I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the Antarctic—with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.
“At the Mountains of Madness” . H. P. Lovecraft (1936)
The bearded Frenchman landed the plane on a narrow sheet of ice as expertly as anyone could. It wasn’t smooth, and the four passengers were utterly silent as the hull shuddered and echoed and threatened to split along its riveted seams. Wendell closed his eyes so tight he saw stars, and clung to what was around him to keep from being thrown from his seat. When the plane finally slid to a stop, part of him wanted to leap up and hug not only the ground but the men around him. He didn’t, because when he finally opened his eyelids the first thing he saw was the thuggish Dogan’s disgusted smirk, and it quickly extinguished any lingering elation. Isaacs, for all his faults, was not so inhibited. Instead, he had his hands pressed together in supplication and whispered furiously under breath. It caught Dogan’s eye, and the look he and Wendell shared might have been the first time they had agreed on anything.
“The oil companies have already done a survey of Melville Island, so there shouldn’t be too many surprises ahead,” Dr. Hanson said. “However, their priority has never been fossils—except, of course, the liquid kind—and it’s unlikely they saw much while speeding across the ice on ATVs, doing damage to the strata. So we have ample exploring to do. We’ll hike inland for a day and set up base camp. From there, we’ll radiate our dig outward.”
Gauthier unloaded the plane two bags at a time, and his four passengers moved the gear to the side. They packed light—only the most essential tools and equipment—so the hike would be manageable, but seeing the bags spread across the encrusted surface, Wendell wondered if he were up to the task. It took too long to load everything on his narrow shoulders, and when he was done he suspected the pack weighed more than thirty pounds. Dr. Hanson looked invigorated by his own burden, his face a smiling crimson flush. Isaacs was the opposite, however, and visibly uncomfortable. Wendell hoped the goggle-eyed boy wouldn’t be a liability in the days ahead.
They walked across the frigid snow, and nearly an hour went by before Dr. Hanson turned and looked at the breathless entourage behind him.
“So, Wendell,” he called out, barely containing his anticipation and glee. “Have you noticed anything peculiar so far?”
Wendell glanced at both Dogan and Isaacs, but neither showed any interest in Wendell’s answer. Even Dr. Hanson seemed more concerned in hearing himself speak.
“For all the research the oil companies did here, it looks as though they made a major error in classifying the rock formations. It doesn’t really surprise me—you said they weren’t here looking for rocks. Still, they thought all these formations were the result of normal tectonic shifts—that these were normal terrestrial rocks.”
There was a pause.
“And that’s not the case?”
“No, these are aquatic rocks. The entire island is full of them.”
“And how do you account for so many aquatic rocks on an island, Wendell?”
“Lowering water levels, increased volcanic activity. The normal shifts of planetary mass. It’s unusual for something so large to be pushed up from the ocean, but the Arctic island clusters have always had some unique attributes.”
Dr. Hanson nodded sagely before catching his breath to speak.
Wendell noticed that the dribble from Hanson’s nose was opaque as it slowly froze.
“These islands have always had a sense of mystery about them. The Inuit don’t come here, which is strange enough, but they have a name for these clusters: alornerk. It means ‘the deep land.’ I don’t know where that term comes from, but some claim it has survived from the days when the island was still submerged.”
“That would mean either Melville Island only surfaced sometime in the last ten thousand years, or—”
“Or there was intelligent life in the Arctic two hundred million years before it showed up anywhere else on the planet.”
“But that’s impossible!” Dogan interrupted, startling Wendell. He looked just as confused. Dr. Hanson merely laughed excitedly. “Yes, it’s the worst kind of lazy science, isn’t it? I wouldn’t put too much stock in it.”
They fell back into a single line quickly: Dr. Hanson leading the way, then Dogan, Wendell, Isaacs, and finally the pilot, Gauthier. Wendell made a concerted effort to keep close to the front so he might hear anything Dogan and Dr. Hanson discussed, but the sound of their footsteps on the snow had a deafening and delirious effect—at times he hallucinated more sounds than could be possible. The constant crunch made him lightheaded, a problem exacerbated by the cold that worked at his temples.
But it was Isaacs who suffered the worst. Periodically, Wendell checked to see how far behind his fellow student had fallen, and to ensure he hadn’t vanished altogether. Yet Isaacs was always there, only a few feet back, fidgeting and scanning the landscape. Gauthier likely kept him in place. The two made quite a sight, and Wendell was amused by how little Gauthier did to conceal his contempt. Isaacs was a frightened rabbit in a cage. Gauthier, the snarling wolf beyond the lock.
“This feels wrong,” Isaacs whined, and Wendell did his best to pretend he hadn’t heard him. It did not dissuade Isaacs from continuing. “You can’t tell me this feels right to you guys. You can’t tell me you guys don’t feel everything closing in.”
Wendell glanced back. It was reassuring to see that even an expensive jacket couldn’t prevent Isaacs from being ravaged by the weather—his eyes bulged, his color was pale.
“Isaacs, look around. There’s not a wall or anything in sight. Nothing to box you in. The idea you feel confined—”
“I feel it, too.”
Nothing about Gauthier’s face betrayed that he’d spoken. Nevertheless, Wendell slowed to close the distance between them. Isaacs did the same, eyes wide and eager.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you feel it?” Isaacs said. “I feel it all over my body. I don’t like being here alone.”
“You aren’t alone. There are five of us, plus a plane. And Gauthier has a satellite phone, just in case. The only thing boxing you in is all your protection. You’re practically surrounded.”
“Then why are we so alone? Where are all the animals?”
“They were probably on the shore. Gauthier, we saw some birds or something when we flew over, right?”
The pilot shook his head slowly. It spooked Wendell nearly as much as Isaacs had.
“Well, I’m sure there are animals around. They’re probably hiding from us because they’re afraid.”
“I don’t have a good feeling about this, Wendell,” Isaacs said. “I don’t have a good feeling about this at all. We should get back on the plane and go.”
“Wait, did Dogan put you guys up to this?”
The look of surprise did not seem genuine, though it was hard to be certain. Wendell wanted to press further, but he heard Dr. Hanson’s voice.
“Wendell! Isaacs! Come, you must see this!”
Wendell turned to the men before him. They looked confused. When the three reached Dr. Hanson and the visibly uncomfortable Dogan, Wendell didn’t immediately understand what the concern was. Before them lay ice, just as it lay everywhere. Dr. Hanson smiled, but it held no warmth. It was thin and quivering and echoed his uneasy eyes.
“Do you see it? Right there. On the ground. Where my foot is.” There was only ice. Wendell kneeled to get a better look, but a pair of iron hands grabbed him and yanked him back to his feet. He stumbled as Gauthier set him down.
“Don’t,” was all the pilot said.
“Are you really that much of an idiot?” Dogan asked, and Wendell felt once again the butt of some foul trick. Had it not been for Dr. Hanson’s distinct lack of humor, Wendell might have stormed off into the snow. Instead, he tamped his irritation and looked again.
He wasn’t certain how long it took, but slowly what the rest had seen resolved. Isaacs, too, spotted it before Wendell, serenading them with a litany of “oh, no,” repeated over and over. Dr. Hanson tried to help by asking everyone to back away, while Wendell wondered why no one simply told him what he was missing.
Then he realized it wasn’t him who was missing something but someone else, because trapped beneath the sheet of ice was what could only be a severed human finger.
The flesh was pale, verging on white, and beneath the clouded surface it was barely visible. Wendell inspected the hands of the party to be sure it hadn’t come from any of them.
“I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
“It’s not going to leap out and grab you, Isaacs. Get a grip on yourself.”
“But where did it come from? Doctor Hanson, could it have come from Doctor Lansing’s party? You said they were here for a few days. Why else would they have left after finding only those three small ichthyosaur bones?”
“I asked Doctor Lansing that very question, Wendell. He simply responded by asking me how many bones beyond three I thought would be necessary to collect to prove his point. Five? Ten? Fifty? He said all he felt necessary were three to prove ichthyosaurs traveled this far north. I’ll grant you: that makes little sense, but that’s Doctor Lansing for you. Even he, however, wouldn’t be foolish enough to waste time poring over this discovery. More than likely, it was due to some accident involving the oil men here before us. There’s nothing we can do for the fellow that lost it, and we have more important discoveries to dig up, discoveries beside which this will ultimately pale. Let’s march on. We still have a journey ahead of us.”
Dr. Hanson resumed walking, Dogan trotting after him. Isaacs looked as though he was going to be sick, but before he could Gauthier shoved him.
“Keep moving. Standing too long in the open like this isn’t a good idea. You never know what’s watching.”
Wendell looked around, but all he saw were hills of ice in every direction. If anything was watching, he had no idea where it might be hiding.
Wendell couldn’t stop thinking about the finger as they continued on. Maybe it was the sound of their footsteps, or the dark beneath his parka’s hood, but he felt increasingly isolated from the group, and as they traveled he became further ensnared in thought. He’d never seen a severed body part before, and though it barely looked real beneath the ice, it still made him uncomfortable. Someone had come to Melville Island and not only lost a finger but decided to leave without it. How was that possible? Wendell shivered and tried to get his mind on other less morbid things. Like water.
Water is the world’s greatest sculptor. It is patient, careful, persistent, and over countless years it is capable of carving the largest canyons out of the hardest rock. Who knew how long it took to carve the shapes that surrounded the five of them as they walked? It was like a bizarre art gallery, full of strange smooth sculptures that few had ever seen. Wendell reached into his pocket and fished out his digital camera. As he snapped numerous photos, he realized he was the only one doing so. Dr. Hanson barely slowed his pace to acknowledge the formations, and the sight of the towering rocks left Isaacs further terrorized.
“Do you have to take pictures? Can’t we just keep going?”
“Dr. Hanson said to document everything.”
“Then why didn’t you take one of that finger?”
It was a fair point. Why hadn’t he taken that photograph?
“It’s not really part of the history of Melville Island, or the life that was here, is it?”
Isaacs shrugged, then spun around like an animal suddenly aware of a predator. Wendell stepped back.
“What is it?”
Isaacs took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Nothing. I guess.”
He wanted to say more, but despite Wendell’s prodding Isaacs remained quiet.
They trudged along the ice, keeping their heads down as they followed Dr. Hanson. He had studied the maps for months and was certain that their best bet was to set up base camp about twenty-five miles in. From that point, they could radiate their survey outward and see what they might discover.
Wendell wondered, though, if it wouldn’t have been better to remain nearer the shoreline where remnants of a water-dwelling dinosaur might be more evident. He kept his opinion private, not wanting to contradict a man capable of ending his career before it started. Which was why Wendell was both surprised and irritated when Dogan posed the same question. And even more so when he heard Dr. Hanson’s response.
“Good question, Dogan. I like that you’re thinking. It shows a real spark your fellow team could learn from. However, in this case you haven’t thought things through. Don’t forget that during the Mesozoic area we’re most interested in the Earth had yet to fully cool. Melville Island was more tropical than it is now. The greatest concentration of vertebrates will likely be farther inland. It shouldn’t take us more than a few more hours to get there.”
The thought of traveling a few more hours made Wendell’s body ache. The cold had already seeped through his insulated boots and the two layers of socks he wore inside them.
“Maybe we could stop and rest for a second? I don’t know how much longer I can carry this gear.” As Wendell spoke the words, his pack’s weight doubled in tacit agreement.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Dr. Hanson said, and Wendell wasted no time slipping the burden off his shoulders. Immediately relieved, he then sat on the snow to give his tired feet a rest. Dr. Hanson, Isaacs, and Dogan all followed his lead. Only Gauthier remained standing, one hand on his belt, the other in his frozen beard. He looked across the horizon while the others used the moment to eat protein bars and contemplate what had led them to their seats at the top of the world.
It had been days, and over-familiarity combined with sheer exhaustion was enough to keep them quiet. No one spoke or glanced another’s way. They simply kept their heads down and tried to recuperate before the next leg of the journey. Dr. Hanson’s eyes were wide as he plotted their next steps. Isaacs experienced jitters, which continued to multiply as the group remained stationary. Dogan, however, was the opposite. With eyes closed and arms wrapped around his legs, he appeared to have fallen asleep. Until Gauthier delivered a swift kick to his ribs.
“What was—?”
The pilot shushed him quickly. Dogan, to Wendell’s astonishment, complied.
“Did any of you see that?”
They all turned. Around them was the vast icy expanse, wind pushing clouds over the snow-encrusted tundra, eddies dancing across the rough terrain. But Wendell saw nothing different from what he’d already witnessed. A glance at the other men revealed the same confusion. Wendell looked at the towering Gauthier, waiting for the answer to the question before them, but the pilot was silent. He merely continued to stare. Isaacs could not bear it. “What? What do you see?”
“Shut up,” Gauthier hissed, and Isaacs cowered, his breathing uneven. Dr. Hanson flashed an expression that was buried so quickly Wendell didn’t have time to process it.
Gauthier raised his arm and pointed away from where they had been walking, off into the distant vastness that flanked them.
“I think something’s been tracking us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’ve been watching while you four were stumbling along, and I saw something—a shadow, keeping pace with us. It’s been there ever since we left the runway.”
“Where is it?”
“There. Do you see it? In the distance. It’s not moving now. Just a shadow. Watching us.”
Wendell squinted, but still saw nothing.
“It’s likely a polar bear,” Dr. Hanson said. “I’ve been warned they come to the island, looking for seal. No doubt he knows we’re here.”
“Should we be worried?” Isaacs asked.
“It’s not going to come after us,” Dogan said. Dr. Hanson was more hesitant.
“Well, I don’t know if I’d go that far. But there’s enough of us that it should keep its distance.”
That failed to reassure Wendell. And if he wasn’t reassured, then Isaacs—
“So you’re saying a polar bear is following us, and we shouldn’t be worried? Nothing to worry about at all?”
“It’s okay, Isaacs. You’ll be okay. Gauthier, tell them not to worry.”
“Don’t worry. It’s moving now. It looks too small to be a polar bear anyway. Probably just a pack of wolves.”
It wasn’t long before they were moving again.
They successfully made it to the camp site without further report of being trailed. The lack did nothing to calm Isaac’s nerves, but Dogan reverted to his old ways, insinuating himself between Dr. Hanson and Wendell any time they might have had a moment to speak. It was infuriating.
The five of them had been awake and traveling for well over twenty hours, and as far as Wendell could tell the sun had not moved an inch. The clouds, however, were not so bound, and he suspected their speed had as much to do with Hanson’s decision to camp down as did the coordinates Dr. Lansing had provided him. The last thing Wendell wanted to do when they finally stopped walking was set up the tent, but Gauthier helped them all find the motivation through the promotion of fear.
“The way this wind is breaking? There are storms brewing ahead, somewhere beyond the ridges. The weather here is unpredictable. If we don’t get cover and fast, we might not be around long enough for you four to start digging up bones. Get ready for what’s coming.”
“But what is coming?” Dogan asked. Gauthier laughed. “A storm, man. A storm.”
In the time it took to tell them, thick smoke-like clouds had rolled across the clear sky, casting a long shadow across the top of the world. Somehow, from somewhere, the men found the energy to erect their shelter, and Wendell silently admitted it felt good to have Dogan as an ally for once.
The storm arrived as the last peg was hammered in place. The five of them huddled beneath the tarpaulin tent, one of the tall water-carved rocks acting as both anchor and partial shield from the winds. Inside the enclosed space their heat quickly escalated, but Gauthier warned them to keep their coats on in case the wind wrenched the tent from the ground.
Strangely, Isaacs was the most at peace during the ordeal. While Dogan and Wendell held down the edges of the tent, their knuckles white, Isaacs had his eyelids closed and head tilted back to rest on his shoulders. He sat cross-legged, his body moving with the slightest sway. Wendell thought he also heard him humming, but convinced himself it was only the wind bending around the sheltering rocks.
They stayed hunkered for hours, wind howling outside, pulling at the thin barrier of canvas standing between them. The sound of it rippling back and forth was a terrifying thunder, and even after hours enduring it, the noise did not become any less so. Each clap was an icy knife in Wendell’s spine, and as he shook under the tremendous stress he used every ounce of will he had within him to maintain his rationality and tamp down his fear. Deep breaths, slow, long, continued until the knot inside his chest slackened. It was only when he felt he could look again at his fellow captives without screaming that he dared. Isaacs remained blissfully distant, his mind cracked, and he was simply gone from it to another place. Gauthier and Dr. Hanson spoke among themselves, planning and debating the next course of action, all at a volume that was drowned by the howls and ripples. Only Dogan noticed Wendell, and the scowl across his face suggested that whatever truce the circumstances had negotiated for them was fleeting at best. He stared directly at Wendell with a stubbly, twisted face and did not bother to look away when Wendell caught him, as though he wore his disgust with pride. Wendell took a breath to speak and tasted the most noxious air. Dogan shook his twisted face, but it was no use; the fetid odor filled their lungs. Wendell covered his nose and mouth with his gloved hand. Whatever it was, it was sickly and bitter and smelled not unlike dead fish.
Outside there was a long sorrowful howl that sounded so near their shelter that Wendell prayed desperately it was only the wind echoing between the stones.
Sleep did wonders for Wendell’s demeanor, and when he emerged from the battered shelter a few hours later he stepped into a world canopied by a cloudless sky punctuated at the horizon by a single glowing orb. Gauthier was already awake, and Wendell found him prepping their equipment, beads of moisture frozen in his unkempt beard. He did not look pleased. Something was wrong.
It was only once outside the tent Wendell noticed it—something in the post-storm air, some excess of electricity, or maybe a remnant of the foul odor that stained his clothes. Whatever it was, it was troubling.
Dr. Hanson emerged a few minutes afterward with an eagerness to meet the glaciers head-on.
“You’re up early. Good man! Why don’t you hand me one of those coffees?”
Isaacs, too, joined them, and when the thick-set Dogan finally emerged from the tent, the look on his face upon seeing the rest of the team gathered made Wendell certain any ground gained the night before had been lost. Dogan was the same man he’d always been, and Wendell did his best to deal with it. He was frankly too tired to keep caring.
“After we’ve made our breakfast,” Dr. Hanson said, blind to the turmoil of the students around him, “let’s start our search for some ichthyosaur fossils. Right now, we are most concerned with locating those.”
“Dr. Hanson?” Isaacs said.
“We should start at those ridges.” Dogan pointed into the distance opposite, where a slightly elevated ring circled the land. “Water would have receded soonest from those areas, leaving the earliest and most complete fossils for us to find.”
“Good thinking, Dogan. I applaud that.”
“Doctor Hanson?” Isaacs repeated.
Dogan may have gotten the doctor’s attention, but Wendell was not going to be outdone.
“Maybe, Doctor Hanson, we should use a grid pattern closer to where Doctor Lansing and his students made their discovery? I mean, from there.”
Dogan shot Wendell a look, and Dr. Hanson laughed at them. “Both good ideas, men, but don’t worry. I already have a plan. You see, based on my expectations, the fossil—”
“Doctor Hanson?” Hanson sighed.
“Please don’t interrupt me, Isaacs.”
“Doctor Hanson? Can you come look at this?” Isaacs was kneeling by the tent, staring into the ground.
Immediately, Wendell was certain it was another finger. Another pale white digit trapped beneath the ice. Or perhaps it was a whole hand. Something else lost for which there could be no reasonable explanation. Dogan approached, as did Gauthier, both alongside Dr. Hanson. Wendell remained where he was, worried about what they would find, though their faces suggested it wasn’t anything as mortally frightening as a severed finger. But it was also clear no one knew if it was far worse. Wendell hesitated but approached Dr. Hanson, his heavy boots crunching the ice underfoot. When he reached the four men, any conversation between them had withered.
Something impossible was caught in the tangle of boot prints surrounding the tent: an additional set of tracks in the crushed and broken snow. They differed from the team’s in size—they were smaller, hardly larger than a child’s, and each long toe of the bare foot could clearly be traced.
“Is it possible some kind of animal made them?”
“No,” Dr. Hanson said. “These are too close to hominid.”
“They can’t be, though. Can they?”
“I thought this island was deserted.”
“More importantly, what was it doing standing here in front of our tent?”
“I don’t like this,” Isaacs said. For once, Wendell agreed with him. “Doctor Hanson, what’s going on?”
“I wish I knew, Wendell. Gauthier, what do you think?” Gauthier looked at them over his thick beard. It was the first time Wendell had seen puzzlement in the pilot’s eyes. Gauthier looked at each of them in turn as they waited for him to offer an explanation, but he had none to offer. Instead, he turned away with a furrowed brow.
“Where is everything?”
Wendell didn’t initially understand what he meant, not until he walked into the center of the camp. He looked back and forth and into the distance, then pushed the insulated hood off his head.
“It’s all gone. Everything.”
It had happened while they slept. Someone or something had come into the camp and stolen all their food and most of their supplies.
Things became scrambled. The men spoke all at once, worried about what had happened and what it might mean. Wendell was no different, a manic desperation for answers taking hold. Dr. Hanson did his best to calm them all, but the red rims around his eyes made it clear he too was shaken.
“I don’t understand it,” he repeated. “There aren’t supposed to be any visitors here beyond us.”
“It looks as if you were wrong. There is someone here. Someone who’s been following us.”
It sounded crazy, and Wendell fought to keep from falling down that rabbit hole. Perversely, Dogan was the one Wendell looked to for strength, and only because he could imagine nothing worse than failing apart in front of him. Isaacs on the other hand suffered no such worries. He was nearly incapacitated by terror.
“We can’t stay here. Didn’t you guys hear it? Last night? That muffled creaking? And the crunch—I thought it was something else. I thought it had to be. It couldn’t have been footsteps, but all I see on the ground are thousands of them, and all our stuff has vanished. We can’t stay. We have to go. We have to go before it’s too late.”
“This expedition is a one-time event. It took all the grant money to send us here. If we don’t bring back something, we will never return to Melville Island.”
“Good,” Isaacs said, his whole body shaking. “We shouldn’t be here. There’s something wrong.”
Dr. Hanson scoffed, but Wendell wasn’t certain he agreed. Dogan certainly seemed as though he didn’t, but said nothing. After the journey they’d taken and what they’d seen, they had to trust Dr. Hanson knew what to do.
But what he did was turn to Gauthier for an answer, only to receive none. The pilot was more interested in sizing up Isaacs. When he finally spoke, it startled all of them. Isaacs almost screamed.
“The kid is right. We can’t stay here. Even if we wanted to. Our supplies and rations are gone. We wouldn’t last more than a few days.”
Dr. Hanson shook his head. Wendell could see he was frustrated. Scared, tired, and frustrated.
“I told you: we can’t go back. This is it. There’s no time to spare, not even a few days. Not if we’re to complete our tasks in the window. We have to stay here.”
“Do we all need to be here, Doctor?” Dogan asked. His voice wavered with uncertainty.
Dr. Hanson hesitated a moment. “No,” he said, “I expect not. At least, not all of us.”
Dogan looked directly at Wendell. Wendell swallowed, outsmarted, and prepared himself for the inevitable. Instead, Dogan surprised him.
“Send Gauthier back to replenish our supplies while we stay here and work. It’s only a few days. We can hold out that long, but we can’t go on forever without food.”
“Maybe Isaacs should join him,” Wendell added, nodding when Dogan looked over. “He sounds on the verge of cracking, and for his sake as well as ours he should be off this rock if he does.”
“Yes, we should go. Can we go? Can we?” Isaacs looked ready to swallow Gauthier. His bug-eyed face was slick and pallid, and Wendell wondered if Isaacs was too sick to travel. Then he wondered if it might be worse if he stayed.
Dr. Hanson did not seem entirely convinced. None of them did. None but Isaacs. Wendell had to admit, thinking about the strange footprints in the snow outside the tent, he wasn’t sure if he’d rather be the one leaving.
“Maybe we should vote?” Dogan said.
“No point,” Gauthier said. “I’m leaving. The kid can come if he wants.”
Isaacs looked as if he were going to dance. Hanson nodded solemnly while Dogan said nothing. Wendell wasn’t sure what he felt.
They split what little food they had left among them before Gauthier and Isaacs loaded their packs and left. There were six energy bars, a bag of peanuts, and four flasks of water. The two men took only half a bar each—as little as they could to get them back to the landing strip while Wendell, Dogan, and Dr. Hanson kept the rest to help them last until the plane returned.
“I want you to get back here as soon as you can,” Dr. Hanson said. “We can’t afford to be down this many men for long.”
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Gauthier said, then handed Dr. Hanson a small leather bag. “Take this. In case of emergency.” Dr. Hanson looked in the bag and shook his head.
The two men waved at them as they started back—Isaacs nearly bouncing on the ice, while Gauthier’s gait remained resolutely determined. They passed the tall, smooth rocks without trouble, and the crunch of their boots on the icy snow faded quickly once they were out of sight. The three remaining men stood in uncomfortable silence. Wendell worried they had made a grave mistake.
“I’m sure they’ll be back before we know it.” Dr. Hanson tried to sound upbeat and reassuring; Wendell wondered if he was as unconvinced as he sounded. “But in the interim, we have the equipment, and we’re at the primary site. I know the situation is not as fortunate as we would have liked, but let’s see how much we can get done before Gauthier gets back. We are here for another three days, so let’s take the time to gather the information necessary to salvage this expedition.”
The three of them trekked out from the base camp on Dr. Hanson’s suggestion despite all they’d seen, right into the bleakness of Melville Island. Trapped, they needed something to occupy their minds, distract them from disturbing sights like the severed finger, like the worrying sea of bodies that had mysteriously surrounded them as they slept. The only thing the three could do was resume their search for the elusive evidence of ichthyosaurs in the Arctic Ocean. They spent what hours remained in the day scouting those locations Dr. Hanson highlighted, turning over rocks, chipping through ice and permafrost, doing their best without tools, a researcher, and a pilot. And with each hour that passed they discovered nothing, no sign of the ichthyosaurs they were certain had once swam there. Dr. Hanson grew increasingly quiet as he brimmed with frustration, and Wendell decided to stay out of his way until they finally retreated to the base camp. Dogan, however, was the braver man. Or more foolish.
“Doctor Hanson, I have to tell you, I’m concerned.”
“Oh, are you? What could possibly concern you?” Dogan didn’t hesitate.
“I’m concerned for our safety. I’m concerned our emergency transportation has left, that we’re undermanned, and that neither Wendell nor I truly have any idea where we are. We’re just following you blindly. I’m worried about our safety.”
“Well, don’t be, Dogan. Let us return to the base camp. We will reassess our plans there. Perhaps you and Wendell can help determine our next course of action. There is something on Melville Island worth finding no matter what the cost. I intend to stay until we do.”
But when they finally reached the base camp they discovered what that cost was. It had vanished. Along with it, any trace of their presence, including their footprints. It was as though they had never been there.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
“Of course I’m certain. Don’t you recognize the shape of rocks? Or the nook we used for shelter? This is most certainly the right place.”
The three stood watching the snow for a few minutes, as though the sheer force of their collective will would make the camp re-materialize, and when that too failed to yield results Dogan sat down on the snow, spent, a heavy-browed doll whose strings had been cut.
“Maybe we should go back to the landing strip,” Wendell suggested. “Gauthier and Isaacs may not have left yet.”
Dr. Hanson shook his head. “We’ve barely begun, we can’t leave.”
“But, Doctor Hanson, our camp—look around us. We can’t stay here. Whatever it is that’s—”
“Enough!” Dogan said, struggling to his feet with a concerning wobble. “I’m not waiting to be hunted by whatever is out there. At least at the landing strip, we’ll be ready to leave once Gauthier gets back. I don’t give a shit about ichthyosaurs or Mesozoic migration patterns or just when the hell Melville Island formed. All I want right now is to get off this iceberg and back to civilization where it’s safe. And Wendell, I’m betting you feel exactly the same. So, are you coming or not?”
Wendell liked neither solution. Dogan was right: staying seemed like idiocy—something was watching them, stealing from them, and had left them for dead. And yet, his solution made no sense. How did he know whatever was following them wouldn’t track them to the landing strip? How did he know when or even if Gauthier would be back to rescue them? Wendell wasn’t convinced, but to blindly ignore what he had seen so far and continue to explore Melville Island with the same willful ignorance as Dr. Hanson seemed ludicrous.
“All I know is that whatever we do, we can’t stay here. We need to keep moving.”
“I don’t think the two of you understand the importance of what we are doing here, or the costs involved. This is not simply a trip to the shopping mall. This is not something easily aborted. We must stay and complete our expedition. We have found nothing so far to justify the cost, and without that we will never be granted the opportunity to return. My tenure at the university will shield me from losing my position, but likely I’ll never complete my work. Isaacs, he’ll get by on his father’s wealth, but the two of you? Your careers will be irrevocably damaged. Your graduate studies will have become a waste. This is the moment. This is the place where you both have to decide your respective futures. I already know what needs to be done. I implore you both to stay with me and discover those secrets hidden long before man’s eyes could witness them. Stay with me and discover the true history of the world.”
But Dogan wouldn’t. And Wendell reluctantly concurred.
The three men split what remained of the food and set a timeline for Dr. Hanson’s research. They agreed that he would keep trying to contact Gauthier via the satellite phone the pilot had given him, and when he got through he would let Gauthier know that both Dogan and Wendell had returned to the landing strip, and what his own coordinates were so the party could return to meet him. If before then anything should occur that might suggest Dr. Hanson was still being followed, he would immediately set out for the landing strip and join the two men there. Wendell didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone, especially with little more than a half an energy bar and overburdened with excavation equipment, but there was no choice. Hanson insisted on completing the expedition, no matter what the cost.
Dogan, on the other hand, was not so committed. He and Wendell took the rest of the food and began their long hike back. Clearly, it wasn’t lost on Dogan that he had chosen to retreat with his worst enemy; Wendell certainly felt no better about it.
The trek across Melville Island was as quiet as it had been the first time, the two men walking single file over the uneven terrain. But Wendell’s dread made the journey much worse. They had been numbered five before, not two, and they hadn’t carried the suspicion they were being stalked by a predator. On the occasions the two men stopped to rest, they didn’t speak, sharing an overwhelming fear of what was happening. Wendell hoped if they remained silent the entire trip would simply be a hazy dream, one from which he’d soon awake. But he didn’t.
His stomach rumbled after the second hour of their journey, and the sourness on his tongue arrived after the fourth. His head ached dully, letting him know his body was winding down. Dogan, too, seemed to be having trouble concentrating on the direction they were supposed to go, and more than once he stopped to ask if Wendell wanted to take the lead while he plotted their next steps.
They took a rest after a few hours to eat a portion of their reserves. It seemed so little once Wendell saw it through the eyes of hunger, and it took immense willpower to keep from swallowing it all. He was exhausted, and Dogan looked no different, his eyes rimmed with dark circles against pale skin. His voice, too, was throated.
“Who would have thought it would be you and me, trying to keep it together?”
Wendell wanted to laugh, but just wheezed air.
“I don’t think anyone would believe it if we told them.”
“I’m not sure I believe it myself.”
And like that, things had changed between them. Wendell didn’t know how long it would last, or if it would survive their return to civilization, but at that moment they were bonded, and Wendell would have done anything to keep Dogan at his side. It was unclear how long they sat, silently building their strength for the journey ahead, but their stupor was broken by an unsettling howl. Dogan and Wendell straightened, eyes wide and searching the landscape in all directions for its source.
“There!” Dogan shouted, and went off running toward the sound, his feet sinking into snow as he dashed, his limbs flailing for balance. Wendell followed blindly in Dogan’s footsteps, hand pressed against his pack to ensure nothing was spilled. When he finally caught up, both he and Dogan were panting, barely able speak.
“What did you see?” Dogan pointed.
There was nothing there, but that wasn’t what caused Wendell to shiver uncontrollably. It was instead what had been there, and the evidence it left in the crusted snow—a flurry of footprints, none larger than a barefooted child’s. They proceeded in a line, leading back in the same direction from which Wendell and Dogan had come, as though whoever or whatever had made them had been keeping a steady watch on the two students since they left Dr. Hanson. It was no longer possible to avoid the truth: something was following them, something that wasn’t a wolf or polar bear or any other northern predator. It was something else, and they knew absolutely nothing about it.
“What are we going to do?” Wendell asked. Dogan’s eyes teared from the cold.
“What else can we do? We get the hell out of here right now.” They didn’t stop until they reached the landing strip, both afraid of what might happen if they rested too long. By Wendell’s watch it was well past midnight, though the frozen sunlight still shone, lighting their way. When they arrived, they found the strip vacant. No plane, no sign of life. Just a long stretch of iced snow and an ocean off in the distance. Wendell couldn’t explain why the discovery was crushing—Gauthier and Isaacs had over a day’s head start, and Wendell knew they wouldn’t have waited. And yet it was devastating. He and Dogan had walked so far . . .
“On the bright side,” Dogan said, “we know they found their way back. That means they’ll be returning soon. It’s better than finding them stranded like us.”
“True, true.”
Wendell looked back at the snow and ice they had walked across. There were shadows moving out in the nooks and recesses, but none that seemed unusual. Wendell wondered what an unusual shadow would even look like, and whether he was in any condition to find out.
“We need cover. Who knows how long we’ll be waiting.” There was a depression in an ice drift that shielded them from the brunt of the wind and snow. Their combined body heat warmed the air enough to diminish the chill under their jackets, and Wendell was able to peel back the farthest fringes of his hood so he might speak to Dogan without shouting. It had been so long since their last snack, simply raising his voice aggravated his headache.
“Do you think Doctor Hanson is okay?”
“If anyone would be, I’d bet on him. That old man is resilient.”
“I’m not sure we should have left him, though.”
“He wanted us to.”
“I know, I know. I just feel it was a mistake.”
Wendell closed his eyes to rest them. The brightness of the snow after being under a hood for so long was blinding. It would take some time to adjust.
“Did you get a good look at it?” Dogan asked.
“At what? The snow?”
“No, not the snow, you idiot. What was following us in the snow. What left those footprints.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He didn’t even want to think about it. Dogan wouldn’t be dissuaded.
“I’m sure I was close to it, but I barely saw anything more than a blur.”
“Maybe you were seeing things. Maybe your hunger—”
“Did you, or didn’t you, see those footprints in the snow?”
“I—”
“Do you think I put them there?”
“No, I—”
“Did you put them there?”
“How would I—?”
“Well, they got there somehow. Just like they got inside our camp. It wasn’t an accident. It was something, watching us.”
Wendell took off his mitten glove and rubbed the side of his face. It made him feel better, and slightly more present. “I don’t know, Dogan. It so hard to think. I’m tired and hungry and terrified of what’s out there and of never getting back home. My brain feels like mush.”
“How much food do you have?”
He opened his pockets and turned out what was left. An eighth of a power bar, a handful of nuts. His water supply was okay, but only because he and Dogan had been filling their flasks with snow to melt.
Dogan assessed the situation.
“Yeah, I don’t have much more than that, either.”
“Are you worried?”
“About being here?” He frowned. “No. I’m sure Gauthier will be back.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He shrugged.
“What else do I have to do?”
Wendell eventually fell asleep. He and Dogan had huddled close to conserve heat, and when they both ran out of energy to talk Wendell’s eyes flickered one too many times. There was the sound of the ocean, and the wind rushing past, and then nothing until Dogan shook him awake.
“Look.”
The snow had accumulated since they took shelter, and the footprints they had made were buried, but Wendell could still see the wedge cut into the corridor down which they’d come, and in the distance a solitary figure staggering toward them.
“Is that Doctor Hanson?” Wendell worried he was suffering from a starved hallucination.
“I don’t know.”
“Is it what’s been following us?”
Dogan didn’t respond.
Whether from hunger or cold or exhaustion, Wendell’s eyes teared as he watched the limping figure. His muscles ached, trying to tense in anticipation but too exhausted to do so. The approaching shape resolved itself first for Dogan, who made an audible noise a moment before Wendell realized what—or rather whom—he was seeing. Isaacs stumbled forward, and a few steps before meeting Dogan and Wendell he crumpled and dropped to his knees, then collapsed face-first into the frozen snow.
They scrambled to him as quickly as their tired bodies could manage. Isaacs was nearly lifeless, his left leg bent at an angle that suggested it was broken, but leaning close Wendell could hear his shallow breathing. They wasted no time dragging Isaacs back to their shielded depression, and while Wendell did his best to splint the leg, Dogan brushed the remaining snow from Isaacs’s face and pulled up his hood to help protect him.
“What do you think happened?” Dogan quietly asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He looks strange. What’s up with his eyes?”
Wendell shook his head.
“I’m more concerned about what he is doing on Melville Island at all.”
Isaacs breathed heavily as he lay unconscious. They shook him and called his name, worried about what had happened, but neither Dogan nor Wendell understood what he mumbled. There was something about a plane, which did not ease Wendell’s worry.
When they were finally able to rouse him, Isaacs screamed. The piercing sound overloaded Dogan’s starved brain and he lashed out, striking Isaacs in the face. Then Wendell was between them, urging both to calm down. Isaacs shook, pulled the straps of his hood tighter, hid his face. All that was left were his large watery eyes.
“Isaacs, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’m sorry I hit you, but you’re safe. Do you understand?”
He was a trapped animal, shivering uncontrollably.
“Do you understand?”
Isaacs nodded.
“What happened?” Wendell asked. “Why are you here? Where’s Gauthier?”
Isaacs continued to rock, hiding behind his drawn hood.
“It’s okay, Isaacs. Just tell us what happened.”
“Gauthier and I made it back here to the plane,” he said. Even in his semi-consciousness, he sounded terrified. “The wings were iced, he said, and we couldn’t take off. He told me to go outside with a bottle of propylene glycol and spray them down after he started the plane. He said the heat and the solution would melt everything. While I was doing that the wind was blowing like crazy. I thought I heard yelling, but I wasn’t sure. Then out of nowhere the plane was shaking. I lost my balance, and the plane jerked and started to move. I was falling and tried to grab hold of something, but the wing was slick and I was already rolling off it. I don’t remember anything after that.”
Wendell tried to make sense of Isaacs’s story, but couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He was exhausted, hunger and the elements taking their toll, and could barely think. He looked to Dogan, who appeared just as troubled.
“Did Gauthier say anything?” Dogan asked.
He was worsening, and there was nothing Dogan or Wendell could do. Already his lips had turned a bizarre shade of red, and his eyes could not focus. He coughed violently and spit pink into the snow. Then he lay his head down. “I can’t. I—I don’t want to die.”
Wendell put his hand on Isaacs’s shoulder.
“You aren’t going to die here. We won’t let you.”
Isaacs coughed again.
Dogan and Wendell looked at each other. Dogan shook his head.
“We have to find Doctor Hanson. We need that satellite phone.”
“We can’t leave Isaacs,” Wendell said. “He won’t last without our help. And how are we supposed to find Doctor Hanson? We’ll be dead before we do. We have no idea where he is. I think we’re better off waiting right here.”
They spent the next few hours trying to sleep in their makeshift shelter, the three men huddled to conserve warmth. While Dogan and Isaacs slept, the wind had become a gale, and it again brought with it the overpowering stench of fish and sea, so thick Wendell could hardly keep from gagging. He tucked his face into his coat as best he could to survive it.
The men did not sleep for long, but it was long enough that when they awoke they found Isaacs had crawled away from the safety of the depression and frozen to death. It made no sense, but nothing did any longer. The arctic cold of Melville Island had upended everything. Dogan was upset and wanted to drag Isaacs back, close enough to protect his body should anything come looking for it, but he didn’t have the strength left. Neither of them did. It was then they agreed, for the sake of the fallen Isaacs, that their hunger had become too severe. But when they turned out their pockets, they found them empty. Isaacs, too, had been stripped of all food and supplies. There was nothing left to sustain them. Dogan cried, certain he’d eaten all their shares unwittingly in a somnambulistic frenzy, but Wendell wasn’t convinced. It didn’t explain the hazy footprints that encircled them.
Dogan and Wendell paced in the subzero weather, trudging out a trail while trying to keep themselves warm. Eventually, even the effort of pacing proved beyond Dogan, and he stumbled and toppled to the ground. Wendell knelt down but didn’t have strength to help. All he could do was stay nearby.
“I can’t keep going,” Dogan said. “I can’t.”
“We have to,” Wendell said.
But Wendell knew they would never make it. They started talking then to keep themselves awake and alert, to remind each other not to give up. They talked about how they came to be under Dr. Hanson. They talked about Isaacs, about whether he had crawled away on purpose, or if it was due to some horrible mistake. They talked about Gauthier and what had happened to him. But mostly they talked about themselves, their childhoods, their lives before meeting. They talked until they couldn’t, until Dogan was delirious and stopped making sense. Wendell tried to rouse him, to keep him moving, but he couldn’t. He didn’t have the energy. So tired, he could barely keep his eyes open. They fluttered more and more until they stopped completely. Before they did, the last thing Wendell saw was something in the distance, crouching. Watching them. And then it moved.
A slap that tore off his face woke him from death. He opened his stinging eyes, and only his lethargic malnourishment prevented him from screaming. The shrunken man’s face hung inches from his own. It was dark brown, as though deeply tanned, with lips gray to the point of blue. He did not tremble, though he was dressed in nothing more than a cloth that covered his sex, and he was perilously thin. What startled Wendell most, however, was his eyes. They were larger than any Wendell had ever seen, and spaced so far apart they threatened to slide off his skull. He couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. Wendell was certain it wasn’t a dream, but if it were it was the worst dream he’d ever suffered. He tried to moisten his mouth to get his tongue working, and when he did all he could hazily croak was, “Dogan?”
The half-man grunted, then hobbled away. Wendell wanted to pull himself up, but discovered he had been swaddled with furs. He could turn his head, but only with great difficulty, and only enough to see Dogan similarly wrapped a few meters away. Dogan had two more of the dark half-men at his head, and they were trying to feed him though he was still unconscious. Isaacs lay face down a few feet further in the snow, a fourth shrunken man holding his lifeless arm to his gray lips and sniffing. Wendell nodded at no one in particular, and as the world grew dark once more he felt he was being dragged. In his delirium, the dragging went on and on forever.
Something was wriggling in his mouth, trying to crawl down his throat. Wendell struggled awake, gagging, and managed to spit it out. A piece of unrecognizable yellow meat curled on the ice, while a short distance away those small dark half-men from his nightmare danced, their bare feet crunching on the snow. There was no longer anything binding his limbs but weakness, and he’d been left propped up next to Dogan. Both of them were awake and shaking.
Only unrecognizable pieces remained of poor Isaacs.
“I don’t know what’s going on, Wendell. I don’t know where we are, but look.” Dogan nodded his head across the ice and Wendell saw Dr. Hanson. He lay face down in the snow, unmoving, his pack beside him and torn open, equipment scattered. Wendell squinted to see if the satellite phone was still there, and in his concentration missed what Dogan was saying.
“Do you see it?” Dogan repeated.
“I think so. It’s right by his hand.”
“No, you idiot. Do you see it?”
Wendell looked up again, past Dr. Hanson and at the group of five near-naked men dancing before a shorn wall of ice. It stretched out further than the end of his sight in either direction; the break no doubt formed when tectonic plates shifted the glacier. What was uncovered was so impossible Wendell would have thought his mind had cracked had Dogan not witnessed it first.
There was a monstrous creature encased halfway in the solid ice. It had large unlidded eyes, milky white; its mouth wide and round, its scaled flesh reflecting light dully. Where its neck might have been was a ring of purplish pustules, circling the fusion of its ichthyic skull to its tendonous body. Chunked squid limbs lay outstretched, uncontrollable in its death. The air was again dominated by the overpowering odor of the sea. The shrunken men before it treated it as a god, and yet it was clear the five could not have been the ones to uncover it—with the sharpened rocks they used as tools it would have taken generations to carve that deep and that much. They peeled strips of its flesh away and ate them raw, and when they looked back at Dogan and Wendell it was suddenly evident why their features had transformed over time, their eyes grown wider, jaws shorter, skin rougher. Their fish faces stared at Wendell, expectantly. It was true he was hungry beyond imagination, but he was not so hungry that he might eat what they presented.
The sour taste and sensation of what they had previously tried to feed him returned, and he looked down. The morsel continued to writhe slowly in the snow.
“Did you—did they make you eat any?” Wendell asked, then realized Dogan had turned the palest shade. They had. Wendell feared for his life, and his sanity.
“How do I look?” Dogan managed through his chattering teeth, and Wendell lied and told him he was fine. Was Wendell imagining the flesh had already changed him, already started prying his eyes apart? Was it even possible after so small a meal? But he realized with horror that he didn’t know how much Dogan had willingly eaten, nor if either of them had been force-fed in their delirium.
“Can you move?” Wendell asked, fleetingly energized by his fear. “We need to get that phone. We need to call for help.”
“How? Even if we manage to get it, we’ll never escape with it. We have no idea where we are. We might not even be on Melville Island anymore.”
“We have to try. Maybe Gauthier has already come back and is waiting for us at the landing strip. What else can we do? End up like Doctor Hanson and bleed out in the snow? Or worse, like Isaacs, torn to pieces?”
“We should escape.”
“And what then?” Wendell whispered. “Die in the snow, waiting for them to find us?”
Dogan paled.
“Did you—did you see that?”
Wendell looked up. The five dark men sat mesmerized before their dead idol.
“It moved,” Dogan said. “Did you see it move?”
“It can’t move. Whatever that thing is, it’s dead.”
“It’s not dead—look, it moved again.”
Wendell looked closer at Dogan’s face and saw the swelling and the subtle distortion. There was no longer time to gather strength. Whatever they fed him, Dogan had eaten more than he thought. It was transforming him. Wendell did not want to suffer the same fate.
“Stay here,” he said, though when he looked over he wasn’t certain he’d been heard. Dogan appeared fascinated by what was trapped in the ice.
Wendell lowered himself onto his stomach and crawled toward Dr. Hanson, keeping an eye on the gathering of disciples ahead. He moved elbow-to-knee as slowly as he dared, not willing to risk being seen. The half-men were feral, and as smart as they were, they were still animals, waiting to attack anything that moved. Wendell had only one chance to get the satellite phone and figure out a way of escaping from the nightmare he and Dogan found themselves in. His hunger had not abated, but enough strength had returned that he was able to make it to Dr. Hanson’s body in under ten minutes.
The tribe of half-men had not moved from around their dead idol. They bounced on their haunches, made noises like wild animals, followed imaginary movement before them with precision. What was strange, however, was that each reacted differently to what it saw, as though they did not share the same sight. One stood while another howled, the rest looking in different directions. Wendell couldn’t make sense of it, and reminded himself not to try. He had to focus on that satellite phone and getting back.
He searched the body, doing his best to forget who it had been. Dr. Hanson’s face had been removed—the pale flesh frozen, tiny blood icicles reaching from the pulpy mess to the ground. Wendell turned to keep from panicking and checked the pockets of Hanson’s coat and everywhere he could reach for the satellite phone. But it wasn’t there. Wendell rolled on his side and tried unsuccessfully to flag Dogan for help. Dogan was staring straight ahead at the impossible giant embedded in the ice, eyes open wide and spread far apart.
Dr. Hanson’s pack was ripped open in the blood-soaked snow, the items within trapped in sticky ice. Wendell heard a loud creak and froze. In his mind’s eye he saw himself spotted, then swarmed by ugly bodies and ripped limb from limb. But when he raised his head he found nothing had changed. The five men remained bent in supplication. Almost by accident Wendell spotted the leather pouch Gauthier had given Dr. Hanson pinned beneath the doctor’s torso. Wendell managed to pry it free of the ice, then put it into his own pocket and gently eased his way back the distance to Dogan. Or what was left of Dogan.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Wendell whispered, but Dogan didn’t respond. Wendell grabbed his wrist and tried yanking, but Dogan had become a dead-weight, staring beatifically ahead, his face transformed. Mouth agape, eyes spread apart, staring at the dead thing as though it were alive, Dogan was unblinking as tears streamed down his sweating face. Dogan, Wendell’s enemy, Wendell’s friend, was gone.
There would be time for grief later. Wendell reached over and put his hand on Dogan’s shoulder. “Stay strong. I’ll be back as soon as I can with help.” Then he attempted to stand and discovered he wasn’t able to do so. His legs had given up for good, buckling as Wendell put weight on them. He tried again and again, desperate to escape before it was too late, but he couldn’t get up. After a few minutes, Wendell felt the sensation in his hands going, too, his control slipping away. Everything he saw took on a hazy glow, the edges of his vision crystalizing. The sky jittered, as did the snow.
Dogan wasn’t the only one who’d had his unconscious hunger overfed with flesh. It was no wonder they had been left unbound at the edge of the camp and ignored. The creatures had no worry. All the damage had long been done. They simply needed to wait.
Wendell scrambled the small leather bag he had taken from Dr. Hanson’s body out of his pocket. He prayed the satellite phone would be unharmed, that Gauthier had already returned and was waiting for them. If Wendell could only call him, it might not be too late for rescue. He could still escape the horrible things he was witnessing. That creature in the ice—Wendell thought he saw it move, thought he saw one of its giant milky eyes blink, even though so much of its flesh had already been stripped. It blinked, and the coils that sprouted free from the ice twitched and rolled, and a scream built inside him. But when it escaped it wasn’t a scream at all but laughter. Laughter and joy. That terrified Wendell further, the joy, because it finally turned the five beasts his way. They rolled onto their haunches, staring at Wendell and his catatonic friend.
Wendell took off his glove and reached into the bag slowly to remove the phone, but what he found there was nothing of the sort. It was another kind of escape, the one thing a man like Gauthier would hand over when he was suggesting that someone protect himself. From out of the leather bag Wendell withdrew a handgun, and even in the cold wind he could smell the oiled metal.
Those five men looking agitated and more bestial than ever before. They snarled, while behind them a giant that Wendell refused to believe was alive illuminated like the sun pinned above. It filled the horizon with streaks of light, tendrils dancing from the old one’s gargantuan head. It looked at the five half-men radiating in the glow. It looked at Dogan, kneeling and waiting for it to speak to him. Then it looked at Wendell and all Wendell’s hunger was satiated; he was at one with everything.
But he knew it was a lie. It was the end of things, no matter what the disembodied voices told him. The five shrunken men approaching him stealthily on all fours would not return him to civilization, would not return him to health. Dogan and he would be something more to them—sustenance in the cold harshness of the Arctic, pieces of flesh chewed and swallowed, digits shorn until they rained on the snow. These things were much like Wendell, in a way. Much like everyone. They struggled to unearth what they worshipped most, something from a world long ago gone, and if remembered, then only barely and as a fantasy. But it was far more real than Wendell had ever wished.
Those subhuman things were closing in, and there was little else Wendell could do but surrender to them, let them take him away.
Or he could use Gauthier’s gun.
He lifted the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The half-men scattered, but not before he put two of them down. The alien’s appendages flailed madly, and waves of emotion and nausea washed over Wendell. He couldn’t stand, but was eventually able to hit the remaining three as they scrambled for cover. It took no time at all for him to be the last man alive, surrounded by the blood and gore of everyone he knew. Everyone but the mesmerized Dogan.
It was too late for either of them. Even with the half-men dead, Wendell could feel the draw of the flickering creature in the ice, and knew he would be unable to resist much longer. In an act of charity and compassion, he raised the gun to Dogan’s temple and squeezed the trigger. There was a bright flash, and a report that continued to echo over the landscape longer than in his ears. Dogan crumpled, the side of his head vaporized, his misery tangible in the air.
But it was not enough. That thing in the ice, it needed him, needed somebody’s worship on which to feed, and as long as Wendell was alive it would not die.
Wendell put the gun against his own head, the hot barrel searing his flesh, but he could do nothing else. His fingers would not move, locked into place from fear or exhaustion or self-preservation. Or whatever it was that had been fed to him, pulling the flesh on his face tighter. Somehow the handgun fell from his weakened grasp, dropping onto the icy snow and sinking. He reached to reclaim it and toppled forward, collapsing in a heap that left him staring into those giant old milky eyes.
Wendell didn’t know how long he lay in the snow. He was no longer cold, was no longer hungry. He felt safe, as though he might sleep forever. The old one in the ice spoke to him, telling him things about the island’s eonic history, and he listened and watched and waited. Existence moved so slowly Wendell saw the sun finally creep across the sky. No one came for him. No one came to interrupt his communion with the dead god. All he had was what was forever in its milky white stare, while it ate the flesh and muscle and sinew of his body, transforming him into the first of its new earthly congregation.