WHO GOES THERE?
A sequel to John Carpenter's THE THING
Prologue
There was a stillness over the cold wastes of the arctic. This was Winter and blackness blanketed this region of the world in perma-darkness, nary a star nor the moon would dare show their faces in such a cold and empty area of the world. Few places, save for the bottom of the sea or the vastness of space felt so completely desolate and alone as this God forsaken place. Yet, men being ambitious and versatile, sought to claim even this most lonely of places, as their own.
A wind increased the chill in the air, flying quickly like death across the wastes of ice and snow, no animal life could survive in such a cold, dark place, except for a few, including some not yet known to the greater society of men.
As the wind picks up, a black smoke becomes entangled in the snowy mixture of an incoming storm. Pieces of ash and debris fly with the storm, almost in an attempt to escape the desolation, but like man escaping death, futile in its efforts. Instead, the ashes become one with the wind and are carried out across the skies towards the great Northern seas to become nothing but a drop in an ocean of other lost particles and elements places there through time.
They will travel fast, much faster than any living thing could in such a region. No man would be found out in this place on such a night, but some men are here.
A burning wreckage is seen silhouetted against the horizon of the arctic night. The smoke is so heavy that it can be easily discerned even when placed in front of the blackened sky of the arctic night. The ruin in question is not the remains of a native shelter, but one of explorers, researchers. Man has always striven to venture and discover beyond his world, and these had been such men here. What was once a modern research facility, was now but a flaming skeleton of destroyed dreams, burning death. Something terrible has occurred here, something that would be incomprehensible to all, but the most maddened of the world's population, for surely no sane mind could conjure up the images apparent in this white Hell.
For in the span of 72 hours, twelve men had discovered something in the ice. Perhaps, it was an answer from the stars, another explorer attempting to expand the limited horizons of it's own world. The first men who discovered it, must have thought so. A Norwegian base also recently stationed with a sharp crew of learned men who made the discovery of a ship in the ice that should have remained where it was. Being men of science they strove on to analyze and bring back what they had found, sealing their fate.
They were all buried now, a few hours away in a similar state. For, this was no welcome visitor, but something more terrible than anything that ever walked this Earth.
It did not come for exploration, at least not what's known to man. This was a creature built for a world like this, something crueler and more desperate than man, devoid of conscience or understanding, just the most primal need for survival.
It's unknown how many it has murdered in it's quest for survival these thousands of years it has existed. It has claimed the lives of at least twenty men on this planet. Two survive in the remains of this base, but they won't survive these harsh elements.
It will, though.
It was made for such a place.
They thought they killed it, using the tools they had available, they brought their world into the earth with them, hoping to destroy this thing, so that it may not live to harm greater humanity. Outpost 31 came to destruction in a few mere hours since the creature made it's introduction to them. Ten of them died or became assimilated, with only two remaining in the wreckage of what was once their home.
Perhaps, they didn't intend to go down as martyrs, but that's their apparent fate, these two Americans, left in the cold desolation of Antarctica, alone and dying in a world unknown.
Alone with the coldness of death.
The destroyer of worlds.