. “What?” he yelled. Then he turned around – and almost had a heart attack when he saw the creature twenty feet in front of him and closing fast. It looked impossibly huge, standing eight feet off the ice, and moving with the stealth of a wild predator.

  Wilbanks said, “Shit,” and ran for his life across the ice toward the helicopter.

  Sloan was standing in the cargo bay door waving his arms, urging Wilbanks on. “Faster, Wilbanks. Run faster!”

  Suddenly the creature lowered its body – and then without warning, it flashed across the ice at a terrible speed, instantly closing the distance to Wilbanks with lethal precision.

  “Oh, God,” Wilbanks whimpered, as he felt the creature directly behind him. A primal musky smell laced with human blood filled his nostrils, and –

  He was lifted off the ice, caught in the creature’s grip like a rodent in a hawk’s claw. And then in one violent stroke, the powerful arms snapped past each other in a quick scissoring maneuver, separating Sergeant Wilbank’s torso from his hips. The two halves of his body dropped to the ice with a wet thud.

  The creature spun around, retreated back twenty yards, picked up the harpoon it had dropped and, with it held at its side, raced across the iceberg toward the helicopter.

  Inside the Black Hawk, Sloan had been watching everything from the crew compartment. Seeing that the creature was now coming for him he yelled, “Shit!” and threw the cargo door shut.

  Moments later, the creature slammed into the side of the Black Hawk, causing the helicopter to rock violently back and forth.

  The creature raised the harpoon, and then, as if the helicopter was some giant prey to be felled, it began to attack the Black Hawk. The air filled with the sound of smashing glass as the cargo door window exploded, showering Sloan with bits of bulletproof glass.

  He screamed for help as the creature moved forward, punching holes in the helicopter’s aluminum skin.

  “Son of a bitch!” Nowhere Man yelled. He leveled the M-16 and was about to bolt forward, when –

  Amy yelled, “No!”

  Harry lunged toward Nowhere Man, grabbed the rifle out of his hands, and firing short bursts into the air, charged directly toward the Black Hawk.

  The creature ceased its assault, wheeled around, locked onto Harry, and dropped into a defensive crouch.

  Whatever happened to Harry’s legs, they stopped moving. He stood frozen in his steps, staring directly at the creature’s menacing-looking yellow eyes. Harry slowly backed away, keeping the rifle pointed at the creature…

  The creature let out a blood curdling scream, and then it was suddenly moving again, directly towards him!

  Harry didn’t wait around to find out what was going to happen. He immediately took off running across the iceberg, yelling toward Nowhere Man,” Get into the air – and come and get me!”

  “Shoot it!” Nowhere yelled back. “Shoot it, Harry!”

  But Harry just kept running, angling across a flat section of iceberg that led to a steep outcrop of ice.

  “We’ve got to help him!” Amy screamed.

  “Shit,” Nowhere Man said. Then, “C’mon!” He and Amy sprinted to the helicopter, hauled open the cargo door, jumped in over the glass-covered floor and saw Sergeant Sloan plastered to the rear bulkhead, shaking uncontrollably with fear.

  “Sloan… Sergeant Sloan!” Nowhere Man shouted at him, but Sloan didn’t respond. Hugging his knees, he continued to tremble without raising his head.

  “Shit,” Nowhere Man said, then turned to Amy. “See if he’s okay, and make sure he’s not bleeding.”

  Amy crouched over to Sloan and knelt beside him, while Nowhere Man jumped into the cockpit and began to preflight the helo.

  Out on the ice, Harry hit the base of the outcrop and fought his way up its slippery face. He made it up just twenty feet before he began to slip backwards. Using the barrel of the rifle like an ice axe, he regained his footing and continued climbing.

  The creature hit the foot of the slope, and without pausing, started after Harry using its powerful fingers to dig into the ice like metal pitons.

  Harry glanced back, saw the creature coming, and said, “Shit!”

  Chapter 39

  The Black Hawk’s turbines were screeching at full power and the blades began to turn, kicking up bits of loose ice.

  “Sloan,” Nowhere Man said, as he leaned into the crew compartment. “Sergeant Sloan! Snap to! I need you to get on the hoist and hook the harness up to the lift cable.” Sloan looked up at Nowhere Man, but didn’t respond. “Do you copy, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sloan said, finally managing to speak.

  “Good. Do it now, sergeant.” Nowhere Man said, then looked at Amy. “Dr. Tyler, you come forward and be my spotter.”

  “Right,” Amy said, and scrambled forward into the cockpit, dropping into the number two seat.
>
  “Here we go…” Nowhere Man yelled. Then he pulled back on the controls and the Black Hawk leapt into the air, gaining altitude immediately.

  Harry continued to scramble up the ice ridge, pumping his legs, digging his boots into the ice, and every couple of feet driving the barrel of the rifle into the ice to hold his position.

  After another minute of intense effort, Harry suddenly realized he’d run out of ice and found himself standing at the top of the ridge.

  Trapped!

  There was nowhere to run. He looked down – and just beyond the toes of his boots, a five-hundred-foot slope spilled down to the ice below.

  Shit!

  He flipped around and watched the creature haul itself up five more feet, then stop and look directly at him.

  Harry stared down at two yellow eyes that looked like the end of the world.

  He knocked the rifle barrel against the side of his boot to loosen any ice, pulled the lock back, and chambered a cartridge.

  Harry spread his feet, raised the M-16, and leveled it at the creature that was now right on top of him.

  And as the creature rose up, he aimed point blank at the center of its chest. The air around him suddenly turned foul with the creature’s musky smell.

  The creature let out an unholy scream, and –

  “Fuck you!” Harry said, then pulled the trigger.

  The rifle jammed.

  Frantically, he pulled on the trigger again, and again…

  Nothing.

  The creature moved in for the kill. It dug its feet into the ice, raised the harpoon,

  and –

  The air around the top of the ridge filled with a deafening roar. Seconds later, the Black Hawk screamed up behind them, nosed into a dive and streaked overhead, missing the creature by inches.

  Harry instinctively dropped to the ice, thinking they’d both had it.

  The creature spun around and slipped, dropping the harpoon, then cartwheeled thirty feet back down the slope before it could stop itself with its powerful arms.