The Weird Company (25 page)

I ran until I collapsed from exhaustion. I was driven to put as much distance between myself and the monstrous landscape as possible. Somewhere along the way my legs gave out and I fell in a heap against a tunnel wall. When I awoke, my watch told me that I had been out for two days! I did not think it possible that I had slept so long, but the growth of hair on my head and my face suggested that this was the truth. After waking, I ate a small tin of meat. My supplies were still in good shape; I was eating and drinking much less than I thought I would need to. Indeed, I could not recall the last time I was actually hungry or thirsty.

After my repast, I tried to gain my bearings. I was briefly concerned that during my unexpected rest I might have gotten turned around and would therefore return to the chamber I had left. Thankfully, my electric light revealed a feature that I knew I had not passed before. In front of me was a great spiraled ramp, like the core of a conch, leading up into the ceiling. I followed it up, glad to be out of the labyrinth of tunnels.

The ramp emerged on one side of a vast cavern wholly unlike the chambers I had previously discovered. This one was more natural in shape, the dominant feature of the three-to-four-acre cave being a shallow pool dotted with small islands of rocky fragments and boulders. There was life in the water, small fish and some minute snails, both apparently feeding off of a slimy mold or bacteria that grew on the bottom. I suspected that in the deeper pools there were larger animals, perhaps in significant numbers. It seemed a necessity to support the predators that basked on the shores of the subterranean lake. They were penguins of a sort, monstrously large, and albino. I counted eight of them, and at five feet tall they posed some threat to me, for they were fast and their beaks are more than six inches long. But, lucky for me, uncounted generations in the dark had rendered them eyeless, and I with my two good eyes and electric lantern held a serious advantage. One of them wandered away from the rest, and I killed it to make sure it was real and not some sham crafted by the protoplasmic thing I had escaped. Oddly, I found the dead bird, and the rest of the flock, relatives perhaps of the extinct Anthropornis, comforting. Even in this monstrous form they represented a kind of recognizable normalcy, following established rules of biology and behavior. More so, they reinforced my belief that I must indeed be somewhere in Antarctica.

The new cavern was significantly colder than the chambers and tunnels I had left behind, and was fringed with small sheets of ice. Clusters of icicles hung down from the ceiling. Thankfully, the cold weather gear that I carried kept me warm. The pool itself was warmer than the surrounding air and seemed to contain a significant amount of sulfur. It was fed by a small stream that led off into one of several rough passages. I suspected that the source of the stream was a geyser or similar volcanic feature. I was tempted to try to find the source, but the passages were too narrow for even my lithe frame to explore. There were other, larger passages from which a haunting but welcome sound of wind emanated. I desperately wanted to dash down one of those tunnels, but for some reason I decided to stay amid the colony of mutant birds.

Following the shoreline, I found myself forced to work around to the dryer side of a particularly large boulder. In doing so, I startled a rather large penguin at least five and a half feet tall, and incredibly rotund, possibly topping out at over two hundred pounds. It screeched at me in anger and then scrambled away, diving onto its belly and using its arms as paddles to glide across the rocky ground. The whole event would have been comical had it not been for what the thing had left behind. There on the ground lay the remains of a smaller penguin from the head, upper torso and single wing that remained. Of the other wing, lower torso and legs I could find no trace, neither of flesh, feather or bone. Logically, I assumed that the victim had been killed some time before and then been subject to slow consumption, decay hampered by the cold. But that possibility was negated by what happened next, for the head of the dismembered bird suddenly reared up! The beak opened and closed as if trying to call out. In that moment, I was grateful that the thing lacked the ability to move air through its throat, for I am not sure I could have shouldered the burden of its miserable cries. I used the heel of my boot to put the thing out of its misery.

Given the desolation of the place, I was not surprised that the penguins, or at least one of them, had turned to cannibalism. What I did find amazing was that one could attack and devour another, flesh and bone included, before the victim had even expired. The speed at which such an event must occur, coupled with the strength needed to rend such an animal into digestible pieces, was truly frightening, and I realized that I must be on constant guard against attack. Towards this end I decided to fully explore the cave and all of its environs. Starting at the entranceway to the spiraling ramp, I worked my way clockwise around the lake, exploring the rocky strip that ran between the rim of the lake and the cavern walls. There was little to see. The terrain was uneven and covered with a loose gravel of black rock, peppered with larger rocks and the occasional boulder. The cavern walls were made of the same black stone and were equally uneven. In places large clusters of boulders formed plateaus six to eight feet off the ground. These, I noted, would make perfect places to rest and remain out of reach of the penguins.

Continuing on my way, I passed several fissures in the wall which had been worn smooth by millennia of trickling rivulets of water. The water was cold but clear with a heavy mineral taste. I took a few moments at one of the streams to wash the dirt and dust away. I gasped as the frigid water ran over my body. The mutant birds all turned to stare at me with blind eyes as I struggled to bathe. It was an unnerving sight, and I was happy when the flock finally went back to ignoring me.

As I reached the far side of the lake, I noticed an object that was neither the color nor the shape of the surrounding rocks. It was a sledge of supplies, cold weather gear, tinned food, lamps, clothing, a heater, a stove, a clutch of bamboo stocks, and several barrels of kerosene. There were footprints around it, boots all the same size. It was the first evidence of human life I had seen, and it sent my heart pounding. The sledge was pointed toward the mouth of a large cave from which a flickering pinprick of light could be seen. It couldn’t be more than a mile away. I grabbed a few supplies from the sledge and began to move down the tunnel, but then I stopped dead in my tracks, and the things in my arms tumbled and clattered against the rocky terrain.

In front of me stood the obese penguin that I had caught devouring one of its own. It was moving toward me, as if staring at me with those empty, eyeless sockets. I moved quietly to the left, and the monster bird mirrored me. I moved again, but again the mutant countered. I reached back slowly and pulled a bamboo stock from the sledge. The beast cocked its head and opened its mouth, revealing double rows of sharp, thorn-like teeth. Spittle dripped from those horrid fangs, and where it fell onto the rocks it hissed and sputtered like acid, and I finally understood how the thing had devoured the other penguin so quickly. Then as I watched, it shuddered. The sides of its head split open and two large black eyes shoved themselves up out of the skull and twisted back and forth in the rough sockets. It looked at me now with real eyes, saw the metal-tipped stick and screeched like some great raptor.

I stumbled backwards and landed against the sledge. The creature lunged forward. I swung the stock forward, and the bird’s fat belly slid over it and was slowly impaled. Though the basket was not present, the hooks used to attach it were, and it was these metallic spikes that tore into the bird’s spine and kept it from moving forward. The thing struggled to reach me, snapping and thrashing about violently, but to no avail. I pushed myself back and at the same time reached for another stock. The pinned beast shuddered once more and I paused, entranced by the horror that was unfolding before me. The monstrously fanged beak split apart and peeled back, ripping the flesh off the skull. The exposed throat swelled and a frightful thing that bore some resemblance to the mouth parts of a squid shot out at me. Reflexively, I thrust the stock forward and into the center of the gnashing parts, driving them back into the main body of the thing. It wailed and squirmed, desperate to release itself from the two shafts that held it in place. The flesh elongated, stretched and then pulled apart, and two replaced the single beast that had confronted me moments before. They slid about and slowly worked their way off of my makeshift spears. Thinking quickly, I grabbed one of the lamps, undid the fuel cap and poured kerosene over the two squirming masses. I hastily struck a match and tossed it into the fuel. The flames engulfed the things, and they squealed in agony, their limbs flailing about. The smoke turned black and acrid, and whatever the monstrous penguin degenerated into, I could not precisely discern. It was a pulpy, protoplasmic thing that writhed within those flames, another thing that was not what it appeared to be, and I was glad to put some distance between myself and the smoldering masses that remained.

I crashed through that rocky tunnel, heading blindly toward that distant glow. Instinctively I knew that the light was neither a lantern nor some strange assemblage of fungi. The color was all wrong, the white glow soft and inviting. I drove myself forward at breakneck speed, tripping over rocks and climbing over boulders. The rock floor covered with gravel gave way to a landscape of scattered stones, and then an obstacle course of boulder fragments. In the end I was scrambling over boulders larger than me. They peppered the ground that led up to a rough wall that filled the entire passageway. Only a single opening, maybe four feet in diameter, provided a break in the blockage, and from this the light emanated. But it wasn’t only the light that poured from that hole. With it came a terrifying wind, a blasting jet that surged icily into the tunnel and carried with it stinging, biting crystals of ice.

I plunged into that hole, hugging to me what gear I could and dragging the rest of it behind me. I used my arms and knees to push myself through, all the time the wind whipping past my face and into whatever gap in my gear it could find. The rocky shards did their best to bruise and break me, but the padding of the jacket afforded some protection. With each movement forward my breathing grew more rapid, my heart beat faster, the wind whipped more ruthlessly, and my desperation grew palpable. Straining against that demonic, freezing wind, I burst from the end of the warren and tumbled into the light beyond.

I found myself at the base of a mountain, of a mountain range. Behind me the white-crowned peaks stretched up into the sky, grey basaltic things, like inhuman towers that clawed at the sun. Before me was a vast icy plain, white and blue reflecting in the sun. Snow drifted in great waves, stopped and then moved on. The cold was a tangible thing I could feel with my hands as it hung in the air. If I tried, I felt I could almost grasp it, shape it, twist it into any form I desired. The cold tore at my skin and eyes as I struggled to put on a pair of snow goggles and cinch down my hood. As I lowered my head to protect my face, my eyes wandered across the ground at my feet and discovered two thin, parallel scratches in the ice-covered rock, readily recognizable as traces of a sledge similar to the one I left behind in the cavern. The trail began at the cave mouth and went off over a low rise just a few hundred yards away, more evidence that I wasn’t alone in this place. Excited at the possibility of seeing another person, I foolishly dashed down the trail and over the rise.

I wish that I hadn’t, for on the far side of the hillock I found the sledge, and more, so much more. I ran from that place, ran from the light and the sky and the wind. I crawled back through that tight little hole and pushed my way into the cavern of monstrous penguins. Pulses racing with looming madness, I went through the sledge that remained there and took all that I could use. I slaughtered the birds, even though that was all they were. I felt a tinge of regret, but that faded as I pulled my supplies down the spiral ramp and into the tunnels below. The drums of kerosene rolled easily through the tunnels and from cavern to cavern. The thing that played at being a forest shrieked as I doused it with fuel and set it ablaze. It took hours to make sure that I had destroyed all of the thing, for bits of it kept breaking off and trying to escape. I hunted them all down. The flying, creeping, crawling things flopped angrily within the flames, but they all died.

The machine-creature went easier. It, too, shrieked against the flames, but it seemed to lack the power to divide itself and thus could not attempt an escape. It roared as the flames charred its titanic bulk. It crashed against the wall, reared up and gouged the ceiling, knocking massive chunks of rock down onto itself. The boulders pinned the beast and left it wailing pitifully. I cackled maniacally as it slowly succumbed, struggling for more than an hour. It died with a violent shudder. As whatever life force that sustained it finally fled, the structure of the thing gave way and the strange matter that comprised it crumbled into a strange pasty jelly which lingered for a while and then suffered some catastrophic change, dissolving into nothingness.

The creatures trapped in the pits were easiest. They didn’t even scream as I poured the kerosene over them. I don’t think they even noticed. They were too simple to understand what was happening. Even after I set them ablaze they barely reacted. They bubbled in the heat, turned greasy black, then crisped. When I was done, all that remained were a few piles of glossy black ash.

I rolled the barrel containing the rest of the kerosene back to where it all began, back to the place where I woke up. God help me, I wish I hadn’t! I wish I hadn’t awoken. That I hadn’t wandered through the dark labyrinth. That I hadn’t found my way out. I wish that I hadn’t seen those mountains, nor the madness that I found at their base. Or seen those shapes, those blasphemous shapes frozen in the ice around the sledge.