story [H'ween] Creeping Terror [Halloween Fanfic in the Tankiverse]

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

Creeping Terror

It had been late September when the last report came from Hell’s Mouth. If you look at a globe, you can see where there’s a finger of Antarctica that stretches out as if reaching for South America. Right on the tip of that finger? That's where Hell’s Mouth is located. Technically the land belongs to the Pan-Continental Alliance, but they are happy to lease access to other parties. Hell’s Mouth belongs to a co-op of nations and corporations. As such, it’s no-go for regular military. Too tense. Alliance and Red Coalition don't mix. Mobilizing us solved a few problems and sidestepped others.

First we flew across two continents to reach the ass-end of South America. Actually, we were the second team to go. Another team was dispatched a week earlier but disappeared in transit. Search operations were initiated, but in the meantime, our butts were activated and shoved on a quad. Hey, whatever, we were all smiling. Work meant pay, and why else be a merc?

We got caught up at the border, of course. And because of that delay, we missed our window on the regularly-scheduled transport ship, so we persuaded another cargo vessel to swing by Hell’s Mouth. It wasn’t exactly on their route, but we asked nicely. The captain is good at that. He never threatens, never bullies, but somehow people decide to do what the man with two tanks and a dozen troopers asks, including taking their cargo vessel to the south pole for humanitarian reasons.

There wasn’t much to do on that ship, and even less comfort. I was bunked with the rest of the tankers; six of us in a cabin designed for two. Gotta love hot bunking! The sergeants, Liu and Ingram, took the first shift. The drivers, myself and the other Ingram (no relation), took second; and the gunners, Ledermann and Hilton, took third. The captain shared a cabin with his lieutenant, and the grunts bunked in the cargo hold.

Working in the military does inure one to inhospitable treatment. Physical discomfort, bad food, hostile people, crippling boredom, and chronic diarrhea are all part and parcel of the life. The crew on that tub tried to make us feel unwelcome, but we didn’t much notice. I mean, we’ve all done time in the worst places on Earth. What can a bunch of sulky cargo handlers do, other than suck it up? Three of them eventually decided to vent their frustration at our “hijacking” by jumping Jerry. I guess they’d picked up on his status as the new guy, and figured that made him somehow more vulnerable? That’s funny, if that’s what they thought. The new guy always has something to prove. Anyway, we pulled him off of them before too much damage was done, just a couple of broken noses. After that, they limited themselves to sidelong glances and sullen responses. 

Hell’s Mouth was the sort of commercial genius operation that sounds completely absurd. They harvested water from Antarctic ice. As summer waxed, and the massive ice sheets covering the landmass melted and flowed into the sea, calving and spawning icebergs, the Hell’s Mouth fleet of custom mega-tugs would round up and capture those icebergs, then drag them back into a protected bay. There, using controlled demolition, they would be sectioned, secured, and towed to a bottling facility across the strait. The fact that such a dangerous and difficult proposition could be not only commercially viable, but immensely profitable, speaks to the collective intelligence of the human race. 

Because we couldn’t contact Hell’s Mouth, there was no reason to think we’d be able to disembark there. Without a harbor pilot, the captain would not risk going into the bay. Honestly, I didn’t blame him; given what goes on there, taking a lumbering tub into that bay full of icebergs bordered on suicide even with a harbor pilot and tugs to assist. So it was that we disembarked at the Red’s “weather” base, several hundred kilometers south of our ultimate destination.

We were made to feel welcome at the Red Coalition base. Very welcome. A little too welcome, in fact. Our arrival was the high point of their year, and they were already throwing a party in our honor before we began disembarking. All the food and vodka we could stomach, and everywhere we turned, smiling faces patting our backs and fingering their machine guns. Our tech is much nicer than the Red’s, and they fawned over our tanks as we unloaded and woke them from their slumber. We made our excuses (we were on a rescue mission after all) and got out of there before their greed to examine our hardware, combined with their celebratory drinking, convinced them that “losing” us in the frozen wastes was a good idea. It’s not like the crew of the cargo ship would have backed us up; they were underway within minutes of our second tank hitting the ground.

Between the loss of the first mission, our transit time via air, and the ocean crossing, a month had passed since anyone noticed Hell’s Mouth was silent. We still had several days of arduous driving ahead of us. Rocky, icy, treacherous terrain, with deep crevasses and freezing ocean the rewards for a single mistake.  The infantry bundled in their cold weather gear, climbed onto the two Firebirds, and off we went. Sergeant Liu, my commander, watched the IR and satellite views; Ledermann, my gunner, watched the radar; I kept my eyes on the road. This was not the place to break a tank due to negligent driving!

October is the beginning of summer down there, and the sun stayed high in the sky for far too many hours in a row. While the light made it easier to see, the “heat” made driving brutal. Everywhere the ice was melting, as slick as anything you can imagine. As the ground was slowly exposed after months of being frozen and buried under layers of ice, it transformed from solid to quagmire. Rocks and boulders, held by caked-over ice to the sides of the mountains from which they’d been split by the brutal winter, came tumbling down. No wonder the Reds couldn’t be bothered or bribed to risk their lives checking on their neighbors. It’s not like they were invested in the project.

The facility had just been gearing up for full production when they went quiet. A couple of fly-overs had shown nothing, and the co-op had been oddly reticent about letting anyone else land there. You would think, with lives on the line, they would be a little more willing to solicit help from the neighbors. Maybe the Reds would have obliged, maybe not. But the co-op was adamant; without evidence of some actual emergency, we were to be the first boots (and treads) on the scene. I strongly suspected that the Reds had, in fact, visited the place, but done so secretly, and weren’t saying anything about what, if anything, they had found. Or stolen. 

It was October 30 when we finally rolled into town. We stopped a few kilometers out, kicked the infantry off, and approached in a battle formation. Infantry up front; tanks in support. That always makes those grunts so happy! 

That facility was cold. There was no IR signature at all. None. Everything registered as cold and dead as the landscape around it, which just should not have been possible. Even if some mishap had damaged the main reactor, there were dozens of smaller portable power plants as well as reactors on the vessels. If they weren’t under load, they’d still be idling. There should be hot spots all over the town, even without people.

There weren’t.

We advanced using standard cover-and-sweep tactics. At first glance, everything looked normal, just like any town below the Antarctic circle that had been abandoned for a month or longer. Ice everywhere, glistening wetly in the early summer sun, covering everything. Buildings, materials, a few vehicle-shaped lumps. But first glances didn’t last long.

Everything was… warped, is the best word I can come up with. When I was young, I had a model train set that I played with during the holidays. There were little plastic buildings to make a little town, little plastic people, little plastic trees, even a little plastic dog. One year I decided it would be fine fun to build the town inside the oven. Later that day, Dad preheated the oven for some holiday baking. The smell of burning plastic filled the house. I raced to the kitchen; my little plastic village, just starting to melt, was slumping and deforming in the heat. That’s what we were seeing. Except these weren’t plastic buildings. They were formed concrete; they were cinder block; they were steel and plexiglass; they were quarried stone. And they had softened and flowed and reset into something from a demented version of a Dr. Seuss book.

We were quiet. Some of us were scared; all of us were jacked up on adrenaline. Chatter on the wireless was only mission-essential. There was no “What the…” or “I don’t like this” or anything extraneous. Just “Delta team, widen left. Check that bunker.” I was tense, but also proud. We were doing what we were trained to do, and doing it well.

The town was pretty linear, laid out between the coast and the mountain range on a fairly narrow strip of flattish land. That made our job easier since we didn’t have to spread our limited forces very wide. Still, we took our time, sweeping each building and checking every vehicle. Still, we found no one, living or dead, to tell us what had happened.

The whole town fronted the bay, so we could see the icebergs that had been towed in for processing floating serenely in the sea. The massive docks were ahead of us, where the mega-tugs rested and demolition work on the frozen behemoths was begun. At the far end, one particularly large iceberg was fastened for processing.

The dock was at least 300 meters wide and stretched over a kilometer into the ocean. We worked our way down it slowly and systematically. The cranes and structures, even the railroad tracks on which the gigantic derricks travelled, were all warped, even more so than what we had seen in the town, as if we were approaching the epicenter of whatever had caused the phenomenon. The surface of the dock looked like the undulations on a pond, somehow flash-frozen, and our tank bobbed and rocked in an unsettling fashion as we crept forward over the uneven surface. 

We could see one of the mega-tugs adrift in the distance, and the captain briefly took counsel as to the wisdom of boarding another boat, if we could find one that wasn’t too damaged to be trustworthy, and heading out to examine it, but opted to “put a pin in it” until we finished the sweep. 

As we approached the end of the dock, we could see that a crew had been at work on the particularly large berg. It had no motion, no bobbing or response to the gentle ocean swells, which implied it was large enough that it had run aground, despite the deep waters there. Its top was blasted off, and huge fissures split the sides. The inside was dark and black, not the deep glacial blue one expects from icebergs, which should be impossible. People don’t like the taste of burned explosives in their high-priced, purity-guaranteed, prehistoric bottled water. The charges used for this work burn cleanly and don’t leave residue.

The derrick here was bent and warped, curving out over the frozen bulk in a way that seemed to defy the law of gravity. A nearby structure, maybe a warehouse, looked like the architect was trying to build a colony of mushrooms, it was distorted in such bulbous waves.

We should have run. At that moment, we should have run. Damn our training, and our sense of duty, and our greed. We should have run. Instead, we did our jobs. The massive pier marked the far end of the town; there were only a couple of small structures still to search when we returned to land. Since we were already here, the captain had us hold position and gave the infantry instructions to investigate.

“Listen up,” came the captain’s voice over the command channel. “Alpha team, check out that warehouse. Except you, Jerry, climb that derrick, see what there is to see from the crane cabin. Bravo and Charlie teams, spread out and search. Delta team, Firebirds One and Two, secure our line of retreat. Let’s find some clue as to what happened here. Stay sharp, people!”

We took a position about 200 meters from the farthest end of the dock, facing inland. Firebird One was a little bit closer to shore than us, and Delta team took cover around her. We all scanned the horizons with radar, IR, computer-enhanced imaging, and good old-fashioned peeled eyeballs.

Jerry sent a video of something awful from the derrick. It was an indentation in the floor, recognizably the shape of a broken human body, as if someone had had all their limbs snapped, then been pressed down into a clay mold. The level of detail was terrifying, and it required no imagination to “see” the crane operator’s grizzly end. I felt my last meal backing up in my gullet, and could tell from the murmurs on the comm that I wasn’t alone. 

Once that image had been shared, others began to come in. Less detailed, maybe more subject to interpretation, but once the grunts knew what to look for, over a dozen similar impressions were found in the area. No bodies, but clear evidence of where bodies had fallen and been pressed into a then-plasticine flooring.

It was about that time I heard a blip from one of the consoles in the turret. “Radar contact,” sang out Ledermann. “Bearing two nine zero, range three point five clicks. Indeterminate, large. It’s coming over the mountains.”

All eyes turned that way. I’m sure those that had binoculars, used them.

Large. Indeterminate. Horrible.

It was a cloud of nightmare made flesh. It was darkness, self-illuminated by darkness, and it sucked the light from the world around it. It made me physically ill to point my eyes at it, and I was looking at a camera feed on an LCD screen. Most of the men had no such protection.

“Range closing, three clicks.” Ledermann hadn’t seen it; his eyes were on his scope. Outside, the infantry I could see were standing slack-jawed, rifles dangling from their fingertips or hanging from shoulder straps. Some were on their hands and knees, vomiting.

“Range closing, two point five clicks. It’s going to cut us off here on the docks if we don’t move now.” Ledermann’s voice was calm and precise. He was doing his job. Maybe that solid presence was what snapped the captain out of his stupor; maybe it was just coincidence. Regardless, the next voice over the comm was the voice of command.

“Everyone, mount up! Firebirds, thirty seconds then sprint for the shore.”

I felt and heard the thunks of soldiers clambering aboard. Mentally, I was doing the math. There was no way everyone would reach us in 30 seconds. Alpha team in the warehouse, Jerry in the derrick, we were leaving them behind. And yet, 30 seconds was too long. I could see the massive blob moving closer on the radar scope, I knew what my tank could do, and it was going to be CLOSE. 

“Roll!” shouted Sergeant Liu from the turret. I floored the accelerator and tried not to think about the poor bastards we were leaving behind.

“Weapons ready! Fire when in range!”

I switched my view from live camera to simulated. The computer was rendering it, whatever it was, as a grey cloud with nebulous edges. That was far superior to what my eyes were telling me, and this abstract form helped keep the nausea at bay. I opened the comm to Firebird One. “Switch to simulated view, guys! It’s… easier!”

Firebird One was maybe 20 meters ahead of us, just the luck of where we’d been positioned and when she’d rolled. She was also to my right, as was the target. We’d have to be careful not to hit her when we fired; flamers are not precision weapons. 

“Range closing, zero point five clicks.”

Damn Ledermann, and his cool voice.

“Weapons free, fire when ready. Target the nearest edge.”

At least Sergeant Liu sounded tense. Sounded human.

On the screen, I saw Firebird One open fire. It seemed like she was too far away for that to be effective. I gritted my teeth and switched back to live camera view. Sure enough, the edges of that thing were much closer than they appeared on the sim. They weren’t solid; I could see through them as if they were made of fog, but they were moving like tentacles or pseudopods, moving with intent, not blowing in the wind. I heard the telltale whine of our plasma generator kick in and knew that Ledermann had opened fire as well. The twin streams of plasma arced out in front of us, passing straight through the misty appendages to splash, boiling and spitting, on the warped surface of the dock.

An arm, a thick appendage of nacreous darkness, swept across Firebird One. The tank slumped, melting down into itself, the jet of fire sputtering out. The men on the outside were melting, too, their faces running like wax, and then we were past her, our movement thankfully taking the horror out of sight. I returned my eyes to the approaching shore, willing our tank to go faster. The com channel was filled with screams, static, and an insane, high-pitched piping, like a cracked dog whistle operating at the edge of human hearing.

Our tank rocked, not the kind of rocking that comes from driving quickly over broken terrain, but the kind that says something hit us; something large, something soft. In that same instant, Sergeant Liu started screaming. I’ve heard people scream before. I serve in a mercenary corps. I’ve burned people to death with plasma fire; I’ve watched a teammate try to stuff her spilled entrails back in place. I know pain, and I know death, and I have never heard anything or anyone scream like this.

The dock was ending; land was meters ahead. The thing was meters to the side and closing fast. My world collapsed to my viewscreen and the feel of the controls in my hand. We reached solid groubnd, I slewed left, the thing a half-second too late to cut us off, and we ran. 

“Target pursuing, but we’re gaining ground.”

The sergeant continued to scream. This was damaging my calm.

“Ledermann, narc him!”

I didn’t get a response, but the screams stopped, to be replaced by a moist gibbering. Still pretty horrific, but at least I could think.

“Target still pursuing. Range two five zero meters, and opening.”

Ok, time to think. We’re at the far end of a peninsula, racing towards the sea, with a giant semi-solid tentacle beast that melts men and warps reality in pursuit. We’ve got very little space in which to run, then it will be on us, and… I realized that we’d stopped firing.

“Why aren’t we firing?”

“The turret is inoperable.”

Well, fudge. I checked my controls. The turret was pointed about 30 degrees right of front, so even if I did something crazy like spin the tank around and drive in reverse, it wouldn’t be pointed at the thing. Not that the thing had much noticed when we fired on it before.

“Range zero point five clicks and opening. Land’s end in two clicks.”

Crud. 

Crud. Crud! Crud!!!

Ok, the tank was actually sealed, and capable of underwater travel, assuming the damage to the turret hadn’t opened a leak. Driving into the sea was a viable option. We would very quickly lose the ability to navigate except by inertial and magnetic references; this close to the south pole, magnetic was wildly inaccurate, and with inertial tracking margins of error grew very quickly over time unless there were visual points of reference. Which, being underwater, we would not have.

So, plan one: turn and fight.

Plan two: plunge into the sea, hope it doesn’t follow us, then try and get back around it and emerge on the other side. Maybe make it to the Coalition base, and take things from there.

“Range one click. Land’s end approaching.”

Damn Ledermann! Even now, he wasn’t going to break. Whatever I did, he was just going to sit there, sing out numbers, and maybe fire if it was convenient. 

“Radar suggests ice ahead.”

Ice?  I squinted at my screen, then stretched my neck to look out one of the narrow view slits. The sun did seem to be reflecting off of ice, not water, as the land disappeared. Well, that really didn’t change my options. I unconsciously took a deep breath and kept driving.

If we’d been a heavier tank, who knows what might have happened? We may have ended up driving along the ocean floor. As it was, though, the ice shelf was still thick enough to support us, and we raced out over it.

In many ways, this was worse. If we went off the edge or broke through the ice, it wouldn’t be a matter of us driving calmly (or charging blindly) into the ocean. It would be a matter of us falling through the ocean. We could flip and land upside-down. Our velocity could drive us into the soft floor, sticking us. If we miraculously did land right-side up and not-stuck, we’d still lose all of our inertial tracking references, and be operating completely blind.

“I’m not sure this improves our chances,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level.

“Agreed,” came Ledermann’s flat reply. “Radar suggests the ice shelf ends in one click. Probably the edges aren’t stable.”

“And the thing?”

“Target is slowing.”

Really? Was it giving up? Ledermann was right about not trusting the edges of an ice floe, particularly during summer. In a month, none of this would be here. I sped on for half a click then eased to a stop.

“Target has reached the edge of the ice, and seems static.”

“It stopped?”

“Affirmative. Readings are imprecise, but it seems to be sitting there.”

Whew! A break. Ok, first things first. “Give me a damage report. I’ll check the sergeant.”

“He’s in a bad way,” replied Ledermann as I began unstrapping myself.

While Ledermann turned to his consoles, I climbed back towards the turret. Sergeant Liu, what was left of him, was still strapped into his seat. He gibbered and drooled; open eyes focusing on nothing and rolling wildly. He twitched, and he stank of excrement and rotten meat. He, like the wall of the turret beside him, had been partly melted and reformed. His arms, legs, torso, fingers; all curved and bent in unnatural fashions. His skull looked like a clay sculpture that had been squeezed in a vice, thinned and elongated. One eye protruded from the socket. 

His chair, and the wall of the turret beside him, were likewise deformed. The tip of that tentacle had reached through the wall of the tank as if it weren’t even solid, deforming and maiming as it went. Its gentle swipe had reshaped our reality.

Ledermann’s seat was beside the sergeant’s, only a few centimeters away. In normal operation, they sat shoulder-to-shoulder. That he had escaped seemed unlikely, until I saw his right arm. He hadn’t escaped; that arm and hand were grotesque parodies of their original shapes; they were sculptures made of dough by a toddler still working on its fine motor control.

He saw me looking, and shrugged. “It still mostly works. And it doesn’t hurt.” He grimaced. “Much.”

“Need some narc?”

“I already took as much as I can without impairing my function.”

I nodded. “And the tank?”

“We’ve lost a lot of electronics. And hull integrity is compromised. We’ve got power to the gun, full mobility, the primary reactor is unharmed, internal environmental controls and local com are still operating. That’s about it.” He nodded at the sergeant. “And him?”

I knew what we should do. Ledermann knew what we should do. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though. Not yet. “We’ll keep him narced for now. As long as he isn’t screaming, he’s not interfering with anything.” 

Ledermann nodded. He had to be in shock; no one was that cool. But he was functioning; right now, that was what we needed. I could narc him later if needed. Hell, I could narc myself later if needed!

Ok, what are our options? Fight, evade, run, wait. 

Fight. That hadn’t gone so well before. Maybe, since it wasn’t crossing onto the ice, we could get close to it and spew plasma with impunity. Then… what? We can’t hurt it, it can’t reach us. What’s the endgame of that scenario? 

Evade. I punched up a map of the area. Maybe, just maybe, we could follow the ice around the tip of the peninsula, and make landfall on the opposite side of the mountain range. Even if it tried to follow us, maybe it would be slowed down enough by climbing over the ridge that we could make an escape. There were no roads and no settlements for hundreds, maybe thousands, of clicks, but, maybe?

“Can you tell from radar imaging if we could make landfall on the eastern side of the peninsula?”

Ledermann checked his screen and touched a few controls. “Seems unlikely.”

Of course it did. So, run. Run where? Into the ocean? Our hull was compromised, so we’d fill with water. Maybe we could seal it. And maybe we’d be able to move closer to land before taking the plunge. And maybe we’d land right-side up on the sea bed. And maybe we’d be able to navigate. And maybe we’d be able to find our way back to land. And maybe we’d be far enough away that the thing wouldn’t have tracked us. How many maybes was that? Still, it was our best plan so far.

That left wait. Hell’s Mouth had been out of contact for over a month before we made it here. There’s no reason to think the next mission would come any sooner. And, as I mentioned earlier, our little ice shelf wouldn’t be here in a month.

“What we need,” I murmured out loud, “is a boat.”

Ledermann nodded.

The adrenaline was wearing off; I could feel the shakes and fatigue setting in. I rubbed my face, contemplated taking some stim, and reached for a thermos of coffee instead. Pouring a cupful, I handed it to Ledermann before pouring one for myself.

“It’s too hot,” he complained, blowing on it. “We need some ice.”

I chuckled. He chuckled. I chuckled some more. Soon, we were both guffawing, laughing helplessly. I saw tears rolling down his face, and knew mine was no different. Still we laughed, almost spasming, the emotional release our psyches craved exploding in laughter. How many minutes? I don’t know, but when we finally slowed down, my diaphragm hurt.

I opened my hatch and stood up, surveying the nearby area. There was ample ice encrusted on our tank. I beat at it with my fist until a few chunks broke loose. I made the mistake of looking at the side of my tank where the thing had struck us; the impression of a body was pressed into the turret’s side. That sobered me up, real quick. I retreated inside, closing the hatch against the cold and the horror.

Ledermann took the ice gratefully. He may not have known what I saw, but he knew it couldn't have been good and stayed silent. I dropped my ice into my drink and sat there, staring into my cup, watching it float there and melt.

The ice melted. And floated.

It melted.

It floated.

Suddenly, I knew what to do. The grin on my face may have been a bit manic, but Ledermann perked up when he met my eyes. I had a plan. It was a crazy plan, something that combined the extremes of lunacy and desperation, but it was better than the other options.

After consulting our maps and the radar display, I swung the tank around and headed back towards land. It was still there, waiting at the edge of the shore, as if certain that we’d come back to it. I’m sure it never guessed what we had in mind, though.

About 500 meters from shore, I turned to the right, and we crept slowly towards the edge of the floe. We had no way of knowing how thick it was, or how solid, so we left the hatches open. We drove with our heads sticking out, using our eyes and ears, hoping that we’d get some form of warning before the ice parted underneath us. Maybe a web of cracks would appear; maybe there would be a splintering noise. We crept forward until the open sea was about 100 meters away, then I gently turned us around. 

Ledermann fired up the plasma cannon, and liquid fire leapt from the muzzle, arcing through the air, and landing on the ice, where it boiled the water away, cutting it like, well, like plasma through ice. I nudged the throttle, and we slowly began rolling across the ice shelf, carving a trench as we went.

Plasma cannons do require frequent cooling periods, so our progress was slow, but we persevered. The shelf was just over a kilometer wide at this point. If our plan worked, we would cut it free. A great ice raft, several square kilometers, would break free, carrying us away. With the prevailing currents here, there was a fair chance we’d brush up against the shore far to the west. If the thing did follow us, or even if it just gave up and started wandering about, the next thing it would find was the Red Coalition base where we’d disembarked. Probably they would be overwhelmed, but when that base disappeared, it was going to get the attention of some very powerful nations. 

We did what we could during the cooldown periods. We tried to raise survivors on the com. We tried to find something more than narc to help Sergeant Liu. We tried to repair any of the electronic systems that might increase our odds of survival. We tried to stay busy, and not let the images of melting friends drive us from our minds. We tried.

Not too long after midnight, our cut was almost complete. That’s when I heard it; a splintering rumble that seemed to surround us. Quickly, I turned hard left, and sped for the center of our raft. Then, with just a hint of a tremor, it was over, and we were adrift.

A minute after that, maybe two, I heard another sound. That piping, that hideous, mind-wracking piping sound which had come over the coms, filled the air, filled my head. I covered my ears with my hands and screamed, screamed, screamed as loud as I could, trying to drown out that terrible sound, before falling down into my chair and fumbling the hatch closed. It knew! It knew what we had done, and it was pissed. Impotent, it sat there howling as we slowly drifted away.

So, here we are, on Halloween. Radar puts us about sixty clicks from land and getting farther away. We’re moving east, not west. Ledermann thinks we’re caught in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. If he’s right, our next closest landfall will likely be New Zealand. If the ice lasts, there’s no reason we won’t. There’s plenty of fuel in the reactor to keep the heat on. We’ve got ample ice for water. Food will be a stretch, but once we do what must be done with the sergeant, that will help. In more ways that one. But it is summer, and our raft is melting. Will it last long enough for us to sight land?

What of the thing? Will it retrace our steps, finding its way to the Red base? Will it wander off into the wastes of Antarctica? Or might it return to the black-hearted iceberg from where we awakened it, maybe even to set itself adrift. Following us to New Zealand, or drifting north to South America? How long has it been there, slumbering, waiting, entombed in ice that took thousands of years to fall into the ocean?

A note in a bottle. How cliche is this? Ok, technically, it’s notes in a waterproof first-aid kit. With most of our electronics gone, it is the best we can do. But, really, it has better odds of being recovered than we do. It should stay afloat long after our natural raft has melted into the sea. Enclosed are also letters to our loved ones, our dog tags, and a few personal items. Please help those get where they need to go.

If you find this, tell the world about us. Either we didn’t make it, or made it and were silenced. People need to know. Something old, something evil, is awake down there. It’s loose. People need to know. 

 

Mahalo (thank you) for reading; I hope you enjoyed! This story is part of a world. Information on the world, and links to the other stories, can be found here.

TNK00-00000-0473T-E90UD-NTTL?

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Headlining our Halloween issue this year is an absolutely amazing Halloween tale from the pen of our masterful storywriter Hippin_in_Hawaii! I won't keep you waiting; grab a warm drink and dive into this suspenseful story right away!