Back on a chopper again.
"You sure you don't want any backup?" North asked as they approached Dronning Maud.
"I'll be fine," Blake replied. "Take that research back to base and figure out what's going on down here."
"Affirmative...what did you mean when you said you owed it to Pierce?" North asked.
Blake hesitated a moment, not wanting to remember that. "It's a long story," he said finally.
The chopper began to land. Blake said his goodbyes and left the vehicle, ducking low and running away from it, towards a structure he'd landed near. He waited for the helicopter to finish taking off again, then straightened back up.
Before he could take a single step, his radio crackled to life. "Blake, it's Whitley. Have you found anybody yet? Over."
"Negative. I've just arrived. Though from what I can tell, this base is in pretty much the same shape as the last one. Over."
"Affirmative...this little stunt of yours might have paid off. Over."
"What do you mean? Over."
"I received a partial transmission from Pierce. It sounds like he found some kind of research. Might be important. Over."
"Roger that. Did he say if there were any hostiles in the area? Over."
Whitley paused. "Negative...no hostiles...out." There was something off about the way he'd said that. Blake was suddenly convinced that Whitley had just lied to him. But why? That wouldn't make any sense. Colonels didn't lie to soldiers in the field. Of course, ops involving extreme weather and possible alien contacts also should be more well-planned.
He moved off, deciding to find out for himself if there were any hostiles in the area.
Blake took stock of the environment around him as the chill began to set in. Everywhere but to his left were more frozen, misty wastelands. To his immediate left was a wood and chainlink fence that walled off what had looked like a good portion of the base. There was a hole in the fence, but it spat blue and white sparks periodically. Probably not a good idea to mess with it. Surely there was another way into the base.
Blake ignored the hole and moved along the fence, towards the dark shape of a structure up ahead. He came to an open doorway, but noticed a depression in the snow a little further ways on. Ignoring the door for the moment, he moved around a pile of snow to a slope that led down into the depression. Moving carefully, as not to fall, he came across something interesting. Blood. A lot of it, frozen to the snow. It looked somewhat recent.
Another sign that this mission wasn't adding up.
Blake was glad for the flashlight. It kept both hands free and let him grab the MP-5. He flipped off the safety. If there were no hostiles in the area, then where had all that blood come from? He supposed it could have been some kind of mistake, a friendly fire...but that didn't happen too often in the Special Forces. Maybe they'd run into Norwegian survivors. Blake spied another doorway up ahead, in a lower portion of the same building.
He spied a body further on, lying inside the little niche the door resided in. Blake approached it cautiously, but saw he had nothing to worry about. The body was frozen solid. Likely one of the original inhabitants. The door was no-go, too. It looked like the roof had collapsed just beyond the doorway. A wooden beam punched through a small window in the middle of the door. Blake cursed softly, turned and began making his way back out of the depression. He stopped immediately, however, when he spied dark movement up ahead.
"Hold it!" he called, moving forward, gun ready. "Identify yourself!"
There was something wrong with the movement he glimpsed through the mist. It was far too small, almost like an animal or something. He thought he might just be seeing someone's head, their body blocked by a mound of snow, but then it was gone. Blake finished getting up out of the depression and search the immediate area.
But there was nothing.
"Shit," he muttered, wondering if he'd just seen nothing or maybe it was the snow or it was just his stressed mind playing tricks on him. God knew this place was stressful enough. He was shivering very badly now, the chill eating into him. He made a beeline for the open doorway he'd passed earlier. The storm was worsening and he'd have to start spending even less time outdoors. As soon as he stepped into an empty room, he noticed several things. The first was that the room had been hit by a fire at some point, as all the wood was warped and twisted. The second was that there was a flare set atop the only piece of furniture in the room: a big, wooden crate.
It was still burning.
They had a twenty minute lifespan, which meant that whoever had set it was very likely still around here. Someone from Alpha Team, he hoped. Blake moved past the flare and into a corridor. It veered left, then right. He passed a door that was very firmly locked and briefly considered shooting the lock off. Opting to not make any more noise than was necessary, he moved on, following the corridor as it twisted right again, then left once more. Here was another door. It was, thankfully, unlocked.
Blake opened it up and stopped dead in his tracks as he surveyed the room he'd come to. It was some kind of work area. Directly ahead of him was an L-shaped desk with a sparking computer set up atop it. In the chair wedged into the desk area, a man in a gray thermal suit sat, still partially frozen, his neck and his wrists sliced open violently. Shelves, desks and crates occupied the peripheral of the room. Several heavily mutilated corpses lay scattered across the floor. One man had his head removed, another, his stomach hollowed out.
Frozen blood was everywhere.
Blake spied movement in the far left corner of the room. He raised his weapon and saw someone was crouching among some crates.
"Identify yourself!" he snapped, approaching, but lowered his gun as he saw it was a black man wearing Special Forces cold weather gear.
"It's Carter," he replied, his speech slightly slurred. He seemed to be having trouble focusing.
"What happened?" Blake asked, taking in the gory state of the room.
"They attacked us. These...things. I thought they was part of the...the...wait a minute," he muttered, staring harder at Blake now. "You aren't Captain Pierce...who are you?!" he snapped. "How'd you get here?" he asked.
"My name is Blake. I'm the Captain of Delta Team. We were sent to investigate an American outpost three miles south of here. I received a distress call from Pierce and came as back up...you need medical attention," Blake replied, seeing that the man was bleeding from his stomach.
"Yeah...I saw a kit on the wall, behind you. Was going to get to it...ugh, god, it hurts," he muttered. "Lost some blood."
Blake turned and spied the emergency medical kit on the wall next to the door he'd come through. Perfect. He went over to it, tore it off the wall and hurried over the Carter. Cracking it open, he took off his gloves and snapped on some medical gloves, suddenly remembering about the apparent infection going around.
"So what happened?" Blake asked as he studied the wounds. It looked like some kind of animal had clawed through his coat and into his stomach.
"These things, they attacked us...we split up. Pierce, Pace and Williams went ahead, deeper into the base. Me and Cruz were checking out this portion. Right about the time the lights came back on, I'm guessing Pace fixed the generator, they-agh!"
Carter cried out as Blake poured antiseptics into the wound. "Sorry," he muttered. "Forgot to say this is gonna sting a little."
"Uh-huh," Carter grunted. "They attacked us!" he managed as Blake began bandaging the wound. "They were these little things...Cruz lost it, locked himself in the next room."
"Little things?" Blake asked, finishing up and tossing the gloves.
"Yeah, like...heads with legs," Carter replied.
Blake frowned. Carter tried to get up. "No, sit, rest. Let me look around. You need to get your strength back," he said.
Carter looked like he was going to argue, no Special Forces soldier wanted to be told to 'take it easy', especially while on a mission, but they also knew self-discipline. He nodded and sat back, resting his back against one of the crates.
"Just five minutes," he said.
"Five minutes," Blake promised as he shoved the medical kit into his backpack. It'd likely pay to have it later.
He stood up and began making a slow trek around the room. The place was a wreck, but not as bad as Outpost Thirty One. Power was on, the lights were burning bright, well, maybe not bright, but good enough to see by. He checked the shelves, the desks, finding nothing of use but a few more flares. There were two doors in the room besides the one he'd come through. One was locked down with some kind of keypad and the other led to a barren storage room with nothing useful in it. Blake finally turned his attention to a relatively intact workstation.
He spied a closed circuit television, or CCTV, which was basically just a TV hooked up to a camera somewhere nearby, a computer and an audio recorder. Blake first turned his attention to the computer. There was a message typed up on it in Norwegian. As luck would have it, he read and spoke Norwegian.
We're all going crazy. This thing in the ice. Don't know who is human and who isn't. Morale is low and I don't think our chances are good.
Not exactly a happy find. Blake spent a moment searching through the computer, but it looked like it either hadn't been used all that much or someone had wiped it. All he could find were a few weather reports. He spent another minute listening to the audio recording, and heard a bored Norwegian researcher drone on about the temperature, cloud formations and snowfall predictions. Figuring there might be something useful on it, he popped the tape out and put it into his backpack. Finally, he turned his attention to the CCTV.
It was on and functional, showing a scene of an iced over room. Blake grabbed a joystick and began moving the camera around in a slow circle. He spied a huge block of ice with the center carved out. Beyond that, he saw someone standing in a small alcove. Cruz, more than likely. An SF soldier who had lost it? Panicked? He'd seen it happen, but it was really, really rare. He must've seen something truly terrifying...
What the hell had Carter been going on about? Heads with legs? Blake suddenly had a vision of the small dark shape he'd seen outside. Could it be? It sounded utterly insane, totally whacked-out...but Whitley had mentioned aliens. What the hell was going on here? Blake continued to swivel the camera around until he happened on a whiteboard next to the door that was locked down. 46892 was scrawled across it.
The code to the door, he realized.
"Heads with legs?" Blake asked, turning back towards Carter.
"Yeah...I know it sounds nuts, totally nuts. But we both saw it. If you find Cruz, he'll back me up," Carter replied, slowly getting to his feet. "I feel a bit better now. I can carry on, Captain," he said.
"All right, come on. I've located Cruz, he's through here," Blake replied.
Carter joined him as he punched the code into the pad. The door chimed sharply and opened up. Blake pushed through the door and stepped out onto a wooden platform overlooking the room. He surveyed the large block of ice, a small alcove to the right and Cruz. He was coming out of the alcove, MP-5 at ready, eyes wide and wild.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Captain Blake. I'm from another team," Blake replied.
"You okay in there, Cruz?" Carter asked, coming up behind Blake.
"Carter? Shit, I thought you'd bought it...I..." he hesitated, then lowered his weapon. "I'm sorry I broke and ran," he said, his voice stained with guilt and shame.
"You scared them off," Carter replied. "And I'm still alive, so I guess we're even. Tell Blake about them."
"They were...ugh, god," he shuddered. "So creepy. They were like people's decapitated heads with this weird, horrible faces on them. They had gray skin and chicken legs. There were three or four of them. They growled."
"Where did they come from?" Blake replied, trying to take the soldier's account at face value.
"No idea. They must've followed us in."
"Have you heard from Pierce or Whitley?"
Cruz shook his head. "I got a partial transmission from Pierce. He said he was in the north section of the base, talking some crazy medical shit. Other than that...I haven't heard shit from anyone."
"Fantastic. Let me try my radio," Blake replied.
"This is Blake to Whitley or Pierce. Over."
Static bled through the speaker, intermittent, and what might have been a voice. "This is Blake to anyone, do you read? Over."
More static, then nothing.
"This fucking weather," he muttered. "Okay, come on. Let's go. How did Pierce and the others get deeper into the base?"
"They went through a hole in the fence," Carter replied.
"Shit. I saw that same hole when I came in. It's electrified."
"Must be a downed line or something...it came back on when the turned back on the generator," Carter said.
"How do we get around it?" Blake asked.
"I can shut off power to that area," Carter said, looking past Cruz into the alcove. "It looks like I can do it from there."
Blake looked past Cruz as well, into the alcove, to a confused network of fuse-boxes and all manner of electronic gear.
"Be my guest," Blake said as Cruz stepped out of the way. Carter walked back into the alcove. A moment later, the lights dimmed slightly, but held, and he returned.
"Done," he said.
"You're good at your job," Blake said, leading them back out of the room. He hesitated as he came to the top of the wooden platform overlooking the area. He stared at the ice block. "Either of you know what that's about?" he asked.
"No idea," Cruz said.
Carter shrugged and shook his head.
"Fantastic, come on," Blake said, leading them out of the room. He led them back through the fresh necropolis and out into the hallway. As he took the first step into it, he heard something: a distorted kind of growl and the clack of what might have been claws on hard wood.
"Oh god," Carter moaned, "that's them! That's what they sound like!"
He brandished a pistol, an M9 that Blake hadn't noticed he'd had, and Cruz raised his MP-5. Blake readied his own. He kept going down the short length of corridor until he came to the first bend. And that's when he saw them.
For a second, it was like his brain had hiccuped, and he felt like a ship that had slipped its moors and was adrift at sea. He couldn't process what he was seeing. All he kept thinking was 'heads with legs'. They were heads with legs. They had horrible, mottled gray skin and disgusting faces. They walked on two severely back-bent legs. They were growling, and when the three of them saw the three humans, they began shrieking.
"Open fire!" Blake heard himself shout.
He squeezed the trigger. So did Cruz and Carter. Gunfire filled the hallway, painful and loud. Muzzle flare turned the battle into a series of still shots. He watched as the three of them were cut down, a viscous black blood spraying across the wall behind them. Blake emptied his entire magazine, then shakily reloaded.
"Holy shit," he whispered.
"We got em," Cruz said, and started laughing. "We fucking nailed em!"
"We got them all right, what the hell are they?" Blake replied.
So this was first contact. There was no doubt about it. And it was certainly hostile. It was also terrifying. No wonder Cruz and Carter had flipped out. Blake was pretty sure he would have as well. He took a deep breath and let it out.
"Come on, we need to reassemble the team and get the hell out of here," he said.
They made their way back outside, encountering nothing more, and moved along the fence until they were at the hole.
No more blue sparks.
Blake walked through, leading the others.