Attack of the Yetis, page 7
“We need to get out of here,” Leah stammered. “I think it’ll be back when it gets itself together from the shot to the head it took.”
“Dang right it’ll be back and a lot more with it,” Dobson growled.
“We passed Dr. Seeley in the corridor,” Colonel Brannon told Leah. “He was running like a bat out of Hell. Figured the rest of you might need some help.”
“Thank God you did,” Leah said, “Dr. Harvey …”
Her words trailed off as she pointed at Dr. Harvey’s mangled corpse.
“I’m sorry,” Dobson said. “We need to get somewhere safer, hole up until the evac. birds get here. So where to, boss?”
Colonel Brannon thought things over for a moment before answering, “The armory and then the mess hall. It may be the only place left without a hole in it. With the base running on only backup power and these breaches in its structure, the cold is going to become a problem for us fast.”
Dobson led them out of the lab, with Leah following after him and the colonel bringing up the rear.
****
Quinn clutched the rifle he carried in a white-knuckled grip. He wasn’t a combat soldier. All he could do was keep wondering how things had gone south so quickly. He had come to the mess hall because there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go. Dobson had stayed in the comm. room to fight the monster that had entered the base there and Quinn had heard gunfire ringing out in its other sections as well. Guilt clawed at him, but he made the choice not to approach those areas anyway. Quinn hadn’t fired a rifle since Basic. The skills were ingrained into him on some level, but he had no desire to put them to the test in a life or death situation. He was a tech, for frags sake.
The gunfire had all died away and the base was eerily silent now. Quinn sat at the rear of the mess, keeping his rifle aimed at the only door that led in and out of it. He supposed he could have made an effort to barricade it, but there were, he hoped, other members of his unit and the science team out there who might come seeking shelter in the mess too. Quinn knew the copters from the Hobart were inbound. All he needed to do was stay alive until they reached the base and then he could leave the nightmare he was currently trapped in behind.
Aliens were real. He had just seen one in the comm. room with his own eyes. Quinn had always believed that there was life out there among the stars. It just made sense that mankind wasn’t alone in the universe. Somewhere out there, other forms of life surely had developed. The mathematical probability of it was a near certainty. Quinn had never given much thought to what that life might be like though. In general, he assumed that it wouldn’t be friendly to mankind, even if it was a peaceful species, after it saw how messed up planet Earth was. War, hunger, identity politics, and all the other horrors mankind inflicted upon itself was enough to convince any other intelligent race that humanity would be or become a threat to it. That much he believed without question. When he had been briefed on this mission, Quinn hadn’t taken any of it seriously. Not really. He figured it was just another op. One where he would freeze his butt off for a few days or weeks, be bored out of his mind, and eventually be nothing more than a memory and exaggerated stories that he told when he felt like bragging about his job. It had turned out to be so much more though. He had found out the hard way that aliens were indeed very real and just like he had suspected, weren’t big fans of the human race.
Quinn gnawed on a granola bar and knew he was stress eating. He wasn’t overweight or anything. Heck, he wasn’t even that health conscious. Quinn didn’t work out like the other guys. He spent his free time reading tech magazines and browsing various topics that interested him on the web. Sure, he had a bit of gut, but he had made his peace with that. He supposed that worrying about stress eating was something his mind had come up with to keep him from dwelling on the insanity and deadliness of his current situation. Even if he never saw another creature like the one that had attacked him and Dobson in the comm. room, he was going to remember that monster for the rest of his life. Its yellow eyes would be in his dreams every night until the day he left this world.
Something was moving in the corridor outside the mess. Quinn stiffened as he heard the noise growing closer to the mess’s door. He made sure the safety on his rifle was disengaged and that it was ready to rock and roll if a hulking white shape appeared in the doorway. His finger tightened on the trigger as he held his breath and waited to see who or what was coming his way.
Quinn barely stopped himself from opening fire on Colonel Brannon, Leah, and Dobson as they came charging into the mess as if the hounds of Hell were on their heels. He swung the barrel of his rifle up towards the mess’s ceiling as Dobson yelled at him.
“Don’t shoot!” Dobson called out. “We’re human!”
Slumping in his chair, Quinn relaxed, breathing a sigh of relief.
“You scared the crap out of me,” he said, grinning at Dobson. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
“Me too,” Dobson replied, returning the smile. “We may not be for long though unless we get this door secured.”
Quinn sprang up from his chair, rushing to aid the others as they closed the mess’s door and started barricading it by shoving the room’s table in front of it. They reinforced the table with some chairs before realizing they had done all that could do what they had at hand.
Dobson looked at him, his expression both intense and tired. “I thought you might be dead when I didn’t find you with the others.”
“I … I …” Quinn stammered, not wanting to get into why he opted to seek shelter in the mess instead of heading for the science team’s lab or any of the other places he had heard gunfire coming from.
“This section of the base is just about the only one that still has real heat,” Dobson said, changing the subject and saving him from admitting he was a coward.
“What?” Quinn asked. “The power hasn’t been back on that long.”
“Those things tore their way into the base in more places than just the comm. Room, Quinn,” Dobson explained. “I’ve killed two of them so far.”
“We saw three already here before the power went out,” Quinn reminded him. “That should only leave one.”
“But we have no idea if any of the others that were still headed for this camp have reached it yet. The bulk of the creatures may have changed their minds and turned around, but there were dozens that didn’t.” Dobson shrugged. “We honestly have no means of knowing what we’re up against. I think we have to assume the worst and there are more than just the one creature we’re going to have to deal with.”
“Agreed,” Colonel Brannon said.
Colonel Brannon shrugged a bag he was carrying from his shoulder and thumped it down on the small counter area at the mess’s rear. “We hit the armory on our way here. I suggest everyone load up with a weapon that has some real firepower.”
He spread open the bag to reveal its contents. Inside the bag were an automatic shotgun, two pump-action shotguns, a grenade launcher, and a bolt action .30-06 rifle.
Quinn whistled at the sight of the weapons. He hadn’t known that the base’s armory even held such a selection. The grenade launcher caught his eye and he picked it up, gauging its weight in his hands.
“If you take that, you’re going to want a shotgun too,” Colonel Brannon warned him. “Not every engagement is going to be fought at a range where you can use that safely.”
Swinging the grenade launcher onto his shoulder by its strap, Quinn reached into the bag of weapons again and picked up one of the pump-action shotguns. He worked its pump, chambering a round, and then stuffed a handful of extra shells into the pocket of the parka he wore.
“Leah?” Dobson asked. “You comfortable with a shotgun?”
Leah picked one up, working its pump like a pro. “I might be a scientist by trade, Dobson, but I grew up on a farm. I think I can manage it.”
Dobson smiled at how she handled the weapon. She’d be just fine when the crap hit the fan.
Colonel Brannon took the automatic shotgun and began shoving magazines for it into his pockets. “Okay,” he said. “I guess we’re as ready as we’re likely to get.”
Not a believer in leaving anything that could be useful lying about, Dobson took the rifle and slung it onto his back. He didn’t bother getting extra ammo for it though. He figured that most of the fighting they were likely to get into was going to be close up and the rifle was a long-range weapon. It wasn’t suited for use in the cramped corridors of the base very well, unlike the shotguns which were perfect for such close-in work.
Leah looked around the mess hall and then at Dobson. “That only leaves one question then?”
“Oh,” Colonel Brannon said. “And what would that be?”
“Where in the devil is Dr. Seeley?” Leah asked.
****
Dr. Seeley only had one thing on his mind—staying alive. He wasn’t so much a coward or selfish as he was arrogant. Self-preservation just mattered more to him than anything else. He saw himself as one of the greatest minds in the field of science today and didn’t believe the world could stand to lose him. There was too much left that he felt he could contribute to the knowledge of mankind.
After fleeing the lab, he had passed Dobson and Colonel Brannon on their way to it. None of them had stopped him. They likely thought he would stop running and turn around to join them. That thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. If the fools wanted to charge headlong into near certain death, it wasn’t his place to stop them. He had plans of his own and they didn’t include risking his life any more than he had to. It seemed logical that the creatures would focus their attention on the camp’s main building as they arrived, given that it was where the others would be making their futile stand against them. His plan was simply to find an out of the way place and hunker down until the copters from the Hobart arrived to extract him. It was as if everyone had forgotten that the base had its own copter just sitting outside. He couldn’t fly it, no one could until it was de-iced and uncovered from the storm that had rolled through, but he dang well could take shelter in it. It would be cold inside the bird, but it would protect him from the added chill of the arctic wind. He was gambling that the creatures wouldn’t have any interest in checking out the copter until they had finished with the camp’s buildings.
His pockets were filled with thumb drives containing his personal data gathered on the alien radiation and his logs from his time at the base. He didn’t have a weapon but knew that there would be some in the copter that would be on hand if it came to him needing one. There were rations, flares, and everything else he might need stowed away in the bird’s cache of emergency supplies too. All he had to do was make it to the helicopter and get inside it.
Dr. Seeley reached the base’s rear door. The corpses of two soldiers, that he thought were named Wallace and Bennet, lay on the corridor’s floor. The barricade they had rigged up for the door was still intact but a frigid wind blew into the corridor from a hole that one of the creatures appeared to have made in the wall. Dr. Seeley snorted at the sight of the two soldiers’ bodies. They had screwed up the one job they had been given which was protecting the building and his work. As far as he was concerned, they deserved what they had gotten. If they couldn’t stop the creatures, then what good were they anyway?
There was no point in trying to dig through the barricade blocking the doorway with the hole in the wall not far from it. Dr. Seeley pulled his coat tighter about him and stepped through the hole in the corridor’s wall in the snow outside. It crunched beneath his boots. He looked around for any sign of the creatures that might be nearby. All he saw was endless white that searched on to the horizon in every direction and the copter sitting partially buried by the snow. Fierce gusts of wind tore at him, chilling him to the bone despite him having taken the time to grab the parka he had worn during his trip with Dobson. His eyes felt as if they were freezing solid in their sockets. Dr. Seeley hurried toward the copter.
In the distance, though he couldn’t really tell from where, he heard an inhuman howling rise up. He wanted to tell himself that it was just the wind, but he knew better. The creatures had followed him and Dobson back to the base. He couldn’t tell from the sound of the howls how many of the things there were nearby, but it was clearly more than just one. Dr. Seeley picked up his pace, his hurried walk turning into a full-out sprint towards the copter. The cold and fear that was coursing through him were taking their toll on him, and by the time he reached the copter’s side door, he felt exhausted. His fingers clawed at the pile of snow blocking his ability to easily open the entrance into the copter. Dr. Seeley dug at it for close to a minute before he had finally cleared away the snow enough to where he could reach the latch and slide the copter’s door open. He scurried up into the bird and closed the door behind him as quietly as he could. Locking it into place, he slumped against the interior wall of the helicopter, catching his breath. Dr. Seeley was still freezing, but at least he had made it out of the harsh wind that had been ripping at him and expediting the dropping of his body’s core temperature. He took comfort in that he didn’t have to worry about nightfall. This was the summer season, so unless another storm came along, the sunlight coming through the copter’s forward window would remain constant and add a tiny amount of heat inside it from a greenhouse effect. Of course, that meant that the creatures outside would be able to see him more easily if he got near the copter’s window. Dr. Seeley kept to the copter’s rear section and found a blanket that he could use not only for heat but to cover himself with so that anyone or anything that did manage to peer into through the copter’s forward window would see nothing more than an unmoving lump on its floor if they saw him at all. He also raided the copter’s emergency cache for a weapon. He found several M-16 rifles but didn’t take one of them. Looking around for something else, Dr. Seeley found a heavy pistol he believed to be a .357 Magnum strapped beneath the pilot’s seat. It clearly belonged to Dobson, as this was basically his bird for all intents and purposes while the team was here. Dr. Seeley removed the pistol from where it was beneath the pilot’s seat and flipped it open to make sure it was loaded. He saw the butts of the six bullets resting in its cylinder. Dr. Seeley wasn’t an expert on guns, but he had seen enough movies to know that a pistol like the one he now held offered him some serious firepower in terms of penetration and lethality. He carried the .357 with him as he selected a spot on the floor of the copter’s rear section.
Dr. Seeley spread the blanket he had found over him and settled in to wait for the evac. birds from the Hobart to arrive. Being out here assured him that he would hear their arrival and be able to hurry towards them as soon as they were on the ground. He placed the .357 within easy reach, not daring to continue to hold it in case he fell asleep during the wait ahead of him. Reaching into the pockets of his parka and pants, his fingers confirmed that the thumb drives he had shoved into them before his flight from the lab were still there. The information they held about the alien radiation could prove to be priceless once he was back in the real world. He couldn’t afford to lose them. They were the key to the future of his career and somewhat made all the hell he had endured worth it.
****
No one had a clue where Dr. Seeley had vanished to when Leah asked.
“Most likely he’s dead,” Colonel Brannon told her.
“Regardless, there’s nothing we can do to help him even if he isn’t,” Dobson added.
“I’ll give you that the guy is a jerk, but that’s just cold, man,” Quinn spoke up.
“It’s the truth,” Colonel Brannon said. “Even armed as we are, thanks to our stop at the armory, we’re no match for those monsters. They’re stronger and faster than us.”
“Not to mention fragging tough to kill,” Dobson stared at Quinn and Leah. “It’s going to take everything we have and us working together just to stay alive until the evac. copters reach this base. Not to mention a good bit of luck.”
“Speaking of the copters,” Colonel Brannon turned to Dobson, “shouldn’t they be almost here by now?”
Dobson nodded. “Unless they’ve run into issues with the weather or something, yeah. I’d put them about ten minutes out.”
“Then shouldn’t we be undoing all that and looking for a way out of here?” Leah asked, pointing at the barricade they had thrown together earlier to reinforce the mess hall’s door.
“She’s right,” Colonel Brannon said. “We’re going to have to go back out there.”
Quinn’s sarcasm was sharp-edged. “Gee, this has been an awesome few minutes of feeling somewhat safe.”
“Belay that crap right now, Specialist,” Colonel Brannon barked. “We did what we had to. If those things had shown up already, that barricade we threw together might have helped us stay alive.”
“But it does have to come down now,” Dobson said and got started on disassembling it.
“This sucks,” Quinn muttered as he joined Dobson in taking the barricade apart.
When the door was where they could get to it again, Colonel Brannon looked around at the others. “We’ve got no idea what’s waiting for us out there, so keep it together and stay alert, people.”
“Roger that,” Dobson answered.
There was no sound of the creatures on the other side of the door, so Colonel Brannon cracked it just enough to see out of. The corridor outside appeared to be clear. He opened the door the rest of the way and led the way out of the mess hall. Quinn brought up the rear as the group moved cautiously through the building, weapons at the ready. Dobson was pretty sure that Leah could handle herself just fine, but since she was the only non-military member of the group, he ensured that she stayed in the middle where he could keep an eye on her, and she would be safer regardless if they were attacked from the front or the rear. He held back, covering the rear.
“Do you hear that?” Leah whispered suddenly. “It sounds like …”
