The Spawning (5 page)

Coyle had known a guy named Jerry Sherrily who had worked McMurdo back then and been part of the clean-up crew. It had been a nasty business. Remains were stored in the food freezers until they could be flown out. Sherrily said he would never forget the sound of the Skuas eating out of those bags or the sight of one flying over his head with a human hand in its beak. It was high summer at the time and as the bodies came in, they were stacked alongside the strip at Willy Field. The sun glaring down on them made them heat up and the bags kept breaking open as they were off-loaded from choppers, splashing rancid body fluids and gouts of tissue in the faces of the workers.

Coyle had seen some of the films of all that and he was remembering them now. Remembering every grisly detail and wondering just what in the hell he was getting himself into here.

First Mount Hobb losing its crew and now a chopper crash.

If these were omens for the coming winter, then they were not good ones.

T
HE CRASH SITE.

They saw the smoke from it long before they got in visual range.

Out on the polar plateau, if it was clear and cold, you could see for miles. But on a day like today with the sun barely making a showing and the snow blowing down from the mountains and that gloomy haze reflected up off the ice itself, visibility was down to twenty yards at best. It made it hard to tell which was the sky and which was the earth itself. It became one. Something that was only multiplied by the dimness of the dying early winter sunlight.

Horn piloted the Sno-Cat down the flagged ice road, the headlights jumping as they passed over humps and dips. The ice road was safe, but beyond its perimeters there were great jagged crevasse fields blown by ice-mist and glacial wind, meandering rows of scalloped sastrugi that looked like five-foot breakers heading ashore that had frozen in place. Back in the old days, Coyle knew, you had to rope your sledge to five or six men and drag it over obstacles like that, something that was accomplished only by straining brute strength and willpower. Even dog teams had a hell of a time.

“There . . . that's smoke out there,” Special Ed said, jabbing his finger at the windshield. “See that?”

They all did, of course. Out in that unbroken glaring whiteness where even the shadows were pale gray, the black plumes of smoke boiling in the sky were in stark contrast. Frye's Sno-Cat was already at the scene when Horn downshifted and rolled them to a stop. He brought it around so the headlights were on the wreck like the other ‘Cat. He left it running.

They strapped their Stabilicers on—extra soles with steel cleats on them that you strapped to your boots so you didn't slip and slide all over the place—and jumped out.

The crashed helicopter was a Huey.

It looked like some fluorescent orange wasp that had fallen to earth, been stepped on, and kicked to fragments by a precocious child: wings here and thorax there and abdomen over there. It was just a smoldering mess of iron and plastic and composite. Fuselage crushed and rotors snapped off, tail boom flattened and jutting up vertically now like an exclamation mark. The entire thing was burning, fuel tanks rupturing on impact and spraying gasoline in every which direction, creating a flaming wall that kept everyone away from the wreckage. The flames were burning out gradually, but it was still pretty hot and dangerous if you got too close.

Things were sputtering and popping. Now and again, a sizzling piece of metal broke free or was ejected by pressure and heat.

“Shit and shit,” Coyle said.

“Oh boy, oh my God,” Special Ed kept saying, circling around in his ECWs, bunny boots crunching on the hardpack.

Frye's team—which was composed of Frye, a kid they called Slim, and Flagg, the camp doctor—just stood there hopelessly, knowing there wasn't a damn thing they could do. The heat was melting the snow and ice, putting out a barrier that was hot like a breath from a kiln.

Frye just shook his head, unmoved by it all. “Sweet little mess, ain't she?” he said, spitting tobacco juice into the snow. “Jee-ZUZ-Christ, what a clusterfuck. Where'd this guy get his chopper license? Box of Cracker Jacks?”

Nobody commented on Frye's sensitivity to it all. That was Frye. Down deep, he was good as gold, but on the outside just plain crusty.

“So what're we supposed to do, Ed?” Horn was saying. “Whoever was on her is toast.”

“Show some respect,” Flagg said, the wind ruffling the fur of his parka.

Horn shrugged. “It's cool, Doc.”

Frye spat another stream of tobacco juice at a smoking shard of metal. “He's right, though. Ain't nothing alive in that mess. Crew must be tater tots by now. Can't even see nothing in there that looks like a man. Unless you got a big spatula to flip ‘em over with, ain't shit we can do.”

“That's enough,” Flagg said. “Good God, there were men on board.”

“Ain't no men there now, Doc. Whatever was on board is bacon fried real crispy.”

“Dude, that's cold,” Slim said.

“I want your opinion, sunshine, I'll ask for it,” Frye told him.

Slim was a General Assistant, a GA, which meant he pulled any shit job that came along. And this was beginning to look like one of those.

Coyle stood there, the heat coming off the wreckage so intense that he could have stripped down to a t-shirt and shorts. As it was, he was sweating in his heavy ECWs, his Extreme Cold Weather gear. He backed away, smelling acrid fumes of burning fuel and scorched metal, less pleasant odors that he figured were probably human flesh and bone. The wind shifted and blew smoke right into everyone's faces. Coughing and fanning the air, they stepped further back.

“Must've come down damn hard,” Frye said. “Looks like she went nose first right into the ice. That's funny.”

“Why?” Slim wanted to know.

“Because, kid, it ain't right. I've seen chopper crashes out here before. What usually happens is that the pilot has mechanical failure or whiteout conditions confuse him and he skims the ice. Either way, the chopper comes in horizontally with the ice, see? Follows the plane. This one looks like it was driven down vertically.”

“Oh,” Slim said, not getting it at all.

But Coyle was getting it and so were the others by the looks on their faces.

“You're right,” Horn said, pulling off his hood and hat, wrapping an American flag bandanna over his sweating head which was steaming in the wind. “Looks like that pilot drove her straight down like a nail. Like maybe he did it on purpose.”

Special Ed kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish trying to get a good pull of water through its gills. “Really, people, we don't know what happened here. It's not our place to speculate.”

“Why not?” Horn said. “Why the hell not? If that chopper was from Colony, then you never know what kind of crazy-ass shit it was up to.”

“That's right,” Frye said. “Could be them Martians you hear about.”

Slim giggled . . . then stopped when he saw no one thought that was funny. Not down here. Not on the Ice.

Coyle just watched the inferno.

The sight and smell and sound of that burning debris made something twist up in his belly like a screw seeking threads. It was horrible. The wreckage was scattered easily for two-hundred feet in all directions, fanning out from the central flaming mass. There were lots of charred things and smoking clumps everywhere. In the semi-darkness with the shadows thrown from the clouds of smoke, it was hard to tell much of anything.

Slim and Horn started ducking around the flames, checking things out while Special Ed told them to stay back, throwing his arms up into the air when they wouldn't listen.

Frye and Coyle sat on the treads of a Sno-Cat while Special Ed called it in on the radio and Flagg just stood there with his hands on his hips, his medical bag hanging from his waist.

There was a humming sound in the distance that got louder and louder until it became the telltale
thunk-thunk-thunk
of an approaching helicopter. It was coming in fast.

“Another chopper,” Frye said. “And I can just about guess where it's coming from.”

Coyle did not move. He just watched Horn and Slim playing amongst the burning wreckage like boys, kicking smoking shards of metal around and leaping over blackened sections of the chopper itself.

“Fuck is that?” Horn said. “That a body?”

“A couple of ‘em,” Slim said. “I think.”

Flagg was interested now.

He moved around the perimeter of the wreckage, trying to get a look at what they'd found.

Both of them sounded excited. Even Horn who got excited about nothing but the idea of anarchy. Flagg was sixty-years old and he was in no shape to be leapfrogging burning debris. He held a hand to his face to shield the smoke and heat.

Frye just shrugged, disinterested.

But Coyle was interested. He went over there and jogged around the far side. The sound of the approaching helicopter was getting really loud now.

“Look at that,” Horn said. “A body, all right.”

Coyle saw it. Looked like a man all twisted-up, mangled. He was burning and the stink was nauseating.

A section of the tail fell right over on top of him and he was completely engulfed in flame.

“Damn,” Slim said.

“Something else over here,” Horn said.

They darted around behind the wreckage, trying to get at something near a flaming section of tail stabilizer. Something large and oblong. It was covered in a tarp that was smoldering, flames burning around its edges. Whatever was under it was steaming like it was frozen and melting very fast.

“Is that a man over there?” Flagg said.

“Can't tell,” Horn called out.

In an act of bravado born of youth and inexperience, Slim leaped the stabilizer and tried to get at the tarped form. Smoke was in Coyle's eyes, so he could not really see what was going on. Just Slim trying to yank that burning tarp away and commenting on the stink coming from underneath it.

“Be careful!” Flagg called out.

Horn was peering into the smoke as Slim took hold of the edge of the tarp and gave it a quick yank with his mittened hand. He pulled his hand away quickly.

“Ow! Ow! That shit is hot!”

“Something under there,” Horn said. “Something big and it ain't no man.”

Slim tried again and managed to pull it away and as he did so, he stumbled and fell back like whatever was under there had scared him.

“Goddamn!” he said, the tarp falling back into place. “You see that, Horn? You see that fucking thing under there?”

There was a sudden explosion and a fireball leaped from the wreckage, casting a wall of sparks over at Slim. Horn grabbed hold of him and yanked him away as burning bits flew free and sizzled in the snow like shrapnel.

Special Ed was hanging out of the cab of his ‘Cat with the mic still in his hand. “Get away from there! You two, get away from there right now!”

“Yeah,” Frye said. “Johnny! Tommy! You quit playing with that burning helicopter! You might get your pants dirty or scuff your Sunday church shoes! Fucking kindergarten.”

Horn and Slim raced away from the wreckage and Slim's face was pinched white, his eyes huge. He didn't look frightened, really, but shocked.

Then the other helicopter buzzed overhead, hovered, and dropped down far behind the remains of the first, its rotor wash sending smoke and snow in every which direction.

“Hell you see over there?” Flagg called out to Slim over the noise of the chopper.

But Slim kept shaking his head and Horn kept licking his lips like maybe there wasn't enough spit in the world to lubricate his tongue so he could tell what he saw.

Something was up.

And Coyle figured it was more than just a charred body. This was something else. Something bad.

Three men came out of the chopper and they were all dressed in military-issue olive drab wind pants and parkas and snow goggles. They were big men and they carried sidearms. Two of them formed a perimeter at the wreckage like they were daring anyone to get too close. The other guy jogged over near the Sno-Cats.

“Here come the spooks,” Horn said under his breath.

“We have a crash team en route from Colony,” the guy said beneath a thick black mustache that looked like a particularly large and hairy spider that was trying to mate with his mouth. “We'll take care of it from here on in. Thanks for getting here so soon.”

Flagg said, “The site is very hot, but we saw no survivors. The remains are trapped inside, I'm guessing.”

“That's fine,” mustache said. “We can handle it from here. You guys can pull out now. We have it well in hand.”

In other words, Coyle thought, thanks and now get the hell out of here.

“We'll hang around to see if we can be of assistance,” Flagg said.

“That's not necessary. We can handle this.”

Special Ed hopped off the Sno-Cat. “Captain Dayton! How nice to see you again! We got here as fast as we could, but I think we were a little too late as you can see from the wreckage. My God, what a tragedy, what a terrible–”

Dayton ignored him. “I want this area cleared.”

“Wait a minute now,” Flagg said, getting his gumption up. “This is a crash site with fatalities. My assistance will be required.”

Dayton narrowed his eyes. “Your assistance is not required.”

Coyle was watching the exchange, but he was also watching Horn and Slim. They both had the same pale wide-eyed look about them, their mouths pulled into gray pressed lines just as sharp as razor cuts. They looked like they'd both just looked through a window into Hell.

Coyle was also watching Dayton.

Flagg was arguing with him and Special Ed danced around the periphery trying to make peace like a good little wind-up company man.

Coyle didn't know who Dayton was, but he did not like him.

Just an inflexible, rigid military man with a pole shoved up his ass. He and his two troopers had the same crewcuts, the same pickle jar heads, the same winter-dead eyes. You could read guys like that just fine if you spent enough time around them like Coyle had back in his Navy days. Maybe Special Ed was an obedient yes sir/no sir bureaucratic doormat, but guys like Dayton were one step above all that. They got the order, they'd slit your throat.