4019 words
Rhys Carter died today, or maybe tomorrow, he wasn’t sure yet. Lying face down in the snow with blood streaming from his left shoulder, he considered his situation.
The cold hit first, seeping through the torn layers of Kevlar into his skin. His arm, half exposed through the ruins of his sleeve, had already gone numb in the snow. He couldn’t feel his fingers. Carefully, he managed to prop himself up with his back against a tree. He tried to move his left arm and regretted it immediately. Something in his shoulder tore as he shifted it and he had to fight back a scream. He let his arm slack again and focused on breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. It didn’t help.
Through the pine trees, snowflakes drifted down. He could almost hear them falling, quiet as it was. He watched one settle on the back of his glove and vanish. Another followed. Then another. It distantly occurred to him that if he stayed here long enough, the snow would cover him completely and he would be like the others.
The others.
His squadron lay around him. He could tell by the stained red mounds of snow that covered them. Rhys closed his eyes for a moment and revelled in the darkness, but even the eigengrau wasn’t safe as images of his friends being torn apart resurfaced in his mind's eye. His heart racing, he opened his eyes again, and stared at the forest floor until it stopped spinning. Having composed himself, Rhys ran his functional hand over his body. A few minor surface wounds, but aside from his shoulder he and his gear seemed mostly intact. Sitting there in the snow, 53 km deep into Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada, he did the only thing he knew how to do: consult his training.
He had dug out three of his fallen comrades before he found Stephen, their medpack carrier. He packed the deep bite and covered it with gauze, before tightly wrapping his shoulder and upper arm in bandages. He could feel the blood soak through the first few layers, but it would have to be enough for now. His left arm held up in a sling, he felt for the comm in his helmet.
'MTF Lambda-7, this is Agent Carter, come in,' he said, forcing the words out. His throat felt raw, like he had been screaming for hours. Maybe he had. It occurred to him that he had no idea how long he’d be lying there, drifting in and out of consciousness. He tapped the side of his helmet twice, 'Command, do you read?'
He lay there listening to the static, waiting for the click that meant he wasn’t totally alone. Someone always answered. Even if Command didn’t reply, even if the uplink failed, someone on their squad would come in with some smart-ass remark or a shaky 'yeah, I’m here.' Nothing came. The dead line didn’t even give him the courtesy of interference.
Rhys shifted his head just enough to look beyond the base of a tree. Dense patches of spruce and pine stretched in all directions. Dark and pale trunks rose from the snow like his own personal prison bars. He could see shallow, pinkish tracks leading to a larger mound of snow, approximately thirty metres from his position. He knew what would be under there, something large and furry that vaguely reminded him of a Smilodon. It must have wandered off after massacring his squad and knocking him unconscious. It was dead. Small red blots seeping through the snow revealed the location of at least forty bullet-holes.
Rhys caught himself feeling disappointment. That shocked him. After all, he was safer with it dead than alive. Still, the dread persisted, it was the knowledge that their capture mission had failed. Part of him had hoped that if he could face the thing again then maybe, just maybe he wouldn’t die in vain. Perhaps he could still do something to help future squads catch and study it. Now, that hope melted away, and looking at the snow-covered corpse of the beast that had murdered his friends he felt well and truly alone.
'They’re coming,' He muttered, though he wasn’t sure who he meant. Extraction, QRF, anyone. It didn’t matter. He knew the protocols, everyone did. Contact loss, presumed total casualty, they’d redirect the comm line and divert resources elsewhere. That comm unit in his helmet was useful for nothing but decoration.
He pictured some weaselly, bespectacled man already writing a neat line into his report, somewhere far south of the treeline. MTF Lambda-7 neutralised during initial engagement. Recovery deemed nonviable.
Nonviable, he almost laughed.
It was such a stupid word, too clinical in the face of it all. He tried to picture himself as a data point, an ‘X’ in a box, but the image refused to settle. His shoulder throbbed in time with his pulse. He tasted copper in his mouth. Slowly, he got up, his nearly empty M25 held out in front of him, and approached the bleeding mound that used to be the anomaly. Now closer, he could see tufts of frozen, light grey fur poking through the snow. He kicked it, then again, and again, screamed every profanity he knew at it and then some. It didn’t move. Rhys cleared away some of the snow and sat against its side, knowing he was going to die.
He'd just closed his eyes when he heard a cracking noise, subtle at first then louder. A distinct primal fear overtook him when he met the eyes of a wolf standing just a few metres from him. Three wolves, he noted soon after, three wolves circling him. It was funny, he hadn’t been afraid when the anomaly charged them, but now, alone in the snow with one bullet left in his pistol, he was terrified of some ordinary wolves.
Still facing the main wolf, Rhys awkwardly pushed himself onto the large back of the anomaly. It was a clumsy affair, with only one functional arm, but the wolves didn’t advance. Perhaps they too, were confused as to what he was doing. They watched him with flat, unreadable eyes. Steam curled from their mouths in steady breaths. They were healthy, shiny coats, no visible ribs, not desperate. That, somehow, made it worse. Rhys kept the gun trained on the one in front, though the blood loss and the cold made his arm tremble badly enough that the sight wobbled in and out of line with its head. One bullet. He was acutely aware of it now, of the fact that even if he used it perfectly it wouldn’t matter. Wolves didn’t charge one at a time.
Behind him, a wolf took a step closer. Rhys spun around.
'Stay back,' Rhys commanded. He raised his arm above his head, attempting to look as large as possible. Rhys was not a small man, but the blood now seeping through the bandage on his shoulder and the way he winced with every movement did nothing to help his threat display. He swallowed hard and tried again, louder. 'Go on, get out of here!'
The wolf cocked its head, as if genuinely considering the offer. Its gaze flicked briefly from Rhys, to the bulk of the anomaly beneath him. Rhys felt a sudden, absurd surge of possessiveness. This thing was his now. It had killed his friends, but they had killed it, so now it belonged to him. He trained his pistol on the mass of the closest wolf again.
The main wolf behind him moved forward, he heard its paws crunch in the snow. He didn’t know if it actually was the lead wolf, or if wolves had a chain of command at all, but it seemed as good a name as any. A third stayed back in the treeline, a pale thing half swallowed by the snow. They’d stopped circling him now, but he estimated he could easily touch one if he reached down, as close as they’d gotten. He’d barely even noticed it, but there they were, only an arms-length away. And him, standing atop the thing that killed his friends, brandishing a gun that wouldn’t save him.
Then the front wolf lowered its head and sniffed. Not at Rhys. At the anomaly. Its nose brushed a piece of blood-matted fur where the snow had fallen away. It recoiled instantly, fur on end, and let out a low growl. The other two reacted instantly, stiff, with their ears pinned back and teeth bared.
Rhys noticed it then, too. The anomaly didn’t smell of death, not exclusively at least. It had this sharp, metallic, yet strangely sweet scent about it. He hadn’t even noticed it at first, because he’d smelled it so many times before. That’s just what lingers around things that don’t quite belong. That wrong smell that made his stomach churn if he breathed too deeply. The wolves clearly knew it as well.
The front wolf took a step back. Then another. The wolves lingered for a moment longer, eyes never leaving him, then one by one turned and melted back into the trees. The last thing he saw was the pale one, at the treeline, glancing over its shoulder before vanishing out of sight. Rhys let out a deep breath. His knees threatened to give out and he kneeled onto the body beneath him, digging his fingers into its pallid fur. He laughed then, a rough, broken sound that turned into something close to a sob. He pressed his forehead to the creature’s back and stayed there, breathing deep, until the shaking passed.
'Okay,' he whispered to no one particular. 'Okay, still here.'
It occurred to him, then, that these were not the words of a man resigned to his inevitable demise. The realization crept up on him slowly, unwelcome yet utterly undeniable: this thing had protected him. Not intentionally, of course, but its presence, even in death, had kept him alive for a few minutes longer. That changed things.
He pushed himself back upright, grimacing at the pain in his shoulder, and scanned the forest. No movement, the wolves were gone. Now, just a long, cold stretch of wilderness lay between him and anything resembling safety. Dying here was still an option, but it wasn’t the only one anymore.
Rhys carefully slid from the anomaly’s back and looked it over. A massive ruin of a body with thick, albeit blood-soaked, fur. An idea began to take shape, one very much against protocol. He holstered his pistol and went for the knife at his belt.
'You’re going to be useful,' he smiled. The forest did not protest as he began to work.
It couldn’t quite be called a cloak. The vaguely oblong swath of fur with a slit cut into it to wrap around his shoulders still dripped with blood, despite Rhys’ best attempts to scrub it clean with snow. Skinning such a large creature one-handed had been no easy feat. It didn’t help that the anomaly seemed to have some kind of thick, blubber-like layer into which his knife continuously lodged itself. In the end, he’d given up on taking the entire skin and settled for carving out a patch of fur from the thing’s side. While this left his end product looking less than presentable, the large size of the anomaly meant Rhys’ new cloak was still more than big enough to wrap around his entire body like a parka.
His work had left an open hole in the side of the thing, exposing its meat. Rhys wondered if it was edible. He’d resigned himself to the fact that a very long hike was in his future, and he’d need something to eat. He ran his knife along a rib, scraping off a thin sliver of marbled red meat and hesitantly placed it into his mouth. Rancid. That was the only word that came close to describing the taste Rhys stood trying to scrub from his tongue. He’d spat it out immediately, gagging, but the sour taste lingered. He now understood why the wolves had growled at it, he was tempted to do the same.
'Fine,' Rhys muttered. 'Worth a try.'
He shelved the thought of food for now. Logistics and tactics, that was safer ground for him. He took stock of what he had left with a familiar, detached efficiency that gave him a comforting sense of normal. One sidearm, good. One bullet in said sidearm, less good. An m4 carbine slung across his back, but that wouldn’t do him much good with his motionless left arm. A knife dulled by bone and hide. An in-helmet communicator that might as well have been brick, and a well-stocked medpack which he was currently using to refresh his bandages.
And time, maybe.
He forced himself away from the body and gathered what he could from the snow around him. The ripped open pack of their field scout yielded a crushed ration brick and a plastic baggy with cigarettes and, more interestingly, a lighter. While clearing away snow from what he thought was an extra coat, he found only the frozen arm of one of his comrades. He left it where it was, but it reminded him of his most important duty. He dug out and lined up his fallen squadmates, then saluted them one by one.
Before moving on, he returned to the anomaly once more. The dark hole he’d left in its side still steamed faintly. Rhys hesitated for a moment, then plunged his hand into the open cavity. He rubbed a thick layer of blood all over his fur cloak and tactical gear, until he reeked to high heavens and had to fight his gag reflex. The wolves hadn’t liked the smell. That was all that mattered.
He saluted it, too.
DAY 1
Rhys started counting his steps in intervals of three. It gave his mind something to do in the monotony of trees and snow.
He’d picked his direction quickly. While their tracks were long gone, they’d moved in a relatively straight line, and walking away from the bodies soon brought Rhys to small landmarks he recognised. He knew his goal clearly: Two jeeps waited in a clearing, a few kilometres into the park. They'd ditched them there to avoid tipping off the anomaly. Lotta good that did, he thought.
The fur cloak worked better than he’d expected. Having to keep holding it shut tired him out, so he poked a small hole on either side of the slit and pinned it closed with a stick. The cold still crept in eventually, but slower now with both his arms under the fur.
When exhaustion hit, he let himself collapse against a tree. His carbine’s bullets proved useful for starting a small fire which he used to warm up a chunk of the ration bar. It didn’t taste any better warmed than cold, but even a meagre hot meal helped stave off the shreds of cold that had slipped through the cloak. That night he slept in fragments, waking every time he twitched in his sleep and hit his shoulder against the tree. He dreamt of radio static turning into voices. He awoke to silence.
DAY 2
The trees seemed to be thinning slightly, and Rhys came upon a thin stream. The freezing water soothed his aching throat and invigorated his movements. He took the moment to clean his wounds. The cold water stung, but seemed to slow the bleeding.
That afternoon he saw a deer in the distance. Hesitantly, he removed his pistol from its place at his hip. However, as he dropped into a crouch and inched closer into position, the deer’s head shot up in his direction. For a split second they stared at each other, prey and predator, both frozen. Then it bolted, vanishing into the brush with the violent crash of branches.
Rhys was beginning to regret his venture into the world of anomalous perfumery.
DAY 3
After what had begun to feel like an endlessly repeating landscape, the trees finally gave way to icy plains. Here, away from the protection of the trees, the wind cut into him. He was reminded harshly of the damage his body had taken when a minor gust caused him to slip on a patch of ice. He crashed onto the frigid surface and his vision burst white. He lay there longer than he should have. He’d learned, by now, that staying still for too long was a bad idea, the cold would creep into his bones no matter how tightly he pulled his fur around him. He lay on his back, gasping for air. This is it, this is where I stop, the thought flashed through his mind for only a moment before he forced it away. It took him a while to get back up. He struggled to find his balance on the slick surface. Eventually, he was able to use his knife to anchor himself into the ice and hoist himself up.
Rhys thought a lot as he walked. Frankly, there wasn’t much else to do. He thought of his friends, of how he’d liked to have buried them proper, even though the ground was hard and frozen so he knew it was impossible. Of the anomaly, laying there in the vast wilderness. He imagined it contained in a sterile, white box. Pulling his cloak tight, he considered that maybe it was better off dead.
Most of all, he thought about the Foundation.
The even, undisturbed snow reminded him of the shiny white walls and the coats of researchers. Researchers who stood around watercoolers talking casually about monsters and how many had died to contain them. One day, on his way to windowless briefing room, he’d overheard two weathered senior researchers comparing ‘kill stats’. They’d boasted, trying to convince the other that their project was the more dangerous and impressive assignment.
He'd believed in it once, too. In the idea that someone had to do the dirty work so the rest of the machine could pretend that things just materialised in boxes for them to study. That it mattered, that they mattered. Someone had to die in the dark. He wasn’t sure when that faith had begun to crack. Maybe it had always been just a hollow fantasy he convinced himself of so he could sleep at night.
He imagined a meeting room. Some suits who’d never been in the field a day in their life saying his name in the past tense before moving on to the next point on the agenda. They’d consider sending some other squad to go looking for the anomaly. Maybe they’d even designate a new Lambda-7. His stomach stiffened and he tightened his jaw against the feeling.
They hadn’t come looking. That was what stuck with him, kept him walking. No reply on the comms for a few hours had been enough to be written off.
Rhys stumbled, caught himself on a rock and pressed his forehead to the icy stone. The hard, cold texture felt nice against his face, it soothed a burning there he hadn’t even noticed existed. He elected to spend the night by the boulder, to shelter from the harsh winds that swept the plain. His eyes wandered over the smooth snow ahead.
'If I make it.' Rhys stopped, shaking his head. 'When I make it out of here…'
He didn’t finish the thought. What would he do? The world outside the Foundation seemed abstract, but the idea of walking into another briefing room made his heart race.
He didn’t feel himself fall asleep, and he didn’t dream.
DAY 4
He smelled the jeeps before he saw them. He’d never noticed it before, but after days of nothing but frost and pine the smell of gasoline was overwhelming.
Every step after that was weightless. He didn’t even feel the hot pulse of his shoulder or the weight of his gear, not even after today’s hours of walking. He trudged into some spindly bushes and elected to put his helmet back on to prevent the branches from whipping him in the face as he pushed through.
Then, the foliage gave way and Rhys' eyes began to sting.
A clearing with some frozen tarps and tape flapping about. Their shapes now seemed so alien he barely recognised what he was looking at. The jeeps. His jeep. He’d imagined this moment a thousand times while he walked, yet now faced with his freedom he found himself overcome with a profound aimlessness. He regarded the jeeps with careful eyes. The keys of the one he’d driven burned a hole in one of his many pockets. He wanted nothing more than to just get in, to be inside something again. Something gnawed at him, however.
His gaze wandered to the roof of his jeep. From the smooth black, unmarked body rose the metre tall broadcast antenna. The more complex radio system in the jeep would let him talk directly to various command channels. He had his pick of open lines. For a long time, Rhys stared at the dark rod surrounded by smooth snow on the roof.
He trained his pistol’s sights on the antenna and pulled the trigger.
The thing exploded in a mess of plastic, metal and wires. He dropped his gun in the snow and looked at what he’d done. Worth it.
He limped over to the driver’s side and fumbled with the door. It took him two good tugs before it snapped open. The inside smelled like dusty fabric and cough drops. In that moment, it was the best smell in the world. He slid into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed behind him with a reverent click. For a moment he just sat there, his fur coat thrown messily into the seat next to him. Inside felt amazing. His first course of action was to turn the heat up as high as it would go. It soothed his aching muscles, but the warmth combined with the enclosed space made the terrible odour he’d coated himself with all the more apparent. Maybe a shower should be his first stop, he considered, after the hospital of course. His fingers had turned black somewhere between day two and three.
He turned the key all the way. The engine coughed once, then roared to life. The sound was deafening to him. Rhys let out a shaky breath and rested his hand on the wheel. He could drive north. Find some tiny town that didn’t ask too many questions, blend in. He could head south. Dump the jeep, flag someone down on the side of the road and see how long it took before the men in unmarked cars arrived.
He could go anywhere.
The Foundation would notice eventually. Of course they would, Rhys held no illusions about that. They might notice their radio antenna going dark and figure it out, or come back here eventually and find one less jeep than there should be. They’d open a file, and speculate quietly in windowless rooms.
But they wouldn’t know where he went.
Rhys glanced in the rearview mirror. Covered in dried viscera, his hair standing stiff on his head, his arm transitioned from bright red to purply black and the beginnings of a beard covered his face. He barely recognised himself. He smiled.
Nonviable. The word didn’t hurt as much anymore.
He put the jeep in gear. The tires crunched in the snow as he pulled away. It would swallow his tracks like it had swallowed everything else. Rhys didn’t look back. He drove until the sky began to change colour. Eventually he drove from an unmarked patch of plains, onto an equally unmarked backwater road. He didn’t know where he was going.
Only that he was going.
And somewhere far away a report would eventually be written.
It would be drafted up, formatted perfectly and shoved into a dusty filing cabinet.
It would say:
MTF Lambda-7: no survivors.
And for once, it would be wrong.
