Terminal Freeze

40

When he first pulled duty at Fear Base, as a green buck private back in 1978, Gonzalez had participated in the occasional infiltration exercise. They-there had been six of them back then-were told to assume a Russian sabotage unit had penetrated the base, and they were tasked with interdiction. Of course, since even at that time the base had been closed almost twenty years, it was nothing more than a war game. Yet it was considered good training, especially for those who transferred out of the engineer corps and into the regular army. And it stayed with you: Gonzalez still vividly recalled the whispered orders, the readied weapons, the doors knocked open with sudden kicks.

This felt pretty much the same.

After the semi and trailer had departed, the team had readied their weapons and-after a short briefing and a few words of caution from Gonzalez-deployed into the south wing. They moved down the corridors in near-total silence, Gonzalez indicating his wishes with a gesture or single word. They had passed the infirmary and were approaching the spot where Fluke and Davis were attacked. It was the second time in an hour he’d taken this particular walk. The last time, he missed the action by seconds. Fluke was dead, torn literally into pieces, but Davis lingered a little while. It hadn’t been a pretty sight. Now both bodies were occupying the infirmary’s examining room, rolled in plastic sheets, replacing the missing Peters.

“Okay,” he muttered. “We’ll take up position outside the staging room. Phillips, you do a quick recon.”

Phillips, who was on point, gave a thumbs-up. Gonzalez glanced back at Marcelin, who nodded his understanding.

Privately, Gonzalez was relieved at how Marcelin was holding up. He was the only one to catch a glimpse of the creature, and it had almost unmanned him. But either he’d rallied or he was putting up a good front. A rotation like this, stuck in the ass end of nowhere, didn’t generally pull the cream of the crop, but he was pleased with his present team. True, they were “camp slugs,” engineer corpsmen without combat experience under their belts. But they weren’t whiners and they weren’t prima donnas. They understood that every day at Fear Base would be just like every other day.

That is, until now.

Gonzalez looked over Marcelin’s shoulder at Creel. The burly foreman was grinning like an idiot, two handguns jammed in his waistband, brandishing his M4 grenade launcher-equipped carbine like he was goddamned Rambo. Creel was a wild card: Gonzalez was a little skeptical about the Third Cav claims but at least the man knew how to handle a weapon. And though three machine guns seemed like plenty, Sergeant Gonzalez was a conservative man. An extra trigger finger felt like a good precaution.

He’d considered calling this one in and waiting for orders. But waiting for a reply to filter through the chain of command would have taken hours, maybe longer, and Gonzalez was in no mood to wait. Besides, he didn’t particularly relish trying to explain what it was, precisely, they were after. There had been three deaths already on his watch, and he’d been given broad discretion at this far remove from authority. Better to let the bullet-riddled corpse provide its own explanations.

The powerhouse staging room lay directly ahead now. In the dim light of the corridor, Gonzalez saw the door yawning open, hanging at a crazy angle on twisted hinges. “Remember,” he told Phillips. “Low and slow.”

“Yes, sir.” The private unshipped his M16. Weapon at the ready, he drew himself up to the doorframe, slipped around it. Ten seconds later he gave the all clear.

Gonzalez motioned the others to step inside, then he followed. The room was as they’d left it: a hurricane of bloodstains, looping in fantastic arcs and jets across the floor and the footings of the step-down transformers. They had managed to close the access panel to the maintenance crawl space, but the room was still uncomfortably cold.

He glanced at Marcelin. The corporal was studiously averting his eyes from the bloodstains. He looked a little green about the gills.

“Corporal?” Gonzalez spoke over the hum of the transformers.

Marcelin’s eyes darted toward him. “Sir?”

“You okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Gonzalez nodded and turned his gaze once more toward the rivers and tributaries of blood. Dozens of bloody footprints traced desperate lines, testament to the frantic activity that had taken place here shortly before. Some of them led into the corridor and back in the direction they’d come from, toward the infirmary. But there was another set of prints-if you could call them prints-that led off in the other direction, deeper into the base. Pulling his flashlight from his service belt, he snapped it on and examined them. They were huge, distorted rosettes. Recurved hooks, long and cruel-looking, sprouted from the front of each rosette.

He stared a long time.

Gonzalez considered himself a simple man, a man with few needs and fewer pretensions. He had never had much use for the company of others, and the only kind of pride he knew was the pride of doing a good job. That was why he’d never sought out promotion; why he’d never felt any strong desire to advance beyond the rank of sergeant. Sergeant, he felt, was his ideal niche: high enough to impose his own small vision of order on things, but not so high as to court unwanted responsibility. It was also why he was the only soldier to have remained longer than eighteen months at Fear Base. The fact was, he’d been here now almost thirty years. He would never forget the look on the face of the major at Fort McNair when, returning from a furlough after his first tour at Fear Base, Gonzalez asked to be posted there again. He could have retired years ago, but he couldn’t imagine doing anything else other than making sure this installation, mothballed and forgotten, was well cared for. He had no family and few possessions beyond a Bible and the tall stack of mystery novels he read over and over again in the evenings, alphabetically by title. He’d spent so much time in the company of his own thoughts that it had become the company he most preferred. It was a simple existence but well-ordered, rational, predictable-just the way he liked it.

Which was why the bloody print now illuminated in the flashlight beam gave him such a disagreeable feeling of unease.

His thoughts were interrupted by Creel snugging a grenade into the under-barrel launcher of his M4. “You know, my uncle won an African safari once,” he said. “No kidding. First prize in an Elks raffle. Bagged a cape buffalo on it. Boy, he boasted about that damn hunt for years.”

This is one hunt you won’t ever be allowed to brag about, Gonzalez thought. He glanced at his men. Phillips was shining his light over the floor and walls, spatters of blood appearing and disappearing as the beam traveled. Marcelin was standing in the doorway, looking out into the corridor, head cocked as if listening.

“We ready?” Gonzalez asked quietly.

“Hell, yes, we’re ready,” Creel said. “Let’s take this thing down.”

They regrouped just inside the doorway, then moved into the hall. Phillips once again took point, supplementing the faint corridor illumination with slow sweeps of his flashlight, following the bloody, disquietingly large prints. There seemed to be occasional droplets of blood on the floor here, too-drops that had nothing to do with the tracks. Had the creature been wounded somehow?

“Jesus,” he heard Phillips say. “What the hell kind of prints are those?”

The hall dead-ended at an intersection. To the left lay a series of unused and empty offices; to the right, the corridor led to the radar-support spaces. They paused while Phillips carefully shone his light around. The prints were growing less distinct, the droplets of blood less frequent, but they clearly led to the right.

Gonzalez felt his heart sink. The radar-support spaces were a warren of small, equipment-heavy galleries and storage nooks. If the thing was in there, it would be a bitch to flush it out.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Weapons at the ready. Don’t speak unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

He looked at them in turn, lingering briefly on Marcelin. The greenish cast had left the corporal’s face, to be replaced by pallid anxiety.

As they moved forward again, Gonzalez took a quick mental inventory of his own emotions. He realized that he, too, was afraid. Not of being killed or injured-their overwhelming firepower would protect them from that-but of the unknowns this thing they were tracking represented. He remembered the photographer, Toussaint: the way he had raved, shrill and loud and with hardly a break for breath, until sedated. He recalled the panicky edge to Marcelin’s voice, back in the mess. Don’t make me say it…! Gonzalez was simply too old, too set in his ways, to have his understanding of the natural world roughly unseated.

The corridor was a receding rectangle of black, punctuated by pools of yellow light. Phillips kept his flashlight on the tracks while the others licked theirs left and right in loose, unchoreographed patterns. They passed the stairwell leading to C Level and the enlisted men’s quarters, then the set of rooms used for data acquisition and identification. All four doors were closed and showed no signs of tampering, their small metal-grilled windows undamaged.

“Where should we aim?” he heard Creel pipe up, almost eagerly, from behind. “The head? The heart? The guts?”

“Just keep shooting until it falls down,” Gonzalez replied.

Ahead was the narrow opening that led to the radar-support spaces. It was pitch-black. Phillips entered first, sweeping left past the doorway. Gonzalez followed, reaching over and flipping on the lights with the palm of his hand.

Radar support was a series of three large rooms, one after another, all filled with monolithic metal racks arranged in a parallel line-a library of technological obsolescence. The first rack lay directly before them like a wall, its high shelves covered with ancient equipment for radar scanning, acquisition, and interpretation: dark CRT screens, logic boards festooned with vacuum tubes, multicolored tumbleweeds of tangled wire.

“Where does this lead?” Creel whispered.

“Nowhere,” Gonzalez replied. “It’s a cul-de-sac.”

“Sweet. So if the thing’s in here, we’ve got it cornered.”

Nobody answered.

Gonzalez peered along the tall metal casing, looking first left, then right. Then he turned to Phillips and Marcelin. “You two take the right-hand edge,” he said. “And watch your six.”

They nodded, then turned and crept down the narrow space between the wall and the first rack, weapons at the ready.

Gonzalez motioned to Creel. “We’ll go down the left. Meet us at the rear door. If you see anything-anything at all-sing out.”

“Got it.”

Gonzalez walked alongside the storage rack until he reached the left-hand wall of the room. Then he turned the corner quickly, raking the area with his eyes. The end caps of the other storage racks retreated toward the back of the room, the narrow corridors between them dark. To the left, along the wall, were deep niches for additional storage. Gonzalez took a slow breath, then started forward again, glancing down each row of storage racks as he passed it. At the far end of each he could make out the forms of Phillips and Marcelin doing the same, advancing up the right side.

It was the work of a minute to reach the rear of the room. He turned and walked along the back wall until he met up with the others at the doorway leading to the second storage area. “Anything?” he asked.

Phillips shook his head.

Gonzalez nodded. The room had not only looked empty; it had felt empty. Searching radar support began to seem like a waste of time. The creature had probably retreated down the staircase to C Level. Why would it be here, in this dead end?

“Let’s take the next,” he said, reaching through the doorway and snapping on the lights in the room ahead. “Same procedure.”

The second room seemed identical to the first: tall shelves full of long-forgotten equipment. It was as dead as the first room except for a faint humming noise, pitched very low, almost more felt than heard-excess air in the heating system, no doubt. Again, Gonzalez and Creel took the left-hand side, walking slowly and quietly along the storage racks, while the other two took the right. They reached the rear-which thanks to a burned-out bulb was only dimly illuminated-and once again rejoined Phillips and Marcelin at the doorway to the third room.

Gonzalez peered into the blackness ahead. “We’ll check, just to be thorough. Then we’ll go back to stairwell 12 and try C Level. Let’s go, same procedure.”

“Smell that?” Creel asked.

“Smell what?” said Phillips.

“I don’t know. Hamburger or something.”

Gonzalez reached in, snapped on the lights once again. A few fluorescent bulbs flickered into life. Then, seconds later, the nearest one dimmed with a quiet sizzle.

He frowned. Shit. What a time for the ballast to go. Now the distant part of the room lay in half-light, while the area directly ahead of them was shrouded in gloom.

Phillips snorted. “You picked a strange time to be hungry,” he told Creel.

Gonzalez stepped through the doorway, the others following.

“No, man. I didn’t mean cooked hamburger.”

Gonzalez turned to the left, preparing to walk yet again along the storage rack, Creel right behind him. Then he stopped.

Ahead, where the walls met, he could make out the first of several equipment niches. Except this niche didn’t contain the metal-sided radar units he’d observed before. Instead, something lay in the bottom; something that shone dully in the faint light.

“My head hurts,” said Marcelin.

Gonzalez reached for his flashlight, stabbed its beam toward the niche. The light illuminated a twisting of clear plastic, something caked with dried blood inside.

Peters.

At that precise moment, Marcelin began to whimper.

Gonzalez wheeled around. Something was peeping out at them from around the opposite corner of the storage rack. In the brief moment that he saw it, Gonzalez registered a heavy, shaggy pelt of dark hair; a large ear, heart-shaped like a bat’s and set at an angle lateral to the head; and a single yellow eye.

And there was something else. The head was too high, too high off the ground…

There was a roar in his ear as Creel’s grenade launcher exploded. The shell rocketed along the storage case and exploded against a shelf half a dozen feet short of where the head had been. The room shook. Red-and-yellow smoke roiled back toward them and pieces of metal and vacuum-tube glass rained everywhere.

“Back!” Gonzalez yelled.

They scrambled back into the second room.

“Take up positions in the corners!” Gonzalez ordered. “Phillips, Marcelin, cover the door! Careful of crossfire!”

He retreated to the rear left corner of the second room and hunkered down, using the end cap of the last storage rack for cover, aiming his M16 at the darkened doorway. His heart was beating faster than it ever had in his life.

Creel was jabbering beside him. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Get behind me,” Gonzalez said. “If it comes for us, aim at the door. The door, you hear me? If you shoot my men by accident, I’ll shoot you.”

But Creel didn’t seem to hear. “Oh, God…”

“Ready yourselves!” Gonzalez shouted to the soldiers. There was no response from the far side of the room save a faint whimper that was probably Marcelin.

He sighted down the barrel of his M16, struggling to control the sudden, unfamiliar panic that had at first almost overwhelmed him. A dreadful minute passed, then two. Gonzalez tried to blink away the sweat coursing down his forehead. The low sound he’d noticed before was louder now, filling his ears and even his head with a dull ache that…

A headache. Marcelin had mentioned that, too-

Gonzalez went rigid. In the darkness of the doorway, something moved.

He blinked again, passed a hand quickly over his eyes. It was some trick of the dim light. But no: there was movement in the shadows, gray against gray. For a moment, it stopped. Then it started again and-slowly, slowly-the head slid out. A low noise, like the gargle of a drowning man, began to sound in Creel’s throat. Gonzalez stared, paralyzed like the rest. Christ, it just seemed to keep on coming, dark and bullet-shaped, with a massive crest of bone at the rear leading to a set of incredibly powerful, high-set shoulders. It was like nothing Gonzalez had ever seen. It was magnificent. It was terrifying.

The head was fully through the doorway now, staring in the direction of Marcelin and Phillips. As Gonzalez watched, the head moved again and-with an agonizing, insolent slowness-turned to look at him. The yellow eyes seemed to hold his own eyes in thrall. Then the jaw opened and Gonzalez’s gaze dropped to it and-sweet Jesus, what the hell were those…

Abruptly he felt the hinges of his sanity begin to loosen. His finger twitched spasmodically against the trigger guard.

The gargle in Creel’s throat changed to a low keening, then rose abruptly to a ragged scream.

And then the thing leapt toward them.

Everything happened at once. Creel yelled incoherently, falling backward instinctively while simultaneously raising his weapon. Phillips and Marcelin opened fire from the far corner, their bullets ripping along the wall and ricocheting over Gonzalez’s head with sharp whines. Gonzalez felt himself brutally knocked to one side as the thing fell upon Creel: there was a low crunching, like the sound of a chicken joint giving way, and the foreman gave another terrible scream-this time of pain. Gonzalez leapt to his feet, room spinning, grabbed his gun, and whirled around, taking aim. He saw right away it was too late for Creel. The creature was taking him apart like a rag doll, coronas of blood and gore rising in a red mist. The others had stopped firing. As Gonzalez stared, the thing looked up at him, its face a mask of red. In the faint light, Gonzalez thought he saw the edges of its mouth raise in what could only have been a smile. And then he was running, running, past the storage racks and out the door in the wake of Phillips and Marcelin, through the first room and into the corridor and on, running, running…