by Greig Beck
“Keep that light on,” Carter demanded. “It might still be hiding in here.”
Mikhail shook his head slowly. “Why? It could have killed us. Could have killed all of us, in the cage room, but didn’t. It just wanted out.”
“Saving us for later.” Mitch still seethed. “Maybe for dessert.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Carter lowered his gun. “It had sawn through the cage bars and probably could have gotten away earlier if it wanted. I think it was observing us as we were observing it.”
The three men stood in the center of the room, turning slowly. Mikhail had his portable blacklight held high, but after five minutes he lowered his arm.
“We are alone.”
“Yeah.” Carter holstered his gun. “Let’s go see how Anna is doing.”
They entered the room to find Yuri crouched beside a bloody sheet that had been thrown over the remains of Stefan. Nikolay had an arm around Anna, propping her up as Sara, still streaked with blood, talked softly to her. Anna nodded as she held a hand to her head and still looked shaken.
She turned when Mikhail entered, her eyes widening and beginning to speak in machinegun rapidity to him. Carter only caught a few of the Russian words but didn’t like what he was hearing.
“Help her up,” Mikhail said and pulled a chair closer.
Nikolay did as asked and guided her to the seat. She sat down, but reached out to hold onto Mikhail’s arm, her hands gripping like claws.
She began again in Russian and Sara frowned. “No, in English. This affects us all.”
“Yes, Anna, slowly please, and in English,” Mikhail said calmly.
Anna blinked a few times and swallowed, her eyes round and a little wild. “I saw it,” she said and swallowed again. “When it had hold of me; I saw into its mind.”
Carter came and crouched in front of her. “Tell us. Tell us what you saw.”
“They’ve been sleeping for thousands of years. They send up scouts to take, samples, every few years…”
“Samples. The animals and us, you mean?” Mitch said.
“Yes,” she replied. “But now, they’re all waking up.” She tugged on Mikhail’s arm and shot to her feet. “They’re going to call for others—they’re ready now.”
“What?” Carter got to his feet as well. “Others?”
“What do they want?” Mikhail’s eyes were half-lidded.
Anna’s face crumpled for a moment, and her eyes flooded. “The wolves, the bears, the fish… us. They use biological entities like we use machines. We are their raw materials; their building blocks, their glue, their fuel.”
“I told you,” Yuri said softly. “They want us.”
Mikhail patted her hand and eased her back down. “Good, good, rest now. We learned a lot today.”
Anna shook her head. “It did too. That’s why it knew to smash the UV lights. It pulled the information from my head. It didn’t like being seen.”
“How much time have we got?” Mikhail asked her.
“They will call on the next full moon to take advantage of the strong gravitational effects to boost their signal—five days. Then the others will come. And when they do…” Her face was bleached of color and her lips worked for a moment. “The oceans… the oceans are where they’ll arrive. In the deepest trenches; they now know it’s where we can’t get to them.”
“They’re getting ready for an invasion,” Carter said. “Establishing a fortified base.”
“Those motherfu…” Mitch shook his head. “Kill ‘em all.”
“Thus ends the interspecies communication.” Carter turned to Mitch. “Get Red, tell him to suit up. These things want a war, then we’ll give ‘em one, and before their main forces arrive.”
“No.” Anna jumped from her chair to scrabble at his arm. “There’s still a chance we can talk to them. It could have killed me but it didn’t. It was surprised to find we had intellect.”
Carter frowned down at her. “No, it used you. That’s all.”
“They’re different to us and don’t think like us.” She grimaced and crowded him. “They have no concept of pain or loss. We just need…”
“Stop it.” Carter pushed her back a step and then walked right up into Mikhail’s face. “We’re going to cleanse the site, but your buddies in Moscow better come up with a plan to root out those ones down on the bottom of the lake before we, and everything living thing on this planet, end up next year’s suits of clothing.”
Sara used a rag to wipe some of the blood from her face and arms but her hair was becoming sticky. “I need to get this off.”
“I’ll walk you up there,” Carter said. “Just in case that thing is still looking for another ride.”
EPISODE 05
CHAPTER 43
INTERACTION: Lake Baikal Forest—right now
Igor Stavros scoffed as he stared at the naked man standing in the snow. “What is this fool?” he whispered.
“Sentry duty on wash day?” One of his men laughed. “Or maybe he lost a bet.”
Stavros put binoculars to his eyes. The man was of average height, bearded and middle-aged, or maybe even slightly older than that as his beard, chest, and pubic hair were mostly a grizzled grey. On his arm was a fading tattoo, possibly of a wolf wearing a beret with a dagger through it. He recognized it—military.
What is he doing? he wondered. Did he come up here to shit, or was he mentally impaired? He had no time for this. Though his brief was to try and avoid taking out the Russian citizens, this idiot might put his mission at risk—one shout from this man, and they’d all be exposed.
Fuck it, he thought. Why wait? He turned to one of his bratva at the rear and first put a finger to his lips, made a cutting motion at his neck, and then pointed at the lunatic.
The bratva nodded his understanding and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He then drew forth a huge hunting knife that he kept at his back and headed toward the naked man.
The guy was facing them and hadn’t moved a muscle. The bratva approached, his knife hand behind his back, casually holding up his other hand in a friendly wave.
Stavros watched, hoping he could be taken down quietly and efficiently. His man got in striking distance, and then the hand holding the knife lashed out, stabbing deftly into the chest, just between the ribs over the heart—an immediate kill stroke.
But the naked man stood straight, his mouth still gaping open and face blank. He didn’t fall or even react. He didn’t even bleed. But then the weirdest thing Stavros had ever seen occurred.
The naked man’s stomach opened, like it had been slit, and the two sides of the gash hung there, wide, showing an absolutely empty gut cavity, like his man had somehow disemboweled him.
There was a puff of snow from just in front of the naked man, who stood there, eyes vacant as if he was in a trance.
His bratva recoiled a few paces from the gutted man, held his knife up to him, and spoke a few words that were lost to Stavros. But then in another moment, he turned to look over his shoulder at the bratva team leader, his face pale and confused.
That’s when it all went insane.
There was movement, not from the naked man, but from the snow between them, and then his bratva soldier looked like he had been shocked or struck. He doubled over, and then threw his head back, clutching his front.
Even from where Stavros was, he heard his man’s grunt of pain, and then from between his clutching fingers his jacket opened and his stomach poured out wetly into the snow before him. The heat of the internal organs rose in curls of steam and the pile of guts quickly melted into the snow.
“What the fuck?” Stavros’s mouth hung open for a moment.
His man toppled face-first into his own hot gizzards and stayed down. Stavros now only had six men at his disposal and swung to call three of them from their stakeout positions.
Stavros circled his hand in the air and then pointed to his man who had fallen back into the snow. His three team members pulled rifles in tight to
their shoulders and headed over, wading through snow that came to their knees.
Stavros stuck the field glasses into his pocket and instead put his riflescope to his eye to get a closer picture of what was unfolding while having the naked guy in his crosshairs—but he still just stood there, immobile, immutable, his stomach open like a trapdoor.
As he watched his three men cautiously approach, Stavros scowled into his scope, and then his brows drew even tighter together—something was happening in the gap between the men. There seemed to be marks, tracks, being made in the snow. And they looked to be headed directly toward his men.
“Look out, you fools,” he hissed.
It was too late. The first of the three men yelled and spun as though he had been struck. His rifle fell into two pieces as half of his face was cut away. The red line of blood also traveled all the way down his coat.
What the fuck was going on? Stavros felt a cold hand of panic on his neck. His head whipped around. Was someone throwing something? Some weapon he couldn’t see? he wondered.
His next man in line did the same, except his arm fell from his shoulder with the hot blood spurting, staining the snow a brilliant red. He yelled and kept on yelling as he turned to stagger away.
This was too much for the final man who turned and started to run in a plodding gait away from the killing zone. Behind him, his one-armed man held the spurting stump and yelled a string of Russian curses.
Stavros pointed his gun at the bellowing man and fired one round into his head, dropping him and immediately cutting off his screams. It was all going to shit, and Stavros had no idea why.
“Tosco,” he yelled after his last man who ran and kept on running into the forest. “Get back here.” And then, “You fucking coward!”
The man never slowed or even turned, and then he was gone. Stavros hit himself in the forehead with a gloved fist. “Mugda!” he cursed. Tushino would have his head for fucking up.
They’d made too much noise now. He quickly looked over his shoulder at the mill compound but didn’t see any movement or people coming to investigate the yelling—a small blessing, he thought and then swung back to the ruined bodies of his men.
Stavros could only guess that somehow the American had rigged some sort of booby-trap—razor wire or something. But strangely, the naked man still stood there, like a clockwork toy that had wound down.
See how you like this, he thought and raised his rifle, sighting dead center on the naked man’s forehead. He breathed out and gently squeezed the trigger.
A red spot appeared on the man’s brow immediately followed by an explosion of blood and bone out the back of his skull. The naked old man’s body fell back into the snow.
“Fuck you,” Stavros whispered and then lowered his rifle. He turned to where his three remaining men were secreted on the hillside tree line. He called to the first… nothing. The second and third… also nothing. Not one of the men showed themselves or answered his call.
After a few more moments of absolute silence, he knew he was alone. Stavros had braved many tough and bloody times in his life, but it had been a long time since he had felt the cold hand of death at his neck.
He turned slowly, letting his eyes run over the snow, over the tree line, and he even glanced up at the branches overhead. But there was nothing now except the cold, silence, and solitude.
Maybe they had all run off. That must be it. He didn’t really blame them after seeing their comrades be sliced up by nothing but thin air. Stavros came to a decision—he would leave his position and join up with the other team on the far flank. If any of his missing team were there, they’d answer to him.
Stavros shouldered his rifle, and as he turned, he noticed something strange. In the snow were weird tracks made by what looked like some sort of spikes. Following them back with his eyes, he saw they traveled circuitously from the killing zone of his men, all the way to stop just six feet beside him.
As he stared, another indentation appeared in front of the others, and then another. His mouth dropped open. It was as if something was taking slow and careful steps… toward him.
“Fuck you.” He swung the muzzle of his gun down, but there was a whipping sound in the air and he felt a burning pain from his genitals to the center of his chest. The burning suddenly became ice cold.
Stavros gritted his teeth and dropped his rifle. He placed a hand over his stomach, but even through his gloves he felt the warm slipperiness as his insides spilled out into the snow.
The Russian killer began to weep with fear, pain, and confusion. “How?” He sunk to his knees.
The last thing he felt was something gripping the front of his shirt, something he still couldn’t see, beginning to push inside his belly.
CHAPTER 44
Sara dried her hair last, better now for the soap and scalding shower but still feeling unclean from being bathed in the young man’s blood. Things were getting out of her control—even more out of control—and right now, all she wanted was for the sun to come up and get through the night. Everything would look better in the morning, she kept telling herself.
Right now, she wished she could just lie on the bed and drift away. Everything in her body ached with fatigue and there was a pain behind her eyes from tension, tiredness, and also raw fear.
She had sent Carter back down and wouldn’t call him back as her escort, but instead would head back down to the mill house herself to see if there was anything else she could be doing.
She pushed the last box of Marcus’ personal items under a cupboard, and then took a quick glance around the house and all the changes she had made—blue china on dark antique wood dressers, long, settler-style table with fresh fruit, and dried flowers. There were now comfy leather chairs near a fireplace and couches with colorful cushions.
There was still work to do, so there were paintbrushes, screwdrivers, and hammers on every tabletop both upstairs and down. It all looked so normal; a different world to the one of chaos and horror down near the water.
Sara turned, just hearing the deep tick-tock of the mantle clock up against the far wall. The one thing she’d need to get used to in a Siberian winter was the absolute absence of sound—snow falls dampened down everything, and there were few animals wandering about, or owls hooting, and even the rustle of leaves in a breeze.
The thing she missed was the night sounds of Florida, where there was a gentle shush of tiny waves on golden sand.
She made a mental note to switch on the radio. There were a few stations they could sometimes get out here that played a few hits, mostly Russian, but a few European ones she recognized—hello again, ABBA. She smiled flatly and headed toward the kitchen.
Sara stopped in her tracks, tilting her head. One thing about the absence of sound was it magnified any remaining noises. And unusual ones stood out like a red cherry on a white cake. She waited, frozen to the spot, concentrating her senses.
Then the windows blew inward.
Sara dropped her coffee cup and spun toward the closest window as huge men in white, bulky outfits crashed in and continued to pour through. Her body locked up for just a moment, maybe only a second, but by the time she turned to run, she was cornered, as from the back of the house was more smashing and more figures breaking in fast.
They were armed, faces covered in white ski masks. Where was Carter? Where was Mitch, Red, or even Yuri? she wondered, as the noise the intruders made should have carried all across the compound.
She was immediately grabbed by both arms and held to the spot as the others raced through the house, obviously looking for anyone else.
One of the men crossed to the front door and opened it. A single man stepped inside.
“You.” She bared her teeth.
Tushino grinned, bowed theatrically, and straightened. “Yes, me. I told you I’d be back. And now here I am.”
Sara wrestled with the iron grip of the men who held her. “You son of a bitch, I’ll see you in…”
Tushino qui
ckly crossed to her and punched her in the eye, rocking her head back on her neck. Sara saw stars but worked hard to not black out. She felt dizzy and her left eye was now hot, wet, and blurry. But she managed to stay upright.
“What do you want?” She had never felt such hate toward anyone in her life, and if she had her gun, she would shoot him in the face, dead center, without even blinking.
“A signed contract, of course.” Tushino produced some folded paper and held it up. “Unfortunately, as negotiations have been protracted, expensive, and a little messy, the original deal has had to be altered to include compensation to reflect those conditions.”
Tushino smiled sympathetically. “So, you give us control of 75% of the mill house sturgeon business, and we will be on our way.” He placed a hand on his heart. “And I promise you will never be bothered by us or anyone else again.” He held out the papers.
She spat on them and wasn’t surprised to see some blood in her sputum, as she could taste it. The punch to her eye must have ruptured her socket.
Tushino half-turned away but then spun back to punch Sara in the other eye. She fell and the men let her drop. But the blow wasn’t as hard as the last time, and she looked up through blurry eyes, but not at Tushino; instead, her eyes went to the tabletop.
In a blink, she launched herself at the table, grabbed the screwdriver and staying low, swung it back at the man, catching him in the front of the leg. The small flat blade of the screwdriver only sank in about half an inch, but the howl of pain was worth the beating that came after.
The punches and kicks immediately rained down on her. Sara managed to cover up at first, but the fists were like iron and the boots were large, hard, and ice cold from the snow, and they stomped and kicked with a ferocity that ruptured muscles and fractured bones.
“Stop,” Tushino hissed. “She’s no good to me dead or in a coma.”
Sara lay on the ground, feeling like she was at the bottom of a long, dark pit of pain, sticky hot blood dripping from her nose. She barely heard the man say, bring her, as it all felt like a dream now. But in the next few seconds, she was being dragged out through the back broken window, feeling the sting of the bitter cold as the blood froze on her face.
