The Spawning (6 page)

“Okay everybody,” Special Ed said. “Let's load up and head back.”

“I don't think we should,” Flagg said to him, never taking his eyes off of the good captain. “We scrambled and came out here almost ten miles from the station and we did that because it's standard procedure. And now this guy is trying to order us off. I think we better stay. I think something about this whole situation really stinks.”

Suddenly, it got very quiet.

Dayton was bristling, not used to having his authority questioned.

Nobody was saying a thing and nobody was making to leave either. Dayton just stood there glaring with his dead eyes and Flagg gave it right back to him while Special Ed looked from man to man, wondering how he could defuse this and keep everyone happy.

But Flagg was right: this did stink.

There was something wrong about the whole situation and they all knew it. Coyle knew it and it was sitting on him very wrong. Dayton was coming on far too strong for a simple helicopter wreck. He was acting like a flying saucer had crashed and he didn't want anybody stealing the little green men.

Dayton looked at Special Ed and Special Ed looked like he needed to piss real bad. “You will get your people out of here right now. Do you understand me?”

Special Ed was nodding his head so frantically it looked like it might fall right off.

Then Frye stood up. “No, sorry, chief, we're not leaving. There's something shitty in the old horsebarn and I plan on finding out what. These boys here—” he motioned towards Horn and Slim “—they found something under a tarp over there, something that must have been thrown clear of your chopper and I wanna know what.”

Dayton took a step forward, brushing Special Ed aside. “What is under that tarp is Colony business.”

“Sorry, chief. I think otherwise.” He turned to Horn and Slim. “Now tell me, boys, what did you see under there? Don't worry about this jarhead. He has no jurisdiction here.”

Horn wisely kept his mouth shut, smelling something on Dayton he did not like.

Slim just shrugged, that same shell-shocked look on his face. “I don't know . . . it was big and weird and ugly,” he said, having trouble framing it into words. “It wasn't a man . . . it was some kind of
thing.”

“You hear that, chief?” Frye said. “It was some kind of fucking thing. Now you want to tell us what kind of cargo that chopper was carrying or do we wait around until things cool and find out for ourselves?”

Special Ed looked like there was something stuck in his throat he could not swallow down.

Coyle stepped forward because he knew that Frye was incapable of backing down from any man. Problem was, Dayton was the same type. Only he had a gun.

“Again, what is under that tarp is Colony business,” Dayton insisted. “Now, please, sir, leave the area. I won't ask you again.”

Frye grinned, all working class attitude. “And if I refuse? You gonna pull that gun on me, junior? You got three boys and I got a good spit more. I'm thinking we'll cornhole your merry ass three ways to Sunday if you try.”

“Okay,” Special Ed said, “that's enough.”

Coyle figured it was, too.

He got in-between Frye and Dayton and pulled Frye away, leading him over to the ‘Cat while Frye bitched the whole way, saying how there was one thing in this world he hated and that was uppity little Annapolis jarheads sucking government root. Frye cast Dayton a hard look and got into the ‘Cat. Flagg followed and Special Ed went with them like he didn't trust those two not to get out again and make trouble.

“C'mon,” Coyle told Horn and Slim who were just standing there in the wind. “Get in the fucking ‘Cat.”

They moved now like they'd been slapped, climbing up into the cab.

Coyle jumped up on the treads and took one last look at Dayton and his toy soldiers. No, this was all wrong. This whole scenario was spooky and strange. First Mount Hobb and then this crash and now Dayton with his James Bond shit. Not good, not good at all.

As Coyle cranked up the ‘Cat and got it moving, he cast one last look at the burning wreckage and that singed tarped form. Then he looked at Horn and Slim.

They stared at him without blinking.

WILLIAMS FIELD,
ROSS ICE SHELF,
WEST ANTARCTICA

I
N THE DYING LIGHT, Kephart watched the Caterpillar loaders hauling crated skids of machine parts, lab equipment, food, and construction supplies over to the DC-3 which sat on the snow runway. The wind coming in off the Ross Sea had a glacial bite to it today but it was nothing in comparison to the weather where the DC-3 was going: the edge of East Antarctica, right in the shadow of the mountains. A place called Colony Station that was getting a really spooky reputation. Kephart never paid much attention to the gossip.

Ever since the Kharkov Tragedy there was a lot of bullshit in the wind down here on the Ice.

He kept his nose clean and concentrated on why he was here and the job he had to do. He walked through the wind to the staging area where the cargo was stacked. It was all here on his inventory list and that's the way Kephart liked it.

Everything by the book, every bolt, every 2 x 4, every carton of liquid eggs and every frozen steak accounted for.

So when he found something that was not accounted for, he was not happy.

Sitting on wooden pallets were six silver aluminum-skinned boxes that looked very much like coffins, except they were about eight feet long.

Kephart went over his inventory five times by penlight. Nope, nope, and nope.

The ANG pilot was standing there, checking his watch, anxious to get in the air. He was smoking a cigarette, back to the wind.

Kephart went over to him. “Lieutenant,” he said. “What are these silver containers? They are not on my inventory.”

The lieutenant stared at him through ice goggles, blowing smoke. He pulled out his inventory sheet. “Well, they're on mine.” He paged through it. “Right here. Six aluminum BCVs. Biological Containment Vessels.”

“Well, why the hell aren't they on my list?”

“I don't know. You better ask the loadmaster about that. And tell him to move it along, I want to get airborne here.”

Kephart just stood there. “What the hell are those things for?”

“Biological specimens,” he said. “We've flown ‘em out to Colony before.”

“Look like coffins,” Kephart said.

The lieutenant looked off across the ice. “I learned never to ask questions about Colony Station. Things are simpler that way. Maybe they are coffins, but as far as I'm concerned they're BCVs. That's good enough for me.”

“What do you suppose they use them for?”

But the lieutenant would only smile.

POLAR CLIME STATION

W
HEN THEY GOT BACK, the first thing Coyle did was to take Horn and Slim aside in the Heavy Shop and put it to them like this: “You guys want trouble, then just go ahead and write up what you saw out there. Write down what you saw or what you
think
you saw. That's how to go about it.”

They both just stared at him.

He pulled off his hat and slapped it against his leg. “Listen, guys. I don't know what you saw and I don't think you really do either. Whatever is was, forget about it, okay? That Dayton guy is bad news. He's the sort that can make real trouble for both of you. Special Ed will make you write it all up. It's SOP. Just leave out the business about what was under the tarp. You don't and Hopper'll be all over you. You know how he is. He can't handle things like this. All he knows is teamwork and group effort.”

“Dude,” Slim said, pulling off his own hat and exposing his brightly dyed yellow spiky locks, “we can't lie on that report. Man, I need this job. I need the money. I got a kid back home and shit. If I lie on that, I won't get my bonus and I'll never get to come back.”

Horn lapsed into his usual cynicism. “And that's a bad thing?”

Coyle ignored him. “If you report some
thing
under a tarp, you're screwed. Trust me. The NSF doesn't want the truth of what goes on down here just like Special Ed doesn't. They want neat, tidy things in their reports. Things that make sense. Things that they can fit snug in their briefcases when they ask for more funding. That's how The Program works. That's how it's always worked. Bullshit is a way of life. Embrace it.”

Horn didn't say a thing.

With five years Ice Time, he knew Coyle was right. Absolutely right. But Slim kept saying that Special Ed was there. He'd ask questions if they left out the bit about the thing under the tarp. But Coyle assured him that Special Ed would not. What they needed to do was make no mention of that thing and no mention that Dayton was acting like some spook hiding little green men.

“Okay . . . what
do
we say then?” Slim asked.

“Just say that you saw a body. No speculation. You saw a body, but it was burning and you couldn't get to it. Then the team from Colony arrived, said they could handle it, and we left.”

“Bet Doc's not gonna log it like that,” Horn said.

Coyle shrugged. “No, he probably won't. But Doc's got a cousin who's married to a fucking congressman from Illinois. They wouldn't dare mess with him. Special Ed will probably edit Doc's report. So save him the trouble and edit yours yourself. It'll save you bullshit. Save your job. And save you from a nasty post-season psych eval with the witch doctors from McMurdo.”

Slim seemed to be okay with it now.

Horn, too.

Sometimes, with his years down here, Coyle felt like he was everyone's favorite uncle. While other Polies liked to watch Fingees—Fucking New Guys—stumble about and get themselves into all kinds of trouble and took a truly perverse enjoyment from it, Coyle liked to watch over them. Steer them straight. Help them out. Do anything so they wouldn't become the sort of bitter, fucked-up, neurotic types that infested the stations. The sort that filed grievances because you were drinking too much milk or using too much soap or accused you of pissing in the showers and making obscene gestures behind their backs or went absolutely berserk because somebody ate the last box of Jujyfruits.

And with what Horn and Slim saw . . . well, it went without saying that you just had to leave that out or you were inviting trouble like nobody's business. The NSF did not want to be hearing about things under tarps. Not in the least. Not after Kharkov and what may or may not have been brewing with that British station, Mount Hobb.

“What about that thing, Nicky?” Slim said. “It wasn't a man.”

“Looked kind of alien to me,” Horn said.

Coyle just gave him a look that shut him up.

After he loaded Horn and Slim into the Sno-Cat and got them away from the crash site, they just kept staring at him. They wanted to tell him. They wanted him to know about what they had seen and he knew it. Maybe it was his years on the Ice or his cool head and easy manner, but Coyle was often the repository of secrets and confessions at the stations. People told him things they did not tell their wives or husbands. They admitted things that the NSF would not approve of and bared their souls to him, purged all the dark things. Maybe he should have been a therapist. Regardless, he never repeated what he heard and he always tried to help whoever did the confessing. That was his way.

So, a couple miles down the road, he pulled the Sno-Cat to a stop and said, “Go ahead, boys, tell me what was under the tarp.”

Horn wasn't sure, not really, just something weird that he could not properly identify. And he admitted as much. Maybe he didn't want to say.

Slim had no such compunction. He gripped Coyle's arm through his parka, said, “Nicky, it was freaky, man. I mean, it was just . . .
freaky.
I never seen nothing like that before.”

“Take it easy, kid. Just tell me.”

So Slim did.

He said when he yanked the tarp back he got a quick look at something big that was nearly encased in ice. Kind of an oblong gray body with sort of a head attached to it. Something like a head. A drab yellow thing that looked like a frozen starfish with all its legs extended stiffly and at the end of each of those legs, there was a red eye about the size of golf ball. Perfectly round and perfectly red.

“I saw it,” he maintained. “I saw it and I don't care what anybody says. I just saw it for a second, but it was there, dude, it was there.”

“Take it easy,” Horn told him, looking a little pale himself. “We believe you. That's the kind of thing I saw, too, Nicky. I'm not shitting you.”

“Okay, okay. I believe you saw it. I don't know what the hell it could be, but I believe you,” Coyle told them. “Now put it out of your minds.”

Then they drove back to Clime.

The whole way no one said a word. There were things Coyle could have said, but why? Why go into all that? Why resurrect those old tales that had been making the rounds on the Ice for years now? Maybe they saw something and maybe they just thought they did.

Coyle had heard stories like theirs before.

Six, seven years before he'd been down at McMurdo one autumn as winter was approaching. He'd signed on to winter-over so he was helping load up the planes, pack everyone's gear up. A deep-field team came in late and they had to hurry them on an outgoing C-130 Win-Fly that was taking everyone back to Christchurch, New Zealand. The whole lot of them, geologists and paleontologists, were acting pretty spooky. One of them, a paleobotanist named Dr. Monroe from the Chicago Field Museum, was acting spookier than the rest.

His colleagues actively avoided him.

Coyle learned that they were coming back in late because Monroe had gotten lost overnight. Coyle had been pretty friendly with him, so he asked him what that had been like, lost up on the mountain alone.

Monroe looked at him with eyes like open wounds.