Terminal Freeze

The lights snapped on again as a secondary transformer picked up the load. The wires jerked and danced, raining fitful showers of sparks. Gonzalez peered through the roiling pall of smoke, searching desperately for a glimpse of the thing. It had to be dead. It had to. Nothing could live through that…

The creature’s head poked through the leading edge of the smoke. Gonzalez gasped, tightened his grip on his weapon. As the smoke began to slowly dissipate, more of the creature became visible. Black scorch marks were seared across its withers. For a moment it remained as still as death.

And then it opened its mouth.

Inside the substation, Marcelin began to scream.

The creature swiveled toward the noise. It reared back on powerful haunches. Then it turned and-slowly, deliberately-disappeared inside the doorway. And as he watched, unable to move, unable to act, Gonzalez’s heart seemed to accelerate with the pitch of Marcelin’s screams.

44

“What was that?” Conti turned suddenly, camera tilting dangerously on his shoulder.

Once again, all three paused to listen.

Wolff cocked his head to one side. “I don’t hear anything,” he said. “This is the third time you’ve done that.”

“I tell you, I heard something. A shout, I think. Or maybe it was a cry.” Conti pointed down the corridor. “It came from that direction.”

Kari Ekberg followed the director’s outstretched finger with her eyes. The corridor led into blackness. It was so dark she couldn’t make out its end. It was as if it led on forever, into the icy wastes beneath the arctic night. She shivered despite the humid warmth.

They had been looking for Gonzalez’s team, unsuccessfully, for half an hour now. They had first tried the staging area, only to find it deserted save for a large cache of weapons. After that they had moved around the central wing in widening circles. As the minutes passed, Conti had gotten increasingly restless: complaining bitterly about the time he had squandered in convincing them to assist him, fretting over and over that he was missing his “window of opportunity.” As their search shifted to the southern wing of the base, Ekberg felt herself growing more and more uneasy. It seemed to her just as likely they’d find the creature as Gonzalez’s party.

“Let’s keep moving,” Conti said. “The infirmary’s just ahead.”

“I know,” Wolff said. “I was there, too-remember? What makes you think the sergeant came this way?”

“I heard them saying that Ashleigh and that soldier were killed not far from it,” the director replied.

“Seems to me a good reason to stay away,” Ekberg said.

Conti didn’t bother to answer. Instead, he snapped on the camera’s supplemental illumination. Yellow light filled the corridor, throwing the old equipment scattered against the walls into sharp relief.

“If you’re so eager to find them,” Wolff said, “why not just use the radio?”

“Can’t do that,” Conti replied. “That sergeant doesn’t believe in my work. None of them do. They’d probably give us false directions, just to throw us off. Or confiscate the camera. We can’t take the chance.”

He led the way down the hallway. Most of the doors they passed were closed; the ones that were open gave onto shadow-haunted spaces full of unidentifiable gear. They descended a staircase, turned a corner.

“That’s it, right?” Conti said. “That door on the left?”

Wolff nodded.

Ekberg followed the two into a small waiting room. She had never been in this section of the base and, despite her unease, looked around curiously at the dusty medical supplies and ancient, fading labels of the bottles stored behind glass fronts. Conti had already walked into the next room, and when she heard his sharp intake of breath she knew he had found something. Peering in after him, she saw two sheeted bodies lying on an examination table. One was abnormally short, as if made up of parts rather than an intact corpse. The plastic coverings were so thickly smeared with blood and fluids that the remains were utterly obscured. Ekberg quickly looked away.

“Kari,” Conti said.

She was so overcome with horror that she did not reply.

“Kari,” he repeated. “Turn on the sound pack.”

It was all she could do to switch on the mixer, plug in the microphone cable. Conti hovered over the bodies, the glare from his camera raking them pitilessly. “They’re here,” he said into his lavalier mic, his voice fraught with the gravity of the moment. “The newest victims. One was a simple soldier, doing his part in the service of our country, who gave his life trying to protect others. The other was one of our own, Ashleigh Davis, who was also doing a service-a service in its way no less vital. She came to this godforsaken place in order to solve a great mystery. She was an intrepid journalist who never shirked danger, never hesitated to put her life on the line for others, whether for enlightenment or entertainment. The thing that killed them is still out there-as is the party of soldiers bent on its destruction.”

He fell silent, but his camera lingered over the sheeted bodies, passing back and forth, zooming in, pa

“They’ll never let you show that on the air,” Wolff said.

“I’m thinking of the DVD to follow,” Conti said. “The director’s cut.” He lowered the camera. “This was a lucky break.”

“A lucky break?” Ekberg asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Finding them here. I was afraid they’d be in cold storage already.”

Wasn’t so lucky for them, Ekberg thought. She began to object but held her tongue. It wouldn’t do any good.

They returned to the corridor and continued, their footsteps echoing hollowly on the floor. Now and then Conti called a halt and stood motionless, listening intently. There was an expression on his face she’d never seen before: a strangely furtive eagerness. His eyes shone with it. She glanced uneasily at Wolff. In the reflected light of the camera, his face was set in a dubious frown.

Another intersection, another endless hall. Conti stopped once again. “Look,” he said, pointing the camera down the hall like an oversized flashlight. “Isn’t that blood on the floor?”

Ekberg followed the beam of light. He was right: maybe twenty yards ahead, sprays of what could only be blood covered the floor of the hallway. They seemed to have come from an open doorway marked

P-H STAGING ROOM. A confusing welter of bloody footprints led in and out of the room and down the far end of the corridor. Ekberg felt a spike of anxiety.

Conti trotted ahead, fitting the camera’s viewfinder to his eye. Ekberg watched as he pointed the lens at the blood, pa

“This is where the outrage occurred,” he intoned. “This is where the unspeakable finality of death overtook them. Death at the hands of what can only be described as a monster-a monster whose secrets we are now committed to uncovering…and putting to an end.”

He gestured for Ekberg to kill the sound. Lowering the camera, he pointed excitedly at the ground before him. “Look. Those tracks-there are three sets at least! That’s got to be Gonzalez and his men.” He paused, scrutinizing the floor more carefully. “My God. Is this the monster’s spoor?” He raised the camera again, pa

As Ekberg came forward, she avoided looking into the room where Ashleigh and the soldier named Fluke had died, focusing instead on the bloody splotch Conti was staring at. It couldn’t be the tread of a creature-it couldn’t. It was too big; its shape was too u